In the Wilderness (17 page)

“Had any wise man counselled my father as I now counsel you,” said Sira Hallbjörn, “then he had taken me away from the house where I was fostered after my mother died. I was a pious
child while I was with her—she had vowed me to God while I was yet unborn. But then Father sent me to a foster-father, and he was of Lappish race—”

“Do there dwell Lapps in Valdres?” asked Olav; he felt he ought to say something.

The priest nodded. “I saw many a strange thing as I grew up, Olav. They are the most excellent hunters, the Lapps—and divers creatures are abroad in the mountains, both beasts and men—and others. Since then it goes ill with me to live elsewhere. I yearned not to return thither during the years I was in foreign lands, resorting to one school after another. But these folk hereabouts—they provoke me so that I lose patience—”

“So it seems.” Olav could not forbear to smile a little mockingly.

“Ay,” said the priest hotly. “ ’Tis not good to dwell in these parts. You have no friends here either, Olav.”

“So it seems,” said Olav again. “But I know not if it be because— Maybe folk are no different here than elsewhere.”

“Have you ever taken part in hunting reindeer?” asked Sira Hallbjörn abruptly—“at the old deer-pits among the fells? Have you seen the reindeer herd on the move—many thousand deer?”

“Nay,” said Olav. “I have never seen a living reindeer.”

“Bear me company some time”—there was almost an entreaty in the priest’s voice, so eager was he—“when I go home to visit my brothers.”

“I thank you, Sira Hallbjörn. Should the occasion suit, I would gladly bear you company one day.”

They took leave of each other. The priest said once more:

“But keep Eirik from Rundmyr. If not, they will trick the lad into a share of their stealings—or father some wench’s brat on him, before he is two years older. And you would be ill served with that, both of you, Olav.”

Olav thought deeply over his talk with the priest as he rode down in the dark. He felt something like disappointment. Not that he had any quarrel with his parish priest—on the contrary; he was one of the few men in the district who had not yet been in conflict with him. But he too had thought there was some secret about Sira Hallbjörn—and then his being exiled, as it were, to this parish, outside all the positions and dignities to which he might be entitled by his high birth and his learning. So Olav had half expected that one day something or other would come to light
about him. And now it seemed nothing but this, that Hallbjörn Erlingsson thrived ill down here in the lowlands and found it hard to be friends with their people, being headstrong and whimsical as fell-dwellers, often are. No doubt it was little to his liking to have the quiet charge of a parish church and be at the call of any who had need of his ministrations.

Formerly Olav had instinctively sought the company of such men as he felt to be pure of heart and faithful toward God. Without thinking of it he had shunned the black sheep when he met them. Now he felt just as much at his ease among men who were less strict—who had the name, in any case, of being not too strict with themselves, though for aught he cared they might judge others strictly. In a way he was not displeased at heart to find some fault or other in a man, especially if it were a priest or a monk. Nor did he ever inquire into rumours now; he held his peace when the talk was of such things, but lent an ear, and that no longer with repugnance or sensitiveness.

He thought too of what Sira Hallbjörn had said about Eirik and it vexed him. But he did not care to speak to the boy about it—much better seem to know nothing. But he would have to forbid the boy haunting Rundmyr.

And he did so. But Eirik did not obey. Olav came to hear of it. Sometimes he spoke harshly to his son about it, but at other times he let it pass, as though he did not know Eirik had been there.

He had acted foolishly in letting Anki and Liv have Rundmyr. If they would only keep to what was his—that he could afford to wink at—but now there were murmurs abroad, folk found that there were light fingers at Rundmyr. At last Olav had to take Arnketil to task about it: “Meseems you two might live awhile on what you pick up at Hestviken.” The man promised to mend his ways—but Olav was not so sure that the promise was worth much.

And now it might be difficult to be rid of them. When Arnketil came and asked him to hold their babe at the font, he had not the heart to refuse the poor simple man. Moreover he thought that if he agreed to be godfather to the boy, no one could suspect him of commerce with the mother. It never entered Olav’s mind that, so far as he knew, no one had had such a thought; it was only himself who feared folk might hit upon this. There had been a hint of it when she had her first child—but then he was common talk over the matter of Torhild, and there are always those who are
ready to make a man blacker than he is. But by accepting the godchild, he had now bound himself to support its parents.

To Eirik, Arnketil had been in some sort as a foster-father, so it was not easy to part the lad entirely from him. And Liv came out to Hestviken with her babe on her back—stayed there the whole day, dealing out good advice to the serving-women and talking of how everything had been done when she was in charge.

Torhild had turned out right in saying he acted unwisely in housing such people so near to the manor. Olav thought of it with a dull bitterness: that he could be so placed that he could not bring in Torhild and profit by her sensible advice.

It was a vexation to Olav that Eirik forced himself thus upon his notice and his thoughts. And again and again he came upon this incomprehensible mendacity. Each time it was like a riddle to Olav. He had told lies himself, hard and cold enough to split rocks—he had not forgotten that—but then he had known why he lied; he had lied because he was forced to it. But Eirik lied and lied, and his father could never espy anything that looked like a plausible reason—he did not lie for gain and he seldom lied for concealment. Olav had seen that, though he had not been so careful to note how seldom Eirik attempted to deny or to lie if he were asked a straight question: the lad was quite ready to confess even his worst misdeeds; falteringly, blushing and blinking, he said how it was, if he were asked. So it was almost as though Eirik made up these lying stories of his because it amused him—incomprehensible as such a thing seemed to Olav.

Year in and year out Olav’s feelings for the child had swung between a vague longing to be able to like this young being who had been placed in his power—and dislike of this stranger who was as a thorn buried in his flesh. Now at last they were coming to rest for good. There were times when Eirik’s incomprehensible and positively high-spirited mendacity aroused hatred in Olav’s heart: as though the very lie he had taken upon himself as a yoke were incarnate in Eirik’s person, mocking him in the smile of the fairy-like, brown-eyed boy.

Nevertheless there were other times when it was not so.

This second summer after his wife’s death Olav had to attend the Eidsiva Thing. He was short-handed now at Hestviken and
could not easily take any man from his work. So it came about that Eirik was to ride with his father.

Olav had little mind to this long journey, nor had he any great desire to meet his brother-in-law. He had not been north of Oslo in all the thirteen years since he had brought home Ingunn, except that one time when he fetched Eirik, and then it had been winter.

Now he took the summer road northward through Raumarike. It was fine, sunny weather, but warm for travelling in the middle of the day. So they found a suitable place near the road; Eirik unsaddled the horses and hobbled them. After their meal Olav and Eirik stretched themselves on the ground. The lad fell asleep at once.

Olav lay with his head on his saddle, gazing before him through the tissue of grass. The meadow was golden yellow with buttercups, flower upon flower, and round the little brown watercourse below were silvery tufts of bog-cotton. Beyond the brook blazed a mass of red campion in the shade of the alders. He looked at the flowers as though they were old acquaintances he had met again after an interval of years: it was true he noticed at home too when this grass or that came out, taking auguries from it of how the summer would turn out. But here as he lay idly watching the flowers blooming on land of which he knew not the owner, it was different—bringing back to him in some measure the tracts in which he had spent his youth.

Great silver-grey clouds shining at the verge welled up over the fir-tops and spread quietly and with wonderful swiftness over the whole warm blue sky—down on the ground not a breath stirred. Now they came over and put out the sunshine. Olav drew his cloak over his face because of the midges and slept.

In the course of the afternoon they came out of a forest and saw a great manor lying before them under the sinking sun. It looked like some great man’s seat there on the top of its mound, with a little white stone church to the north of the group of houses, and the meadows surrounding it on every side. Eirik cried out with joy, so grand it seemed to him. Olav made no reply to his exclamation.

The bridle-path led up the hill and straight through the manor. This was no less imposing when one came up to it, with countless
houses, new and old, in two rows by the side of the way, and every sign of activity and habitation.

When they had come down into the valley and were riding by the bank of a river, Olav asked Eirik: “Know you what that manor is called, Eirik?”

“Nay?” asked the boy eagerly.

“That was Dyfrin.”

“Was it!” After a while Eirik said in a hushed voice, with strong emotion:
“We
should have been there, if we had our rights—is it not so, Father?”

“So it is.” Olav rode in silence for a few moments. Then he asked with a sort of smile: “Which of the two manors do you like best, Eirik—Dyfrin or Hestviken?”

“Hestviken,” answered Eirik warmly, without hesitation.

“Dyfrin is more than twice as large—you could see that?”

“No matter. At Dyfrin they have not the sea either—or wharves or boats. But ’tis galling to call to mind the injustice. Methinks a man who worked so much injustice to the landholders of the country as that Sverre—he could not be fitted to be king—”

“Some injustice must be done by every man who will gain his cause,” replied Olav.

Eirik wished to hear of the old traditions—of Torgils Fivil and his sons and of the widow whom King Sverre gave to one of his men. Olav replied to his questions. But then they saw the road lying before them across a sandy plain, level and easy, and Olav urged on the horses; with that their talk came to an end.

Hallvard Steinfinnsson gave a hearty welcome both to his brother-in-law and to his nephew. With the passing of years Hallvard had grown very like his father, Olav saw, and he also resembled Steinfinn in his ways; he was merry, open-handed and not over-wise. He had the eldest son of Tora and Haakon Gautsson with him at the Thing. Eirik had looked forward with great joy to meeting his mother’s kindred, but though they were so friendly to him, Eirik seemed unusually shy, and he kept close to his father at all times and places while the Thing lasted.

Quite unexpectedly Olav met his kinsmen from Tveit in Soleyar at the gathering: Gudbrand and Jon Helgessons with two sons and a son-in-law. Olav had met the men of Tveit only once before
—at the time he was engaged in discharging the fines for the slaying of Einar Kolbeinsson, and then he had thought they gave themselves little trouble for a young kinsman. Now they were getting on in years, both he and the Helgessons, and it seemed late to take up the ties of kinship. But he exchanged words with them when they met. And on one of the last days of the gathering, when Hallvard had asked Olav to come and drink with him at his inn, he found the men of Tveit there; Hallvard had fetched them in to show courtesy to his brother-in-law.

Hallvard lodged in the same house Steinfinn had used when he came to the Thing. Olav could not recall it; he was not sure that this hall they now sat drinking in was the same in which they had betrothed him to Ingunn. Apart from that he remembered everything so clearly—Ingunn and Steinfinn and his own father—ay, he scarce remembered his father apart from that evening—and many of the guests’ faces he could recall as though it were yesterday.

Olav was very taciturn the whole evening, but the others paid no heed to that; they drank, and at last they seemed entirely to forget that he sat there. But what chiefly occupied Olav’s attention was Eirik—he kept so quiet and was utterly unlike himself as they were used to seeing him at home.

The lad sat on the outer bench together with the younger ones from Tveit. Olav looked at him: old feelings, by no means unfriendly, were strangely revived in him—during the journey Eirik had not chanced to do anything that might irritate his father. He sat there very quiet and well-mannered, talking easily in low tones with Knut and Joar. The dark-skinned, sharp-featured boyish face was beginning to put on a maturer look: the forehead was high and narrow under the shock of black hair, the nose was high and thin, hooked, or rather indented, from the very root down to the bridge; the mouth was prominent, with a pronounced curve in the upper jaw; when listening he was apt to show something of his front teeth, and they were very white; the two midmost were very slightly crossed. Nevertheless his face was far from ugly: he had a fine complexion, red-cheeked and browned by the sun, the lips bright red, the eyes unusually large and pale brown, so light that they made one think of amber, or bog-water in sunlight. Olav felt, as a fleeting quiver through his mind, that here he sat in company with his own kinsmen and brother-in-law, and
he found little to say to them. And underneath the honest, open ties that bound him to the others, the ties of blood and of the law, he was joined to this slender, swarthy lad who sat like a stranger among the fair, red Tveit boys—he knew not himself how indissolubly.

Hallvard had wine, and so it was near midnight before the guests broke up. It was a half hour’s walk down to the booth where Olav lay, and at the parting of the roads he stood awhile talking to some men who were going the other way. Then he walked on quickly with Eirik. The night was mild and so light that the moon seemed quite pale and faint. When they had gone some distance they heard the men of Tveit before them on the road—they were drunken and noisy, and Olav had no desire for their company. So he turned out of the path with Eirik; they strolled along the hillside, which was covered with great rocks and juniper and other bushes; a few dun horses grazed among the tussocks in the moonlight.