He and Guttorm dashed headlong to the room. There they saw Ingunn, running barefoot and in her shift and tramping on the floor—the room was full of smoke and the straw was alight among the rugs she had thrown upon it. She held Steinar in her arms; he was wrapped in the bedspread, shrieking and wailing.
When the others came in, she sank down on the bench, kissing and fondling the boy and trying to lull him: “Steinar, Steinar, my darling, now you will soon be better, now I will make you so well, my little one!” She called to the others that Steinar had burned himself and they must bring her cloths and ointment at once.
She had been lying alone, and Steinar was in the room with her; he had been sitting by the hearth, where a tiny fire was burning, and although the woman in the bed told him he must not, he had played with it, sticking dry twigs into the fire and letting them burn. The day was warm, and the boy had nothing on but a shirt—all at once the fire caught it. Then Ingunn knew no more till she was standing by the hearth with the child in her arms; she had put out the fire in his shirt by throwing the coverlet about him; but now she saw that the rushes with which the floor was strewed were burning, and so she threw down the cushions from the benches and trampled the fire as she cried for help.
The boy had been burned about the body, but Ingunn too had ugly burns on her legs and on the under side of both arms. But she heeded nothing but Steinar; they were not allowed to bind her wounds until the child had been tended, and then she laid him in her bed and lay watching over him, fondling and wheedling the poor little thing. And as long as the boy had fever and pain from his burns, she gave no thought to other things.
The palsy had slipped from her—she herself seemed scarce aware of it. She ate and drank what they brought her, greedily and unthinking, and the terrible vomiting and dizziness had altogether ceased. Arnvid sat by Steinar day and night, and, cruelly as it hurt him to see the boy suffer so, he nevertheless thanked God for the miracle that had happened to Ingunn.
From now on she quickly grew better, and when Steinar was well enough to be carried out into the sun to look at the snow that had fallen in the night, Ingunn had got back a little of her delicate roundness of face and form, and her cheeks flushed pink in the frosty air. She stood with Steinar on her arm waiting for Arnvid, who was away among the rocks collecting frozen haws in his hat—Steinar had said his father must find some berries for him.
The prospects of a reconciliation between Arnvid and the rest of Ingunn’s kinsfolk had not been improved by these rumours Mistress Hillebjörg had spread abroad about Kolbein—that he had had spells cast upon his niece to bring her to her death. And when the betrothal ale was drunk at Frettastein, for Haakon Gautsson and Tora Steinfinnsdatter, a short time before Advent, no one from Miklebö was present at the ceremony. The wedding was held at the New Year in 1282, and afterwards the newly married pair went round visiting the young wife’s kinsfolk, for Haakon was the youngest of many brothers and had no house of his own in the westland. It was intended that he should settle in the Upplands.
But now there came word from the lady Magnhild of Berg that she wished to take Ingunn. Ivar and Kolbein had promised that they would leave the girl in peace if she would stay there quietly and live in chastity. Arnvid swore horribly when Brother Vegard told him this, but he could not deny that he had no legal right to dispose of Ingunn. And Mistress Hillebjörg was beginning to be tired of her guest: now that Ingunn was well she had no patience with the young woman, who was only for show and no use at all. And the message Lady Magnhild had sent was no more than was reasonable: she had her old mother with her, Aasa Magnusdatter, the widow of Tore of Hov; the old lady was infirm and had need of her granddaughter for help and pastime.
Just before Easter, then, Arnvid went to Berg with Ingunn.
Lady Magnhild was the eldest of all Tore’s true-born children; she was now a woman of two score years and ten—the same age as her half-brother Kolbein Toresson. She was the widow of the knight Viking Erlingsson. Children she had never had; in order to do good, therefore, she took to herself young maids, the daughters of kinsmen or friends, and taught them courtesy and such attainments as were suited to women of good birth; for Lady Magnhild had seen much of the King’s court while her husband was alive. She had also offered to receive her nieces from Frettastein, but Steinfinn—or Ingebjörg—had been unwilling to send the little maids to her, and Lady Magnhild had been exceeding angry thereat. So when it came out that Ingunn had let herself be ensnared by her foster-brother, she said it had turned out as she expected: the children had been ill brought up, and their mother had been disobedient to her father and false to her betrothed, so it seemed most likely that Steinfinn’s daughters would bring shame on their race.
Ingunn was tired and low-spirited as she sat in the sledge on the last stage of the journey through the forest. They had been several days on the road, for the weather had set in mild, with snow, as soon as they left Miklebö. Now toward evening it froze hard, and Arnvid walked beside the sledge and drove, as the road was bad—in places over bare rock, slippery with ice, in others through deep snowdrifts, for no one had passed this way since the last snowfall.
When they came out of the woods, the sun was low above the ridge facing them; it was an orange ball behind the mist, and the dark, rugged ice of the bay had a dull and coppery gleam. The mist had frosted the snow-covered woods and fens, so that all was grey and ugly as evening drew on. Down in the fields Arnvid’s men struggled on; they and the sledge with the baggage went straight ahead through the snow. The manor lay down by the water, at some distance from the other houses of the parish—the woods formed a barrier, so that from Berg one could not see any of the other great farms about.
Ingunn had not seen her aunt since she came to Hamar, well-nigh a year and a half ago, and then the lady of Berg had been harsh toward her. She did not expect much good of the lady Magnhild this time either.
Arnvid hoisted himself onto the edge of the sledge, as it dipped into the first hollow.
“Look not so sorrowful, Ingunn,” he begged her. “ ’Twill be hard parting from you, if you are so faint-hearted.”
Ingunn said: “Faint-hearted I am not; you know that I have not complained. But I shall not be in the hands of friends here. Pray to God for me, kinsman, that I may keep a firm mind, for I look to be sorely tried, so long as I must bide here at Berg.”
But as they drove into the courtyard the lady Magnhild herself came out and received Ingunn in friendly fashion. She led her niece into the women’s room and bade the maids bring warm drinks and dry footgear. She herself helped the young woman to take off her fur-lined boots and coat of skins. But then she said, taking hold of a corner of Ingunn’s coif: “This you must now put off.”
Ingunn turned red. “I have worn the coif ever since I was at Hamar. The Bishop bade me cover my hair—he said no virtuous woman goes bareheaded when she is no longer a maid.”
“He!” sneered Lady Magnhild. “He has so many fancies—But now so much time has passed that the gossip has died down hereabouts. I will not have you blow fresh life into the rumours of your own shame by going here like a fool in married woman’s attire. Take off the kerchief and turn your belt again. ’Twas a mercy at least that you were never forced to buckle it at the side.”
Ingunn wore a leather belt around her waist, set with little silver studs and handsomely mounted at the end that hung down. Lady Magnhild took hold of it and pulled it straight, so that the buckle came in front. Again she ordered Ingunn to take off her head-covering.
“All know this about me,” said Ingunn hotly. “If I do this, folk must think worse of me and deem me an immodest woman—if I am to go bareheaded when I have no right to that—as the wantons do.”
Lady Magnhild said: “There is your grandmother too, Ingunn; she is old now. She remembers well enough all things that happened in her youth, but new tidings she forgets as soon as she hears them. Every day we should have to tell her afresh why you were to go in matron’s dress.”
“ ’Twould be easy to answer her that my husband is gone away.”
“And soon it will come to Kolbein’s ears that you stand by the old claims, and his hatred of Olav will never cool down. Be reasonable now, Ingunn, and cease these follies.”
Ingunn unbound her coif and began to fold it together. It was the finest she had—four ells long and sewed with silk. Hillebjörg had given it her the year before, saying she could use it for a church-going coif and wear it the first time she went to mass with Olav, when he came home.
She drew the pins out of her hair and let the heavy yellow locks fall about her shoulders.
“And such goodly hair you have,” said Lady Magnhild. “Most women would be glad to make boast of it awhile longer, Ingunn—if they could have no joy of their man, and the coif brought them no power or authority. Let it hang loose this evening, I pray you.”
“Oh no, aunt,” begged Ingunn, almost in tears. “That you must never ask me!” She divided her mass of hair and bound it in two plaits, stiff and unadorned.
Arnvid was already sitting at the table when Lady Magnhild and Ingunn came into the room. He looked up, and his eyes clouded over.
“Is it thus they will have it here?” he asked later, when they said good-night to each other. “You are not to be allowed the honour of a married woman?”
“Nay, you may see that,” was all Ingunn said.
Aasa Magnusdatter had a house to herself at Berg with a loft-room and two maidservants to do the housework and cooking, and to spin and weave all the flax and wool that fell to her share. Grim and Dalla, the old bailiff and his sister from Frettastein, looked after her beasts, which stood in Lady Magnhild’s byre; these two had been given a little cot to dwell in, close by the cow-house, but they were counted as part of Aasa’s household.
Ingunn then had nothing to do at Berg but to be, as it were, at the head of her grandmother’s little household and to be a solace to the old woman. She mostly sat with her grandmother when the maids were at their work.
As Lady Magnhild had said, Aasa was now grown somewhat childish, she remembered little of what was said to her, but asked again and again about the same things day after day. Sometimes she asked after her youngest son, Steinfinn, whether he had been there lately or whether they expected him soon. Often, however, she remembered that he was dead. Then she would ask: was it not four children he had alive? “And you are the oldest? Ah yes, I know that very well; your name is Ingunn—after my mother, for Ingebjörg’s mother was still living when you came, and she had cursed her daughter for running away with Steinfinn. Ay, he was simple-minded and glad of heart, my Steinfinn, and it came to cost him dear that he was so nice in his choice of a leman that he carried off a knight’s daughter by force.…” Aasa had never liked Ingebjörg, and she used often to talk of Steinfinn and his wife, without remembering that it was their daughter she spoke to. “But how was it now—did not a great misfortune befall one of these little maids of Steinfinn’s? Nay, that cannot be so—they cannot be so old yet?”
“Dear Grandmother,” Ingunn begged in her embarrassment, “you should try to get a little sleep now.”
“Oh ay, Gyrid, perchance that were best for me—” Aasa often called her granddaughter Gyrid, taking her for a Gyrid Alfs-datter, a kinswoman who had been at Berg some fifteen winters before.
But all that had happened in her young days Mistress Aasa remembered clearly. She spoke of her parents and of her brother Finn, Arnvid’s father, and of her sister-in-law, Hillebjörg, whom she both loved and feared—although Hillebjörg was much younger than Aasa.
When fourteen winters old she had been given to Tore of Hov. Before that he had lived with that Borghild for over ten years, and very loath he was to send away his leman—she did not depart from Hov until the morning of the very day when Aasa was brought there as a bride. Borghild continued to have great power over Tore as long as she lived—and that was for twenty years after the man’s marriage. He consulted her about all matters of importance, and he often took his true-born children to her, that she might foretell their future and judge whether they seemed promising. But Tore bestowed his greatest efforts and his love chiefly on the four children he had had by his leman. Borghild was the daughter of a woman thrall and a nobleman—some said, one of those kings that Norway was full of at that time. She was fair and wise, and a bold schemer, but haughty, rapacious, and cruel to folk of low degree.
Meanwhile Aasa Magnusdatter was mistress of Hov. She bore her husband fourteen children, but five died in the cradle, and only four lived to grow up.
Aasa remembered all her dead children and used to speak of them. She mourned most for a daughter, Herdis, who became palsied from having slept out on the dewy ground. She died four years afterwards, when she was eleven winters old. A half-grown son had been kicked to death by his horse, and Magnus had lost his life in a brawl on board the ship, when coming home across the lake from a banquet in Toten together with other drunken young men. Magnus had just been married, but there was no child after him, and the widow married again in another part of the country. Aasa had liked her best of her daughters-in-law.
“But tell me, Grandmother,” asked Ingunn, “have you had naught but sorrow in your life? Have you no good days to think upon now?”
Her grandmother looked at her and seemed not to understand. Now, as she lay waiting for death, she seemed to take as much pleasure in recalling her sorrows as her joys.
Ingunn did not thrive ill in this life with the old woman. Weak she was, even now when she had her health, and she had never liked to have to do anything that demanded hard work or continued thought. She would sit with some fine needlework that there was no need to finish in a hurry, lost in her own thoughts, while she listened with half an ear to her grandmother’s talk.
In her growing years she had been restless and had found it hard to sit still for long at a time. But now it was different. The strange sickness that had fallen upon her after the separation from Olav seemed to have left behind a shadow that would not give way; it was as though she were always in a half-dreaming state.—At Frettastein she had had all the boys, and Olav first and last, and they had brought games and excitement and life to her, who herself lacked enterprise to undertake anything. Here at Berg there were only women, two old ladies and their servants, and a few elderly house-carls and workmen; they could not rouse her from the torpor into which she had sunk while she lay paralysed in bed, expecting to wither away altogether from among the living.
When Olav was whisked away, she seemed to have no strength to believe he would ever come back. All too many great events had overwhelmed her in the short time between her father’s departure to seek out Mattias Haraldsson and Arnvid’s taking her to Hamar. She felt she had been carried away by a flood, and the time at Hamar was like an eddy, in which she and Olav had been churned round in a ring, slowly but surely passing farther and farther from each other. There all had been new and strange, and Olav had changed till even he seemed to have become a stranger. She could understand indeed that it was right of him never to seek an opportunity for meeting her in secret while they were there. But that he should have taken it as he did when she brought about that meeting with him on Christmas Night—that had frightened her into a corner; she had felt so shamed and abandoned afterwards that she dared not even think of him as she had done before, lingeringly, with a sweet, hot desire for his love. She was like a child that has been corrected and punished by a grown-up—she herself had never guessed there could be anything wrong in it.
Then he had come to her that last night, out of the darkness and the driving snow, worn out and agitated, shaking between tiredness and suppressed ferocity—an outlawed man with her cousin’s blood yet warm on his hands. She had been self-possessed in a way. But when he left her, it was as though all the waters closed over her.
At first, when she was so sick, she too had thought that it was with her as Mistress Hillebjörg said. But as time went on and it became clear that she was n
ot to have a child, she scarce had the strength to feel disappointed. She was so worn out that it would have seemed too much if she had had more to look for, of either good or ill. She bore it with patience that she was so sick and that none could tell what ailed her and that there seemed to be no cure for her. If she tried to look forward into the future, she saw naught but black, waving mists like the darkness that whirled before her eyes when she had her swooning-fits.
Then she plunged deep into the memories of all that had been between Olav and her that last summer and autumn. She closed both eyes and kissed her own plait of hair and hands and arms and made believe it was Olav. But the more she abandoned herself to dreams and desires, the more unreal it seemed to her that these things had happened in truth. That the end of the matter would be that they were united at last, in peace and with full right, she had indeed believed, but never been able to imagine—just as she believed, but was little able to imagine all that she had heard of the priests about a blissful state in the other world.
So she lay powerless, not expecting ever to regain the use of her limbs. With it the last rope was broken that still held her to the everyday life and occupations of other men and women. She no longer hoped that she would ever be lawfully married to Olav Audunsson, would be mistress of his house and mother of his children. Instead she allowed herself to drift as the sport of dreams which she never looked to see fulfilled.
Every evening, when the candle was extinguished and the fire raked out, she played that Olav came and lay down with her.
The Axe Page 19
