The next instant Olav had him by the neck and flung him aside. Eirik had a glimpse of his father’s face, grey and wild with fury—then he got a blow of his fist on the jaw which made him reel, his father caught him again, shook him, and hurled him backwards, so that he fell at full length in the snow.
“Be off, you foul trollop,” said Olav to Aasta—she was standing there awkwardly. The girl slipped away. “Stand up!”—he gave Eirik a push with his foot.
Eirik rose to his feet and stood dazed before his father.
Olav said in a low voice, shaking with rage: “Do you think you can behave thus in your father’s house—you and your bitch—in broad daylight, before folks’ eyes—like a dog!”
Eirik turned red as fire. He too began to tremble with rage. “ ’Tis not true—’twas only—jesting.” His anger brought him to the verge of tears, and then he shouted: “May I not touch one of the maids here without you must needs think—that I shall deal with her as you did with Torhild?”
He raised his arms to fend off the blow—Olav threw him and was over him. He crushed the boy with his knees as he lay in the miry, blood-stained snow. He did not desist as long as he felt any sign of resistance in the body beneath him. Eirik lay limply, with his face half buried in the snow, as Olav stood up and left him.
Old Tore had stood watching Olav punishing his son. Now he knelt down in the dirty slush and tended the unconscious lad.
Later in the day they found the other pig that Eirik had allowed to escape in the early morning. It lay in the hollow behind the outhouses in a pool of slush, dead. Olav shrugged his shoulders when they came and reported the mischance. He clenched his teeth: he had not chastised Eirik too severely that morning.
No one saw any more of Eirik that day—nor was it noticed, so busy was the household. It was only old Tore who had seen Olav strike Eirik. The other house-folk remarked no doubt that there was discord once more between father and son, but that happened so often.
But at dusk, when Olav came in from outside, there was one standing in the anteroom; he followed the master into the empty hall and closed the door behind him. It was Eirik. A few logs were burning on the hearth—in the uncertain flicker Olav could see that the lad’s face was bruised and swollen.
Olav seated himself on the bench. On the table lay a bannock and a tasty sausage, smoking hot. The man took a bite of the food, chewed and ate slowly—but Eirik stood erect and silent in the shadows.
“What will you?” asked his father at last, reluctantly.
“I wonder if you yourself believed what you said—” Eirik began, so calmly and naturally that his father wondered at him—and then felt a chill of remote misgiving: never had he heard the boy speak in this way. “If you think it so ill of me to trifle with the young maid—then you are not very reasonable, Father. But you are seldom reasonable or just with me.”
Olav pushed away his food. He sat upright on the bench—a feeling of tension clutched at his heart. Then a cold clearness of vision came upon him, like acknowledging a defeat: Eirik was surely right.
The son paused for a moment. Then he spoke as before: “It is almost as though you had taken a hatred to me, Father.”
But as the man on the bench still sat motionless, Eirik went on, more hotly, more like his usual self: “The way you treat us, one would almost think you had taken a hatred to your own children! You grant your son no honour and no authority—you keep me as a child—and I am in my sixteenth winter!” His voice had broken now, turning to a scream.
“I can see that you think so,” said his father. And presently he added, with a touch of scorn: “Nevertheless you are very young, Eirik, to judge of your own worth.”
Eirik turned and went out.
Eirik had already crept under the skins in his bed—so it appeared—when Olav came in that night to go to rest. The little girls were already asleep in the south bed, Mærta was still busy in the cook-house. But the next morning when the lady went to wake Eirik, she found nothing but a bundle underneath the coverlet.
Sticks and straw tumbled out when she took hold of the old cloak. Mærta was angry—she thought the boy had done this to make a fool of her. Olav stood by and saw it—for a moment he felt alarmed—absurdly, as he saw at once. He turned away in annoyance: what wretched child’s tricks! The boy had not been in his bed that night, he wished to show he was offended; but such nonsense as this bundle! Then it struck the man: surely he had never gone to Aasta, to defy him? Ah, if that were so, he should have a beating he had never dreamed of.
He would ask no questions. But by the afternoon it was clear to the whole household that Eirik was not at the manor.
None of the boats was missing, and his horse stood in the stable. There was the same thick, wet fog again today—it was vain to search for the boy, nor could Olav spare any men to send out. But he wondered whither Eirik had betaken himself—to Rynjul or Skikkjustad or perhaps to that Jörund Rypa?
At night the wind got up from the south and it began to rain. In the course of the day the fields were all a mirror of ice, the air was filled with a roaring blast from sea and woods.
As yet Olav had not uttered a word to his house-folk about the matter. Lady Mærta tried to speak of it, but Olav cut her short.
Now and again anxiety dragged at him. The boy could not have taken it so that he—surely he had not fallen over somewhere in the night and the fog? Thoughts crowded upon him, which he strove to drive away. It was unlikely.
He found occasion to see to the boats—took courage and looked under the sheds and the quay, went round the shore of the bay—all the while saying to himself: “Eirik is surely at Rynjul”—he had always been Una’s favourite.
On Sunday he met both the Rynjul folk and those of Skikkjustad at church. After mass he fell into talk with Jörund Rypa’s kinsmen. He saw at once that they knew nothing of Eirik’s flight.
He went over to the parsonage. Several people had been in there to speak with the priest, and mass had been late that day, for the roads were almost impassable after the bad weather. Sira Hallbjörn had not yet tasted bite nor sup—he was pale about the nose from his long fast.
Olav told him his son had run away.
“Ay, ’twas not too soon,” said the priest.
His ancient housekeeper came limping in with the dish of porridge; the men moved forward and took their places at the table. The priest and the deacon said grace, Olav stood silently waiting at the door. With a mute gesture Sira Hallbjörn invited him to sit down with them and break his fast.
Olav thanked him, but said he must go home. But he asked the priest to come to the outer door with him—he had three words to say to him. Sira Hallbjörn went out reluctantly.
“You know nothing of Eirik, do you, Sira? You have heard no rumour of where he is gone?”
“I—?”
Olav went out, angry. His horse stood outside in the rain, hanging its head; the water poured off its mane, running in streams among the darkened strands. It fell in a sheet from the cloak he had laid over the saddle and the horse’s quarters when he put it on.
On the way he looked in at Rundmyr and questioned Anki and Liv closely, making no concealment. They denied all knowledge of the matter, and Olav saw that they spoke the truth for once.
In the evening he asked Aasta—swallowed his pride and questioned the young serving-maid: “You can surely tell me, Aasta, whither Eirik has made off—since you two were such good friends?”
The girl turned red and tears came into her eyes. She timidly shook her head.
“But he came and said farewell to you, did he not, before he took himself off?”
Aasta broke into sobs. “There was no tie of friendship between me and Eirik, Master Olav.” Eirik had only jested a little with her once or twice; Eirik was good-natured, wanton, but kind. On seeing her master’s little crooked smile she wept outright and swore most solemnly that she never forgot the teachings of her honest parents, her honour and good name were without stain or blemish.
“Ay, if you let the young lads handle you as I saw that morning, you will soon find yourself without either the one or the other,” said Olav sternly. “Now go and cry outside.”
Then there was nothing left but to peer into his own despair. All day long Olav cudgelled his brains to find some credible explanation—what could Eirik have done? He had gone away in his great hooded cloak, his sword and spear he had taken with him. A little gold pin in the band of his shirt and a great brooch in the bosom of his jerkin, these and his finger-ring with a red agate he always wore; had he made for the town he might have provided himself with a lodging by selling one of these trinkets. He might have gone to Claus Wiephart or to the armourer’s—or to one of the monasteries. Or, if he had been able to get carried across the fiord, to Tunsberg—likely enough the lad might have taken it into his head to seek his fortune where so many lords were passing to and fro. Between whiles Olav tried to fan into flame his first indignation at Eirik’s flight.
But at night he lay awake—and then his thoughts would only dwell on what might have happened to Eirik. He might have lost his way in the fog that night, have fallen over the cliff somewhere. For the son of Hestviken manor was well enough known to many—it was incredible that he could disappear as if he had sunk into the ground or—Carried off, spirited away, spellbound by the powers of evil—now Olav called to mind all the stories Eirik had told as a child, about his intercourse with the folk of that world. There might have been some truth in it after all, even if he made up a deal of it. Or if he had been out on the fiord the second day after he ran from home—many boats’ crews had not been heard of since that day. Nor were the roads inland so safe but that it might be dangerous for a young lad, well dressed and armed, with jewels on him, to travel alone. Northward, in the forests about Gerdarud, there were reports of robbers.—Or, or—For all that, Olav knew not a little of Eirik’s fickle nature; he turned to melancholy as suddenly as to sport and dalliance. But he could not surely have taken his correction so much to heart as to throw himself into the fiord—
“Ingunn, Ingunn, Ingunn mine—help me, where is the boy?
“Jesus, Mary—where is Eirik?”
Olav rose on his knees in the bed with his head in his clasped hands. He leaned his forehead against the foot of the bed. “Not for myself do I pray for mercy. Holy Mary, I taught the boy these prayers myself when he was a child—be mindful of that now!”
But that was an age ago—he did not know whether Eirik remembered anything of them now. It was an age since he had thought of teaching the children anything of that sort. Cecilia never a word—that he had left to Mærta. It had come to this, that he could not and dared not. But, God, God! they must not suffer for it. He prayed God to take Eirik under His protection, he prayed God’s Mother for his son, he prayed Saint Olav and Saint Eirik, as he had never been wont to pray.
Sometimes it made him a little calmer. For himself he cared not now, but for the young lad, Ingunn’s son—
He never thought of Cecilia thus—that she was Ingunn’s daughter as much as his.
He could not prevent the servants from talking of Eirik’s flight. He himself said hardly anything, but he listened stiffly and intently—whether the others might have heard some news.
The southerly weather held. A draught of wind whistled through the church on Christmas Eve, levelling the flames of the candles in the lustrous choir whenever the storm came down with full force—the vault above was darkened, and then the heavy doors shook and the window-shutters rattled—as if the spirits of the tempest flung themselves with all their might against every barrier in their fury to thwart the sacred ceremony that was proceeding in the choir. There was a howling and piping about the corners of the building, a vast droning in the ash trees on the ancient burial mounds beyond the churchyard fence. Through the roaring dissonance of the storm the singing of the mass sounded strangely still and strong—like the smooth streak of a current in the midst of a rough sea.
The moment the silver bells chimed and the congregation knelt, while Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus resounded from the choir, it fell still. The candle-flames recovered themselves and gleamed erect; the painted images on the whitened walls of the chancel seemed to spring forth, shining in their blue and yellow and rust-red colours. Sira Hallbjörn’s tall form, clad in pure white linen with the golden chasuble, appeared like that of an angel, descended straight from the heavenly visions of Saint John—a bearer of good tidings and a herald of God’s judgment.
Then came a fresh gust of wind, crashing and roaring against the walls; the choir was plunged in gloom as the priest bent over the paten, whispering. The tolling of the bell in the ridge-turret over the people’s heads was drowned in the raging of the storm.
When the congregation rose to its feet after the Agnus Dei, Olav Audunnsson remained sunk on his knees. Baard Paalsson from Skikkjustad, who stood by his side, bent down, trying to look into his face in the darkness.
“Are you sick, Olav?”
Olav shook his head and stood up.
After mass Olav and Baard struggled side by side across the green to the tithe barn. The great lantern under the roof swayed hither and thither. Everywhere in the shadows they descried the forms of folk who lay in the straw to take a short rest before the Mass of the Shepherds.
Olav unhooked his cloak and shook the rain from it.
“Are you sick?” asked Baard again. “You are pale as a ghost.”
“No,” said Olav. He went in and lay down in the straw, where some men moved closer to make room for the two.
“Nay, but I thought it,” said Baard, “since you were not with Eirik. I saw how pale you turned tonight, and I thought maybe you had been unwell. Gunnar and Arne spoke of it; they thought it strange that you let your son travel thus alone, with only a token—”
“What mean you?” Olav managed to say.
Baard made no answer—he could not follow.
“Gunnar and Arne—is it Arne of Haugsvik you speak of?” As Baard said nothing, Olav resumed, as unconcernedly as he could: “ ’Twas not with my consent that Eirik left home—nor against my will either. He deemed he was old enough to shift for himself now—so I thought, let him try it. Then he took the road for Oslo,” Olav ventured at a hazard. “He came through safe and well?” he asked when he received no answer.
Yes, he came through safe and well, replied Baard sleepily—it was the day of the storm. And he had been in good heart, said Arne, when the lad parted from them. But out at Haugsvik, when he came and asked for a place in their boat, he had told them there was an agreement between Olav and one of the great lords in the town that Eirik should enter his service in order to learn the trade of war and courtly ways. Nay, who his new lord was to be, Eirik had refused to say—that was his way, always such an air of secrecy.
Olav lay with his hands clasped under his cloak. “God, my God, I thank Thee—Mary, most clement, most kind, what shall I do to show my gratitude?” Memories of burned out thoughts stirred like ashes driven off by a puff of wind. Nay, that was all over—but he would give something to her poor, a cow to Inga, who had the leper son.
But as he rode homeward after the morning mass, in pouring rain—the wind had dropped now—his anger revived. Such conduct he had never heard of indeed—and there had been the usual bragging and romancing out at Haugsvik, he could guess.—A token, it occurred to Olav; what could that token be?—surely he had never taken something, his seal or seal-ring, for instance—run away from home as a thief?
He sat leaning over the table, silent and gloomy, scarcely noticing his house-carls, who fell on the steaming dish of meat. Now and then he recollected himself sufficiently to raise the ale-bowl, drink to them, and let it go round.
Afterwards he went in and turned over his store of treasures. But nothing was missing.
His wrath came and went in waves, died down and gave place to uneasiness. Eirik had made his way to Oslo—more than that he did not know as yet—and there was no saying what he mi
ght fall into there. There was no help for it, he would have to go and find out about his son, ill as it suited him to leave home at this time.
At last, on Twelfth Day, Olav met with a farmer up the parish who had spoken with Eirik in the town. He had been in to Nonneseter at Yule—the convent owned a share in the farm he occupied—and there he had come upon Eirik in the guests’ refectory. He sat waiting while his master, Sir Ragnvald Torvaldsson, had speech with the Abbess.
The day after, Olav sailed in to Oslo. Inside the Sigvalda Rocks the fiord was frozen over. A great number of boats had been left at the edge of the ice, and there was not a horse to borrow at any of the farms about. So Olav let old Tore stay with their boat while he walked alone across the ice to the town.
He found Tomas Tabor and sent him out to the old royal castle at the river-mouth—Sir Ragnvald had custody of the place. But Eirik did not come to his father’s inn the first day; the evening of the second day was wearing on and still Olav sat there waiting.
The travellers, as many as were at home, lay under the skins in their sleeping-places—it was cold. The hostess sat dozing by the hearth, huge in her sheepskin wraps; she was only waiting till it was time to rake over the fire and bar the door. Olav sat on his bed, with his hands hanging over his knees; his legs were like ice from the cold of the floor, and he was dull with waiting.
The woman got up to tend the two lanterns that hung at each end of the long hall of the inn. “Will you not go to bed, master?”
Then there was a knock at the door. It was Eirik.
Olav went a few steps to meet him and gave him his hand in greeting. They happened to come together just under the lantern. In a way the father must have noticed before now that Eirik had grown taller than himself and that shadows of dark down had begun to appear about his mouth, but never before had he been wholly aware of the change—Eirik was grown up. He was well dressed—wearing a plain steel cap, and under it a dark blue woollen hood that framed the narrow, swarthy face, making it seem yet narrower. His long cloak was brown and of good stuff; under it he was clad in a tight leather jerkin and he wore a sword at his belt, in token that he was now one of his lord’s men-at-arms. Long iron spurs jingled as he walked.
In the Wilderness Page 16
