In the Wilderness (19 page)

As Olav left the Abbot’s chamber he ran straight on the child—she was on her knees in the gallery playing chuckie-stones. The weather was bitter and boisterous, sleet and snow blew in under the roof of the gallery; so Olav spoke to her, bidding her get up. Bothild did not answer, but obeyed at once. Olav took her by the
hand; it was icy cold, and he rubbed her hands between his. He had occasion to go down to his boat, and he asked if she would go with him. Bothild nodded, and he led her down.

Her little hand lay so submissively within his that it made him fond: if he took Cecilia’s it slipped away again at once; she could never walk quietly by the side of a grown person. But he could not get a word out of his foster-daughter beyond a faint yes and no.

He took Bothild with him back to the guest-chamber, and as he sat down by the fire to dry himself, he drew Bothild up on his knee. She settled herself there, leaning her head against his breast; such a sweet scent came from her hair. Olav lifted up her face and kissed her on the mouth—felt the living movement of the soft childish lips—she kissed him back. A warm, melting thrill went through him.

Eirik had often been ready to sit on his knees when he was small, but Cecilia always wanted to get down as soon as he had picked her up. And if it chanced that he tried to kiss his little daughter, he noticed that Cecilia did not like it.

For the last year Olav had slept in the hearth-room, in the bed that had been his marriage-bed. He slept better than he had done for many years, but even now he often lay long awake. At such times it was pleasanter to lie here than in the closet; there the daylight never penetrated, so that its air was always chillingly sour and musty, and there was always a cold, raw smell of oil and food that they stored in there during the winter. The great room smelt of men and smoke; even at night a hint of cosiness seemed to be given off by the hearth, where live embers were hidden beneath the ashes. A piece had been broken off the cover of the smoke-vent one night when it was blowing, and Olav had not yet had a new one made. When the moon shone he could see a corner of light on the parchment pane of the vent, and he could watch the dawn. Olav liked that.

Now he moved back into the closet; Mærta and the children were to have the south bed in the hearth-room.

Olav had expected Cecilia to scream and make a great to-do when she was told she was to sleep with the strangers instead of with Ragna, as she had been accustomed. But it turned out otherwise. He had come in to Hestviken late in the day, having taken
three days on the voyage from Tunsberg, as he had met with bad weather and run for shelter. Bothild was more dead than alive when Olav carried her up to the houses—she sat the whole evening on the stool where he had first put her down, feeling as if she were still in the boat. Folk tramped in an out, carrying one thing and another, and meanwhile Cecilia Olavsdatter hovered about the strange little maid, and her big bright eyes were all agaze under the tumble of flaxen curls.

No sooner had Mærta laid the poor exhausted little thing under the bedclothes, and Olav said that now Cecilia must go and lie down by her foster-sister, than she pulled off all her clothes in a twinkling and jumped up into the bed. Soon after, Mærta came with a pillow; she took hold of Bothild, who was already asleep, to put it under her head. Instantly Cecilia threw her arm around the strange child:

“You shall not touch her! This is
my
sister!”

It was a jest among folk in the countryside that now at last Olav Audunnsson had got a heritage from his rich kinsmen in Denmark: he had inherited a mother-in-law. They soon found a name to call her by and dubbed her the Lady Mærta.

Olav got on well with the new mistress of his house. He was spared further trouble with such matters as did not rightly come under his control, and she seemed to be kind to Cecilia.

Galfrid Richardson owed Olav some money, and now he asked him to accept in payment a handsome, well-trained falcon—Galfrid had bought her in the spring of an Icelander, but he himself had little skill in hawking and wished to be rid of the bird. Olav knew of old that it was difficult to mew these birds at Hestviken so that they kept in good condition over the winter; nor had he any horse now that would serve for hawking. Nevertheless he could not control his desire to own this fine bird. He rode out with her a few mornings, before the snow came. Most days he got only black game, but once or twice it happened that he had the luck to see the falcon hunt kites. When he came home, warmed and cheered by the fine sight of the struggle in the air, Eirik had the benefit of his father’s good humour. When the boy talked of catching young hawks in the spring and taming them for hunting, Olav laughed a little—it was not so easy for an unpractised hand, but he had known something of it in his youth and
he promised to help Eirik as well as he could. It was the lad’s work to change the sand and keep the bird’s cage clean. His father taught him how to handle the falcon, to slip on the hood and fasten the jesses on the legs. The man and the boy became good friends over this bird.

Then the kites left the country, and the snow came. Olav had set up a perch for the falcon within the closet and hung up some old blankets for a curtain. At night, when the walls were rough with rime and the coverlet over him was frosted with his breath, he lay listening for any movement of the falcon. He was anxious lest she might fare badly and be useless in the spring. Every day he examined her shanks and castings, watched whether she fed. He was still strangely happy in the possession of this treasure, so proud and wild and yet so frail and easily spoilt. He loved to feel the weight of her on his wrist; he carried her into the light and looked at her fine markings, the greyish bands and pale brown spots that showed in her white plumage. At night, when all smells were deadened by the cold, he thought nevertheless he could catch the rank scent of the bird of prey, and then he looked forward with longing to the spring, as he had not done since—he knew not when.

The deer had left the district after the last two winters, when wolves were rife.

As the new year wore on, Olav remarked several times that there was dissension in the house because Eirik set himself against Lady Mærta. Olav was very angry, for now he wished for peace—he corrected the boy with harsh words, but this seemed not to make him any better. Olav took it for granted that Eirik was to blame—so courteous a woman as Mærta Birgersdatter could hardly have expected the son of the Master of Hestviken to be so rude and childish an oaf.

Until now Eirik had never paid much attention to his little sister’s doings. But on the other hand he had never been used to tease her; if now and then he turned to Cecilia, it would be to show her kindness and help her in her games. Now that too was changed; he was constantly in the way of the two little maids, provoking them and amusing himself by making Cecilia as savage as a young hawk. The other little girl simply shrank into a corner, dumb with misery.

One evening Olav came in from outside; he stayed in the anteroom awhile, getting out a chest of arrow-shafts and feathers—he intended to spend the evening making ready some arrows for fowling. He moved noiselessly, as had been his habit in all the years when he had had so much on his mind—he had come to hate noise.

He heard the children in the great room, Eirik and Cecilia—he was laughing and she was angry. Olav looked in. Cecilia was sitting before the hearth on the little three-legged stool that was her own. Tore, the old house-carl, had made it for her. She sat clutching the stool with both hands under the seat and her feet braced against the floor. Her mouth was slightly puckered and her eyes were round and staring; they were almost as blue in the whites as in the light pupils—she looked like a white, blue-eyed kitten crouching for a spring. Behind her stood Eirik. He put his foot under the stool and rocked it a little. Cecilia resisted with all her weight.

Olav came into the room for a lantern. Eirik left his sister, but no sooner was his father back in the anteroom than he began again. He dangled a red hair-ribbon—dropped it into the straw that covered the floor. Cecilia was to be quick and snatch it first, but Eirik was quicker still; roaring with laughter, he dropped astride on her stool.

His sister darted at him and seized his hair with both hands. She pulled it without making a sound; Eirik laughed and swung her this way and that, so that she fell into the hearth, put out her hands, and got hold of a log that still had some heat in it. Then she set up a howl and turned furiously on her brother, spitting at him so that it dribbled down on her little chin.

Olav came in, seized Eirik’s hand roughly, and pulled it aside—the boy had got Cecilia by the hair when she tried to bite him. Her father lifted her up in his arms.

“So you pull little girls by the hair, I see.”

“She
pulled mine first.”

“Nay, did she?”

Eirik turned red as blood. Cecilia remembered that she had burned her hand, and burst into a pitiable fit of crying. Olav comforted her, found some candle-grease, and smeared the burned place. Bothild came out of her corner and stood looking on.

Olav enjoyed being able to sit awhile with Cecilia in his arms
and the other little girl at his knee. Eirik he pretended not to see. But when Lady Mærta and Ragna came in with the food and Mærta asked what was the matter, Olav answered: “Nothing.”

Then Cecilia looked up from her father’s breast. “Must not Eirik give me my horse now, Father?”

“Surely he shall give you your horse.”

“ ’Tis not her horse,” said Eirik, red as fire again.

Then Mærta put in a word: “I gave the children a little wooden horse I found in Eirik’s bed when we changed the straw for Yule. And now they have been quarreling over it for twelve weeks.”

Olav smiled mockingly. “Is that wooden horse such a treasure, Eirik, that you will not let your sister have it?”

“Yes,” replied Eirik defiantly. “Mother carved it for me when I was a child.”

“Then you must let Eirik have it,” said Olav. “Wooden horses I will give you, as many as you wish.”

Later, after supper, Eirik came and asked if he might help his father with the arrows. Olav said he could. Once when Eirik could not get the feathers to sit straight, Olav paused in his work and looked at him.

“I cannot say you are very handy, Eirik.”

This was not true; Eirik was deft and quick, it was only a fault in the wood of this shaft, which made the groove for the feathers too shallow.

One afternoon some days later father and son were down at the waterside salting auks. Olav flayed the birds; Eirik cut out the breasts, laid them in the kegs, and salted them. Now and then Olav dried his hands on the lappet of his coat; Eirik was tempted to do the same, but the salt stung his chapped and swollen hands so sharply that it was too painful even to touch the coarse woollen garment.

The south wind howled and beat against the wall of the shed; now and then a shower of rain poured down. Underneath the floor the waves splashed and gurgled, grinding the flakes of ice and breaking them against the rock. It was turning to foul weather. Eirik felt intensely happy at being allowed to stay here in the shed alone with his father and help him.

• • •

King Haakon came from the border round by the north to Tunsberg just after Easter. It was then rumoured in the country about the fiord that the peace with the Danish King was to hold for two years more. Folk were glad of this, for the first tidings that had come from the Kings’ meeting there said that in the spring King Haakon would ravage Denmark with a greater war fleet than ever before.

But Olav felt no gladness when he began the work of spring. It was wearisome to look forward to a whole summer at Hestviken. He did not ponder why the days should seem much more dreary now, when at last he was rid of the lingering torment of a wife who was always sick. In those days time had hung heavily on him; now it went swiftly, though his mind was now filled with a never ceasing impatience. It was as though he had sold his soul and been cheated of the payment.

It was not in order to busy himself about this farm here on the hill by the creek—to sail out with his fishing-boats, to dig the ground, to visit the mill and go out to Saltviken—it was not for
this
he had finally silenced the voice that had urged and called to him so long. The secret spiritual conflict that for twelve years had been his whole life was like a web, woven by himself and One other. And he had acted like a woman who cuts down the tapestry from her loom, rolls it up, and hides it in a locked chest. To Olav it seemed as if he had thrown the key into the sea.

But he had not done so in order to have these calm days, wearingly alike, in its place. He had forgotten his doings in England and all the thoughts he had had there, better than he would have believed it possible for a man to forget such things. Nevertheless a dim memory flickered forth of that which had turned the scale: the song of the retainers and the salt, sweet taste of blood it brought back from his own brisk youth of outlawry, and he remembered the joy of grappling with foes of flesh and blood, footpads who used the knife in the darkness of the woods. It was as though these had been the bribes he was offered—no great matters, but enough to turn the scale in the hour when he was tempted to turn away from God for good and all, since it was so hard to return to the banner of his rightful Lord for a man who had become a traitor and a runaway. Thirty pieces of silver are not so great a sum as to have tempted Judas, had it not been for that bag of our
Lord’s travelling-resources for which he would have had to account.

And at times the thought came over Olav this spring—He stood under the pale and boundless arch of the evening sky, still faintly yellow over the ridge on the western side of the fiord; the surface of the water beneath him loomed grey and restless, wrapped in an indefinite gloom where the darkness was gathering about the shores. Olav washed the rough dirt from him in the tub before the house door. Whatever he might turn his hand to, every day’s work began and ended in his toiling up and down the familiar paths to the yard, creeping into his house, creeping to his rest within the closet. For an instant there came over him a temptation to do like Judas—he had such a hellish loathing of going in to the others.