In the Wilderness (10 page)

Afterwards, when they were to share their provisions, they had bought cider—it was mighty good and their heads were a little mazed with it. Then they lost one another in the crowd down in the fair-field. Olav and Tomas had kept together longest, but then Tomas would stand listening to a minstrel so long that at last Olav was tired of waiting and went on. Now he stood at the edge of the forest looking out, if he could see any of his companions in the swarm that drifted hither and thither on the green.

He felt within his kirtle for the packages he was carrying over his belt. They were gifts that he would send home—a last greeting. Embroidered velvet gloves for Signe and Una, a rosary of corals and gold beads for Cecilia, a dagger for Eirik. Though Eirik would now inherit all his arms—except Kinfetch; he must remember to send a message home that the axe was to descend in Cecilia’s branch of the family.

The thought was like stirring up a wasps’ nest. He turned away from it, looked about him; no, he could see none of his company.

From somewhere in the wood behind him he heard singing; it sounded like ballads. Olav turned and followed the woodland path—if they were dancing he would be certain to find Galfrid in any case, and Leif.

After a while he came to a great open space in the forest. Upon this plain stood a band of dancers, getting their breath; people lay on the grass under the trees, eating and drinking. A little child ran toward Olav, stumbled, and fell. Olav picked up the little boy, who was howling, and tried to comfort him. He stood looking about him with the child on his arm, when a stout, good-looking young woman came running up. Olav smiled faintly and shook his head at her flood of words. With a sudden gesture he pressed the boy to him and kissed him before handing him to the mother. It was like taking farewell of something.

The dancers formed a ring again—they were only men, who went arm in arm and broke into a wild and stirring tune. Olav went forward, forcing his way through the crowd looking on.

The strange, resounding, and provocative dance inflamed him through and through: it was fighting they sang of, and it seemed like something he had heard before—his heart stirred as the grave-mould stirs over a dead man who wakes and struggles to come out—and when he saw the look on the faces of those around him, his excitement grew. Old men stood leaning forward, beating time with their heads, glowing with passion. Big, portly matrons listened with hard faces, as though the song had to do with disasters they themselves had suffered. Even Olav felt that he knew something of it, but could not come at what it was—

—And all at once he had it! The river, Glaana, rushed down in flood, cold in the shadows, while the sun still blazed on the pinnacles of the keep—the castle stood on a little island, cleaving the stream. And he stood in the water-meadow watching the Earl’s retainers, the lads from the Cinque Ports, as they danced and sang of the battle between English and Scots.
That
was the song, by God!

Memories that he had never recalled for years rushed up from the depths within him, like prisoners from a dungeon. A stream of rapid visions—furious hand-to-hand fighting, torchlight flickering over wild sword-play in a narrow gateway that sloped away into darkness—and then he was in a boat, rowing in the pale evening light outside the island walls of Stockholm, and facing him in the stern sat the Earl, short and broad as the door of a loft, invincibly strong and shaggy and warm as a he-bear, bright in his crimson velvet cloak, with his clear amber eyes laughing at war and adventure—oh, Lord Alf, Lord Alf, my liege!

The chain of dancers surged past him, and there was no end to the wild, ringing song. The men hung together, hooked arm in arm, leaning backward with their shoulders, and the chain swayed; the fiery faces of the singers could be seen through the clouds of dust each time they leaped high and stamped hard as they came down. Then a sudden jerk to the right all round the ring, and back they came charging toward the left.—His memories still sped through Olav’s mind: of men with whom he had been friends in a cool and pleasant fashion, each man for himself within the iron shell of his coat of mail, but covering one another with
shield and sword. Oh, to hell with all women, they cling all too closely to a man! The glare of flames among the dark timber gables of a city street. And himself, a lad of twenty, fully armed, standing in a doorway—a young serving-maid, whose name he had forgotten, seeking to drag him in and hide him. He laughed, snatched a kiss and tore himself away, rushed up the street, sword in hand, to where he heard the trumpets of the Danish King’s men—and he was wild with an angry fear lest the Earl’s men should let themselves be driven down to their ships without attempting resistance.

Olav’s hands clenched upon the borders of his cloak—his spirit was in a violent uproar: to think that he could forget all this! And now it came back, his vision of the manor on the hill above the creek, but strangely paled and faded now; it was fraught with memories of ill health and contention with a dense, grey, overmastering force, and of a sick woman who crushed the youth and manhood out of him and who grew ever paler and more faded in spite of sucking his strength dry. And, with a sudden break, whatever feelings these memories had brought him hitherto—they now sickened and revolted him—Jesus! had he not been as one bewitched—or thrust into hell?

The song ended in a resounding roar and the thud of half a hundred feet that struck the ground at once. Olav drew a deep breath.

The ring of dancers broke up and the crowd of onlookers scattered. Olav moved about, uncertain what to do with himself. Then he ran against someone—looked at him and saw that it was the blind man from the church of the preaching friars.

For a moment they stood and stared at each other—so it seemed to Olav: the wan, sightless face, contracted with misfortune or bitterness, seemed all agaze. Olav’s only thought was that he had been clumsy. Then a change came over the stranger’s face, as though awakening from an evil dream. A smile broke out on it as he felt before him with his hands and spoke a few words.

“Cognovis me?”
whispered Olav doubtfully.

The stranger—he was not much more than a lad, Olav now saw—replied at once in the same language, but he spoke it so quickly and fluently that Olav did not understand a word.

“Non capio bene latinum,”
muttered Olav awkwardly.

The other smiled courteously and began again more slowly, in
fewer words. Olav grasped so much: that he was parted from his company, and now he asked Olav to lead him somewhere—to the church. With hesitation Olav accepted the young man’s proffered hand and felt with aversion how clammy it was. Then he let the other take his arm and led him toward the path by which he had come.

The young man tried to enter into conversation—in Latin, English, and French, a little of each. Olav understood him to say that he knew him from the Dominicans’ church.

“Non es—”
he sought the word for “blind.” He stole a look at the other’s ruined eyes. No, he must be stone-blind. A shock went through him—then someone had pointed him out to the man.
“Non es c
œ
cis?”
The tension filled him with something like joy. Now he must be on guard.

It was dark in the forest; cautiously Olav led the blind man over roots and stones in the path—watching intently for any sign of men lurking in the undergrowth. And it had chanced unluckily that he had the stranger’s left arm locked in his right—or had the other managed it of set purpose? Olav was ashamed to change now. But he kept an eye on the man’s sword-hand.

He was waiting all the time for the flash of a dagger—or for someone to burst out of the thicket—and the way could not have been so long as he went to the sports green, nor the path so narrow—and dark it was here in the wood. But to the blind man’s questions he replied calmly that his name was Olav; he was a Norseman and a merchant. He would have told him too where he lay with his ship—it were well that the man should know he had no thought of hiding—but when he tried to explain it, he could not make himself clear in the foreign tongue.

And all at once they were out of the wood. Olav led the blind man up toward the church, which now gleamed faintly in the fading light. And a dull, oppressive fear came over Olav—it was not with dagger or armed men the stranger would attack him. But into the church with this man he would not go!

Then a serving-man came running down toward them and called out on seeing his master. The latter at once dropped Olav’s arm, took him by the hand, and thanked him for his help. Olav was dumb with surprise. The young knight turned to his man, laid a hand on his shoulder, and allowed himself to be led away, as he turned once more and greeted Olav with a parting
“Vale!”

Olav stood still; it was now so incomprehensible that he felt almost disappointed. He followed the stranger with his eyes. Before the gate of the little priory by the church a company was getting into the saddle. And in a little while they came riding past him.

There were several men of rank in velvet, with gold chains on their breasts; they had excellent horses and costly gear. The blind man rode on a black stallion, which was led by a page. The serving-men who followed were armed and equipped for a journey, and in the rear came several horses laden with merchandise. Olav guessed they had come from far away.

And now it dawned on him that the blind man must have been away from home for some days. So she, the wife, had sent for him while she was alone.—He recalled the arbour in the secret corner of the garden, the young woman who came with perfumed hair, naked under her thin silken robe—neither pixy nor phantom as he had made himself believe—only an unfaithful wife.

In a surge of passion Olav felt as if he himself were the man betrayed. His rage was red and hot as lust—he could have seized and killed her with his bare hands. And he was dazed the while by a strange, unreal feeling—this had happened to him once before.

Then the rush of blood ebbed back, the red mist faded from his eyes. He felt the ground under his feet once more and saw everything about him with a strange distinctness. The beeches were bathed in a pale, subdued light, and the sky above was whitish, with a few bright shreds of cloud; the grey stones of the church flushed faintly in the afterglow. The place was now almost deserted, and a scent of dew and dust arose from the trampled grass. And Olav saw the cold, clear truth of it: that this game in which he had here been involved—he had taken part in it once before. But this time he was himself the thief.

He took the front of his cloak in both hands, as though he would tear off his bonds. But from the innermost chambers of his soul—now that at last he had been forced to open a crack of the door—the darkness spoke to him, a voice without words. This was the
meaning
of what had lately befallen him. Another man’s wife had been offered to him, so that he had but to reach out his hand to take her. And he himself had had no other thought—until that cry had warned him, from heaven or from purgatory.
Had he not been
snatched
away, as a child is snatched from the fire by its mother, he himself would now have been a wedded woman’s paramour.

Olav began to walk swiftly, as though he would escape from these thoughts. He strode across the fair-field. Embers still glowed upon the ground in the increasing dusk; in one place a fire was burning brightly. Many people still lingered here, and all seemed drunken. Olav walked on rapidly; he entered another wood by a well-marked path that led downhill.

In a kind of desperate resentment he struggled to drown the voice—“in the devil’s name, I did not
touch
the woman. I have behaved like a fool, making eyes at an English bitch, because I thought she was like my wife.” And he might well be angry, at his age, for being caught in the woman’s snares—“but I had no such thought in my mind, and did I not make off at once, when I saw what she would with me?” And that the blind man had known him could hardly be a miracle; for he had often seen that blind men—beggars and aged folk—seemed to see with their whole body: they had the scent and hearing of dogs.

But all his striving to drown the voice within him was of no avail—
he
had violated no man’s honour indeed, but he had not regarded it in this way as he led the blind man through the wood; then he had been sure that the other sought his life, and justly. And again he knew that he had been guilty in accompanying the strange lady’s messenger—or an old, drowned guilt had floated up into the daylight.

As he hastened down the wooded path in the growing darkness, over stock and stone and bog-hole, sure of foot as a sleepwalker, it was borne in upon him that this darkness into which he hurried farther and farther was his own inner self, and presently he would have entered its deepest and darkest secret chamber. Soon he would be driven in, with his back against the last wall; but he knew withal that he would fight and defend himself to the utmost. And he understood—

First God had spoken to him face to face—that was in the night when he was to lose Ingunn. In that hour, when he was forsaken by his only friend, God had spoken to him from the forsakenness of the cross. In that night, when his grief was such that he could have sweated blood, God had appeared to him, bedewed with the blood of the death agony and the scourging and the nails and the
thorns, and He had spoken to him as friend to friend: “O all ye that pass by, behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow!” And he had seen his own sin and sorrow as a bleeding gash upon those shoulders. Yet he had not been strong enough to come.

And God had spoken to him a second time. He had spoken to him in His holy Church, as soon as Olav was so far healed of grief’s fever that he could compose himself and listen to calm words. Yet he had voluntarily delayed on the road—nor was he any longer sure that he had obeyed the call. Unless—

But now this last thing had befallen him, so that he was forced to see what manner of man he was and what was his sin.

All at once he stood as it were outside and looked upon himself—as one stands behind a fence and looks at a man labouring in a barren, weed-grown field.