A VIKING’S LOVE
It was long ago, when the world was so young that peace meant little more than a breathing spell between battles. At the Royal Farm of Augvaldsnes, in Norway, King Olaf Haraldsson sat at an Easter feast with his men.
Right and left on either hand the long tables stretched away, cleared of all their bounty, save two lines of brimming ale-horns. Down the middle of the hall fires burned brightly, flushing the delicate faces of the women on the cross-benches, sending the golden light higher—higher—until every shield upon the tapestried wall flashed back an answer. Overhead, through the smoke-holes between the sooty rafters, shone the still white stars.
“So, it may be, the eyes of angels look down upon our earthly pastimes,” King Olaf said thoughtfully, and his stern face softened with the satisfaction he had in a scene of such orderly good cheer. Rolling his ale on his tongue, he settled himself to listen to a man who had just risen from a place on the left of the high-seat.
Thorer Sel was the man’s name, and he was the bailiff that had this royal farm of Augvaldsnes under his management. As he stood now, a showy figure in the firelight, he would have been good to look at if his eyes had not been shifty and his mouth coarsely overbearing. He smiled jeeringly at the man who had addressed him.
“So you want to know what took place between me and your friend, Sigurd Asbiornsson, do you?” he asked.
“If you will,” the man on the bench answered. “I was away on a Viking voyage last summer when it happened.”
Next above this man on the bench sat a tall, broad-shouldered young fellow with a frank, comely face and the air of one amiably used to having his own way. He was the son of King Olaf’s most powerful vassal, and his name was Erling Erlingsson. Now suddenly he, too, spoke up.
“I, also, would like to hear that story. If it is true, as I have heard it, then are you the only man in the world who has ever made Sigurd Asbiornsson bow his neck.”
Thorer Sel threw him a glance over his shoulder.
“I forgot that it would not sit comfortably in your ears,” he said. “It had slipped my mind that the Halogalander is your kinsman.”
“Kinsman or not, I like to see justice done to men of courage,” young Erlingsson answered. “I say, in the presence of everybody, that Sigurd Asbiornsson is one of the bravest men that ever drew sword or breath.”
“The story will show,” Thorer Sel said mockingly, and began forthwith.
“To start at the beginning, Sigurd Asbiornsson is the man who came down here from the north and bought corn and malt to carry home for the entertaining of his friends, though it was well known to him that because of the bad seasons, King Olaf had forbidden that any meal should be carried out of the south of the country. Dauntless as I am wont, I went down where he had put in under the island for the night and stripped him of his cargo and his fine embroidered sail, and drove him home in disgrace—all in the manner which I will truthfully relate.”
“I have seen that you have his sail in your possession,” Erling said slowly, “but only he could convince me that you got it without a trick, if you got it against his will.”
That was not a bad guess, since the only cause to which the bailiff owed his success was his forethought in providing himself with sixty men, as against Sigurd Asbiornsson’s twenty, and in falling upon him at the moment when he and his crew were dressing after a morning swim and stood utterly defenseless against attack. But a guess is only a guess—and no one stood up to confirm it.
“The story will show,” sneered Thorer Sel, and proceeded to tell it at great length, with less and less regard for the truth.
He drew it out so long that many of the feasters tired of him and began talking among themselves; but four people continued to listen attentively. One was the Viking who had asked for the tale. Another was Erling, ominously fingering his sword-hilt. A third was a young girl sitting among the matrons on the cross-bench—a beautiful girl who bore her small fair head with brave dignity. The fourth was a strange man in poor attire who had come in unnoticed among the servants that were fetching fresh supplies of ale.
The stranger listened the most keenly of all—it almost seemed as if the bailiff might have left him hanging on the words. Step by step, he was drawn forward until only a space of bare table lay between him and the storyteller.
He was a tall man, with a mighty girth of chest and limb. For all that he wore a shabby hat and held a hayfork in his hand, he did not carry himself like a churl. As he moved from the shadow of the last pillar into the firelight, the girl on the cross-bench stifled an exclamation, and her cheeks went white as the linen before her.
“Astrid, my friend, what ails you?” the housewife beside her asked kindly.
A woman on the matron’s other side admonished her with a nudge.
“Have you forgot,” she whispered, “that Asbiornsson wooed her before her father married her to Hall the Wealthy? Naturally she would be troubled at hearing him ill-spoken of.”
Then both forgot her and their gossip and all else.
“How did Sigurd behave when you unloaded his vessel?” the Viking had just inquired.
And the bailiff had answered brazenly: “When we were discharging the cargo, he bore it tolerably, though not well; but when we took the sail from him, he wept.”
They were the last words Thorer Sel spoke on earth. While they were still on his lips, the stranger cleared the table at a bound. There was a flaming of warrior-scarlet from under homespun gray, a hiss of steel, the sound of a blow—and then the whole room seemed turning scarlet, and the head of Thorer Sel rolled on the table before the king.
“Sigurd!” the girl on the cross-bench cried piercingly.
“Sigurd!” shouted young Erlingsson, leaping to his feet.
After that, it was hard to tell what any one said. Pushing forward in obedience to an awful gesture from King Olaf, guards laid hold of Sigurd Asbiornsson and hurried him from the hall, and thralls came running with towels and water and a board. While some took up what lay heavily among the reeds of the floor, others spread fresh linen, and still others removed the bespattered mantle from the king’s shoulders. Only in one thing they all acted alike—no man raised his eyes to the king’s furious face.
Of a different mettle was Erling Erlingsson. Coming back from the door through which the guards had led his friend, he came straight up to the high-seat.
“Lord,” he said, “I will pay the blood-money for your bailiff, so that my kinsman may retain life and limbs. All the rest do according to your pleasure.”
King Olaf’s voice was very low. It was his way when his rage was highest.
“Is it not a matter of death, Erling, when a man breaks the Easter peace, and breaks it in the king’s lodgings, and makes the king’s feet his execution-block? Though it may well be that it seems a small matter to you and your father!” His teeth showed through his quietness.
Erling tried his unpractised tongue at entreaty.
“The deed is ill-done, Lord, in so far as it displeases you, though otherwise done excellently well. But though it is so much against your will, yet may I not expect something for my services to you?”
After a little, King Olaf said:
“You have made me greatly indebted to you, Erling, but even for your sake I will not break the law nor cast aside my own dignity.”
By a gesture he forbade a reply, and spoke on, asking what had been done with the murderer.
“He sits in irons, upon the doorstep, with his guard,” Erling said, heavily.
Then he roused himself to ask one thing which he thought might not be denied him.
“Lord, it is a year since I have seen him, and we have been blood-brothers since we were children. Give him into my charge this one night, and I will answer for him in the morning.”
After a long time, King Olaf said grimly:
“It is true that to hang a man after sunset is called murder. Take him, then, for the rest of the night. But know for certain that your own life shall pay for it if he escape in any way.”
“It must be as you will,” Erling answered, and went out of the feasting-hall that but a short while before had seemed to him a place of such good cheer.
Upon the doorstep, ironed hand and foot, Sigurd Asbiornsson sat listening quietly to the excited expostulations of his guard. Now that the broad-brimmed hat had fallen off, it could be seen that there was nothing blood-thirsty in his handsome sun-browned face. Strong-willed and proud and hard, it might be, and yet in some delicate curve of his mouth, some light of his fine gray eyes, lay that which won him, unsought, women’s trust and men’s love. He looked up with a smile to meet Erling’s troubled gaze.
“Why take your failure so much to heart, comrade?” he remonstrated. “I came prepared to pay Olaf’s price. Stay here by me that we may at least have to-night together, for I suppose he thinks too much of his wonderful laws to hang me before sunrise.”
Nodding, Erling turned and spoke to one of the guards, who caught up a hammer and commenced knocking the chains off the prisoner’s limbs with far greater alacrity than he had shown in putting them on.
“What is the meaning of that?” Sigurd asked in surprise.
“Olaf has given you into my charge until morning,” Erling explained briefly.
For as long as the space between one breath and the next, the prisoner grew tense and alert.
“What pledge did you give for my safety?” he asked quickly.
Less quickly, Erling answered: “My own life.”
The half-formed hope faded. Sigurd’s mighty frame relaxed.
“I give you thanks,” he said, and no more was spoken on the subject.
One by one, the guards drifted back to the ale-horns, and the friends were left alone in the starlit silence of the courtyard. Suddenly, Erling laid hold of the great shoulders before him and shook him fiercely, while at the same time his fingers clung to them in a caress.
“You madman!” he burst out. “Could you not guess that I was going to kill him for you? Olaf dare not slay me—a fine would be the uttermost. What fiend possessed you! Did you imagine Olaf loved you because you had always defied his laws? You madman! Did you not know that I would do it for you?”
“Would that have rubbed out my disgrace, if you had done it for me?” Sigurd asked quietly.
He laid his hands on the other’s shoulders, and they stood breast to breast and eye to eye.
“Come, come, kinsman, these are useless words; why waste breath on them? If you knew how Thorer Sel spoke to me that morning—spoke to me before my men!—and how the tale spread northward until churls that had never dared sneer behind my back before, taunted me to my face! No, no, it was the only way to do it, boldly and openly, with every one looking on. Now I shall leave a clean name behind me. What more could I do if I lived to be a hundred?”
Erling was silent; only, his hands that rested on his friend’s shoulders gripped and held them so that marks were left on the flesh, and the two men remained looking into each other’s eyes until a mist came between.
Then, without speaking, they freed each other; and Sigurd said quickly:
“One more thing lies on me to do. Will you help me?”
“I trust there is killing in it,” Erling said through his teeth.
“It is to get a message to Astrid, Gudbrand’s daughter,” Sigurd replied.
Erling cried out in amazement: “The wife of Hall the Wealthy!”
“Hall the Wealthy has been dead two seasons.”
But Erling exclaimed again: “Gudbrand’s daughter! Of whom you could not speak bitter words enough—even though you knew they would reach her ear!”
“I spoke unfairly,” Sigurd said, flushing. “She sent me a token that I did not receive—I cannot tell you more. I do not ask now that she should stoop to see me herself, but if she would send some woman who has her confidence—if I could speak my message to her with the certainty that it would come truthfully to Astrid’s ear——” His dark face flushed redder and redder in the moonlight, and he did not turn away to hide it. “It is the greatest service you could render me, kinsman,” he finished.
Stifling an impatient breath, Erling flung the end of his cloak over his shoulder and turned.
“The sooner the better, then—before they are gone to bed. Wait in the herb-garden, yonder. It is the spot where you will be the least liable to interruption.”
Netted around with bare bushes and strewn underfoot with shriveled leaves, the herb-garden lay in desolation. Yet even here the slender sides of branches showed the swelling hopes of springtime. A thought came to Sigurd of the budding trees at home, and the harvest he would never reap; then he thrust it from him angrily, and strode up and down the pathway, waiting.
Three times the wind rustling through the bushes tricked him. But at last there was the ring of spurs on gravel, and Erling came out of the shadows, followed by a slender figure wrapped from head to foot in a hooded cloak of blue.
Trying to guess which one of Astrid’s women the silken folds hid, Sigurd stood gazing at her silently. She halted before him without speaking; but Erling said shortly:
“You have little enough time. I was only able to manage it because Gudbrand is still swilling drink in the hall. The instant I see his torch-bearers, I shall call you.”
He disappeared again into the gloom that lay between them and the gate.
Unconsciously, Sigurd’s glance must have followed him, for when it came back to the girl, she had answered the question in his mind. The blue hood was thrown back, and the moon shone on a small fair head, upborne with brave dignity, even while the lovely eyes and lips were tremulous.
“Astrid!” he breathed.
She returned his look with the grave steadiness that was a little pathetic in so young a girl.
“For the second time I have lowered the point of my pride to you,” she said. “Are you going to make me sorry this time also?”
He began to speak eagerly. It seemed that he would have caught her hands if he had dared.
“Astrid, I was not to blame! I beg you not to believe that I would slight a token from you who have always sat highest in my heart. The churl you gave your rune-ring to—he must have mislaid it, and then feared to give it to me when he found it afterwards. Not until this Spring, when he died and his relation came upon it among his things and brought it to me, did I know that you had sent me a message of love after your father refused to bargain with me. Because I was not in the king’s service, Gudbrand was even disrespectful in his treatment of me. And the next month, I heard that you had married Hall. And I had had no farewell from you. What could I think but that you had held me lightly, and lightly let me go? What else could I think?”
“You could have remembered that I was helpless,” Astrid answered slowly. “Could I wed you against my father’s will? Could I hold back from marrying Hall, though he was in everything what I detested most?”
She steadied her lip in her little white teeth.
“You could have believed in me,” she said, “as I would have believed in you. Three seasons we had spoken and feasted and ridden together, and when had you ever found me changeable toward my friends, or greedy after gold? You could have believed in me.”
“I ought to have believed,” Sigurd said humbly.
His face had grown white, as no man had ever seen it. Even when spurs clanked on the path, he stood before her helplessly.
“I ought to have believed,” was all he could say.
Moving a step nearer, she laid her hands upon his breast and looked up at him with a little flickering smile.
“You would have believed—if you had loved me as I loved you,” she said.
She touched her finger to his lips, as he would have cried out.
“I do not think it is in your nature to feel much love for a woman, my friend. If you had not loved your own way better than me, would you not have entered the king’s service to win me, when only that lay between us? Your land—your chiefship over your men—the freedom to do as you pleased—all those you loved; and what was left over, you gave to me. It was not very much, was it? Yet perhaps it does not matter, since I was so glad to get it.”
Though her eyes were misty with tears, she held up her mouth to him bravely.
“I give you thanks for telling me,” he whispered softly, when he had kissed her.
As Erling’s voice sounded urgently, she drew her hood over her head and was gone.
It was a soberly thoughtful man that was pacing the garden-paths when Erling came back. They walked away the rest of the night in silence, while the moon went on in darkness, and the gray dawn which is neither light nor shadow spread coldly over the sky.
It was this new expression which caught King Olaf’s eye, when he and his outlaw faced each other again.
With the first burst of morning sunshine, the king came out of the hall on his way to mass, followed by the high-born people of his household. Blinking laughingly in the dazzle, and drawing in great breaths of the fresh sweet air, the retinue made an odd contrast to the other group waiting on the doorstep—three swarthy thralls testing a coil of rope in their hairy fists, and Sigurd Asbiornsson once more ironed and guarded.
King Olaf stopped abruptly.
“How is it that things which I dislike are always kept before my mind?” he demanded. “Why was he not put to death at sunrise?” The guard answered that the king had named no definite time, and they feared to misunderstand his will.
“I have seldom heard a poorer excuse,” King Olaf returned coldly.
But he did not make his will clearer. He remained scrutinizing the prisoner with a touch of uncertainty in his strongly marked brows. Fearless, Sigurd Asbiornsson looked, as always, but for the first time that something seemed gone from his boldness which had stirred the king’s temper against him.
Olaf smiled slowly as a test came to his mind.
“To please your friends, Sigurd,” he said, “I will make you an offer which you can do as you like about accepting. It is the law of the land that a man who kills a servant of the king shall undertake that man’s service, if the king will. Would you submit to that law, and undertake the office of bailiff which Thorer Sel had, if I gave you life and safety in return?”
He gathered up his mantle to depart, as he concluded, so sure was he that his offer would be rejected. Of all the throng, from Gudbrand’s daughter to Erling, not one believed that it stood any chance of acceptance. They almost ceased to breathe when—slowly—with a flaming face and the stiffness of a pride that was cracking at the joints, Sigurd Asbiornsson bent his head and kissed the king’s hand.
Not to save his life could he have spoken. His power of speech did not come back to him until the churchgoers had swept on across the court, and he was left alone with Astrid in his arms.
“Do you believe now that I love you?” he asked, raising her face between his hands.
Then it smote his heart that he should even seem to reproach her, and he finished lightly:
“What does it matter? We will make a jest of it between ourselves. Let the world think me the king’s man—we know that I am yours!”
