“What the devil! Have you nothing but tinkling love-tunes in stock? Do they rear their men in the women’s house in France? Some song of might—fire—you milksop!”
Murmuring apologies, Olaf tried plainly to regain his wonted poise; but before he had got out so much as the first couplet of the battle-song he had struck into, the hand had leaped from the embroidery, snatched his instrument from his hold and dashed it against the opposite wall.
“Fool! I have warned you that battle-songs are my love-songs,” Helvin’s voice rose in thunder. “To sing them to me when I am doomed to inaction is to heat the fever in my veins to madness! Oh, where in the Troll’s name is the Songsmith? The three weeks leave I gave him was up when the candle of the sun marked noon to-day; and here the sun is burned out, and he has not come. What can he mean by it?”
Olaf laughed, neither mirthfully nor yet perfunctorily, but with the frank discordance of his mind.
“Lord, who shall take it on him to say what any one means at this court? If it were in France, now, I could interpret your relations well enough; but here—here you go not by any rules I know. I give up the riddle.” With a gesture of less than usual grace and more than usual feeling, he went over to pick up his lute.
But Helvin spoke with unusual softness from the darkness of the bed-curtains: “How would you interpret our relations if you were in France, beausire?”
“Nay, noble one, it has no meaning here,” Thorgrim’s son answered almost impatiently, “here where no house reaches underground, and women count for naught. There, men would say that the fellow had some secret of yours in his power and you took insolence from him because you feared to resent it.”
That he was aiming a shaft is unlikely for he did not look up to see if the shot told, but went on examining the broken strings, his mouth working like that of a man who is trying also to mend a rift in his damaged composure. It was not until the stillness behind the curtains had lasted so long as to become ominous that he started as though struck by a possibility, lowered the lute slowly, and slowly turned his gaze towards the recumbent figure.
Even the restless hand had been drawn in from the light now; crouching as for a spring, Starkad’s son loomed in the dimness. Like vultures hovering over their prey, Olaf’s eyes settled on him, tearing their way in as though they would reach the inmost places of his heart.
So they faced each other until they were startled by an outburst of jovial voices in the guard-room without, shouting the name of Rolf’s son with words of noisy welcome.