The Axe (24 page)

But as it drew on toward summer, it became clear that there was no natural cause for Ingunn’s disorder, and no one could guess what ailed her.

Arnvid wondered whether it could be sorrow alone that had broken her down so completely—for she grew no better, but rather worse: the fainting-fits gained upon her, and often she fell into a swoon, all the food she tried to eat came up again, and she
complained of constant pains in the back across her hips, as though she had had a heavy blow with a stick—and there was such a queer feeling in her legs, as though they were withered; she was scarcely able to walk any more.

She longed for Olav day and night, Arnvid could see that, and then there was her sorrow over her parents, which had now come upon her again; for a while she had half forgotten it on Olav’s account. But now she accused herself bitterly for this, saying she had thrown away by her fault a happiness that bade fair to be hers: “The night that mother died I became Olav’s wife!”

A strange look came over Arnvid’s face as she said this, but he held his peace.

She grieved also at being parted from her brothers and sister. Tora was at Berg with her aunt, and though there had never been any very warm affection between Ingunn and Tora, she now longed for her sister. But it was far sadder to think of her two young brothers; with them she had always been good friends, but now they were at Frettastein with Haftor and his young wife—and now of course Hallvard and Jon would be brought up in hatred of Olav Audunsson and anger with her.

She spoke of all this to Arnvid, without many tears—but it was almost as though she were too hopeless and heavy of heart to be able to weep. Arnvid wondered whether she would die of grief.

But Mistress Ingebjörg hinted that this sickness that had fallen upon Ingunn was so strange as almost to persuade her it was the work of some
guile
.

One evening at the beginning of summer Arnvid was able to coax Ingunn to walk down with him to look at the corn that was coming up so finely in the fair weather. He had to support her as she walked, and he saw that she moved her feet as though they were hindered by invisible fetters. He had got her as far as the edge of the wood when she suddenly sank to the ground and lay in a swoon. At long last he succeeded in bringing her back to life; so long he thought her fits had never lasted before. She could not stand on her feet, so he had to carry her in as one carries a child. She was so thin and weighed so little that he was quite scared.

Next morning it proved that she could not move her legs—the lower part of her body was quite paralysed. At first she lay
moaning softly—the pains in her back were so grievous. But as the days went by they passed off, and now her body seemed to be entirely without feeling, from the waist downward. In this state she remained. She never complained, spoke but little, and often seemed absent from all around her. The only thing she asked for was to have Steinar with her, and when he crept up into the bed and played and frolicked over her half-dead body, which was now wasted to a skeleton, she appeared to be content.

During this time none knew where Olav was. Arnvid thought that Ingunn must surely die, and he could send no word to Olav of how matters were with her.

But Mistress Hillebjörg now said aloud to everyone she spoke with that it was certain someone had put the sickness upon Ingunn by witchcraft. She had stuck pins into the woman’s thighs and calves and burned her with red-hot irons, but Ingunn felt nothing; she could bring witnesses to this, men and women of good repute and her parish priest and her son. But there was none beside Kolbein and Haftor who could be suspected of this misdeed. And here lay the unhappy child, wasting away and slowly dying. Now therefore she charged her son that he should call upon the Bishop to take up the matter and inquire into it.

Arnvid came near believing his mother had guessed rightly, and he promised to go to the lord Torfinn, as soon as the Bishop came home from his visitation. Meanwhile he made Ingunn speak to the priest and make her confession, and he had masses said for her. Thus the time passed till the birthday of our Lady.
That day Arnvid had confessed and taken
corpus Domini
, and during mass he had prayed for his sick kinswoman so long and so earnestly that he was all in a sweat. It was past noonday before the church folk from Miklebö came home. Arnvid stood talking to Guttorm about his horse Elk, which had fallen lame as he rode homeward, when he heard loud cries for help from the room in which Ingunn lay.

He and Guttorm dashed headlong to the room. There they saw Ingunn, running barefoot and in her shift and tramping on the floor—the room was full of smoke and the straw was alight among the rugs she had thrown upon it. She held Steinar in her arms; he was wrapped in the bedspread, shrieking and wailing.

When the others came in, she sank down on the bench, kissing
and fondling the boy and trying to lull him: “Steinar, Steinar, my darling, now you will soon be better, now I will make you so well, my little one!” She called to the others that Steinar had burned himself and they must bring her cloths and ointment at once.

She had been lying alone, and Steinar was in the room with her; he had been sitting by the hearth, where a tiny fire was burning, and although the woman in the bed told him he must not, he had played with it, sticking dry twigs into the fire and letting them burn. The day was warm, and the boy had nothing on but a shirt—all at once the fire caught it. Then Ingunn knew no more till she was standing by the hearth with the child in her arms; she had put out the fire in his shirt by throwing the coverlet about him; but now she saw that the rushes with which the floor was strewed were burning, and so she threw down the cushions from the benches and trampled the fire as she cried for help.

The boy had been burned about the body, but Ingunn too had ugly burns on her legs and on the under side of both arms. But she heeded nothing but Steinar; they were not allowed to bind her wounds until the child had been tended, and then she laid him in her bed and lay watching over him, fondling and wheedling the poor little thing. And as long as the boy had fever and pain from his burns, she gave no thought to other things.

The palsy had slipped from her—she herself seemed scarce aware of it. She ate and drank what they brought her, greedily and unthinking, and the terrible vomiting and dizziness had altogether ceased. Arnvid sat by Steinar day and night, and, cruelly as it hurt him to see the boy suffer so, he nevertheless thanked God for the miracle that had happened to Ingunn.

From now on she quickly grew better, and when Steinar was well enough to be carried out into the sun to look at the snow that had fallen in the night, Ingunn had got back a little of her delicate roundness of face and form, and her cheeks flushed pink in the frosty air. She stood with Steinar on her arm waiting for Arnvid, who was away among the rocks collecting frozen haws in his hat—Steinar had said his father
must
find some berries for him.

The prospects of a reconciliation between Arnvid and the rest of Ingunn’s kinsfolk had not been improved by these rumours Mistress Hillebjörg had spread abroad about Kolbein—that he
had had spells cast upon his niece to bring her to her death. And when the betrothal ale was drunk at Frettastein, for Haakon Gautsson and Tora Steinfinnsdatter, a short time before Advent, no one from Miklebö was present at the ceremony. The wedding was held at the New Year in 1282, and afterwards the newly married pair went round visiting the young wife’s kinsfolk, for Haakon was the youngest of many brothers and had no house of his own in the westland. It was intended that he should settle in the Upplands.

But now there came word from the lady Magnhild of Berg that she wished to take Ingunn. Ivar and Kolbein had promised that they would leave the girl in peace if she would stay there quietly and live in chastity. Arnvid swore horribly when Brother Vegard told him this, but he could not deny that he had no legal right to dispose of Ingunn. And Mistress Hillebjörg was beginning to be tired of her guest: now that Ingunn was well she had no patience with the young woman, who was only for show and no use at all. And the message Lady Magnhild had sent was no more than was reasonable: she had her old mother with her, Aasa Magnusdatter, the widow of Tore of Hov; the old lady was infirm and had need of her granddaughter for help and pastime.

Just before Easter, then, Arnvid went to Berg with Ingunn.

Lady Magnhild was the eldest of all Tore’s true-born children; she was now a woman of two score years and ten—the same age as her half-brother Kolbein Toresson. She was the widow of the knight Viking Erlingsson. Children she had never had; in order to do good, therefore, she took to herself young maids, the daughters of kinsmen or friends, and taught them courtesy and such attainments as were suited to women of good birth; for Lady Magnhild had seen much of the King’s court while her husband was alive. She had also offered to receive her nieces from Frettastein, but Steinfinn—or Ingebjörg—had been unwilling to send the little maids to her, and Lady Magnhild had been exceeding angry thereat. So when it came out that Ingunn had let herself be ensnared by her foster-brother, she said it had turned out as she expected: the children had been ill brought up, and their mother had been disobedient to her father and false to her betrothed, so it seemed most likely that Steinfinn’s daughters would bring shame on their race.

Ingunn was tired and low-spirited as she sat in the sledge on the last stage of the journey through the forest. They had been several days on the road, for the weather had set in mild, with snow, as soon as they left Miklebö. Now toward evening it froze hard, and Arnvid walked beside the sledge and drove, as the road was bad—in places over bare rock, slippery with ice, in others through deep snowdrifts, for no one had passed this way since the last snowfall.

When they came out of the woods, the sun was low above the ridge facing them; it was an orange ball behind the mist, and the dark, rugged ice of the bay had a dull and coppery gleam. The mist had frosted the snow-covered woods and fens, so that all was grey and ugly as evening drew on. Down in the fields Arnvid’s men struggled on; they and the sledge with the baggage went straight ahead through the snow. The manor lay down by the water, at some distance from the other houses of the parish—the woods formed a barrier, so that from Berg one could not see any of the other great farms about.

Ingunn had not seen her aunt since she came to Hamar, well-nigh a year and a half ago, and then the lady of Berg had been harsh toward her. She did not expect much good of the lady Magnhild this time either.

Arnvid hoisted himself onto the edge of the sledge, as it dipped into the first hollow.

“Look not so sorrowful, Ingunn,” he begged her. “ ’Twill be hard parting from you, if you are so faint-hearted.”

Ingunn said: “Faint-hearted I am not; you know that I have not complained. But I shall not be in the hands of friends here. Pray to God for me, kinsman, that I may keep a firm mind, for I look to be sorely tried, so long as I must bide here at Berg.”

But as they drove into the courtyard the lady Magnhild herself came out and received Ingunn in friendly fashion. She led her niece into the women’s room and bade the maids bring warm drinks and dry footgear. She herself helped the young woman to take off her fur-lined boots and coat of skins. But then she said, taking hold of a corner of Ingunn’s coif: “This you must now put off.”

Ingunn turned red. “I have worn the coif ever since I was at Hamar. The Bishop bade me cover my hair—he said no virtuous
woman goes bareheaded when she is no longer a maid.”

“He!”
sneered Lady Magnhild. “He has so many fancies—But now so much time has passed that the gossip has died down hereabouts. I will not have you blow fresh life into the rumours of your own shame by going here like a fool in married woman’s attire. Take off the kerchief and turn your belt again. ’Twas a mercy at least that you were never
forced
to buckle it at the side.”

Ingunn wore a leather belt around her waist, set with little silver studs and handsomely mounted at the end that hung down. Lady Magnhild took hold of it and pulled it straight, so that the buckle came in front. Again she ordered Ingunn to take off her head-covering.

“All
know
this about me,” said Ingunn hotly. “If I do this, folk must think worse of me and deem me an immodest woman—if I am to go bareheaded when I have no right to that—as the wantons do.”

Lady Magnhild said: “There is your grandmother too, Ingunn; she is old now. She remembers well enough all things that happened in her youth, but new tidings she forgets as soon as she hears them. Every day we should have to tell her afresh why you were to go in matron’s dress.”

“ ’Twould be easy to answer her that my husband is gone away.”

“And soon it will come to Kolbein’s ears that you stand by the old claims, and his hatred of Olav will never cool down. Be reasonable now, Ingunn, and cease these follies.”

Ingunn unbound her coif and began to fold it together. It was the finest she had—four ells long and sewed with silk. Hillebjörg had given it her the year before, saying she could use it for a church-going coif and wear it the first time she went to mass with Olav, when he came home.

She drew the pins out of her hair and let the heavy yellow locks fall about her shoulders.

“And such goodly hair you have,” said Lady Magnhild. “Most women would be glad to make boast of it awhile longer, Ingunn—if they could have no joy of their man, and the coif brought them no power or authority. Let it hang loose this evening, I pray you.”

“Oh no, aunt,” begged Ingunn, almost in tears.
“That
you must
never ask me!” She divided her mass of hair and bound it in two plaits, stiff and unadorned.

Arnvid was already sitting at the table when Lady Magnhild and Ingunn came into the room. He looked up, and his eyes clouded over.

“Is it thus they will have it here?” he asked later, when they said good-night to each other. “You are not to be allowed the honour of a married woman?”