The Son Avenger (38 page)

Olav looked up from the desk and turned half round as the door opened. It was Finn Arnvidsson who entered. His speech was dry and strangely cool—Olav guessed he was trying to conceal his emotion.

The monk said he came straight from St. Halvard’s Church, where he had spoken with Master Sigurd Eindridson, who was delegate during Bishop Helge’s illness to confess homicides. And he would hear Olav’s confession in the sacristy after mass.

“So you have a day in which to prepare yourself. I too shall watch tonight, and pray that you may make a good confession. But remember that you are an old man, Olav—lie down and take your rest when you can watch no longer. It is of no use to constrain your body more than it can bear.”

Olav compressed his lips. But it was true—he was old; even on his bodily strength he could rely no longer. Arnvid’s son knelt by his side and remained on his knees a long while with his face in his hands. Then he rose silently and went out.

The hours went by. Now and again Olav caught sounds from outside—footsteps in the paved cloister as they fetched water from the well. The rain continued to splash on the roof and pour off it, gusts of wind beat upon the house, with a roar in the tree-tops, a creaking and crashing everywhere—then the blast died down for a while. The bells told him how the day was passing; the distant singing from the church showed how the life of the convent followed its wonted way.

A day and a night—the time of waiting seemed unbearably long. He held the crucifix in his hand and looked at it from time to time—but it seemed to him that his prayers fell from his lips as withered leaves flutter down from the trees in autumn. Was it so hard to wait?—but He had been kept waiting thirty years. From the beginning of time until the last day, God waited for mankind.

At dusk the young lay brother came, bringing him food—Olav saw that the man guessed something of what was afoot. He drank up the water and ate a little bread. Then he knelt down again and waited.

Night fell outside, the house grew silent, only the rain continued to pour down, the wind rose and fell. Once he went to the window and looked out. In an upper window of the opposite wing a faint light glowed through a little pane. There was one man who watched with him tonight.

As morning advanced on the next day it looked as if the southerly weather would soon have spent itself for this time. There were short fine intervals and once the sun peeped out strongly enough to be reflected from the wet roofs.

Olav sprang up as Finn Arnvidsson appeared at the door. He
took his hat, threw his cloak about him, and followed the monk down the narrow stairway that led to the cloister.

From the parlour someone came flying toward them in great haste—a tall man in a dark-red cloak with the hood drawn over his head. He was as wet as he could be. It was Eirik.

“Father! Cecilia is innocent—” He greeted as though absently the preaching friar who stood by his father’s side. “Ay, Father, there is so much I have to tell you—but this comes first—she is innocent!”

Olav stared at his son—slowly he turned crimson in the face.

“God be praised—thanks be to God—” His voice became unsteady. “Are you
sure?—
You are not to tell me this now if later I am to hear—for I cannot bear it a second time—”

“They have found the man who killed him, Father. It was Anki. The poor wretches were so frightened that they ran away with their children and all they possessed, hid themselves in the woods by Kaldbæk. But late in the evening of Sunday, Anki came down to Rynjul and asked Una to go with him to Gudrun. Poor child, she was already dead when Una came. Then she sent a message home, and Torgrim came over himself with the men who were to carry the bodies to the village. Then they found both the dagger and Jörund’s brooch in the bog-hole under Gudrun. Arnketil denied nothing—seemed rather to be glad it had come out, says Torgrim—they were to know that his children were not left unavenged.”

Olav swayed so strangely as he stood; a stifled rattling sound came from his lips, and they had turned blue—the whole face was blue. Then he fell, like a tree that is blown down.

Eirik threw himself down beside the strange monk, who was already loosening the clothes at the neck, raising the shoulders in his arms. His father’s face was dark, the whites of the eyes showed yellow and bloodshot under the lids, the breathing was stertorous. Eirik could not read the look in the monk’s face—despair or horror that he fought to repress—but it added to the son’s fear.

“Is he dying—?”

“No,” said the other hastily. “Help me to take hold, so we can carry him in.”

M
IDSUMMER
was gone before Eirik was able to visit his home at the Ness.

Across the bogs the sunshine blazed on the shining leaves of the osiers, and the new blades of grass were agleam in the little tussocky meadows. The lake reflected the woods on the other side and the warm blue sky and the clouds, which were already turning to gold—it was the end of the day.

As he approached the gate of the paddock a scent of new-mown hay was wafted toward him. Eirik dismounted, but paused for a moment before opening the gate: the days of the evening sun were yellow as gold, and the cluster of little houses on the ness threw long shadows over the meadow, where Eldrid and old Ragnhild were spreading hay.

His wife had seen him; she put down her rake and came to meet him. She walked lightly and erect, barelegged in her working-clothes. Erik thought once more that he knew nothing finer than Eldrid’s forehead above the great eye-sockets and the rounding of the cheek, though the face was brown as wood, the skin drawn tight over the bones, and she had deep furrows right across her brow, many wrinkles about the great eyes, and cracks in her rough lips.

Never had he felt so intensely that here was the home he would have chosen; he liked best to dwell in the forests. This was the last time he would come
home
to this place. But it was not that he thought with any regret of the destiny that was now bearing him away from here. At one time he had loved Hestviken so that it sent a tremor through mind and sense if he did but come near anything that belonged to his home. Now he loved Hestviken because the manor needed him, the old folk looked to him and expected him to take control as master; he was the brother who was to care for Cecilia and her children, and he was the son, bound to stay by the old man who lived on, stricken and swathed in his dumbness and mysterious calamity as in a cloak of darkness.

Man and wife gave each other their hands in greeting, but their manner was the same as if Eirik had ridden from home the day before. Eldrid asked how his sister fared now, and Eirik answered: well. And Olav? There was no change, said Eirik.

As soon as he saw that it would be long ere he himself could come home, Eirik had sent Svein Ragnason over to the Ness. The young man had told Eldrid all he knew of what had taken place at Hestviken in the spring, and it did not occur to Eirik to tell his wife any more or even to inquire how much she had heard.

He lay awake that night and felt how securely Eldrid slept in his arm. He was glad he should be at home for a while in their own house, before they had to move out to Hestviken and live in the same house as his father. He remembered full well that their life together had begun in a flame of passion, when they had rushed into each other’s arms as though each would devour and suck the other dry. A change had come over them by degrees, and now they lived together as if the hunger and thirst of both were appeased. Eldrid was the first human being he had known with whom he felt so safe that he could hold his peace. It had been so from the very first days, before they were married—nay, from the days when he was a new-comer here and never had a thought that she was to be his. Not even then had he been tempted to talk wildly and at random or to assert himself noisily when he was in Eldrid’s company.

These were not new thoughts—he simply felt that with her he had enjoyed silence, calm like that of the forest, and freedom. The bond that bound him to her was the first to which he had submitted without feeling the strain.

He had seen Gunhild again at church, one day in spring. Ay, surely, she was fair—like a bell-cow with her jingling jewels, honest and capable she looked. But they had not been suited to each other after all. He was thankful to have got a wife of whom he would not tire.

He did not reflect upon what Eldrid might have found in him. He saw her calm demeanour, watched her sleeping securely by his side, and that was enough for him.

He and Svein mowed the grass on the marshes during the next few days; at evening he rowed out with Eldrid and set the nets. During the midday rest he lay on the green by the wall of the house, and most of the household did the same. Eirik listened to
the two old folk and chatted with them. Holgeir seemed well pleased that he and Eldrid were leaving the place. When Svein married and came hither, Holgeir would be more of a man at the Ness, being the mistress’s kinsman. Eldrid wished to take Ragnhild with her; the woman was in two minds about it: now she would go with her mistress, now she would not. Young Svein slept with his cap over his eyes. Eldrid sat a little apart, mending a garment or spinning.

Eirik said to her one day when they were alone: “’Tis no easy lot I have in store for you at Hestviken, Eldrid. There you will find much that is not well.”

But he said nothing of what the difficulties were. It was long since Eirik had thought of speaking to anyone of the difficulties that might await him. Perhaps he had never done so, but formerly he had tried to deaden his own feelings with talk and with fussing about other things. Now he had taught himself the calmness with which one must go to work if one would unravel a knot.

It was terrible to see his father in such a state, but he dared not show that he felt it—dared not even show him special care or affection: in the man’s present plight this would only add to his torment.

Olav had been almost entirely paralysed in one side when he came to himself. Little by little he recovered sufficiently to be able to walk, but he was bent quite over on the left side; he could just move his arm, but could not control it, and the scarred and ravaged face was now quite distorted and awry. When he tried to speak, it was almost impossible to catch a word; his lips only gave out a babbling. But now he no longer tried.

One day, about a month after Eirik had brought him home to Hestviken, he made signs that he wished to be shaved of the ragged white beard that had grown over his face. Apart from that, Eirik saw how it hurt Olav to be obliged to accept help; he was always making impotent attempts to do without it. But be made an ugly mess of his beard when eating—that was the reason.

As far as Eirik could tell, his father’s understanding was not darkened. Perhaps it would have been easier if it had been.

When Olav lay sick at Oslo, Father Finn Arnvidsson had said he would give him extreme unction and the viaticum if his life were in danger—he had proved his will to confess his hidden sin.
But if he was destined to recover and live on for a time with the seal of this secret doom upon his lips, then let no man venture to think there are limits to God’s mercy or that he can fathom God’s mysterious counsel. As a king receives his faithless liegeman back into his friendship, but bids him dwell awhile without the court until he be sent for—so must Olav await with manly patience a sign from our Lord.

Eirik had lodged with his own brethren during the last days at Oslo. There he made his confession to Brother Stefan and took counsel with him. And next morning, when he went forward and received
corpus Domini
, he prayed:

“O God, Thou who art King of kings and eternal Love. No king of this world, be he never so hard, refuses a son who would ransom his father; rather will he take the son as his father’s hostage. Lord, look not upon my sins, but look upon Thy Son’s sacred wounds and have compassion upon my poverty, that my offer may find favour in Thy sight, so that I may do such penance in his stead as my father should have done.”

Brother Stefan said that he too must wait fox a sign.

One of the greatest difficulties was that Cecilia could scarcely bear to look at her father—and Eirik guessed that affection had little part in the horror she felt for him.

None could fail to see that Cecilia had rallied and grown younger again since her husband was no more. She had grown so fair in these three months of widowhood—it was as though she had been stifled in a dungeon and were now set free. What she had said when her father would force her to lay her hand on the corpse was not true. And well it was not, thought Eirik; it would have been dreadful had it been so with her, after the ugly death that came upon Jörund.

She was a faithful mother to her two little sons. The second boy, Torgils, was still at Rynjul, where the old people would not let him go. Kolbein was now six and Audun three winters old. They were handsome and healthy children, obeyed their mother like lambs and held her in high honour; but among the folk of the manor they were full of sport and high spirits, and when they came to know their uncle, they followed at his heels wherever he went. They were not at all afraid of their grandfather, Eirik saw—they scarcely noticed him.

Early in the autumn Eirik came again to the Ness, and this time it was to bring his wife home to Hestviken.

There was a diversity of opinions among folk when Eldrid Bersesdatter came back to the country where she had lived in her youth and took her place as mistress of one of the greatest manors. But for the most part they thought it was well. True, she had done much that was ill, but that was very long ago; it was right that she should be taken out of the humble cot in which she had lived for fifteen years and restored to such condition as became her birth. Her kinswomen, the daughters of Arne and their families, received her, Una and Torgrim cordially, Baard and Signe more coolly, but in very seemly fashion.