The Axe (44 page)

“Ingunn,” whispered Tora, weeping. “I spoke not so harshly to you because I wished you ill. But it will be worse than all the rest if you forsake your child.”

Ingunn’s voice was as hoarse as her sister’s as she answered: “I know it. I have seen that you are fond of Eirik. You must try—when I am gone, you must—you must look after Eirik as well as you can.”

“I will—as much as I dare—for Haakon,” said Tora.

None of the three slept much that night, and just as they had fallen into a doze toward morning, Lady Magnhild came and woke them. The woman was ready to start.

Tora watched her sister as she wrapped the child—“I do not
believe she will dare to do it,” was her hope. Then Lady Magnhild began again with her talk that Olav had transgressed so deeply against them all that it could not be called sheer injustice if he had to suffer Ingunn to take her child south with her. They need not have it at Hestviken; Olav could very well have it fostered outside.

Then Ingunn seemed hard and resolved as she carried the child out and gave it to Hallveig and watched her and the little boy who accompanied her ride away with it.

At breakfast-time it appeared that Ingunn had left the house. Arnvid and Tora ran out to search for her—she was walking hither and thither in the field behind the barn, and, beg as they might, they could not get her to go in with them. Tora and Magnhild were quite bewildered—it was dangerous for a married woman to go out in this way, before she had been churched—and what were they to say of a mother in Ingunn’s case? Arnvid thought they must send for Brother Vegard, for Ingunn ought to obtain absolution and make her peace with God and the Church before Olav came back, so that they might go together to mass, when he had received her with her kinsmen’s consent. He himself promised to stay with Ingunn and keep watch over her until he could get her to come in.

Once they came right up to the birch grove north of the manor. Arnvid followed close on the woman’s heels—not a word could he find to comfort her. He was as tired as a drudge and hungry; the afternoon was far spent, but when he begged her to use her wits and come in with him, he did not get so much as a word in answer; he might just as well have spoken to a stone.

Then she went up to a birch tree, laid her arm against its trunk, and ground her forehead on the bark, uttering groans like those of an animal. Arnvid prayed aloud for God to help him. He guessed she must be half mad.

At last they reached a little knoll, where they sat side by side in silence. All at once she tore open her dress and squeezed her breast so that the milk spouted in a thin jet onto the warm rock, where it dried into little shiny spots.

Arnvid jumped up, caught her round the waist, and set her on her feet, shook her this way and that. “Now you must behave yourself, Ingunn—”

As soon as he took his hand from her, she let herself fall at full
length; he raised her again. “Now you must come in with me—or else I’ll take and
beat
you!”

Then her tears came—she hung in the man’s arms and wept impassively. Arnvid kept her head buried against his shoulder and rocked her this way and that. She sobbed till she could sob no more. Then she wept silently, with streaming tears, and now Arnvid could fasten her clothing over the bosom; after that she allowed herself to be half led, half dragged home, till he could hand her over to the women.

Late in the evening Arnvid sat out in the courtyard talking to Grim and Dalla—when Ingunn came out of her door. As soon as she saw the old people, she halted in fear. Arnvid rose and went up to her. Dalla went in, but Grim stood where he was, and as Ingunn came past him by Arnvid’s side, he raised his hairy old face and spat at her, so that the spittle trickled down on his bushy beard. When Arnvid took hold of him and pushed him away, he made some nasty gestures and muttered all the coarsest names the thralls of old had for loose women as he turned after his sister and left the yard.

Arnvid took Ingunn by the arm and drew her indoors. “You cannot look for aught else,” he said, half in anger and half consoling her, “than to suffer such things while you are here. It will be easier for you when you come away, where folk know not so much of you. But go in now—you have tempted fate more than enough in running out today, and now the sun is going down.”

“Stay a little while,” begged Ingunn. “My head is burning soit is so good and cool here.”

It was rather dark for the time of year; clouds were spreading over the whole sky, and in the north the sunset turned them to gold. A rosy light came over the valleys, and the bay reflected the glory of the clouds.

Ingunn whispered: “Speak to me, Arnvid.—Can you not tell me something of Olav?”

Arnvid shrugged, as though impatiently.

“I would but hear you speak his name,” she said plaintively.

“Methinks you must have heard it often enough these last weeks,” replied Arnvid with annoyance. “I am sick of all this long ago-”

“I meant it not so,” she begged quietly. “Not of how useful a
man he might be to us and such things. Arnvid—can you not speak to me of Olav—you who love him? For you are his friend-?”

But Arnvid would not say a word. It occurred to him that now he had allowed himself to be tormented year in, year out by these two; he had done so many things that were like cutting into his own flesh and turning the knife in the wound. He would do no more.—“Come in now—”

Tora met them and thought that she and her sister might well sleep in Magnhild’s house tonight. It was so cheerless in the other house, now the child was gone.

When they were about to go to rest, Ingunn asked her sister to sleep with Lady Magnhild in the chamber: “I am afraid I shall get but little sleep tonight, and sleeplessness is catching, you know.”

There were two bedsteads in the room. Arnvid slept in one, and Ingunn lay down in the other.

For a long time she lay waiting for Arnvid to fall asleep. The hours passed; she felt that he was still awake, but they did not speak.

Now and again she tried to say a Paternoster or an Ave, but her thoughts roved hither and thither and she could seldom repeat a prayer to the end. She said them for Olav and for Eirik; she herself must be beyond prayers, since she had determined to cast herself into perdition with her full knowledge and will. But since she
had
to do it, perhaps she would not be given the very hardest punishment in hell—even there she thought it must be an alleviation to know that when she cut the bond between them and plunged into the depth, she left Olav a free man.

She could not feel that she was even afraid. She seemed worn out at last—hardened. She did not even desire to see Olav again or her child. Tomorrow Brother Vegard would come, they had told her; but she would not see him. She would not look
upward
, and she would not look
forward
, and she recognized the justice of her perdition, since she refused to receive anything that was necessary to her soul’s salvation. Repentance, prayer, work, and the further pilgrimage of life, seeing and speaking to those with whom she must dwell, if she should try to live on—the thought of all this was repulsive to her. Even the thought of God was repulsive to her now. To look
downward
, to be alone and surrounded by darkness—that was her choice. And she saw her own soul, bare and dark
as a rock scorched by the fire, and she herself had set fire to and burned up all that was in her of living fuel. It was all over with her.

Nevertheless she said another Paternoster for Olav—“Make it so that he may forget me.” And an Ave Maria for Eirik—“Now he has a mother in me no longer.”

At last Arnvid began to snore. Ingunn waited awhile, till she thought he was sound asleep. Then she crept up and into her clothes and stole out.

It was the darkest hour. Behind the manor a wing of cloud rested upon the ridge and seemed to cast its shadow over the country. The woods surrounding the farm were steeped in gloom—a thin grey vapour floated over the corn and gathered about the clumps of trees, effacing their outlines. But higher up, the sky was clear and white and was palely reflected in the bay; on the heights beyond the lake there was already a gleam of the coming dawn above the woods.

At the gate of the paddock Ingunn stopped and set the stakes in after her. There was not a sound in the summer night but the grating of the corncrake. Dew dripped from the alders on the path by the burn and there was a bitter scent of leaves and grass in the darkness of the thicket.

The grove went right down to the manor hard. And now Ingunn saw that the lake had risen greatly while she had been lying in. The water came over the turf and covered the shore end of the pier.

She stopped, uncertain—in an instant terror quickened within her and shattered her hardened resolve. Nay, for this she had no heart—wade through the water out to the pier. She wailed helplessly in her fear. Then she lifted up her dress and put one foot into the water.

Her heart seemed to thrust itself into her throat as she felt the chill water running into her shoe; she gasped and swallowed. But then she ran on, wading through her own fear, tottering unsteadily over the sharp stones of the beach. The water splashed and gurgled about her with a deafening noise as she went forward. Her foot reached the pier.

It was flooded for a good way out; the plank bent between the piles, it gave under her feet, and the water came far up her legs. Farther out the planks were just above the surface, but sank under
as soon as she stepped on them. Each time she held her breath in fear of losing her foothold and falling into the lake. At last she reached the extreme end of the pier; it was clear of the surface.

There was nothing left of her callousness now—she was beside herself with fright. But her trembling hands busied themselves blindly with what she had thought out beforehand. She took off the long woven girdle that was wound thrice about her waist, drew her knife, and cut it in two. With one piece she bound her clothes together around her legs below the knees—that she might appear seemly if she should drift ashore. The other piece she tied crosswise over her bosom and slipped her hands underneath—she had thought that it might be over sooner if she did not struggle as she sank. Then she drew a last, long breath and threw herself in.

Arnvid half woke, lay in a doze, and was on the point of dropping off to sleep again when, with a dull thump of the heart, he started up, wide awake—and knew that what had half awakened him was that he had heard someone go out.

He was on the floor in an instant and over by her bed, fumbling in the dark. The couch was still warm, but empty. As though still distrusting his own senses he searched on, along the logs of the wall, the head of the bed, the foot-Then he thrust his naked feet into his shoes, slipped his kirtle over his head, groaning the while—he did not even know how long it was since she had gone out. He set out at a run straight through the corn and came down into the meadow that led to the lake—there was someone on the pier, he made out. He ran across the meadow and heard his own footfalls thudding on the dry turf. On reaching the water’s edge he ran on, wading until he could strike out and swim.

Ingunn awoke in her old bed in Aasa’s house. At first she was aware of nothing but that her head ached as though it would burst and the skin of her whole body was as sore as if she had been scalded.

The sunshine poured in; the louver was open and she had a glimpse of the clear sky. The smoke, which showed blue under the ridge of the roof, turned brown in the bright air outside—it was caught at once by the breeze and whirled among the grass on the roof.

Then she remembered—and fell almost into a faint. The feeling of relief, of being saved, was so overpowering—

Arnvid came up at once from somewhere in the room. He supported her with one arm and put a wooden cup to her lips. There was tepid water-gruel in it, with a flavour of herbs and honey.

Ingunn drank every drop, keeping her eyes on him over the rim of the cup. He took it from her and put it on the floor, then seated himself on the step beside the bed with his hands hanging between his knees and his bead bowed. It was as though both were overcome by a sore sense of shame.

At last Ingunn asked in a hushed voice: “I cannot think—how was it I was saved?”

“I came at the last moment,” said Arnvid shortly.

“I cannot tell,” she began again. “I am so stiff in all my limbs—”

“Today is the third day. You have lain in a swoon—’twas the milk went to your head, I wis—and you had grown so cold in the water, we had to pour hot ale and wine into you. You have been awake before this, but haply you do not remember—”

The bad taste in her mouth seemed worse than before and she asked for water. Arnvid went out for it.

As she drank, he stood and watched her. He had so much at heart that he knew not what to take first. So he said it without more ado: “Olav is here—he came yesterday in the afternoon—”

Ingunn gave way, sick and dazed. She felt herself sinking down and down—but deep within her there was a little spark that was alive and tried to catch and break into flames—joy, hope, the will to live, meaningless as it was.

“He was in here for a while last night. And he bade us tell him as soon as you were awake. Shall I go and fetch him now?—the others are in the hall—’tis breakfast-time—”

After a moment Ingunn asked, trembling: “Said Olav aught—have you told him—of this last?”

Arnvid’s face contracted suddenly—he set his teeth in his lower lip. Then it burst out of him: “Had you no thought—have you no thought, Ingunn, of where you would be dwelling today if you had carried out your purpose?”

“Ay,” she whispered. She turned her face to the wall and asked in a low voice: “Did Olav say
that
? What said he, Arnvid?”

“He has said naught of that.”

After a while Arnvid asked: “Shall I bring Olav in now?”

“Oh nay, nay—wait a little. I will not lie here—I will sit up—”

“Then I must send in one of the women—you have scarce the strength to dress yourself?” asked Arnvid doubtfully.

“Not Tora or Magnhild,” Ingunn begged.

Then she sat on the bench by the end wall and waited. She had put on her black cloak, without really knowing why she did so; and she held it tightly about her and drew the hood over her head. She was white and cold in the face with fear. When the door opened—she had a glimpse of the man stooping as he came in—she shut her eyes again and her head sank on her breast. She planted her feet hard against the floor and held on to the edge of the bench with both hands to master her trembling.