A Viking's love: and other tales of the North

by Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

It happened to the sweet bride to come to it last and alone, for that she had lingered above to pray once more to her on whom she fixed her faith. Blissfully enough she began the descent of the stairs that cored the massive wall; but ere she reached the foot, where a door gave upon the king’s hall, dead was her joy. For this is what befell.

First, a quavering shriek as of an aged woman stabbed by evil tidings; and after that a deathlike stillness. Then the door opened and a girl staggered forth up the stairs, her hands groping before her as her staring eyes had been sightless, the while she moaned over and over the name of her soldier lover.

Though she knew not why, little Adeleve shrank from the groping hands and crept by them down the stairs. Whither rose these words in a man’s loud voice:

“—but last week came a load of Danish pirates to the shore, reeking of slaughter and gorged with Irish spoil. And every night thereafter a band of them sat at drink with the Monks-bane, stirring his fighting lust, until——”

Here the voice was lost in the outburst of many voices, till it overleapt them hoarsely to answer a question from the king.

“The twoscore English soldiers I named to your grace; besides all the nuns of Saint Helena’s that lie stark in their blood——”

Then once again the tumult rose, which now there was no overleaping, and the bride cowering against the wall saw how all heads turned toward him who stood opposite the king in the mockery of gay feasting clothes. And suddenly one called down Christ’s curse on the race of Ogmund Monks-bane, and a second echoed the cry. Whereat the other Danish hostages—to show that their hands were clean—took up the shout more fierce than any, and smote Valgard so that he reeled under their fists. And the aged woman whose son had been slain flung her cup of wine in his face.

Thereafter the young wife saw only the figure of her doomed lord upon whom it seemed that the curses descended as a visible blight, withering to ghastliness his fresh beauty and blasting his spirit so that he shrank farther and farther from the damning looks and tongues till he might no longer in any wise endure them, but calling in agony upon his God strove with his hands to stop his sight and his hearing. And when presently he became aware of the Little Nun approaching, he cried out to know whether she also was come to curse him, and bent his arms around his head as against a blow.

But even as he did this, he met the anguished love in her eyes and saw how she was laboring to make of her fragile self a buckler for him against the press of crowding bodies; whereupon he caught hold of her shoulder and held to her as a man sinking into Hell might hold to the robe of an angel. Until brutal hands thrust her one way and dragged him the other.

Now the sentence was that he should die at sunrise, unto which time the Church should have him to chasten. And this sentence our king might not alter, for that he was called the Truth-teller and had sworn to take the atonement of life for any breach of the faith. But this much he granted, out of the pity and love he had toward the young pair, that they might be together when the end drew near. And stranger than betrothal or marriage feast was this vigil of their wedding night!