The priest lifted a gentle hand. Brawny shepherd’s hand though it was, it had no lack of dignity.
“My lord and son, turn not your good gift of speech to your own ill. I would in no way vex you. That you were sorely tried under Starkad’s rule was before all eyes. How should I who have not felt the burden chide you that your back is weary? Only I would beseech of you that fairness towards him which we show to you, when in your less worthy turns of mind we still remember how noble is your nature. Old sayings have it that men are wolves and bears in their Other Shapes,—it is but a turn of the cloak to hold with the Christ-faith that the blackest-hearted man has a better self within him. Believe of your father that he had a gentler spirit somewhere hid, that his life bound him as yours binds you. Believe, and pardon.”
From resting on his elbow, Starkad’s son started passionately upright.
“Pardon,—and give up my hate that is as meat to my teeth! Priest, are you Northern born and know not that such satisfaction comes from hating a foe as makes the joy of loving a friend look like pale moonshine by red fire? My foe was what he was—doubly my foe in that he owed me help—and blow shall go for blow between us. Pardon that I may be pardoned? Rather than forgive him one jot of his punishment would I share his torture and count it gain! Rather would I burn by his side until that spirit which cannot be subdued by Norway’s rocks or Greenland’s snowwastes or Iceland’s belching mountains has burned out of both of us, and left no more than two dead cinders! Nor will I bear rebuke!”
“Nay, how should I do aught else than sorrow for you who choose for yourself so hard a way?” the old priest said sadly. “Methinks my heart would break over you if I did not know that even at the goal of that road, at the end of that torture, One will stand waiting for you beside whose love mine is but a taper to a star. His mercy be upon you and save you from yourself!”
As a star through the night, shone his soul through his swarthy face; but Starkad’s son averted his eyes that he might not see it.
“Everything bides its time. When I feel desire for that goal, it may be that I shall believe in it. You are an honest man,—do what you can among my people. For my malady, your medicine is too mild.”
With a hand raised in dismissal, he met the hand raised in benediction and flung himself back on his cushions, speaking curtly to Olaf, Thorgrim’s son.
“Do you sing, until I decide whether your jingling or my humor makes the worst discord in my ears.”
As a man wakened out of deep abstraction, the courtman came to himself with a start. Though he sought to cover it with his graceful bow, and set his shapely fingers instantly to their task on the lute-strings, his customary tactfulness was lacking. In the middle of the first verse of his ballad, the Jarl’s hand—that had come out into the firelight and begun to pick and tear at the gold-embroidered flowers of the bed-hangings—flew up irritably.