In the Wilderness (20 page)

Early in the winter, when the talk was of war, Olav had said that this year he would take Eirik with him on board. And so long as all men thought the fleet would sail, Eirik had been busy looking over all the things he was to take with him and exercising himself in the use of his weapons. But when the word came that peace was not to be broken, Eirik was yet busier, and now his talk was that if and if and if—It galled Olav every time he heard the lad’s boasting.

Another thing that annoyed Olav was that Eirik was continually humming and singing. It had not mattered so much while Eirik was a child, he had had such a clear, sweet voice. But now that his voice was breaking he still sang as before; it did not sound well.

One noontide in the haymaking Olav sent Eirik home to the houses to fetch a rope, Time went on and on. A thunderstorm broke on the heights over Hudrheimsland; it was coming this way, the men worked hard to bring the dry hay under a rock shelter, and Olav grew angrier and angrier as he carried great armfuls of hay. He ran up to the farm.

In the yard stood Cecilia playing ball. She threw the ball against the wall of the storehouse and caught it in one hand; the other little free hand mimicked the action more feebly. Every time she threw the ball she tossed her fair head charmingly. Bothild sat on the ground looking on.

All at once Eirik leaped in between his sister and the wall and caught the ball. He ran backwards across the yard, throwing the
ball into the air and catching it, Cecilia following and trying to get it back. Sometimes Eirik pretended to throw it to her. “Catch it, catch it—” and then he tricked her. Suddenly he threw it over the roof of the house.

Then he caught sight of his father. He picked up the ropes, which he had flung down on the rock, and handed them to Olav.

“Could you not find some that were rottener?”

“Nay, these are not rotten, Father,” said Eirik confidently.

Olav put his foot in the hank, gave a tug, and threw away the broken ropes. Eirik was crossing over to the storehouse, when his father ordered him sharply: “Find your sister’s ball and give it to her.” He went himself to find a fresh rope.

In the storehouse all was in confusion; Olav hung everything in its place before he went out. He was making a loop in the new rope when he heard a disturbance in the dairy.

It was Mærta, who had given the little girls some curds and cream to taste; but Eirik forced himself in and wanted to taste the curds too. Mærta took hold of him and pushed him out.

Eirik shouted angrily: “You behave as if you were mistress here—’tis not
your
curds.”

Mærta took no notice of him, but Cecilia made a grimace at her brother, finger in mouth.

Eirik was furious and shouted louder: “ ’Tis not yours, I say, nothing is yours here in
our
house—even if my father allows you food and lodging, you and the brat you have with you—”

Then Olav was at his side.

“That is no courteous speech, Eirik. You must beg pardon of your foster-mother for it.”

Eirik was obstinate and defiant; he turned red.

Olav flared up wrathfully: “Beg Mærta’s pardon—kiss the lady’s hand and do as I bid.”

A flash of lightning cleft the black darkness over the fiord. Olav counted under his breath as he waited for the thunderclap. The peal rolled away among the hills.

“Be quick now, do as I tell you, and then come out to the hay.”

Eirik did not move.

Olav let the leather thong run between his fingers; coldly and quietly he said: “ ’Tis an age since you felt my hand on you, Eirik. But do now as I tell you, else you shall taste this.” He gave the rope a little shake.

Eirik bent down on one knee and rapidly kissed Mærta Birgersdarter’s hand. But at that instant Olav felt he could not bear to see the lad’s miserable face.

The father took the coil of rope and set off at a run for the fields. He did not even look round to see whether the boy followed him. Abundantly as Eirik had deserved the humiliation, Olav hated having to force the lad thus on his knees before a stranger; he hated Eirik for it.

Y
ET
father and son got on together in a way for another year and more.

Then came Advent in the following winter, and they were killing meat for Yule.

Arnketil and Liv came out to Hestviken in the pitch-dark early morning; the man was to be butcher, his wife to help the women with puddings and the like.

It had snowed the week before, enough to whiten the fields, but with the new moon came mild weather, and that morning, as Olav came out into the yard, the fog was so thick that they could scarce find their way between the houses. Olav told the men they must rope the pig before they drove the toughness out of it—if it escaped them in this fog, it might not be easy to catch it again.

Olav stood on the doorstone, watching the torches lighting up the thick sea-mist; a moment later they only showed as faint red gleams in the downy grey darkness and then vanished. But soon after, he heard cries and roars and the squealing of the pig, and men came running over the smooth rocks of the yard. Something dashed past him in the dark, and Olav guessed it was the pig. He tried to jump in the way of it, but it was gone in the dense gloom, making eastward across the fields.

After it came the men with torches and brands through the mist, dark forms swathed in darkness. Olav ran on with them. Arnketil and Eirik stooped as they ran, lighting up the pig’s tracks in the snow. Olav halted by the barn, and old Tore told him how it had happened. Eirik was to have held the pig, while Arnketil got on its back to ride it tender, and then he had let go.

One of the pigs that were not for slaughter had got loose at the same time. So this pig’s flesh was to be effectually worked into softness before they stuck it. They could hear it through the fog.

Olav knew of old that Eirik was always squeamish on pig-killing days—but nobody
likes
them. And the lad was still as clumsy as ever when he had to lend a hand with a beast; it made things no better when he tried to conceal his shrinking with unbecoming flippancy and foolish jesting.

The house-carls came back. They did not think they could catch the pigs again until the fog lifted, and they cursed over the waste of time.

But an hour later Arnketil and Eirik returned with the pig—it had run itself into a drift of thawing snow. Olav went indoors again and lay down on the bench—it was the custom that the master of the house should keep away from pig-killing and only show himself in the yard when he brought out the ale-bowl for the refreshment of the butchers. He lay listening to the pig’s shrieks—it was quite preposterous the time it took today before the life was out of it.

It was already daylight outside, stiff with grey fog, when Olav went across with Arnketil to the cook-house. On the snow outside it lay the pig’s carcass split in two.

Under the cook-house wall stood Eirik and little Aasta, the youngest of the serving-maids; they were washing themselves in the water-butt, laughing and splashing each other. Eirik was not aware of his father for the fog; he made a dash at the girl and tried to dry his hands on her clothes—his conduct was not very seemly. Aasta screamed, but laughed still more and made no great struggle to escape the lad’s forwardness, and Eirik made free with his hands under her kirtle.

The next instant Olav had him by the neck and flung him aside. Eirik had a glimpse of his father’s face, grey and wild with fury—then he got a blow of his fist on the jaw which made him reel, his father caught him again, shook him, and hurled him backwards, so that he fell at full length in the snow.

“Be off, you foul trollop,” said Olav to Aasta—she was standing there awkwardly. The girl slipped away. “Stand up!”—he gave Eirik a push with his foot.

Eirik rose to his feet and stood dazed before his father.

Olav said in a low voice, shaking with rage: “Do you think you
can behave thus in your father’s house—you and your bitch—in broad daylight, before folks’ eyes—like a dog!”

Eirik turned red as fire. He too began to tremble with rage. “ ’Tis not true—’twas only—jesting.” His anger brought him to the verge of tears, and then he shouted: “May I not touch one of the maids here without you must needs think—that I shall deal with her as you did with Torhild?”

He raised his arms to fend off the blow—Olav threw him and was over him. He crushed the boy with his knees as he lay in the miry, blood-stained snow. He did not desist as long as he felt any sign of resistance in the body beneath him. Eirik lay limply, with his face half buried in the snow, as Olav stood up and left him.

Old Tore had stood watching Olav punishing his son. Now he knelt down in the dirty slush and tended the unconscious lad.

Later in the day they found the other pig that Eirik had allowed to escape in the early morning. It lay in the hollow behind the outhouses in a pool of slush, dead. Olav shrugged his shoulders when they came and reported the mischance. He clenched his teeth: he had
not
chastised Eirik too severely that morning.

No one saw any more of Eirik that day—nor was it noticed, so busy was the household. It was only old Tore who had seen Olav strike Eirik. The other house-folk remarked no doubt that there was discord once more between father and son, but that happened so often.

But at dusk, when Olav came in from outside, there was one standing in the anteroom; he followed the master into the empty hall and closed the door behind him. It was Eirik. A few logs were burning on the hearth—in the uncertain flicker Olav could see that the lad’s face was bruised and swollen.

Olav seated himself on the bench. On the table lay a bannock and a tasty sausage, smoking hot. The man took a bite of the food, chewed and ate slowly—but Eirik stood erect and silent in the shadows.

“What will you?” asked his father at last, reluctantly.

“I wonder if you yourself believed what you said—” Eirik began, so calmly and naturally that his father wondered at him—and then felt a chill of remote misgiving: never had he heard the boy speak in this way. “If you think it so ill of me to trifle with
the young maid—then you are not very reasonable, Father. But you are seldom reasonable or just with me.”

Olav pushed away his food. He sat upright on the bench—a feeling of tension clutched at his heart. Then a cold clearness of vision came upon him, like acknowledging a defeat: Eirik was surely right.

The son paused for a moment. Then he spoke as before: “It is almost as though you had taken a hatred to me, Father.”

But as the man on the bench still sat motionless, Eirik went on, more hotly, more like his usual self: “The way you treat us, one would almost think you had taken a hatred to your own children! You grant your son no honour and no authority—you keep me as a child—and I am in my sixteenth winter!” His voice had broken now, turning to a scream.

“I can see that
you
think so,” said his father. And presently he added, with a touch of scorn: “Nevertheless you are very young, Eirik, to judge of your own worth.”

Eirik turned and went out.

Eirik had already crept under the skins in his bed—so it appeared—when Olav came in that night to go to rest. The little girls were already asleep in the south bed, Mærta was still busy in the cook-house. But the next morning when the lady went to wake Eirik, she found nothing but a bundle underneath the coverlet.

Sticks and straw tumbled out when she took hold of the old cloak. Mærta was angry—she thought the boy had done this to make a fool of her. Olav stood by and saw it—for a moment he felt alarmed—absurdly, as he saw at once. He turned away in annoyance: what wretched child’s tricks! The boy had not been in his bed that night, he wished to show he was offended; but such nonsense as this bundle! Then it struck the man: surely he had never gone to Aasta, to defy him? Ah, if that were so, he should have a beating he had never dreamed of.

He would ask no questions. But by the afternoon it was clear to the whole household that Eirik was not at the manor.

None of the boats was missing, and his horse stood in the stable. There was the same thick, wet fog again today—it was vain to search for the boy, nor could Olav spare any men to send out. But he wondered whither Eirik had betaken himself—to Rynjul or Skikkjustad or perhaps to that Jörund Rypa?

At night the wind got up from the south and it began to rain. In the course of the day the fields were all a mirror of ice, the air was filled with a roaring blast from sea and woods.

As yet Olav had not uttered a word to his house-folk about the matter. Lady Mærta tried to speak of it, but Olav cut her short.

Now and again anxiety dragged at him. The boy could not have taken it so that he—surely he had not fallen over somewhere in the night and the fog? Thoughts crowded upon him, which he strove to drive away. It was unlikely.

He found occasion to see to the boats—took courage and looked under the sheds and the quay, went round the shore of the bay—all the while saying to himself: “Eirik is surely at Rynjul”—he had always been Una’s favourite.

On Sunday he met both the Rynjul folk and those of Skikkjustad at church. After mass he fell into talk with Jörund Rypa’s kinsmen. He saw at once that they knew nothing of Eirik’s flight.

He went over to the parsonage. Several people had been in there to speak with the priest, and mass had been late that day, for the roads were almost impassable after the bad weather. Sira Hallbjörn had not yet tasted bite nor sup—he was pale about the nose from his long fast.

Olav told him his son had run away.

“Ay, ’twas not too soon,” said the priest.

His ancient housekeeper came limping in with the dish of porridge; the men moved forward and took their places at the table. The priest and the deacon said grace, Olav stood silently waiting at the door. With a mute gesture Sira Hallbjörn invited him to sit down with them and break his fast.

Olav thanked him, but said he must go home. But he asked the priest to come to the outer door with him—he had three words to say to him. Sira Hallbjörn went out reluctantly.

“You know nothing of Eirik, do you, Sira? You have heard no rumour of where he is gone?”