“Go to Helvin Jarl in those clothes! He would order his dogs set on you! You look more like a stag than a man.”
It is likely that he went on at some length, but Randvar gave him no further attention. Making his way down the hill and across the bridge, he came into the crowd just beginning to disperse. His final decision was to submit the question of etiquette to Bolverk, whose burly figure had come into sight in the throng; but before he could reach the guardsman, his glance encountered Helvin’s.
Rigidly erect rode the young Jarl in his sable mourning clothes, his face an ivory mask to hide what lay beneath it; but into his eyes there leaped now such a look as a man gnawed by torturing fear might give the man who brought him relief. What the look meant, the Songsmith did not ask himself; he knew only that response to it rose in him as rises a river in flood-time. Like a wooden bridge before a freshet, etiquette was swept out of his thoughts.
Pushing between the courtmen, he made his way to the Jarl. Without speaking, Helvin put out a hand and gripped the deerskin shoulder, and so rode holding to it as Rolf’s son walked beside him.
VI
“Ill luck is the end of ill redes”
—Northern saying.
It was three weeks later. A group of old fur-traders stood in the porch of the Jarl’s feasting-hall, answering in chorus the remark of one of their number:
“A favorite so soon? Time is not allowed to go to seed when a young man gets the rule!”