In the Wilderness

by Sigrid Undset

  Toward evening Olav took the ship’s boat and rowed on the river. The finest of all views of the town was from the water; there was a movement on the stream like that of a great highway. From the stately houses on the Strand, west of the city, came great barges, flying swiftly along under ten or twelve pairs of oars; across the water came the music of minstrels and pipers playing to the lords and ladies on board.

  A little lower down, the walls of a castle rose out of the river, with strong water-gates and a wharf outside, and lofty gabled halls behind—Domus Teutonicorum. Olav fixed his eyes on the castle as he drifted past in his little boat. It booted little for folk of other lands to contend with these merchants of Almaine; bitterly he reflected that no doubt the day would come when they would found their hanse on Oslo wharves too. But it was a fair house, this of theirs, as everything that bears witness of strength is fair in its way.

  He turned and rowed up against the stream. Now he passed the south-western water-tower of the town wall and could see the whole western sweep of the wall from the outside, with the towers and barbicans before the gates. Soon the roofs of the Knights Templars’ prœceptorium appeared above the trees.

  Olav had never been out there, but Galfrid said he ought to go on a Friday morning. Then they carried out into the field an immense red cross, and while a priest preached to the people, the knights stood around, clad in mail with drawn swords in their hands, the points raised to heaven; they stood as though cast in bronze. And their priest must be the most powerful of preachers, for the people wept and sobbed, both men and women.

  Olav’s thoughts were busied, half toying, with this monastery of warriors. He had heard that the Pope had given their Grand Prior the same right of loosing and binding as he had himself. Before a man was admitted to the brotherhood he had to confess all the sins he had committed in his life, both atoned and unatoned—and of the severe penance he had to undergo the world heard no more than it hears of what is done in purgatory. They had strange customs, folk said—he who would enter their ranks was compelled to strip naked and lie thus for a night in an open grave in the floor of the church, as a sign that he was dead to all his former life.

  He had seen the Templars ride through London more than once; they were clad in chain armour from the throat to the soles of their feet, with a red cross on their white tunic, which they wore over the shirt of mail, and on their white mantle; their great battle-maces also bore the sign of the cross. He had heard of the warrior monks before, but never seen them.

  Then there were the anchorites. There were so many of them here in London; some dwelt in cells within the town wall and some in little houses that were built against a church with an opening in the wall between, so that the hermit might see the altar and the ciborium that held the body of the Lord. Some had a lay brother or a lay sister to do their errands for them, but many, both men and women, had caused themselves to be walled up, that they might share the lot of the most wretched prisoners. One of them dwelt in the wall close to a dungeon—till the day of his death he was to live there in a cold, black hole into which the water dripped, in his own stench and in his sour and mouldy rags; he was crippled and paralysed with rheumatism. And this man’s life had been distinguished by great holiness even as a child and while he was living as a monk in his convent. When men who were to suffer punishment were led past the orifice of his cell, the anchorite cried out: “Be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful!”

  Of late years Olav’s thoughts had now and then been drawn toward the monastic life—whether it might be the end of his difficulties if he adopted it. But not for a moment had he believed it in earnest. Whatever might be God’s will with him, he was surely not called to be a monk. Of that he had the most certain sign—for it was not the hardships of the monastic life that he shrank from. On the contrary, to let fall from his shoulders all that a monk is bound to renounce, to submit to the discipline of the rule—for this he had often longed. Nevertheless no man was fit for this unless God gave him special grace thereto. But now Olav had roamed long enough as an outlaw on the borders of the realm of God’s grace to perceive that when once a man of his own will surrenders himself to God and accepts what is laid upon him, God’s power over him is without limit. And in the long, sleepless nights he had often thought: “Now they are going into the choir in their convents, men and women, standing up to serve their Lord with praise, prayer, and meditation, like guards about a sleeping camp.” But it was all the things that were included in the rules for the relief and repose of man’s frail nature that he could not think of without distaste: the brotherly life, the hours of converse, when a monk has to show humility and gentleness toward his fellows, whether he like them or not, whether he be minded to speak or be silent; to have to go out among strangers or to serve in the guest-house when the prior bade him, even if he would rather be alone. He had seen that this was beyond the power of many monks, who were otherwise good and pious men; they grew sour and cross with strangers, quarrelsome among themselves. But this was a sign that these men were not fitted for the monastic life. “One may carve Christ’s image as fairly in fir as in lime,” Bishop Torfinn had once said to Arnvid, on his expressing a wish that he could be as calm and good-humored as Asbjörn All-fat; “but never have I heard that He turned fir into lime, like enough because it would be a useless miracle. With God’s grace you may become as good a man as Asbjörn, but I trow He will not give you All-fat’s temper, for all that.”

  But now he saw that the life of a monk had other paths than those he knew at home in Norway. There were paths also for those who were not fitted to associate with strange brethren. Warfare with the discipline of the convent behind that of the warrior, like a hair shirt under the coat of mail—in the Holy Land the Templars’ hosts had been cut down many a time to the last man. In the Carthusians’ monasteries each monk lived in a little house by himself; they met only in church. And now he had seen some other monks, the Maturines—their white habit resembled that of the preaching friars, but they bore a red and blue cross on their breasts. They collected alms, wherewith to cross the sea and redeem Christian men from slavery among the Saracens. And when they had no more money, the youngest and strongest of these monks gave themselves in exchange for sick and weary prisoners.

  It had not yet come to any fixed purpose with Olav, but it made him thoughtful. The world had widened to his vision, and he now saw that that other world which stretched its curtain over the earth from one end to the other was without bounds. And now, when he saw himself standing beneath this immense vault, he felt so small and so lonely and so free. What mattered it if a franklin from the Oslo fiord never came home again? He might be stabbed any evening on the quays here—they might be plundered and slain by pirates on the Flanders side this autumn, they might be wrecked on the coast of Norway—every man who put to sea on a trading voyage knew that such things might easily happen, and none stayed at home on that account. Strange that he could have thought it so great a matter, as he tramped over his land and splashed about his creek, that he should rule the manor—indifferently well—if he had to murder his own soul to do it.

  That might yet be while she was alive. But now—Arne’s daughters and their husbands would take charge of the children and of the estate if he sent home a message this autumn that he would not return.

  London’s church bells rang—time to put out fires. Olav rowed downstream again. He put in at a little wharf just below the western water tower. The old man who took his boat was so thickly covered with beard and dirt that he seemed overgrown with moss. Olav exchanged a few words with him—he had picked up a little English now. Then he made his way through the lanes, where children ran and shouted and refused to obey their mothers who called them in, up to the Dominicans’ church.

  He said the evening prayers and a De profundis for his dead, and then found himself a seat on some steps that led to a door in the wall. With his chin in his hands he waited till the monks should come into the choir and sing complin.<
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  The lofty windows darkened and grew dense; dusk collected under the vaulting and filled the aisles. A single votive candle burned before one of the side altars, but up in the choir the golden lamp alone hovered like a star in the twilight. Outside the open doors the fading daylight paled in a grey mist. Folk came strolling in to hear evensong; the echo of their chattering whispers murmured incessantly through the lofty pillared church; their footsteps rang softly on the stone flooring. Then came the hushed but penetrating beat of many footfalls in the choir, the clatter of seats being turned up; the tiny flames of the candles were lighted on the monks’ desks, throwing their faint gleam on the rows of white-clad men standing up in the carved stalls. And down in the body of the church there was a rustle of people rising and drawing nearer, while a hard, clear, man’s voice began to intone and was answered by the chant of more than half a hundred throats, the first short sentences and responses—till the whole male choir raised the song of David on sustained, monotonous waves of sound.

  Olav sat down again when the psalm began. Now and again he sank into a half-doze—woke up as his head dropped—then the veil of sleep wound about him again and his thoughts became entangled in it. Till he grew wide awake at the notes of Salve Regina and the sound of the procession descending from the choir. The people moved forward into the nave as the train of white and black monks advanced, singing:

  “Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende. O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria!”

  Olav strode quickly down toward the wharf; it was dusk outside now, bats flitted like flakes of soot in the darkness. He must be aboard the Reindeer before it was quite dark—the other evening the river watch had called to him from their boat. To his very marrow he felt the good this evening service had done him. It was the same as he had heard in Hamar, in Oslo, in Danish and Swedish ports—in good and evil days he had always attended evensong, wherever he found a convent of the preaching friars. He had also heard the singing of nuns one evening here in London—for the first time in his life. He had never chanced to enter the church of a women’s convent before, but Tomas Tabor had taken him one evening to a nunnery. Marvellously pure it had been to listen to—but nevertheless it did not stir the depths of him in the same way. The clear, sharp, women’s voices floated like long golden streaks of cloud on the horizon between earth and heaven. But they did not raise themselves above the world over which the veil of darkness was falling as did the song of praise from a choir of men on guard against the approach of night.

  Tomas Tabor appeared at the gunwale as Olav came alongside. Now it was dark already, he complained, and Leif had not yet come—likely enough he would stay ashore again tonight, and tomorrow he would make the same excuse, that he could not get a boat in time. Olav swung himself over the gunwale.

  “You must refuse him shore leave, Olav! He cannot be so steady as we thought him, Leif!”

  “It seems so.” Olav shrugged his shoulders and gave a little snorting laugh. The men walked aft and crept in under the poop.

  “I trow that serving-wench out at Southwark has clean bewitched him.”

  They snuggled into their bags and ate a morsel of bread as they lay.

  “ ’Twill end in the boy getting a knife between his shoulder-blades. That place is the haunt of the worst ruffians and ribalds.”

  “Oh, Leif can take care of himself—”

  “He is quick with the knife, he too. You must do so, Olav, you must forbid him to go ashore alone.”

  “The lad is old enough; I cannot herd him.”

  “God mend us, Master Olav—we ourselves were scarce so wise or heedful that it made any matter, at seventeen years—”

  Olav swallowed the last mouthful of bread. After a while he answered:

  “Nay, nay. If he cannot come back on board betimes, he must not have leave. And he should have had his fill of playing now, enough to last him a good while.”

  Presently: “I think we shall have rain again,” said old Tomas.

  “Ay—it sounds like it,” said Olav sleepily.

  The shower drummed on the poop above them and splashed on the boards; the hiss of raindrops could be heard on the surface of the river. The men shuffled in under cover, as far as they could come, and fell asleep, while the summer shower passed over the town.

  Torodd and Galfrid were tarrying in the west country, it seemed—perhaps they had not found it so easy to get their hands on the heritage of Dom John. Olav was as well pleased one way as the other—and the days went by, one like another.

  2 Psalm cxix, 95, 96, 1.

  3 St. Matthew, xiii, 44.

  4 St. Matthew, x, 34.

  3

  ONE EVENING Olav had been sitting half-asleep in his corner of the church. When he heard the scraping of feet in the choir, he stood up and went forward into the nave.

  Right opposite on the women’s side was a statue raised against one of the pillars, of the Virgin with the Child in her arms and the crescent moon under her feet. This evening a thick wax candle was burning before the image; just beneath it knelt a young woman. The moment Olav looked at her, she turned her face his way.

  And now his breath went from him and he lost all sense of himself and where he was—but this was Ingunn, she was kneeling there, not five paces from him.

  Then he recalled the time and place and that she was dead, and he knew not what to believe. It felt as if the heart within him stood still and quivered; he knew not whether it was fear or joy that made him powerless, whether he was looking on one dead—

  The narrow face with the straight nose and long, weak chin—the shadow of the eyelashes on the clear cheeks. The hollows of the temples were darkened by a wave of golden-brown hair; a transparent veil fell from the crown of the head in long folds over the weak and sloping shoulders.

  Even as he drank in the first vision of her charm, Olav saw that perhaps this was not she—but that two persons could be so like one another! So slender and delicate from the waist down to the knees, such long, thin hands—she held a book before her, and her lips moved slightly—now she turned the leaf. She knelt on a cushion of red silk.

  A sobering sense crept over him that it was not she after all. As when one wakes from a heavy sleep and recognizes one thing after another in the room where one is, realizing that the rest was a dream—so now he realized little by little.

  His poor darling, she had not been able to read a book. Nor had she ever had such clothes. As he looked on the rich dress of the strange woman, a bitter compassion with Ingunn stirred within him—there was never anyone to give her such apparel. He remembered her as she had been all the years at Hestviken, in bad health and robbed of her youth and charm, poor and unkempt in the coarse, rustic folds of her homespun kirtle. She should have been like this one, kneeling on her silken cushion, rosy-cheeked, fresh and slim; her mantle spread far over the stone slabs, and it was of some rich, dark stuff; her kirtle was cut so low that her bosom and arms showed through the thin golden-yellow silk of her shift. Half-hidden in the folds at her throat gleamed a great rosary—some of its beads were of the color of red wine and sparkled as her bosom rose and fell. She was quite young. She looked as Ingunn had looked as she knelt in the church at Hamar, childlike and fair under her woman’s coif.

  The strange woman must have felt his continual stare—now she looked up at him. Again Olav felt his heart give a start: she had the same great, dark eyes too, and the uncertain, hesitating, sidelong glance—just as Ingunn used to look up at those she met for the first time. She had never looked at him in this way—and a vague and obscure feeling stirred in the man’s mind that he had been cheated of something, because Ingunn had never looked upon him for the first time.

  The young wife looked down at her book again; her cheeks had flushed, her eyelids quivered uneasily. Olav guessed that he annoyed her with his staring, so he tried to desist. But he could think of nothing but her presence—every moment he had to glance across at her. Once he met a stolen lo
ok from her, shy and inquisitive. Quickly she dropped her eyes again.

  The procession came down from the choir, and the sprinkling of holy water recalled him wholly to his senses. But truly it was a strange thing that here in London he should chance to see a woman who was so like his dead wife. And young enough to be her daughter.

  He remembered that he had not yet said his evening prayers, knelt down and said them, but without thinking of what he was whispering. Then he saw that she was coming this way—she swept past so close to him that her cloak brushed against his. When he rose to his feet, she was standing beside him, with her back turned. She had laid her hand on the shoulder of a man who was still kneeling. Behind her stood an old serving-woman in a hooded cloak, carrying her mistress’s cushion under her arm.

  The man stood up; Olav guessed he must be the strange woman’s husband. Olav knew him well by sight, for he came to this church nearly every day. He was blind. He was young, and always very richly clad, and he would not have been ugly but for the great scar over his eyebrows and his dead eyes. The left one seemed quite gone—the eyelid clung to the empty socket—but the right eye bulged out, showing a strip under the lid, and this was grey and darkly veined as pebbles sometimes are. His face was pale and swollen like that of a prisoner—he looked as if he sat too long indoors; his small and shapely mouth was drawn down at the corners, tired and slack; his black, curly hair fell forward over his forehead in moist strands. He was of middle height and well-knit, but somewhat inclined to fatness.

  Olav stood outside the church door and watched them: the blind man kept his hand on his wife’s shoulder as he walked, and after them came the serving-woman and a page. They went northward along the street.