The Snake Pit (2 page)

Aasa sighed when she saw it. It was her charge to be like a foster-mother to young Olav, and he slept in her bed. But Aasa was more minded to herd Foulbeard and tend him, she as well as the great-grandfather. Koll, the old house-carl, was the only one who had care of the boy Olav.—Other than these four had not
been dwelling at the manor, that Olav could remember. There were some who came and worked on the farm and down by the waterside.—Like enough the decline of Hestviken had already begun in those years. And after Olav Ingolfsson took over the conduct of the place, it had gone steadily downhill.

Now, farming had never been the main thing at Hestiviken; but neither Olav Ribbung in the last years of his life, nor Olav Ingolfsson had made such use of the sea as had been the custom here from old time. Then it came about that the rightful owner was outlawed, and the larger craft that still belonged to the place were seized by the King’s officers. Olav Ingolfsson had never succeeded in providing new boats, nor yet in restoring the herds of cattle and making good the number of horses.

Olav guessed that the heritage that had fallen to him on the death of his father, Audun Ingolfsson, was so great that he would have been a very rich man at that time; but he himself had not known this and Steinfinn had never made any inquiries on his behalf. And even before his outlawry the estate had greatly shrunk. Now he owned no more than his ancestral manor and some farm-lands in the surrounding district, with others over in Hudrheim, across the fiord. He had sold the udal estate in Elvesyssel that had come to him from his grandmother, when he had to make atonement and pay weregild for the slaying of Einar Kolbeinsson; but there was still so much money owing to him by the monks of Dragsmark, who had bought most of the land, that he could again fit out ships and resume the trading by water.

And at that time there were not so many franklins in the country round the Oslo Fiord who possessed their udal estates whole and undivided. A great part of their property had come into the hands of the great landlords, or into those of the King or the Church. So Olav Audunsson of Hestviken might nevertheless be reckoned a man of substance and leading in his native district—and as such he was honoured as was meet, when at last he returned to his ancestral home.

Folk judged that he had shown himself generous when he took over his property from the aged man who had been his guardian and had acquitted himself so ill of his trust. But none had heard Olav complain of this, and he showed his namesake filial respect. And when certain men tried to find out what Olav himself thought, and asked how he had found his affairs situated, Olav
replied very soberly: “Not well.” But it could not have turned out otherwise—with the doom that had fallen on himself—and even before that the work of this place must have been more than Olav Ingolfsson could accomplish, crippled as he was. One of Olav Half-priest’s legs had been broken, so that it was quite stiff and the foot was turned outward; he was very lame and could not move without a staff, and his stiff and straddling leg made it difficult for him to sit a horse or travel in a boat.

Olav Ingolfsson was a good deal more than threescore winters and he looked older yet—he seemed old as the hills. He was tall and thin and bent; his face was narrow and well-featured, with a fine curved nose—the younger Olav had a feeling that his namesake was not unlike his own father, so far as he remembered him. But Olav Ingolfsson was bald as a stone, with red and bleary eyes; the skin hung in shrivelled puckers under his eyes, on his shrunken cheeks, and below his chin. To cure the pain in his lame leg he used dogskin and catskin and many kinds of unguents. Whether from this or other causes, there was always a peculiar smell about the old man—as of mice—and the closet where he slept smelt of mice.

He was a son of Olav Ribbung’s twin brother, Ingolf Alavsson, priest of St. Harvard’s Church at Oslo. When the order came that the priests of Norway were to live in celibacy, Ingolf Priest sent his wife home to Tveit, the estate in Soleyar which she had brought him as her dowry; and all the children followed their mother, save the youngest son, Olav; he was himself set apart for the priesthood and newly ordained deacon when the accident befell him that made him a cripple. But he had lived in chastity all his days, and folk thought he had such great insight into many things that some held him to be more learned and pious than their parish priest. It was above all when folk were troubled by the walking dead and by goblins on sea and land, or when they had some sickness that was thought to be the work of witchcraft or evil spirits, that they sought counsel of Olav Half-priest, for he had more understanding of such things than all men else.

Olav Audunsson took to his namesake at once—in the first place because he was his nearest kinsman and the first man of his father’s race whom he had met. It was strange to be here and to know that this was his ancestral manor and these surroundings his native
soil; here he was destined to live the rest of his life—and he would have grown up here, but that his lot had been so markedly unlike that of other young men. But fate had cast him far from his home while he was yet a child, and since then he had been homeless and rootless as a log adrift in the sea.

Now he had come back to the place from which he had sprung. In a way he felt at home with many things, both indoors and out; but for all that it was very different from what he seemed to remember. The mill in Hestvikdal was familiar, but all that lay on the other side of the creek—the Bull, the wooded ridge—was as though he had never seen it, nor could he remember the marshy valley along the stream, a waste full of foliage trees. He could never have known what the country was like to the north of the creek—perhaps he had believed it settled and tilled like the shores of Lake Mjösen. But from Hestviken not a single human dwelling was to be seen.

The houses of the manor he remembered much bigger than they were. And the little strip of beach hemmed in by rocks, which had seemed to him a whole stretch of country with many distinctive marks—a great bluish rock on which he used to lie, some bushes in which he could hide—now he saw that the little strip of sand was scarcely fifty of a grown man’s paces in length. He looked in vain for a hollow in the meadow above the manor, where he had been wont to sit and sun himself—it might have been a little pit east of the barn, which was now overgrown with osiers and alders. In a crack of the rock in the courtyard he had once found a curious snow-white ring—it must have been a vertebra of some bird or fish, from which the points were broken off, he now thought. But at that time he had taken it for a rare treasure, had preserved it carefully and often searched in the crevices of the rock to see if he could find others like it. It was almost like remembering old dreams—the scenes of the past floated before him in fragments—and at times he recalled a forgotten feeling of eeriness, as though after bad dreams he remembered no more than the dread.

So he snatched at everything that might help him to overcome this sense of insecurity, of dreams and shadows, and make him feel that Hestviken was his, and that when he walked over the fields here he had his own ancestral soil under his feet—the Bull, the woods and hills on both sides of the valley, all was
his
land.
And he was glad to think that now he was dwelling under the same roof as a kinsman, his own grandfather’s cousin, who had known all the men and women of his race since the days of his great-grandfather’s, Olav Ribbung’s manhood. When he sat in the evening drinking with his namesake and the old man told him of their bygone kinsmen, Olav had a sense of fellowship with his father’s stock which he had never known when he was in Denmark among his mother’s kindred.

And he was drawn to the old man by the belief that Olav Priest’s son was so pious and learned. During these weeks, while he was awaiting the time when he could go northward and fetch Ingunn, he felt in a way as though he were settling his account with God.

He himself was fully aware that it would not be easy for him to show perfect serenity and a glad countenance when he came to Berg to conclude the atonement with Haftor and receive Ingunn as his wife at the hands of the Steinfinnssons. But it could not be otherwise—and to get her was what he himself wished, in spite of all—and so he would surely be man enough to put a good face on it. But he could not defend himself against the insistence of childish memories—the certain knowledge that they belonged to each other and should always be together. That anything could come between them had been so far from their thoughts that it had never moved their hearts to either joy or wonder—they had taken it for granted that it should be as it had been determined for them. Until that summer when, locked in an embrace, they had fallen out of childhood and innocence, frightened, but at the same time giddy with rapture at the new sweetness they had found in each other—whether it were right or wrong that they abandoned themselves to it. Even when he awoke to a fear and defiance of all who would meddle with their destiny, he had been full sure that at last they two would win their cause. These memories would come suddenly upon Olav, and the pain of them was like the stab of a knife. That dream was now to take its course-but not the course he had imagined. And remembering himself as he was then was like remembering some other man he had known—a boy of such infinite simplicity that he both pitied and despised him, and envied him excruciatingly—a child he had been, with no suspicion of deceit, either in himself or in others. But he knew that for this anguish of the soul there was but one remedy—
he would have to hide his wound so that no one, she least of all, might see that he bore a secret hurt.

These thoughts might assail him while he sat conversing with the other Olav, and he would break off in the midst of his talk. The old man scarcely noticed it, but talked on and on, and the young man stared before him with a face hard and close—till old Olav asked him some question, and young Olav became aware that he had not heard a word of what the other had been saying.

But he made ready to shoulder the burden he had to bear-without wincing, should it be God’s will to chasten him sorely in the coming years. For in a way the memory of that ski journey he had made with another and of the night at the sæter was ever present to him—except that he did not seem to see
himself
as the murderer. Rather was it as though he had witnessed a settling of scores between two strangers. But it
was
he, he knew that in a strange, indifferent way, and the sin was
his
sin. The slaying in itself could hardly be any mortal sin: he had not enticed the other into an ambush, the lad himself had planned this journey, and he had fallen sword in hand—and even a thrall had had the right to avenge his wife’s honour in old days, he had heard; ’twas a man’s right and duty by the law of God and men.

It was what came after—

And he had a feeling that he was offering God a makeshift in squaring his shoulders and making ready to bear the burden of Ingunn’s misfortune. Never would he let anyone see it if it became too heavy. And he would live piously and in the fear of God from now on—so far as that was in the power of a man who had an unshriven sin on his conscience. He would act justly by his neighbour, be charitable to the poor, protect the forlorn and defenceless, honour the house of God and his parish priest and render such payments as were due, say his daily prayers devoutly and with reflection and repeat the Miserere often, pondering the words well. He knew that he had received far too little instruction in the Christian faith during his youth; Brother Vegard had done his best, but he came to Frettastein only once or twice a year and stayed there but a week, and there was none else who so much as made inquiry whether the children said their prayers every day. And the good instruction he had received while with Bishop Torfinn had fared as in the parable—so many tares had been sown among the wheat during the years he spent abroad
that the wheat, just as it was beginning to sprout, was choked by the weeds. For the first time something like remorse for the slaying of Einar Kolbeinsson dawned upon Olav Audunsson: he had regretted it because it was an ill reward to Bishop Torfinn for his kindness and because, as his affairs were then situated, it was the most unlucky chance that could befall him—ay, and then he knew that he
ought
to repent it, because it w
as
sin, even if he could not see why it was so sinful. Now he began to divine that a deeper meaning and a deeper wisdom underlay our Lord’s commandment “Thou shalt not kill” than merely that which he had been told—God desires not the death of any sinner. Behind the commandment lay also a care for the slayer—the slayer also exposed his soul to many kinds of evil powers, which now found occasion for sudden assaults.

Therefore it might well be of service to him to dwell with so pious a man as Olav Half-priest; his kinsman could surely afford him useful guidance in many things. Such as the penitential psalms —he had learned a number of them of Asbjörn All-fat and Arnvid in his days at Hamar, but now he had forgotten the most part.

Olav invited his neighbours to a home-coming feast and told them that the wife he was to bring home was the daughter of Steinfinn Toresson, his foster-sister, to whom he had been betrothed when both were of tender age. So soon as he had looked about him at home and seen how his affairs stood he would ride back to the Upplands and fetch his wife. But as to the wedding he said not a word, whether it had already been drunk or was still to come; nor did he ask any of his neighbours to accompany him, though it was impossible for his kinsman to make the journey. Folk were quick to remark that the young Master of Hestviken was one who kept his own counsel and knew full well how far he would give an account of himself—not much was to be got out of him by asking questions.

Olav had thought long and deeply whether he should mention that there was a child. Perhaps it might make the matter easier if he spoke of this beforehand. But he could not bring himself to it. And then he thought that after all it might be dead. It had been born quick—but death came easily to young children, he had heard it said. Or they might hit upon some means—put it out to foster-parents on the way, perhaps. That Ingunn should give him
out as the child’s father, as he had told her in his first bewilderment and desperation, he now saw to be madness. He could not understand how he had come to conceive such a thought—bringing a bastard into the race. Had it but been a daughter, they could have put her in a convent, and no man would have suffered any great wrong by his letting her pass as his; but Ingunn had had a man-child—Oh, he had been witless at the time, from grief and anger. But he felt bound to accept the child, if the mother wished to have it with her. It must now fall out as fate would have it; useless to take up an evil before it was there.