The Axe (15 page)

“The ring I pledged her with—Steinfinn has it in his coffer, I know it,” Olav broke in hotly.

“You may know it; Steinfinn is not like to have made away with any of your goods, my Olav, but your kinsmen shall witness that not a button is missing when they come to receive them on your behalf.”

Olav’s breath came quick and short.

Kolbein went on: “You must see plainly, Olav, no man of sound mind gives away his children thus, in his drink—”

“Steinfinn did it—I know not whether he were a man of sound mind-”

“—except all covenants about marriage portions and the like were made beforehand. You must know, had Steinfinn thus bound himself to Audun Ingolfsson, he would have said no straight out when I spoke to him this spring of Ingunn for the son of a friend of mine—”

“What said he then?” asked Olav breathlessly.

“He said neither yes nor no, but promised to listen to the man; we spoke of it again when we conferred about this other matter—that it might profit us greatly if Ingunn were married into that kindred. But I stand by what I have said to you, Olav: gladly will we kinsmen help you to a good match—”

“I have not asked you that; I was promised Ingunn—”

Arnvid interposed: “ ’Twas one of the last words Steinfinn spoke, Ivar—on the morning of his death—that had he himself been able to give away Ingunn, he would have chosen Olav for son-in-law.”

“Ay, that is likely enough,” said Kolbein, rising from his seat and coming forward; “but now it falls out, Arnvid, that Steinfinn
could
not do it.
You
should be old and wise enough to see that we cannot turn away the man who can give us most support in our troubles, because Olav has taken for earnest a game they played with him once when he was a little boy.
You
went unwilling enough to your bridal bed, Arnvid—’tis strange you should make such haste to push your friend into his. Belike Olav will thank us one day that we did not let him have his will in such childish fancies—”

With that he and Ivar went to the closed bed in which Steinfinn had been used to sleep before the raid; they lay down and shut the door.

Arnvid went up to Olav; the young man had not moved and his eyes were fixed on the floor; his face twitched again and again. Arnvid bade him come and lie down.

“ ’Twas lucky you curbed yourself so that it came not to angry words between Kolbein and you,” said Arnvid as they undressed in the dark behind the pillars.

A sound like a snort came from Olav.

Arnvid went on: “Else it would have been hard to bring this matter to a good ending—Kolbein could have claimed that you
should leave the house at once. Let him not mark that your heart is so set upon getting Ingunn and none other—then ’twill be easier.”

Olav said nothing. He was used to sleeping on the outer side, but as they were getting into bed, Arnvid asked: “You must let me sleep outside tonight, friend—that ale tonight was not good; I feel sick from it.”

“I had no good of it either,” said Olav with a short laugh.

But he lay down on the inside against the wall. Arnvid was just falling asleep when he felt Olav get up and try to step over him.

“Where are you going?” asked his friend, taking hold of him.

“I am thirsty,” muttered Olav. Arnvid heard him grope his way over to the tub of whey and water; he ladled some out and drank.

“Now come and lie down,” Arnvid bade him.

And indeed Olav soon came pattering back, crept into the bed, and lay down.

“It were much best you say nothing to Ingunn of the answer we have had, till we have taken counsel what course to pursue,” whispered Arnvid earnestly.

Olav lay quiet a good while before he answered: “Ay, ay.” He sighed deeply. “So be it, then.”

Arnvid felt a little easier after that. But he dared not abandon himself to sleep before he heard that the young man was in a deep slumber.

T
HE SNOW
was falling thickly when Olav came out into the yard at dusk on St. Catherine’s Eve.
It was the first snowfall of the year; his footprints showed black on the ground as he ran across to the stable.

He stood for a moment before the stable door, watching the whirling mass of white. His eyes blinked as the snowflakes fell on his long lashes; they felt like a light caress against his skin. The forest below the manor on the north and east, which in the
autumn nights had been full of gloom and desolation, now seemed near and shone like a white and friendly wall through the driving snow and the gathering darkness. Olav felt glad at the snow.

Someone within the stable was speaking in a loud voice—the door flew open behind him, and a man dashed out as if he had been thrown. He pitched against Olav, and both went to the ground. The other got onto his feet and shouted back to someone standing in the doorway, a vague black figure in the pale gleam of the lantern: “Here is one more for you to show your manhood on, Arnvid”—with which he ran off into the snow and the darkness.

Olav shook himself and dived in under the doorway. “What was that with Gudmund?”—when in the shadow behind Arnvid he caught sight of a girl in tears.

“Out with you, foul slut,” Arnvid said to her, furious. The woman slunk crouching past the men and out. Arnvid barred the door behind her.

“What is it?” asked Olav again.

“Oh—no great thing, as you may think,” said Arnvid hotly. He picked up the little lantern and hung it on the hook; Olav saw that he was trembling with agitation. “Naught else but that now every whoreson who serves about the place seems to think he dare scorn me because—because—I have said I will not have womenfolk in the stables; ’tis unfitting. Gudmund answered me that I should rather keep a watch on the bowers here and on my kinswomen.”

Olav turned away. In the darkness beyond, the horses could be heard crunching their fodder and stamping their feet. The nearest stretched its neck and snorted at Olav, and the flame of the lantern was reflected in its dark eyes.

“Did you hear?” Arnvid insisted.

Olav turned to the horse and did not answer. He felt in agony that he was blushing violently.

“What have you to say to that?” asked Arnvid hotly.

“What would you have me say?” answered Olav in a low voice. “As my case stood—after the answer Kolbein gave me—you cannot well be surprised—that I followed your advice.”

“My—advice!”

“The advice you gave me that day we spoke together up in
the woods. You said that when two persons under age have been betrothed by their lawful guardians, none has the right to part them, but if they agree to follow the designs of their parents, there is no need of more; they can come together as married folk—”

“That I have never said!”

“I mind me not how the words went. But such I guessed to be your meaning.”

“My meaning!” whispered Arnvid, deeply moved. “Nay, Olav—what I meant—I—I thought you knew—”

“No. What meant you, then?” asked Olav point-blank, turning toward the other. Driven by a sense of utter shame, he hardened himself, looked his friend defiantly in the eyes, while his face was on fire.

But Arnvid Finnsson dropped his eyes before the younger man and blushed in his turn. What he had thought he could not say. And he found it hard to undeceive himself now. Confusion and shame made him speechless. That he had kept up familiar friendship with a man whom he himself believed to be the seducer of his kinswoman—how ill it looked he seemed not to have guessed till now. It was as though he had not seen its ugly, dishonourable side before—because Olav seemed so honourable all through, he had been blind to the dishonour—when it was Olav.

Nor could he believe it now—that Olav stood there lying to him. He had always held Olav to be the most truthful of all men. And he clutched at it now—Olav’s words must be worthy of belief. He himself must have wronged his friend with his suspicion in the summer—so it must be. There had been nothing unseemly between the two, though they had been together at night in the summer.

“I have ever thought well of you, Olav,” he said. “Believed you jealous of your honour—”

“Then you could not well expect,” Olav broke in hotly, still staring the other in the face, “that I should lie down tamely and let the Toressons trample on my honour and cheat me of my right. I will not go home to my own country in such guise that every man may mock at me and say I let these men defraud me of the marriage I should have made. You know that they use fraud against me, Kolbein and those—you remember how I got back my ring?”

Arnvid nodded. When the property was divided, Kolbein had given back to Olav the chests of movables which Steinfinn had taken charge of for his foster-son. But then Olav’s mother’s signet-ring was among these goods, threaded on a ribbon together with some other rings. And Olav could not say a word about his having lately seen the ring lying among Steinfinn’s own treasures.

“And in
my
eyes it concerns my father’s honour too,” Olav continued excitedly, “if I am to let strangers set at naught his last will and the promises given to him before he died! And Steinfinn—you heard yourself what he said; but he knew well enough, poor man, that he had not the power to carry it against those overbearing brothers of his. Are Ingunn’s father and my father to have so little respect in their graves that they are not to be allowed the right to dispose of their own children’s marriage?”

Arnvid reflected, a long time.

“None the less, Olav,” he said slowly, “you must not now do such things as—go to her in her bower and meet her secretly so that all the house-folk know of it. God knows, I should not have kept my counsel so long—but it seemed to me an ill thing to speak of. You have not been afraid to show
me
disrespect.”

Olav made no answer—and Arnvid felt sorry for him when he looked at him. Arnvid said: “I deem, Olav, since it has come to this between you and her, that
you
must take charge of the manor here.”

Olav looked up with a question in his eyes.

“Declare to the house-folk here that you will not give way to the new sponsors, but hold them to the bargain Steinfinn and your father made and take your wife to yourself. Step into the master’s bed with Ingunn and declare that now you think that
you
are next of kin to have charge for Hallvard and Jon, so long as you and Ingunn stay here in the north.”

Olav stood biting his lip; his cheeks were burning. At first Arnvid’s advice tempted him—unspeakably. This was the plain road out of all the furtive dealings by night and by stealth which, he felt, were making him a meaner and weaklier man. Take Ingunn by the hand and boldly lead her to the bed and high seat left by Steinfinn and Ingebjörg. Then let them talk about
that
, all these folk about the place who giggled and muttered behind his
back—though as yet they had not dared to come out with it before him.

But then his courage sank when he thought of carrying it out. It was their sneers, their nasty little words. They were so apt at that, the people hereabout—with an innocent look, making it hard for a man to return an answer and defend himself, they dropped a few sly words with a sting in them. Many a time the malice in their speech was hidden so cunningly that it was a little while before he guessed what the men were smiling at, when one of them broke off, with too unconcerned an air, or gave a start.—Without being aware of it he had striven in all his doing at Frettastein so to conduct himself as to give them no occasion to make that sort of game of
him
. Until now he had succeeded in some measure—he knew that his fellow servants liked him well enough, and stood in a sort of awe of him, as happens when a man is sparing of words, but is known not to be a fool; thus he may easily be accounted wiser than he is. As yet none had dared to hint at what all knew of him and Ingunn—no word, at least, had come to his ears.

But he flinched at the thought—the laughter and the jesting would break out sure enough when he himself made no secret of the matter and offered to take over the stewardship of the farm, where he had been reckoned a young lad until this year. Insensibly Olav’s view of himself and of his position on Steinfinn’s estate had changed—he no longer counted Frettastein as the home to which he had belonged as one of the children of the house. The chance words that had trickled into his mind, the fact that Ingunn’s kinsmen disregarded him, the stings of an evil conscience and the sense of shame at all he had done in secret, made him see himself in a meaner light than before.

And then there was this—that he was so young; all the other men of the place were much older than he. He was well used, indeed, to their counting him and Ingunn as not yet fully grown. And he blushed at the thought of having to own that he was living with a woman—when no grown man had led him forward and accepted him in the ranks of husbands. Without that he could not feel that it was
real
.

At length he replied: “ ’Tis not to be done, Arnvid. Think you either man or woman here would obey me if I tried to command?
Grim or Josep or Gudmund? Or would Dalla willingly give up her keys to Ingunn?”

“No; Ingunn would have to be content to wear the coif—” Arnvid gave a little laugh—“till you can give her the keys of Hestviken.”

“Nay, Arnvid; they go in fear of Kolbein, every mother’s child here—what you counsel is impossible.”

“Then I know of only one other way—and this counsel I should have given you long ago, God forgive me. Go to Hamar and put your case in the Bishop’s hands.”

“In Bishop Torfinn’s? I trow not I can look for much mercy of
him,”
said Olav slowly.

“Your right you may look for,” replied Arnvid. “In this question it is only Holy Church that can judge. You two
can
only be married to each other.”

“Who knows if the pious father will not order us to be monk and nun, send us to the cloister to expiate our sin?”

“He will assuredly make you do penance to the Church for going to your bride without banns or wedding. But if you can bring forward witnesses that the betrothal is valid—and that I think we can surely do—he will demand of the Toressons that they accept offers of honourable atonement—”