In the Wilderness

by Sigrid Undset

  Olav was making his way over a field, where some small houses lay, down by a brook. Before him he saw a man reeling as he ran; now he fell and lay still. Olav stopped as he came up to the man, lifted him, and turned him over. It was Baard’s son-in-law, the bridegroom of last summer, he saw. Hoskold Jonsson pushed him away as though in stupor and sat half-upright, leaning on one hand, with drooping head; then he turned round and dropped down on his other side—like a child when one tries to wake him, Olav thought, turning over in his bed and going to sleep again. The snow was bloody about Hoskold. Olav gently raised the other and with some difficulty hoisted him onto his shoulders. It was heavy labour to trudge with him on his back through melting snow over the rough ground, but he got him into one of the houses and laid him down in a little room where two old women sat. Afterwards he could not remember what he had said to the women or they to him as he ran on in the tracks of some others, together with three men who had joined him by this hut. Now for the first time he noticed that he must have received a blow or a kick in the plate that covered his loins; it had made a dent that plagued him as he walked.

  After a while he came up to a high, rock-strewn moor, where a number of the fugitives had halted. He flung himself down in the heather, leaning against the trunk of a spruce, and took some food—several of the men had bags of provisions and shared with the others. Baard was there and Sira Hallbjörn and four or five more whom he knew—in all, a band of something over twenty men had collected.

  One of the men gave a shout, ran forward to a knoll, and looked out. Others followed him. From here a corner of Skeidis parish could be seen to the south. Beyond the forest a column of thick, black smoke rose up and spread itself in the heavy air. It was Hestbæk that was burning, said the men who hailed from that part. A little farther to the eastward they saw more smoke—the Duke’s men must be taking revenge for the attack.

  “You are sore stricken, Baard,” said Olav in a low voice. Arne of Hestbæk, Baard’s father-in-law and Olav’s kinsman, was still alive, active and hearty in his old age. And now Olav had to tell Baard of his son-in-law, whom he had left behind, badly wounded, in one of the little crofts under the hill.

  But Baard, the silent, good-natured franklin, only gave an angry laugh.

  It was raining fast with a faint, rustling sound in the melting snow. The country where the farms were now blazing was ringed in by a thick, dark sky, which lay low on the black woods that closed the view. The men had crept in under the thickest trees, chewing food and sucking at lumps of snow as they talked together.

  Now they could all see that an unsuitable place had been chosen for the attack. Aurebæk Dale would have been much better, with the narrow bridle-path between screes in the glen. But those whose homes lay nearest the forest there would have been loath to provoke the hostile army before it had left their district behind. Then it was said that the stacks of timber should have been saved till the mail-clad horsemen came up—and one man asked why the scouts had not reported that the force contained such a troop. Olav had just been thinking that had they known that, then—but it was Sira Hallbjörn’s fault, so let him reply. But the priest said merely that these mercenaries must have lain at farms farther south than he and Olav Audunsson had been able to penetrate. The men cursed a little, others swore roundly: sure enough the Duke himself had been with that troop.

  Then there was talk of what should be the next step. Most of the men were inclined to make for home and see how it fared with their farms.

  Then Sira Hallbjörn spoke up: “ ’Tis not to be thought that the Duke will be suffered to plant himself in Oslo without any trying to disturb him. If he sits down before the castle of Aker—he will scarce take that so soon; Munan Baardsson is neither a fool nor a coward, and he has a good following with him. It seems to me, then, that the best we can do is to make our way eastward to Eyjavatn and thence up to Sudrheim. Haftor, the King’s son-in-law, and his brothers are brisk lads and the right ones to lead, if there be a levy. Haftor, I know, will scarce weep so sorely if he lose the chance of calling Duke Eirik brother-in-law—at Sudrheim they were but middling glad when the King betrothed to him the Lady Agnes’s little sister.”

  Some young lads came climbing up from the wood, supporting among them an elderly yeoman who was bleeding like a pig. While some men, the priest among them, were tending the wounded man, one of the lads asked for Olav Audunsson of Hestviken—was he here? At first Olav did not recognize the young man, but then he saw it was the lad who had leaped ashore from the Björnssons’ fishing-boat and had gone with him to Galaby. Now the boy asked what Olav purposed to do and whether he might join with him. Olav said he might indeed, but he had not brought more with him than what he stood up in, and he for his part would follow Sira Hallbjörn’s advice and betake himself to the Jonssons of Sudrheim, to see whether the men of Raumarike would try to drive the Duke out.

  The stranger said that was to his mind. His name was Aslak and he was a son of Gunnar of Ytre Dal in Rumudal, but he had three brothers older than himself, and so his parents desired that he should enter a monastery. He had now been for three years, since he was thirteen, with the white friars at Tunsberg, for Father Sigurd Knutsson was his uncle. But he was not made for a monk—indeed, most of the time he had spent on one of the convent’s farms at Andabu, and now he had leave of his uncle to return home.

  “So when I heard of the raid and they spoke on board of putting in to Hestviken, and I saw you were in war-harness—uncle had spoken of you—you and he are friends, I think.”

  “Did Father Sigurd speak of me?” asked Olav, rather incredulously. “I have seen him, when I had occasion to go thither, but never have we exchanged many words—I cannot guess why he should speak of me.”

  “He said you were a bold man and had fared much in foreign lands—he told me you were fostered in his home country, at Frettastein, and had made your marriage there.”

  Olav made no answer to this. He never liked to hear of his young days or to meet with men from the Upplands who knew of him from that time. That Father Sigurd of the Premonstratensian convent had kinsfolk in that part of the country he had never known. But this seemed not to be worth a thought now. He asked Aslak where he had been during the fight in the pass and let the lad talk, but said little himself. He was rather tired too, and wet to the skin; he now felt his head aching from the blow he had had on his helmet, and his boots had rubbed the skin off his feet.

  Soon after midday the party on the hill broke up. Most of them were going home—among them Baard of Skikkjustad; he wished to see to his son-in-law. But eleven men started eastward, led by one from Skeidis parish, who was to guide them through the forests to Eyjavatn. There were Sira Hallbjörn and Olav Audunsson, Markus and Simon, sons of Alf of Berg, and a stalwart young franklin whom Olav did not know; the rest were house-carls, and then there was this lad Aslak.

  Within the forest a few more men joined the company, and there was talk of the fight; but none knew anything certain as to how many of the country levies had fallen or how many men the Duke had lost. One party of the horsemen had turned back, plundered and burned some farms, but they had not given themselves time to range far afield.

  Soon all talking ceased. The little company tramped in single file up and down the woodland, over and around low pine-clad heights, in thick wet heather and sodden snow—on the tarns the slush was ankle-deep above the ice. And the rain poured and poured from a grey sky. At dusk they reached houses and cultivation; before them lay the lake, Eyjavatn, a wide grey surface under the darkening, rainy sky.

  No one here had heard the least news of the troubles, and the people of the manor, where they asked shelter for the night, sent a messenger at once to the knight at Ormberg; war arrows were sent out and men went up to light the beacon. By next day they had assembled a band of over eighty men, who marched northward across the slushy surface of the lake on foot, on horseback, and in sledges.

  1 December 13.

  2 Duke Eirik was the brothe
r of King Birger of Sweden, son of King Magnus Ladulas, and grandson of the great Earl Birger. Eirik had been betrothed in 1302 to Princess Ingebjörg, the little daughter of King Haakon V of Norway. His ambition was to make himself master of the three Scandinavian kingdoms, and as one of the steps to this end he seized his brother Birger and threw him into prison. Eirik’s invasion of Norway, here described, took place in 1308.

  8

  THE FRANKLINS from outside were lodged at farms up and down the parish and lay there during the feast of Yule. In most places they were well received—the Raumrikings had a right good mind to march upon Oslo and give Duke Eirik a taste of their steel. But Sira Hallbjörn was invited to stay at Sudrheim—he was distantly related to Sir Jon Raud—and so the latter asked Olav Audunsson also to be his guest during Yule.

  He occupied the manor with his youngest son, Ivar; the two others, Sir Haftor, the King’s son-in-law, and Sir Tore, speaker of the Thing, were with the King at Björgvin. Sira Hallbjörn and Olav were assigned a bed in a fine house apart, where the two unmarried sons lived, and Sir Jon had suitable clothes sent out to them.

  Not for years had Olav kept Yule with so cheerful a heart. Messengers left the manor and came home with news: Sir Jon had his scouts abroad. The King’s young kinsman, Munan Baardsson at Akershus, had received tidings of the raid in good time. The castle was undermanned, so he could not venture a sally, but he had beaten off the first attack. After that the Duke sat down before the castle, but the long-continued rain forced him to break camp in the swampy ground about Aker and retire upon the town of Oslo. There he kept Yule in the old royal palace on the riverbank, dubbed his Norwegian friends knights, and held a tournament—though it was said he had got an ague in the camp, so that he was often sick. He exacted a ransom from the country districts, nor did the townsmen go free, though he dealt somewhat more gently with them. The folk at Sudrheim laughed rather maliciously when they heard of it, for there had been no bounds to the affection the men of Oslo showed Duke Eirik before, when he visited the town as King Haakon’s son-in-law to be. The Duke’s army numbered three hundred German horsemen and a hundred and fifty Swedish men-at-arms, and his Norwegian adherents had among them a little over an old hundred of men, most of them armed after the fashion of squires.

  Sir Jon Raud of Sudrheim was not so very old, but he was in bad health, so it fell upon his son, Ivar Jonsson, to lead the country levies, and he was courageous, prudent, and well liked by the people—but he was very young, just one and twenty. They kept their Yule feast at Sudrheim as usual, and here Olav met several men and women with whom he could claim distant kinship, going back to the time when his forefathers were in possession of Dyfrin. He was also related to the men of Sudrheim, it turned out.

  “How can it be, Olav,” asked Sir Jon one day, “that you have never cared to serve the King? ’Tis not right that a man of such good birth, substance, and courtly breeding should have no place among his bodyguard.”

  “I have served King Haakon when he called out the levies,” replied Olav; “but you must know, sir, I was Alf Erlingsson’s liegeman in my youth, and I swore by God and by my patron saint, when I heard the Earl had died in banishment, that never would I swear any other allegiance on the hilt of my sword, and least of all to the man who made him an outlaw.”

  “Then you are more loyal than most men,” said Sir Jon, with a little sigh. He himself had known that Earl well, and after this he often talked with Olav of the gentle Lord Alf; and Olav felt he had not been drawn so near to his own youth and the time when he was free and light of heart—ay, not since he came home to Norway.

  Sira Hallbjörn too was like another man, a sociable and kindly companion. He was in the war heart and soul and took part in all the Sudrheim men’s plans. It was clearly far easier for him to mix with worldly lords and knights than with priests and countrymen. Sometimes he and Olav went hunting with young Ivar and his friends, when the weather suited. On the holy-days he said mass in the church, to the great joy of the people, for he carried himself nobly at the altar and had a clear and powerful voice, whether in speaking or singing—but the parish priest here was a bungler, and Sir Jon’s chaplain was so old that he was in second childhood. He could still say mass, but he no longer knew people rightly; he often took Ivar to be Sir Jon, who had been his foster-son in his youth.

  Sir Haftor’s young wife, Lady Agnes Haakonsdatter, was at home at Sudrheim, as she was expecting her second child. There was already a son, and no doubt his kinsfolk had their plans for that boy, should the little Lady Ingebjörg die without heirs.

  What Olav had heard of the lady’s mother, King Haakon’s leman, had always moved him strangely, though most folk made a scornful jest of her. She was a yeoman’s daughter from the fiords, and she had been Queen Ingebjörg’s bath-house maid. One day when she had made the bath too hot, her mistress had struck her so fiercely that she left the bath-house bleeding and in tears, and there she was met by the King’s young son, Duke Haakon. He spoke to the maid and asked why she was weeping so. Fair to look upon she was not, and she was much older than he, by a score of years at least; but before the year was out she had a child by the King’s son. The Queen was sore displeased, but the Duke would not part from his leman, and when he took up his residence in Oslo, he gave her a manor in the hundred of Bergheim. Of the children he had with her, only Lady Agnes grew up. When he was to marry the German princess, he took his base-born daughter into his own house, but sent her mother to the convent of Reins; there she became a nun some years later. A pious and virtuous woman she had always been, and kind to the poor—but in the King’s bodyguard they all thought she was ill chosen to be a royal leman, being small and pale, modest and shy with strangers; it was said she had often begged her lord to show mercy to such as deserved severe punishment. Lady Agnes took after her mother; she was small and wan, without charm, hard to talk to, but a gentle lady.

  One day as Olav was sitting alone in the house, seeing to his weapons, a woman came in and went along the beds, lifting the coverlets and feeling the pillows. When she came into the light, Olav saw that it was Lady Agnes herself. He stood up and bowed, and when she came and gave him her hand, he dropped on one knee before the King’s daughter and kissed her hand, thinking the while that she was more like a worn-out cottar’s wife who was forced to keep up her toil until the very hour when she would be brought to bed.

  “I wish to see if our guests are honourably housed here,” said Lady Agnes. She sank upon a stool, and Olav stood before her with bowed head and a hand laid upon his breast; he thanked her, they lived well here in every way.

  “You men from Folden can know but little of how it has fared with your homes?” the lady asked.

  No, said Olav; they had heard no news from thence since they took the field.

  “Then you have not had a joyful Yule?”

  Olav could not help laughing a little—he had never drunk so good a Yule, he answered.

  “But you know not whether your manor be standing or lie in ashes?”

  “Hestviken has thrice lain in ashes, my lady,” replied Olav as before. “If ’tis burned now for the fourth time, then I must even do as my fathers: take such fortune as God sends me and build it up anew.”

  “And what of your kinsfolk?” asked Lady Agnes.

  “My son is with Sir Ragnvald on the border, and my daughters are with friends on the west side of the fiord, so I need not distress myself for them.”

  “Then you have no wife alive?”

  “No, lady, this is the eighth winter since she died.”

  “Ah yes, then it must be easier for you, Olav, than for many men. One hears so many tales—the poor country folk in the south, God help them!”

  “Àmen, lady—but if He will, they will not have long to wait either, ere they be helped and avenged. Ill it is that we have not your lord with us, but Ivar has good will enough—”

  “Oh, I know not,” the lady sighed. “I cannot say I grieve so sorely either that Sir Haftor is
away. Yeomen against German mercenaries—’tis an unequal struggle, even though the yeomen have numbers. And yet it is sad for me that my lord is absent from me at this time.”

  Olav looked down at the little wife; he thought her condescension somewhat uncalled-for and her words ill suited to a King’s daughter, but he felt sorry for her. She had fine brown eyes like those of a hind, but other beauty there was none in her.

  Nevertheless it was with a strangely keen pity that he heard, one morning a few days later, that now Lady Agnes lay in the pains of childbirth, and the ladies who were about her knew not how it might fare with her. Sir Jon and his kinsmen wandered about with gloomy looks, but what they must chiefly have feared was that if Lady Agnes should die, the strongest tie would be broken that bound Haftor Jonsson to the King, and if the child were lost, it would be one arrow less in their quiver.

  But in the course of the evening a message came that Lady Agnes had been delivered of a fine big son, and then there was joy: Sir Jon ordered in mead and wine, and the men drank to the welfare of the new-born babe. The grandfather had the elder boy, the year-old Jon, brought in, whom his kinsmen called the Junker among themselves—he was hailed and passed from man to man, and the franklins drank till they were under the table, like men, as Ivar said.

  Next day the new-born son was christened by Sira Hallbjörn—Magnus he was called. The guests at the manor joined the kinsfolk with their offerings, and in the evening they held the christening ale with great merriment, but Olav could not but think of the young mother, whom all seemed to forget—one of her ladies had said she was very sick, lay wandering in a fever and wailing that Sir Haftor did not come in to her they could not make her understand that he was in Björgvin.