The Son Avenger (41 page)

Olav rolled his head again, raised his sound hand deprecatingly.

The two went back and lay down. Again Olav’s pains receded to their centre fairly quickly; after he had lain motionless awhile, it was no longer so bad. If only they had thought to give him a drink of something—And it was hot with this coverlet—Olav pushed it onto the floor.

Otherwise he did not suffer so much now; only for the pain that was lodged under his ribs and seemed to swell over his chest with every breath he took. Presently he thought his body was like an old craft that lay half sunken on the beach, and every wave that lifted it loosened the planks more and more from the timbers, and his spirit was like a bird sitting on a floor-board awash within the rotten boat, and when the board came clear and floated off, the bird would fly away. But after a while the tide lapped him to sleep.

His thirst awoke him—he was not so much in pain now as feeling ill, and he himself was afflicted by the close, cold smell of age and death about him. He could not remember if he had dreamed or what, but he had come out of his sleep with a feeling that within the worn and tortured old body that now wrestled with Death, he himself was a young prisoner.

At the foot of the bed was a loop-hole in the wall, closed with a wooden shutter. Olav lay tormented by thirst and shortness of breath and thought he would get up and open it. Two or three times he raised himself slightly, but as soon as he moved he felt that the pains were making ready to rush upon him.

Then he did it in spite of them—one wrench and he was on his knees at the foot of the bed. Flung forward over the bedstead he lay waiting till the excruciating throes aroused by the sudden movement had raged their fill.

A fresh whirl of pain sparkled over him as he took hold of the pin of the shutter and pulled it toward him. It was stiff—Olav clenched his teeth, swallowed his cries, as the red-hot devils raged within him, but then he sank back against the horse’s head of the bedpost with the pin in his hand; it seemed the hardest pull he had given in his life, and the tears poured down over his ravaged face as he breathed the morning air that blew in upon him. Outside it was light, a white morning, and the birds were awakening.

He swung himself out of bed and staggered to his clothes. In a way he was himself aware that he was only a mortally sick old man struggling with a hand and a half to hitch on some wraps in a dark room, and it hurt him so much when he moved that tears and sweat ran off him, and he ground his teeth lest he might howl aloud and wake them in the outer room. But at the same time he felt that within him was himself, engaged in breaking through a ring of foes, trying to ride them down—memories of all the fights in which he had borne arms loomed before him as presaging dreams—but now it was earnest, and he struggled furiously to force his quaking limbs into obedience.

Groping along the wall, he came out into the great room, found his way to the door of the anteroom, and opened it. From there he reached the outer door and accomplished that. Then he stood on the icy doorstone, barefoot in cloak and kirtle. The morning air blew into him and filled his aching chest; it hurt, but more than that, it did him good.

He looked up at the cliff that rose behind the roofs of the outhouses, with green grass and bushes clinging to its crevices, and every leaf was still and waiting; the fir forest above waited motionless against the white morning sky.

The fiord he could not see, but he heard it moving gently at
the foot of the rocks, and the murmur of the wavelets over the shingle. He must see the water once more.

Supporting himself with his hand on the logs of the wall, he made his way along the line of houses and stood leaning against the corner of the last in the row. The path leading to the waterside wound lonely and deserted by the side of the “good acre’s” brown carpet, which crept into the shelter of the lookout rock; the corn was sprouting thickly with green needles. Down below, where the path came to an end, the sheds leaned listening over the sea, which swirled with a faint splash about their piles.

Olav let go his hold of the corner of the men’s house. Swaying, he walked on without support. A little way up the lookout rock he climbed, but then sank down and lay in a little hollow, where the dry, sun-scorched turf made him a bed.

The immense bright vault above him and the fiord far below and the woods of the shore began to warm as the day breathed forth its colours. Birds were awake in woods and groves. From where he lay he saw a bird sitting on a young spruce on the ridge, a black dot against the yellow dawn; he could see it swelling and contracting like the beats of a little heart; the clear flute-like notes welled out of it like a living source above all the little sleepy twitterings round about, but it was answered from the darkness of the wood. The troops of clouds up in the sky were flushing, and he began to grow impatient of his waiting.

He saw that all about him waited with him. The sea that splashed against the rocks, rowan and birch that had found foothold in the crevices and stood there with leaves still half curled up—now and again they quivered impatiently, but then they grew calm. The stone to which his face was turned waited, gazing at the light from sky and sea.

From the depths of his memory words floated up—the morning song that he had once known. All the trees of the forest shall rejoice before the face of the Lord, for He comes to judge the world with righteousness, the waves shall clap their hands.—He saw that now they were waiting, the trees that grew upon the rocks of his manor, all that sprouted and grew on the land of his fathers, the waves that followed one another into the bay—all were waiting to see judgment passed upon their faithless and unprofitable master. It was as though the earth were waiting every
hour of the day, but it was in the quiver of dawn that the fair and defrauded earth breathed out so that one heard it—sorrowful and merciless as a deflowered maid it waited to be given justice against men, who went in, one by one, to be judged. Every hour and every moment judgment was given; it was the watchword that one day cried to another and one night whispered to the next. All else that God had created sang the hymn of praise—
Benedicite omnia opera domini Domino
—he too had known it when he was young. But those whom He had set to be captains and lords of the earth forsook God and fought with one another, betraying God and betraying their fellows.

The bird in the tree-top on the ridge still poured out its stream of notes—and he too had been given his life in fief, and authority had been his, the rich Christ had placed the standard in his hand and hung the sword over his shoulder and set the ring upon his hand.—And he had not defended the standard and had stained the sword with dishonour and forgotten what the ring should have called to mind—he must stand forth and could not declare one deed that he had performed from full and unbroken loyalty, nor could he point to one work that he could call well done.—Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither condemn me in thy justice.

Above him he saw the whole vault of heaven full of white clouds, they stood thick as an immense flock of lambs, but they
were
folk. They were white and shone with a light that was within them and filled them as sunshine fills the clouds. Slowly gliding, they moved high above him, looking down on him—he recognized his mother and certain of the others too, Ingunn was there—

It was the sunrise, he knew that—but it was like a writing. Thus he had stared at the fine pattern of letters on smooth white vellum, until all at once he knew a word—that time when Arnvid tried to teach him to read writing.

Then the very rays from the source of light broke out and poured down over him. For an instant he stared with open eyes straight into the eye of the sun, tried even, wild with love and longing, to gaze yet deeper into God. He sank back in red fire, all about him was a living blaze, and he knew that now the prison tower that he had built around him was burning. But salved by the glance that surrounded him, he would walk out unharmed
over the glowing embers of his burned house, into the Vision that is eternal bliss, and the fire that burned him was not so ardent as his longing.

Eirik found his father lying in a swoon far up the hill when he went out in the morning, alarmed at the old man’s absence. He carried him in and put him to bed.

Death could not be far away, he saw. Olav’s hair was parted in strands, his cheeks had fallen in, and he was white about the nose, but he seemed free from pain. Eirik sent messages—for the priest, for the old people at Rynjul, and to Saltviken. The messenger was to tell his sister that this time she
must
come—Cecilia had not set foot in Hestviken since she moved out with Aslak a year and a half ago, and whenever Eirik had asked her to come and see her father she had excused herself.

They were gathered about him within the closet, his kinsfolk and household, when Sira Magne entered in alb and stole and recited:

“Pax huic domui,”

and the acolyte who bore the crucifix gave the response:

“Et omnibus habitantibus in ea.”

Kolbein and Torgils were allowed to hold the candles. They stood looking intently at their grandfather, who was about to die. The children had always known that there was something sombre and mysterious about the old man who dragged himself around on the outskirts of their life, crooked and shrunken and speechless, but at ordinary times they had not thought much about him. Now they took no notice of the molten wax that ran down on their fingers as they stared at him; in the soft light of the candles the waves of smooth white hair showed brightly against the brown pillows, Eldrid had combed him so finely. The grey face with its scarred cheek, one eyelid half closed and the mouth drawn awry, but clear and unmarred on the other side, was like the head of one of the statues in the doorway of St. Mary’s Church, for that too was shattered on the left side.

Quivering with excitement, the boys watched to see if anything would happen, if any change would come over the old man’s ruined face when the priest absolved him of his sins in God’s name. Beside the standing figure of the priest knelt Uncle Eirik, motionless as a statue; he kept his grizzled head bent, and in his
hands, which were hidden by a cloth of fine linen, he held the manor’s best silver cup with six little tufts of snow-white wool. In a clear voice he said the responses together with the acolyte; the boys understood nothing of the prayers, but remembered to bow their heads whenever they heard the name of Jesus or
Gloria Patri.

Then came the questions in Norse to the dying man, who had not been able to make any confession; at each act of repentance, faith, hope, and love the dying man smote his breast and made a bowing motion with his head. In his one living eye, which reflected the flame of the candle, the boys looked into a world of which they could form no idea, but the shattered half of the face was not made whole, as they had almost expected. Afterwards the priest and their uncle said the
Kyrie
, and Sira Magne read out of his book a long, long prayer and called their grandfather by name, Olavus, while Eirik lowered his head yet deeper, and behind them they were weeping, Una loudest of all.

Eirik’s forehead nearly touched the floor as the acolyte said the
Confiteor—
they knew that, and then came the absolution,
misereatur
and
indulgentiam.

They had never before seen a dying person anointed, and their eyes followed the priest’s fingers as he took the tufts of wool one by one out of the cup in Eirik’s hands, moistened with oil and smeared the sign of the cross over their grandfather’s eyes and ears, nose and mouth, and the backs of his hands. Last of all Eirik, otherwise remaining motionless, raised with one hand the blanket from the dying man’s feet; thus with the chrism of mercy were blotted out all the sins he had committed with sight and senses, with word and hand, and every step he had taken from the right way.

And now the children waited with a sore longing for it to be over, for they were tired of standing still and holding the candles, and Eirik’s back and shoulders kept moving as though he wept, and his voice was husky as he said the responses.

In the afternoon they were out in the courtyard; they knew they must not play any game, for Sira Magne was to come back at evening and bring
corpus Domini
for their grandfather. But after a while they forgot themselves and made a good deal of noise—it was not so often that Kolbein and Audun saw their
brother Torgils, and then they had to discuss with the foreman’s children the wonderful thing they had seen that morning. Reidun had been in the closet with the rest, and she had seen that the black hand of Olav turned white when the priest anointed it, and Kolbein and Torgils agreed—they saw it turn lighter, at any rate.

Then they were sent for to the women’s house; the old people from Rynjul were resting there, and their little red-haired brother, Gunnar, had learned to walk since the big children had last been at Saltviken. Audun remembered that this was the first time Gunnar had been here, so they took him out into the yard. Till Aslak came and told them to be quiet.

Eirik and Cecilia sat alone in the old house. The smoke-vent was open, and the evening sun shone down and gave colour to the thin column of smoke that rose from the last dying embers. Higher up, the trailing smoke began to curl and wave, then it spread out under the roof in a light cloud. The two sat watching the play of the smoke, and from outside came the sound of boys’ shrill voices and little feet running on the rock.

Presently the son got up, went into the closet, and looked at the sick man.

“He is asleep now,” he said as he came back. And after a moment: “When he wakes, you would speak with him alone awhile, I doubt not?”

“Speak with him is more than any can do now, Eirik.”

“Say to him what you have on your mind—”

“We have already bidden him farewell, all of us. What more is there to say?”

“Cecilia,” said Eirik, dropping his voice, “can you think that Father has not noticed it?—in all these four years you tried not to see him. If he came into the room where you were, you left it if you could.—Nay, I have not forgotten that he did you grave injury that time—”