The Snake Pit (12 page)

“Then meseems God is cruel!” exclaimed the woman hotly.

“That is what we human creatures are so prone to say,” replied the priest, “when He grants not our desires. Now, it was of great moment to you and your husband that this child should have grown to man’s estate—he was born to take up a great inheritance and carry on the race. But if a woman bear a child whose only destiny is to be a testimony of her shame and whose only inheritance is his mother’s milk—then her mother’s heart is oftentimes not to be depended upon. It may be that she will hide herself and give birth to it in secret, destroy her child body and soul or put it out with strangers, well pleased if she neither hear nor see it more—”

Olav sprang up and caught his wife as she fell forward in a swoon. Kneeling on one knee, he supported her in his arms; the priest bent down and quickly loosened the linen coif that was tightly wound about her neck. With her white face hanging backward
over her husband’s arm, and the bare arch of her throat, she looked as one dead.

“Lay her down,” said the priest. “Nay, nay, not upon the bed—on the bench, so that she may lie flat.” He busied himself with the sick woman.

“She is not strong, your wife?” asked the priest as he was about to ride away. Olav stood holding his horse.

“No,” he said. “She has ever been weak and frail—ay, for you know we are foster-brother and sister; I have known her from childhood.”

E
ARLY
in the following spring Duke Haakon made ready for an inroad upon Denmark; the Danish King was to be forced to make a reconciliation with his outlawed nobles upon such terms as they and the Norwegians should impose on him.

Olav Audunsson set out for Tunsberg; he was one of the subordinate leaders under Baron Tore Haakonsson. He was not altogether glad to be away from home this summer. He was now striking root at Hestviken: it was his ancestral seat and his native place—he had so long been homeless and an outlaw. As he proceeded with repairing the decay of his property, so that the source that had long been dried up began to flow again with riches, and as he himself acquired a grasp and a knowledge of the work ashore and afloat, he came to take pleasure in these labours on his own behalf. He would have liked Björn to stay behind as his steward, but Björn had no mind to it. In the end Björn accompanied Olav as his squire, and an older man named Leif was to take charge of Hestviken together with the mistress of the house.

He also felt some anxiety for Ingunn—about midsummer she would be brought to bed again. True, she had been in much better health than last time; she had managed her housekeeping and her share of the farm work the whole time—and now she had learned and was not nearly so helpless as she had been when they were newly married. But Olav was uneasy, just because he guessed that she awaited this child with impatient longing. If a disaster should befall it, she would be utterly struck down with sorrow. And he seemed to have a presentiment—that he should find a child in the
house when he came home in the autumn, seemed to him well-nigh unimaginable.

As soon as he reached Tunsberg, Olav Audunsson found old acquaintances of his years of outlawry wherever he turned. Earl Alfs men had flocked to the son-in-law of their slain chief, begging Lord Tore to take them into his service. Also among the Danish outlaws and their men, of whom the town was full, he met many that he had known while he was with the Earl. And one day a vessel ran into the harbour with letters from the Danish lords at Konungahella; her captain, Asger Magnusson, was from Vikings’ Bay and he and Olav had been friends when Olav was at Hövdinggaard; they were also kinsfolk, but very distant. In the evening he went up into the town with his Danish kinsman and took a good rouse—he was much better for it afterwards.

Lord Tore made Olav captain of a little sixteen-oared galley, and his ship, with three small war-vessels from the shipowners of the south-east of the Vik, was to sail under the orders of Asger Magnusson in the
Wivern,
which the Norwegians called
Yrmlingen.
⁶
Feeling between the Danes and their allies was often barely friendly, for this time the greater part of the force was Norwegian. And now the Norwegians made no secret of what they intended by the expedition: King Eirik and Duke Haakon would claim the whole kingdom of Denmark in succession to their grandfather, the holy King Eirik Valdemarsson, and make the country tributary to the crown of Norway. But the Danes did not like to hear this; they jeered at it, saying that their lords, the Constable, Stig Andersson, and Count Jacob, had never bound themselves by promises to any king, and that the Norwegians would have reward enough for their aid when they helped themselves with both hands among the towns and castles of the Danish King. The Norwegians answered that when it came to dividing the spoil, the Danes were great tricksters who always knew how to get the best share for themselves. The Norwegians were the more numerous, but they were mostly peasants and seamen, less inured to war than the Danes. For nearly all of these had served for years under their outlawed chiefs, had grown hardy and resolute, and let the Devil take every law but those of the fighting trade. But in this matter Earl Alf’s old band were a match for
the Danes and more than that. Olav and Asger had their hands full keeping the peace among their men.

The war fleet lay off Hunehals, and the squadron to which Asger’s and Olav’s small vessels belonged harried the northern coasts of the Danish islands. To Vikings’ Bay they did not come. Olav had heard from Asger that the Danish King’s men had stormed Hövdinggaard, burned the manor, and pulled down the stone hall; Sir Barnim Eriksson had fallen, sword in hand. So it booted not to think of him any more, else Olav would have had a mind to see his uncle again. Now he could only let say a mass for the man and let it go. For that matter he felt even less bound than before to his mother’s land and kindred.

There was something light-minded and foolhardy about these low, defenceless coasts that lay awash in the midst of the glittering sea. Above the broad white beach the yellow sand-dunes sloped up, and forest trees grew right out to the point: the trunks of full-grown beeches and gnarled oaks stood just above the stormy waves; turf and roots overhung the edge of the bluff like the threads of a torn tissue. It looked as if the sea had seized and bitten out great pieces of the naked bosom of the land. Olav thought it ugly. Inland there were indeed fair tracts—great and lordly manors, rich soil, swine in the woodland, fat cattle in the meadows, fine horses in the parks—nevertheless, he had never felt at home here. His homeland, the coast of Norway, ring within ring of rocky defences—shelves, skerries and holms, the inner channel, and at last the bright rocks of the mainland, before the first streaks of green soil stole down to the head of an inlet, as though spying out. The great manors lay inland, built mostly on ground from which one could see far afield and know what was coming.

He thought of his own home—the bay within the bare rocks, the manor on the slope of the hill with the Horse Crag at its back. Ingunn would be up again by now—maybe she was standing out in the yard, fair and young and slender again, sunning the child. For the first time he felt an intense desire for children in his home. But the bright vision was far off and incredible.

He was back in the same life he had led when he was outlawed from Norway. The very feeling of wearing a coat of mail again was strangely good; under the weight of it his bodily forces seemed gathered together—it was good to feel the coolness of it when he was at rest, and how it shut in and saved up the heat of
the body when fighting; it was like a warning to husband his strength, not to waste himself without plan or object. The trials of strength, afloat in rough weather, or in a descent ashore—both one and the other demanded of a man that he should be prompt and vigilant, but at the same time reckless in his inmost will, not caring if he were conquered by the danger he was using all his powers to conquer. It was something of this sort that loomed within Olav, more as feelings than thoughts—and at times he felt a kind of repugnance as he recalled the two years he had lived upon the land as a married man. A vague pang at the heart, like a faint throbbing beneath a healed wound—was he wasting his manly strength as he toiled in his loose woollen working-clothes, powerless to determine what he would gain in the end by his trouble? And a kind of revulsion against the memories of his intimate life with the sickly woman—it was as though he surrendered his powerful youth and unbroken health in order that she might absorb vigour from his store, and in his heart he did not believe it would be of any use. Like swimming with a drowning companion hanging about one’s neck—no choice but to save the other or go down with him, if one would deserve the name of man. But one might be pardoned a failing at the heart, at the thought that the end was certain—to be drawn under—though one would struggle to the last, because a man can do no less.

Had she been in good health, and had it seemed natural to him that they would have children to reap where he sowed and inherit all his gains, then he would have looked upon his lot with different feelings. And now and then, when he tried to persuade himself into the belief that Ingunn might be well again, and that, for all he knew, he had a healthy, squalling infant son or daughter in the cradle at home—he would long for his own house. But usually this longing was absent—he had a profound sense of well-being at having no one but himself, no other care but his duties as one among many subordinate captains in the army.

He liked this life among none but men. The women he saw ashore, old or aging women who were charged with the food, venal hussies who were to be found wherever men were, he did not count these. There were wet days and nights afloat, fighting when they forced a landing—this had not fallen to Olav’s lot very often, nor was he altogether sorry for it: in all the years he had followed Earl Alf he had never been able to overcome his dislike
of useless cruelty—and the Danes were cruel when they harried their own country. Indeed, they would scarce have been anything else if they had harried another country. But down here they were used to the game; these coasts had seen plunder and rape and burning since there were men in Denmark. Olav felt himself a stranger among his mother’s people. It was true his heart had been set upon warfare and fighting in his young days, but then the struggle was to end in a decision: death or victory. At times an image would rise before him—a hostile attack upon Hestviken; he defended himself in this home on the rock, with its back to the cliff, drove the enemy downhill into the sea, or fell on his own lands.

The Danes were different, softer and tougher. They let themselves be chased away—peasants into the depths of the forests, lords overseas—but they came back, even as the waves of the sea retire and come again. They lost and they won, and neither one nor the other made much difference to their appetite or enjoyment of life. And with a strangely buoyant patience they bore the thought that things would never be otherwise—they expected to have to fight to all eternity, winning or losing along the low, wet shores, without calling any victory or defeat the last one.

Then they were quartered ashore for a time. The men were closely packed in the houses of the town; the air was dense and hot with rank smells, foul talk, ale and wine, belching, wrangling and quarrelling. There was fighting every night in the streets and yards—the captains had hard work to keep anything resembling peace and discipline among their bands.

Rumours were ever in the air—of ships’ crews that were reported to have made descents and carried off great booty. At Maastrand a body of Earl Alf’s old men-at-arms had fought with some German merchants and killed all their prisoners—in payment of an old score of their dead lord’s, it was said. The Danish King’s fleet had taken the Constable’s fortress on Samsö, and Sir Stig Andersson himself had fallen, folk said. Among the Norwegians it was believed that Duke Haakon aimed at winning Denmark for himself, and that it was over this he had quarrelled with his brother the King; it was for this reason that King Eirik had sailed home to Björgvin already in the early summer, and that the captains of the King’s fleet, lords from the west country and some
few from Iceland, had wrought such destruction. But the Duke caused strict discipline to be kept in his army: he did not wish to see the total ruin of the land he intended for himself.

Olav thought that even if the great lords knew the truth or falsity of all these rumours, the rank and file of the army had little grasp of what was going on. And the lesser captains, like himself, were reckoned with the rank and file, not with the lords—whom the fighting men usually knew only by name; but the less they knew of them, the more inclined they were to talk about them. That he himself was related to many of the outlawed Danish nobles, he was too proud to mention, if they did not remember him. His own chief, Baron Tore, counted him as no more than a subordinate captain on the same footing as the masters of the ships of the country levies; he deemed Olav of Hestviken to be a brave man and a useful leader—but he had not distinguished himself in any way above the rest; he had had no opportunity of performing deeds that attracted attention.

One thing resulted from this life: when Olav recalled his secret dread that there was some connection between the load on his conscience and the fact that there had been so little joy in his life with Ingunn, this now seemed to him a very preposterous thought. Imperceptibly an idea of this sort had grown up in him during these two years. But these men among whom he was had robbed the peasants of their cattle, burned houses and castles, had not only reddened their weapons in fight, but often slain and maimed defenceless folk without just cause. Some had on them treasures that they were mightily afraid of showing—likely enough these things were stolen from churches. And though it was Duke Haakon’s order that rape should be punished with death, it could hardly be thought that all the women and girls who drifted among the fighting men while the army was ashore had taken to this life entirely of their own free will.