The Axe (7 page)

Again Olav sat in the dark church listening to the deep male voices that chanted the great king’s song to the King of kings. And again the images of that long, eventful day flickered behind his weary eyelids—he was on the point of falling asleep.

He was awakened by the voices changing to another tune; through the dark little church resounded the hymn:

He knew this; Arnvid Finnsson had often sung it to them in the evening, and he knew pretty well what the words meant in Norse. He let himself sink stiffly on his knees at the bench, and with his face hidden in his hands he said his evening prayers.

It had clouded over when they went down to the boat; the sky was flecked with grey high up and the fiord was leaden with dark stripes. The wooded slopes on both sides seemed plunged in darkness.

The strangers offered to row, and so Olav sat in the stern with
Ingunn. They shot forward at a different pace now, under the long, steady strokes of the two young peasants; but Olav’s boyish pride suffered no great injury nevertheless—it was so good to sit and be rowed.

After a while a few drops of rain fell. Ingunn spread out the folds of the heavy cloak and bade him come closer.

So they both sat wrapped in it and he had to put an arm around her waist. She was so slender and warm and supple, good to hold clasped. The boat flew lightly through the water in the blue dusk of the summer night. Lighter shreds of mist with scuds of rain drifted over the lake and the hills around, but they were spared the rain. Soon the two young heads sank against each other, cheek to cheek. The men laughed and bade them lie down upon their empty sacks in the bottom of the boat.

Ingunn nestled close to him and fell asleep at once. Olav sat half up, with his neck against the stern seat; now and again he opened his eyes and looked up at the cloudy sky. Then his weariness seemed to flow over him, strangely sweet and good. He started up as the boat grounded on the sand outside Aud’s cabin.

The men laughed. No, why should they have waked him?—’twas nothing of a row.

It was midnight. Olav guessed that they had rowed it in less than half the time he had taken. He helped the men to shove the boat up on the beach; then they said good-night and went. First they became two queerly black spots losing themselves in the dark rocky shore of the bay, and soon they had wholly disappeared into the murky summer night.

Olav’s back was wet with bilge-water and he was stiff from his cramped position, but Ingunn was so tired that she whimpered—she would have it they must rest before setting out to walk home. Olav himself would best have liked to go at once—he felt it would have suppled his limbs so pleasantly to walk in the fresh, cool night, and he was afraid of what Steinfinn would say, if he had come home. But Ingunn was too tired, he saw—and they both dreaded to pass the cairn or to be out at all in the dead of night.

So they shared the last of the food in their wallet and crept into the cabin.

Just inside the door was a little hearth, from which some warmth still came. A narrow passage led in, which divided the
earthen floor into two raised halves. On one side they heard Aud snoring; they felt their way among utensils and gear to the couch that they knew was on the other.

But Olav could not fall asleep. The air was thick with smoke even down to the floor and it hurt his chest—and the smell of raw fish and smoked fish and rotten fish was not to be borne. And his worn limbs twinged and tingled.

Ingunn lay uneasily, turning and twisting in the darkness. “I have no room for my head—surely there is an earthen pot just behind me—”

Olav felt for it and tried to push it away. But there was so much gear stowed behind, it felt as if it would all clatter down on them if he moved anything. Ingunn crawled farther down, doubled herself up, and lay with head and arms on his chest. “Do I crush you?” In a moment she was fast asleep.

After a while he slipped from under the warm body, heavy with sleep. Then he got his feet down on the passage, stood up, and stole out.

It was already growing light. A faint, cold air, like a shudder, breathed through the long, limber boughs of the birches and shook down a few icy drops; a pale gust blew over the steel-grey mirror of the lake.

Olav looked inland. It was so inconceivably still—there was as yet no life in the village; the farms were asleep and fields and meadows and groves were asleep, pale in the grey dawn. Scattered over the screes behind the nearest houses stood a few spruce-firs as though lifeless, so still and straight were they. The sky was almost white, with a faint yellow tinge in the north above the black tree-tops. Only high up floated a few dark shreds of the night’s clouds.

It was so lonely to be standing here, the only one awake, driven out by this new feeling which chased him incessantly farther and farther away from the easy self-confidence of childhood. It was about this hour yesterday that he had risen—it seemed years ago.

He stood, shy and oppressed at heart, listening to the stillness. Now and again there was the clatter of a wooden bell; the widow’s cow was moving in the grove. Then the cuckoo called, unearthly clear and far away somewhere in the dark forests, and some little birds began to wake. Each of the little sounds seemed only to intensify the immense hush of space.

Olav went to the byre and peeped in, but drew his head back at once before the sharp scent of lye that met him. But the ground was good and dry under the lean-to roof; brown and bare, with some wisps from the winter’s stacks of hay and leaves. He lay down, rolled up like an animal, and went to sleep in a moment.

He was awakened by Ingunn shaking him. She was on her knees beside him. “Have you lain out here?”

“ ’Twas so thick with smoke in the cabin.” Olav rose to his knees and shook the wisps and twigs from his clothes.

The sun came out above the ridge, and the tops of the firs seemed to take fire as it rose higher. And now there was a full-throated song of birds all through the woods. Shadows still lay over the land and far out on the deep-blue lake, but on the other side of the water the sunshine flooded the forest and the green hamlets on the upper slopes.

Olav and Ingunn remained on their knees, facing each other, as though in wonder. And without either’s saying anything they laid their arms on each other’s shoulders and leaned forward.

They let go at the same time and looked at each other with a faint smile of surprise. Then Olav raised his hand and touched the girl’s temples. He pushed back the tawny, dishevelled hair. As she let him do it, he put his other arm about her, drew her toward him, and kissed her long and tenderly on the sweet, tempting pit under the roots of the hair.

He looked into her face when he had done it and a warm tingling ran through him—she liked him to do that. Then they kissed each other on the lips, and at last he took courage to kiss her on the white arch of her throat.

But not a word did they say. When they stood up, he took the empty wallet and his cloak and set out. And so they walked in silence, he before and she behind, along the road through the village, while the morning sun shed its light farther and farther down the slopes.

On the higher ground folk were already astir on all the farms. As they went through the last of the woods, it was full daylight. But when they came to the staked gate where the home fields of Frettastein began, they saw no one about. Perhaps they might come well out of their adventure after all.

Behind the bushes by the gate they halted for a moment and looked at each other—the dazed, blissful surprise broke out in
their eyes once more. Quickly he touched her hand, then turned to the gate again and pulled up the stakes.

When they entered the courtyard, the door of the byre stood open, but no one was to be seen. Ingunn made for the loft-room where she had slept the night before.

All at once she turned and came running back to Olav. “Your brooch—” she had taken it off and held it out to him.

“You may have it—I will give it you,” he said quickly. He took off her little one, which he had worn instead, and put it in her hand that held the gold brooch. “No, you are not to give me yours in exchange. I have brooches enough, I have—”

He turned abruptly, blushing, ran from her grasp, and strode off rapidly toward the hall.

He drew a deep breath, much relieved after all to find that the rooms beyond were empty. One of the dogs got up and came to meet him, wagging its tail; Olav patted it and spoke a friendly word or two.

He stretched himself and yawned with relief on getting off his tight clothes. The coat had chafed him horribly under the arms-he could not possibly wear it again, unless it was altered. Ingunn could do that.

As he was about to fling himself into his sleeping-place, he saw that there was already a man lying there. “Are you all come home now?” asked the other drowsily. Olav knew by the voice it was Arnvid Finnsson.

“No, it is but I
. I
had an errand in the town,” he said as calmly as if there were nothing strange in his going to Hamar on business of his own. Arnvid grunted something. In a moment they were both snoring.

W
HEN
Olav awoke, he saw by the light in the hall that it was long past noon. He raised himself on his elbow and found that Ingunn and Arnvid were sitting on the dais. The look on the girl’s face was so strange—at once scared and thoughtful.

She heard him get up and came rapidly to his bed. She wore the same bright-red kirtle as the day before; and with the new
vision with which he looked on her, Olav turned hot with joy, for she was fair to see.

“Now methinks we shall soon know what Brother Vegard meant—and the smith—with that they said about the axes,” she said, greatly moved. “Arnvid says that Mattias Haraldsson was at the Thing and fared northward to the manor he has at Birid.”

“Ah,” said Olav. He was bending down to tie his shoestring. Then he straightened himself and gave Arnvid his hand in greeting: “Now we shall see what Steinfinn will do when he hears this.”

“He
has
heard it,” replied Arnvid. “It is for that he has ridden north to Kolbein, says Ingebjörg.”

“You must go out and fetch me some food, Ingunn,” said Olav. As soon as the girl was out of the hall, he asked the other: “Know you what thoughts Steinfinn has now?”

“I know what thoughts Ingebjörg has,” replied Arnvid.

“Ay, they are easily guessed.”

Olav had always liked Arnvid Finnsson best of all the men he knew—though he had never thought about it. But he felt at ease in Arnvid’s company. For all that, it would never have occurred to him to call the other his friend; Arnvid had been grown up and married almost as long as Olav remembered him; and now he had been two years a widower.

But today it was as though the difference in their ages had vanished—Olav felt it so. He felt that he was grown up and the other was a young man like himself; Arnvid was not settled and fixed in his ways like other married men. His marriage had been like a yoke that was laid upon him in his youth, and since then he had striven instinctively to outgrow the marks of it—all this Olav was suddenly aware of, without knowing whence he had it.

And in the same way Arnvid seemed to feel that the two young ones had shot up much nearer to him in age. He spoke to them as to equals. While Olav was eating, Arnvid sat shaving fine slices, no thicker than a leaf, from a wind-dried shoulder of reindeer, which Ingunn was so fond of chewing.

“The worst of it is that Steinfinn has let this insult grow so old,” said Arnvid. “ ’Tis too late to bring a suit—he must take a dear revenge now, if he would right himself in folks’ eyes.”

“I cannot see how Steinfinn could do aught ere now. The man
took pilgrim’s fancies—fled the country with his tail between his legs. But now that we have gotten two unbreeched children for kings, a man may well use his own right arm and need not let the peasants’ Thing be judge of his honour—so I have heard Steinfinn and Kolbein say.”

“Ay, I trow there is many a man now who makes ready to do his pleasure without much questioning of the law of the land or the law of God,” said Arnvid. “There’s many a one is growing restive now, up and down the land.”

“And what of you?” asked Olav. “Will you not be with them, if Steinfinn and Kolbein have thoughts of seeking out Mattias and—chastening him?”

Arnvid made no answer. He sat there, tall and high-shouldered, resting his forehead in his slender, shapely hand, so that his small and ugly face was completely shaded.

Arnvid Finnsson was very tall and slight, of handsome build—above all, his hands and feet were shapely. But his shoulders were too broad and high, and his head was quite small, but he was short-necked; this did much to take the eye away from the rest of his handsome form. His face too was strangely ill-featured, as though compressed, with a low forehead and short, broad chin, and black curly hair like the forelock of a bull. In spite of this, Olav now saw for the first time that Arnvid and Ingunn bore a likeness to each other—Arnvid too had a small nose, as though unfinished, but in the man it seemed pressed in under the brow. Arnvid too had large, dark-blue eyes—but in him they were deep-set.