NILS LYKKE. Ah, now it grows clear to me! Sten Sture was then in Norway on a secret errand. We Danes were not to know that he wished your friends well.
LADY INGER. Disguised as a mean serving-man he lived a whole winter under one roof with me. That winter I thought less and less of the country's weal—— ——. So fair a man had I never seen, and I had lived well-nigh five-and-twenty years. Next autumn Sten Sture came once more; and when he departed again he took with him, in all secrecy, a little child. "Twas not folk's evil tongues I feared; but our cause would have suffered had it got about the Sten Sture stood so near to me. The child was given to Peter Kanzler to rear. I waited for better times, that were soon to come. They never came. Sten Sture took a wife two years later in Sweden, and, dying, left a widow——
OLAF SKAKTAVL. ——And with her a lawful heir to his name and rights.
LADY INGER. Time after time I wrote to Peter Kanzler and besought him to give me back my child. But he was ever deaf to my prayers. "Cast in your lot with us once for all," he said, "and I send your son back to Norway; not before." But 'twas even that I dared not do. We of the disaffected party were then ill regarded by many timorous folk. If these had got tidings of how things stood—oh, I know it!—to cripple the mother they had gladly meted to the child the fate that would have been King Christiern's had he not saved himself by flight.[1] But besides that, the Danes were active. They spared neither threats nor promises to force me to join them.
OLAF SKAKTAVL. 'Twas but reason. The eyes of all men were fixed on you as the vane that should show them how to shape their course.
LADY INGER. Then came Herlof Hyttefad's revolt. Do you remember that time, Olaf Skaktavl? Was it not as though the whole land was filled with the sunlight of a new spring. Mighty voices summoned me to come forth;—yet I dared not. I stood doubting— far from the strife—in my lonely castle. At times it seemed as though the Lord God himself were calling me; but then would come the killing dread again to paralyse my will. "Who will win?" that was the question that was ever ringing in my ears. 'Twas but a short spring that had come to Norway. Herlof Hyttefad, and many more with him, were broken on the wheel during the months that followed. None could call me to account; yet there lacked not covert threats from Denmark. What if they knew the secret? At last methought they must know; I knew not how else to understand their words. 'Twas even in that time of agony that Gyldenlove the High Steward, came hither and sought me in marriage. Let any mother that has feared for her child think herself in my place!—and homeless in the hearts of my countrymen. Then came the quiet years. There was now no whisper of revolt. Our masters might grind us down even as heavily as they listed. There were times when I loathed myself. What had I to do? Nought but to endure terror and scorn and bring forth daughters into the world. My daughters! God forgive me if I have had no mother's heart towards them. My wifely duties were as serfdom to me; how then could I love my daughters? Oh, how different with my son! He was the child of my very soul. He was the one thing that brought to mind the time when I was a woman and nought but a woman—and him they had taken from me! He was growing up among strangers, who might sow in him the seed of destruction! Olaf Skaktavl—had I wandered like you on the lonely hills, hunted and forsaken, in winter and storm—if I had but held my child in my arms,—trust me, I had not sorrowed and wept so sore as I have sorrowed and wept for him from his birth even to this hour.
OLAF SKAKTAVL. There is my hand. I have judged you too hardly, Lady Inger! Command me even as before; I will obey.—Ay, by all the saints, I know what it is to sorrow for a child.
LADY INGER. Yours was slain by bloody men. But what is death to the restless terror of all these long years?
NILS LYKKE. Mark, then—'tis in your power to end this terror. You have but to reconcile the opposing parties, and neither will think of seizing on your child as a pledge of your faith.
LADY INGER (to herself). This is the vengeance of Heaven.
(Looks at him.) In one word, what do you demand?