So we asked them to sit and have meat with us, and they sat down; though we were careful of our arms till they had eaten.
And the next day we landed them at a town, where they might build another ship.
This is the tale of the marriage of my lord just as it happened.
WHERE THE WOLVES DANCE
Three years before, in the winter time, I had brought my wife Elsa from her father’s, loving her as fools and lonely men love dogs and women. So I kept ever near her, but was shy of her. Now this is the tale of a very strange thing, and it begins from her. Though my hall stood far to the west on the main, where even the sight of the sand-hills could be found from the highest tower, yet there were trees and gardens on the other side, and paths ran down to little ponds, and cattle browsed over rich uplands and sheep grew fat. There were sixty men in my hall; heavy men and slow, but slow to change, and as their fathers leant before them, so they leant also from the worn castle windows, and the window-sills were smooth with the rubbing of their elbows. As to the hall and its build, there is little need be said. It was square and large, and partly of stone, with a banqueting-hall, and enough of small rooms and of cellars for the storage of meat and milk and beer. In the summer sometimes I would go down to the coast, and crossing in my ship over to Fōen, buy cattle or grain or go to the south ports for some strange rare thing for my lady; thus it was for three years, and contentment had grown round me like a woof.
So one day a horseman came riding slowly. He bore to me a message that three of the priests of the Lord-Bishop of Lund demanded shelter that night under my roof. I was standing dressed in my best leather suit and with my handsomest sword-belt by my chair at the head of the table, when the door swung open and they entered. They came slowly up the hall into the light, and lifting their heads when they came to the bottom steps at the top of which I stood, they showed the faces of three old worldly men, fed on the follies and the agonies of man. They were all pale and stooping, but the one to the right, a tall man with one shoulder higher than the other, bent the most, and leant upon the shortest priest, who was in the middle.
“Greeting,” I said; “you are most welcome.”
They advanced up the steps and the tall old priest stepped towards me and blessed me in a low voice, and then asked to be shown to his room. I conducted him myself, leading the way to the apartment with a candle, and the two others followed, their arms crossed over their chests. Thus came the learned Father Cefron into my house. Next morning the two other priests departed in haste, the way they had come, to inform the Lord Bishop of Lund that the learned Father Cefron was ill and like to die, which indeed seemed to be true. I sat by his bedside as he lay with his face to the wall, his shaven head looking dark against the bed-clothes.
“When will he come? When will he come?” he would murmur; then clenching his hands and turning towards me and sticking both fists out, “I want the boy,” he said; then flinging his face to the wall impatiently. This kept on for two days, till I sent a messenger to the one of the two priests whom I had liked most (the fat one), asking who he, “the boy,” was, and telling him how the learned Father Cefron lay calling for him and would not be quiet. In eight days there came back my messenger, saying that he, the boy, would follow on, and would probably be at the hall to-morrow morning early. So it was. While I was yet in bed I heard the barking of dogs in the courtyard, and the cracking of whips, and the voices of the men calling to one another, and the clatter of their wooden shoes on the stones. I sent word that he should at once be taken to Father Cefron if so be that Father Cefron was awake; and he went quickly and I did not see him at all till after noon that day. Then, as I rose from my meat—the men had already trooped out of the hall, their dinner over—there entered through the tapestried door a tall, broad-backed, narrow hipped, slim-limbed, youth, who held his head high, and bore eyes full of laughter under his wild light hair.
“My Lord Olaf,” he said, extending his hand, “I ask your pardon for coming late to my meat; but good Father Cefron has wanted me with him. I have been much with him since a child, you know.”