The Axe (2 page)

That done, he went out to his men. Olav Audunsson, Steinfinn’s foster-son, a boy of eleven years, ran forward and cut Steinfinn’s bonds. The lad, Steinfinn’s children, and their foster-mothers had been dragged into the outer room and held there while Mattias was speaking to his faithless betrothed and her man within.

Steinfinn snatched a spear and, naked as he was, ran out after Mattias and his men as they rode down the steep slope, straight across the plough-land, laughing scornfully. Steinfinn flung the spear, but it fell short. Meanwhile the boy Olav ran to the men’s room and the byre and let out the serving-men who had been
barred in, while Steinfinn went back to the house, dressed himself, and took his arms.

But all thought of pursuing Mattias was vain, for there were but three horses left at Frettastein and they were loose in the paddock. Nevertheless Steinfinn rode off at once, to seek his father and brothers. As he dressed, he had spoken in private with his wife. She came out with him when he was ready to set out. And now Steinfinn declared to his house-folk that he would not sleep with his wife until he had repaired the shame, so that no man could say she was his by the favour of Mattias Haraldsson. Then he rode forth, but his lady went into an old outhouse that stood in the courtyard, and locked herself in.

The house-folk, men and women, streamed into the hall, eager to learn what had happened. They close-questioned Olav, who sat half-clad on the edge of the bed that Steinfinn’s weeping daughters had crept into; they turned to ask the two little maids and the foster-mother of Steinfinn’s youngest son. But none of these could tell them aught, and soon the servants grew tired of questioning and went out.

The boy sat in the dark hall listening to Ingunn’s obstinate weeping. Then he climbed up into the bed and lay down by her side.

“Be sure your father will take vengeance. You may well believe he will do that. And I trow I shall be with him, to show that Steinfinn has a son-in-law, though his sons are yet too young to bear arms!”

It was the first time Olav had dared to speak straight out of the betrothal that had been made between him and Ingunn when they were children. In the first years he spent at Frettastein the servants had sometimes chanced to speak of it and tease the children with being betrothed, and it had always made Ingunn wild. Once she had run to her father and complained, and he had been angered and had forbidden his people to speak of such things—so wrathfully that more than one of them had guessed that maybe Steinfinn repented his bargain with Olav’s father.

That night Ingunn took Olav’s reminder of the plans that had been made for them in such wise that she crept up to the boy and wept upon his arm, till the sleeve of his shirt was drenched with her tears.

•   •   •

From that night a great change came over the life at Frettastein. Steinfinn’s father and brothers counselled him to bring a suit against Mattias Haraldsson, but Steinfinn said that he himself would be the judge of what his honour was worth.

Now, Mattias had gone straight home to the manor in Borgesyssel where he dwelt. And the following spring he went on a pilgrimage in foreign lands. But when this was noised abroad and it was known that Steinfinn’s wrath was such that he shunned folk and would not live with his wife any more, then there was much talk of the vengeance that Mattias had taken upon his faithless betrothed. Even though Mattias and his men told no different tale of the raid from what was heard at Frettastein, it turned out that the farther the rumour spread over the country, the more cheaply folk judged that Steinfinn had been held by Mattias. And a ballad was made of these doings as they were thought to have fallen out.

One evening—it was three years later—as Steinfinn sat drinking with his men, he asked if there were any who could sing the ballad that had been made upon him. At first all the house-carls made as though they knew naught of any ballad. But when Steinfinn promised a great gift to him who could sing his dance, it came out that the whole household knew it. Steinfinn heard it to the end; now and then he bared his teeth in a sort of smile. As soon as it was done, he went to bed together with his half-brother Kolbein Toresson, and the folk heard the two talking behind the bed-shutters till near midnight.

This Kolbein was a son of Tore of Hov by a concubine he had had before his marriage; and he had always cared more for his children by her than for those born in wedlock. For Kolbein he had made a good marriage and got him a great farm to the northward on Lake Mjösen. But there was little thrift in Kolbein; he was overbearing, unjust, and of a hasty temper and was ever in lawsuits both with lesser men and with his equals. So he was a man of few friends and there was little love between him and his true-born half-brothers, until, after his misfortune, Steinfinn took up with Kolbein. After that these two brothers were always together and Kolbein charged himself with Steinfinn and all his affairs. But he ordered them as he ordered his own and brought trouble with him even when he acted on his brother’s behalf.

Assuredly it was not that Kolbein had a will to harm his
younger brother; he was fond of Steinfinn in his own way, after that the younger in his perplexity had put himself wholly into his half-brother’s hands. Careless and lazy Steinfinn had been in his days of prosperity; he had thought more of lordly living than of taking care for his estate. After the night of the raid he shunned all men for a time. But afterwards, by Kolbein’s advice, he took a whole band of house-carls into his service—young men well trained to arms, and by choice such as before had done lord’s service elsewhere. Steinfinn and his men slept in the great hall, and they followed their master wherever he went, but they neither could nor would do much work on the estate, so that he had great cost and little gain of the whole band.

Nevertheless the farm work at Frettastein was seen to in a way, for the old bailiff, Grim, and Dalla, his sister, were children of one of Steinfinn’s grandmother’s thralls, and they had no thought beyond the welfare of their young master. But now, when Steinfinn had need of a return from his outlying farms, he cared neither to see nor to speak with his own tenants and bailiffs—and Kolbein, who took charge of all such matters in his stead, brought with him trouble without end.

Ingebjörg Jonsdatter had been a skilful housewife, and in former days this had made great amends for her husband’s lavish and indolent ways. But now she hid herself in the little outhouse with her maids, and the rest of the household scarcely saw her. She spent her days in pondering and repining, never inquired of the condition of the house or estate, but rather seemed to be angered if any disturbed her thoughts. Even with her children, who lived with their mother in the outhouse, she was silent, caring little for how they fared or what they did. Yet before, in the good days, she had been a tender mother, and Steinfinn Toresson had been a happy and loving father, proud of their strong and handsome children.

So long as her sons, Hallvard and Jon, were still small, she often took them in her lap and sat rocking them, with her chin resting on their fair-haired crowns, while she moped, lost in sorrowful thought. But the boys were not very old before they grew weary of staying in the outhouse with their mournful mother and her women.

Tora, the younger daughter, was a good and pretty child. She saw full well that her father and mother had suffered a grievous
wrong and were now full of cares and sorrow, and she strove to cheer them, kindly and lovingly. She became the favourite of both. Steinfinn’s face would brighten somewhat when he looked at this daughter of his. Tora Steinfinnsdatter was delicate and shapely in body and limbs, she ripened early into womanhood. She had a long, full face, a fair skin, and blue eyes; thick plaits of smooth, corn-yellow hair hung over her shoulders. Her father stroked her cheek: “A good child you are, Tora mine—God bless you. Go to your mother, Tora; sit with her and comfort her.”

Tora went, and sat down spinning or sewing beside her sorrowful mother. And she thought herself more than rewarded if Ingebjörg said at the last: “You are good, Tora mine—God preserve you from all evil, my child.” Then Tora’s tears began to fall-she thought upon her parents’ heavy lot, and, full of righteous wrath, she looked at her sister, who had never enough constancy to sit still with their mother and could not come into the outhouse without making her impatient with her continual restlessness—till Ingebjörg bade her go out again. And Ingunn made for the door, carefree and unrepentant, and ran out to play and shout with the other children of the place—Olav and some boys belonging to the serving-folk at Frettastein.

Ingunn was the eldest of all Steinfinn’s and Ingebjörg’s children. When she was little, she had been marvellously fair; but now she was not half as pretty as her sister, people thought. And she had not so much sense, nor was she very quick-witted; she was neither better nor worse than are most children. But in a way she was as much liked by the people of the place as the quiet and beautiful younger sister. Steinfinn’s men looked upon Tora with a sort of reverence, but they were better pleased to have Ingunn among them in the hall.

There were no maids of her own age either at Frettastein or any of the farms and homesteads round about. So it was that Ingunn was always with the boys. She took part in all their games and all their pursuits, practised such sports as they used—she threw the spear and the stone, shot with the bow, struck the ball, set snares in the wood, and fished in the tarn. But she was clumsy at all these things, neither handy nor bold, but weak, quick to give up and take to tears when their play grew rough or the game went against her. For all that, the boys let her go with them everywhere.
For one thing, she was Steinfinn’s daughter, and then Olav Audunsson would have it so. And it was always Olav who was the master of their games.

Olav Audunsson was well liked by all on the estate, both great and small, and yet none would have called him a winning child. It seemed that none could come at the heart of this boy, although he was never unfriendly toward any living soul—rather might it be said that he was good-natured and helpful in his taciturn and absent way.

Handsome he was, though he was fair of skin and hair as an albino almost, but he had not the albino’s sidelong glance or bowed neck. Olav’s blue-green eyes were pale in colour, but he looked the world straight in the face with them, and he carried his head erect upon his strong, milk-white neck. It was as though sun and wind had little power upon that skin of his—it seemed strangely tight and smooth and white—only in summer a few small freckles appeared over the root of the nose, which was low and broad. This healthy paleness gave Olav’s face even in childhood something of a cold, impassive look. His features too were somewhat short and broad, but well formed. The eyes lay rather far apart, but they were large and frankly open; the eyebrows and lashes were so fair that they showed but as a golden shadow in the sunlight. His nose was broad and straight, but a little too short; his mouth was rather large, but the lips were so finely curved and firm that, had they not been so pale in the colourless face, they might have been called handsome. But his hair was of matchless beauty—so fair that it shone like silver rather than gold, thick and soft and lightly curled. He wore it trimmed so that it covered his broad, white forehead, but showed the hollow in his neck between the two powerful muscles.

Olav was never tall for his age, but he seemed bigger than he was; of perfect build, sturdy and muscular, with very small hands and feet, which seemed the stronger because the wrists and ankles were so round and powerful. And indeed he was very strong and supple; he excelled in all kinds of sport and in the use of arms—but there was none who had ever taught him to practise these exercises in the right way. As things stood at Frettastein in his growing up, Olav was left to his own devices. Steinfinn, who had promised to be a father to him when he took charge of the boy, did
nothing to give him such training as was meet for a young man of good birth, heir to some fortune and destined to be the husband of Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter.

That Steinfinn Toresson was Olav’s foster-father had come about in this way:

One summer, while Steinfinn was still in goodly case, it chanced that he had business at the Eidsiva Thing. He went thither with friends and kinsmen and took with him his wife and their daughter Ingunn, who was then six years old. The parents had such joy of the pretty child that they could not be without her.

Here at the Thing Steinfinn met a man, Audun Ingolfsson of Hestviken. Audun and Steinfinn had been bedfellows in the King’s body-guard and good friends, though Audun was older than the other and the men were of very unlike humour; for at that time Steinfinn was merry and loved to talk of himself, but Audun was a silent man and never spoke of his own affairs.

In the spring of the same year that King Haakon was away warring in Scotland, Audun was married. He took a Danish wife, Cecilia Björnsdatter, Queen Ingebjörg’s playmate, who had been with her at the convent of Rind. When the Bishop of Oslo took young King Magnus’s bride by force and carried her to Norway, because the Dane King slighted the compact and refused to send his kinswoman thither, Cecilia went with her. At first the young Queen would fain have kept the damsel always with her; but a year later the Lady Ingebjörg seemed already to have changed her mind and she was eager to have Cecilia married. Some said it was because King Magnus himself liked to talk with the Danish maid more than his wife cared for; others declared that it was young Alf Erlingsson of Tornberg who had won her heart, but his father, Baron Erling Alfsson, would not let his son take a foreign wife who owned neither land nor powerful kinsfolk in Norway. Young Alf was a man of fiery nature and wont to have his will in all things, and he loved Cecilia madly. The Queen therefore took counsel to marry off the maid, lest some misfortune might befall her.

However these things might be, the maid herself was chaste and full of grace; and after Audun, who at first had seemed somewhat unwilling, had spoken two or three times with Cecilia, he himself was eager to take her. Their wedding was held at the
King’s court in Björgvin; old King Haakon gave the bride a marriage portion. Audun carried his wife to Hestviken. There she was well secured, whether from King Magnus or from Alf Erlingsson.