In the Wilderness (3 page)

The Richardsons returned to Oslo, and Eirik guessed that his father had made a bargain with them. But now he dared not ask whether he would be allowed to go too. What deterred him was that not even this last misbehaviour of his had sufficed to drive his father out of his sinister silence. When Olav suddenly appeared beside the sledge, Eirik had been so sure that now he would be given a thrashing—he winced already under his father’s hard hand. But afterwards he felt it as a terrible disappointment that nothing had happened. Blows, curses, the most savage threats he would have accepted—and returned, inwardly, at any rate—and felt it as a relief, if only it put an end to this baneful uncertainty—not knowing what to make of his father.

Olav would sit of an evening staring straight at Eirik—and the boy could not tell whether his father were looking at him or through him at the wall, so queerly far-away were his eyes. Eirik grew red and unsteady beneath this gaze which he could not read. Sometimes Olav noticed his uneasiness: “What is it with you, Eirik?” There was a shadow of suspicion in his voice. Eirik found no answer. But it might chance that he collected himself, seized upon something that had happened during the day, and poured out his story, usually of how much work he had performed or of some remarkable thing that had befallen him—when he came to speak of it to his father, everything became far more important than he had guessed at first. Most commonly it fell out that long before Eirik had finished he found that his father was no longer listening—he had glided back into his own thoughts. But the worst was when his father finally gave the faintest of smiles and said quietly and coolly: “Great deeds are common when you are abroad.” Or “Ay, you are a stout fellow, Eirik—one need only ask yourself to find that out.”

Yet Eirik did his best, when talking to his father, to remember everything as it had happened and to say nothing beyond that. But when his tongue was set going, it came so difficult to him—before he knew it he was relating an incident as it might have
happened, or as he thought it ought to have happened. Another thing was that the house-folk egged him on to tell everything in the way that was most amusing to listen to. They knew as well as Eirik that he tricked out his truthful tales with a few trimmings, but they agreed with him that so it ought to be, and not one of them betrayed a knowledge that Eirik was apt to tell a little more than the truth. It was only his father who was so cross and dull of apprehension and always required to be told everything so baldly and exactly.

But one day his father should be forced to say it in earnest—that Eirik was a brave fellow. Of that he was resolved.

For that matter, Eirik now gave a good account of himself, for his age, both on the farm and in a boat. He had not much strength in his arms, was slender and lightly built, but tough and tenacious, so long as he did not trifle away his time and forget to do what he had been set to. But, for all that, the house-carls were glad to have Eirik working with them—he was of a kindly and cheerful humour so long as no one provoked him, but then he was quick to anger. He had also a fine, clear voice for all kinds of catches and decoy songs and working-chants.

This spring both Tore and Arnketil spoke to the master about him, praising his industry and handiness. Olav nodded, but seemed not to see the expectant look on the boy’s face. And much as Eirik strove to please his father and serve him—well, sometimes Olav did remember to thank him. And at other times he appeared quite unaware of it when Eirik gave him such help as he could; he accepted it without looking at the boy or giving him so much as a nod.

Then Eirik’s anger flared up. He turned over in his mind something he would do simply to vex his father—
then
maybe he would remember to chastise him at any rate. But when it came to the point he did not dare—for that would end all chance of his going on the voyage to England.

In the week after Whitsunday, Olav Audunsson sailed up to Oslo, and ten days later the Richardsons’ little hoy lay alongside the quay at Hestviken. The freight that Olav was to take was soon loaded, though he had charged himself with some trifles for Baard Paalsson of Skikkjustad; skins and pig-iron. Apart from this,
Olav had not been able to get hold of any goods in the country round at this unfavourable time of year. The very next day Olav’s boats towed the hoy out of the creek; they came out into the fiord and hoisted sail. It was a bright, calm morning of early summer.

Eirik had been on board, helping to stow the cargo and talking to the men. There was not a strip of plank or boarding, not a block or a rope’s end, that he had not pried into and handled.

Toward evening the boy sat on the lookout rock gazing after the little craft, which was now sinking out of view far away to the south. He went down to the quay, cast off his own boat, and rowed away under the Bull.

Some way up the headland there was a green ledge, and in the middle of it lay some great rocks. On the biggest of these grew three firs; Eirik called it the King. One could crawl in between these rocks; underneath the King there was a little hollow like a cave, and here he had a hiding-place.

On this side of the Bull there was only one place where one could land from a boat and climb up by a cleft in the rock. Otherwise one had to row round to the north side, or else up to the head of the creek. And toward the water this ledge ended in a sheer drop. Eirik had thought many a time that if a man were surrounded by his enemies up on that ledge, he could leap out, swim a long way under water, and save himself, before the others found the path down to their boat.

But this evening he was so sad and heavy of heart that there was no solace in the thought of these things. He crept into his cave and took out his possessions, but felt none of the old thrill and joy of ownership when he sat with them in his lap. He had not had them out more than once before this year—and then he had overhauled his treasures with the same intense delight as of yore.

There were two wooden boxes, turned on the lathe. The little one he had used for collecting rosin in summer, but now it held nothing but some scraps of little birds’ eggs that he had kept because they were redder than most. In the other box he had the bones of a strange fish. It had been caught in the nets one day, several years ago; neither his father nor the boatmen had seen the like of it before, and so Olav ordered them to throw it into the sea—it looked likely to be poisonous. But Eirik saw that it had fallen between the piles of the old pier; when the men had left the waterside he rowed out and fished it up. There was no knowing
whether it was dangerous to keep its bones, or whether there might be some hidden virtue in them; therefore he had always counted them very valuable. Until now—and now even he thought they were only trash.

He also had a leather bag full of smooth and barbed flints. Under an overhanging crag above the mouth of the stream in Kverndal he found plenty of these in the gravel, but he only kept the finest, those that looked like arrow-heads. His father said they
were
arrow-heads—the Lapps had used such things in heathen times, long before the Norsemen came and settled Norway. But Eirik thought there might well be something queer about them—perhaps they were thunderbolts. He had also found a bone fishhook up there one time—a fine hook, with barbs and an eye for the line. He had thought of using it some day, when the fish would not bite; then the others would marvel at him, pulling up fish by the heap when no one else had any. But now he had lost that hook.

For all that, his dearest possession was the horse. It was roughly whittled from the root of a tree, and was not much bigger than his hand. Eirik did not know where it had come from—he had brought it with him from the place where he was fostered as a child, he believed; and he had a notion that it had been found under a rock, beneath which mound-folk dwelt—it was a gift from them. He had given away his childish toys long ago, for he saw that he was too big to play with such things without disgracing himself. But the horse seemed to be more than a toy, so he kept it up here under the King Rock.

Eirik knelt on the ground looking at the horse. It was dark and worn; one of its hind legs was so short that it stood on three, and it had an eye on only one side of its head, which stood out, a knot that had been cut away. It gave it such a weird look.

He took it up and placed it on the flat white stone that belonged to it. With closed eyes he walked backwards three times withershins about this altar, crooning softly the while:

But having accomplished this, he did not care to make the sign of the cross backwards—that was sinful, and foolish besides. He had a misgiving that the whole game had always been foolish.
He could never really have expected to see it turn into a copper horse with a silver bridle. But he had believed in a way that one day something wonderful must happen, after he had sung that ugly spell over it.

Jörund Rypa would think it a foolish game. He was always afraid that Jörund might come upon him while he was thus employed. It was not very likely—Jörund had kinsfolk who lived far up the parish and sometimes he came to stay with them, but it was scarcely to be imagined that he would show himself out here on the farthest rocks of Hestviken. Nevertheless Eirik was always afraid Jörund might come upon him. He felt in himself that Jörund would make nothing of it, would only think he was faddling here like a little child—and he could well believe that Jörund would bear the tale of it and make mock of him. Yet Jörund Rypa was, of all the lads of his own age Eirik had met, the only one of whom he wished to make a friend. But Jörund had not been in the neighbourhood for more than a year now—his home was in the east, by Eyjavatn.

Eirik sat with his hands clasped about his knees and his chin resting on them, gazing over at the manor.

It was now flooded by the evening sun, and the creek below was still as glass, so that it could not be seen where the land came to an end and the reflection began in the deep shadows under the foreshore, but below the quay with its sheds another quay stood on its head in the water, and deep down in the creek he saw the image of the sun-gilt rocks on the hill and the row of turf roofs, already slightly yellowed by the sun, and the meadows and all the fair strips of plough-land where the corn was now coming up finely and evenly—but across this mirrored Hestviken a bright wavy streak was drawn by the current.

The constant sound of bells from the wood under the Horse Crag came nearer. Ragna was calling the cows home: the herd came in sight at the gate at the brow of the wood. The line of roan and dappled cows moved forward along the edge of the top field.

Again a breath of distasteful memory crossed the boy’s mind. Just before his father went to Oslo he had sent him on an errand to Saltviken. Up on the hill he had met the cattle, and then he had gone and stuffed the cow-bell full of moss—not for any reason, it had just occurred to him to do it. But Jon, the herdsman,
had gone on about it and complained to the master when he came home in the evening. And once more the devastating thing happened that his father was moved neither to wrath nor to laughter by his prank; he only muttered something about child’s tricks and looked unconcerned.

There went Liv up the path from the quay—she had been to the shed again, with Anki no doubt. Eirik moved uneasily. His body was hot and tingling, he felt guilty and ashamed. Though indeed
he
had done nothing wrong—he could not help it if she said such things to him, and it only made him angry and ashamed when she tried to take hold of him and hug him in the dark. What did she want of him? He was not yet grown up, and she had men enough without him, the ugly trollop.

But he could not get it out of his thoughts, for he guessed that she hung about his father too. And then it all came back to him, all the evil he had had in his mind when he found out about his father and Torhild Björnsdatter—his dread and his despair, not knowing whether he were sure of his right to his father and to Hestviken, and a miry flood of foul and evil thoughts and visions, and a mortal hatred that made his cheeks go white and cold when he thought of how he hated.

His father’s fits of silence, which lasted from morning to night, the tired, drawn look of his mouth, of his eyes with their thin, filmy lids—even the way he rose to his feet after a rest, to go back to his work, as though laboriously collecting his thoughts from far away—all this filled the child’s mind with insecurity. He guessed that he was living under the same roof with a pain of such a kind that it must strike him with terror if he ever saw it laid bare. And he hated, he raged against anything in the world that prevented him from ever having peace and happy days. And at the same time the boy could see that his father was still a handsome man, and no old man. The house-folk openly discussed what maidens and widows might be reckoned a fit match, both in the parish itself and in the neighbouring districts—little joy as Olav had had of his wife for many years, they doubted not he would marry again as soon as might be.

Had not this Liv been such a loathsome creature, it were almost better—for his father could never
marry
her. Many men were content to keep a leman in their house. But then he recalled the time when Torhild was here. No, his father must
not
bring
any strange woman to dwell at Hestviken—he would not have anyone going about here, keeping the stores and dealing out the food, whispering in his father’s ear at night, asking a boon or giving a word of advice, making mischief for him and Cecilia with their father, and filling the place with her own brood the while.

From here not much more was seen of the houses of Hestviken than the row of turf roofs on the slope under the crag. The shadow crept higher and higher up the hill, but the sun still shone on the roofs and the black cliff behind, with green foliage brightening the crevices. Up on the back of the Horse the red trunks of the firs were still ablaze.

All at once the tears burst from his eyes. His love of the manor smarted like homesickness; his grief at his father’s leaving him was overwhelming. The relish had gone out of all his former joys. Eirik gave himself up entirely, he lay on the ground weeping so that the tears ran down.