The Snake Pit

  He accused her of nothing now.

  Ingunn guessed it must be hard for Olav to be shut out of the church. And one night, when her husband had fasted on bread and water during the day, so that he was quite worn out when he had to watch by her, she whispered, as she drew him down to her:

  “I will not complain, Olav—but why could I not be suffered to die, when Cecilia was born? Then you would not have fallen into this sin with Torhild—”

  “Speak not so.” But he could not tell her that was not what had brought about the misfortune. It was that he had been embittered against her, and then he had grown careless and weary of himself, had longed for rest from all that weighed upon him. Now he no longer gave her any blame for it—she had known no better. He had known for close on thirty years that Ingunn had little wit, and God had laid it upon him to judge and answer both for himself and for her. Simple she was—and unspeakably dear to him. He put no blame on any but himself. Mea culpa, mea culpa—and the fault of no one else.

  All things went regularly at Hestviken now, both with the farming and the fishery. If the master could not take part himself—but he had to be with her. He always consoled himself with the thought: “It cannot possibly go on much longer.” But at the same time he could not imagine it would be today, or tomorrow, or the next day. The end must indeed come soon, but there was still a little time.

  Easter fell early that year, so that the Oslo fair was held in the week before St. Blaise’s Day. Olav had to go into town: he had some goods lying in the hands of Claus Wiephart—had entered into a kind of trading partnership with the German, but he did not trust that fellow farther than he could see him, nor had he cared to lodge with Claus on his recent visits; it came too dear. Hitherto he had excused himself by saying that he would lie in the guest-house of the preaching friars, since from his youth up he had been a friend of that order. But this year he could not very well be in the convent, since he was banned from taking part in the mass. So this time he had put up at the Great Hostelry.

  On the evening of the last day of the fair he sat in the great room of the hostelry munching the provisions he had brought and washing them down with their indifferent ale, when Anki came in and asked for Master Olav of Hestviken.

  “Here am I. Is there any news from home, Arnketil, or what brings you hither?”

  “God help you, master. Ingunn lies at the point of death—she was given extreme unction as I left home.”

  She had had a fit of colic, but no worse than often before, and she had coughed violently for some nights. But when she collapsed that morning they did not guess that she was dying—until old Tore came in to dinner. As soon as he saw the state the woman was in, he went out, saddled his horse, and rode for the priest. Sira Hallbjörn was again away from home—ay, now his parishioners would complain to the Bishop on his next visitation—but one of these barefoot friars of his occupied the parsonage and was called his vicar. Even before the monk began his ministrations to the dying woman, he told the house-folk that they must send for the master in all haste—it was uncertain at the best whether he could reach home in time to say farewell to his wife.

  There had been no cold worth talking about that winter; beyond the islands the fiord had been open, so that Olav had come by boat. But then here had been a few nights’ frost, followed by a strong southerly wind, and now it was freezing again—Anki had been able to row as far as Sigvaldasteinar, but there he had had to take to the land and borrow a horse. And now it was likely that the fiord was full of ice a long way out; it was hard to say how Olav would reach home quickest. No doubt he would have to ride round inland. Claus would be able to find him a horse.

  People had collected about Olav Audunsson and his man; they stood listening and offering advice. Some young, well-dressed squires in long, coloured kirtles and cloaks also came up; they had been sitting farther up the hall, laughing rather noisily as they drank German mum and threw dice. Now one of them spoke to Olav—he was a tall, fair lad with silky, flaxen hair, which he wore long upon his shoulders according to the latest foreign fashion. Olav knew him by sight: he was one of the sons of the knight of Skog and was in company with his brother; the others were doubtless pages from the King’s palace.

  “It means much to you to reach home quickly, I can guess. You can borrow a horse of me—I have a well-paced horse out in the friars’ paddocks—if you will go thither with me?”

  Olav protested that this was too much—but the young man was off already, settled his gaming debts and drank up his ale while he took his sword and cloak. Then Olav gave Arnketil orders about his baggage and threw his cloak about him.

  The snow crunched under their feet as they came outside. The sky was clear and the hills were still green; the first stars were coming out. “’Twill be villainously cold tonight,” said Olav’s companion. They struck out eastward through the alleys toward Gjeitabru.

  Olav asked the other about the road—he was totally unacquainted with the districts lying east of the town toward Skeidissokn, had never come to Oslo overland. The young man answered that he could ride across the whole of the Botnfiord, the ice was safe enough—well, it was unsafe too, in some places, “but I can ride over with you.”

  Olav said that was far too much and he would find his way sure enough; but his companion, Lavrans Björgulfsson was his name, made off at once: “I have my horse standing in Steinbjörn’s yard; if you will wait for me in the church—I shall not be long—” He turned and went back to the town.

  The Franciscans’ church was not yet dedicated and the friars said mass in a house within the garth; but the church was roofed, Olav had heard, and they preached there in the evenings during Lent. Not before Easter would his first year of penance be ended, but he was free to enter this edifice, which had not yet become the house of God.

  For all that, he had a queer feeling as he crossed the bridge and took the trampled path over a field, where the snow shone grey in the falling darkness, toward the church, whose black gable-end was outlined against the blue, star-set gloom.

  It was colder inside than out. From habit he bent the knee as he came in, forgetting that the holy sacrament had not yet been brought into this house. From the farther end of the dark nave his eye was met by the blaze of a great number of little tapers—they were burning at the foot of a great crucifix that stood against the grey stone wall. Beside it the chancel arch yawned before a pitch-dark empty space.

  A little farther down the nave a solitary candle was burning by a lectern; before the book a monk stood reading, clad in the order’s brown garb of poverty. He was standing on an inverted tool-chest, and about him were assembled a score of men and women in thick winter clothes—some stood and some had drawn up beams and overturned vessels to sit upon. Their breath showed like white smoke in the light of the candle.

  The very incompleteness and desolation of the place caught at him like a hand clutching at his anxious heart. The openings for windows in the wall were boarded up; the scaffolding still stood at the western end of the nave, and he made out boxes and mortar-vats and boards and ends of beams as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. But most desolate of all was the black chasm of the choir—and above this image of the world, without form and void, rose the great crucifix with the glittering assemblage of candles at its foot.

  It was not like any crucifix he had seen before. At every step he took forward, an immense pain and dread rose within him at the sight of this image of Christ—it was no image, it seemed alive—God Himself in mortal agony, bleeding from His scourging as though every wound men have inflicted upon one another had stricken His flesh. The body was bent forward at the loins, as though contorted with pain; the head had fallen forward, with closed eyes over which streamed the blood from the crown of thorns, down into the half-open, sighing mouth.

  Beneath the crucifix stood Mary and John the Evangelist. The Mother held her thin hands clasped, one above the other, against her bosom, as she looked up—mournfully as though she raised the sor
rows of all races and all ages to her Son, praying for help. Saint John looked down; his face was contracted with brooding upon this mystery.

  The monk read—Olav had known the words since he was a child: O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendite, et videte, si est dolor sicut dolor meus.1

  The monk closed the book and began to speak. Olav did not hear a word—he only saw the image on the cross before him: et videte, si est dolor sicut dolor meus.

  Ingunn lay at home, in the agony of death, if she were not dead already. It did not seem real to him, but he knew now that this sorrow of his was also as a bleeding wound upon that crucified body. Every sin he had committed, every wound he had inflicted on himself or others, was one of the stripes his hand had laid upon his God. As he stood here, feeling that his own heart’s blood must run black and sluggish in his veins with sorrow, he knew that his own life, full of sin and sorrow, had been one more drop in the cup God drained in Gethsemane. And another sentence he had learned in his childhood came back to him: he had believed it was a command, but now it sounded like a prayer from the lips of a sorrowing friend: Vade, et amplius jam noli peccare—2

  Then it was as though his eyes lost their power of sight, and his blood rushed back to his heart, so that he grew outwardly cold as a dead man. All this was as it were within him: his own soul was as this house, destined for a church, but empty, without God; darkness and disorder reigned within, but the only sparks of light that burned and sent out warmth were gathered about the image of the rejected Lord, Christ crucified, bearing the burden and the suffering of his sin and his despair.—Vade, et amplius jam noli peccare.

  My Lord and my God! Yea, Lord, I come—I come, for I love Thee. I love Thee, and I acknowledge: Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci—against Thee alone have I sinned, and done evil in Thy sight.—He had said these words a thousand times, and only now did he know that this was the truth that held all other truths in itself as in a cup.

  My God and my all!—

  Then someone touched him on the shoulder—he gave a start: it was Lavrans Björgulfsson; the horses were standing in the garth. This was the shorter way—the young man went in front, up through the church, into the choir. Now that Olav’s eyes were used to the darkness he could make out the altar—the naked stone, as yet undedicated and unadorned, a cold, dead heart. There was a little door on the south of the choir:

  “Look how you go—the steps are not finished—” Lavrans jumped down into the snow. Out in the yard stood two of the friars. One held the horses, the other carried a lantern. Lavrans must have told them how things stood, for one of them came up to Olav—it was one of those who had been with Sira Hallbjörn, and he had come out to Hestviken once. Olav knew the monk’s face, but did not remember his name.

  “Patiently and meekly she bore it all, your wife. Ay, and now it is Brother Stefan who is with her—ay, we shall remember her in our prayers here too tonight.”

  The north wind was at their backs as they rode over the ice—long stretches of it were like steel, swept of the little snow that had fallen lately. The moon would not rise till toward morning; the night was black and strewn with stars.

  “We shall have to ride up to Skog,” said Olav’s guide, “and get fur cloaks on.”

  It was a great manor, Olav saw—many great houses stretching away in the darkness. Young Lavrans sprang from the saddle, unhindered by the long folds of his mantle, stretched his tall, supple frame, and went across and opened the door of one of the houses. Then he stood by his horse, caressing and talking to it, till a man came out with a lantern—the light seemed to hover over the snow.

  “You must dismount, Olav, and come in with me.” He took the lantern from his man and showed the way across the courtyard. “We live where we have been since we were married—my stepmother and Aasmund, my brother, have the great house, as in father’s time—” he seemed to take it for granted that everyone knew all about the great people of Skog.

  “Is your father dead?” asked Olav for the sake of saying something.

  “Ay, ’tis a year and half since—”

  “You are young though—to be master of this great manor.”

  “I? not so young either—I am three and twenty winters old.” He opened a door. They did not seem to bar their houses here at Skog. Through an anteroom they entered a little hall, warm and tidy. Lavrans lighted a thick tallow candle that stood near a curtained bed, threw the pine torch on the hearth, and spoke to someone within the bed. He handed in some woman’s clothes behind the curtain.

  A moment after, a young woman stepped out, lightly clad, with a red cloak over her long, blue shift—she was tucking locks of jetblack hair under the coif she had flung around her narrow, large-eyed face. While she busied herself, with easy, youthful briskness, her husband lay half-hidden within the bed. There were sounds of a little child behind the curtains, and the young father laughed aloud:

  “Nay, Haavard—will you pull your father’s nose off? Leave go now. Or maybe you want to feel if ’tis frozen off me—” The hidden youngster choked with laughter.

  The mistress had brought in food from the closet and offered her guest a foaming bowl of ale. Olav thanked her, but shook his head—he could no more eat and drink now than if he had been dead. Lavrans shook off the child he was playing with, came up, and took some food standing.

  “You must give me a drink of water then, Ragnfrid.—My wife and I have made a vow to drink naught but water in Lent, except we be in company with guests or on a journey”; he gave an affectionate look at the foaming bowl of ale. With a little crooked smile Olav accepted the draught of welcome, took a taste of it, and passed the bowl to the master of the house, who now did justice to his guest—the young man did not seem minded to say good-bye to the slight intoxication that had been on him when they left Oslo. It had been passing off as they rode along, but now he made up for it, generously.

  The single draught he had taken worked upon Olav so that he felt awakened from his ecstasy. Gone was the strange sense that all he saw and felt was a shadow, but that he himself had been taken away this night by God from the paths of men, brought before His face alone in a desolate spot—for now He willed that this His creature should understand at last.—And he heard all sounds from the visible world outside as he heard the voice of the fiord under the crags at home in Hestviken, sensed them without hearing. Voices reached him as though they were speaking outside a closed hall, where he was alone with the Voice which adjured and complained, full of love and sorrow: O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendite, et videte, si est dolor sicut dolor meus!

  But now the door of the closed room was thrown open, the Voice was silent—and he sat in a strange house with total strangers, the night was far spent, and he was to find his way through country that was quite unknown to him ere he reached home. And there death awaited him, and the choice that, as he now saw, he had made more and more difficult for himself every day and every year he had put it off. But now he must choose—he knew that, as he sat here feeling dazed and frozen, roused out of his strange visionary state: after that vision or whatever it might have been, he could not go on drowsily hoping that one day God would choose for him—force him.

  So many a time had he allowed himself to be driven out of his road, upon false tracks that he had no desire to follow. Long ago he had acknowledged the truth of Bishop Torfinn’s words: the man who is bent upon doing his own will shall surely see the day when he finds he has done that which he never willed. But he perceived that this kind of will was but a random shot, an arrow sent at a venture.—He still had his own inmost will, however, and it was as a sword. When he was called to Christianity, he had been given this free will, as the chieftain gives his man a sword when he makes him a knight. If he had shot away all his other weapons, marred them by ill use—this right to choose whether he would follow God or forsake Him remained a trusty blade, and his Lord would never strike it out of his hand. Though his faith and honour as a Christian were now stained like t
he misused sword of a traitor knight, God had not taken it from him; he might bear it still in the company of our Lord’s enemies, or restore it kneeling to that Lord, who yet was ready to raise him to His bosom, greet him with the kiss of peace, and give him back his sword, cleansed and blessed.

  Olav felt a vehement desire to be left alone with these thoughts—though he did not forget that this young Lavrans had shown himself very kindly, and he knew it might be difficult for him to reach home that night without the other’s help. But the young folk troubled and disturbed him by their constant services. The wife knelt before him and would help him change his boots—she had brought out foot-clouts of thick homespun and big fur boots stuffed with straw. The scent of her skin and hair was wafted to him, warm and healthy—it made him shrink within himself, as though to ward it off. The young mother breathed a fragrance of all the things in life from which he had been led away step by step, until tonight he saw that he was parted from them as completely as though he had already taken a monk’s vows.

  The husband came in with his arms full of fur clothing and set about finding something that would fit his guest. Olav was queerly abashed to see how much too large for him the other’s clothes were—he was quite lost in them when he got them on. Olav’s broad shoulders gave him a look of bulk, and the other seemed so slight; but he was doubtless more substantial than he looked, and he was tall besides. And in the pride of his grief Olav felt mortified that he should appear a lesser man than Lavrans Björgulfsson in everything, stature and worship and power—this tall, fair-skinned boy who breathed this air of home with wife and child, who was master of this rich knightly manor, helpful, kind, and well content. He had a long face with handsome, powerful features, but his cheeks were still smooth and of a childlike roundness; life had not marked his young and healthy skin with a single scratch—was never likely to do so either: he looked as though destined to take his course through the world without ever meeting sorrow.