The Son Avenger (7 page)

As he turned, she stood up and faced him, erect, with face
aflame. “What are you doing!” Her eyes were big and black as coal. “You act like a—you are not acting like a
man—
oh!” Bothild gave one scream, loud and shrill, and then her tears gushed out.

A chill gust passed over Eirik—the sight of the girl’s anger sobered him at once. But her tears plunged him headlong into a fresh tumult—he was bewildered by a sense of shame and misfortune, and her weeping frightened him.

“Do not weep so—” he muttered in his agitation.

But Bothild continued to sob, so that the tears poured down her distorted features. Once she threw her hands before her face, but the next moment she let them drop heavily again.

“What have I
done
to you?” she cried; “what sort of man are you become?”

“Bothild!” Eirik begged, miserably. “You surely cannot think I meant it in earnest—’twas only jesting.”

“Jesting!” Flashing with anger, she looked him full in the eyes. “Is that what
you
call jesting?” Then her tears got the better of her again. She wept so that she had to sit down—sank down on a chest and turned her face from him. With her forehead leaned against the wall, she now wept more quietly, in bitter lamentation.

Eirik stood still. He could not find a word to say.

At long last Bothild half turned round to him again; she heaved a long, quaking sigh. “Ah me! It was not this I had looked for, when you came home to us again.”

“When I came home?” asked Eirik weakly.

“We thought you would surely come home again one day,” she said almost scornfully. “We often spoke of it, Cecilia and I—” Now she was weeping again.

“Do not weep so,” Eirik begged at last.

Bothild got up, passed her hands over her tear-stained face.

“Open the door for me,” she bade him curtly.

Eirik did so, but did not move from the doorway.

“Stand aside,” she said as before. “Let me out now!”

Eirik stepped aside. Bothild went out past him. Eirik did not move—his surprise felt like a gleam of light within him, faint at first, then growing stronger and stronger. Now he was utterly unable to understand how he could have treated her as he had done.

A little way up the hill he overtook Bothild. She stood holding
dewy leaves to her tear-stained cheeks and red eyes. As he stopped before her, she charged him, with looking round: “Go—” He hesitated. Bothild said impatiently: “Go now—I cannot show myself like this, all tears—you must see that!”

Eirik made no reply, walked on.

He could not understand what had gone wrong with him. The moment the defenceless maid had turned to resist, it was as though a devil had gone from him. He was bewildered and ashamed, but not deeply, for already his own evil thoughts appeared to him unreal—nothing but an ugly dream.

The sun shone brilliantly in the course of the day and it was warm as summer. Eirik and the house-carl who was left at home were busy on the newly broken ground under the woods. Eirik worked hard—he always did so when once he had taken anything in hand. But at the same time he was deep in thought—Bothild was in his mind the whole time. He could not forget her quivering rage and her bitter tears. And now for the first time he realized what she had said: she and Cecilia had often spoken of his coming home.

A lingering, painful shame pierced him at the thought. Had these two poor little maids waited here all this time for their brother? Bothild must have expected that he would look on her as another sister.

The rude and turbulent thoughts he had conceived of her lay dead at the bottom of his soul like the dried mud left by a flooded stream. And as new and tender green struggles up through the hardened grey slime, so did new thoughts of Bothild shoot up in him unceasingly.

That day he did not see her again till he came in to supper. She busied herself gently, holding her fair head bent as usual under the weight of her plaits, but the cowed and secret air that had been upon her and had provoked him to evil and sensual thoughts was now gone. She was merely a gentle young housewife going calmly about her duties.

Even her beauty now stirred him in another way: now he saw nothing but sweetness and gentleness in her rounded, red and white face, dignity in her languid movements and in the fullness of her form.

The Sheriff did not come next day, and by noon on the following day he was not yet there. An hour or two later Eirik went down to get a bite of food. As he came out with a piece of bread in his hand he heard Inga calling to Bothild, who was sitting outside by the north wall of the house, toward the sea. He went thither—she sat in the sunshine, sewing the shirt he had given her that evening.

She looked up for a moment as he came, but there was none of the anxious, clinging look in her glance now. Bothild bent over her sewing again; she looked melancholy, but calm and sweet.

Eirik stood there, leaning against the corner of the house. When he had eaten his bread and she had neither spoken nor looked up again, he had to break the silence himself.

“Are you still angry with me, Bothild?”

“Angry—” she repeated in a low voice, and went on sewing in silence for a while. “I hardly know myself
what
I am, Eirik—for I cannot understand it. Nay, I cannot understand why you should treat me thus!”

Eirik was at a loss. For as he was about to reply that he had believed she was trying to allure him, he saw that he must not say such a thing—it would make the matter far worse.

“I can promise you now,” he said softly, with a little sigh, “I shall not hurt you again.”

Bothild let her sewing drop into her lap and slowly turned up her face toward him. And now Eirik was moved by it in quite a new way: the round, white face with the two bright roses in the cheeks, the dark, thoughtful eyes, the fine mouth, which seemed small when she was distressed. Now his only desire was to pat her cheek, to pass his hand tenderly and kindly over the long, white curve of her throat—he felt he wished her well with so warm a heart.

“Is it for my aunt’s sake,” she asked him earnestly, “that you were so—spiteful toward me?”

Eirik seized upon this eagerly. “Yes—but now I cannot understand how I could think you were like Mærta—”

“Even so, my aunt never desired aught else than Olav’s welfare,” said Bothild meekly. “She would ever bid me be mindful of how great were the thanks we owed your father—God must reward him, we cannot. And I too wish him naught but well—I am not greedy of authority, Eirik, but consult Cecilia in all I do.”

Eirik felt a thrill of intense joy and relief. God be thanked for her innocence—she believed no more than that he was bad to her because he was jealous on his sister’s account, or would avenge himself on her for the old ogress, her aunt—beyond that she had no thought. She firmly believed he had only meant to humiliate her.

He had heard sounds of horsemen coming down from Kverndal, and now he thought he must go and see who was coming. So there was no help for it, he had to tear himself away.

The horsemen were already in the court. They were Ragnvald Jonsson, the Sheriff’s young brother from Galaby, and Gaute Sigurdsson, whom folk called Virvir; Eirik had often met them in the two months he had spent at home. He called to Bothild, and she appeared at the corner of the house.

“Heh!” said Ragnvald with a laugh. “So you were not alone! Then our coming is untimely, I fear.”

“Are you sewing that shirt for Eirik, Bothild?” Gaute Virvir rallied her.

And now she hung her head again, and her eyes hovered this way and that. She hurried away, as though she would avoid them.

Ragnvald and the other had come by land, for they had had business up in the church town, and they were not altogether unrefreshed, so Eirik guessed it would be well to settle the matter in hand ere they went to table. The sisters had spread the cloth and laid the table when they returned from the upper chamber, and by that time the guests were hungry and not a little thirsty. While the men ate and drank, the two young maids sat in another part of the room. Ragnvald tried conclusions with Cecilia the whole time, and Cecilia gave him sharp and snappish answers; but Eirik could see that this word-play amused her—he had remarked the same thing before, his sister was ready enough for a wrangle. But Bothild had relapsed into her diffidence and shyness and seemed utterly miserable when Gaute teased her about a certain Einar from Tegneby whom she was supposed to have met in the summer, while staying with Signe Arnesdatter at her daughter’s house. Eirik did not like to hear her teased about another man, and he did not like her looking as though she had a bad conscience.

Ragnvald and Gaute delayed their leave-taking for some while after sundown. Then they would have Eirik and the maids to bear them company a part of the way.

“Nay, I dare not go with you, Ragnvald,” said Cecilia Olavsdatter; “I might meet with the same misfortune as befell Tora Paalsdatter—you jested with her so long that she put out her jaw with yawning. It may be Father and the men will soon come in, I cannot leave the houses. But you, Bothild, might go up to Liv, since Eirik can bring you back.”

So the four set off. Ragnvald and Gaute let their horses walk in front, the three young men chatted together, and Bothild followed a little way behind with her box and her bundle. Dusk was already falling; a thin white mist lay over the pale autumnal fields, and the orange glow in the sky faded and turned to rust-red. A bitter, withered scent hung about the alder thicket along the river, and the path was wet with the dew from falling leaves.

At Rundmyr Bothild left the path; before the men were aware of it the dark, bent figure was already darting across the fields. Eirik would have gone on with the others, but they begged him with a laugh not to give himself the trouble. Then they mounted their horses.

“Bitter cold to sport in the grove with one’s lady fair,” said Ragnvald laughing. “But I dare say you cannot choose your own time, you two—with the old man always about you down yonder.”

“Good night,” they both cried. “Beware, Eirik, lest the trolls snatch away your ladylove tonight!”

Eirik stood listening to the beat of their horses’ hoofs as the two rode away into the dusk. Then he turned and went up to the cabin.

There was a good fire burning on the hearth by the door, and a candle stood in an iron clip by Liv’s couch on one of the raised floors. Bothild sat at the mother’s feet swathing the child. On the other side sat Anki and the six older children, eating the food Cecilia had sent; the savoury smell of a boiling pot of meat almost overcame the wonted evil odour of the hut. Comfort and unconcern in the midst of poverty met Eirik as he entered, ducking his head, from the raw autumn evening outside.

He sat for a while talking to Anki, while Bothild tended the child—she dawdled over it till Eirik grew impatient: now she must come, ’twas already black night outside.

They went, he in front and she behind, across the Rundmyr fields, which showed faintly grey in the darkness, and down to the bridle path through the woods. They walked by the side of the
river, which rippled and gurgled very softly among the bushes; there was hardly any water in it that autumn.

Now and again Eirik heard that she was hanging behind; then he stopped and waited till she came up. And every time he had to halt and wait like this in the dark under the trees, his evil will seemed to grow more irresistible.

At last, when he had halted thus, she did not come. Eirik held his breath as he went back, treading as noiselessly as he could. He ran against her in the dark; as he took hold of her shoulder he felt she was trembling like one sick of a fever.

“What is it?” His pulses were throbbing so that he could hardly command his voice.

“I can go no farther,” she whispered miserably.

“Then we must rest awhile.” He took her in his arms and drew her to the edge of the road, where there was a little clearing among the trees. “’Tis your own wish!” he muttered threateningly.

Instantly Bothild tore herself away from him. It was a moment before Eirik recovered himself—he heard her flying footfalls on the path ahead, ran after her; then came a dull thud—Eirik nearly stumbled over the prostrate body. He knelt beside her—she had fallen face forward. Eirik took hold of her, put his hand over her mouth, and felt it wet with a scalding stream that came bubbling out. At first he did not know what it was; disgust and rage boiled up in him—was the bitch lying there vomiting! Then with a shock of horror he knew that it was blood.

He turned her on her back, knelt in the mire of the path, and supported her against his chest. It was so dark that he could only just make out the pale round of her face and the dark flood that poured in pulse-beats from her mouth.

“Bothild—what is it—have you hurt yourself so badly?”

He could get no answer, but beneath his hand he felt the girl’s heart throbbing as fast as his own. In vain he begged, time after time: “Can you not answer, Bothild—Bothild, have you hurt yourself?”

At last he had to lay her down. He tore his way through the bushes; stones scattered and gravel crunched under his feet as he floundered in the darkness, searching for a pool in the river-bed where he could fill his hat. The water oozed through the felt
crown; he had but a few drops when he found her again, and dashed them over her. And now he could smell the blood; his own clothes were drenched with blood, and he felt sick with horror and disgust. And Bothild lay silent as though she were dead already.