The Son Avenger (3 page)

And this merely for a young maid’s fancy, which she would surely have forgotten ere a year was out, if only none reminded her of it. Was he to return alive to such a purgatory for the sake of two children’s childishness? Never would he consent.

A
MONTH
later Eirik Olavsson came home to Hestviken. He had sent word in advance that he was bringing with him a friend, Jörund Kolbeinsson from Gunnarsby, and he begged his father to receive the guest kindly.

The sun-warmed air of the valley was charged with the scent of hay and of lime blossoms as Eirik rode down by the side of the Hestvik stream. At Rundmyr the hay was still lying in swaths, dark and already somewhat spoiled, in the little meadows; around the poor homestead stood the forest, deep and still, drinking in the sunlight. Anki came out when he heard the horseman, shading his eyes with his hand, and then he broke into a run, with his thin neck stretched out, his back bent, swinging his overlong arms. After him came the whole flock of half-naked, barelegged children, and last of all waddled Liv herself, carrying her last baby in her arms and with the next one already under her shift; she was so marked with age that with her chinless face she looked like a plucked hen.

Eirik stayed in the saddle, so that they might have a good sight of him. But when the first greetings were over, he had to dismount, and Anki looked his horse over and felt him, while Liv sang the praises of Eirik and his companion. He had to go back to the hut with them.

The very smell within, sour and putrid as it was, seemed grateful and familiar. The round mud hut, with no walls and a pointed roof like a tent, was divided into two raised floors with a passage between, and this passage was wet like a ditch of stinking mud:
one had to sit with legs drawn up. The dark hole was full of a litter of rubbish. Eirik’s memories were of all that was strange and lawless: here he had lain listening, all ears, to vagabonds’ tales of a life that lurked, darkly and secretly, like the slime of Liv’s floor, beyond the pale of law-abiding, workaday men, in bothies and caves in summertime, on the fringe of the great farms—the life of husbandmen, townsmen, priests, as seen from the beggar’s pallet. He heard of smuggling in wares banned by the King, of robbery and of secret arts, of illicit intercourse between men and women who kept company for a while and then parted, of St. Olav’s feast and the consecration of churches, and of sheer heathendom, sacred stones and trees. Here he had won in gaming a silver-mounted knife, which he gave away, for he dared not keep it. And over there in the corner they had once found a dead child—the mother had overlain it in the night, and then she had simply gone her way. Liv had got rid of the corpse. Eirik had been sick with suspense—what if his father came to hear that such a thing had happened in a croft that belonged to Hestviken! It was a dire thought, but at the same time there was solace in it! It would be a sort of redress for his miserable, everlasting rebuffs—his father ought just to know what things he dared to see and hear and do at Rundmyr. As yet his father knew nothing of his defying him in this way. Even when he first misconducted himself with a woman it was more to avenge himself on his father than for anything else. Afterwards he had been sick with shame and fright when he had to creep home in the dark and steal from the storehouse the piece of meat he had promised her; and he knew not which was the stronger, his remorse or a kind of joy that he had ventured to do a thing at which his father would be beside himself with wrath—if he knew of it.

Eirik picked the flies out of the old wooden bowl and drank. The milk was villainously sour and acrid, but it had the familiar taste that was proper to Liv’s cabin. After that he sat with his knees drawn up and his hands clasped about them, listening to the talk of Anki and Liv: ay, they were well off, now that Cecilia and Bothild ruled the house; nay, Olav himself never had a hand in it, either when Mærta refused them or when his daughter gave. Interwoven with their talk came news of deaths and births and feastings throughout the countryside, of Hestviken and the ravages of the Swedes, so far as these things had affected their life.

Eirik listened to them with half an ear. Rather sleepily he allowed his memories to drift through his mind, wondering with a faint smile what was to come now. He had buffeted about the world so long that he felt old and invulnerable. Outside the door the sun shone upon rock and mossy meadow; lower down the bog-holes glistened among the osier thickets, and behind him rose the dark wall of the spruce forest. It was
his
land and
his
forest, the cabin here was his, and these people were his: his heart warmed toward them in all their wretchedness of body and soul. He would be good to them, for they had been true to him when he was a child.

Jörund Rypa called to him from outside—he lay taking his ease in the grass, had refused to enter the foul hut. Anki and Liv and their whole flock of children followed at Eirik’s heels as he came out.

The millstream trickled, narrow and shrunken, among the rocks. Eirik recognized pool after pool where he used to take trout. The sheeny green flies that darted hither and thither under the overhanging foliage might have been the same as of old, and the same tufts of setwall and clusters of bluebells were to be found as he remembered them. He rode past one meadow after another; in some places the haycocks were still out. The scent was overpowering; screes and bluffs were covered with lime trees that clung fast to the cliff with their honey-coloured bunches of blossom showing beneath the dark overlapping leaves. Where a tongue of the forest intruded on the bridle-path, the shingles-grass
¹
carpeted the whole ground with little pale-pink bells.

There was the little overhanging rock under which he had found thunderbolts lying in the sand—Lapps’ arrows his father had called them. He forded the stream near its mouth and rode out of the thicket, and there lay the old creek before him, glittering in the sun. On the north the Bull rose with the reflection of the water like a luminous net on its rusty, smooth-worn cliff; on the south side the land sloped upward, meadows already cut and bright, waving cornfields under the steep black wall of the Horse, and against the blue summer sky the roofs of the manor showed up on the knee of the hill, below the crag. Smoke whirled above the roofs up there; outside there was a glimpse of the fiord, dark
blue in the fair-weather breeze. Every stone of the path and every straw in the fields was his and he loved it.

There stood the bath-house, a little apart, and the great barn above it. He rode up the steep little bend that was so hard to get round with a loaded sledge when there was no snow on the ground. And now the horses’ hoofs were striking against the bare rock of the courtyard.

From the door of the living-room came his father, followed by his sister. His father was in holiday dress, a green kirtle reaching to the feet with a silver belt about his waist; he went to meet his son, erect and dignified. He was freshly shaved and combed, and about his square-cut, stone-grey face with its bloodshot, pale-blue eyes, a wealth of hair lay curled. It was now quite grey, with pale-yellow strands floating here and there in the softly waving locks. Eirik had always pictured to himself God the Father Almighty in his father’s likeness.

He was the handsomest and manliest man in the world. He was that still, though his head had grown grey and the right side of his face seemed driven in and the cheek was wrinkled and furrowed all over by the great scar. The two young men sprang from their horses; Eirik took his father’s outstretched hand and kissed it.

Then Olav greeted Jörund and bade him welcome.

Cecilia came forward. She bore the old drinking-horn in both hands, and she too was in festival attire with her flowing hair bright about her grave little face. She stood there in doubt, looking from one young man to the other, when her father gave a nod: she must offer it first to the son of the house.

A wave as of the final, perfect joy came over Eirik—this was his sister! Young and erect, fair and fresh and pure as the noble damsels he had never been able to approach—here was one, the fairest, the brightest of all high-born maids, meeting him at the door of his home; and she was his own sister.

“Our guest first, sister mine,” said Eirik joyfully, and Cecilia greeted Jörund and drank to him.

Indoors a fire had been lighted on the hearth; the flame played palely in the sunshine that made its way through the smoke-vent and turned the smoke blue under the rafters. The floor was thickly strewn with leaves and flowers; on the northern bed, which had been Eirik’s when he was a boy, a new red and yellow coverlet
had been spread over the skins. The table was laid as for a banquet, and on each side of Olav’s high seat were set the two silver-mounted griffin’s claws from which he and Jörund were to drink; never before had Eirik been allowed to drink from these horns.

After sunset they sat on the lookout rock, the three young people. Eirik lay in the heather, in a little dry hollow among the rocks; his sister sat higher up, straight in the back, with her little, short hands folded in her lap. With quiet delight Eirik listened to her talk—she was sparing of words and judicious beyond her years.

It was dead calm; the ripples gently licked the base of the cliff. The sky was perfectly clear but for some strips of red-tinged cloud down in the south-west. A flood of light from the fiord and the pale vault of heaven shone upon his sister’s white face, as she turned it upward to see if any stars were visible tonight.

Jörund sat a little apart. He too was unusually silent this evening; he listened to the others’ talk and looked at Cecilia.

Nay, said Cecilia, it was on Bothild that most of the household duties fell, Bothild was a far better housewife. And she had left everything in such good order that it was easy for Cecilia to work single-handed for a time. ’Twas always so that Signe Arnesdatter took one of them with her when she went to visit her married children, and this time it was Bothild who was to go—nay, she would not be home for a good while yet; Helga did not expect to be brought to bed before St. Margaret’s Mass
²
or thereabouts, and Signe always made a long stay with that daughter.

Nay, Bothild was not yet betrothed, but no doubt their father would soon look about for a husband for her. And Bothild might well look to make a good match; she had inherited not a few chattels from her aunt, and Olav would add to her dowry, and with her gifts and her goodness, and her beauty—ah, beauty! There were not many maidens hereabout who were so fair as Bothild Asgersdatter, so said all the countryside. Her hair was fine as silk, and so long and thick “she can scarce comb it herself; I do that for her; we are wont to plait each other’s hair.”

Eirik lay smiling to himself from pure joy. He rejoiced too that Jörund could see what his ancestral home was like: a great manor and a house of gentlefolk, maintained in lordly fashion—but after the old usage; the houses were small and old, here were no newfangled
courtiers’ ways, but it was the more dignified on that account. Such things might be suitable for the new families who had risen from a poor estate, but there was no need of them here at Hestviken; Olav Audunsson and his children had no need of ostentation.

Eirik saw his father come out of the stable in the yard below. Olav stopped, looked up at the rock where the young people were sitting, but went indoors without calling to them or saying anything.

Cecilia, however, rose at once. “I am sure Father thinks ’tis time we go in and go to bed. And you may well be tired too, brother.”

Eirik awoke next morning to the sound of bells and lowing—leaped up, into his clothes, and out.

The sun had just risen above the ridge in the north-east; it shone in splendour upon the green that clung fast to the clefts of the rock. Outside, the sea lay bright and smooth as a mirror; over the meadows at the entrance to the valley lay long shadows of trees and bushes in the morning sunlight.

The feeble warmth of the beams was grateful in the early coolness. Eirik came out in time to see the last of the cattle disappear into the woods. Cecilia stood by the gate, fastening the hasp of withy and calling to the herdsmen. Now she came back, walking along the high balk of the cornfield, for she was barefooted and the path was muddy. She was dressed like a working-woman, in an old blue smock she had kilted up to her knees, and her feet were red with cold in the dewy grass.

“Are
you
up already?” she greeted her brother. Ay, she was always early up: “the first morning hours are the busiest.” There was a smell of the byre about her, and her white arms were soiled from milking; the wrists were as round as if they had been turned in a lathe. The two stiff plaits that hung over her bosom were short and thick, and ruffled in the knots, so curly was her hair.

Cecilia had to go off to the bleaching-ground; Eirik sat on the step of the barn and watched her laying out her linen. She went into the dairy and spoke to Ragna, and he stood at the door meanwhile—she was so brisk and prompt in all that she did.

Her brother followed at her heels, sitting on the threshold of the women’s house while she washed herself in the water-butt
outside and rinsed her feet. She stepped past him over the threshold and called from within: would he come in and see the room?

The women’s bower was the largest room in the manor; with its walls of fresh yellow logs it was much finer than the dark hall, and its furniture was richly carved; the beam from which the pot hung over the hearth ended in a wild, gaping horse’s head. Along the wall stood weaving-frames, reels of yarn, and chests; over the crossbeams hung folded blankets and cushions for the benches. Cecilia, who had now put on shoes and stockings, took down the best of them to show him.

From a carved box his sister fetched a stone jar and a little silver goblet, filled it, and drank to her brother.

“Father gave us this last year—we were to have it, he said, in case one day we might have to receive a guest. And now you are the first.”

“Thanks! It was good wine too.”