The Snake Pit (25 page)

Olav did not come to Oslo. Arnvid spoke with Brother Vegard about it, saying that he was doubtless unwilling to come while Ingunn was unfit to accompany him. But she had grieved so much
that she could not see the instructor of her youth while he dwelt so near, Arnvid proposed that the monk should borrow a sledge and drive south to Hestviken one day. Brother Vegard was well minded to make the journey, but he had been so unwell and full of rheum ever since he came to Oslo. By Peter’s Mass
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a hard frost set in. A few days after, the old man fell suddenly sick of a fever in the lungs and died the third night. Thereafter Arnvid had to deal single-handed with the hiring of the stonemasons, and it took up all his time, until he had to take the north road again.

Olav got Ingunn to keep her bed in the daytime when the weather turned so cold: she was scarcely able to move now, so far gone was she, and then her feet were frostbitten so that there were great open holes in the flesh. Olav tended them himself and smeared foxes’ fat and swine’s gall on the sores. Ever since Arnvid’s departure he had been gentle and solicitous with his wife; he had quite put off the cross and unfriendly air that he had shown her during the autumn and winter.

Ingunn lay huddled under the skins, whispering a little word of humble thanks whenever Olav did anything for her. She had bowed beneath his displeasure and harsh words, silent and submissive; now she accepted his affectionate care with almost the same dumb meekness. Olav kept an eye on her privily as she lay motionless by the hour together, staring out into the room, almost without blinking. And the old, wild fear rose up in his heart, as hot as ever—it was no matter if he had neither use nor joy of her; he could not lose her.

Ingunn was glad to be allowed to creep thus into hiding. She had come to feel it as an unbearable disgrace every time she was to have a child. Even before she had her first two she had been distressed and shy, because it made her so ugly—Dalla’s insults had bitten into her mind so that she never got over them. She winced when she had to appear before Olav—and when he was away from her, she felt as though she could not sustain herself without his sound health close at hand to draw strength from.

But as time went on and it proved that she could not bring into life a single one of these creatures who came and dwelt in her, one after the other, she was filled with a horror of her own body. She
must be marked in some mysterious way, with something as terrible as leprosy, so that she infected her unborn infants with death. Her blood and marrow were spent, her youth and charm wasted long ago by these uncanny guests who lived their hidden life beneath her heart for a while and then went out. Till she felt the first warning grip as of a claw in her back, and had to let herself be led by strange women to the little house on the east of the courtyard, give herself into their hands without daring to show a sign of the mortal dread that filled her heart. And when she had fought through it, she lay back, empty of blood and empty of everything—the child was as it were swallowed up by the night, taken back into a gloom where she had not even a name or a memory to look for. The last premature births the women had not even let her see.

And yet she sometimes thought that it was even worse with Audun. When she lost the year-old child, he had already shown in many ways that he knew her for his mother; he would not be with others than her, and he was so fond of her. But he must be so still. When they sang in the litany:
Omnes sancti Innocentes, orate pro nobis,
Audun was one of them. In purgatory she would know that Audun was one of the holy Innocents who prayed for her. And when her hour of grace arrived, perhaps our Lord Himself or His blessed Mother would say to Audun: “Run down now and meet your mother.”

How it might go with her this time, she tried hard not to think.

But when the men came in at mealtimes, Olav and Eirik together, a deep, uneasy tension came to life in the sick woman’s great lustreless eyes. Olav noticed how wide awake she was, watching every movement of his features, listening to every word he spoke, when he was with the boy. And he always kept a guard over himself, taking care not to show it, when he was impatient or annoyed with Eirik.

The boy was troublesome enough; Olav liked him but moderately, now that he was big enough to show his nature. Noisy, full of boasting and idle tales, he chattered more than becomes a youth; not even when the men sat over their food, tired and worn out, could Eirik keep his mouth shut. There was that Arnketil, or Anki, as they called him. Olav had had him in his service some six years, and the man was now well on in the twenties, but he had
poor parts, might indeed be called almost half-witted, though he was useful for many kinds of work. He had always been Eirik’s best friend. They quarrelled—half in jest—raising their voices, till Eirik flew at Anki as he sat on the bench, pushing and pulling him till he got him to join in the game; they thrust each other hither and thither about the room, laughing and screaming and shouting without a thought of the other men who sat there and wanted rest and quiet. Grossly disobedient he was too; whether his father taught him something or forbade him to do this or that, he forgot it at once.

And Olav was angry that Eirik did not show his mother more affection. He was himself aware of the unreasonableness of this: formerly he had felt a secret exasperation when he knew that mother and son clung together behind his back. But now it made him angry to see Eirik spend the whole day out of doors among the men, never going in to sit by his sick mother. Olav himself had taught the boy his prayers some years ago—when he saw that Ingunn did not seem to think it was yet time. Now he made Eirik say a Paternoster and three Aves for his mother every evening, when he had prayed for himself. The boy gabbled off his prayers while his father stood over him—Eirik rose to his feet before he had finished the last Ave; at
In nomine
he was up on the bed, hastily crossed himself, and plunged headlong beneath the skins in the northern bed, which he shared with his father. He was asleep in an instant, and when Olav had finished smearing Ingunn’s feet, he found Eirik curled up in the middle of the bed, so that he had to straighten him out and push him against the wall to make room for himself.

At times Olav felt a stab of pain when Eirik sought him out with his foolish talk, boasting of his little, unhandy attempts to make himself useful among the men—“If only the boy had been so that I could have liked him.” In his innocent stupidity Eirik seemed never to guess that his father was not so fond of his company as he was of his father’s. But Olav had taken his resolution: he had acknowledged this child and raised him up in order to set him in the high seat here at Hestviken in succession to himself—though God knew Eirik was unpromising material for a great franklin and the head of a manor: the boy seemed to be a loose-tongued chatterer, untruthful, boasting and cowardly, lacking in
hardiness, and born with little sense of seemliness and quiet good manners. But he would have to do what he could to teach Eirik good behaviour and drive the bad habits out of him—even if he had to let the discipline wait till Ingunn was stronger—so that the lad might learn to comport himself as became Eirik Olavsson of Hestviken.

Some years before, herds of deer had moved into the districts on the west side of Folden, and there were now not a few deer on Olav’s land—they were to be found up in Kverndal, on the ridge of the Bull and in Olav’s oak wood, which lay inland, toward the church town. The summer before, they had grown so much fodder in Hestviken that they had stacks of hay and dried leaves standing in the open. Now, in late winter, the deer came as far as the manor in the early morning to snatch what they could of the fodder. Hiding behind some timber that lay in the yard, Olav one morning shot a fine young stag of ten points. Eirik was then quite wild to go with him—he would bring down a stag too.

Olav laughed a little at the boy’s chatter. The next few days the wind was off the fiord and he made Anki go out in the morning so that the deer might get scent of him and keep off the hay, and Eirik was allowed to go with them. The boy lay stiff with cold—with bow and spear by him—but when he came in he made out that he had both seen and heard the red deer.

Then one night Olav woke up and went to the outer door to see the time. It was two hours to daybreak, intensely cold and a dead calm—with the faintest breath from the east down Kverndal. In the early morning the deer would certainly come down and take tithe of the stacks. Olav dressed in the dark, but in order to choose his arrows he had to light a torch. That waked Eirik—and the end of it was that his father gave him leave to go with him, but he was not allowed a weapon.

As soon as they had crept into hiding behind the timber stacks, Olav had hard work to keep the boy quiet. Eirik forgot himself every minute and would whisper. Then he fell asleep. He had on a thick leathern jacket of his father’s; Olav wrapped it well about the child, so that he should not get frostbites—it was bitterly cold just before dawn—and thought with satisfaction that now Eirik could do no harm.

Olav had a long time to wait. The eastern sky was already turning yellow above the forest when he espied the deer coming out of
the thicket. Four dark spots moved against the dun-coloured ground; patches of it were clear of snow. Now and again they stopped, looked about and sniffed the air—now he could see that they were a stag, two does, and a calf.

Excitement and joy warmed his stiffened body as he rose on one knee, took his bow, and laid an arrow to the string. He held his breath. The stag came on, proud and stately—now he saw it against a snowdrift. It climbed onto an old balk of sods—stood there with feet close together: the neck and head with the antlers showed clearly against the yellow sky. Olav gave a noiseless gasp of joy—he had not met this old fellow before: a mighty beast, full-shouldered, with a great crown of antlers, fifteen or sixteen points, no less. It moved its head this way and that, spying out. It was a rather long shot, but the target was just right: Olav took his aim, and his heart laughed with joy—he felt too that Eirik was on the point of waking.

The boy started up with a shout—he too had seen those glorious horns against the sky. Olav sent his arrow after the flying deer, chanced to graze the shoulder, making the stag leap high into the air—it went on in flying leaps and the whole herd disappeared in the thicket.

Eirik received a couple of hearty cuffs on the side of the head-he took them with a little gasp, but did not cry out; he had wit enough to be ashamed of what he had done and did not cry out; besides, the thick leather cap he wore must have deadened the blows.

“Say nothing to your mother about this,” said Olav, as they went back to the houses. “She need not know that you can behave yourself like an untaught puppy, old as you are.”

Later in the day Olav followed the blood-tracks of the stag with his hound, found the deer, and killed it on the hillside at the top of Kverndal. And when the quarry was brought home at evening, Eirik went about boasting—it was he who had warned his father when the great stag came within range.

Olav did not care to say a word to the boy—he was afraid of losing his temper.

The seal now came in thickly on the approach of spring, and the farmers of the country round took their boats out to the edge of the ice and went seal-hunting in the south of the fiord. Olav
let Eirik go with him, but the result was not very happy; the massacre of seals and the brisk life among the hunters made him wild with excitement. It was quite incredible that the boy should have so little idea of how to behave anywhere in seemly fashion. But on coming home again he had the most extraordinary tales to tell. It was not easy for Olav to listen to the boy’s talk without losing patience.

St. Gregory’s Day
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brought a change of weather, southerly winds and rain—this was thought to presage a good year both on land and on sea.

On the morrow Ingunn was lying alone in the house early in the day. It was fairly dark indoors, for the smoke-vent was closed; it was raining outside.

Olav came in. He sat down on the bench, drew off his boots, struggled out of his jerkin and shirt, and opened his clothes-chest to find other garments.

“Are you asleep, Ingunn?” he asked with his back toward her. “How is it with you?” he said when she whispered in reply, no, she was not asleep.

“Oh, well. Will you ride out?”

Olav said yes, the Thing at Vidanes was summoned for today. He came up to the bed, naked to the waist, and put one foot on the step. “Must I change my hose, think you?”

Ingunn involuntarily drew her head away. “Indeed you must—they smell so ill.”

“They will scarce smell sweeter, the other men who come there—we have been out seal-hunting day and night of late, all of us.”

“But if you are to meet strangers from other parts—” suggested Ingunn.

“Ay, ay, as you will.” He drew off his breeks and hose, stood quite naked, stretched himself and yawned.

The sight of his faultlessly shaped body hurt her, it made her own ravaged wretchedness so hopeless. That time was so impossibly long past when she had been young and lovely, when they were well matched—but Olav was yet a young man, sound and handsome. His muscles were more knotted than of old, chiefly about the shoulder-blades and upper arms; they moved freely and powerfully as he stretched himself, raising his arms and lowering them. His flesh was still white as milk.

He came back to his wife when he had put on his red woollen shirt, long hose of black leather, and linen breeks.

“Then I must wear the blue kirtle too, think you—since you will have me so tricked out?” he asked with a smile.

“Olav—?” As he bent over her, she suddenly threw her thin arms around his neck and drew him down to her, pressing her face against his cheek. Olav felt that she was trembling.

“What is it?” he whispered. She only clung to him and made no answer.

“Are you sick?” He loosed her arms from about his neck; it was so uncomfortable to stand bent double. “Would you have me stay at home today? I can ride to Rynjul and fetch Una to you—at the same time ask Torgrim to speak for me at Vidanes.”