The Snake Pit (20 page)

It was unbearable in the hall that evening; the room was chock-full of smoke, for it was impossible to open door or louver in this wind. Eyes smarted and chests were racked; and when the men’s wet clothes began to steam on the crossbeams, the air was soon so thick that it could be cut with a knife.

Ingunn lay in the little closet with both the children—there was less smoke, but it was so cold that they had to creep under the
bedclothes. The men went out as soon as they had supped. Olav threw some skins and cushions on the floor by the hearth and lay down there, to be below the smoke.

His arm was now swollen. His face was burning from the weather and his head and body were hot and cold by turns. Feverish and light-headed, he heard the storm as a multiplicity of voices—it howled about the corners of the house, slamming a loose shutter somewhere—now and then he could distinguish its roaring in the trees on the crag above the manor. The deepest note was that of the raging fiord; where he lay he thought he could hear the thunder of the waves breaking on the rock on which the houses stood as though the booming came from beneath him, up through the rock.

In a doze he saw the huge white-crested seas coming, their water brown with mud; and he crawled again up the wet rock on hands and knees, with the boathook gripped under him, and the rope he had to fasten in a cleft of the rock. The spray, thick as rain, lashed him even up here. The black welter of clouds was split at that moment with a brassy yellow rift, and far beneath him, where the black and foaming fiord seemed hollow as a cup, a single shaft of sunlight fell glittering upon the racing waves.

Then another vision appeared under his closed eyelids—a great bog, pale with rime, grass and heather frosted and white. But a kind of light glimmered within the morning mist, and he could tell that as the day wore on, the sun would break through. Never is there such a day for riding out with hawk and hound: bog-holes and tarns scattered over the moor are held fast in dark, smooth ice with little white air-bubbles that crack. The wooded hillsides are clear and carry sound, for trees and bushes are bare, and the fallen leaves are bright over the ground, but the fir forest stands dark and fresh after the rime has thawed—and then there is the suspense, whether the bird will make for impassable ground or will take to the bogs and the frozen water.

The only hawk he owned now was in the loft of the men-servants’ house, sick and reddish about the feet, nor did it breathe as it should either. It would be as well to make an end of it now—it would never be fit for hunting again. And he had lost his falcon last autumn.

Now Audun was fretting again. Ingunn hushed him and lulled him to sleep in there.

Torhild Björnsdatter came up and spread some blankets over her master. Olav opened his eyes—from where he lay he could see the girl’s strong figure moving in the red glare from the embers on the hearth. Torhild was putting things straight—moving the clothes on the crossbeams.

“Are you not asleep, Olav—are you thirsty?”

“Oh, ay. Nay, I will rather have water—”

Olav raised himself on his elbow. His bandaged arm hurt him when he tried to stretch it out and take the cup of water. Torhild sat on her haunches and held it to his mouth. When he lay down again, she drew the coverlet over his shoulder. Then he heard her asking in the closet whether the mistress wanted anything.

“Hush, hush,” Ingunn whispered impatiently in reply; “you will wake Audun for me—he was almost asleep.”

Torhild covered the embers and went out. Olav lay on the floor all night.

The severe autumn weather was not good for Audun. He got sore eyes from being always in the pungent smoke, and he coughed a great deal.

On the approach of Yule the weather fell calm; the sun glowed red behind the frost fog every morning. Early in the new year the fiord froze over, but the cold increased. In the farms round about, folk had to move all into one house and keep the fire burning on the hearth night and day.

It had been a good spring the year before, so the farmers had as much live stock as they could in any way find room for. But in spite of their byres and stables being overfilled, the beasts suffered so much from the cold that folk had to wrap in sacks and cloths those it was most important to save, and they had to spread the floor with spruce boughs, lest the animals should freeze fast in the clay. The dung was frozen stiff every morning, so it was almost impossible to clear it away.

About the time of St. Agatha’s Mass
⁹
it was said in the countryside that now men could drive on the ice right down to Denmark. But now no man had business in that land; peace had been concluded between the Kings the year before.

About this time Olav was called upon to show cause why he had stayed at home in the summer, when the Duke proceeded to
Denmark to negotiate the peace of Hegnsgavl. The matter was thus: that Olav, who had been out for three summers in succession with the war fleet as one of the lesser captains, had been given a half-promise of furlough by Baron Tore Haakonsson for the fourth summer; but Tore ordered him to provide two fully armed men and their victuals for the Baron’s service instead. Olav had not been able to do this, but in spite of that he had not presented himself at the muster of the army in the spring—the levy this year was much smaller, since the Duke only went south to negotiate. Now Olav found himself in trouble over this, and in the bitter cold about mid-Lent he had to ride once to Tunsberg and then several times to Oslo, first to account for his absence and then to raise ready money. He lost much cattle that winter, and the white horse died that he had bought of Stein.

The two little children filled the crowded house with commotion.

Eirik had a bad fault: Olav found out by degrees that this boy was greatly given to lying. If his father asked whether he had seen this or that member of the household, Eirik was always quick to answer yes, he had just spoken with the other in the house or out in the yard, and gave an account of what had been said or done. Usually there was not a word of truth in it. Some of the serving-folk, and his mother too, hinted that perhaps the child had second sight—Eirik was not like other boys. Olav had not much to say to this, but he kept an eye on him—he could see no sign that it was anything but mendacity.

Another bad habit of Eirik’s was that he would sit humming or singing some rigmarole that he made up himself, interminably, till Olav’s head ached and he felt inclined to beat the boy. But he had grown wary of laying a hand on the child since he had thrashed him so pitilessly the day Ingunn came home from her churching.

Eirik knelt before the bench in the evening, arranging these snail-shells and animals’ teeth of his in rows and chanting:

He repeated this about cows and calves, sheep and lambs, sows and pigs.

“Be still,” his father checked him sharply; “have I not told you I will have no more of these gowling cantraps of yours?”

“I had forgotten, Father mine,” said Eirik in alarm.

Olav asked him: “How many horses would you choose to have, Eirik—four and five of the fifth dozen or a hundred horses?”

“Oh, I would have many more,” replied Eirik. “I would have—seven and twenty!”

So little did he understand of his own crooning.

Audun was fretful and ailing. Ingunn boasted of her son and said there was no fairer child, and indeed he had been better of late; but Olav saw the smouldering anxiety in her eyes when she spoke thus. Eirik repeated what he heard his mother say, hung over the cradle, rocking and wheedling his silken brother, as he always called Audun.

Olav felt a strange distress when he saw it. Audun seemed to him a most miserable little creature—always scurfy about the scalp, sore about the mouth, lean and raw about the body, which was backward in its growth. Never had this son made him feel anythink like paternal joy; but that he was father to this poor sick, fretting child gave him a feeling of bitter pain when Eirik was bending over the cradle: the other was so fair and full of life, with his glistening nut-brown locks falling about Audun’s wrinkled face.

One day Olav asked Torhild what she thought of Audun.

“He will surely mend, when the spring comes,” said Torhild; but Olav felt in himself that the girl did not believe her own words.

They had turned loose the cattle at Hestviken and drove them up to the old moss-grown pastures in Kverndal in the daytime, when Audun fell very sick. He had coughed the whole winter and had had many fits of colic, but this time it was worse than ever before.

Olav saw that Ingunn was ready to drop with fatigue and anxiety,
but she kept wonderfully calm and collected. Untiringly she watched over the child night and day, while every remedy was tried to help Audun—first those familiar to the people of the house, and then all those known to the neighbours’ wives for whom Ingunn sent.

At last, on the sixth day, the boy seemed to be much better. By supper-time he was sleeping soundly, and he did not feel so cold to the touch. Torhild put warm stones underneath his cradle clothes; then she went out, taking Eirik with her. She had watched nearly as much as the mother and had had all the housework in the daytime; now she could do no more.

Ingunn was so tired that she neither heard nor saw—at last Olav led her away by force, took off her outer garments, and made her lie down in the bed. He promised that he himself would sit up with the maid and would wake her if the boy was restless.

Olav fetched three tallow candles, set one on the candlestick, and lighted it. But, though he was usually such a bad sleeper, he felt heavy and drowsy tonight. If he stared at the flame of the candle, his eyes began to smart and run, and if he looked at the maid, who had taken her distaff and was spinning, he grew sleepy from seeing and hearing the spinning-wheel. From time to time he made up the fire, snuffed the candle, gave a look to the sleeping child and to his wife, drank cold water, or went outside for a moment, to look at the weather and refresh himself with a breath of the calm, cold spring night—bringing in a piece of wood, which he whittled as he sat. Thus he kept himself awake till he had set the third candle on the stick.

He started up on hearing the cradle rockers bumping queerly against the clay floor; such a strange sound was coming from the child. It was almost dark in the room; the candle-end had fallen off the spike, almost burned out—the wick flickered and smoked in the molten tallow on the iron plate. On the hearth there was still a faint crackling amid the smoke of the wood ashes. Olav was beside the cradle in two noiseless steps; he lifted up the child, wrapping him in the clothes he lay in.

The little body struggled, as though Audun would free himself from his swaddling-clothes—in the dim light Olav thought the boy gave him a strangely accusing look. Then he stretched himself, collapsed limply, and died there in his father’s arms.

Olav was benumbed, body and soul, as he laid the corpse down again and covered it over. It was vain to think when Ingunn would wake.

The maid had fallen asleep with her head in her arms over the table. Olav waked her, hastily hushing her as she was about to utter a cry. He bade her go out and tell the house-folk, begging them not to come near the house—Ingunn must be allowed to enjoy her sleep while she could.

He opened the smoke-vent—it was daylight outside. But Ingunn slept and slept, and Olav stayed sitting with her and their dead son. But once when he got up to look at her, he chanced to jerk her belt onto the floor. It made a clanging noise, and the woman started up and looked into her husband’s face.

She sprang up and pushed him aside when he tried to hold her back, threw herself upon the cradle so violently that it looked as if the dead child was upset into her arms.

As she sat on her haunches, rocking the corpse in a close embrace and weeping with a strange, spluttering sound, she checked herself all of a sudden and looked up at her husband:

“Were you two asleep when he died—were you both asleep when Audun drew his last breath?”

“No, no, he died in my arms—”

“You—and you did not wake me—Lord Christ, how had you the heart not to wake me—in
my
arms he should have died, ’twas me he knew, not you—you never cared for your child. Is it thus you keep your word!”

“Ingunn—”

But she leaped up, holding the child’s corpse high above her head with both hands and screaming. Then she tore open the dress over her bosom, pressed the little dead son to her bare body, and threw herself on the bed, lying over him.

When Olav came up after a while and tried to talk to her, she put her hand against his face and thrust him away.

“Nevermore will I be parted from my Audun—”

Olav knew not what to do. He sat over on the bench with his head between his hands, waiting if perchance she should recover her senses—when Eirik burst open the door and ran to his mother, in a flood of tears. He had been told it when he awoke.

Ingunn sat upright—the child’s corpse was left lying on the pillow. She drew her son to her in a close embrace, let him go and
took his little tear-stained face in both hands, laid her own against it and wept, but much more quietly.

The day Audun was borne to the grave was gloriously fine.

During the afternoon Olav stole away from the funeral guests, down to the fence around the farthest cornfield. The sea gleamed and glistened so that the air seemed all a-quiver with it; the quiet surf at the foot of the Bull shone fresh and white. The smell that came up from the quay was so good and full-laden today, and it was met by the scent of warm rocks and mould and young growth. The little waves breaking on the beach trickled quietly back among the pebbles, rills were gushing everywhere, and from Kverndal came the murmur of the little stream. The alder wood up there was brown with bloom, and the hazel thickets dripped with yellow catkins. Summer was not far off.