The Son Avenger

by Sigrid Undset

  Cecilia sat clutching the edge of the bed with both hands; the tears now ran down her cheeks as she wept almost without a sound; and when Eldrid had wound the warm skin coverlet about her legs and laid her down, she turned to the wall and buried her face in the pillows. She lay thus till her sister-in-law came with the food.

  “Now you must come out with me, you—Svein was your name, was it not? I shall go to Holgeir’s house and sleep with Ragnhild tonight, Eirik—I think your sister would fain speak with you alone, you have not seen each other for so long.”

  With that Eldrid bade them good-night and went out.

  Cecilia ate and drank.

  “Shame on Gaute—he has put it about all over the countryside that you go in rags, half-naked, and live like the meanest cottar, and your wife is so infirm she must ever take to her bed—”

  “Then Gaute is a worse tattler than I am myself,” said Eirik.

  “Had I known the truth of your condition,” replied Cecilia, “I am not sure I should have come hither to complain of my trouble. I thought you could not be worse off than you were.”

  “Then it was well that Gaute spread his tale.”

  But when he had taken away the empty cups and seated himself on the bed by his sister, while the embers fell together in the fireplace, he felt a dread of what he was about to hear.

  Between whiles Jörund had been tractable and kind, said Cecilia. But he scented covert injuries and distrust of himself in all that their father and the old serving-folk said and did, and it was often hard for her to intervene. Then there were Anki and Liv—he had conceived a hatred for them since that unfortunate affair, and he would have them out of Rundmyr. Olav said he would not hear of it—then Jörund was beside himself, made the most incredible accusations against their father, said it was known to the whole countryside why he kept such a den of thieves close beside his manor, but now they should go or he would set fire to the whole nest. This happened last autumn, while she still lay in after her little daughter who died—her father had come over to see her. Shortly after, it came out that Gudrun from Rundmyr, who had been helping at Hestviken during the summer, had not returned to her parents as she had left them, and Jörund had offered money to Svein Ragnason and several other men to take the blame on themselves. “I have never told Jörund of it,” said Cecilia, “but I went up thither one day lately—Anki takes it much to heart, for Gudrun is not ill-looking; her at any rate he had thought to marry off, and she is but fourteen, so the poor child could scarce help herself.”

  But Jörund had gone quite wild when he got to know it. And for Olav, the cripple, he had always had a loathing. And yestermorn Olav had been in the fields with the children—he was cutting willow pipes for them—when Kolbein came running home; the boy cried and said his father had come upon them, so angry, had snatched Olav’s crutches from him and struck him with them.

  Cecilia had dashed out. There lay Olav, with the blood running from his nose and mouth. “I said to Jörund what first came into my head.” But Jörund was like a raging bull and not like a reasonable being. Then Svein and Halstern came up, and he let her go. They carried Olav Livsson in to Ragna, and Cecilia had sat by him all night, but in the morning he died.

  At last Cecilia fell asleep, and Eirik went and lay down in the farther bed.

  He had no doubt that Jörund was distracted at times—he ought to be watched, perhaps put in bonds. And Cecilia could not live with him any longer. Either she must move out to Saltviken with her children, or he himself must go thither and take his brother-in-law with him, while his father returned home to Hestviken and stayed there with Cecilia—that he must decide when he had seen how things were on the spot.

  Next morning at daybreak Eldrid stole in to change into her working-dress. Eirik said he would have to ride over to Hestviken that day—“and I fear it may be some while ere I come home to you.”

  “Ay, so I thought.”

  Cecilia insisted on riding back with Eirik, though both he and Eldrid begged her to stay at the Ness till her brother sent for her.

  Not much was said between them on the journey; the roads were in a bad state, and Eirik could see too that Cecilia already repented of having said so much as she had.

  When they came to Rundmyr, Eirik asked his sister and Svein to wait in the old houses that stood by the roadside; he would go on to Anki and Liv. He knew not what he should say to the poor folk. As he hurried on foot along the familiar path over the bog, he recalled how here he had played with fire, blinded by childish anger against his father, filled with a vain desire to make himself acquainted with all that was evil—and he himself had come off free, in a way, while those who had less sense and less guilt lay writhing, burned beyond help.

  Two sheep were in the tussocky field, seeking what pasture there might be; they ran off as he came up. The door of the cottage was barred, and there was no answer to his knocking. And the little byre was open and deserted. Eirik’s anger was kindled—had Jörund driven them out after all?

  As they rode into the yard at the manor, the house-folk appeared from every door. They collected about Eirik as he sat on his horse, looked up at him, grave and anxious. But no one said anything, until Tore came forward and held the bay while Eirik dismounted.

  “You have not come too soon either, Eirik!”

  To that he could answer nothing. Then he asked: “Where is Jörund?”

  At first there was none who answered; then someone murmured that he must be indoors; but at last a half-grown lad whispered fearfully—Jörund had gone down to the waterside awhile ago, he had seen—

  As the men were about to follow him, Eirik forbade them, and to Svein, who handed him an axe, he said: “I have my sword, as you see—but I look not to have use for it.”

  He did not take the road, but went down the hill below the front of the dwelling-house. Between the spur on which the manor was built and the waterside there were only a few small scraps of arable land; the rest was rocky knolls and scrub, briers and juniper. Eirik crept along stealthily so that the madman should not see him coming. But as he went down he could not help seeing how much farther advanced the spring was out here by the sea; everywhere fresh green appeared among the withered grass in the crevices of rock, there were great red shoots on the brier bushes, and the goats that picked their way on the hillside had already recovered from the winter. And outside, the fiord gleamed in the afternoon sunshine.

  He saw no one on the quay. But as soon as his steps were heard on the planks, a man dashed out from behind a shed, flew past him, bent almost double, and leaped straight into a boat that lay alongside. Eirik did not stop to think, but ran after him and jumped into the boat in his turn, just as Jörund had cast off. They both stood up in the boat. Jörund seized an oar and struck at his brother-in-law, and in an instant the boat capsized.

  As soon as they were in the water the other flung his arms about Eirik; he guessed that Jörund was trying to hold him under—he had swallowed a mass of water, and his cloak and sword and heavy boots hindered him; he was dizzy and choking already. But in spite of that he was more used to falling into the sea than Jörund; he contrived to free himself from the other’s hold and get his head above water. They were not far from the shore; he reached the slippery seaweed, clambered up, and sat down on the rock.

  Eirik spat out the sea-water, took off his dripping cloak, and shook himself, so that the water splashed inside his boots.

  “Can you get ashore by yourself?” he called out as he saw Jörund’s head above water. “Or shall I come and help you?”

  Then Jörund scrambled in; Eirik gave him a hand and pulled him onto the rock. There they stood, with the water pouring from them.

  “I believe your madness is half feigning,” said Eirik. “Do you think thus to escape from your misdeeds more lightly?”

  Jörund sent him the ugly look, like a scared rat, that Eirik had seen before, and it made him wince inwardly.

  “Anyhow, you failed again to take my life,” said
Jörund scornfully. As Eirik made no answer, his brother-in-law went on: “I knew very well you have hated me and planned revenge and sought my life all these years. Ever since that night at Baagahus, when you had drunk your wits away and struck at Brynjulf Tistill—and I saved you from the dungeon!”

  It came back hazily to Eirik—an old memory of some half-forgotten brawl in the castle. They had both been mixed up in it, he and Jörund, but he it was who had to pay the penalty, and Jörund had got off free.

  “Let us go up now,” he said impatiently; “we are standing here like a pair of wet dogs.”

  “And since I found out what you meant by having such folk settled at Rundmyr—and I can guess ’twas irksome for you and your father that you were not suffered to pursue this noble trade in peace—”

  Eirik had drawn his sword and was drying it as best he could with heather and tufts of grass. “If you do not go home, I will baste you with the flat of this!”

  “More likely you will run it through me, now you have me unarmed.” But he began to move.

  Eirik did not know what to think: whether Jörund himself believed all this or was only feigning.

  The house-folk in the yard stared at these two as they walked up, all wet. Eirik bade one of them tell Cecilia that they must have dry clothes. Then he followed Jörund, who went toward the great room; as he came in he saw that they must be living here now. He hung up his sword and seated himself, opposite Jörund; and there they sat in silence.

  But when in a little while Cecilia came in with her arms full of clothes, Jörund looked up with an ugly smile at his young wife. “Have you time to give me a thought? I did not think you could tear yourself from the corpse of your bold paramour, the six-legs that I chastised yesterday.”

  “Nay, Jörund,” said Erik below his breath, but with a shake in his voice, “if you are never so mad—you can still go too far. That you could raise your hand against a poor cripple—”

  “’Tis her way to have a fancy for cripples, this wife of mine.” Again he smiled, that horrid, imbecile smile. “The first one she played the whore with, he was a limping cripple too—”

  A sudden change came over Cecilia’s face; there was an icy green glint in her great bright eyes. Instinctively Eirik sprang to his sister’s side.

  “I saw it myself,” the man went on, “the halting misshapen wretch—and she big with my own child—”

  Cecilia’s cold voice was sharp as a knife: “If you thought you saw aught unseemly—how was it you did not come forward till this halting cripple was so far away that he could not defend me when you trampled me underfoot?”

  Eirik seized his sister by the arm. “Come out!” In a flash he had seen the depth of Cecilia’s hatred of her husband, and he was afraid.

  “Nay, I cannot bear the touch of Jörund’s clothes,” he said, when they had come into Ragna’s house. “There are some old things of mine in the chest above in the loft.—Did you not once learn of Mærta,” he asked as she turned to fetch his clothes, “how to brew draughts that send a man to sleep? Better mix something of the sort in his ale tonight. I will go over and find Father this very evening; and I am afraid to leave this house unless I can be sure that he is fast asleep.”

  When he had changed into some of his old clothes, he went up into the loft in which they had laid Olav Livsson on straw. There were two candles burning by the dead man’s head, and he was wrapped in a good linen cloth. Eirik uncovered the face only: that too bore black marks of ill usage, but the narrow white features were peaceful, as though the lad had fallen asleep. Under the winding-sheet the body looked ungainly in its length, with its thin, withered limbs.

  Eirik kissed the ice-cold forehead, knelt beside the bier, and recited the prayers and the litany for the dead; and those of the household who sat there murmured the responses: “Ora pro nobis” and “Te rogamus, audi nos.”

  Afterwards he spoke in a low tone with the house-folk. They had not dared to send word to the priest, but they themselves had sat by the corpse the night before, and they promised to take turns at watching tonight as well. Eirik said that he would make provision for the funeral when he came back on the morrow, but now he must go out to Saltviken and speak with Olav. They had heard nothing of Arnketil and Liv; the houses at Rundmyr had stood empty since yestermorn, so they must have fled with all their flock from terror of Jörund, for he had threatened them with fire and murder.

  He had asked Halstein to take supper in to Jörund and stay with him till he fell asleep—Halstein was a big, strong man. Now Eirik looked into the room before going down to the boat. Jörund was asleep. The door of the house could be locked from the outside; Eirik gave the key to Halstein and bade him bring Jörund his breakfast betimes in the morning.

  When he landed in Saltviken it was already dusk. Nothing was left of the sunset but some copper-red edges below the grey clouds that lay over the west country. The sea was dark, crisped by the evening breeze, and broke against the faintly gleaming curve of the beach with the low rippling murmur he knew so well.

  The gravel crunched under his feet and the wind whistled in the bent grass; on the scanty strip of pasture with its tall junipers lay some bullocks. Ah, he had not set foot here since the day he rode out to seek Gunhild. And now there was not a thing in his life that he had forgotten so completely as Gunhild.

  He had expected the folk to be in bed at the farm, but as he came up between the fences he saw a dark figure standing by the gate—his father.

  “It is I, Father”—instinctively he wished to forestall the old man, so he spoke hurriedly: “I come from Hestviken; it has come to such a pass there that Cecilia thought we must all take counsel what is to be done; she sent for me.”

  “It has long been so,” said Olav. “But of you we heard never a word. It can hardly be worse now than it has been all this time, when you felt no call to see how things were at your own home.”

  But it was his father himself who had forbidden him to come. His youthful anger reverberated in Eirik: could his father never be fair and just toward him? But he controlled himself—to justify his actions would only make bad worse.

  “I never heard other than good tidings—but you may be right; one can never trust hearsay.”

  Knut and Signe slept in the living-room, said Olav—they would have to go into the upper chamber, where his own bed was. It was dark as the grave in the room above, and Eirik stumbled and ran against things that lay scattered about. And in the darkness, with the door ajar to the spring night, they sat and talked together. Eirik told of what had happened at Hestviken and what was in his own mind: “Cecilia cannot live with Jörund after this.”

  “No, that must fall to you and your wife. And ’twill be a merry life at Hestviken when you three share it.”

  The bitter scorn in the voice that came out of the darkness put an end to Eirik’s patience. “There has never been a merry life at Hestviken, Father. You wore down Mother—I know not whether of set purpose or not. Since then you have done all in your power to wear us down, till we were of the same mind, Cecilia and I—that anything was better than to dwell in the same house with you. Remember that, when she comes to live here—and be like a Christian man and not like a mountain troll to her children—even if they have mouse’s ears.”

  “Would to God I had never seen you!” came in his father’s voice, shaking with passion. “Would to Christ and our Lady I had let you stay where you were, at the back of beyond!”

  “That was in other hands than yours—I came whither I was meant to come. But for that I say it would have been as well for me to have stayed there—and for you too: in one way or another it seems you were fated to deal unjustly with every child you have begotten.”

  “You I have not begotten! You are not my son!”

  “Shame on you!” Eirik sprang up in his wrath. “What is this strain that is in such men as you and Jörund? When the world goes against you, you cry shame upon your own wives with infamous words—”

  He heard O
lav breathing hard in the darkness and restrained himself.

  “But this is an ill season for us to take up our old quarrels, Father—and I beg you forgive me if I spoke too hotly. But you might spare Mother your insults”—he was on the point of firing up, but checked himself again. “Let us to bed now, Father—best that we set out for Hestviken as soon as it is day.”

  With that he rolled himself up on the bench. Sleep was impossible—his mind was in a whirl: the long day’s ride, and Jörund, and his struggle with the madman in the water, and the dead lad in the loft, the deserted cottage at Rundmyr, and Cecilia—the sudden distortion of her pale features into the very face of naked hate, the icy glint in her deep clear eyes. Fear for his sister made him shudder—never could Cecilia stray on those false paths that Eldrid had followed, but it dawned upon him that hate knows many roads, and they all lead to the same goal at last.

  Then he recalled his father’s words—and he recalled his childhood’s terror of one day being driven out as a bastard. Could it be that there had been some reason for his fear, that he had once heard words of which he had forgotten all but the fright they gave him—that his father had suspected his poor mother, persecuted her, as Jörund persecuted Cecilia, as he himself had persecuted a woman to death with shameful suspicions?

  A longing for his home at the Ness came over him, an irresistible temptation to take flight. But thither he could never more return, he knew that. But at the same time he knew that if he and Eldrid were forced back into this foretaste of hell, he had a wife on whom he could rely. Never had he put so secure a trust in any human being as in her, whose soul had breasted torrents unbearable.

  His father was not sleeping either, he felt sure. And now his anger gave way to pity for the old man.

  Olav waked him—just as he had fallen asleep, he thought. The sun rose as they rounded the Horse. Then Olav broke the silence:

  “When we come up,” he said, “I must ride inland at once—Svein and I. They cannot be left out in the woods with all their children and Gudrun. I must get Anki and Liv back to Rundmyr first of all—you will herd Jörund meanwhile. He shall be made to pay the full penalty for the lad he slew and for their daughter whom he has debauched. Then, I think, next time his wit is about to fly from him, he will remember to catch it by the tail.”