"Look at the shield-maiden, comrades,—look at the shield-maiden! It has come into her mind that she is going back to Thorhild!"
For a moment Alwin wondered who Thorhild might be. Then vaguely he remembered hearing that it was to escape a strong-minded matron of that name that Helga had fled from Greenland. That now she must go back to be civilized, and made like other maidens, struck him also as an excellent joke; and he joined in the laugh. One after another caught it up with jests and mocking.
"Back to Thorhild the Iron-Handed!"—"No more short kirtles!"—"She has speared her last boar!"—"After this she will embroider boar-hunts on tapestry!"—"Embroider? Is it likely that she knows which end of the needle to put the thread through?"—"It will be like yoking a wild steer!"—"Taming a shield-maiden!"—"There will be dagger-holes in Thorhild's back!"—They crowded around her, bandying the jest back and forth, and roaring with laughter.
Always before, Helga had taken their chaff in good part; always before, she had joined them in making merry at her expense. But now she did not laugh. She rose slowly and stood looking at them, her breast heaving, her eyes like glowing coals.
At last she said shrilly, "Oh, laugh! If you see a jest in it—laugh! Because I am going to lose my freedom—my rides over the green country,—never to stand in the bow and feel the deck bounding under me,—is it such sport to you, you stupid clods? Would you think it a jest if the Franks should carry me off, and shut me up in one of their towers, and load me with fetters, and force me to toil day and night for them? You would take that ill enough. How much better is it that I am to be shut in a smothering women's-house and wound around with cloth till I trip when I walk, and made to waste the daylight, baking to fill your swinish stomachs, and sewing tapestries that your dull eyes may have something to look at while you swallow your ale? Clods! I had rather the Franks took me. At least they would not call themselves my friends while they ill-used me. Heavy-witted churls, laugh if you want to! Laugh till you burst!"
She whirled away from them into her booth, and the door-curtain fell behind her.
All day long she sat there, neither eating nor speaking, Editha crouching in a corner, afraid to approach her.