The Long Ships (58 page)

Rapp was calmed by this assurance and became exceedingly proud of his son. He wanted Father Willibald to christen him Almansur, but the priest refused to give the child a heathen name, and he had to be content with calling him Orm instead. Orm himself carried the child to the christening.

A fortnight after this child was born, Ylva gave birth to her second son. He was black-haired and dark-skinned, and yelled little, but gazed about with serious eyes; and when the sword’s point was offered to him, he licked it even more avidly than Harald Ormsson had done. All agreed that he was born to be a warrior, and in this they prophesied rightly. Ylva thought that he resembled Gold-Harald, King Harald’s nephew, in so far as she could remember this great Viking from her childhood days; but Asa would have none of this, insisting that he bore a marked likeness to Sven Rat-Nose, who had been similarly dark of skin. But he could not be christened Sven, and they already had one child called Harald; so in the end Orm gave him the name of Blackhair. He behaved very quietly and solemnly during the christening, and bit Father Willibald in the thumb. He became his parents’ favorite child, and in time the greatest warrior on the border; and many years later, after many things had happened, there was in the court of King Canute the Mighty of Denmark and England no chieftain of greater renown than the King’s cousin Blackhair Ormsson.

AT length that year arrived in which the world was due to end. By this time Orm was in his thirty-fifth and Ylva in her twenty-eighth year. All good Christians believed that in this, the thousandth year after His birth, Christ would appear in the sky surrounded by hosts of shining angels and judge every man and woman, both living and dead, to decide who should go to heaven and who to hell. Orm had heard Father Willibald talk about this so often that he had become resigned to it. Ylva could never make up her mind whether she really believed that it would happen or not; but Asa was happy in the thought that she would be able to attend this great occasion as a living person, in her best clothes, and not as a corpse in a winding-sheet.

Two things, however, troubled Orm. One was that Toke still refused to be converted. The last time he had visited him Orm had striven earnestly to persuade him that he would be wise to change his faith, enumerating to him all the advantages that Christians would shortly enjoy; but Toke had remained obstinate and had chaffed Orm for his zeal.

“The evenings will be long in heaven if Toke is not there,” said Orm to Ylva more than once. “Many of the great men I have known will be elsewhere; Krok and Almansur, Styrbjörn and Olof Summerbird, and many other good warriors besides. Of the people who have meant most to me, I shall only have yourself, our children, Asa, Father Willibald, Rapp, and the house-folk; and also Bishop Poppo and your father, King Harald, whom it will be good to meet again. But I should like to have had Toke there. It is his woman who holds him back.”

“Let them do as they think best,” said Ylva. “Things may turn out otherwise than as you anticipate. For my part, I do not think God will be in such a hurry to destroy the world, after having put Himself to so much trouble to create it. Father Willibald says we shall all sprout wings, and when I picture him thus, or you, or Rapp, I cannot but laugh. I do not want any wings, but I should like to be allowed to take my gold chain with me, and Father Willibald does not think I shall be allowed to. So I am not looking forward to this event as eagerly as he is, and will believe in it when I see it happen.”

Orm’s other concern was whether it would be wise to sow his crops. He was anxious to know at what season of the year Christ’s advent might be expected, but Father Willibald was unable to enlighten him on this point. Orm doubted whether it would be worth the labor, for he might never be able to reap the year’s harvest and would not be likely to need it even if it should ripen in time. Soon, however, he succeeded in solving this problem to his satisfaction.

From the very first day of this year every young Christian woman had sought the delights of bodily pleasure more greedily than ever before, for they were uncertain whether this pleasure would be allowed them in heaven and were therefore anxious to enjoy as much of it as they could while there was yet time, since, whatever form of love heaven might have to offer them, they doubted whether it could be as agreeable as the sort practiced on earth. Such of the servant-girls as were unmarried became wholly intractable, running after every man they saw; and even in the married women a certain difference was evident, though they clung virtuously to their husbands, thinking it imprudent to do otherwise when the Judgment Day was so close upon them. The result of all this was that by the spring most of the women at Gröning were with child. When Orm discovered that Ylva, Torgunn, and the rest were in this condition, his spirits perked up again, and he ordered that the sowing should take place as usual.

“No children can be born in heaven,” he said. “Therefore they must all be born on earth. But this cannot be until the beginning of next year. Either the god-men have calculated wrongly, or God has changed His mind. When nine months have gone by without any woman becoming pregnant, then we shall know that the end of the world is imminent, and can begin to prepare for it; but until then we can live our lives as usual.”

Nothing that Father Willibald said could persuade him that he was wrong in this surmise; and as the year wore on and nothing happened, the priest himself began to have doubts about the matter. It might be, he said, that God had altered His plans, in view of the fact that there were still so many sinful men on earth to whom the gospel had not yet penetrated.

That autumn a band of foreigners came from the east and made their way on foot along the border. They were all soldiers, and all wounded; some of their wounds were still bleeding. There were eleven of them, and they trudged from house to house craving food and night shelter; where this was granted them, they remained for one night, or sometimes two, and then proceeded on their way. They said they were Norwegians and were journeying homewards, but more than this they would not reveal. They conducted themselves peaceably, using no violence toward anyone; and where night shelter was refused them, they continued on their way without complaint, as though unconcerned whether they ate and slept or no.

At length they arrived at Gröning, and Orm came out to speak with them, accompanied by Father Willibald. When they saw the priest, they fell on their knees and besought him earnestly to bless them. He did so willingly, and they seemed overjoyed at having come to a Christian house and especially at having found a priest. They ate and drank ravenously; then, when they had consumed their fill, they sat silent and large-eyed, paying scant heed to the questions that were addressed to them, as though they had other things uppermost in their minds. Father Willibald saw to their wounds, but his blessings were what they were most eager for, and of these it seemed that they could not have enough. When they were told that the morrow was a Sunday, they begged to be allowed to stay and attend Mass and to listen to the sermon. This request Orm granted them willingly, though he was vexed that they would tell him nothing about themselves or whence they had come.

That Sunday was a fine day, and many people came riding to church, mindful of the promise they had made to Father Willibald on the evening of their baptism. The foreigners were given places on the front benches and listened earnestly to all that the priest said. As usual during this year, he took as his theme the end of the world, assuring them that it might be expected to occur very shortly, though it was difficult to say exactly when, and that every Christian must mend his ways in order that he might not be found wanting when the day arrived. As he said this, several of the foreigners were seen to smile contemptuously; others, however, wept, so that the tears could be seen on their cheeks. After Mass they begged to be blessed again, with a great blessing; and Father Willibald did as they asked him.

After he had blessed them, they said: “You are a good man, priest. But you do not know that the event of which you warn us has already happened. The end of the world has come; Christ has taken our King from us to live with Him, and we have been forgotten.”

Nobody could understand what they meant, and they were unwilling to say more. At length, however, they explained what had happened to them. They spoke with few words, and in voices such as dead men might have, as though nothing any longer had any meaning for them.

They said that their King, Olaf Tryggvasson of Norway, the best man who had ever lived on earth, save only Christ Himself, had fallen in a great battle against the Danes and Swedes. They themselves had been captured alive by the Swedes; their ship had been boarded by great numbers and they, fatigued, had been pinned between shields or else, because of their wounds, had been unable to resist longer. Others of their comrades, more fortunate, had followed their King to Christ. Then they had been led, together with many others, aboard one of the Swedish ships to be taken to Sweden. There had been forty of them in the ship, all told. One night they lay in an estuary, and someone observed that this river was called the Holy River. This they took to be a sign from God, and as many of them as had the strength to do so broke their fetters and fought with the Swedes in the ship. They killed them all; but most of their comrades were slain also, so that only sixteen of them were left alive. These had then rowed the ship up the river as far as they could. Five, wounded more grievously than the rest, had died at their oars, smiling; and they, the eleven survivors, had taken weapons from the dead Swedes and abandoned the ship, thinking to march overland to the Halland border and so into Norway. For, realizing that they were the most unworthy of King Olaf’s men, since they alone had been left behind when all their comrades had been permitted to accompany him, they had not dared to take their own lives, for fear lest he should refuse to know them. They believed that this was the penance demanded of them, that they should return to Norway and bring to their countrymen tidings of the death of their King. Every day they had said all the prayers they knew, though these had been fewer than they could have wished, and had reminded one another of all the King’s commandments regarding the conduct of Christian warriors. It was a great joy to them, they said, that they had at last found a priest and been permitted to attend Mass and receive God’s blessing; now, however, they must continue on their journey, that they might lose no time in bringing their sad tidings to their countrymen. They believed that when they had done this, a sign would be given them, perhaps by their King himself, that they had at last been deemed worthy to join him, though they were the poorest of his men.

They thanked Orm and the priest for their kindness and went their way; and nothing more was heard of them at Gröning, nor of the end of the world.

The year ended without the smallest sign having appeared in the sky, and there ensued a period of calm in the border country. Relations with the Smalanders continued to be peaceful, and there were no local incidents worth mentioning, apart from the usual murders at feasts and weddings, and a few men burned in their houses as the result of neighborly disputes. At Gröning, life proceeded tranquilly. Father Willibald worked assiduously for Christ, though he was not infrequently heard to complain at the slowness with which his congregation increased, despite all his efforts; what particularly annoyed him was the number of people who came to him and said that they were willing to be baptized in return for a calf or heifer. But even he admitted that things might have been worse, and thought that some of the men and women he had converted were perhaps less obdurately evil than they had been before baptism. Asa did what she could to help him; and although she was by now beginning to grow old, she was as active as ever and had plenty to occupy her in looking after the children and the servants. She and Ylva were good friends and seldom exchanged words, for Asa was mindful that her daughter-in-law was of royal blood; and when they disagreed, Asa always yielded, though it could be seen that it went against her nature to do so.

“For it is certain,” said Orm to Ylva, “that the old woman is even more obstinate than you, which is saying not a little. It is good that things have turned out as I hoped they might, and that she has never tried to challenge your authority in the house.”

Orm and Ylva still found no cause for complaint in their choice of each other. When they quarreled, neither of them minced words; but such incidents were rare and quickly passed, nor did either of them cherish rancor afterwards. It was a strange peculiarity of Orm’s that he never birched his wife; even when a great anger came over him, he restrained his temper, so that nothing more came of it than an overturned table or a broken door. In time he perceived a curious thing: namely, that all their quarrels always ended in the same way; he had to mend the things he had broken, and the matter about which they had quarreled was always settled the way Ylva wanted it, though she never upturned a table or broke a door, but merely threw an occasional dish-clout in his face or smashed a plate on the floor at his feet. Having discovered this, he thought it unrewarding to have any further quarrels with her, and a whole year would sometimes pass without their harmony being threatened by hard words.

They had two more children: a son, whom they called Ivar, after Ivar of the Broad Embrace, and whom Asa hoped would, in time, become a priest, and a daughter, whom they called Sigrun. Toke Gray-Gullsson was invited as the chief guest at the christening, and it was he who chose her name, though only after a long exchange of words with Asa, who wanted the child to be given a Christian name. Toke, however, asserted that no woman’s name was more beautiful than Sigrun, or more honored in old songs; and as Orm and Ylva wished to show him all honor, it was allowed to be as he wished it. If all went well, Toke said, she would, in good time, marry one of his sons; for he could not hope to have either of the twins as a daughter-in-law, none of his sons being old enough to be considered as future husbands for them. This, he said to himself sadly as he sat gazing at Oddny and Ludmilla, was, in truth, a great pity.