The Axe (9 page)

“No, I have not. You know, I was so young when I was betrothed to her. But surely Steinfinn and my father must have made an agreement about that—what we are to bring to each other.—Why do you ask me this?” said Olav, with sudden surprise.

Arnvid did not answer.

Olav said: “Steinfinn will take good care that we get what we are to have according to the settlement.”

“Ay—he is my cousin.” Arnvid spoke with some hesitation. “But you are soon to be our kinsman by marriage—I may well speak of it to you. They say Steinfinn’s fortunes are not so good as they were. I have lain awake thinking of what you spoke of—I believe you are right. You will be wise to hasten the marriage—so that Ingunn may get what comes to her as soon as may be.”

“Ay, we have nothing to wait for, either,” said Olav.

The next day was a holy-day, and the day after they began to cut the grass at Frettastein. Arnvid and his man helped in the haymaking. Early in the day the sky turned pale and grey, and by afternoon big, dark clouds began to drift up from the south and spread over the hazy sky. Olav looked up as they stood whetting their scythes; the first drop of rain fell on his face.

“Maybe ’twill be but a shower or two tonight,” said one of the old house-carls.

“Tomorrow is Midsummer Day,” answered Olav. “If the weather change on that day, ’twill rain as many days after as the sun shone before, I have always heard. I trow we shall have no better hay crop this year, Torleif, than we had last.”

Arnvid was standing a little farther down the field. Now he laid down his scythe, came up quickly toward the others, and
pointed. Far down the hillside rode a long line of armed men across a little glade in the forest.

“It is they,” said Arnvid. “It seems they are set upon another kind of mowing. And now, by my troth, I wonder how it will go with the haymaking at Frettastein this year.”

Late in the evening the rain came down, with a thick white mist that drifted in patches over the fields and wooded slopes. Olav and Ingunn stood under the balcony of the loft where she slept; the lad stared angrily at the pouring rain.

Arnvid came running across the mud of the courtyard, darted in to the couple, and shook himself.

“How is it you are not in the men’s councils?” asked Olav with a sneer.

Olav would have followed them when the men went into Ingebjörg’s little house—they chose it for their meeting, out of earshot of the servants. But Steinfinn had bidden his foster-son stay in the hall with the house-carls. Olav was angry—now that in his own thoughts he reckoned himself Steinfinn’s son-in-law, he forgot that the other did not yet know their alliance was about to be welded so fast.

Arnvid stood leaning against the wall, glaring before him mournfully. “I shall not shirk my duty, but shall follow my kinsmen as far as Steinfinn may call upon me. But I will have no part in their councils.”

Olav looked at his friend—the boy’s pale, finely arched lips curled lightly in a scornful smile.

O
N
the evening of the second day the men went down to the lake. The rain had held off that day, but it had been cold, with a high wind and much cloud.

Kolbein rode with five of his men, Steinfinn had with him seven house-carls and Olav Audunsson; Arnvid followed with one henchman. Kolbein had provided boats, which lay concealed in a cove of Lake Mjösen a little to the northward.

Ingunn went early to rest in her loft. She did not know how long she had slept when she was awakened by a touch on her chest.

“Is it you?” she whispered, heavy with sleep—expecting only to find Olav’s soft locks; but she awoke to see a coifed head. “Mother—” she cried in astonishment.

“I can get no sleep,” said Ingebjörg. “I have been walking outside. Put on some clothes and come down.”

Ingunn got up obediently and dressed. She was surprised beyond measure.

It was not so late after all, she saw on coming out. The weather had cleared. The moon, nearly full, rose due south above the ridge, pale red like a sunset cloud, giving no light as yet.

The mother’s hand was hot as fire as she took her daughter’s. Ingebjörg drew the girl along, roving hither and thither beyond the houses, but saying scarcely a word.

At one moment they stayed leaning over the fence of a cornfield. Down in the field was a water-hole surrounded by tall, thick rushes, which were darkly mirrored in it, but in the middle of the smooth little pond the moon shone—it had now risen high enough to give a yellow light.

The mother looked into the distance, where the lake and the farms surrounding it lay in a pale, calm mist.

“Have you the wit to see, I wonder, what we have all at stake?” said Ingebjörg.

Ingunn felt her cheeks go white and cold at her mother’s words. She had always known what there was to know of her father and mother; she had known too that great events were now at hand. But here by her mother’s side, seeing how she was stirred to the depths of her soul, she guessed for the first time what it all
meant
. A feeble sound came from her lips—like the squeaking of a mouse.

Ingebjörg’s ravaged face was drawn sideways in a sort of smile.

“Are you afraid to watch this night with your mother? Tora would not have refused to stay with me, but she is such a child, gentle and quiet. That you are not—and you are the elder, I ween,” she concluded hotly.

Ingunn clasped her slender hands together. Again it was as though she had climbed a little higher, had gained a wider view over her world. She had always been clear that her parents were not very old folk. But now she saw that they were young. Their love, of which she had heard as a tale of old days, was ready to be
quickened and to burn with a bright flame, as the fire may be revived from the glowing embers beneath the ashes. With wonder and reluctance she suspected that her father and mother loved each other even yet—as she and Olav loved—only so much the more strongly as the river is greater and fuller near its mouth than it is high up in the hills. And although what she guessed made her ashamed, she felt proud withal at the uncommon lot of her parents.

Timidly she held out both hands. “I will gladly watch with you all night, Mother.”

Ingebjörg squeezed her daughter’s hand. “God can grant Steinfinn no less than that we may wash the shame from us,” she said impetuously, clasping the girl and kissing her.

Ingunn put her arms round her mother’s neck—it was so long since she had kissed her. She remembered it as part of the life that was brought to an end on the night Mattias came to the house.

Not that Ingunn had felt the want of it—as a child she had not been fond of caresses. Between her and Olav it was like something they had found out for themselves. It had come as the spring comes—one day it is there like a miracle, but no sooner is it come than one feels it must be summer always. Like the bare strip of sod that borders the cornfield—so long as it lies naked with its withered grass after the thaw, it is nothing but a little grey balk amongst the sown; but then there comes a forest of tangled wild growth that makes it wellnigh impassable.

Now the springlike bareness of her child’s mind was overgrown with a summer luxuriance. She laid her cool, soft cheek against her mother’s wasted face. “I will
gladly
share your watching, Mother!”

The words seemed to sink into herself—for
she
had to watch for Olav. It was as though her thoughts had been astray when he set out with the others in the evening—she had not thought of the dangers the men were to face. A fear thrilled through her—but it was only as a flutter at the root of her heart. She could not fancy in earnest that anything could happen to one of
hers
.

For all that, she asked: “Mother—are
you afraid?”

Ingebjörg Jonsdatter shook her head: “No. God will give us our right, for right is on our side.” When she saw her daughter’s look she added, with a smile Ingunn did not like—there was a queer cunning in it: “You see, my girl, it is on this wise—’tis a
lucky chance for us that King Magnus died this spring. We have kinsmen and friends among those who will now have most power—so says Kolbein. And there are many of them who would fain see Mattias—do you mind what manner of man he is? Oh no, you cannot—he is short of stature, is Mattias; yet there are many who think he might be shorter by a head. Queen Ingebjörg never liked him. You must know, but for that, he would not lie at Birid at this time, when knights and barons are gathering at Björgvin and the young King is to be crowned.”

She went on talking as they walked along the fences. Ingunn fervently desired to speak to her mother of Olav Audunsson, but she guessed that she was so wholly lost in her own thoughts that she would not care to hear of aught else. Yet she could not help saying: “Was it not an ill chance that Olav could not fetch his axe in time?”

“Oh, your father will have seen that they are as well armed as there is need, all the men he has taken with him,” said the mistress. “Steinfinn would not have had the boy with him, but he begged leave to go—”

“But you are cold,” said her mother a moment later. “Put on your cloak—”

Ingunn’s cloak still hung in her mother’s room; she had not fetched it in all these fourteen days, but had worn Olav’s fine mantle when she needed an outer garment. Her mother went in with her. She stirred the fire on the hearth and lighted the lantern.

“Your father and I were wont to move into the great loft in summer—had we been sleeping there the night Mattias came, he could not have taken Steinfinn unawares. It will be safer for us to sleep there till Steinfinn be made free of the law.”

The great loft-room had no outside stairway, for it had been used for storing household goods of value. From the floor below, a ladder led up into the loft. It was not often that Ingunn had been up there; the very smell of the place gave her a solemn feeling. Bags of strong-smelling spices hung among bedcovers of fur and leather sacks—there was almost an uncanny look about all the things that hung from the roof. Against the walls stood great chests. Ingunn went up to Olav’s and let the light fall on it; it was of pale limewood, and carved.

Ingebjörg opened the door to the balcony. She emptied the bedstead
of all that was piled upon it and began searching in chests and coffers, making her daughter hold the light for her; then she dropped on the floor all she had in her hands and went out on the balcony.

The moon was now so far to the westward that its light lay like a golden bridge over the water. It was about to sink into a bank of heavy blue cloud, some shreds of which floated up toward the moon and were gilded.

The mother went in again and turned over more of the chests. She had come upon a woman’s gown of silk—green with a woven pattern of yellow flowers—the light of the lantern gave the whole kirtle the tint of a fading aspen.

“This I will give to you now—”

Ingunn curtsied and kissed her mother’s hand. A silken gown she had never owned before. From a little casket of walrus ivory her mother took a green velvet ribbon, set all over with silver gilt roses. She put it over the crown of her daughter’s head, pushed it a little forward, and brought the ends together at the back of the neck under the hair.

“So. Fair as you looked to be when you were small, you are not—but you have grown fairer again this summer. ’Tis time for you to wear the garland—you are a marriageable maid now, my Ingunn.”

“Yes; Olav and I have spoken of that too,” Ingunn took courage to say. She strove instinctively to speak as naturally as she could.

Ingebjörg looked up—they were both crouching before a chest.

“Have Olav and you spoken of
that?”

“Yes.” Ingunn spoke as calmly as before, dropping her eyelids meekly. “We are old enough now to expect that you will soon see to the fulfilment of this bargain that was made for us.”

“Oh, that bargain was not of a kind that cannot be undone again,” said her mother; “if you yourselves have no mind to it. We shall not force you.”

“Nay, but we are well pleased with what you have purposed for us,” said Ingunn meekly. “We are agreed that it is well as our fathers have disposed.”

“So that is the way of it.” Ingebjörg stared thoughtfully before her. “Then I doubt not some means will be found—Do you like Olav
well?”
she asked.

“What could I do else? We have known each other so long, and he has always been good and kind and has shown himself dutiful toward you.”

Her mother nodded thoughtfully.

“We knew not, Steinfinn and I, whether you two remembered aught of that bargain or thought more of it. Ay, some means must be found, one way or another. At your age you two cannot be so closely tied. Handsome he is, Olav. And Audun left wealth behind him—”

Ingunn would fain have said more of Olav. But she saw that her mother was far away in her own thoughts again.

“We went by desert paths, your father and I, when we crossed the fells,” she said. “From Vors we took to the moors, and then we passed through the upper dales. There was still much snow on the fells. In one place we had to stay a whole week in a stone hut. It stood beside a tarn and a snow-field came down into the water—we heard the flakes of ice break off and splash into the lake as we lay at night. Steinfinn offered a gold ring from his finger at the first church we came to below—it was a holy-day. The poor folk of the fells stared at us agape—we had ridden from the town as we stood, in our Sunday clothes. They were much the worse for wear, but, for all that, no such clothes had ever been seen in that dale.

“But a weary bride I was, when Steinfinn brought me home to Hov. And already I bore you under my heart—”

Ingunn stared at her mother as though spellbound. In the faint light of the lantern that stood on the floor between them she saw so strange a smile on her mother’s face. Ingebjörg stroked her daughter’s head and drew her long plaits through her hand.

“—And now you are already a grown maid.”

Her mother rose and gave her the great embroidered bedcover, bidding her shake it out over the balcony.