The Snake Pit (3 page)

Nevertheless he crept one day up to the little room that was above the closet and the anteroom. The thought occurred to him that the child and its foster-mother might live there, if Ingunn wished to have her son in the house. Olav Ribbung’s daughters had slept in this loft with their serving-maids; but it was an age since the young women had lodged there. The dust and cobwebs of at least twenty years had collected there undisturbed, and the mice scrambled out of the bedstead when he went to see what might be stowed away there. Some old looms stood against the wall, and trestles for a table, and then there was a chest, carven with armorial bearings, which showed him that it had been his mother’s. He unlocked it: within lay spindles, spools, and combs and a little casket. In the casket was a book and a child’s swathe of white linen—a christening-robe, Olav guessed, no doubt the same that had been wrapped round him when he was lifted out of the baptismal font. He lingered, sitting on his haunches and twisting its embroidered border between two fingers.

He took the book down with him and showed it to Olav Half-priest. But although the old man had always let it be thought that he could read and write as well as any priest—and much better than Sira Benedikt, their parish priest—there was in any case not much that he could make out of Cecilia Björnsdatter’s psalter. In the evening Olav sat and looked at it: little images were drawn within the capital letters, and the margins were adorned with twining foliage in red and green. When he went to bed he buried the book under the pillow, and there he let it lie.

A few days before he was to set out for the north there came a poor woman to Hestviken who wished to speak with the master. Olav went out to her. She bore an empty wallet on her shoulder,
so he guessed her errand. But first she greeted Olav with tears in her voice—tears of joy, she said; ’twas such a glad thing to see the rightful master stand at his own door at last, “and a fair and lordly man have you grown, Olav Audunsson—ay, Cecilia ought to have seen her son now—and they speak well of you among the neighbours, Olav. So methought I must come hither and see you—and I was among the first who saw you in this world, for I served at Skildbreid at that time and I was with Margret, my mistress, when she came to help your mother—I gave her a hand when she swathed you—”

“Then you knew my mother?” asked Olav when the woman had to pause for want of breath.

“You know, we saw her at church sometimes, when first Audun had brought her hither. But that winter she grew so sickly that she never went abroad—’twas too cold, the house she lived in, her handmaid said, and at last she had to move into the great room, where the old men were, for the sake of the warmth. It was right ill with Torgils that winter and spring. I mind me he raved most foully the night you were born, and the fit was upon him a whole week—Cecilia was in such fear of him, she lay trembling in her bed, and Audun himself could not comfort her. ’Twas that, I ween, that broke her, that and the cold. Audun carried her up to the loft-room when the weather was warmer; he saw she was not fit to dwell in the house with the madman—but she died straight. You must have been a month old then—”

The woman’s name was Gudrid, she told him, and she lived in the cot that maybe Olav had seen when he rode east to the church town—to the north of the bogs, just before the road turns off toward Rynjul. In her first marriage she had had a little farm in the Saana district—with a good and worthy husband, but she had had no child by him. Then he died, and his brother moved to the farm with his wife; and as she could not be agreed with them, she married this Björn, with whom she was now. This was the most foolish counsel she could have taken. Nay, he was no poor man at that time; when they put together their goods, they might have had an easy lot. He was a widower and had only one daughter, and so they deemed that all might turn out well: she was minded to take a husband again, and she greatly desired to have children. And that wish alone was granted, of all she had looked for—eight children, and five of them lived. But the very first winter they
were married Björn chanced to slay a man and had to pay fines, and there was soon an end of their prosperity. Now Björn was mostly out in the fiord, hunting seal and porpoise and sea-fowl, or fishing for Tore of Hvitastein—and she herself sat in the cot with all her little children and the stepdaughter, who was shrewish and ungodly—

Olav listened patiently to the woman’s torrent of words, and at last he bade her follow him to the storehouse. He had laid in all that was needed for his home-coming feast, and he filled Gudrid’s sack abundantly—“and if you are in straits this winter, you must come hither and tell us, foster-mother!”

“God bless you, Olav Audunsson—but you are like your mother when you smile! She had so gentle a smile, Cecilia, and she was always good to poor folk—”

At long last the old wife departed.

There was no one in the hall when Olav entered. And he stood awhile musing. With one foot on the edge of the hearth, and his hands clasped about his knee, he stared into the little heap of burned wood in which there was still a gleam—it hissed and crackled with crisp little sounds, and a faint breath came from the dying embers.

“Mother,” he thought, and recalled the little he had heard of her. She had been young—and fair, they said; she had been reared as became one of noble birth in the rich nunnery, where she was the playmate of a King’s daughter. And from the Queen’s court she had been removed to this lonely manor, far from all she knew. In these poor and rustic rooms she had borne him under her heart, starved with the cold and left alone with two aged men—the madman, of whom she was afraid, and the master himself, who mis-liked his grandson’s marriage.—It was hateful.

He smote his thigh hard with the palm of his hand. Intolerable it must be to be born a woman, to have so little say in one’s own destiny. He seemed to pity
all
women—his own mother in silk and fine linen, this beggar woman Gudrid, Ingunn—it availed one as little as the other to meet force by force. Ingunn—a wave of desire and longing rose within him—he thought of her slender white neck: poor thing, she had learned perforce to bend her proud young head. First for his sake; and now she had been brought full low. But he would take her head upon his breast, softly and
tenderly he would caress that poor, weak neck.
Never
should she hear a word from him of her misfortune; never should she see a sign, in word or in deed, that he bore her resentment.—At that moment he did not feel that there was any resentment in his soul toward the defenceless creature who would soon be in his power—his only wish was to protect her and do well by her.

Later in the day Olav saddled his horse and rode eastward to the church town. He was not sure what he wanted there, but his mind was in a turmoil that day. And when he came there, he tied his horse to the fence and walked across the graveyard up to the church.

He laid his sword and hat on the bench that ran along the wall, but chanced to sweep them to the floor with the skirt of his mantle. The echo within the stone walls made him ill at ease. And the light was unpleasantly pale and strange, for the walls had just been whitewashed—pictures were to be painted on them this summer.

Audun and Cecilia lay at the top of the nave on the left, between the Lady chapel and the apse. As Olav knelt by their tomb and said his prayers as softly as he could, his eye was caught by an image that the master painter had newly finished on the pier of the chancel arch. It was of a tall, slender, and graceful woman with bandaged eyes and a broken reed in her hand—her mien and bearing, nay, the very colour of her dark garment, were also unspeakably mournful. Olav had often seen this image in the churches, but had never remembered to ask what was its significance. But never had the woman looked so melancholy or so beautiful as here.

Bishop Torfinn’s words about the motherless children suddenly occurred to his mind. For the first time he thought he was almost glad he had not required of Ingunn that she should part with her child. At that moment he felt able to think of this infant with a kind of compassion. Since she had borne it, he must find means to rear it.

When he came out of the church, he saw that the priest, Sira Benedikt Bessesson, was standing by his horse. Olav greeted him courteously, and the priest returned his greeting blithely. From the little he had seen of his parish priest Olav liked him uncommonly well. The priest had a fine and dignified presence—thickset,
broad-shouldered, and well-knit. His face was wreathed about with reddish-brown hair and beard, and it was a broad face, but shapeful, with bold features, much freckled; he had large, clear eyes, sparkling with life. Olav judged him to be a pious, discerning man of cheerful disposition—and he liked the priest for having a strong, fine, and flexible voice, whether in speech or song.

At first they talked of the gelding. Olav had got him in Skaane—he was seven years old, big and strong-legged and handsome, white and dapple-grey over the quarters. He always groomed and curry-combed the horse himself, making him smooth and glossy, for he was very fond of the animal and he liked to hear that the priest could see what he was worth. Then Sira Benedikt closely examined the bridle, which was of red leather. Olav concealed a smile—the priest practised much tanning and dyeing of leather, and such work was his joy and delight. This was one of the faults Olav Half-priest had to find with Sira Benedikt—he thought this work altogether unseemly for a priest, since it made him soil his consecrated hands with the worst impurities. To this Sira Benedikt replied that he did not believe such impurities to be unseemly in God’s eyes, since the priest’s hands were as clean as before, when he had washed them. Our Lord Himself had done in like manner and honoured the work thereby, when He took axe and chisel in the same blessed hands that created and redeemed mankind, and wrought the logs in the workshop of his holy foster-father—He surely would not deem His poor servant disgraced by following a noble and ingenious craft.

The priest invited Olav to accompany him home, and Olav accepted with thanks. Another thing at which Olav Ingolfsson turned up his nose was the smell in the priest’s yard, like that of the dyers’ booths in the town. But the house was clean and fair within; his living-room was far finer than that of Hestviken. Three well-favoured young maidens brought in butter, white bread, and ale, greeted the guest with comely grace and went straight out again. They were daughters of the priest’s nephew; the eldest undertook the duties of his household, and at this time she had her sisters on a visit.

The ale was excellent, and the men sat a good while talking of this and that. Olav like Sira Benedikt better and better. Then their talk fell upon Olav Ingolfsson, and the priest praised the young man for having shown such loving-kindness toward one
who had misgoverned his affairs so ill. Olav answered that it was his own outlawry that was chiefly to blame for the neglected state of Hestviken; the old man had doubtless done his best, seeing that he was a cripple and ailing. But indeed he held old Olav to be a remarkably wise and holy man.

“That addle-pate?” said the priest.

Olav said nothing.

The priest went on: “Holiness, I trow, he had good cause to seek—to judge by the fellows he resorted to in his youth, his holiness cannot have been much to boast of. And were he wise, he would think and speak more of Christ and Mary Virgin, and less of witchcraft and spectres and mermen and water-wraiths—would pray, rather than practise these sorceries and incantations of his—I marvel whether much of what he deals with be not downright heresy. But he came out of school a half-taught priestling—and the half he had learned was learned wrong. It may be diverting to listen to his tales some evening or other—but you seem to be a man of sense, Olav Audunsson, you surely do not believe all his preaching—?”

Ah, thought Olav, now he knew it. And in fact he thought he had already suspected how it was. Aloud he said with something like a smile:

“There would seem to be no very warm friendship between you and my kinsman?”

The priest replied: “I have never liked him—but that is not
merely
because he was foster-brother of him who wronged me and mine most grievously. And none of us bore hatred to the other men of Hestviken—they were brave and honourable, all but he. You may see that yourself, Olav—I have liked you since I saw you for the first time, and I was minded that you should see I wish you well, and I think myself that the old enmity between us of Eiken and you of Hestviken should now be buried and forgotten. Not that we ever counted Olav Ribbung and his other sons our enemies—but we kept out of each other’s way as much as we could, as you may well suppose.”

Olav busied himself with wiping off some ale he had spilt on his jerkin; he did not look up as he asked:

“I know not what you mean, Sira Benedikt. I am but newly come home and am strange to these parts—I have never heard aught of this enmity between your kindred and mine.”

Sira Benedikt seemed greatly surprised, and a little embarrassed as well. “I thought surely Olav Half-priest had spoken to you of this?”

Olav shook his head.

“Then ’tis better I tell you myself.” The priest sat in thought awhile, jogging the little dipper that floated in the ale-bowl and making it sail round.

“Did you look at those fair children of mine, the little maids that came in here, Olav?”

“Indeed they were fair. And were it not that I have a young bride waiting for me in the Upplands, I had used my eyes better while your kinswomen were here, Sira!” said Olav with a little smile.

“If I guess your meaning aright,” replied the priest, and he too smiled, but with a troubled look, “you cannot be aware that they are your own kinswomen, and near of kin too?”

Olav turned his eyes upon the priest and waited.

“You are second cousins. Torgils Foulbeard was the father of their father. He ruined my sister—”

Involuntarily Olav’s face was convulsed with horror. Sira Benedikt saw it, guessed the young man’s thought, and said:

“Nay, ’twas before God took his wits from Torgils, or the Evil One, whom he had followed so faithfully, while sin and lust tempted him. Ay, God knows I am not an impartial man when I speak of Olav Half-priest; he and Torgils were foster-brothers, and Olav backed the other through thick and thin. Olav Ribbung would compel Torgils to marry Astrid; he was an honourable, resolute, and loyal man—and when Torgils left her to her shame with his bastard son, while he himself kept to his leman in Oslo and would marry her, Olav Ribbung commanded his son to come hither. Ingolf, your grandfather, and Olav’s daughters, and Ivar Staal, his son-in-law, all said they would not sit at meat with Torgils nor speak to him while he held fast to his purpose. But Torgils was living with the priest, the father of Olav Ingolfsson—the more shame to them that they received him; one was a priest and the other was to be one.