“What a good thing it is that I have three wiseminded old ravens to make sport for me! Hither they wing their way now to give me final advice in this treaty-making. Odin be thanked, it will not be long before we are on the move! Yonder my kinswoman’s hand sends a summons to you, Songsmith. Go, sting Olaf’s jealousy again. The entertainment I have in torturing him, teaches me for the first time why Starkad had delight in bear-baiting.”
In words now as well as voice, he was strange to his song-maker. Randvar mused on it as he descended the slope; again the feeling that he was wakening from a dream came over him.
“Seldom have I experienced such strange things in my sleep as I have done since that day at the Black Pool,” he murmured; then as his wandering gaze fell upon the group before him, he finished contentedly: “But if it be a dream, it must be said that it is a good one.”
Surrounded by her band of comely women, with the elegant Olaf outstretched before her, the Jarl’s sister sat enthroned on the slope at the foot of an ancient oak. The masses of bronze foliage still clinging around the base of the mighty limbs, spread like a canopy above her. The huge trunk was as a background for her rounded form in its kirtle of wine-red, gold-embroidered; against the black bark, her hair was as a spot of golden fire. The song-maker saw neither Yrsa’s pretty smile of welcome nor the shrug of Thorgrim’s son when their mistress greeted him graciously.
“Make me a song in tune with the forest, Songsmith,” she requested. “Olaf’s French ballads that chime so well with my bower sound in this place like the tinkling of bells, though I would not seem thankless in saying so.”
Olaf rose and acknowledged playfully the apologetic gesture she made him.
“Be in no fear of hurting my feelings, madam, by preferring his songs over mine,” he said. “I have amusement in trifling with the singing-craft, as becomes a high-born man; but to do such work seriously is the portion of churls.”
She took back the conciliating hand to fold it on the other in her lap, and spoke a trifle haughtily. “In France, it may be so, beausire. Among Norsemen, skaldship has always been held in honor. If the truth must be told, I am in best tune with Norse ways.”
“Then will I take away the discordant note of my presence,” he said, and smiled at her quizzically as he turned. But he was not so unscathed that his eyes could pass the Songsmith as they encountered him; there, with his will or without it, they froze. “Unless,” he added, “the forester has the wish to make some reply to me.”
Time was when the forester would have replied with the tongue of his snake-skin scabbard, but he was not dull in learning new ways. Almost his smile was a match for Olaf’s as he answered: