The Snake Pit

  The houses of the manor he remembered much bigger than they were. And the little strip of beach hemmed in by rocks, which had seemed to him a whole stretch of country with many distinctive marks—a great bluish rock on which he used to lie, some bushes in which he could hide—now he saw that the little strip of sand was scarcely fifty of a grown man’s paces in length. He looked in vain for a hollow in the meadow above the manor, where he had been wont to sit and sun himself—it might have been a little pit east of the barn, which was now overgrown with osiers and alders. In a crack of the rock in the courtyard he had once found a curious snow-white ring—it must have been a vertebra of some bird or fish, from which the points were broken off, he now thought. But at that time he had taken it for a rare treasure, had preserved it carefully and often searched in the crevices of the rock to see if he could find others like it. It was almost like remembering old dreams—the scenes of the past floated before him in fragments—and at times he recalled a forgotten feeling of eeriness, as though after bad dreams he remembered no more than the dread.

  So he snatched at everything that might help him to overcome this sense of insecurity, of dreams and shadows, and make him feel that Hestviken was his, and that when he walked over the fields here he had his own ancestral soil under his feet—the Bull, the woods and hills on both sides of the valley, all was his land. And he was glad to think that now he was dwelling under the same roof as a kinsman, his own grandfather’s cousin, who had known all the men and women of his race since the days of his great-grandfather’s, Olav Ribbung’s manhood. When he sat in the evening drinking with his namesake and the old man told him of their bygone kinsmen, Olav had a sense of fellowship with his father’s stock which he had never known when he was in Denmark among his mother’s kindred.

  And he was drawn to the old man by the belief that Olav Priest’s son was so pious and learned. During these weeks, while he was awaiting the time when he could go northward and fetch Ingunn, he felt in a way as though he were settling his account with God.

  He himself was fully aware that it would not be easy for him to show perfect serenity and a glad countenance when he came to Berg to conclude the atonement with Haftor and receive Ingunn as his wife at the hands of the Steinfinnssons. But it could not be otherwise—and to get her was what he himself wished, in spite of all—and so he would surely be man enough to put a good face on it. But he could not defend himself against the insistence of childish memories—the certain knowledge that they belonged to each other and should always be together. That anything could come between them had been so far from their thoughts that it had never moved their hearts to either joy or wonder—they had taken it for granted that it should be as it had been determined for them. Until that summer when, locked in an embrace, they had fallen out of childhood and innocence, frightened, but at the same time giddy with rapture at the new sweetness they had found in each other—whether it were right or wrong that they abandoned themselves to it. Even when he awoke to a fear and defiance of all who would meddle with their destiny, he had been full sure that at last they two would win their cause. These memories would come suddenly upon Olav, and the pain of them was like the stab of a knife. That dream was now to take its course-but not the course he had imagined. And remembering himself as he was then was like remembering some other man he had known—a boy of such infinite simplicity that he both pitied and despised him, and envied him excruciatingly—a child he had been, with no suspicion of deceit, either in himself or in others. But he knew that for this anguish of the soul there was but one remedy—he would have to hide his wound so that no one, she least of all, might see that he bore a secret hurt.

  These thoughts might assail him while he sat conversing with the other Olav, and he would break off in the midst of his talk. The old man scarcely noticed it, but talked on and on, and the young man stared before him with a face hard and close—till old Olav asked him some question, and young Olav became aware that he had not heard a word of what the other had been saying.

  But he made ready to shoulder the burden he had to bear-without wincing, should it be God’s will to chasten him sorely in the coming years. For in a way the memory of that ski journey he had made with another and of the night at the sæter was ever present to him—except that he did not seem to see himself as the murderer. Rather was it as though he had witnessed a settling of scores between two strangers. But it was he, he knew that in a strange, indifferent way, and the sin was his sin. The slaying in itself could hardly be any mortal sin: he had not enticed the other into an ambush, the lad himself had planned this journey, and he had fallen sword in hand—and even a thrall had had the right to avenge his wife’s honour in old days, he had heard; ’twas a man’s right and duty by the law of God and men.

  It was what came after—

  And he had a feeling that he was offering God a makeshift in squaring his shoulders and making ready to bear the burden of Ingunn’s misfortune. Never would he let anyone see it if it became too heavy. And he would live piously and in the fear of God from now on—so far as that was in the power of a man who had an unshriven sin on his conscience. He would act justly by his neighbour, be charitable to the poor, protect the forlorn and defenceless, honour the house of God and his parish priest and render such payments as were due, say his daily prayers devoutly and with reflection and repeat the Miserere often, pondering the words well. He knew that he had received far too little instruction in the Christian faith during his youth; Brother Vegard had done his best, but he came to Frettastein only once or twice a year and stayed there but a week, and there was none else who so much as made inquiry whether the children said their prayers every day. And the good instruction he had received while with Bishop Torfinn had fared as in the parable—so many tares had been sown among the wheat during the years he spent abroad that the wheat, just as it was beginning to sprout, was choked by the weeds. For the first time something like remorse for the slaying of Einar Kolbeinsson dawned upon Olav Audunsson: he had regretted it because it was an ill reward to Bishop Torfinn for his kindness and because, as his affairs were then situated, it was the most unlucky chance that could befall him—ay, and then he knew that he ought to repent it, because it was sin, even if he could not see why it was so sinful. Now he began to divine that a deeper meaning and a deeper wisdom underlay our Lord’s commandment “Thou shalt not kill” than merely that which he had been told—God desires not the death of any sinner. Behind the commandment lay also a care for the slayer—the slayer also exposed his soul to many kinds of evil powers, which now found occasion for sudden assaults.

  Therefore it might well be of service to him to dwell with so pious a man as Olav Half-priest; his kinsman could surely afford him useful guidance in many things. Such as the penitential psalms —he had learned a number of them of Asbjörn All-fat and Arnvid in his days at Hamar, but now he had forgotten the most part.

  Olav invited his neighbours to a home-coming feast and told them that the wife he was to bring home was the daughter of Steinfinn Toresson, his foster-sister, to whom he had been betrothed when both were of tender age. So soon as he had looked about him at home and seen how his affairs stood he would ride back to the Upplands and fetch his wife. But as to the wedding he said not a word, whether it had already been drunk or was still to come; nor did he ask any of his neighbours to accompany him, though it was impossible for his kinsman to make the journey. Folk were quick to remark that the young Master of Hestviken was one who kept his own counsel and knew full well how far he would give an account of himself—not much was to be got out of him by asking questions.

  Olav had thought long and deeply whether he should mention that there was a child. Perhaps it might make the matter easier if he spoke of this beforehand. But he could not bring himself to it. And then he thought that after all it might be dead. It had been born quick—but death came easily to young children, he had heard it said. Or they might hit upon some means—put it out to foster-parents on the way, perhaps. That In
gunn should give him out as the child’s father, as he had told her in his first bewilderment and desperation, he now saw to be madness. He could not understand how he had come to conceive such a thought—bringing a bastard into the race. Had it but been a daughter, they could have put her in a convent, and no man would have suffered any great wrong by his letting her pass as his; but Ingunn had had a man-child—Oh, he had been witless at the time, from grief and anger. But he felt bound to accept the child, if the mother wished to have it with her. It must now fall out as fate would have it; useless to take up an evil before it was there.

  Nevertheless he crept one day up to the little room that was above the closet and the anteroom. The thought occurred to him that the child and its foster-mother might live there, if Ingunn wished to have her son in the house. Olav Ribbung’s daughters had slept in this loft with their serving-maids; but it was an age since the young women had lodged there. The dust and cobwebs of at least twenty years had collected there undisturbed, and the mice scrambled out of the bedstead when he went to see what might be stowed away there. Some old looms stood against the wall, and trestles for a table, and then there was a chest, carven with armorial bearings, which showed him that it had been his mother’s. He unlocked it: within lay spindles, spools, and combs and a little casket. In the casket was a book and a child’s swathe of white linen—a christening-robe, Olav guessed, no doubt the same that had been wrapped round him when he was lifted out of the baptismal font. He lingered, sitting on his haunches and twisting its embroidered border between two fingers.

  He took the book down with him and showed it to Olav Half-priest. But although the old man had always let it be thought that he could read and write as well as any priest—and much better than Sira Benedikt, their parish priest—there was in any case not much that he could make out of Cecilia Björnsdatter’s psalter. In the evening Olav sat and looked at it: little images were drawn within the capital letters, and the margins were adorned with twining foliage in red and green. When he went to bed he buried the book under the pillow, and there he let it lie.

  A few days before he was to set out for the north there came a poor woman to Hestviken who wished to speak with the master. Olav went out to her. She bore an empty wallet on her shoulder, so he guessed her errand. But first she greeted Olav with tears in her voice—tears of joy, she said; ’twas such a glad thing to see the rightful master stand at his own door at last, “and a fair and lordly man have you grown, Olav Audunsson—ay, Cecilia ought to have seen her son now—and they speak well of you among the neighbours, Olav. So methought I must come hither and see you—and I was among the first who saw you in this world, for I served at Skildbreid at that time and I was with Margret, my mistress, when she came to help your mother—I gave her a hand when she swathed you—”

  “Then you knew my mother?” asked Olav when the woman had to pause for want of breath.

  “You know, we saw her at church sometimes, when first Audun had brought her hither. But that winter she grew so sickly that she never went abroad—’twas too cold, the house she lived in, her handmaid said, and at last she had to move into the great room, where the old men were, for the sake of the warmth. It was right ill with Torgils that winter and spring. I mind me he raved most foully the night you were born, and the fit was upon him a whole week—Cecilia was in such fear of him, she lay trembling in her bed, and Audun himself could not comfort her. ’Twas that, I ween, that broke her, that and the cold. Audun carried her up to the loft-room when the weather was warmer; he saw she was not fit to dwell in the house with the madman—but she died straight. You must have been a month old then—”

  The woman’s name was Gudrid, she told him, and she lived in the cot that maybe Olav had seen when he rode east to the church town—to the north of the bogs, just before the road turns off toward Rynjul. In her first marriage she had had a little farm in the Saana district—with a good and worthy husband, but she had had no child by him. Then he died, and his brother moved to the farm with his wife; and as she could not be agreed with them, she married this Björn, with whom she was now. This was the most foolish counsel she could have taken. Nay, he was no poor man at that time; when they put together their goods, they might have had an easy lot. He was a widower and had only one daughter, and so they deemed that all might turn out well: she was minded to take a husband again, and she greatly desired to have children. And that wish alone was granted, of all she had looked for—eight children, and five of them lived. But the very first winter they were married Björn chanced to slay a man and had to pay fines, and there was soon an end of their prosperity. Now Björn was mostly out in the fiord, hunting seal and porpoise and sea-fowl, or fishing for Tore of Hvitastein—and she herself sat in the cot with all her little children and the stepdaughter, who was shrewish and ungodly—

  Olav listened patiently to the woman’s torrent of words, and at last he bade her follow him to the storehouse. He had laid in all that was needed for his home-coming feast, and he filled Gudrid’s sack abundantly—“and if you are in straits this winter, you must come hither and tell us, foster-mother!”

  “God bless you, Olav Audunsson—but you are like your mother when you smile! She had so gentle a smile, Cecilia, and she was always good to poor folk—”

  At long last the old wife departed.

  There was no one in the hall when Olav entered. And he stood awhile musing. With one foot on the edge of the hearth, and his hands clasped about his knee, he stared into the little heap of burned wood in which there was still a gleam—it hissed and crackled with crisp little sounds, and a faint breath came from the dying embers.

  “Mother,” he thought, and recalled the little he had heard of her. She had been young—and fair, they said; she had been reared as became one of noble birth in the rich nunnery, where she was the playmate of a King’s daughter. And from the Queen’s court she had been removed to this lonely manor, far from all she knew. In these poor and rustic rooms she had borne him under her heart, starved with the cold and left alone with two aged men—the madman, of whom she was afraid, and the master himself, who mis-liked his grandson’s marriage.—It was hateful.

  He smote his thigh hard with the palm of his hand. Intolerable it must be to be born a woman, to have so little say in one’s own destiny. He seemed to pity all women—his own mother in silk and fine linen, this beggar woman Gudrid, Ingunn—it availed one as little as the other to meet force by force. Ingunn—a wave of desire and longing rose within him—he thought of her slender white neck: poor thing, she had learned perforce to bend her proud young head. First for his sake; and now she had been brought full low. But he would take her head upon his breast, softly and tenderly he would caress that poor, weak neck. Never should she hear a word from him of her misfortune; never should she see a sign, in word or in deed, that he bore her resentment.—At that moment he did not feel that there was any resentment in his soul toward the defenceless creature who would soon be in his power—his only wish was to protect her and do well by her.

  Later in the day Olav saddled his horse and rode eastward to the church town. He was not sure what he wanted there, but his mind was in a turmoil that day. And when he came there, he tied his horse to the fence and walked across the graveyard up to the church.

  He laid his sword and hat on the bench that ran along the wall, but chanced to sweep them to the floor with the skirt of his mantle. The echo within the stone walls made him ill at ease. And the light was unpleasantly pale and strange, for the walls had just been whitewashed—pictures were to be painted on them this summer.

  Audun and Cecilia lay at the top of the nave on the left, between the Lady chapel and the apse. As Olav knelt by their tomb and said his prayers as softly as he could, his eye was caught by an image that the master painter had newly finished on the pier of the chancel arch. It was of a tall, slender, and graceful woman with bandaged eyes and a broken reed in her hand—her mien and bearing, nay, the very colour of her dark garment, were also unspeakably m
ournful. Olav had often seen this image in the churches, but had never remembered to ask what was its significance. But never had the woman looked so melancholy or so beautiful as here.

  Bishop Torfinn’s words about the motherless children suddenly occurred to his mind. For the first time he thought he was almost glad he had not required of Ingunn that she should part with her child. At that moment he felt able to think of this infant with a kind of compassion. Since she had borne it, he must find means to rear it.

  When he came out of the church, he saw that the priest, Sira Benedikt Bessesson, was standing by his horse. Olav greeted him courteously, and the priest returned his greeting blithely. From the little he had seen of his parish priest Olav liked him uncommonly well. The priest had a fine and dignified presence—thickset, broad-shouldered, and well-knit. His face was wreathed about with reddish-brown hair and beard, and it was a broad face, but shapeful, with bold features, much freckled; he had large, clear eyes, sparkling with life. Olav judged him to be a pious, discerning man of cheerful disposition—and he liked the priest for having a strong, fine, and flexible voice, whether in speech or song.

  At first they talked of the gelding. Olav had got him in Skaane—he was seven years old, big and strong-legged and handsome, white and dapple-grey over the quarters. He always groomed and curry-combed the horse himself, making him smooth and glossy, for he was very fond of the animal and he liked to hear that the priest could see what he was worth. Then Sira Benedikt closely examined the bridle, which was of red leather. Olav concealed a smile—the priest practised much tanning and dyeing of leather, and such work was his joy and delight. This was one of the faults Olav Half-priest had to find with Sira Benedikt—he thought this work altogether unseemly for a priest, since it made him soil his consecrated hands with the worst impurities. To this Sira Benedikt replied that he did not believe such impurities to be unseemly in God’s eyes, since the priest’s hands were as clean as before, when he had washed them. Our Lord Himself had done in like manner and honoured the work thereby, when He took axe and chisel in the same blessed hands that created and redeemed mankind, and wrought the logs in the workshop of his holy foster-father—He surely would not deem His poor servant disgraced by following a noble and ingenious craft.