Havelok the Dane: A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln

by Charles W. Whistler

Now, I was next to Goldberga as we came to the door, and there was a step into the house which we always had to warn strangers of when it was dark; and so, in the old way, without thinking for a moment, I said to her, “One step into the house, sister.”

“Ho, Master Radbard, if that is you, you have sharp eyes in the dark,” said Biorn at once; “I was just about to say that myself.”

“I have some feeling in my toes,” I answered; and that turned the matter, for they laughed.

And then, when we were inside, and the courtmen had gone clattering down the street homewards, Biorn took the great door bar from its old place and ran it into the sockets in the doorposts, as I had done so many times; and the runes that my father had cut on it when he made the house were still plain to be seen on it, with the notches I had made with the first knife that I ever had. More I will not say, but everywhere that my eyes fell were things that I knew, even to fishing gear, for it seemed that Biorn was somewhat of a fisher, like Grim himself.

Then they put me and my brothers into our old loft, and Havelok and Goldberga had the room that had been my father’s. As for Biorn, he would be in the great room, before the fire. There was only this one door to the house, and therefore he would guard that. His thralls were in the sheds, as ours used to be, so that we and he were alone in the house.

Now, as soon as we three had gone into our old place of rest, Raven went at once, as in the old days, to the little square window that was in the high-pitched gable, and looked out over the town and sea. We used to laugh at him for this, for he was never happy until he had seen, as we said, if all was yet there.

“There are yet lights in the jarl’s hall,” he said, “and there are one or two moving about down in the haven. I think that there is a vessel coming in.”

“Come and lie down, brother,” I said. “We are not in Grimsby, and you cannot go and take toll from her if there is.”

He laughed, and came to his bed; but we talked of old days and of many things more for a long while before we slept. And most of all, we thought that Sigurd the jarl knew Havelok by the token of the ring and by that likeness to Gunnar which Mord had seen, and that our errand was almost told.

So we slept without thought of any danger; but the first hour of the night in that house was not so quiet to Goldberga, for presently she woke Havelok, and she was trembling.