The Snake Pit (11 page)

Olav turned round to Una—she was red in the face and looked troubled. And slowly a flush rose in the man’s cheeks. “Now I never heard—are you out of your senses, Ingunn?”

“I tell you,” cried his wife, with bitterness in her voice, “she there, ’tis not for nothing she comes of Foulbeard’s brood—and I trow there is more likeness between him and you than—”

“Hold your mouth,” said Olav, revolted. “’Tis
you
should have the wit to be ashamed—are
you
to say such things to me!”

He checked himself, seeing her wince as though he had struck her in the face. She seemed to collapse with wretchedness, and her husband took her by the arm.

“Come in with me now,” he said, not unfriendly, and led her across the yard. She leaned against him with her eyes closed, so heavy that she could scarcely move her feet; he had almost to carry her. And within himself he was furious—“She makes herself out far more wretched than she is.”

But when he had brought her to a seat on the bench and saw how miserable and unhappy she looked, he came up and stroked her check.

“Ingunn—have you clean lost your wits—can it displease you that I jest with my own kinswoman?”

She said nothing, and he went on:

“It looks ill and worse than ill—you must be able to see that yourself. Una has been here with us four weeks, has taken all the work she could from your shoulders—and you reward her thus! What do you suppose she thinks of this?”

“I care not,” said Ingunn.

“But I care,” answered Olav sharply. “’Tis unwise of us too,” he went on more gently, “to behave so that we challenge folk to speak ill of us. Surely you must see that yourself.”

Olav went out and found Una in the cook-house; she was cleaning fish for supper. He went up and stood beside her—the man was so unhappy he did not know what he was to say.

Then she smiled and said: “Think no more of this, kinsman—she cannot help being unreasonable and ill-tempered now, poor woman. The worst is,” she added, making the cat jump for a little fish, “that I cannot be of much use here, Olav, for I saw from the first day that she likes not my being here. So I believe it will be wiser if I go to Signe tomorrow.”

Olav answered warmly: “To me it seems a great shame that she—that you should leave us in this wise. And what will you say to Signe and to Sira Benedikt about your not staying here?”

“You may be sure they have more wit than to make any matter of this.”

“’Twill grieve Ingunn most of all,” the man exclaimed dolefully, “when she comes to herself again—that she has offended our guest and kinswoman so abominably.”

“Oh no, for then she will scarce remember it. Let not this vex you, Olav—” she dried her hands, laid them on his arms, and looked up at him with her bright, pale-grey eyes, which were so like his own.

“You are kind, Una,” he said in a faltering voice, and he bent over her and kissed her on the lips.

He had always greeted the sisters with a kiss when they met or parted. But he realized with a faint, sweet tremor that this was not the kiss that belongs to courtesy between near kinsfolk who count themselves something more than cottagers. He let his lips dwell upon the fresh, cool, maidenly mouth, unwilling to let go, and he held her slender form to him and felt a subtle, fleeting pleasure in it.

“You are kind,” he whispered again, and kissed her once more before reluctantly releasing her and going out.

“There can be no sin in it,” he thought with a mocking smile. But he could not forget Una’s fresh kiss. It had been—ay, it had been as it should be. But that was a small thing to trouble about. He had been
angry
with Ingunn—had never believed she could behave so odiously and ridiculously. But no doubt Una was right, there was little count to be taken of what she said or did at this time, poor creature.

But when he had accompanied Una to Skikkjustad next day
after mass—it was the feast of the Translation of Saint Olav
⁴
—and was riding homeward alone, his anger boiled up anew. Had she come to such a pass that she now suspected him of the worst, simply because she herself had sinned? No, now he remembered that she had shown his kinswomen ill will before, in the autumn, when there was naught amiss with her. She
was
jealous—even at Frettastein she had been quick to find faults and blemishes in other women—the few they met. And that was unseemly.

Olav was indignant with his wife. And then the fact that she should mention Torgils Foulbeard. All his childhood’s vague aversion to the madman had turned to open hate and horror since he had heard the whole story of Torgils Olavsson. He had been a ravisher whom God struck down at the last, a disgrace to his kin. And
he
lived in folk’s minds, while none remembered the other Olavssons who had lived and died in honour. Surely he might just as well be said to take after them—Olav was always ill at ease when he heard it hinted that he was so like Foulbeard. But he was annoyed with himself for feeling as it were a cold blast of ghostly terror at the back of his neck when such things were said.

His worst enemy could not accuse him of being mad after women. In all the years he had lived in outlawry he could scarcely recall having looked at a woman. When his uncle Barnim suggested that he ought to take the pretty miller’s daughter and keep her as his leman, while he was at Hövdinggaard, he had sharply refused. Fair she was, and willing too, as he could see—but he had held himself to be a married man in a way, and he would keep his troth, even if his uncle teased him for it and laughingly reminded him of Ketillög.—This was a poor vendible girl he had fallen in with one night when he was in the town in company with other young men from the manor and they were all dead-drunk. In the morning, when he was sober again, he fell to talking with the girl, and after that he had conceived a sort of kindness for her—she was unlike others of her kind, sensible and quiet in her ways, preferring a man who did not care to play the fool and raise a riot in the inn. And then he had continued to look in on her when he was in the town on his uncle’s business. Often he simply came in and sat with her, ate the food he had brought, and sent her for ale: he took pleasure in her quiet way of waiting upon him. But his
friendship for her had been no heavy sin—and no one in his right mind would assert that he had been unfaithful to Ingunn with
her.
He had often thought of her, however, in the first years that succeeded—hoped she had got into no trouble for helping him to get away to the Earl that time. He wished he could have known for certain that she had been able to hide from the others in the inn the money he gave her at parting, and whether she had carried out the plan she often spoke of: that she would turn her back on that inn and seek service with the nuns of St. Clara’s convent. In truth she was far too good to be where she was.

It was the sense of this secret guilt that made him insecure—he felt defenceless against the Evil One, like a man who must go on fighting though crippled by a secret wound. His wife’s prolonged ill health and her unreasonableness—and her being herself the cause that he was never allowed entirely to forget what
must
be forgotten—all this made him uneasy, wavering in his mind. And he felt a little thrill of pleasure as he remembered how good it had been to hold Una in his arms.

It angered him as he thought of Ingunn—it was her senseless behaviour to the kind, fair child that had been the cause of this.

But he would have to take it patiently—she had so little to comfort her now, Ingunn.

But the same evening Ingunn fell sick; it came so suddenly that before the ladies who were to help her could reach the place, it was over. None but Ingunn’s own serving-women were with her when the child came—and they were all terrified and bewildered, they told Olav afterwards, with tears in their eyes. They thought the boy was alive when they lifted him up from the floor, but a moment later he was dead.

Never, thought Olav, had he seen a creature look so like a piece of broken, washed-out wreckage cast up on the beach as did Ingunn, lying there crouched against the wall. Her thick, dark-yellow hair lay tousled over the bed, and her dark-blue eyes, full of unfathomable distress, stared from her swollen, tear-stained face. Olav seated himself on the edge of the bed, took one of her clammy hands, and laid it on his knee, covering it with his own.

One of the weeping maids came in bearing a bundle, unwrapped
it, and showed Olav the corpse of his son. Olav looked for a few moments at the little bluish body, and the mother burst into another harrowing fit of weeping. Quickly the man bent over her.

“Ingunn, Ingunn, do not grieve so!”

He himself was unable to feel any real grief over his son. In a way he was fully aware how great was the loss—and his heart was wrung when he reflected that the boy had died unbaptized. But he had never had peace for rejoicing in the past months—had felt nothing but a vague and faltering jealousy of what had gone before, anxiety for Ingunn, and a longing for the end of this cheerless time. But he had never realized that the end would be the birth of a son in his house—a little boy whom he would bring up to manhood.

The mother was not very sick, said the neighbours’ wives when they came and nursed her. But when the time came for her to be helped to sit up in bed in the daytime, she had no strength. She was drenched with sweat if she did but try to bind her hair and put on her coif. And Sunday after Sunday went by without her being strong enough to think of churching.

Ingunn lay on her bed, fully dressed, with her face turned to the wall the whole day long. She was thinking that she herself had been the cause of this child’s death. She had received it with loveless thoughts as it lay within her, groping for its mother’s heart-strings. And now it was dead. Had skilful women been with her at its birth, it would surely have lived, the neighbours told her. But she had always insisted, when they came to see her this summer, that she did not expect it before St. Bartholomew’s Day.
⁵
For she had been afraid of these wise neighbours of hers—lest they might find out and spread it abroad that Olav Audunsson’s wife had had a child before. And the morning she woke up and felt it was coming, she had risen and kept on her feet as long as she was able.—But Olav must never know this.

But at last it could be put off no longer—it was on the Sunday after Michaelmas that Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter had to submit to be led into church. Olav had learned that there were four other women newly delivered who were to go in; one of them was the daughter-in-law of one of the richest manors of the neighbourhood,
and she had just brought an heir into the world; the church would surely be half full of her kinsfolk and friends alone, who would come to make offerings with her. Olav could scarce bring himself to think of Ingunn, kneeling before the church door, poor and empty-handed, while the others bowed to receive the lighted candles—as the psalm of David was sung over the women: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart … he shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.”—To Ingunn and him this would sound like a judgment.

Olav had been shy of going near Sira Benedikt since the day Ingunn drove Una Arnesdatter out of their house in such a shameful manner. But now he rode one day up to the priest’s and begged him to be kind and bring consolation to Ingunn.

Sira Benedikt had ordered that all corpses of unbaptized infants should be buried on the outer side of the churchyard fence; they were not to be hidden under a heap of stones, like cattle that had died a natural death, or buried in waste places like evil-doers. He reproved people severely for believing in the ghosts of such children: dead infants could not appear, he said, for they were in a place which is called Limbus Puerorum, and they can never come out from thence, but they are well there; Saint Augustine, who is the most excellent of all Christian sages, writes that he would rather be one of these children than never have been born. But if folk have been scared out of their wits and senses in those places where the corpses of infants have been hidden away, it is because they themselves have such sins on their consciences that the Devil has power over them to lead them astray. For it is clear that the place where a mother has made away with her babe is wellnigh an altar or a church to the Devil and all his imps—they are fain to haunt it ever after.

The priest consented at once to accompany Olav home. Olav Ingolfsson had firmly believed in infant apparitions and thought indeed that he himself had once laid such a ghost. So Sira Benedikt was zealous to dissuade Ingunn from this heresy and give her consolation.

The woman sat, white and thin, with her hands folded in her lap, and listened to their parish priest discoursing of the Limbus Puerorum. It was written of this in a book—a monk in Ireland
had been rapt in an ecstasy seven days and seven nights, and he had had a vision of hell and purgatory and heaven; he had also been in the place where are the unbaptized infants. It appears as a green valley, and the sky is always clouded as a sign that they can never attain the bliss of beholding God’s countenance; but light is shed down between the clouds, in token that God’s goodness dwells upon the children. And the children appeared to be happy and in good case. They do not feel the lack of heaven, for they know not that there is such a place, nor can they rejoice at being saved from the pains of hell, for they have never heard of it. They play there in the valley and splash water upon one another, for the place is passing rich in brooks and meres.

Olav interrupted: “Then meseems, Sira Benedikt, that many a man might be tempted to desire he had died an infant and unbaptized.”

The priest replied: “It is so ordained, Olav, that in our baptism we are called to a great inheritance. And we must pay the price of being men.”

“Are the parents suffered to come thither sometimes?” asked Ingunn in a low voice—”to have sight of their children and watch them at play?”

The priest shook his head:

“They
must go their own way, up or down—but it will never take them over that valley.”