In the Wilderness (28 page)

“Then you have not had a joyful Yule?”

Olav could not help laughing a little—he had never drunk so good a Yule, he answered.

“But you know not whether your manor be standing or lie in ashes?”

“Hestviken has thrice lain in ashes, my lady,” replied Olav as before. “If ’tis burned now for the fourth time, then I must even do as my fathers: take such fortune as God sends me and build it up anew.”

“And what of your kinsfolk?” asked Lady Agnes.

“My son is with Sir Ragnvald on the border, and my daughters are with friends on the west side of the fiord, so I need not distress myself for them.”

“Then you have no wife alive?”

“No, lady, this is the eighth winter since she died.”

“Ah yes, then it must be easier for you, Olav, than for many men. One hears so many tales—the poor country folk in the south, God help them!”

“Àmen, lady—but if He will, they will not have long to wait either, ere they be helped and avenged. Ill it is that we have not your lord with us, but Ivar has good will enough—”

“Oh, I know not,” the lady sighed. “I cannot say I grieve so sorely either that Sir Haftor is away. Yeomen against German mercenaries—’tis an unequal struggle, even though the yeomen have numbers. And yet it is sad for me that my lord is absent from me at this time.”

Olav looked down at the little wife; he thought her condescension somewhat uncalled-for and her words ill suited to a King’s daughter, but he felt sorry for her. She had fine brown eyes like those of a hind, but other beauty there was none in her.

Nevertheless it was with a strangely keen pity that he heard, one morning a few days later, that now Lady Agnes lay in the pains of childbirth, and the ladies who were about her knew not how it might fare with her. Sir Jon and his kinsmen wandered about with gloomy looks, but what they must chiefly have feared was that if Lady Agnes should die, the strongest tie would be broken that bound Haftor Jonsson to the King, and if the child were lost, it would be one arrow less in their quiver.

But in the course of the evening a message came that Lady
Agnes had been delivered of a fine big son, and then there was joy: Sir Jon ordered in mead and wine, and the men drank to the welfare of the new-born babe. The grandfather had the elder boy, the year-old Jon, brought in, whom his kinsmen called the Junker among themselves—he was hailed and passed from man to man, and the franklins drank till they were under the table, like men, as Ivar said.

Next day the new-born son was christened by Sira Hallbjörn—Magnus he was called. The guests at the manor joined the kinsfolk with their offerings, and in the evening they held the christening ale with great merriment, but Olav could not but think of the young mother, whom all seemed to forget—one of her ladies had said she was very sick, lay wandering in a fever and wailing that Sir Haftor did not come in to her they could not make her understand that he was in Björgvin.

But two days before St. Hilary there came word in the evening to Sudrheim that a levy of over two thousand men, from Lier and Ringerike, was marching on Oslo. The state of affairs in the town was that Duke Eirik had been dangerously ill during the holy-days, but now he was better and, for joy of that, his friends would keep the last day of Yule with wassailing. The men of Lier had had news of this, and they thought to fall upon the town that night.

Ivar Jonsson and his friends held a council at once, and next morning they set out with a body of over three hundred men, but the rest of the Raumrikings, who dwelt farther to the north and west, were to follow as quickly as they could: Ivar was afraid the men of Lier might forestall him and reap all the glory.

The men from Folden now mustered about fifty, and Olav Audunsson was their leader. It was he who had raised the yeomen for the first attack on the Swedes, and it was he who had sent warning betimes to the captain of Akershus. He himself had thought nothing of this till now, nor had he been among the leaders in the fight on the Oslo road; but here at Sudrheim he won credit for it, and it seemed to come about of itself that he was held to be the man of greatest mark among his company, the master of the ancient chieftains’ seat of Hestviken and Alf Erlingsson’s liegeman in days gone by. And here he himself thought it natural—as it should be, beyond that it concerned him no more.
The other three subordinate chiefs were much younger men, nearer in age to Ivar Jonsson.

As it was falling dark they reached the village of Tveit, below the Gellir ridge, and here they learned that the Duke had set guards at Hofvin Spital, at Sinsen, and at Aker by the church, but only a few men at each place, for it happened luckily that all these houses on the highroads belonged to Nonneseter, and the Abbess, Lady Groa Guttormsdatter, had protested with heavy threats against any injury being done to her dependants—nor would the Duke care to break peace with the masculine nun more than there was need. Everywhere in the ravaged districts the sisters’ tenants had been let off more lightly than other farmers, whether owners or tenants; those who held their land of the Crown or of the nobles had fared worst. Sira Hallbjörn laughed when he heard it: there was no love lost between him and the Lady Abbess, for he had disputes of his own with her, but he too saw the humour of this. The priest accompanied Ivar in arms and armour.

After consultation with some of those who lived in the neighbourhood it was decided that the Raumrikings should move up into the forest before daybreak and conceal themselves there till the next evening. Then they would advance along the river Alna, surprise the guards at Hofvin on the way, and fall upon the town above Martestokker, at the same time as the men of Lier entered it from the west by way of the convent of nuns. The latter body would have to pass round by Aker church and over Frysja bridge, as the ice on the Bjaarvik was unsafe, and the lower reach of the Frysja was not yet frozen over.
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Up here on the high ground it had frozen a little, and there was enough snow to enable the messengers sent westward by Ivar Jonsson to use their skis, if they kept to the roads and fields.

They settled themselves in the farms of Tveit, Ivar and his captains, intending to rest there till near daylight. But shortly before midnight the door of the house was suddenly flung open, and in came one of the farmers with whom they had spoken earlier in the evening, accompanied by an old woman, his mother.

She lived in the town with her married daughter, and they kept an alehouse in a yard near the palace. The Duke’s men had had word that a strong body of country levies was marching on Oslo from the west, and therefore they were making ready to attempt a storming of Akershus castle in the morning. The woman had watched her chance of slipping out of the town and bringing the message; for in Oslo it was whispered among the townsmen that the lords of Sudrheim were also engaged in raising men from the Upplands, but the Swedes believed nothing of this.

“There’ll be another dance then, for the last day of Yule,” said Sira Hallbjörn.

Now it was hard to know what course the Raumrikings should follow. Then Sira Hallbjörn demanded a hearing and said there were no more than two counsels to choose between: “—and neither is of the best. One is, that we set off at once and go west, the same way that our messengers went; cross the river by Sandakrar, fall on the guards at Aker farm, and then we must hold Frysja bridge tomorrow until the Lidungs
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come up—if we can. Should the Duke have the luck to take Akershus, he can prepare a bloody bath for the yeomen’s army coming from the west and buy his peace with King Haakon at whatever price he himself may offer—he and his Norse friends.—The other counsel is that we turn home again, up to Raumarike, and wash down our shame with the last of the Yule barrels at Sudrheim.”

Young Ivar and his captains discussed the priest’s counsel. It would be fighting on unequal terms, three hundred men, and of those not more than seven and forty mounted and armed after the manner of horsemen, the rest yeomen on foot, against the Duke’s mercenaries and well-trained men-at-arms.

“What say you, Olav Audunsson?” asked Ivar. “You are the oldest and most experienced.”

“I say the priest is right. There are but two courses open. Neither is good—but the first plan seems to me not so bad after
all. If we cannot hold the bridge, we can break it down and take refuge in Akershus.”

Sira Hallbjörn reminded them that it was of great moment to prevent the Duke’s getting possession of the castle. They must make ready to break down the bridge, as Olav said, and they had the church of Aker and the churchyard in their rear; that was a good position to defend if the enemy got part of his men across; and if they were driven back from the churchyard, they would have to take refuge in the church—that they could hold till the army from the west came up.

“Do you yourself believe what you said?” asked Olav as he and the priest were arming—“that the Lidungs can cut their way through to the church if the mounted troops reach the heights west of the Frysja?”

Sira Hallbjörn shook his head. “But we cannot return home without having ventured a brush. And it may cost the country dear, if Duke Eirik is to hold Akershus and treat for peace with his father-in-law that was to be—”

“Nay, that is so. Methinks this business has been somewhat brainlessly undertaken. But Ivar is young; ’tis worse to be heartless than brainless, and the heart is good enough both in him and in the men—no lack of fighting spirit.”

“No.—Do you remember last summer at the wedding—when your axe sang? Now we shall soon see whether the warning was for you or for me.”

“I have never heard that such weapons rang save for their own kin. But as things are shaping here, it looks most likely that it may mean both of us,” said Olav with a little laugh; and Sira Hallbjörn laughed too—“Ay, it looks so indeed.”

There was no moon, and the sky was strewn with stars. The snow was not deep enough to hinder the advance seriously; and now it was freezing a little. Olav Audunsson and Sira Hallbjörn rode at the head of the Folden troop—it was the last in the line. Olav and the priest had borrowed horses from Sudrheim, but Olav said he would fight on foot, for he was more used to that.

“If this frost hold a few days,” said the priest, “the Duke will be able to bring mail-clad horsemen across Bjaarvik.”

“Ay, we are late in moving,” said Olav; “and lucky if we be not too late.”

“At Sudrheim they would stay for the christening ale—and be sure these men from the west have had weddings and funerals and Yule barrels that must be emptied. But maybe we can yet drive back the Duke—as a repentant sinner drives off the Devil at his last gasp.”

Olav said nothing. He looked before him, where the host of constellations descended to the dark line of the wooded ridge. It was strange to think he should have suffered so much all these years on account of
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dead man, have pondered so sadly upon death and all that came after—but when it came to war and fighting, all such thoughts flew away and were as nothing. And so, no doubt, it is always and for every man.

Their guide could not find the ford over the river where the advanced guard had crossed; they had to go right up to a kind of pool, where boats lay. This delayed the Folden troop so much that it was already growing light as they came down again by a path that ran through the alder brakes on the right bank. The sky stretched above them wide and light, yellow as sulphur down toward the eastern hills, as they sighted the tower of Aker church above the trees, and below them, on the farther side of the Frysja, they saw the roofs of Fors, white with snow against the white ground. At the head of the fiord a mist lay over Akershus and the town, spread out in a thin sheet, above which rose the towers of Hallvard’s Church and the gables of the old royal castle.

It looked more hopeful at the bridge than Olav had imagined—he had not passed this way since the King had built wooden towers at the bridgeheads. They were bigger than he had thought. The eastern one, on the Oslo side, was so much lower that the men on the western tower could shoot over it at an army advancing against Akersnes from the east.

Nor had Ivar been idle: his men were engaged in hoisting up stones and missiles into the barbicans, and in the middle of the bridge, where it rose highest, they were building a breastwork—some men were pulling down a few small cottages near the bridge, dragging out the logs and doors, while others loaded sledges with stones on the hillside and others again drove them down. So the men of Folden found work to do at once. From the Raumrikings they learned that the guards at Aker farm had been overpowered and cut down or made prisoner. Sira Hallbjörn at once secured two of the crossbows that Ivar had taken from the Swedes, for
himself and Olav Audunsson—they both shot just as well with these weapons as with the longbow.

The day was already so far advanced that the Norwegians were saying that either the widow at Tveit had been doting, or the Swedes had given up the attack on the castle. The south-western sky was already afire above the forest on the Eikaberg ridge—the sun was just rising—when they heard the muffled beat of kettledrums just below at the brow of the wood under Fors. Their own work had been so noisy, and the falling water roared so under the bridge, that they had not heard the sound of advancing troops before. Now the rumble of many hoofs and the clanging of mail-clad men and horses rose and rolled toward them together with the undertone of drums.

The yeomen had been seen. A storming-ladder swung up above the bushes and shot down again: they were trying whether it worked in the grooves.

Olav flung his shield onto his back and dashed across the bridge with fourteen others, climbing over the obstacle in the middle. He had offered to take his stand in the foremost tower and had picked his party of young, strong lads who had a brisk look, to his thinking.

A boy came with them, bearing a banner—Olav knew his face from the streets of Oslo, but knew not who he was or how he had come here—and Olav answered, laughing: ay, let them set it up. It was a yellow banner with an image of Saint Olav on it—they had taken it out of the church; no doubt it belonged to a guild in Oslo.