The Axe (12 page)

Once they were married, they would get back their honour as
before, and then they would forget this secret humiliation, which was what the fall was. But now he had looked forward with such joy to his wedding—that day when all should make for his and Ingunn’s honour, which should confer full maturity upon them. Now there must be a secret bitterness at the bottom of the cup—a sense that they were not worthy the honour.

This thing that he had done was reckoned the mark of the meanest. ’Twas a hind they had gotten for son-in-law, a man who would prove no trustier than that, folk would say, when it came out. For a boat and a horse and a bride a man should pay the right price before he took and used them—unless he had great need.

For folk of their condition he had thought three months the shortest time they could fitly wait from the day when the settlement of their estate was proclaimed here at Frettastein before he held his wedding at Hestviken. But perhaps, now that Steinfinn had this case of arson and manslaughter on his hands, it would not look so unreasonable if he hastened on the marriage—so that instead of the guardianship of two minors he would have a well-to-do son-in-law whose help he had a right to claim, in fines and suchlike.

So when Ingunn came out to him and whispered, not daring to look at him: “If my father knew this of us, Olav, I ween he would kill us—” Olav laughed a little and took her hand in his.

“For that he would need be far duller than he is. He will have enough gear to unravel, Ingunn, without this—he may have more use for a living son-in-law than for a dead.—But you know well ’twould be the worst mischance,” he whispered dejectedly, “if he—or any—came to know of this.”

The sun was just rising, it was icy cold outside and wet everywhere. Olav and Ingunn huddled together on the stairway and sat there nodding sleepily while the pale yellow light in the east mounted higher and higher in the sky, and the birds twittered louder and louder—their singing was almost over for the year.

“There he is again!” Olav started up. The dog had come back into the yard and posted himself howling before the great house. They both ran down and Olav called to Erp and tried to entice him away. The dog had always obeyed him, but now he would not let himself be caught.

Arnvid Finnsson came out of the hall and tried, but the dog would not come to him either. Each time one of the men came near him, he slipped away, ran a short space, and began howling again.

“But have you two not been out of your clothes tonight?” Arnvid asked presently, looking from one to the other.

Ingunn turned red as fire and turned away hastily. Olav answered: “No—we sat talking up in the loft, and then we fell asleep as we sat, and slept on till this dog waked us.”

More people came out now, both men and women, wondering at the dog. Last of all came Kolbein.

All at once there was one who cried: “Look—!”

Up in the balcony of the great bower they saw a glimpse of Steinfinn Toresson’s head—his face was so changed that they scarce knew him. He called something—then vanished, as though he had fallen inward.

Kolbein dashed to the house, but the door was barred within. Arnvid sprang to his side and they helped Kolbein onto his shoulders; from there he swung himself onto the balcony. A moment later he bent over the rail—his face was utterly distorted: “He has bled—like a slaughtered ox—some of you must come up. Not his maids—” he said, and a shiver of frost seemed to go through him.

In a moment he had opened the door from inside. Arnvid and some of the house-carls went in, while Tora and the serving-maids ran to get water and wine, linen cloths and unguents.

Arnvid Finnsson appeared in the doorway—and all the dread and horror that had gathered in those waiting outside found relief in a groan when they saw him. Arnvid came forward like a sleep-walker—then his eye fell upon Olav Audunsson and he beckoned him aside: “Ingebjörg—” his lower jaw trembled so that his teeth chattered. “Ingebjörg is dead. God have mercy on us poor sinners!—You must take Ingunn—and Tora and the boys—into the hall. Kolbein says that I must tell them.”

He turned and walked on in front.

“What of Steinfinn?” asked Olav in hot haste. “In God’s name—it cannot be that he—has he
killed
her?”

“I know not—” Arnvid looked ready to drop. “She lay dead in the bed. Steinfinn’s wound has opened—the blood has poured from him in streams. I know no more—”

Olav turned quickly to face Ingunn, who was coming up—put
out his hand as though to stop her, as he repeated Arnvid’s words: “God have mercy on us poor sinners! Ingunn, Ingunn—now you must try—you must try to trust yourself to me, my dear!”

He took hold of her arm and led her with him—she had begun to weep, softly and sorely, like a child that fears to let its terror have full sway.

As the day wore on, Olav sat in the hall with the girls. Arnvid told them what they had gathered from Steinfinn about his wife’s death, and Olav kept his arm openly on Ingunn’s shoulder the while—he scarce knew himself that he did so.

Steinfinn knew but little of what had happened. Before they lay down, Ingebjörg had tended his arm. He had slept uneasily and had been wandering in fever during the night, but he seemed to remember that his wife had been up now and again; she had given him to drink. He had been waked by the dog’s howling—and then she lay dead between the wall and him.

Ingebjörg had been troubled by fits of swooning in her last years. Maybe her joy at the restoration of their honour had been too much for her, Arnvid thought. Ingunn abandoned herself, weeping, in Olav’s embrace, and he stroked her on the back. There was this, that he himself, and doubtless the others too, in their first horror had thought of yet worse things. Though God alone could know why Steinfinn should have wished his wife dead. For all that, Arnvid’s words released them from a horror-struck suspense. Beneath it all a thought lay at the bottom of Olav’s mind, striving to come forth; he tried to banish it, ’twas shameful but—Steinfinn had said he firmly believed he should follow his wife. However things might go, there was a chance that neither Steinfinn nor Ingebjörg would ever know that he had betrayed them. Olav could do naught else than feel relieved now, strangely exhausted, but safer.

There had been a moment when he thought he must go under. Just after Ingebjörg was borne out, he had met some women coming from the loft-room. They stopped, after the fashion of serving-women, to show him the bloody garments they were carrying out, making loud lamentation the while. One of them had swept up the flowers from the floor into a fur rug—the meadowsweet was smeared all over with blood, and above them lay the strips Arnvid had cut from his and Olav’s shirts to bind
Steinfinn’s arm—they were soaked and shining with blood. Against his will all that had happened since yesternight, when they assembled in the meadow below the burning homestead, was crowded within him into one vision. And he had not the strength to bear such a horror as this. The disaster to his foster-parents, and then his sin against them—It was as though he had violated his own sister. The boy’s whole world was shattered to pieces about him.

It seemed as though his mind could not contain it—and then it slipped away from him again. And when Steinfinn’s children clung to him, since no one else in the place had leisure to bestow on them, he found a kind of refuge for himself in watching over them as an elder brother.

Tora wept much and talked much. She had always been the most intelligent and thoughtful of the children. She said to Olav that it seemed hard her parents had not been allowed to enjoy their happiness together after all these years of undeserved sorrow and shame. Olav thought it would have been much worse if Ingebjörg had died before Steinfinn had taken his revenge. That their rehabilitation might be dearly bought in other ways was quite clear to Tora. She was also troubled about the welfare of her mother’s soul and the future of herself and her brothers and sister, if this were in Kolbein’s hands. She had no great belief in her uncle’s judgment.

Olav thought that toward Steinfinn, at any rate, Kolbein had acted the part of a trusty kinsman; Mattias’s slaying was not unprovoked, and the burning had been the work of chance. And it must be said that Ingebjörg had lived a pious and Christian life in her last years. She had been given a fair burial. No one told the children what some folk were saying: that had Bishop Torfinn been at home, ’twas doubtful if the lady had been committed to the earth in such great honour, until it had been made clear whether the dead woman had had any say in planning the deed or no.

Olav’s best consolation came from Arnvid Finnsson. They shared a bed, and when Arnvid was not watching by his sick kinsman, the two young men lay talking far into the night.

And it sustained Olav, as it comforted all the household, that Steinfinn bore his lot in so noble and manly a way. He had lost much blood; yet his wounds were not such as were like to prove
the death of so strong and big a man. But Steinfinn said he knew he was to die, and he seemed to waste away and be drifting toward an early dissolution. And in a way Olav deemed this to be the fittest ending to all that had befallen at Frettastein. It would indeed have been still stranger if Steinfinn and Ingebjörg had taken up again the old carefree life of riot and revelry and idleness that they had once led—after all they had gone through.

And this new shame that had come upon them in their daughter they would never know. That reckoning he would escape.

So it was chiefly anxiety for Ingunn that tortured him. It was an everlasting uneasiness—her sorrow was perfectly still and mute. She sat there silent as a stone, while he and Tora were talking. Now and again her eyes filled with tears, her lips began to quiver feebly—her tears ran over, but never a sound was there in her; it was a picture of despair, so far away and so lonely that he had not the strength to look at it. Why could she not speak her sorrow and let herself be consoled together with them? Sometimes he felt that she was looking at him; but when he turned his head to her, he caught a glimpse of a look so pained and helpless—and instantly she looked away from him. His ears rang and rang with one of these new dancing-lays he had heard down by the church last winter—he tried not to think of it, but it came—“or is it thine honour thou mournest for so? …” Often he was near being angry with her for not letting him be rid of these dark night-thoughts that had taken such a hold of his throat in his first remorse and sorrow over his fall.

But he had a care of himself now, strove to be like a good brother to her. He had avoided being alone with her ever since the first morning. And he felt safer and had a better conscience since he had got Tora to persuade Ingunn to go back and sleep with her sister in the little house. He thought that in Tora’s keeping she would be safe from him too.

O
NE
evening Olav came riding down through the wood; he had been on an errand to the sæter for Grim. The evening sun was sinking behind the tops of the pines as he came where the path
skirted the marshy side of the tarn a little to the north of the manor. The forest rose steeply around the little brown lake, so that darkness came early here. Then he saw Ingunn sitting in the heather close to the path.

He pulled up his horse as he came up beside her. “Are you sitting here?” he asked in surprise. It was thought to be unsafe hereabouts after sundown.

She was a sorry sight—she had been eating bilberries and was all blue about the mouth and fingers, and then she had wept till her face was swollen, and dried her tears with her berry-stained hands.

“Is it worse with Steinfinn?” asked Olav earnestly. Ingunn bent forward and wept much louder than before. “He is not dead?” asked the lad in the same tone. Ingunn stammered amid her sobs that her father was better today.

Olav held back Elk, who wanted to go on. He had left off being surprised at her constant fits of weeping, but they annoyed him somewhat. It had been better had she been as Tora, who had now got over her mourning for her mother and spared her tears—soon enough they might have other cause for weeping.

“What is it, then?” he asked, a little impatiently; “what do you want with me?”

Ingunn looked up with her befouled and tear-stained face. When Olav showed no sign of dismounting, she flung her hands before her eyes and wept again.

“What ails you?” he asked as before, but she made no answer. Then he leaped to the ground and went up to her.

“What is it?” he asked in fear, taking her hands from her face. For a long time he could get no answer. He asked again and again: “What is it—why do you weep thus?”

“Should I not weep,” she sobbed, breaking down completely, “when you have not a word for me any more?”

“Why should I not have a word for you?” he asked in wonder.

“I have done no other sin than that you would have me do,” she complained. “I begged you to be gone, but you would not let me go. And since then you have not counted me worth a word.—Soon I shall have lost both father and mother, and you are hard as flint and iron, turn your back on me, and will not
look
at me—though
we were brought up as brother and sister. For naught else but that I loved you so well that I forgot honour and honesty for the nonce—”

“Now I never heard the like! I trow you have lost the little wit you had—”

“Ay, when you cast me off as you have done! But you know not, Olav,” she shrieked, beside herself. “You cannot tell, Olav, whether I be not with child to you already!”

“Hush, shriek not so loud,” he checked her. “You cannot tell that either as yet,” he said sharply. “I cannot guess what is in your mind—have I not spoken to
you?—
methinks I have done naught else these last weeks than talk and talk, and never did I have three words of answer from you, for you did but weep and weep.”

“You spoke to me when you were forced to it,” she snapped between her sobs; “when Tora and the others were by. But me you shun, as though I were a leper—not once have you sought me out, that we might talk together alone. Must I not weep—when I think on this summer—every night you came to me in my bower—”