The Son Avenger (32 page)

Olav answered he had gotten this son while his wife was yet alive, so he had no right over the man, but if Björn needed help to establish himself, he would not refuse—

’Twas not so meant, said Galfrid; he only sought to know whether Olav had anything to say against the marriage. Björn was doing well, and his mother and stepfather were now prosperous. He had become acquainted with the young man last autumn, when Björn hired the smithy in their yard. He was to make the ironwork for the new doors of St. Laurence’s Church; it was some of the knights of the King’s body-guard who made this gift to the church. Björn had acquitted himself of the task in such fashion that one of the knights would have him forge two branched candlesticks and an iron-bound coffer for the chapel of ease that stood on his manor. But when Björn brought these things to Sir Arne and claimed his reward, the knight deemed it too high and would chaffer. Björn made answer that if Sir Arne could not afford to give what the smith claimed, he could afford to present the knight with both coffer and candlesticks; but he held that none other than himself could judge what his work was worth. Then Sir Arne gave him the sum he claimed. Now Björn Olavsson had bought himself the houses he needed in the old Gullbringen Yard—Olav knew it, next below Fluga Yard, between Sigrid’s Yard and the river.
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After this, Olav had a strong desire to see Björn once more. At Margaret’s mass
⁴
he found that he had business in the town. And on Sunday, when he came from mass in St. Halvard’s, he went
down toward the yards that lay at the bottom of the slope, by the river bank. Gullbringen was the largest, and it had three courtyards, one beyond the other.

The houses around the innermost yard stood on the very bank of the Alna. There was a smithy, a stable with lofts, and a fine stone house. A great rosebush grew against the wall of the dwelling; beside it stood a young man and two women, who bent down and smelled the roses. Olav recognized the young slender one with the long auburn plaits; she was Alis Galfridsdatter, he had seen her at her father’s house. The other was one of her married sisters.

Alis had seen him; she whispered something to the young man. Then she turned and went, giving Olav Audunsson a shy greeting as she slipped past. She had a fine, healthy, freckled face, wore a rose in her bosom, and carried roses in her hand.

The man came up slowly and greeted Olav: “Have we such great honour?”

His smile was boyishly self-confident—he must be twenty now, thought his father.

“I had a mind to see you again—”

“And indeed ’tis long since the last time. And the years seem to have dealt hardly with you—you are grown old, Olav Audunsson! But go in—”

So he sat on the bench in the smith’s house, and in the corner opposite sat the man who was his only son.

The lad was handsome—as he himself had been in his youth—a good deal bigger in stature, but not so shapely and well-knit. But he had the same fair complexion, the bright silvery sheen of hair and eyebrows, the white skin, and the clear grey eyes rather far apart.

Olav soon found that it was no easy matter to converse with Björn—he had nothing to say to him. His mother, his stepfather, his brothers and sisters, they were all well and prosperous; and so was Björn himself. His house declared plainly enough that the young man held his own.

“You are young to be a householder and practise your craft as your own master?”

“Oh, I have stood on my own feet since I was fifteen.”

Olav said he would fain see proofs of Björn’s skill—he had heard it greatly praised. Björn replied that he had nothing here which
was worth showing: “but you can go up to Laurence’s Spital and look at the ironwork on the south door of the church and the three candelabra that hang in the nave. They are the best I have wrought till now. I have no leisure today or I would have gone with you—”

“Is it true,” asked Olav with a little laugh, “that the master of whom you learned your craft is of giant race?”

“He told me naught of that. And I never ask folk uninvited questions.” This was meant for a reproof, his father saw, and he was inclined to smile. Never had he seen a man so heartily self-sufficient as this lad.

“But a good smith he was—none better in Norway,” said Björn. He went across to a chest, came back, and handed Olav a lock and key for a coffer. “This I wrought while I was with him. The locks I make now are more cunning. If you like it, you may have it, Olav.”

Olav thanked him and praised the work.

“’Tis not from your father’s family you have this skill,” he said tentatively. “We were never good handicraftsmen in our race.”

“My father’s family I know not at all,” replied Björn in a clear voice.

“And that you resent?” said Olav in the same tone.

Björn looked him straight in the eyes, with his pert young smile. “Nay, Olav, that I do not. You begat me—and I say you did well in that. And have you done no more for me since—then I hold you have done me no ill there.”

Olav looked at his son—wondered whether the boy knew what he was saying, or were these words put into his mouth?

Björn got up and went to the shelf over the door. “But you must think I am inhospitable.” He filled the cup and drank to his father: “Hail to you, Olav Audunsson! It cheers my heart none the less to know you have sat on my bench for once.”

Olav accepted the drink, with a little smile. “I cannot say your looks betray it, Björn!” It was wine, and good wine.

“Ay, but I mean it—and I wish you to have a token to remind you of it.” Again he went to the chest. This time it was a brooch, fairly large and gilt all over; in the centre was an image of Mary with the Child, and around it a wreath of bosses, each of which bore an angel’s face.

“Nay, Björn—that is far too great a gift, I will not have it!”

“Yes, take it now. Do you not remember I had a gold ring of you once?”

“Is it that you wish to quit scores with me, then?”

“No, no, not that either. I may tell you, Olav, ’tis with that ring I shall plight my troth to Alis Galfridsdatter at Clement’s Church door on the eve of Laurence’s mass.”

“’Twill be honoured, then.”

As Björn went with him to the door, Olav asked: “Your mother—she is well content with your choice of a wife?”

“Mother—” For the first time Björn’s smile was purely gay, with no challenge in it. “Mother is content with me, whatever I do.”

“That is well,” replied Olav. “Then I know that you have always done what is right and manly.”

They pressed each other’s hand at parting and Olav went.

Olav walked over toward his inn, half smiling. He might rest content with this Björn. Young and overconfident—but they were faults that life mends in a man—and God grant the lad might lose little of himself in the mending. So that the man might fulfil the promise of the boy, when once he was full-fledged.

What Björn had said was true—he might have done more for this son of his. Other men treated such matters differently—had their bastards brought up in their own homes or in those of their friends. He had indeed given the mother her farm, but Björn seemed to count that for nothing—and true it was, she owed her prosperity to herself and that husband. And if Torhild had not married, perhaps he and Björn would have seen more of each other. Although the true reason was that he felt he could not bear to look a son constantly in the face whom he had no power to bring into the family and set in his place—and so all else he could do was nothing worth.

And whatever the lad had meant in saying it, there was truth in his words: that, if he had done nothing for Björn but beget him, he had thereby done him no ill. The son who stood outside the family and would not call him father—he was also outside the family misfortune.

F
OR
the third time Eirik brought in the corn frozen and half-ripe. It froze down here by the lake earlier than anywhere else in the country round. It was not so great a disaster either—they could always make gruel from it, and grain for malt and bread they could buy. Meat and fish were the foods they had in plenty, and in Lent it was all to the good if they had to go a little hungry.

He smiled when he thought of the first year’s Lent. He kept the fast as had been his custom since he was in the convent, drank nothing but water once a day, and put a piece of ice in his mouth if he was too thirsty at other times. At night he slept on a sack of straw in the porch. He did not ask what Eldrid did. But one morning when he came in he saw her lying on the floor—she was still asleep. Then she said that she lay there every night, after he had gone out to rest, and as she saw that he went barefoot in his shoes, she did the same.

“You must not, for you are not used to it.”

Eldrid said she had been shriven every year in Lent and had received
corpus Domini
on Easter Day—but she had only done so to avoid being cited.

“It is well that you have left such evil ways,” said her husband.

“Nay, I made a vow that night I waited for you on the road—when you had been out to Hestviken.”

“Then they did some good, the foolish thoughts you had. But I had told you I should be home again the third evening.”

“Had you not kept your word,” said Eldrid, “I know not what would have become of me.”

“God help you, Eldrid—but you ought to know better than most, that no man is worth much as he is in himself.”

“You are not like other folk.”

“Oh, but I am. In most things I have not been-better than my fellows, and in some I have been worse.” But he had never spoken Bothild’s name to his wife.

Now he knew the lake from end to end, and the woods around, the paths and the wastes. There was not much to be done on the
little farm, so he had ample time to roam about to his heart’s content. When he found, the first winter, that Eldrid had skis—they made it easier for her to move about among the outhouses, so long as she had no horse—he too had to make himself a pair. When he had accustomed himself to the use of them he liked this mode of travelling so well that he ran on skis oftener than he rode. There were times when he was out from morning to evening; often he did not come home till late at night—until it chanced that there was some piece of work or other that he could postpone no longer. Then he would find a host of other things that it might be well to get done, and for a while he would not leave the houses, had scarce time to swallow his food and none at all to rest; in the evenings he sat by the fire with knife and chisel, awl and sinews, and worked, while Eldrid sewed and span, as silent as her husband.

They never talked much together, beyond what the work required. They knew not much more of each other’s earlier life than they had known when they met. But he felt that her life had gone up in his, she drifted with him as a boat drifts with the stream, and both were content it should be so.

He had been two years at the Ness when Brother Stefan came to preach at Saana church for a few days in Ascension week. On the last day Eirik persuaded him to come home to the Ness and stay the night there, and the next morning he accompanied Brother Stefan by a short road through the forest into the next parish.

They sat talking for a long time on a ridge, whence they had a view of tarns and forest, but never a homestead under the broad sky, and Eirik’s dogs lay in the moss at his feet. Eirik cleared his mind to Brother Stefan of all that he had not been able to bring out in confession, because it had not to do with sin or grace, but with the All in which all things move and have their being.

While they were talking thus, Brother Stefan said he counted it a gain that Eldrid was no longer bound in thraldom by her own hate. “But it will not be your lot to live all your days here at the Ness—have you thought of how it will be when one day you two move out to Hestviken?”

“No,” replied Eirik. “It must be as God pleases—if we ever
come there. Father may live to see eighty years. Moreover, Eldrid is a discerning woman, and open to reason. The finest and most promising foal may be spoilt by cruelty and foolish treatment.”

“You must not liken a Christian soul to an unreasoning beast,” said Brother Stefan.

“That old Ragnhild you saw at our house—she told me—Harald Jonsson once bound Eldrid to the post of the loft ere he rode from home; he would have her stand there till her feet swelled so that she could bear no more—if he could make his wife so meek that she would show him kindness. Ragnhild set her free the second night and tended her—she was sixteen at that time, Eldrid. She had been Harald’s leman, and he sent her away when he wedded Eldrid, but afterwards he took her back to Borg; she was to help him break in Eldrid—this Ragnhild.”

They sat in silence for a while, both of them.

Brother Stefan said they had grieved, all the brethren, when they heard the course Eirik had taken: Brother Arne had vowed to scourge himself every Thursday evening so that the blood flowed about his feet, till he heard his brother had repented.

Brother Arne, who had been the companion of his novitiate, was the one for whom Eirik cared most of all in the convent-he was but a young lad and had been with the Minorites from a child. Eirik now bade Brother Stefan take Arne his greeting and his thanks.

When they came down into the neighbouring parish, at the first fence about a green field Eirik said farewell to his friend. Brother Stefan gave him his blessing; then the monk went on toward the village, and the solitary hunter, with his bow over his shoulder and his hounds at his side, turned back to climb the hill again.

That summer went by at the Ness, and most of another winter. In Candlemas week there was severe cold. Eirik was up on the hill in the daytime, felling timber; but one night he woke to find Eldrid trembling by his side. She said she had fallen into the spring that day, as she was fetching water for the byre, and thought she must now be too old to go about in ice-covered clothes. Eirik then found out that the old serving-woman, Ragnhild, had a way of being out of temper with her mistress at times, and then she
shut herself up in Holgeir’s cabin till the mood passed off. While it lasted Eldrid herself did all the work of the farmyard; they had no herdsman in winter.