The Snake Pit (32 page)

He was so tall now, her boy, slender as a reed and slight of build. Angrily he tossed his shapely head with its black curls.

“It is I who sent for her,” whispered Ingunn.

The boy frowned and turned on his heel; then he went and flung himself down on the edge of the north bed, sat there staring with an angry, scornful smile as Torhild entered.

The girl came forward with bent head—she had bound up her hair under a coarse, tight-drawn coif—but her back was as straight as ever. She carried a bundle in her arms, wrapped in a kerchief with a red and white border. It was strange to see that she bore herself with all her old dignity and calm, even as she appeared before Olav’s wife, humble and sorrowful.

The women greeted each other, and Ingunn remarked that Torhild would have good weather for the passage across. Torhild agreed.

“I had so great a mind to see your boy,” whispered Ingunn shyly. “You must do me the kindness to let me see him. You must
lay him down here before me; you know I cannot raise myself,” she said as Torhild held out the bundle. Then the girl laid the child down on the bed before the mistress.

With trembling hands Ingunn undid the kerchief that was wrapped about it. The boy was awake—he lay staring, at nothing in particular, with big blue eyes; a little smile, as it were a reflection of a light none but himself could see, hovered about the toothless, milky mouth. A fine, fair down curled from under the border of his cap.

“He is big?” asked Ingunn—“for his age—three months, is it not?”

“He will be three months by Laurence Mass.”
⁹

“And fair he is. He is like my Cecilia, methinks?”

Torhild stood silent, looking down at her child. There was no great change to be seen in the housekeeper—though in some way she had grown younger and fairer. It was not only that her figure seemed yet more shapely: she was broad-shouldered and had always been high-bosomed, with a chest as deep and broad as a man’s. But now her full, firm breast looked as if it would burst her kirtle, and this made her seem slighter in the waist. But it was not that alone—her grey, bold-featured face had softened as it were and become younger.

“He has no look of knowing what hunger is, this fellow,” said Ingunn.

“Nay—I thank God,” replied Torhild quietly; “he knows not what it is—and with His help he shall never know it either, so long as I am alive.”

“You may be sure Olav will see to it that the boy shall never lack aught, even if you be taken from him,” said Ingunn in a low voice.

“That I know full surely.”

Torhild threw the cloth over her child again and lifted him in her arms. Ingunn held out her hand in farewell—Torhild bent deeply over it and kissed it.

Then Ingunn burst out—she could not keep back the words:

“So in the end you got your old desire fulfilled, Torhild!”

Torhild replied calmly and with a mournful air: “I tell you, Ingunn—as truly as I hope in Christ and Mary Virgin for mercy for myself and this my child—I do not believe, mistress, that I ever
desired
to deceive you—and he, your husband, never desired it, as you must know—but it came about nevertheless—”

Ingunn said bitterly: “Nevertheless I have seen it, years before I lost my health, what thoughts you had of Olav—you liked him better than all beside—and that has been so for more than three years or four—”

“Ay, from the time I knew him first I have liked him best of all.”

She bowed stiffly and went out.

Eirik started up, spat after the woman, and swore.

His mother called to him, in a hushed and frightened voice. “Eirik mine, be not so sinful—never say those ugly words of any mother’s child,” she begged him, bursting into tears and trying to draw the boy to her. But he wrested himself from her and dashed out of the door.

N
EVERTHELESS
it overtook Olav as something quite unexpected when the end came.

The winter following the misfortune with Torhild Björnsdatter passed like the two that preceded it. Everyone marvelled that life still clung to Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter—it was more than two years since she had been able to take dry food. She had bed-sores now, and in spite of all Olav’s efforts they grew worse. She herself felt little of the sores, except those under her shoulders; they sometimes burned like fire. She always had to have linen cloths under her, and although Olav smeared the places where the skin was broken thickly with grease, the linen often clung fast to the sores, and then it was pitiful to see her torments. But she complained wonderfully little.

One morning Olav had carried her over to his own bed, and while Liv spread clean skins and linen on hers, he tended her back; he had laid her on her side. He was dizzy with fatigue and sickened by the bad smell there was now in the room. Suddenly he bent over his wife and cautiously touched with his lips the moist, open sores on her thin shoulder-blades; he had recalled something he had heard—of holy men who kissed the sores before they bound up the lepers whom they tended. But then this was the other way about: it was he who was the leper, though he seemed
clean and sound outside—and she must indeed be washed clean now, who had borne the torments of all these years meekly and without complaint.

He accused her of
nothing
now.

Ingunn guessed it must be hard for Olav to be shut out of the church. And one night, when her husband had fasted on bread and water during the day, so that he was quite worn out when he had to watch by her, she whispered, as she drew him down to her:

“I
will
not complain, Olav—but why
could
I not be suffered to die, when Cecilia was born? Then you would not have fallen into this sin with Torhild—”

“Speak not so.” But he could not tell her that was not what had brought about the misfortune. It was that he had been embittered against her, and then he had grown careless and weary of himself, had longed for rest from all that weighed upon him. Now he no longer gave her any blame for it—she had known no better. He had known for close on thirty years that Ingunn had little wit, and God had laid it upon him to judge and answer both for himself and for her. Simple she was—and unspeakably dear to him. He put no blame on any but himself.
Mea culpa, mea culpa
—and the fault of no one else.

All things went regularly at Hestviken now, both with the farming and the fishery. If the master could not take part himself—but he had to be with her. He always consoled himself with the thought: “It cannot possibly go on much longer.” But at the same time he could not imagine it would be today, or tomorrow, or the next day. The end must indeed come soon, but there was still a little time.

Easter fell early that year, so that the Oslo fair was held in the week before St. Blaise’s Day. Olav had to go into town: he had some goods lying in the hands of Claus Wiephart—had entered into a kind of trading partnership with the German, but he did not trust that fellow farther than he could see him, nor had he cared to lodge with Claus on his recent visits; it came too dear. Hitherto he had excused himself by saying that he would lie in the guest-house of the preaching friars, since from his youth up he had been a friend of that order. But this year he could not very well be in the convent, since he was banned from taking part in the mass. So this time he had put up at the Great Hostelry.

On the evening of the last day of the fair he sat in the great room of the hostelry munching the provisions he had brought and washing them down with their indifferent ale, when Anki came in and asked for Master Olav of Hestviken.

“Here am I. Is there any news from home, Arnketil, or what brings you hither?”

“God help you, master. Ingunn lies at the point of death—she was given extreme unction as I left home.”

She had had a fit of colic, but no worse than often before, and she had coughed violently for some nights. But when she collapsed that morning they did not guess that she was dying—until old Tore came in to dinner. As soon as he saw the state the woman was in, he went out, saddled his horse, and rode for the priest. Sira Hallbjörn was again away from home—ay, now his parishioners would complain to the Bishop on his next visitation—but one of these barefoot friars of his occupied the parsonage and was called his vicar. Even before the monk began his ministrations to the dying woman, he told the house-folk that they must send for the master in all haste—it was uncertain at the best whether he could reach home in time to say farewell to his wife.

There had been no cold worth talking about that winter; beyond the islands the fiord had been open, so that Olav had come by boat. But then here had been a few nights’ frost, followed by a strong southerly wind, and now it was freezing again—Anki had been able to row as far as Sigvaldasteinar, but there he had had to take to the land and borrow a horse. And now it was likely that the fiord was full of ice a long way out; it was hard to say how Olav would reach home quickest. No doubt he would have to ride round inland. Claus would be able to find him a horse.

People had collected about Olav Audunsson and his man; they stood listening and offering advice. Some young, well-dressed squires in long, coloured kirtles and cloaks also came up; they had been sitting farther up the hall, laughing rather noisily as they drank German mum and threw dice. Now one of them spoke to Olav—he was a tall, fair lad with silky, flaxen hair, which he wore long upon his shoulders according to the latest foreign fashion. Olav knew him by sight: he was one of the sons of the knight of Skog and was in company with his brother; the others were doubtless pages from the King’s palace.

“It means much to you to reach home quickly, I can guess. You
can borrow a horse of me—I have a well-paced horse out in the friars’ paddocks—if you will go thither with me?”

Olav protested that this was too much—but the young man was off already, settled his gaming debts and drank up his ale while he took his sword and cloak. Then Olav gave Arnketil orders about his baggage and threw his cloak about him.

The snow crunched under their feet as they came outside. The sky was clear and the hills were still green; the first stars were coming out. “’Twill be villainously cold tonight,” said Olav’s companion. They struck out eastward through the alleys toward Gjeitabru.

Olav asked the other about the road—he was totally unacquainted with the districts lying east of the town toward Skeidissokn, had never come to Oslo overland. The young man answered that he could ride across the whole of the Botnfiord, the ice was safe enough—well, it was unsafe too, in some places, “but I can ride over with you.”

Olav said that was far too much and he would find his way sure enough; but his companion, Lavrans Björgulfsson was his name, made off at once: “I have my horse standing in Steinbjörn’s yard; if you will wait for me in the church—I shall not be long—” He turned and went back to the town.

The Franciscans’ church was not yet dedicated and the friars said mass in a house within the garth; but the church was roofed, Olav had heard, and they preached there in the evenings during Lent. Not before Easter would his first year of penance be ended, but he was free to enter this edifice, which had not yet become the house of God.

For all that, he had a queer feeling as he crossed the bridge and took the trampled path over a field, where the snow shone grey in the falling darkness, toward the church, whose black gable-end was outlined against the blue, star-set gloom.

It was colder inside than out. From habit he bent the knee as he came in, forgetting that the holy sacrament had not yet been brought into this house. From the farther end of the dark nave his eye was met by the blaze of a great number of little tapers—they were burning at the foot of a great crucifix that stood against the grey stone wall. Beside it the chancel arch yawned before a pitch-dark empty space.

A little farther down the nave a solitary candle was burning by a lectern; before the book a monk stood reading, clad in the order’s brown garb of poverty. He was standing on an inverted tool-chest, and about him were assembled a score of men and women in thick winter clothes—some stood and some had drawn up beams and overturned vessels to sit upon. Their breath showed like white smoke in the light of the candle.

The very incompleteness and desolation of the place caught at him like a hand clutching at his anxious heart. The openings for windows in the wall were boarded up; the scaffolding still stood at the western end of the nave, and he made out boxes and mortar-vats and boards and ends of beams as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. But most desolate of all was the black chasm of the choir—and above this image of the world, without form and void, rose the great crucifix with the glittering assemblage of candles at its foot.

It was not like any crucifix he had seen before. At every step he took forward, an immense pain and dread rose within him at the sight of this image of Christ—it w
as
no image, it seemed alive—God Himself in mortal agony, bleeding from His scourging as though every wound men have inflicted upon one another had stricken His flesh. The body was bent forward at the loins, as though contorted with pain; the head had fallen forward, with closed eyes over which streamed the blood from the crown of thorns, down into the half-open, sighing mouth.

Beneath the crucifix stood Mary and John the Evangelist. The Mother held her thin hands clasped, one above the other, against her bosom, as she looked up—mournfully as though she raised the sorrows of all races and all ages to her Son, praying for help. Saint John looked down; his face was contracted with brooding upon this mystery.

The monk read—Olav had known the words since he was a child:
O vos omnes, qui transitis per viam, attendite, et videte, si est dolor sicut dolor meus.
¹

The monk closed the book and began to speak. Olav did not hear a word—he only saw the image on the cross before him:
et videte, si est dolor sicut dolor meus.

Ingunn lay at home, in the agony of death, if she were not dead
already. It did not seem real to him, but he knew now that this sorrow of his was also as a bleeding wound upon that crucified body. Every sin he had committed, every wound he had inflicted on himself or others, was one of the stripes his hand had laid upon his God. As he stood here, feeling that his own heart’s blood must run black and sluggish in his veins with sorrow, he knew that his own life, full of sin and sorrow, had been one more drop in the cup God drained in Gethsemane. And another sentence he had learned in his childhood came back to him: he had believed it was a command, but now it sounded like a prayer from the lips of a sorrowing friend:
Vade, et amplius jam noli peccare—
²