In the Wilderness (24 page)

“We have four that give milk and three young heifers—” The infant screamed louder and louder while Torhild was telling Olav of her cattle.

“He
seems to be in great distress, though,” said Olav with a smile. He was about to ask whose child it was, but remembered Ranveig, Torhild’s young sister, and checked himself.

“It is a little girl,” said Torhild, suddenly getting up. “I shall have to quiet her.” With a rapid gesture she parted the folds of her kirtle and drew out one full, blue-veined breast.

Olav looked at her, his mouth half-open with astonishment. Then he bowed his head—his forehead grew hot, a blush spread over the man’s face. He felt he could not look at her, had to keep his eyes firmly fixed on the floor.
That
was the only thing he had never once thought of, that it might turn out thus!

Torhild had seated herself on the step of the bed, with the child at her breast. Olav felt that she was looking at him; and he was angry with himself that he could not cease blushing. They sat thus for a good while, saying nothing. Then all at once Torhild spoke, quietly and in a clear voice:

“I would rather you said your business now, Olav—then I will answer you as well as I can.”

“Business—I have no other business than that I thought—I would ask after Björn—see him and hear how he does—and you—”

Torhild answered, as though weighing every word she uttered: “I see right well, Olav, that you may think—that it was not for this you gave me the farm here—I was given Auken that I might support myself and the child over here. But as I told you, the
work here is now double what it was when I came. And I hold it better to have a man here to help one than that I should carry on the farm alone with hired servants. Then you must bear in mind, I am now so old—Björn cannot have
many
brothers and sisters. Perhaps no more than this one—” she bent her face caressingly over the sucking child and pressed it to her.

As Olav was still silent, Torhild resumed with more warmth: “I considered it last year, before I gave him his answer—whether I should go over to Hestviken and speak to you of the matter. But then methought it was long since I had heard from you. But I see that you may think I have acted otherwise than was in your mind when you gave me house and land—though there never passed a word between us that I was not to marry.”

Olav shook his head. “I knew not that you were married.”

“ ’Twill soon be a year ago,” said Torhild shortly.

Olav rose, went up and gave her his hand. “Then I must wish you good luck.” She shook his hand, but did not look up from the child. “ ’Tis a daughter you have got—what is her name?”

“Borgny, after my own mother.” Torhild took the child from her breast, gathered together the kirtle over her bosom, dried the little one’s mouth with the back of her hand, and turned her face to Olav.

“A fair child.” Olav felt he must say so. Out of the tiny red face the dark eyes, wondering, as is the way of infants, seemed to meet his. Then they slowly closed; she was asleep. Torhild remained sitting with her in her lap.

Olav thought that now she would surely tell him something of the man she had taken in here to be her husband. But she did not.

“Your brothers,” Olav then asked, “were they at one with you in this?”

“You know, they have been used to that from childhood—if only I have them under my eyes, they listen to me.”

Olav thought in that case she might have done better to keep at least one of them here, but all he said was: “Nay, ’tis like enough you should deem there was need of a man here now.”

“Ay, as matters stood, I
had
to marry Ketil—he would not stay here longer on other terms. And had I not had his help all these years—he has done more than a man’s work at Auken since he grew up. If I had let the lad go—hired another labourer—I could not be sure that he would not come to me one day with the same
demand. So it was fairer to let Ketil take me and share the good fortune that is so largely due to him.”

Olav made no reply. Then she said again:

“You remember Ketil? You saw him when you were here last?”

“Nay?”

“Ay, he was not fully grown then—”

It dawned on Olav: a half-grown lad with a foolish face—a foundling—who had been with Torhild at that time. Flushing deeply, without looking at her, the man asked: “Is
he
the one you have taken to be to my son in the place of a father?”

“Yes,” said Torhild in a hard voice.

“Nay, I have never claimed to order your doings.” Olav shrugged his shoulders. “And Björn?” he asked. “But maybe he is too young to have a say in this?”

“Oh no. He has known Ketil as far back as he can remember.— Here they come.” Her pale, large-featured face softened and lit up in a little smile.

The door flew open—it led straight into the open air—and a gust of wind brought in the sound of young, laughing voices, a child’s and a young man’s. The smoke in the room swirled blue in the daylight. The boy had a windmill in his hand; he ran straight to his mother, beaming and shouting with joy. The man followed him, tall and fair; he said something as with a laugh he pushed back his ruffled yellow hair and wiped his face. Then they both caught sight of the guest.

Olav saw that Ketil knew him. He checked himself, became more reserved in his manner, and looked confused.

Torhild’s husband was tall, rather loosely built, with big labourer’s hands, which hung dangling to his knees, but his face was childish and rather foolish, with the long, low chin covered with fair stubble. Yellow, shaggy hair hung over his forehead. For all that, he was far from ugly.

Torhild got up and laid the child in the bed, saw to the pot. She signed to Ketil that he was to take his place in the master’s seat. He did so.

The boy had remained standing by his mother. He was not tall for his age, but was close-knit, shapely, and strongly built. Olav saw that Björn took after the Hestvik race—curly hair, pale as bog-cotton, large eyes, clear as water, set rather far apart under fair,
straight brows. His skin was white as milk, with a few little dark freckles over the root of the nose. He stood coolly surveying the stranger.

Torhild spoke to her husband, asking how he had fared in his errand at the neighbouring manor. Then they talked awhile of the weather and the crops; she tried to draw both the men into the conversation, but to little purpose. Then a young woman came in—one of the neighbors who came to help Torhild in the dairy; Torhild had not yet been churched after her childbed. Torhild asked whether Olav had a mind to go out with Ketil and look round the farm.

Björn went with them. He took his stepfather by the hand, and while the men went round the little farm, indoors and out, the boy grew talkative—he agreed with everything his stepfather said or added something to it. Hitherto they had borrowed a horse, said Ketil, but if their luck held a few years more—

“You must know, Ketil,” said Olav, “that if Torhild thinks I ought to do something more for her—”

“I know she does not,” Ketil interrupted. And Olav, meeting his eyes, saw that the young man did not always look such a fool. “We have shifted well enough for ourselves all these years.”

They had eaten their porridge, and Olav said he must think of going down to his boat. Then he called Björn and bade him come over to him.

The boy came and stood before Olav, looking at him with the cool, watchful expression in his handsome, sullen young face.

“Do you know who I am, Björn?” asked Olav.

“Ay, I guess that you are that Olav of Hestviken who is my father.”

Olav had drawn a gold ring from his finger. “Then you will accept this ring, Björn—a gift from your father?”

The boy looked at his mother and then at his stepfather. As they both nodded, he replied: “I will, Olav—I thank you for the gift!”

He tried the ring on, looked at it a moment; then he went over to his mother and asked her to keep it.

Olav took his leave soon after. He asked Torhild to go outside with him. It was dusk, and the wind had increased. The violent
gusts bent the bare rowan trees so that their branches scored the chilly green of the clear sky, but thick masses of cloud were advancing from the south.

Torhild said: “Will you sail home against this wind?—we can house you tonight.”

Olav said he must go in spite of it. He threw the flap of his cloak over his shoulder. “Since you are now married and have a child in wedlock—might it not be as well that Björn came over to live with me?”

He could not hear the answer for the wind, and repeated his own words.

“You must not ask me that, Olav.”

“Why not? I shall not marry again—and I shall bring the boy up as befits my son.”

“No. You too have true-born children. I will not have Björn go where he will be reckoned an inferior. Better to be the first at Torhildrud than the last at Hestviken.”

“Eirik has not been home now for four years. We seldom hear news of him, and ’tis uncertain when he will come back.”

“I know it. But there is Cecilia—and that foster-daughter of yours, and your kinswoman, Lady Mærta. Then you know that the name my brothers bear in those parts is not such as to bring the boy more honour.”

“You are well instructed about my affairs,” said Olav sharply.

“Such things are noised abroad, Olav, of a man in your station.”

Then Olav bade her farewell and left her.

He tried to shake it from him as he walked down through the darkness and the storm. It was unreasonable to be so angry. Torhild had a perfect right to marry. But that was the only thing he never thought could happen.

It was true that she might need a master on her farm, and true what she said, that if she let Ketil go, the next foreman she took might make the same demand. But that she should choose this foundling of all others—He recalled Ketil’s face, childishly young and fair, a tall, powerful lad—hand in hand with the boy, merry and playful both. The last time he took leave of her—it must be seven years ago now—it had been Torhild’s wish that
he
should take her back.—No, he would not harbour such thoughts; it was servile to think basely of any, without certain knowledge.

Björn. It must be bitter as death for a man to lose such a son, if he had had one.

The roar of the surf filled the whole air—through the gathering darkness the breakers rolled, alive and white. The packed stones of the little pier were battered and ground together with a dull booming by the waves that broke over them. Olav stood for a moment looking out—the wind had shifted due south. For all he had to do at home, he might just as well have stayed at Torhildrud till the morrow.

He had never thought of taking up with her again—but still his anger seethed within him whenever he recalled what he had seen up there. He was so wrought up that it surprised himself.

He had known all the time that she should never more be
his
—but he had nevertheless had some sense of ownership, in knowing that she was there—

The seas broke right over him as he went out on the little pier, where his boat lay rocking on the lee side.

T
HE FROST
came early that year. Week after week the weather held, calm and cold, with brazen dawns over dark ridges; the fields were grey with rime, lakes and bogs frozen hard. On clear days the fiord was dark blue and ruffled; then the light breeze died away, and the surface seemed to expand as it turned grey under the frosty mist that came and settled, raw and biting, on the country about Folden. One day the sky was sullen; there was a scent of snow in the air. In the course of the day a few hard little flakes began to fall; the snow grew thicker, rustling down with a faint, dry sound—toward evening it fell in great flakes.

It snowed for a couple of days, one evening the south wind got up, and then there was driving snow.

They had gone to rest early at Hestviken that night—it was two days before Lucy Mass.
¹
Olav was waked by a thundering at the outer door; he heard one of the house-carls get up and go out. It often happened in such weather that people of the neighbourhood,
coming ashore late, asked lodging for the night at Hestviken, so he lay down again; was sleepily aware of folk coming into the room; someone stirred the embers, rekindled a flame. Then he was wholly roused by hearing his name called. Before his bed stood Torhild Björnsdatter with a lighted splinter of pine; the snow lay white on her hood and the shoulders of her mantle.

Olav raised himself on his elbow:

“In God’s name—are you here! Is it Björn?” he asked hastily.

“ ’Tis not to do with Björn. But Duke Eirik crossed Lake Vann today—with five hundred horsemen, they say. He will be bound for Oslo, to greet his father-in-law and return him thanks.”
²

“Where have you heard this news?”

Torhild thrust her torch into a crack of the wall and sat on the side of his bed as she talked. Her brothers had had a share in a fishing-boat this autumn, and now she had been with them out to Tesal, to her mother’s kinsfolk there. Thither some yeoman had come that morning, who had fled before the Swedes—they were ravaging the country, plundering both goods and cattle.

“God have mercy on the country people,” said Olav. “They cannot secure their cattle in the woods either, in wintertime.”

“Hestviken lies out of the way,” replied Torhild; “yet I have thought, Olav, it were safer for your little maids and for the women on our side of the fiord. They say there are German mercenaries with the Duke. So I bade Egil to put in here to Hestviken, I would offer to take them home with me.”

“You are faithful to me and mine, Torhild,” said Olav gently. “And thoughtful.”

“I was well off while I was with you—and Cecilia is sister to my son. But what will you do yourself, Olav?”

“Carry the news northward to Galaby.”

Torhild went into the hearth-room to the house-folk. When Olav came out to the others, he was dressed in a short homespun coat, which showed the leather hauberk underneath, long woolen breeches swathed about the calves; on his head he wore an English
helmet with cheek-pieces and gorget. He carried his shield and the axe Kinfetch in his hands. Torhild looked at him.