The Axe (40 page)

“Be that as it may,” said Teit with the same little smile, “since it seems now that I have more part in her than you—”

“There you are mistaken, Teit. Never can you have part in her—Ingunn belongs to
us
, and whatever she may have done, we will never give her away outside our own rank.”

“Nevertheless it is mine, the child she bears—”

“Know you not, with your learning, Icelander, that an unmarried woman’s child follows the mother and has her rights, even if it be a freewoman who had been seduced by her thrall?”

“I am no thrall,” said the Icelander hotly. “Both my father and my mother came of the best stock in Iceland, though they were poor folk. And you need not fear that I shall not be able to support her, if you do but give her a fair dowry—” and he enlarged on his future prospects—he would become a man of substance if only he came to a place where he had opportunity to exercise all his art and knowledge—and he could train Ingunn to help him.

Olav called to mind the bookbinder who had been here in his youth—a master craftsman whom the Bishop of Oslo had sent up
to Lord Torfinn, that he might finish the books that had been written in the course of the year. Olav had accompanied Asbjörn All-fat to the room where they work—the wife was there helping, boring holes in the parchment, many sheets at a time, and between whiles she pushed with her elbow the great kneading-trough which she had hung by her side; within it lay her child, shrieking and grimacing and dropping the morsel it had been given to suck—till Asbjörn bade her give herself a little rest and comfort the child. He felt sorry for her, said Asbjörn. When their work was done, the Bishop sent her a winter kirtle besides the man’s wages, calling her an able woman. Olav had seen them the day they departed: the master rode a right good horse, but his wife was mounted on a little stumpy, big-bellied jade, with the infant in her arms and all their baggage stowed about her.

Ingunn thrust into such a life—holy Mother of God, no! That was not even to be thought of. Ingunn outside the rank in which she had been born and brought up; it was so crazy a thought—he simply could not understand how it had come about that a fellow who stood so utterly outside had fallen in with her.

He sat watching Teit with a cold, searching glance as the other was speaking. Amid all the rest he saw that the boy was likable in a way. Unafraid, accustomed to make his own way in the world, Olav could guess; it would need no small thing to wear him down or quell his cheerful spirit—he was so quick to smile, and it became him well. He must have grown a tough hide in his roaming life among strangers, knaves, and loose women; but—He himself had now roamed about the world for nine years; he himself had had a hand in doings that he did not care to think of when he came home to settle. But that anyone from
that
world should have stepped between him and Ingunn, should have touched her—

Touched her, so that she lay there at Berg awaiting the hour when she must go on her knees upon the floor and give herself over to the pains and humiliation of childbirth—Ingunn’s child. No one, she had said, when he asked her who the man was. He remembered that he himself had said: “No one” when she wished to know who had helped him to escape to the Earl, when he ran away from Hövdinggaard. And in those years when he had followed the Earl he had met so many, both men and women, who, he knew, would be “No one” to him when once he was settled at home in Hestviken—he had known many lads like this Teit, had
caroused with them in comradeship and liked them. But then he was a
man
, nothing else. When any from that world outside crossed the bond that held a man to his wife—then the life of both was stained for all time. A woman’s honour—that was the honour of all the men who had the duty and right of watching over her.

“Now, what say you?” asked Teit, rather impatiently.

Olav woke up—he had not heard a word of what Teit had just been saying.

“I say, you must put this—folly—out of your mind. But see that you get you out of the Upplands as quickly as you can—take the road for Nidaros today rather than tomorrow. Know you not she has grown-up brothers?—the day they hear of their sister’s misfortune, you are a dead man.”

“Oh, that is not so sure. If I say it myself, I am none of the worst at using arms. And I hold, Olav—since she was once
yours—
that you might well do something to help her to marry and retrieve her honour.”

“So you think I would count her case bettered if she married
you?”
said Olav hotly. “Hold your peace, I say—I will hear no more of this fool’s talk.”

Teit said: “Ay, then I must go to Miklebö alone. I will try it-will speak with this Arnvid. I hold that her case will be better as my wedded wife than if she is to be left with these rich kinsfolk of hers till they have tortured both her and our child to death—”

“But I once said that myself,” thought Olav, wearied out—“torture her and the child to death.—But then we were not to have a child—”

“For I have seen myself the plight she was in with the folk of Berg, ere ever this came about. And I cannot be sure that
she
will not count it a gain if she gets a man who can take her far away from this part of the country and from all of you. ’Tis true, when first she had let me have my will with her, she turned clean round, raved at me like a troll. But maybe she was affrighted—haply ’twas not so senseless as I thought at first. And until this time we had always been friends and agreed well together, and she never made it a secret that she liked me as well as I liked her—”

Liked him—so there it was. Until this moment Olav had felt no jealousy, in such a way that he could fix it on this Teit—it was
she
and her disaster that had troubled him to the depths of his being. The cause—had been “No one” to him too. But so it was,
she had liked this rascal and been good friends with him the whole summer. Ay ay, in Satan’s name, the boy was comely, brisk, and full of life. She had liked him so well that she let him have his will—afterwards she had taken fright.—But she had given herself to this swarthy, curly-haired Icelander, in the kindness of her heart.

“So you will not give me any token or message to Miklebö that may serve me in good stead?” asked Teit.

“ ’Tis strange you do not bid me go with you and plead your cause,” said Olav scornfully.

“Oh nay—I thought that were too much to ask,” replied the other innocently. “But I had it in my mind, if perchance you were bound thither in any case, that we might travel in company.”

Olav burst into a laugh—a short bark. Teit rose, took his leave, and went out.

As soon as he was gone, Olav started up as though from sleep. He went to the door, and saw as he did so that he had picked up his little axe—a working-axe that had lain on the bench beside his hand among knives and gouges and the like. Olav was engaged in making some footstools for use in the church—the Prior had said they wanted some, and Olav had offered to make them.

He went into the convent yard and through the gate. The lay brother who acted as porter was standing there idly. Olav went up to him.

“Know you aught of that fellow yonder?” he asked. Teit was striding up the hill toward the cathedral; no others were in sight just then.

“Is it not that Icelander,” said the porter, “who was clerk to Torgard the cantor last year? Ay, ’tis surely he.”

“Know you aught of the fellow?” asked Olav again.

Brother Andreas was known for the strictness of his life, but his chastity was of the kind that has been likened to a lamp without oil: he had not much charity toward other poor sinners. He then and there bestowed upon Olav all those chapters of Teit Hallsson’s saga which were known to Bishop’s Hamar.

Olav raised his eyes to the churchyard wall, behind which the young man had just disappeared.

No greater harm could possibly befall than that the man came off scot-free.

•   •   •

Next day the sky was again blue and the air quivered with warmth and moisture about the bare and brown tree-tops. As Olav entered the courtyard of the convent late in the afternoon, the cook, fat Brother Helge, stood watching the pigs, which were fighting over the fish offal he had just thrown out.

“What has come to you?” he asked. “You were not at mass today, Olav.”

Olav replied that he had not slept till near morning, and so he had overslept himself. “But I wonder if you could get me the loan of a pair of skis about the house, Brother Helge.” Arnvid had asked him to come north to Miklebö after Easter; he thought of going today.

But would he not rather ride, suggested the lay brother. Olav said that with this going he would get on faster by following the ski-tracks through the forest.

He had just shaved himself when Brother Helge came to the door of the women’s house with his arms full of all the convent’s skis and a wallet of provisions over his shoulder. Olav had cut himself over the cheek-bone and was bleeding freely—the blood had run down his cheek and stained his shirt; his hand was covered with it. Brother Helge could not stop the bleeding either, and he wondered that such a little scratch could bleed so much. At last he ran off and came back with a cupful of oatmeal, which he clapped against the wound.

The sweet smell of the meal and the coolness of it against his skin sent a sharp thrill of desire and longing through the man—for a woman’s caresses, tender and sweet, without sin or pain. It was of that he had been robbed.

The monk saw that a veil came over Olav’s eyes; he said anxiously: “Methinks, Olav, you should give up this journey of yours—inquire first, in any case, if there be no other man in town who goes that way. ’Twas not natural that a paltry cut should bleed so freely—look at your hands, they are all bloody.”

Olav only laughed. He went outside, washed himself in the puddles under the drip of the roof, and chose a pair of skis.

He was standing in the room, fully dressed, telling the lay brother about his horse and the things he was leaving behind—when there was a sharp ring of steel somewhere. Both men turned instinctively toward the bed. Kinfetch hung on the wall
above it, and it seemed to them both that it shifted slightly on its peg.

“ ’Twas your axe that sang,” said the monk in a hushed voice. “Olav-do not go!”

Olav laughed. “That was the second warning, think you?—Maybe I shall bow to the third, Helge.”

Hardly had he uttered the words when a bird flew in at the door, fluttered hither and thither about the room, and flapped against the wall—it was incredible how much noise the little wings made.

The cook’s round red face whitened as he looked at the other—Olav’s pale lips seemed livid.—But then he shook his head and laughed. He caught the bird in his cap, carried it out of the door, and let it go.

“These tomtits are ever perching on the log walls, scratching and pecking at flies at this time of year; the noise they make every morning—You are easily served with portents, brother, if you reckon it one when the tomtits fly indoors!”

He took up the little working-axe and hung it to his belt.

“Shall you not take Kinfetch?” asked Brother Helge.

“Nay, she would be unhandy to drag on this journey.” He bade the lay brother put away the battle-axe together with his sword, took a ski-staff that was tipped with a little spear-point, and then with a farewell to Brother Helge he set out.

It was full moon as Olav mounted the slopes under Furuberg. The sunshine had paled, the sky had become dull and chilly—grey and thick in the north. It looked as though there might be snow. Olav halted with the skis on his shoulder and looked back.

In the fading sunshine the lowlands looked bare and dark and withered—patches of snow were few and small. In the town the dark roofs of turf or shingles and the bare branches of the trees clustered about the bright stone walls of Christ Church, with its heavy, lead-roofed tower standing out against the pale and ruffled waters of the lake. Olav cursed within himself at the feeling of depression that came upon him—well, it would be bad luck if snow came just when he had to find his way through the woods. He had passed that way only once before, and that was in Arnvid’s company, so that they dashed along and took short cuts over
the roughest ground—on skis Arnvid could outrun any man he knew.

It chanced that he knew which of these little huts on the outskirts of the forest the Icelander had taken for himself; a foul murder had been done there in Bishop Torfinn’s time: a father and his two children, a son and a daughter under age, had killed and robbed a prosperous old beggar. Since then folk had not cared to live there. But this Teit was altogether penniless.

Olav pretended to himself that he had no plan—it must fall out as fate would have it. Teit might have set out for the north the day before, or he might have thought better of it, given up that idea. But if that were so, Olav saw at once he would have to keep him to it again; he could not have this man going at large in these parts. He would have to get him to Nidaros, or to Iceland—anywhere out of the way.

He pushed the door; it was not bolted. The cover was over the smoke-vent, so it was very dark; the little room was cold and dismal, with a raw smell of earth and mouldiness and dirt. But Teit sprang out of bed fully clad and looked as fresh as ever—a fleeting smile came over his face as he saw who his visitor was.

“You will have to sit on the bench—I cannot set out a seat for you, for there is not a stool in the place, as you see.”

Olav seated himself on the fixed bench. So far as he could see, there was not a loose piece of furniture in the hut—only some firewood lying about the floor. Teit threw some on the hearth, blew it into a flame, and opened the vent.

“And I cannot offer you a cup of welcome—for a very good reason. But you gave me none yesterday either, so—”

“Did you expect it?” Olav laughed grimly.

The other laughed too. And again Olav felt that there was a sort of charm about the lad—barefaced perhaps, but spirited, undaunted by poverty and desolation.

“I have changed my mind, Teit,” said Olav. “I am on my way to Miklebö now. And if you think it may serve your turn to speak with Arnvid Finnsson—you are welcome to join me.”