The Son Avenger

by Sigrid Undset

  He felt inclined to deal harshly and cruelly with her when he got her in his power—to send her away from him in tears and overcome. It was a senseless whim, this spiteful prompting which sprang from an unknown depth in his soul—the blind and witless caprice of a master who is angry with a slave because he is irritated by the slave’s frightened looks and humble efforts to conceal his sorrow.

  For it was of a thrall she reminded him, a woman captive. Even the two thick plaits she wore hanging over her full, rather flaccid bosom made him think of chains; they reached nearly to her knees, and their weight seemed to force her head forward and give her a stoop in walking. And Bothild’s hair was not black and stiff as he had thought at first, when he saw it wet; it had a soft brown hue, with a tinge of red, and went well with her red and white complexion and her dark-blue eyes. But not even her fairness sufficed to soften Eirik’s mind toward her.

  He scarcely spoke to her—it was only in his thoughts, all this of Bothild. To do anything to a woman who lived in his father’s house was not to be thought of. Besides, he was afraid of his father; now that the peace and purity within him had been bemired, his childhood’s dread of his father was also reawakened in full force.

  Either Olav and Cecilia were ignorant that anything was passing in secret between Eirik and Bothild Asgersdatter, or they misinterpreted what they saw—thought that the two disliked each other, or were shy of each other. In any case neither the father nor the sister showed any sign that they thought about the matter.

  Jörund had quickly guessed what was wrong with Eirik, but he contented himself with hinting at it once or twice in jest.

  “I cannot make out,” he said one day, with the sneering smile that Eirik disliked, “why you have such a mighty fancy to her. She sweats so.”

  Another time he said—it was one evening after they were in bed: “’Tis a great pity you cannot have her for a leman, since Olav is her guardian—and she cannot be rich enough for you to think of marrying her!”

  Eirik was silent, overwhelmed with agitation. Marry her—she was the last woman in the world he would take to wife! ’Twas not thus he had thought of Bothild.

  Jörund made ready for his departure—he was to be home for the Nativity of Mary.4 Baard of Skikkjustad had made inquiries about Jörund. He must be reckoned a good match, said Baard. There was wealth at Gunnarsby, and Gunhild Rypa’s sons might look to inherit more; Kolbein had been like a chief in those parts and a man held in honour. The sons who were now in possession of the manor were not so well liked, but what folk had to say of them was for the most part such envious talk as is always heard when rich men stand on their rights. The two elder brothers were married to daughters of high-born men of good repute—“so I will not seek to dissuade you from listening to them, if in other ways you hold Jörund to be worthy your alliance,” said Baard to Olav.

  Olav then let fall a few words to Eirik: if Jörund was so minded, and his kinsmen would consider the matter, there would be no harm in discussing it.

  When it came to the point, Eirik was a little dispirited. He did not know why, but now he thought all at once that there was no such hurry in getting Cecilia married. She was not much more than a child, his good little sister.

  One morning Cecilia said to her father that now she and Bothild must move out and sleep in the women’s house awhile—they had to repair the winter clothing for the folk of the manor and they would be working till late at night.

  Before Eirik went to bed that evening, he took out the clothes he was to wear next morning on the fiord—Olav and the house-carls were going out after mackerel at dawn. Then he saw that the woollen shirt he meant to put on was ragged at the elbows. Eirik took the shirt and went out to ask his sister to mend it—the maids were still up, he had heard, as he went by their door just now.

  It was pitch-dark in the anteroom. On the other side of the thin boarding he heard his sister clattering with chests and boxes; she called to Bothild to open, as Eirik knocked at the door of the room.

  Then the door was opened, and the room was light behind her. The dark female figure in the doorway seemed to collapse with fright when she saw who stood outside. In her toneless whisper she said that Cecilia was busy turning out the clothes: “I will sew this for you.” She put out her hand for the shirt.

  “Come hither,” Eirik bade her in a low voice, and seized her by the wrist. With a little gasp as of fear the girl obeyed: she bent her head under the lintel and let him draw her out into the anteroom. Instantly he took her in his arms and thrust her against the wall, pressed her close and searched with his lips for her face in the dark, came upon her plaits and found the soft, ice-cold rounding of her cheek. With his kisses he nailed her head, which struggled to be free, against the wall.

  “Come with me,” he whispered; “come out with me—”

  She gulped with terror, he heard her teeth chattering and her soft, cold hands struggled in vain; she tried to defend herself, but had no strength. Eirik took both her hands in one of his and pressed them, as though he would squeeze the blood out under the roots of her nails. So terrified was she that Eirik scarcely knew whether she understood a word of his wild and shameless whispering—

  Then Olav called through the outer door. They had not heard him coming. He called for Cecilia. Eirik let go of Bothild—he himself was trembling—as Cecilia came to the inner door.

  “Are you two here?” she asked in surprise, and then spoke past them: “What is it, Father?”

  Olav asked for the little bucket he had brought up the week before to be cleaned.

  “Inga has surely forgotten it—I will find another for you, Father.”

  She went back for a lantern and came out again. “Have you been quarrelling?” she asked, half smiling, as the light fell on the faces of the two in the anteroom. Then she ran off.

  Eirik heard the sound of his father’s iron-shod heels die away on the rocks of the yard. He had caught a glimpse of Bothild’s face, deadly pale, as she slunk through the door of the room. Now he went and looked in.

  She was crouching on her knees over a chest of clothes, her head sunk in her clasped hands. It made him furious to see her kneeling thus—as though in prayer.

  “Stand up,” he said, and his voice was rude and harsh, “before Cecilia comes. Do you wish her to find out about this?” Then he went out.

  As he went down to the waterside at dawn next morning, he saw her in front of him, carrying a great box. When he reached the boat, she had taken it on board and was just returning over the gangplank. Eirik put out a hand to help her. As he touched her for a moment, her body shrank up and he saw she was dead-white in the face, but under her eyes there were deep black rings. But she often had those, it struck him—no doubt that was why her eyes looked so big.

  But scarcely had Eirik stepped aboard when Olav came and told him he had better stay ashore. It might be they would stay out two days, and he half expected Reidulf, the Sheriff, to come on the morrow about a case. Olav gave Eirik orders as to what he should say and do if the Sheriff came.

  Eirik stood watching the boat till it was lost in the morning mist. He could just see across the creek—the leaves of the little trees in the crevices of the rock were yellow already—he had scarcely noticed it, but here was autumn well on the way. He listened for the sound of oars in the mist; the little craft could still be seen, like a shadow. Eirik shivered a little—it was chilly—he turned to go up to the houses.

  As he passed the shed he heard someone within. Instantly he halted and listened, stiff and tense—could it be she?

  He stole up to the door and peeped in. Bothild stood with her back to him, taking dried fish out of a bundle. In two bounds he was upon her, throwing his arms about her from behind. He felt her body give way, as though every bone in it were dissolved; she hung powerless over his arms, which were crossed below her bosom. Then he flung her from him, so that she fell on the floor. Eirik ran to the door and barred it.

  As he turned, she stood up and fac
ed him, erect, with face aflame. “What are you doing!” Her eyes were big and black as coal. “You act like a—you are not acting like a man—oh!” Bothild gave one scream, loud and shrill, and then her tears gushed out.

  A chill gust passed over Eirik—the sight of the girl’s anger sobered him at once. But her tears plunged him headlong into a fresh tumult—he was bewildered by a sense of shame and misfortune, and her weeping frightened him.

  “Do not weep so—” he muttered in his agitation.

  But Bothild continued to sob, so that the tears poured down her distorted features. Once she threw her hands before her face, but the next moment she let them drop heavily again.

  “What have I done to you?” she cried; “what sort of man are you become?”

  “Bothild!” Eirik begged, miserably. “You surely cannot think I meant it in earnest—’twas only jesting.”

  “Jesting!” Flashing with anger, she looked him full in the eyes. “Is that what you call jesting?” Then her tears got the better of her again. She wept so that she had to sit down—sank down on a chest and turned her face from him. With her forehead leaned against the wall, she now wept more quietly, in bitter lamentation.

  Eirik stood still. He could not find a word to say.

  At long last Bothild half turned round to him again; she heaved a long, quaking sigh. “Ah me! It was not this I had looked for, when you came home to us again.”

  “When I came home?” asked Eirik weakly.

  “We thought you would surely come home again one day,” she said almost scornfully. “We often spoke of it, Cecilia and I—” Now she was weeping again.

  “Do not weep so,” Eirik begged at last.

  Bothild got up, passed her hands over her tear-stained face.

  “Open the door for me,” she bade him curtly.

  Eirik did so, but did not move from the doorway.

  “Stand aside,” she said as before. “Let me out now!”

  Eirik stepped aside. Bothild went out past him. Eirik did not move—his surprise felt like a gleam of light within him, faint at first, then growing stronger and stronger. Now he was utterly unable to understand how he could have treated her as he had done.

  A little way up the hill he overtook Bothild. She stood holding dewy leaves to her tear-stained cheeks and red eyes. As he stopped before her, she charged him, with looking round: “Go—” He hesitated. Bothild said impatiently: “Go now—I cannot show myself like this, all tears—you must see that!”

  Eirik made no reply, walked on.

  He could not understand what had gone wrong with him. The moment the defenceless maid had turned to resist, it was as though a devil had gone from him. He was bewildered and ashamed, but not deeply, for already his own evil thoughts appeared to him unreal—nothing but an ugly dream.

  The sun shone brilliantly in the course of the day and it was warm as summer. Eirik and the house-carl who was left at home were busy on the newly broken ground under the woods. Eirik worked hard—he always did so when once he had taken anything in hand. But at the same time he was deep in thought—Bothild was in his mind the whole time. He could not forget her quivering rage and her bitter tears. And now for the first time he realized what she had said: she and Cecilia had often spoken of his coming home.

  A lingering, painful shame pierced him at the thought. Had these two poor little maids waited here all this time for their brother? Bothild must have expected that he would look on her as another sister.

  The rude and turbulent thoughts he had conceived of her lay dead at the bottom of his soul like the dried mud left by a flooded stream. And as new and tender green struggles up through the hardened grey slime, so did new thoughts of Bothild shoot up in him unceasingly.

  That day he did not see her again till he came in to supper. She busied herself gently, holding her fair head bent as usual under the weight of her plaits, but the cowed and secret air that had been upon her and had provoked him to evil and sensual thoughts was now gone. She was merely a gentle young housewife going calmly about her duties.

  Even her beauty now stirred him in another way: now he saw nothing but sweetness and gentleness in her rounded, red and white face, dignity in her languid movements and in the fullness of her form.

  The Sheriff did not come next day, and by noon on the following day he was not yet there. An hour or two later Eirik went down to get a bite of food. As he came out with a piece of bread in his hand he heard Inga calling to Bothild, who was sitting outside by the north wall of the house, toward the sea. He went thither—she sat in the sunshine, sewing the shirt he had given her that evening.

  She looked up for a moment as he came, but there was none of the anxious, clinging look in her glance now. Bothild bent over her sewing again; she looked melancholy, but calm and sweet.

  Eirik stood there, leaning against the corner of the house. When he had eaten his bread and she had neither spoken nor looked up again, he had to break the silence himself.

  “Are you still angry with me, Bothild?”

  “Angry—” she repeated in a low voice, and went on sewing in silence for a while. “I hardly know myself what I am, Eirik—for I cannot understand it. Nay, I cannot understand why you should treat me thus!”

  Eirik was at a loss. For as he was about to reply that he had believed she was trying to allure him, he saw that he must not say such a thing—it would make the matter far worse.

  “I can promise you now,” he said softly, with a little sigh, “I shall not hurt you again.”

  Bothild let her sewing drop into her lap and slowly turned up her face toward him. And now Eirik was moved by it in quite a new way: the round, white face with the two bright roses in the cheeks, the dark, thoughtful eyes, the fine mouth, which seemed small when she was distressed. Now his only desire was to pat her cheek, to pass his hand tenderly and kindly over the long, white curve of her throat—he felt he wished her well with so warm a heart.

  “Is it for my aunt’s sake,” she asked him earnestly, “that you were so—spiteful toward me?”

  Eirik seized upon this eagerly. “Yes—but now I cannot understand how I could think you were like Mærta—”

  “Even so, my aunt never desired aught else than Olav’s welfare,” said Bothild meekly. “She would ever bid me be mindful of how great were the thanks we owed your father—God must reward him, we cannot. And I too wish him naught but well—I am not greedy of authority, Eirik, but consult Cecilia in all I do.”

  Eirik felt a thrill of intense joy and relief. God be thanked for her innocence—she believed no more than that he was bad to her because he was jealous on his sister’s account, or would avenge himself on her for the old ogress, her aunt—beyond that she had no thought. She firmly believed he had only meant to humiliate her.

  He had heard sounds of horsemen coming down from Kverndal, and now he thought he must go and see who was coming. So there was no help for it, he had to tear himself away.

  The horsemen were already in the court. They were Ragnvald Jonsson, the Sheriff’s young brother from Galaby, and Gaute Sigurdsson, whom folk called Virvir; Eirik had often met them in the two months he had spent at home. He called to Bothild, and she appeared at the corner of the house.

  “Heh!” said Ragnvald with a laugh. “So you were not alone! Then our coming is untimely, I fear.”

  “Are you sewing that shirt for Eirik, Bothild?” Gaute Virvir rallied her.

  And now she hung her head again, and her eyes hovered this way and that. She hurried away, as though she would avoid them.

  Ragnvald and the other had come by land, for they had had business up in the church town, and they were not altogether unrefreshed, so Eirik guessed it would be well to settle the matter in hand ere they went to table. The sisters had spread the cloth and laid the table when they returned from the upper chamber, and by that time the guests were hungry and not a little thirsty. While the men ate and drank, the two young maids sat in another part of the room. Ragnvald tried conclusions with Ceci
lia the whole time, and Cecilia gave him sharp and snappish answers; but Eirik could see that this word-play amused her—he had remarked the same thing before, his sister was ready enough for a wrangle. But Bothild had relapsed into her diffidence and shyness and seemed utterly miserable when Gaute teased her about a certain Einar from Tegneby whom she was supposed to have met in the summer, while staying with Signe Arnesdatter at her daughter’s house. Eirik did not like to hear her teased about another man, and he did not like her looking as though she had a bad conscience.

  Ragnvald and Gaute delayed their leave-taking for some while after sundown. Then they would have Eirik and the maids to bear them company a part of the way.

  “Nay, I dare not go with you, Ragnvald,” said Cecilia Olavsdatter; “I might meet with the same misfortune as befell Tora Paalsdatter—you jested with her so long that she put out her jaw with yawning. It may be Father and the men will soon come in, I cannot leave the houses. But you, Bothild, might go up to Liv, since Eirik can bring you back.”

  So the four set off. Ragnvald and Gaute let their horses walk in front, the three young men chatted together, and Bothild followed a little way behind with her box and her bundle. Dusk was already falling; a thin white mist lay over the pale autumnal fields, and the orange glow in the sky faded and turned to rust-red. A bitter, withered scent hung about the alder thicket along the river, and the path was wet with the dew from falling leaves.

  At Rundmyr Bothild left the path; before the men were aware of it the dark, bent figure was already darting across the fields. Eirik would have gone on with the others, but they begged him with a laugh not to give himself the trouble. Then they mounted their horses.