The Son Avenger (28 page)

“How have you found that out?” she asked with warmth.

“That time last winter—when he seemed beside himself, accused everyone—you did not escape either—”

“Oh, I am partly to blame for it myself,” said Cecilia. “I was so young then. I knew no better than to provoke him by my silence and provoke him by what I said.”

Young, thought Eirik—“she is not so old as Gunhild.”

Cecilia said after a while: “I acted wrongly, too, I doubt not. The others were going to a feast; I refused to go with them. Chiefly because I was so far gone with Kolbein at that time-but I knew too that they had a guest in that house, one whom I was not minded to meet. But in the evening he came to Gunnarsby, and I went out nevertheless and spoke to him by the gate. Nay, we said not a word that Jörund himself might not have heard—that is not
his
way. But Jörund came to hear of it, and he knew the man had known me at Hestviken—You know him not.—Then I was stubborn—and Jörund lost his temper. He has never
done such a thing since—it gave him a fright when Father came. Indeed Jörund is a reasonable man between these fits of his.”

“But it can never be a sin,” thought Eirik, “if I urge Gunhild to resist—”

Some days later Eirik went down to Saltviken. All through the winter he had looked forward to doing the spring work on his farm. Now he set about it, but at the same time his thoughts wandered to other things. He could not get over what he had guessed from his sister’s words—even that insult had been offered Cecilia, who had certainly never let any man touch her even when she was a child. And then there was the thought of Gunhild.

It was the finest of weather every day. Now the manure was spread and dug in on his new dark-soiled cornfields, blending its good warm smell with the acrid scent of growing grass in the meadows. Where the soil was thin over the rocks, the pansies already showed blue. The first shoots on the trees shone bright as pale-green flames against the sunlight—little green leaves had appeared already. The boughs of his cherry trees were pearly with buds; here and there a branch beside the sun-warmed rock had burst into white blossom. In the midday rest Eirik went down to the bay, undressed, and swam out. The water was still cold, but otherwise it was like summer down here on the beach.

The day he had finished sowing he stopped work at nones and changed his clothes—he kept a blue kirtle here, so that he might go to church without passing round by Hestviken. Then he rode inland toward Eiken.

There had been a flock of children at the homestead where he had put up his horse when he was last in these parts. He now made his way thither, found a half-grown girl who was washing clothes in the brook. He took out some small silver coins and asked if she would go an errand for him.

“Then run away to Eiken, see if you can speak with Gunhild alone. You are to ask her if she has any message for the owner of this token.”

He took out of his bosom an embroidered shirt-sleeve; Gunhild had given it him at Yule when they were togther at Rynjul, and promised him its fellow for Easter.

He lay on the grass above the little farm. The woman came up and began to talk to him; from her he learned that Berse and
his wife were not at home; they had gone southward down the fiord a week before, but the place was being made ready to receive guests on the return of the master and mistress. So it was a good thing after all that he had made his way hither, he thought.

At sunset the little girl came running down the road. Eirik went to meet her; she handed him back the token:

“Gunhild bade me bring greetings and say you are to ask the owner of this token to ride to the Ness with all speed and wait there; he shall there be given all he is to receive according to the covenant.”

Eirik stared at the child—this took his breath away. Never could he have imagined it.

Eirik rode southward as the shades of evening gradually deepened to a pale-grey spring night and the birds sang jubilantly all through the forest. It was cool and good to ride at this late hour, and he had never been afraid to travel by night.

And, to be sure, he was glad. But at the same time he was not a little dismayed. That Gunhild should make good so wild a threat—could any man have thought it!

He saw quite clearly that now they would both be placed in a difficult position. If it became known whither Gunhild had betaken herself and that they had been there together, the worst would certainly be said. He must take her away from her sister’s house as quickly as he could. But where could they seek refuge?

The law was even as he had said—it was a bishop’s duty to defend women against forced marriages—but very few bishops were ever called upon to fulfil this duty, even when their rule was
a
long one. He knew pretty well how welcome Gunhild Bersesdatter would be made in the Bishop’s castle or with the strict Lady Groa at Nonneseter if she were sent thither. Ask any of his father’s friends in the town or in his home parish to receive
a
woman whom he had carried off by force, that was impossible. Torgrim and Una would do it no doubt—but he could not drag them into such difficulties. And Rynjul was too near both to Eiken and to Hestviken. For his own father would scarcely be better pleased with this than hers.

The best plan he could think of was to take her to his kinsfolk in the Upplands. He had not parted in friendship from Steinfinn Haakonsson of Berg, but he knew enough of his cousin to be
sure that if he sought his support in such a case as this, he would find a loyal kinsman in Steinfinn.

This plan involved difficulties enough and—the way was long; they might be pursued, and then in God’s name the encounter could scarcely pass off without an exchange of blows. But if they had a start, and travelled by unfrequented paths—There was more than that—he knew it well enough as he rode here in the spring night and breathed the acrid scent of growing leaves and grass and felt the warmth of his own sound youthful body. Already he had visions of the chances he would have of kissing his fair bride and clasping her in his arms as they rode together unattended for five or six days and nights, through forests and remote country districts. But it was well he was old enough to know that he must be on his guard. What would be said of them he knew; but she must know it too, and yet she had chosen to accept this hazard. But to be forced to weep over a secret sorrow of his causing—he would not bring that on Gunhild.

His heart failed him at the memory of thoughts he had once had—no, in Jesus’ name, Bothild was enough.

It was clear he would have been wiser to have sent her back a message that she must not think of keeping so ill-considered a promise. But that would surely have offended her. And what kind of man would he have to be who should be capable of such prudence?

If at least he knew where this Ness was to be found! Somewhere on the border between Saana and Garda parishes. He had ridden past it once with old Tore, when he was a lad—one saw the homestead on the farther side of a lake. Now he did not even know if he were on the right road—he was in the depth of the forest, where patches of snow gleamed here and there and the birches had not yet burst into leaf and the cold ground breathed the raw scent of early spring from the musty slime that covers the ground as soon as the snow recedes. It was already past midnight, and the song of birds, which had been silent awhile, began to be heard again, but the notes of the night-birds were not yet hushed, the night-raven croaked—and in some bogs that he had passed the capercailye was calling. Eirik was sleepy—and the bay was tired and a little lame.

He leaped from the saddle and led his horse down a steep descent, where the water streamed over the path, past some small
farms—and soon he came out on a broader road. A little farther on, this road led past a little lake.

The black forest surrounded the whole piece of water except on the north side, where a solitary homestead stood on a point of land that jutted out into the lake. A mist was rising from the surface of the water and from the marshy meadows around the homestead, so that only its green roof showed above the haze. From the head of the lake a track branched from the road across the marsh. Eirik rode along it—the worst bog-holes were bridged with logs; the birches were dripping wet, with a strong and bitter scent of bursting leaves. He passed many places that had once been meadow, where young green fir trees had sprung up. The dawn was now so far advanced that the sky was white and the surface of the water like steel between the driving mists. In the field before the homestead the grass was already high and lush, grey with moisture in the thick air, and here too birch and alder were almost in leaf.

He could not wake folk in a strange place at this time of the morning, but he saw a little barn standing at the edge of the wood. He turned his horse loose outside, went in and lay down in the empty barn.

When he awoke, the sun was shining in through every crack of the logs. Outside the open door all was gleaming green and gold in the sunlight, and in the doorway stood a woman holding the bay by the forelock. Eirik sprang up, shook out his wrinkled cloak, went forward and greeted her:

“Can you tell me, mistress, if this house be the Ness, where Eldred Bersesdatter lives?”

As he spoke he was sure that this must be Eldrid: she was dressed like a working-woman and looked like—he knew not what, but not like a woman of the people.

She was not very tall—not so tall as Gunhild, and thin, broader across the shoulders than across the narrow, scanty, mannish hips, and she held herself straight as a wand. Her brown, weatherbeaten face looked as if the flesh had been scraped from under the skin—the forehead was smooth, as were the strongly arched cheek-bones and the fine, straight nose. But the longer Eirik looked at this ravaged and aging woman, the more clearly he saw that she must once have been beautiful—so beautiful that not one of all the fair women he had seen could compare with Eldrid.

“I am Eldrid of the Ness—have you an errand to me?”

“I have—one that will seem strange to you, I fear.” Then he told her who he was.

“Are you a son of Olav Audunsson of Hestviken?” Her voice too was beautiful, rich and ringing. “You are not like your father. I remember him—he came home to these parts the year before I disappeared from—”

She asked him to go up with her to the houses, and Eirik saw that the place looked well, now the sun was shining; trees and meadow were nearly as far advanced as at home. But it was strangely deserted and lonely—and shut off, with the dark forest behind it, which was beginning to invade the old meadow-land, and the narrow lake in front, where the reflection of the high wooded slope on the south side darkened half the surface even on a bright May morning like this.

The ness on which the houses stood was almost cut off from the shore, by a neck of land so low that the water came over the grass on both sides. In flood-time it came right across, Eldrid told him.

“Then you must use a boat?”

“Boat?” Eldrid laughed mockingly. “We have naught to take us abroad, we who live here.”

The houses lay irregularly on the little mound, according as there had been room to build them. They were small and might have been kept in better repair. A bent old woman with her coif drawn low over her surly eyes glanced at the two as they went past.

The walls of the dwelling-house were only three logs high; there was a penthouse of upright timbers which formed a sort of anteroom, and only a single room within. Instead of the central hearth there was a fireplace by the door, and the wall in that corner was covered with slabs of stone and daubed with clay; at each end of the other long wall was an untidy bed. Other furniture there was none, but on the bench that ran round the walls all kinds of cups and platters, garments and pots and a butter-churn were piled in confusion.

Eldrid cleared a seat for him at the end of the room. “You must be hungry.”

He was—now he remembered that since he rode from home the day before at noon he had tasted nothing but a drink of milk
at the cottage by Eiken. So he relished what Eldrid set before him on the bench: curds, oaten bread, and old cheese. Then he had to come out with his message:

“I come from your sister, Eldrid—from Gunhild of Eiken—”

“My sister!” Eldrid gave him a strange look. Then she took a spindle from the jumple on the bench, thrust it into her belt, and began to spin. “That sister of mine whom you name I have neither seen nor heard from until now. And I wonder who can have spoken to her of me. Not her parents, I trow. What would she, then—Gunhild, my sister?”

“She begs you to save her. They will give her to an old man, a widower, whom she has never seen. And now she thinks—perhaps you will take pity on her. There is none other in the world from whom she may look for kindness.”

Eldrid looked at him with a shadow of a smile on her brown and broken lips. “Hm. And you—maybe you are he whom she would have?”

“It was agreed that I should be betrothed to Gunhild last winter. But then her father broke with us.”

“And maybe it was too late?” said Eldrid as before.

Eirik guessed her meaning; he was annoyed with himself for turning red, but replied in an even tone: “Ay—so long as we thought we had only to wait a year or so, and the old people would have made up their differences—we should have been content. But if Berse will once more give his young hind to an old buck, he will find it is too late, he shall not so dispose of Gunhild. She will not submit, and I will not suffer that man to get her.”

“But what help do you look to me for?” asked Eldrid. “Shall I go to Berse and invoke a curse on him?”

Eirik had sat and watched her. Although she looked as if she had been dried over many fires, there was still something fine about her; her hair was not wholly hidden by the stiff coif: it was dark, streaked with grey, and a lock of it fell with a strange charm over the broad, smooth forehead, across which ran two sharp furrows. Hollow as her cheeks were, he had never seen anything more beautiful than the rounding of her jawbone and the curve of her chin. The eyes were deeply sunk in their great sockets, and there were many wrinkles about them, but they were large, dark, and grey. Her mouth, however, was
brown and scaly, with a deep red crack through the underlip. And the hands that span were red and cracked and knotted with gout.