The Snake Pit

  Equally incomprehensible did it appear to Olav that she should have taken a fancy to this Liv, who had entered her service the year before. For one thing, the girl was almost the ugliest being Olav had ever seen: at the first glance one was tempted to doubt whether she was human—undersized, hugely broad, and notably squat and bandy-legged. Her red hair was thin and straggling, her skin was a reddish grey, with freckles over her arms and hands and down to her chest, and her face was marvellously hideous, with little blinking pig’s eyes, a pointed nose, and no chin—the lower part of her face slanted in and made one with the flabby flesh of her throat. Nor was she of kindly disposition—lazy and unwilling with Torhild and the dairymaid, and exceedingly stupid. But Ingunn had set her affection on this girl. When it came out that she had gone astray the autumn before, when she was given leave to go home and visit her parents at Michaelmas, her mistress besought Olav not to turn Liv out of the house. Olav had had no such thought; he knew that there was great poverty and many children in the croft from which she came, so it was better for her to stay at Hestviken. But as she was under his roof and very young—fifteen—he thought he would have to try to see justice done to the girl and questioned her about the father. But all she knew was that it was a man who had borne her company a part of the way through the forest, when she was going home at Michaelmas.

  “Ay—and did he maltreat you then?” asked Olav.

  “Nay, nay”—Liv beamed all over her face. He had been so merry and kind. Jon he said was his name.

  “Ay, so every man is called who has no other name.”

  Now in any case she would soon be a fit foster-mother for Cecilia. For it would go ill if the sick mother were to nurse this big and greedy child—but hitherto Ingunn had refused to hear of Cecilia being taken from her breast.

  Olav had sent for all the men and women of the country round who had a knowledge of sickness and leechcraft. None could say what ailed the mistress of Hestviken—and most of them thought it must be caused by treachery or envy. Olav knew that she had been sick in the same way sixteen or seventeen years before, when she was at Miklebö, and then Mistress Hillebjörg had said it was certain that Kolbein had caused spells or other witchcraft to be put upon her. He wondered whether this might not be true after all, and that she had never been entirely set free from the power of evil.

  Then he became acquainted with a German merchant, Claus Wiephart, in Oslo, who was said to be a very learned leech—he had been a captive among the Saracens in his youth and had acquired their knowledge. Olav fetched him, and this man saw at once what ailed Ingunn.

  What might have been the origin of it he was not able to say; it might be one thing or another, but most probably it came from the stars: for example, that her husband had first had knowledge of her in an hour when the position of the heavenly bodies was hostile to them, according to the stars under which they had been born. It might be a question of less than an hour—a little before or a little after, the auspices might have been particularly favourable to them. But this might have had such an effect upon her, who was the weaker, as to disturb the harmony in her body between the solid matter and the humours, so that the solid matter had shrunk and the humours had obtained the mastery—nay, she might even have had a disposition toward this disharmony in her hour of birth, but the disharmony was the especial cause of her weakness. The proof of this was that she had not been able to bear children of the male sex that were capable of surviving, beyond the first one; for man’s body is by nature drier than woman’s and demands from the very beginning more of the solid matter; but a daughter she had been able to bring forth alive. Even so, this child too had absorbed more solid matter than the mother’s body could afford to give up; she was now, Clause Wiephart would say, in a state of decay, as it were; bones and flesh were saturated with humours—even as wood floating in the sea becomes soft and full of water.

  In the first place they must see to getting her body drained of moisture, said the German. The child should by no means be taken from her breast; she must be given sudatory and diuretic medicines, she must drink very little, but take burnt and pounded bones and terra sigillata, and eat hard, dry food with hot spices in it.

  The learned man’s opinion filled Olav with fresh courage. It sounded so reasonable—and the Latin words used by the German came back to Olav from his young days. Prima causa, harmonia, materia, and umidus, disparo, dispono—these words he remembered to have heard from Asbjörn All-fat, Arnvid, and the friars at the convent, and, as far as he could judge, Claus knew them rightly. And then, even before they were grown up, he himself had noticed that Ingunn’s body was strangely weak and without firmness—it made him think of green corn—surely she had always had too little of the solid matter. Terra sigillata must certainly be good for her—it was good for so many things, he knew.

  And he had learned about the four elements of which the human body is composed, and had heard that the position of the heavenly bodies influences a man’s destiny. Learned men at home did not know so much about this; Asbjörn All-fat said that Christian men have no need to inquire what is written in the stars. But the Saracens were said to have more knowledge of the stars than any other

  Olav was unspeakably relieved at heart. Perhaps he had been on an entirely false scent all these years—he had always believed it was he who had brought misfortune upon them both, because he dared not break out of the sin in which he lived. He was living in sin, there was no doubt of that, so long as he made no offer to atone for that unhappy deed, but God must know that he could not; he could not jeopardize the welfare and honour of his wife and child. In all else he had endeavoured to walk as a Christian man. And God must know even better than himself how unspeakably he longed to live at peace with Him, to be allowed to love Him with his whole heart, to bend the knee in prayer, without grieving at his own disobedience.

  But what if he might now believe that all their misfortunes had a natural origin? Cecilia was the pledge that God had remitted his debt—or would give him respite till the hour of death. That the stars had been the cause of Ingunn’s weakness in body and soul—

  But Prima Causa—that was one of God’s names. He knew that.

  She said herself that she was better for these remedies of Claus Wiephart’s. As yet she had not regained sufficient vigour to be able to move her legs, but she felt less of the pain in her back.

  He came into the cook-house one evening just before Olav’s Mass 7—there was something he wished to say to Torhild Björnsdatter before he forgot it.

  She was baking bread for the holy-day. The flour dust floating in the air was golden in the evening sun as he opened the door and the light filled the sooty little room. A sweet, yeasty scent came from the round loaves that lay baking on slanting stones around the glowing, heaped-up fire—Olav’s mouth watered at the smell. The girl was not there.

  Olav was turning to go out when Torhild appeared at the door, carrying a board so heavy that she supported it on her head with both arms. She was obliged to walk even more erect than usual, and in the warm summer evening her light clothing looked but well and suitably free; she was in her working-clothes, a short-sleeved shift of homespun, and bare legs; she was so deft in her movements, firm and strong.

  Olav took the board from her; it was of oak and very heavy. He carried it in and laid it on the trestles. Torhild followed, filled both her fists with chopped juniper from a basket, and spread it over the board. She gave off a fragrance in her rapid movements—of meal and fresh bread, of the healthy warmth of work. Olav threw his arms about the maid and pulled her roughly to him. His chin came near her shoulder—for an instant he pressed his cheek against her skin—her neck was dewy, at once cool and warm. Then he let her go and laughed to cover his confusion and shame at this foolish wantonness that had come over him so suddenly.

  Torhild had turned red as blood—and the sight of her added to his embarrassment. But she said nothing and showed no sign of anger—went about quite calmly, moving the loaves th
at were done from the stones onto the board.

  “You can lift as much as a man, Torhild,” said her master. And as she did not answer, but went on with her work, he began again, more seriously: “You support our whole household—do more work than all the rest of us together.”

  “I do my best,” muttered Torhild.

  “Ay, I know not how you think—perhaps you think we might reward you better—if so, you must tell me; we shall soon be agreed—”

  “Nay I am well content with what I have. I have now put out all mine own into the world, save the two youngest—and you have helped me well.”

  “Nay, say naught of that—” He gave her the message he had come for, and went out.

  Ingunn continued to use the wise German’s remedies, but after a while it was seen that the results were not entirely beneficial after all. She had violent pains in the stomach and burning of the throat from all the pepper and ginger. But she held out as long as she could, struggling to get down the dry and irritating diet, although she seemed to feel the pains even at the sight of the food. She was tortured by thirst day and night; but she bore it all with patience and made little complaint.

  Then Olav had to be away from home for a few nights, and Signe Arnesdatter came to sleep with the sick woman meanwhile. Afterwards Signe told Olav it was quite wrong that Ingunn should still have Cecilia with her at night; the mother no longer had a drop of milk in her breast, and it was hunger and temper that made the child shriek so wildly at night, keeping Ingunn and all awake. Olav had never known any other infant than Audun, and he shrieked almost continually, so the man thought it was the way of little ones. Now Liv had long nursed Cecilia in the daytime, and her own child was lately dead, and the girl was as full of milk as a fairy cow; the only natural thing was to let Liv be Cecilia’s foster-mother and have the child both day and night.

  But when they spoke of this to Ingunn, she was quite beside herself with grief. She begged and besought that they would not take Cecilia from her: “She is all that is left of me; I bought you this daughter at the price of lying here powerless and palsied to the waist. If you love her, Olav, have pity on me—take not Cecilia from me, the little while I have left to live. ’Twill not be long ere you be freed from this wretched life with me.”

  He tried to make her see reason, but she screamed, thrusting her elbows into the bolster under her, raising her shoulders and struggling, as though she would force her palsied body to rise. Olav seated himself on the edge of the bed, comforted her as well as he could, but it was in vain; and at last she had raged and wept till she was so weary that she sank into a doze, but even in her sleep she gasped and shook.

  The end was that he promised she should have Cecilia in bed with her at night, but Liv was to lie on the bench near by, so that she might quiet the child when it shrieked.

  When he came to say good-night to her before he went to bed, she put an arm about his neck and drew his head down.

  “Be not angry, Olav. I cannot sleep but I have her with me. I have ever been afraid when I had to lie alone,” she whispered; “ever since the first night you slept with me it has seemed as though I could not feel safe unless I had your arm about me. And now that will never be again.”

  Olav knelt down, took her under the neck, and let her head rest against his shoulder.

  “Do you wish me to hold you thus until you fall asleep?” he asked.

  She fell asleep almost at once. Then he arranged the pillows under her shoulders, stole quietly across the floor and crept in to Eirik in the north bed.

  He kept a little charcoal lamp burning on the hearth at night-he had to get up so often, to help Ingunn and turn her. And now he had to get up and take Cecilia too, when she shrieked, and carry her to the girl—Liv never woke.

  At last he must have fallen asleep and slept heavily—the child must have been shrieking a good while, so persistently as to succeed in waking Liv. In the feeble light of the little lamp he saw the maid padding about by Ingunn’s bed with Cecilia in her arms. She looked so shapelessly broad and squat that he could not help thinking of tales he had heard of ogres and gnomes. Though he knew how foolish it was, it made him uncomfortable to see Cecilia in the arms of this foster-mother.

  Olav came in to Ingunn about midday on the morrow—he and one of the house-carls had been bringing in the hay on pack-horses from some outlying meadows on the high ground. The nap of his short cloak was thickly beaded with drops of mist, and his boots were heavy with wet earth and withered leaves. He gave off a raw scent of autumn as he bent over Ingunn and asked her how she did.

  With a little embarrassed smile he showed her what he had brought in his hand—some big watery strawberries threaded on straws—as they had used to do when they were children. The berries were soft, so that the palm of his hand was red with them.

  “I found these up by the mill.”

  Ingunn took them, without remembering to thank him. It was these little red spots within his coarse, worn hands—and she recalled their life together from childhood, all the way till now. Twice he had reddened that hand with blood for her sake, and it was the same hard, resin-smirched boy’s fist that had helped her over fences and opened to show her gifts.—Their life appeared as a tapestry to her—as one long tissue: little images of brief, hot, happy love, with long intervals between of waiting and longing and barren dreams, the time of shame and mad despair like a big dark spot, and then all these years at Hestviken—all appeared to her in an instant as though embroidered on a ground—a single fabric, a whole tapestry of the same stuff from their childhood’s days until now, until the end.

  True, she had always acknowledged to herself that Olav was good to her. She had known in a way that few men would have had patience with her so long, would have been equal to the task of protecting her and sustaining her all these years. She had indeed thanked him in her heart—thanked him sometimes with burning intensity. But only now did she see, as a whole, how strong his love had been.

  He was standing by the cradle now. The rockers bumped and bumped against the floor, and the child gurgled and cried with delight, drumming its heels with wild persistence against the skin rug under it—the mother could just see its little pink hands waving above the side of the cradle.

  “Nay, Cecilia—you will soon strangle yourself in these snares!” Olav laughed and lifted up the child in his arms. She had wriggled so violently that her clothes were quite undone, and the swaddling-band had become so tangled about her arms and legs and neck and her little body that it was a wonder she had not strangled herself with it. “Can you get this straight?” He laid the child on the bed by its mother.

  “Are you weeping?” he asked, saddened. Ingunn was blinded by tears, so that she could scarcely see as she tried to free Cecilia from her bands.

  “She will be just as fair-haired as the rest of us Hestvik folk,” said the father; “and now you have seven curls—” he passed his hand over the child’s forehead, where the hair had grown long and curly in little, pale-yellow locks. “Are you in such pain today, my Ingunn?”

  “’Tis not that. I am thinking that, though you have been good to me and faithful so long as I have known you, I have never had it in my power to reward you for your affection.”

  “Say not so. You have been a—gentle—” he could not find another word in her praise on the spur of the moment, though he was trying to say something to please her. “You have been a gentle and—and quiet wife. And you know how fond I am of you,” he said with feeling.

  “And now it will soon be a year,” she whispered, distressed and shy, “that you have been as a widower—with an infirm sister to take care of—”

  “Ay, ay,” said her husband softly. “But if I love you—Sister, you say. Do you remember, Ingunn, the first years we lived to gether; we slept in the same bed, drank from the same bowl, and were as brother and sister; we knew of naught else. But then too we were happiest when we were together.”

  “Yes. But we were children in those days. And th
en I was fair—” she whispered with more passion in her voice.

  “You were. But I fear I was too childish to see it. I believe in those years I never had a thought whether you were fair or not.”

  “And I was not a burden on you. I was healthy and strong—”

  “Oh nay, Ingunn—” Olav smiled weakly and stroked her arm. “Strong you have never been, my dearest friend!”

  It was a long winter for them at Hestviken.

  Olav was at home all the time; he thought he could not leave her for a single night. She now suffered greatly from lying in bed, since she was so emaciated, and then she had got some hurt in her back: when she had lain awhile in one position, it felt as if a pain crept over her ribs and filled her whole chest. The only thing they could do to relieve her was to move and turn her constantly. She could take no food at all; they kept life in her by giving her gruel, broth, and milk, a mouthful at a time.

  She had tried to do a little needlework as she lay in bed, but her hands became numbed whenever she held them raised a little while, so that she could neither sew nor plait. And then she lay in a doze, altogether motionless. She never spoke a word of complaint, and she thanked them gently when anyone came and turned her or arranged her pillows. Sometimes she slept a good deal in the daytime, but at night she seldom had any sleep at all.

  Olav had the fire burning on the hearth all night and he had shut off the closet with a door, to make the great room warmer. The winter was not a very cold one, but all this smoke day and night was troublesome.

  He watched by the sick woman night after night. Eirik lay in the bed behind his back asleep, Liv slept on the bench, and Cecilia slept in her mother’s bed. Olav lay in a sort of doze, but it was never too deep for him to hear an ember shooting out of the fire, or Ingunn’s almost inaudible groans—he was up and beside her in a moment. All that winter he was never out of his clothes, except every washing-day, when he went to the bath-house.