The Snake Pit (13 page)

His own settlement with that Icelander seemed an utterly unimportant affair. Surely no one believed that all these fellows here confessed every scrap to such priests as were to be found—it was impossible that the men could remember all or the priests find time to hear such scrupulous confessions. Many a man who cheerfully took
corpus Domini
before setting out certainly had heavy sins on his conscience which he had forgotten to confess. The wretched Teit had his deserts—Olav now thought himself
strangely foolish to have seen signs in this and that: in the chance words of strangers, in dreams that had come to him, in the colour and markings of his beasts. He had believed at last he felt God’s hand over him, seeking to make him turn aside from the path he followed. Here, among all these men, where he himself was of so little account, his own affairs were also lessened in his eyes: so many a brave man’s death had he seen and heard of that it was unreasonable to think that the Lord God was so scrupulous over the slaying of Teit, or that He singled out him, Olav Audunsson, for chastisement, penance, and salvation, when there were great men enough who needed it much more—such as the Danish lords, for the way they treated their own countrymen. Even Ingunn’s transgressions seemed to grow less—he heard and saw so much out here.

One day in late autumn he steered into the fiord. The sun was hot, between the rain-squalls that swept over the sea. There was a fresh breeze; the white spray shooting high under the Bull gave him a greeting from afar. Up at the manor they had recognized his little craft—Ingunn stood on the quay as he came alongside, her coif and cloak fluttering about her thin, stooping figure. And as soon as he saw her, the husband knew that all was as it had been:

The child had been stillborn, a boy again.

Two months after the new year Ingunn fell sick again—she had miscarried, and this time her life was in danger. Olav had to fetch the priest to her.

Sira Benedikt counselled husband and wife to live apart for a year and employ the time in penitence and good works; weak as Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter now was, the priest deemed it impossible that she could bear a living child.

Olav was willing enough to try this expedient. But Ingunn was clean beside herself with despair when he spoke of it to her.

“When I am dead,” she said, “you must marry a young and healthy wife and have sons by her. I told you that I was broken down—but you would not let me go then. I have not long to live, Olav—give me leave to be with you the little time I have left!”

Olav stroked her face and smiled wearily. She often talked of his marrying again—but she could not bear him to look at another
woman or to say two words to their neighbours’ wives when he met them before the church door.

Sleeplessness troubled him this spring even worse than the other years. With a heart heavy with compassion he lay with his arm about the poor, ailing woman—but he felt her clinging love as an encumbrance. Even in her sleep she lay with her thin arms clasped about his neck and her head resting on his shoulder.

He was glad to get away from home when he set out for Tunsberg in the spring. The summer passed like the previous one. But whenever he thought of his home, Olav was sick at heart. It mattered not, he felt, that he had had so little joy in his life with her—the loss of Ingunn would mean the loss of half his life.

But she was well and cheerful when he came home late in the autumn, this time she was so certain that all would go well. But six weeks before Yule the boy was born, more than two months before his time.

Awhile before this happened it became known in the countryside that Lord Tore Haakonsson had had Björn Egilsson beheaded at Tunsberg. After the first campaign in Denmark he had entered the Baron’s service—he would not go back to Hestviken any more. When the war fleet returned to Norway this autumn, Björn had been on board the ship that brought Lord Tore himself home, and while on shipboard he had fallen out with another man and cut him down. When the Baron ordered him to be seized and bound, he had defended himself, wounded two men to the death, and given several others lesser hurts.

Gudrid, Björn’s wife, had died during the summer, and now Olav Audunsson thought he ought to help the orphans of the man he had liked so well. Torhild Björnsdatter had held aloof from all—she was cross and taciturn; Olav had rarely seen her and scarcely exchanged two words with the girl, so he did not rightly know how he was to put his offer to her.

But when Ingunn lay sick so near to Yule and there was no mistress at Hestviken to cope with all the work that was at hand—their numbers were increased during the fishing season, with the hunting of seals and auks—Olav considered whether he should speak to Torhild Björnsdatter and ask if she would move to Hestviken and keep house for him. She was said to be a capable
and industrious woman—and the mismanagement had now reached such a pitch that any housekeeper at all must be able to do the work better than the mistress; Ingunn was of little use when she was well, and she had had scarcely a day’s health in three years. The food was so wretched that Olav had had difficulty in getting house-carls this winter, and when strangers visited the house, he dreaded and was ashamed of what might be sent to table. Except the fresh fish and frozen meat in winter, there was hardly anything that did not smell and taste abominably. The stores in the larder lasted an unaccountably short time—until Olav discovered that many of the servants stole like magpies. Bought ale from town he always had to keep in the house, dear though it was, for Ingunn’s brew had a bad name all along the fiord. Even the drink in the curd-tub was not merely sour, but rotten. He himself had hardly had a new garment made at home since he was married, and his everyday clothes looked like a beggar’s rags—they were neither kept clean nor properly mended.

He had proposed to Ingunn more than once that they should take a housekeeper, but each time she had been in utter despair, weeping and begging him not to bring such a shame upon her. It was in vain he replied that sickness is every man’s master; it could be no shame to her. He saw that if he was to speak to Torhild, he would have to do it without consulting his wife. The worst thing was about her children—she would have to bring the younger ones with her, and that was likely to lead to noise and disturbance, which Ingunn could not bear.

The six surviving offspring of Björn and Gudrid were known to all as “Torhild’s children.” Gudrid had been an unnatural mother—she shook off one child after another; her stepdaughter took it up, laid it in her lap, and fed it from a cow’s horn. Gudrid cared for nothing but gadding about the neighbourhood. Torhild had been betrothed in early youth to a lad of substance and honour, but he was near akin to that Gunnar whom Björn had had the misfortune to slay, and so the marriage came to naught. Since then she had been drudging in their poor home, doing the work of a man and a woman together. Folk knew little about her, but the maiden was of the best repute. Nor was she ugly, but no one seemed able to conceive that Torhild Björnsdatter might change her condition. She was now no longer young—eight or nine and
twenty winters old; the two eldest of her half-brothers were of an age to take service, but when this was spoken of, Torhild answered that she needed them at home.

One Sunday, not long after Ingunn fell sick, Olav saw Torhild Björnsdatter in church. She stood farthest back on the women’s side and was completely shrouded in a long and ample black cloak, which she held closely about her. She had drawn the hood forward, and from time to time the man saw her face in profile, pale against the black woollen stuff. She was like her father: the forehead high and abrupt, the nose long, but finely curved, the mouth broad and colourless, but with lips tightly closed as though in mute patience; the chin was powerful and shapely. But her fair hair was faded and hung straggling about her forehead; her complexion seemed grey and turbid from smoke and soot that had eaten into the skin. She had large grey eyes, but they were red-rimmed and bloodshot, as though she had stood too long over the fire in the narrow, smoky cot. Her hands, which held the cloak together, even when she clasped them in prayer, were not large, and the fingers were long—but they were red and blue, covered with broken chilblains, ingrained with black, and the nails were worn. And though she was so well shrouded, it could be seen that the girl held herself very erect.

After mass Olav stayed outside the church talking with some other franklins, and it came about that he rode home alone—his people had gone on ahead.

He had reached the place where the forest gives way to open ground, with some great meres and a little croft on the edge of the largest of them. The bridle-path divides here just behind the outhouses, one path going to Rynjul and southward, and another down to Hestviken. As Olav was turning into the road for home, he saw Torhild Björnsdatter standing outside the hut; she had taken off the cloak and gave it back to the woman from whom she had borrowed it. As she caught sight of the horseman, she turned abruptly and crossed the frozen mere, as quickly as if she were flying from him. But Olav had seen why she kept the cloak so closely about her—without it she was in her bare shift, of coarse, undyed homespun. It was cut low at the neck, the sleeves reached to the elbows, and her arms were blue with cold, as were her naked ankles, which showed between the edge of the shift
and the big, worn-out man’s shoes she wore on her feet. She had bound a strip of homespun about her waist for a belt—again Olav could not help being surprised at her erect bearing.

She was dressed like working-women when they cut the corn on a summer’s day. A memory flashed across Olav’s mind—of blue sky, sunshine, and warmth over the fields, where the women bent to grasp the sheaves of ripe, sweet-smelling corn. He watched the summer-clad maid flying across the frozen mere toward the edge of the wood, where the spruces were grey with rime. How she must feel the cold!—she was bareheaded, her plait of hair hung thick and straight down her resolute, unbending back. All at once Olav felt an intense liking for her. He halted awhile on the path, watching the girl. Then he rode on a little way—turned his horse and set out across the mere.

The croft that Björn Egilsson had owned lay up the slope on the other side—an alder thicket almost hid it from travellers on the road. Olav saw that a good deal of clearing had been done since he had last had occasion to come here, two years ago. Some small patches must have been dug last autumn: some stones and roots were not yet cleared away. Farther up, the strips of stubble showed lighter than the rest of the rime-covered, swampy ground. The little byre that Björn had put up a few years before shone yellow with its fresh logs, but he had never got the dwelling-house built: they were still living in the round turf hut.

Torhild Björnsdatter came out on hearing the horseman. The children peeped behind her in the doorway. She stepped outside and stood erect, blushing slightly and glancing ungraciously at the man as he dismounted, and she guessed he had some business with her. Olav tied Apalhvit to a tree and covered him with his grey fur cloak. “You must let me come in, Torhild; there is a matter about which I would fain speak with you.” He did not wish her to stand there in the cold; she was now barefooted.

Torhild turned and went in. She laid a worn sheepskin on the earthen bench, bade her guest be seated, and offered him a ladle of goat’s milk from a bowl that stood behind him on the seat. The milk tasted and smelt strongly of smoke, but Olav was fasting and thought it good. The room was like a cave, with a narrow passage between the two benches of earth that filled it entirely. Torhild sat down opposite her guest; she had a two-year-old child
on her lap; another girl, a little older, stood behind her with her arms about her neck. The two eldest boys lay by the fire near the door, listening to the talk between their sister and the stranger.

After they had spoken of other things for so long as was proper, Olav mentioned his business. She must have heard what a pass he had come to at home—how little likely it was that his wife would be fit for any work that winter. If Torhild would grant them a boon and help Ingunn and him in their difficulty, they would never be able to thank her enough. Olav spoke as one asking a favour, he liked her so cordially. Strong she looked, with her broad, straight shoulders, high, firm bosom, and powerful hips.
She
had never let herself be bent double by all her drudgery here between the cot and the little byre.

Torhild raised some objections, but Olav replied that it was clear she should have leave to bring all six children with her to Hestviken. He had not thought of offering to receive more than the two eldest—they could no doubt be of some service—and the two youngest, who could not be parted from their foster-mother. The middle ones they could surely find a home for in the neighbourhood. Her beasts—the cow, four goats, and three sheep—he would also receive; when the roads were fit for sledges they would send for the fodder she had stacked. And he would see to it that the fields here at Rundmyr were manured and sown in the spring.

The end of it was that Torhild took service with Olav and was to move to Hestviken as soon as she had made ready a few clothes for herself and the children. Olav promised to provide the stuff. He himself rode up with it next day; there was no need for her fellow servants to know how poor she had been.

He had thought of telling Ingunn of his agreement with Torhild the same evening. But when he came in to the sick woman, she lay in a doze, so faint and bloodless that she looked as though she could neither hear nor answer him. So he merely sat on the bedstead beside her. Her face was fearfully wasted; the eyelids lay like thin brown membranes over the sunken eyes, her skin was grey and flecked with brown over the cheek-bones—the dark streaks that had come with her second child had never gone away. Her white linen shift was fastened with a good brooch—her throat was wizened like a plucked fowl’s. He remembered that Torhild’s grey woollen shift had been held together with a pin
of sharpened bone—but her throat was round as the stem of a tree, and her bosom was full and high. She was sound and strong, although her lot in life had been so heavy and toilsome. His own poor creature was well provided with all that was needed to make pleasant the lot of a young wife—and here she lay, for the fourth time in three years, childless and broken in health.—Olav stroked her cheek.