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Title: The Sentimental Vikings

Author: Richard Voorhees Risley

Release Date: May 2, 2010 [EBook #32191]

Language: English

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                        The Sentimental Vikings

                                  BY

                             R. V. RISLEY


                               JOHN LANE
                            THE BODLEY HEAD
                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                                 1897


                              To E. F. C.




CONTENTS


                                                 PAGE
  THE SWEEPING OF THE HALL                         1

  AN INCIDENT                                     37

  WHERE THE WOLVES DANCE                          61

  THE SACRILEGE                                   99

  THE STORY OF THE OAR-CAPTAIN                   115

  THE LAST VOYAGE                                145




THE SWEEPING OF THE HALL:

AN OLD DANISH TRAGEDY


And now this is the story of Witlaf the harper, that he told in the
great hall of Gorm, the king of all Denmark, ten centuries ago, waving
his handless arms in the flickering glow of the firelight.


I tell the tale of Snorē, the lord of the north of the island of
Zeeland, years ago; and of how he swept his hall as the day broke.

First, as to his birth. Men say that the heavens were darkened, and that
tumultuous clouds swept low over the battlements, and that voices were
heard, meaningless, in the air. I do not know—wonders are kind to great
names when they have been memories a little time.

But this much is true, that we in the hall of the castle were told by a
white-faced woman, just as the sun set—I remember how red its light fell
on the rush-covered floor, and how the woman leaned half through the
door and told us, holding the curtain—that the child was born, and was
strong, and a man; but that the mother was dead, and that the Lord
Sigmund was with her.

That night in the hall, by the light of the fire, as we men were talking
in whispers, and telling kind deeds of our lady (for she was ever about
in the cottages, and she and her women made soft-sewed clothes for all
the men of the ship-crew), came, from behind the curtain that is to my
lady’s chambers, a long, low wail of a child, strong and insistent, and
then a man’s tread for a few paces, and then silence again, save for the
men’s whisperings and the sound of the squeaking of their leather-belts
as they moved, and the gentle rubbing of the wooden shields on the walls
as the wind blew through under the rafters.

And afterwards, when the fire burned low, the men departed for their
beds and left the hall empty, and then I also went, because I did not
like the shadows, but to the battlements, not to my sleep, for I felt
that this night meant something, and I was not yet enough settled in my
mind to lie and think in the darkness. So, lonesomely, I paced the
battlements, while the moon rose, and all around me lay the great forest
reaching almost down to the edge of the moat, and throwing its shadows
over the silver water and on the white walls of the house. And in the
distance, the long, still, snake of the fjord stretched out under the
moon, till it curved and a black point of trees cut it off suddenly.

And at last, when the woods had become dusky, and the distant water
where it passed out of sight was grey instead of silver, and then slowly
turned to pink, I went down the steep stairs, through the yet dark
galleries, where the carving on the corners was worn so smooth and
stained with smoke—down to the chill, dark hall, and, kneeling on the
hearth, built up and lit a fire of good beech twigs among the ashes,
while the first day of the life of Lord Snorē, who swept this same hall
of his at another dawning, broke through the long windows and shone on
the armour.

There are truer ways of reckoning time, O king, than by the indifferent
passage of the meaningless years. Some moments, of the flying of a
thought in length, fill more space in our lives and memories than much
of everydays.

Yet something remains to me of those light-footed years till I see again
clearly. Thus, I remember Lord Sigmund, my Lord Snorē’s father, set
forth that year after the grain-planting was over, and until it was
tall, he sailed the high seas, and brought back white furs from the
North, and stories of mountains and ice-floors.

Next, I remember a strange ship come rowing one day up the fjord, and of
her landing, and the men coming up to the hall, where they stayed many
days; and of how they ran in the fields, shouting, and throwing the
grass at each other; for they were sea-weary.

Then they departed, and there passed some more seasons and harvests,
with sometimes hunting of bears or of deer, and the hewing of pieces of
woodland.

Thus the years trod by softly while the Lord Snorē grew to his manhood.

And Lord Sigmund would sail away with his men every spring when the
planting was over, and my young lord would sit in his place in the hall,
and, when need was, give justice unto the townsfolk. Good years, O king,
when the fields grew wide, and the board was filled for a hundred men
who sat there every evening.

When, looking back from where I now sit—I hope near the end of my life—I
see again clearly, it is the time of mid-summer in the meadows that
stretch by the side of the fjord, where the woods fall back, an hour’s
boat-row from the castle. There, just when the still noonday drew to its
close, and the slanting sun was beginning to throw its afternoon
brightness in our brown faces, my Lord Snorē and I lay stretched out in
the long, sweet grass, he with a heavy cross-bow—a new weapon then—and
the carcasses of two brown deer lying beside him, I idly talking and
ever looking forth over the blinding waters for sight of his father’s
ship that we might begin to expect now, the grain being tall.

Suddenly, from behind a point of jutting woods round which the fjord ran
curving, grew and took shape a something long that the sun shining on
made painful for the eyes—a long, low something that, curving in again,
glided between me and the dark green point of trees. It was the ship!
The young lord sat up on the grass, and putting his hand on the
carcasses of the deer, rose to his feet. “It moves too slowly,” he said.
It was true. Now we could see the swing of the oars, and the pause
between the strokes was very long.

“Look at the dragon,” he said again, shading his eyes with his hand. I
saw now that the great beak that had used to be so fierce in its
red-and-gold painting was broken off, so that only its curving neck rose
from the bow. And, looking again, I saw that the sides of the ship were
battered, as if by rocks, and that many of the oar-blades were broken
and tied to their stems with ropes. I ran to our boat that lay against
the side-of-grass, and hurriedly tumbled its stone anchor on board.

“He must have sunk the other ship or he would have come home in her,” I
said, shipping the steering-oar.

Lord Snorē raised himself from the bottom of the boat where he had been
stooping to place the two deer, and turning his shaggy head, looked at
me curiously. “I will sit in my own right now!” he answered.

Beneath the lord’s long strong strokes the sharp-prowed skiff went
rapidly over the still water, and now we could see the broken
dragon’s-neck and the rents in the shields hung over the sides more
plainly. We were almost within the shadow of her mast when a tall man—I
knew his face for that of Esbiern the oar-captain—with a great red cloth
round his head, leaped on the bow, waving his long arms wildly and
shouting to us over the sunny waters, wild words of some sea-fight.

Our prow cut the shadow; half-unwilling hands reached over the gunwale
to grasp our boat; we clambered over the side and turning, we looked
along the length of the battered ship, over the half-empty rowers’
benches, past the pale faces of five or six men with linen-swathed
heads and arms—on, over the confusion and wreckage that littered the
centre of the ship, to where, leaning against the edge of the fore-deck,
lay the body of Sigmund the lord with the half of the crew of his
returned ship arranged in a long sitting row beside him.

So, with Lord Snorē at one of the big oars to help the weary men with
one more rower, and I heaving on the great steering blade and guiding
the ship slowly over the shallows, we went silently up the fjord through
the afternoon.

That night, when the men and the household were done eating and only the
horns and wooden tankards of beer stood along the board, my Lord Snorē
spoke from the great seat where he sat moodily, with his fist on the
table, and the chair-cushions thrown on the floor beside him; and thus
he spoke, with the men leaning silently forward to hear him:

“The men of the ship have told ye of the fight; how in the south, off
Lolland, they met a Viking-ship which attacked them. How they fought and
drove the Viking; how that the Viking led them along the coast till,
our men weary with rowing, there came two fresh ships from a bay,
hidden, friends of the Viking; and how that Lord Sigmund died in the
fight, and how that our men fled north, while the Vikings shouted; and
our ship ye have seen!

“On the sixth day after this, at the sunrise, let the ship be ready with
new oars; the ship’s men will stay here to rest. I shall take the men
that I call my guard; those who hunt bears with me in the forest. But
let the dragon’s-neck remain broken.”

This he said, and the men were silent, the old ship’s crew sitting,
looking dejectedly along the board, their ale undrunk, and shuffling
their feet in the rushes. Then there was drinking one to another while
the women took down the men’s axes and armour-coats from the walls and
carried them off to their houses to clean them; and there was laughter
and boasting and talking loud making up courage, and some got up from
their places and went seriously out of the hall to the houses and to
their children, and some talked to the men of the ship’s crew.

Thus the evening passed, and the men went home to their beds early, save
for a few who sat down with made-up indifference and talked, while their
beer-mugs stood on the benches till they grew warm in the firelight.

So the next six days we worked and made ready, hewing and smoothing new
oars, and whetting our knives on the grind-stone; and at sunrise on the
sixth day, with a long crowd of men and women on the strand and the rain
pouring down out of the misty brown sky, we hauled our ship down the
beach and setting ourselves in our places rowed splashingly away from
the castle; while the fine rain ran down our faces and the shouting grew
faint in the distance.


And so passes that part of my tale and I take up the second.

Now there come two months, O king, that are as difficult to see clearly
as the length of a flame in the sunshine.

We sailed south to Lolland, but we could find no word of a large ship
with a plain prow and a new crew.

And we landed on many shores, and much I learned of the art of
minstrelsy.

And Lord Snorē managed his men well and was a kind lord over us, though
fierce, and long of anger.

We sailed, passing along the coast, sometimes running so near that the
coolness of the trees was grateful to the sun-burned men—where we could
see the bottom over the side of the ship, as we glided, stilly, over the
white stones that glimmered through the clear water.

And sometimes we would pass by grey castles with small villages and
houses over the fields, where the people would come out and look at the
ship, and when they saw the broken dragon and that it was a ship for
fight, run in again, or hurry towards the castle from the fields. Then
we would call out to them to go back to their oxen, or to go on with
their thatching, and wish good marriages unto the maidens, and laugh at
them while they stood staring.

And we would land sometimes and hunt in the forests; and then we would
cook our meat all through over great fires, and not eat it half-fresh as
on shipboard.

Once we chased a great ship and came up with her, but on calling out, we
found they were Northmen; and the ship that we wanted was of our own
race. So we gave them some rope in exchange for some leather, and drank
“skaal” to them over the bulwarks as they spread their brown sail going
northwards.

Sometimes we landed at some lord’s castle, sending a man before that
they might know us as friends. And here were we entertained for many
days, and were well liked, both on account of the kindness and manhood
of my Lord Snorē and on account of the sturdiness of the ship’s men, and
on account of the quest we were on.

Sailing thus, O king, come I to that part of my tale when the ladies
smile, and when the lords in the hall look away and seem not to
listen—yet would I be prompted if I forgot it.

Now, my Lord Snorē was a fierce man of manner and face, being very
large, with his shaggy head held high on great shoulders—a man more for
fighting and combat than for young women’s eyes—and old ones’ tongues.

Yet like some ugly men he seemed the manlier by his ugliness.

We sat in the hall of Lord Rudolf of Lolland, anxiously waiting the
coming of the ship of his brother, gone Viking—hoping for word of the
ship we had searched for. And Lord Snorē hunted and rode with Lord
Rudolf every day, till it came to the evening that he had set for
departure.

And, drinking health to the lord, as he raised his great mug to his
lips, I saw his eyes glance over the edge, and they met the eyes of Lord
Rudolf’s fair daughter. And I saw a slight surprise come into his face;
it grew into amazement; and he drank the cup slowly still looking at
her.

We stayed many days at Lord Rudolf’s.

It was when the men were growing weary of waiting and the household that
eat in the hall knew all of my songs—when the keel of the ship was fast
grounded—that one night as I lay asleep with my back to the bulwark I
felt a hand shaking my shoulder. And, as I grasped his arm in the
darkness, Lord Snorē’s voice came to me whispering:

“Awake; and come out of the ship, silently—here in the darkness,” he
whispered, as I came over the side and let myself drop by my arms to the
sand.

I saw that he was dressed in his armour, and had his great axe in his
hand, as he pulled me into the shadow of the steering-oar, where it
stuck over the stern, its blade of broad silver where it shone to the
moonlight.

“Do you hear the noise up at the castle?” he whispered.

“It is surely Lord Rudolf’s brother returned,” I answered when I had
listened; for a sound like the grounding of swords and the tramping of
men passing in and out over the drawbridge came to me, faintly, from
where lay the castle beyond the black line of trees: the night was very
still.

“Nay, it is not that,” whispered Lord Snorē, looming up dim by the
ship’s side. “Listen, Witlaf: I love Lord Rudolf’s daughter—ah! so thou
knowest?—and this night have I gone up to look at her window where the
light is—nay, listen—and as I was standing there dreaming, I think,
sudden and soft her voice came to me out of the darkness, from just
within the great window that is at the side of the hall, and looking up,
I heard her call to me gently, saying, ‘Snorē, Snorē; come here to the
window-ledge, silently—quick! Back to your ship, Snorē—my father is
arming himself in his chamber; I heard the clang of his armour: he is
angry because that I—love thee. The castle is filled with his men, and—I
love thee!’”

And the lord’s great hand was raised in the darkness.

“Now, Witlaf,” he whispered, and I heard his voice tremble, “the maiden
is safe in the ship; but thou knowest,” and his voice grew firm, “that
the half of our men lie drunk on the fore-deck—and ’tis hard to move
ship with so few. Say, Minstrel, wilt thou hold the ship while I, with
the rest, warm my hands at the castle?”

And thus it was that I, the harper of Lord Snorē, came to be sitting in
the moonlight inside the ship, with my harp by my knee, and my axe in
my hand, and a pale-faced maiden beside me who listened in silence to
the distancing tread of my lord and his men as they stealthily passed up
the path towards the castle.

So, seemingly for years and years, we sat there, with the water lapping
against the side of the ship, and the sound of the straining of leather
and the shuffling of feet as the men sleepily put on their arms on the
fore-deck. Then, more years passed, and the maiden shivered and crept
closer, and I put my great skin-cloak around her.

So we sat and waited; and the moon sailed grandly overhead throwing
flakes of white on the dancing water to seaward; and save for the
lapping of water and occasional sounds from the fore-deck, there was
stillness—out of which an owl cried, thrice, with its long, strange,
mournful note, and then ceased; leaving the silence more silent.

Then, suddenly, from out the darkness, seemingly miles away, there rose,
and rose, and hung on the air, and slowly died away, a great cry in a
man’s voice. Then there was silence once more for a moment. And now
began a confused dull rabble of sound that I knew well enough; with a
skin-moving swish in it like the whetting of knives. And there were far
sounds of voices, and sometimes a curious hollow drubbing, like a hammer
on the side of a ship; this, I could tell, was the sound of my Lord
Snorē’s great axe as it beat on the door, and when it ceased presently I
knew that the door was down.

Now, for a long time only the far sounds and the occasional voices came
to us; and the years grew long again, and I heard the water lapping
against the side of the ship.

Suddenly, out of the darkness and into the strip of moonlit beach that
lay between the edge of the black forest and the silvery ship, came
running a man, silently, and swaying as he ran, and just midway in the
moonlight, he stopped, ran round uncertainly twice in a little circle,
and then pitched forward with his face in the sand and lay still. The
maiden by me gave a little cry and hid her face on the edge of the
bulwark. Then we waited again and listened to the barking of dogs in
the distance; and so more years passed, and the lapping of the water
grew loud again.

Now began to come wounded men in pairs, stumbling groaningly over the
side, and soon with these began to come back other men out of the
darkness, unwounded, but bloody enough, and these waited in a little
crowd outside the ship panting, and wiping the sweat from their
foreheads, and leaving the prints of their hands on the planks where we
found them next morning. And, last, with a little knot of unwounded men
around him, came Lord Snorē walking heavily, swinging his axe, with the
blood dripping from his shaggy foretop and from the ends of his hands.
He stood while the men slowly shoved off the ship, then plunging through
the water like horses and splashing it over their red armour and faces,
they all came clambering aboard, and throwing off their steel hoods and
sword-belts, sat them down to the oars to get the ship out of shoal
water. But my Lord Snorē came to the gunwale, and taking the maiden’s
hand drew her to him, wrapped in the great wolf-skin, and lowered his
head on her shoulder.

Thus we left that shore; and when far out, we saw first a flicker and
then a glow of fire, and the burning of Lord Rudolf’s castle lit up the
sea, and we heard the cocks crowing over the water as we turned our prow
homeward, while the oar-blades rose and fell, dripping silver.

Now, as we sailed homeward the maiden was given the after-part of the
ship, save for the steersman, and because, that, loving Lord Snorē, she
was afraid of him; yet ever looking towards the forward part of the ship
where he sat with his men: thus she would have me come and harp to her
and tell her sagas and tales; and she told me many things in return.

And then Lord Snorē would come to the edge of the raised deck and
leaning upon it, talk to her, while my harp made low music.

In the years that have passed, O king, a mist like the autumn mist that
lies white on the earth in the morning has grown between my eyes and the
past, so that only the hill-tops break through it.

Now, I will tell of the passing of Snorē and Helga, and like the scenes
of a play, the last scene of my tale is the bloodiest—for fighting was
the half of men’s lives in those days—thank the Gods! So, to the end of
the tale.

As we rowed up the fjord past the meadows and woodlands, the oars making
song on the oar-pins for gladness, pointing out things to each other, my
lord and I talked over his taking of Helga to wife on the morrow; my
lord laughing loud and resting his hand on my shoulder and glancing back
ever at Helga as she sat looking out on the fields. We arranged that all
the men of his land should be called in for the great feast that night
at the castle, and that the feast should be until daybreak, when he
would take Helga as wife before all men. Then these things being
arranged, my Lord Snorē went to her and told her, and she answered him
honestly blushing a little that she was glad; and then bade him sit down
beside her, and tell her of what we were passing. And thus, with Lord
Snorē sitting beside her pointing out woodland and meadow, and the men
smiling up at them, as they rowed in the waist of the ship, we came to
the strand and the old castle stood before us; and landing we pulled the
ship up on the beach and with the crowds laughing and welcoming us and
all confusion, we all went up to the castle. I remember till now, the
great comfort it was to get fresh boots and clothes, and new
harp-strings, and soft cushions to sit on.

It was a great feast that night! The long hall with the smoke-stained
walls, hung with great boat-shields and bright arms, with skins of bear
and deer, and with branches of green oak and beech leaves.

Down through the whole length ran the long table, loaded with meat and
drink, and from the cushioned bench where sat Snorē and Helga, to the
other end of the table, were laughing and welcoming. And from the fire
at the end of the hall, where two deer swung, cooking and burning, in
the blaze, and from the great candles along the gay walls came yellow
light shining on arms and laughing faces.

And the smell of the cooking deer came through the hall, and the cakes
of brown meal were piled up on the end of the table, and the great mugs
rang as the drinking men struck them together, and the voices and
laughter rose loud in the hall. And then the men rose, shouting, to my
lord, and drank welcome and “skaal” to him; and, standing, they drank a
great welcome to my lady, and the mugs came down with a crash on the
board, and the shouting was long ere it rested. Then my lady spoke from
the place that she held by Lord Snorē and thanked them in woman’s words;
and they roared again in their gladness.

After, they called to me for a song. Then I stood up and sang to them
with my harp; I sang of peace, and of the glory of it; and of battle,
and of the strong joy of it; and of welcome, and so again peace. And the
men stood, shouting, unto my lord, till the hall rang with it; and the
great fire roared, and the yellow light flashed on the arms and the
faces, and glowed on the painted shields hung on the walls—oh it was a
great feast!

And now, O king, this is the last scene of my play—all this was long
ago, and these loves and these lives have passed away utterly.

It was far in the night and the empty platters and dishes were piled on
the floor, and the men were drinking the frothing beer, resting their
mugs on the foam-dripping board or on the empty seats of the drunken,
who lay around the sides of the hall asleep on the rushes; the arms were
thrown in the corners with dishes, and the air felt chill ere the
dawning in spite of the piled-up fire.

Now Helga being weary arose, and leaned towards my lord Snorē to kiss
him ere she went to her chamber, and I who sat by the side of my lord,
looked up at her, smiling; for she had never kissed him before among
men. And looking, I saw, ere their lips met, a change come into the
eyes of Helga and she stood still. Then, making a little gesture as of
casting something away from her, she stooped again, but the change grew
in her eyes and she could not. I followed her look to where it rested on
the curtained door that enters the hall from the apartments which face
on the water.

Slowly I reached for my axe, and leaning to look at my lord as I lifted
up his, I saw him waiting expectantly, shyly before his men, for Helga’s
good-night. So I leaned a moment. Then I whispered to him, and put the
axe in his hand.


The great table is overturned, the broken stools and benches lie over
the floor, the fire is scattered, and the flying ashes drift in the
smoke and swirl around the heads of the combatants, making them cough as
they strike. The drunken men along the walls are stabbed or trampled
among the torn rushes, and the foe that have stolen in through the
seaward windows are pressing over the benches.

We are behind the upturned table, and fighting desperately, our backs
to the wall. The enemy rush against the table but the long arms of our
men drive them back. I am holding a boat-shield from the wall over Helga
and using my axe with the other hand.

Lord Snorē is sweeping the space in front of him clear; he has thrown
aside his shield. We seem to have been fighting for hours in the dim
hall.

Our men begin to fall behind the table; they are in their leather coats,
and guard badly in the murk.

The swords clang on the edge of the table; the men stumble over broken
dishes. I see through the smoke one of them with his foot fast in a
wooden beer mug. They run along the table striking. The smoke comes in
my eyes, and the forms grow dim.

Now they go back leaving us, and a tall man dressed in strange armour,
breaks through them, and stands, banging his leg with his sword.

“I am Swend, kinsman of Rudolf of Lolland; and I came and found his hall
ashes. Say, dost thou think that a ship with the dragon beheaded, can
sail where it will and no man be the wiser? And who was it, think you,
that drove your ship—laughing?” And he stood, snarling and digging the
floor with his sword-point, like a wolf in his anger.

Then Lord Snorē, resting his axe on the table—“If thou art the man who
fought with my father and called two fresh ships to thy helping then I
am glad thou art come to my feast in my hall!”

Then Swend—“Thou hast murdered thy host for the sake of his daughter! I,
his kinsman—” and he stopped while the smoke swirled down and I heard
him coughing.

“Who would have been kinsman to me had I slept in my ship, Rudolf’s
guest? And the maiden chose freely. He would have bit on my
axe-blade—though he were Odin!” And Lord Snorē lifted his axe, shouting
aloud in his anger.

I hear Swend yell to his men through the smoke; the floor shakes as they
come running towards us. They break out of the gloom; they leap on the
table smiting and stabbing. But the long arms of our men pull them
down; they fall. Lord Snorē’s axe swirls and bangs on their armour; the
table is cleared. They draw back, gasping like dogs; their wounded lie
against the wall in the drip of the candles. I see the chests of our men
heave in their weariness. They lean with their backs against the wall,
wiping their slippery hands on the skirts of their garments. The smoke
comes down; again they come. The fight closes in again the struggling
forms striking over the table, I catch dim sight of swift grey shapes
and the flashing of swords high in the air. Our men are panting like
bulls; I hear the straining of their leather coats as they lean,
striking into the mist. Bodies of men come shocking against the table;
there is roaring, and trampling of feet, and banging and clashing of
armour, and breaking of wood, and the sound of Lord Snorē’s axe falling
regularly comes through the darkness.

All this comes to me, dimly, as though through a dream, and dreaming, I
catch a passing sight of the shadowy figures in the smoke on the other
side of the table. The fight goes on; it goes on for ever and ever it
seems; and the world in the smoke and the noises and sounds of the
combat grow farther and farther away; they come to me unreally, in a
far-off roar, like the sea.

I hear the sound of waves; the water roars, and roars, and roars—farther
and farther—then nearer again; the ship moves and heaves and turns
slowly round under the motion. And now I hear the sound of my harp
playing, coming through the sound of the water; that ceases, and I hear
the sound of Snorē’s and Helga’s voices speaking softly. I hear the
words—they come to me over the continuous sound of the water—and they
are silly words, about a piece of her hair that she has given him—and I
laugh—

And my laugh awakens me, sounding ghastly under the dull smoke; and the
tumult and ringing and roar of the combat springs up around me again.

And now, over the banging of metal and the clashing of armour on armour
and the sounds of the trampling and breaking of wood and the howling,
comes another sound—surely my Lord Snorē’s axe! But the blows are so
quick, there is something awesome, unnatural, in the blows of a man
falling so fast.

And now I am aware of a change that has come in the fight. I no longer
see the ghost-figures passing, dim in the smoke. The sound of the
fighting comes from out in the hall. I wait, peering into the smoke.
Slowly it lifts from above the table—lifts, growing dimmer.

Outlines come out of the distance. The opposite wall of the hall looms
up into the darkness. The candles glimmer and show through the smoke. I
look down the hall. A grey mass, moving indistinctly, and the sound of a
great continuous crashing coming from somewhere within it.

The smoke lifts more; bodies of men on the floor come out, and I can see
the dim tapestries waving on the walls; and now the great sound of the
crashing comes louder.

The smoke lifts yet more, it is pouring out of the windows and under the
roof; the walls spring out into distinctness; and I see, plain, the end
of the hall.

A crowd of men struggling and falling over each other against the great
door; the flashing of armour, swords thrown in the air, clenched hands
raised and falling, the end of the hall full of tumult of arms and legs
and bodies, as the men rush and surge over each other against the
outlet.

But, dominating all in its hugeness, striking the men before it, making
a glory with its flying axe—enormous, irresistible, clothed in red,
seeming to shake the air with the roar through its skin, yet utterly
silent—Lord Snorē, gone mad with the combat, striking with the strength
of a falling tree—sweeping out the hall before him!

The door is open! The men pile up on the threshold; the door grows
high—is darkened—is full. Grows open—men whirl along the floor under the
axe—the wave breaks, it recedes, it runs away into the corners, it
dissolves and runs away in foam—the door is empty.

The last of the smoke rolls around under the roof, the walls rock with
the reverberation, and the sounds of our voices calling to one another
are lost in the echoes. The hall heaves, the sounds die, going out with
the smoke under the roof; and the pale light of the daybreak falls
through the long windows. The candles gutter and go out, falling down
from the walls, from the burned-out spikes. We stumble over the table,
on, over the broken benches, and over the bodies.

It was a good fight, O king, when Lord Snorē swept his hall! There is
now but little more to tell. We found a great figure standing idly by
the door when we came there; it was swinging a great axe in its hand,
with its head sunk on its chest, and it swayed when a man touched it,
and fell back limply into our arms.

As they carried him up the hall towards the great bench a white figure
ran past me.

Then the lights went out, the world heaved, and I fell down across the
table; for both my hands had been cut off upon its edge.

When next I saw the hall, having come back out of the long unreality
that had lasted so many days, the first snow of the winter lay on the
window-ledges and the great fire was blazing merrily. I remember how
strange it all looked. And there, walking up and down slowly, and
leaning on my lady who guided him, was the wreck of a great man who
grasped weakly for support at her robe. I went up to him and stood
silently. My lady touched me with her hand and whispered to me to speak
to him. Then said I to my lord with a strange softness in my throat: “I
hope my lord is better—after his sickness.” And he answered, “Yes,
yes—yes, yes—yes, yes—” nodding his head, sillily. And then my lady led
him to the great bench, and, seating him, talked to him child-talk and
tended him gently.

That night, as I sat by my lady, silent, the boy who fed me having gone
away to the others, one rose, and thinking to please me I suppose,
brought me my harp out of an inner room.


I think we were all glad when my lord died at the last snow. Then my
lady used to go among the cottages of the villagers, tending those who
were sick, talking with the young girls, and comforting all who were in
any sorrow. The women used sometimes to cry when she spoke to them. And
in about three months after we buried my lord, when summer was come
again, and the sun had already begun to warp the timbers of the ship on
the beach, when the boys ran shouting in the shallows, died my lady
also, and we buried her by the side of my lord.

Then left I the castle; and men tell me that it is pulled down to build
more houses for the villagers, and that the old ship has mouldered away
on the beach and can no more be seen.

And all this happened years ago and is forgotten. If some one will hold
my cup I will drink “skaal” to the king that he has listened.


And this is the tale of the sweeping of the hall, that the old minstrel
used to tell at the board of King Gorm, waving his handless arms in the
glow of the firelight.




AN INCIDENT


The great fog lay dun over the sea, and the shadows moved over the
motionless ship, passing swiftly; yet there was no wind.

We lay wrapped in the wood-ashes coloured air, through which the mast
shone glimmering in many lines when you looked at it, idly swinging
under no wind. Easily the water slipped by, dimly streaked, through the
cloudy vapour. The men from the stern could not be seen by those in the
bow.

We yawned and stretched ourselves, the peculiar smell of the fog rising
into our nostrils. The warm air lay like the weight of a cloud on our
foreheads, and we grumbled wearily, wanting a sight of the sun.

While we waited thus sighing, out of the dun vapour on the right came a
cry indistinguishable. After we had been on our feet for some moments,
there came the swift wash of oar-blades, and their rabble on the
gunwale, going very fast.

Then the sound of a far-away crash, and, after a little, clinking as of
knife on glass, and a dead murmur of voices in the fog.

We straightened ourselves, and after a moment of hesitation, my lord
gave the word to get out the oars, which we did very gladly though with
little noise, pulling carefully, our mast-top lost in the shifting roof.
Very soon we could hear the sound of the fighting coming quite plainly
over the dusky sea; and in a little time thereafter, we saw, while the
vapour swirled back for a moment, three brown hulks near together. We
lay on the edge of the foam-touched space of water, catching
occasionally glimpses of the moving shapes: only a large piece of wood
floated past us.

Have you ever listened to a fight at sea? The men were leaning over the
bulwarks, their hands on their axe-handles, their feet grasping firmly
the deck. My lord raised himself in a moment; we ran swiftly along the
water under the quick, ragged stroke, the ships rose before us, we
swept past the side of the largest one, dropping the oars.

The man next to me leans back suddenly just as my bow twangs; arrows
strike into the bulwarks.

Fierce faces and bent bows send their sound of shouting and twanging at
us over the close side of the enemies’ ship. We thrust with our oars
that slip along the timbers; the arrows sing and streak past, their long
feathers grey like storks.

Then the ship by us turns off into the fog with a dash of oars that
sends the white spray flashing for a moment; it is a shadowy form in the
mist; a tall brown thing disappears beside it; we are alone on the
smooth water with the ship we have come to help.


The hillside is sprinkled with flowers, the setting sun draws our
attention from them. “Come,” says Lord Erik to my lord, “let us go in.”
They walk slowly over the darkening blossoms.

“Ever since you called out to me through the fog,” says Lord Erik, “and
came on with me and became my guest, I have trusted you with all that I
care, or think, or am, and you have never before told me of this.”

My lord smiled rather sadly at the handsome, eager, young face, where
the emotion of disappointment lay, like all emotions on those expressive
features, bare.

“We do not always speak so easily of what we like,” he answered.

“Oh, it is like an old sail you speak of her—why do you not care?” And
the beardless mouth went down. “Does she not like you?” glancing at my
lord’s strong limbs.

“Perhaps; girls do not usually love old men,” my lord answered, looking
kindly, amusedly, at the boy.

“You old! You are not old! I think of you as something with me, you——”

“Try your success with women, my son,” broke in my lord laughing; “you,
a young lord—come.”

They went in.

A word about us. We were Eastern men from the island; my lord, old,
burned-out,—though not with years,—restless—deliberately—silent, kind,
secretive, and wise in some old-gained sad kind knowledge of men. So we
had cruised where my lord was quiet, seeming content, till in the fog
opportunity brought us new friends, at whose sunny, lonely town we were
guests. When my lord had told his host of the woman to whom he was
betrothed, idly, we men who stood by watching noticed them keenly, for
we were interested in my lord and the why of his choosing the maiden.
She, the daughter of a timid lord, her mother dead—a fair thing who gave
flowers to boys in fun.

This is what we were.

Now, whether it was the beer we drank that night, or whether the long
rest—though I think the long rest—the men began to speak in loud voices
with sea-tales. Now, the young lord, his slim right hand on the great
mug, laughed to my lord: “Let us go and make some sea-tales!” and
laughing, raised his mug to his lips, glancing merrily at his guest over
the top as he drank.

“But your ship,” said my lord looking at him.

“Let us go in yours, mine is too battered,” answered young Erik.
“Ah—that was a joy—the fog and the shouting and the grey ships!”

His face grew pale in the light with excitement. My lord seemed
reluctant.

“Yes”; he said. “Where shall we go?”

“There—here—anywhere!” cried young Erik, jumping to his feet and waving
his beer-mug to three points of the horizon.

“The men in my town will take care of the harvest.”


We were at sea again; my lord cynical on the after-deck, young Erik
talking to the men.

We were passing a sand-spit that ran out into the calm water just
touched with ripples. Over the top of the sand we saw masts rising, and
came out into the open again, where we could see the yellow over our
sides through the light green water, the sand-spit falling behind—we saw
three great ships, heavy-masted, long-yard-armed and with sharp prow.
These slowly neared with flapping sails, and we could see that the decks
were crowded with men. They passed by, as they went hailing us in rough
tongue, laughing out many-languaged questions as to where we had come
from.

Then came something that was very strange. A few men and myself saw my
lord very slowly take up a cross-bow and drawing it, deliberately shoot
an arrow into the side of one of the nearest ships. A yell of defiance
came over the water, and young Erik cried to every man to take his arms.

Why had my lord shot that arrow? Who can say? We do not know.

They came down on us singing Icelandic songs, as is the custom of most
of these people, for the ships were principally full of these men.

One ship passed close by us and the men shouting over the sides, threw
spears at us as they went by, brushing us with their oars. Then this
ship rounded on behind us, and the spears came in showers over the
stern.

But part of our men, dropping their weapons, and throwing themselves at
the oars, drove us over the sparkling sea, toward the ship that came
gliding toward us, with a howl from the enemy that reverberated in the
ears of the straining men inside our wooden bulwarks, our long prow cut
into their ship’s side. I saw their mast bend away from us. The other
ship now came on, singing.

We shoot at her with our long-bows, and the singing is turned to
shouting as they come toward us. My lord shouts to pull on the
right-hand oars and while some of us tug wildly the others shoot over
the side. Slowly we turn, and the heeling ship before us comes into view
over the bow—slowly we turn, as the third ship nears us. We move round,
and, their arrows in our faces, they go sweeping by—just by—the oars
grazing.

And now we can see the ship we have run down as she turns over her deck
to us; the men tumble down the rowers’ benches; they leap into the
water; she settles sideways, the water bubbling.

Now come the two other ships from behind us.

Young Lord Erik lies wounded on the after-deck. Half of the men sit
white, about the arrow-struck mast. The other two ships come on.

My lord cries to face them, and we move slowly, seeing over the bow the
ships rush on over the place where their comrades sank, striking the
heads of the swimming men with their oar-blades.

We drop our arms and, heaving three times on the long-oars, send our
ship between the other two.

A flight of arrows, a glimpse on each side of a passing mast—they are
behind us. My lord calls from the after-deck, “Row away, row away!”

Turning my head to look at him I see him laughing, the bow still in his
hand.

We rowed round the sand-spit, and as we went round it we saw the two
ships close together picking up men from where a mast stuck up out of
the light-green water.

“It is the second time we have been comrades,” said young Lord Erik, his
right arm bandaged, gazing up palely at my lord as they stood by the
rail.

My lord smiled.

“Yes, true,” he said.


We were running along a forest-covered strand, where the roots of old
trees gnarled themselves into the water.

“Now we must go to the hall that I told you about,” said my lord.

“Yes and see the girl I am so eager to see!” exclaimed young Lord Erik,
his white face lighting as he gazed up smiling to my lord.

He laughed.

“Ah,” he said, “it is both pleasant and good,” and he gazed along the
depleted seats.

The next day there was a strange excitement in my lord’s eyes, and we
began to put together our clothes. And late in the afternoon we came
into the little bay on the shore of which lay old Raud’s castle. We ran
through the water hauling our ship up with cables, and with shouting
from the people coming welcomingly down from the castle, we hastened up
the beach.

As we sat over the meat that night, a curtain was pulled aside from the
door by Lord Raud’s chair, and he, rising feebly, my lord slowly, and
smiling, and young Lord Erik jumping to his feet eagerly, we saw her
come gliding in whom we had seen often before. She gave her hand
timidly, yet with a little laugh, to my lord, shyly yet kindly to young
Lord Erik, and welcomed them as her guests as her father had welcomed
them as his at the castle-door as we passed over it. How such a maiden
could be the daughter of such a feeble, timid, dainty old man as Lord
Raud, I could never know. As a child pretending to ask for forgiveness
was her face—half-laughing and half-sorrowful. Her moving was like a
ripple of blown cloth, it was so springing graceful. And her eyes, when
they occasionally looked at you, had a woman’s innocence, never a man’s
straightforwardness.

It was sunset three days later. Walking on the beach I could see my lord
and Hildur pacing slowly, he laughing, along the grass that stretched by
the path to the houses in the wood. The scene was lit up by one of the
sometimes far-reaching clear sunsets of autumn. I could see her hand
raised in remonstrance, and though I was too far, I could see that they
were both laughing. Presently she nodded her head of gold hair to him,
and turned into the castle-door, leaving him alone in the soft, far,
unusual, light. He turned.

As he moved, I saw that he was not laughing. As he came down to the
beach, I could see the same excitement in his eyes that had always been
there when he came near her, since his hair began to grizzle, and she
used to bring the cynical old father’s friend his beer in the great hall
after meat—a little maiden.

He passed me and turning at a word behind me, I saw him meet young Lord
Erik; smiling again. But the young man’s face was troubled, that face on
which all emotions were like shadows on even water.

Not a word, after my lord’s greeting, passed.

Suddenly, my lord called to me over his shoulder:

“Lord Erik wishes to go home, wilt thou take ship with him and come back
to me?”

Their figures were dim in the lessened light.

“Let another man go; I stay. Send one of the younger men,” I answered.

My lord held out his hand to me. Young Lord Erik’s face was white in the
dusk.

Over our beer, by the firelight, I could see the glances Hildur threw to
young Lord Erik, I could see his hard-shut mouth; I could see my lord’s
cynical smile and the gleam of the excitement in his eyes; I could see
old Lord Raud, daintily fingering his beer-mug-handle—thoughts far away.
And I was glad I had stayed by my lord.

So, the next day young Lord Erik went north with the ship. And my lord
stood on the beach smiling gaily and called out gay words of next
summer. And the young face brightened for a moment as the ship drew
away.

Well, all that day I followed my lord about, smiling at his gay moods,
quiet when he forgot—which gave me pleasure. I am sure he tried to leave
me behind him sometimes, after mid-day, by fast walking, but I came.
And toward evening, as we tramped back along the beach to the hall, I
coming behind, my lord turned, and started running. In a moment I caught
him; and he bent suddenly over my shoulder, with a sound like a seal
grunting. So, I held him for a moment till he shook himself into himself
again and walked up towards the castle, I falling back again; we never
said anything about this.

Now I go out on a long ending, that is only true. After some days of
silent smiling on the part of Hildur—to me she looked very ugly—and much
laughter—which cheered old Lord Raud—on the part of my lord, he asked
Lord Raud to give him the maiden now, for he was anxious to take her
away. So my lord spoke to her about it, and she said yes.

Then we went away; and old Lord Raud stood on the beach, our ship being
back, and large tears came down from his eyes. So we all went home again
and took the maiden with us.

There is little use in telling a tale of women. Yet some scenes rest
with me that concern my lord, so I tell it all. Thus those two used to
walk past the door of the hall, and past again, while I stood in the
doorway; and I would hear what they said, for my lord did not care for
me, and it was very loving. But after it was over he would go down to
the water and look out, and stretch his arms, and yawn—then break in
with a laugh and walk back again.

Often in mid-summer came ships, and their men were well fed and liked
us.

Hildur used to be gay now only when these ships would come; in the
winter she was silent.

The house was badly kept; many times I have made rough sowing for my
lord, so that he would not know.

When spring came and the sea was bright at the early morning, we would
often get drunk in the hall toward night after standing watching the
glancing of little waves through the lazy day. I used to put water in my
lord’s beer that he might not drink too much. He never used to speak of
young Erik now; of which I was glad; he was only a boy.

So the spring went by and the green of the leaves grew darker and the
sunlight lingered over the sea till late. There were no good dishes in
the hall, and the women who cooked never thought of the things my lord
liked. Hildur would go to her chamber early, and we all would wander out
along the sea-shore, away from the clatter of dishes the women made. And
when it grew dark we would come in and sing over great beer-tankards;
but we loved the beer better than the soon-died-out singing.

We were weary in the sunshine, and old sea-sagas came to us so easily.
The women were cross, and children cried, instead of running about in
the forest. I do not know what is in man, or how himself works on
himself; we are parts of the woods, the sea, the far light. The spring
was running into summer; the free air in the night made us gasp like
tired dogs, and we felt smothered.

That night my lord sat on a piece of rock overlooking the sea, I was
behind him. All in front of us was dark, but we could hear the sound of
the water come from away and all along the coast.

Then, out of the silence that lies under the world, came over the edge
of the sea, the bare, silver, edge of the moon, lighting slowly the tips
of the waves. No mist around her; the unroofed, upward depths of the
sky, full of suspended stars, that seemed to wink, being alive. She rose
out of the sea, reaching toward us the elves-bridge she carries, over
which we cannot see the spirits pass; sending out her still beckoning
that she sends to all men. The little waves danced joyously in the
light; there was no sound at all from the shore, only the water
whispering on the sands.

My lord sat black, in the moonlight. After a while he got up and
returned toward the shadowy hall.

He went in and took a great tankard of beer from my hand and drank, then
turned toward me.

“The beer is warm—too warm,” he said. “What a beautiful night. The beer
is too warm.” He waved his hand with one of his old indifferent
gestures, his mouth trembling. I filled him another tankard of beer; he
drank it at a drink and then asked for another, this he also drank and
threw himself down on a bench. “Drink!” he said, “drink!” laughing loud.

I drink with him again and again. He leans back on his bench laughing.
“Ah, old war-follower!” he cries, his voice ringing strange in the empty
moonlit hall. “Dost thou remember our first cruise? We took the
battleship! and that other; where we were caught in the ice. Dost thou
remember Lord Raud? Ah! that was a grand time. And when we chased the
bears in Lord Snorē’s forest. Through all our cruises; that old ship off
Norway that we chased and frightened so? See the moonlight!” he said,
suddenly, and stopped laughing. Then, with a wave of his long arm, he
leaned back and called out again. “Jolly war-dog! Ah!—another tankard;
Skaal! Skaal! to our old times! Skaal! Ah! Old war-dog! It is not good
for men to put their hearts on women. They find them empty; there is no
water in an unfilled pitcher—better the old sea-shells, like us, that
are always filled. Do you know,” and he started up and shook his
beer-tankard in the moonlight, a tall figure, “that, since I was a young
man, I have loved that woman! She was a little —— Be silent! A ghost
comes!” He grasped my arm.

There, gliding in all in white through the door at the side of the hall
came Hildur like a spirit in the moonlight. She spoke from where she
stood, and our delusion of a spirit was scattered. For she spoke cross,
empty words, as she stood by the disorderly hearth complaining of
neglect.

I stood by my lord’s bench, and I saw the old excitement come into his
eyes. She went on complaining; beautiful in the moonlight. My lord
raised his tankard and took a long drink, then with the same old cynical
laugh, he stood there; and she stopped. Then my hands gripped the back
of the bench, for my lord, still laughing, threw the empty tankard at
her with all his force. I saw her lie white in the moonlight. So that is
ended.

The next day we buried her, who had died from a fall from the
hall-terrace to the rocks beneath. And in the after-mid-day, we sailed
in our ship, past the green woods. We sailed north to young Lord Erik’s
town, and found him married, and happy with kisses and things. So we
sailed away again laughing at this easy consolement, and my lord was
very gay at the pleasure of the sea.

Soon the men were brown, and the sun shone above level waters, and we
sailed lazily past dense woods.

Thus one day, as we landed to cook our meat under the trees, one of the
men thought he saw a glance of armour away off in the forest. But
thinking it was only the sunlight on one of the beech-trunks, we cooked
and sat down to our meat.

They came running out of the forest, trying to break past us to get to
the ship. There was clank of swords on armour, and the smoke from the
fire wavered from its straight column; then, they drew back. Their chief
came from the beach-reaches now, and laughing said they had lost their
ship, so, seeing ours, had tried to rush into it, and get away before we
could beat them off.

So we asked them to sit and have meat with us, and they sat down; though
we were careful of our arms till they had eaten.

And the next day we landed them at a town, where they might build
another ship.

This is the tale of the marriage of my lord just as it happened.




WHERE THE WOLVES DANCE


Three years before, in the winter time, I had brought my wife Elsa from
her father’s, loving her as fools and lonely men love dogs and women. So
I kept ever near her, but was shy of her. Now this is the tale of a very
strange thing, and it begins from her. Though my hall stood far to the
west on the main, where even the sight of the sand-hills could be found
from the highest tower, yet there were trees and gardens on the other
side, and paths ran down to little ponds, and cattle browsed over rich
uplands and sheep grew fat. There were sixty men in my hall; heavy men
and slow, but slow to change, and as their fathers leant before them, so
they leant also from the worn castle windows, and the window-sills were
smooth with the rubbing of their elbows. As to the hall and its build,
there is little need be said. It was square and large, and partly of
stone, with a banqueting-hall, and enough of small rooms and of cellars
for the storage of meat and milk and beer. In the summer sometimes I
would go down to the coast, and crossing in my ship over to Fōen, buy
cattle or grain or go to the south ports for some strange rare thing for
my lady; thus it was for three years, and contentment had grown round me
like a woof.

So one day a horseman came riding slowly. He bore to me a message that
three of the priests of the Lord-Bishop of Lund demanded shelter that
night under my roof. I was standing dressed in my best leather suit and
with my handsomest sword-belt by my chair at the head of the table, when
the door swung open and they entered. They came slowly up the hall into
the light, and lifting their heads when they came to the bottom steps at
the top of which I stood, they showed the faces of three old worldly
men, fed on the follies and the agonies of man. They were all pale and
stooping, but the one to the right, a tall man with one shoulder higher
than the other, bent the most, and leant upon the shortest priest, who
was in the middle.

“Greeting,” I said; “you are most welcome.”

They advanced up the steps and the tall old priest stepped towards me
and blessed me in a low voice, and then asked to be shown to his room. I
conducted him myself, leading the way to the apartment with a candle,
and the two others followed, their arms crossed over their chests. Thus
came the learned Father Cefron into my house. Next morning the two other
priests departed in haste, the way they had come, to inform the Lord
Bishop of Lund that the learned Father Cefron was ill and like to die,
which indeed seemed to be true. I sat by his bedside as he lay with his
face to the wall, his shaven head looking dark against the bed-clothes.

“When will he come? When will he come?” he would murmur; then clenching
his hands and turning towards me and sticking both fists out, “I want
the boy,” he said; then flinging his face to the wall impatiently. This
kept on for two days, till I sent a messenger to the one of the two
priests whom I had liked most (the fat one), asking who he, “the boy,”
was, and telling him how the learned Father Cefron lay calling for him
and would not be quiet. In eight days there came back my messenger,
saying that he, the boy, would follow on, and would probably be at the
hall to-morrow morning early. So it was. While I was yet in bed I heard
the barking of dogs in the courtyard, and the cracking of whips, and the
voices of the men calling to one another, and the clatter of their
wooden shoes on the stones. I sent word that he should at once be taken
to Father Cefron if so be that Father Cefron was awake; and he went
quickly and I did not see him at all till after noon that day. Then, as
I rose from my meat—the men had already trooped out of the hall, their
dinner over—there entered through the tapestried door a tall,
broad-backed, narrow hipped, slim-limbed, youth, who held his head high,
and bore eyes full of laughter under his wild light hair.

“My Lord Olaf,” he said, extending his hand, “I ask your pardon for
coming late to my meat; but good Father Cefron has wanted me with him. I
have been much with him since a child, you know.”

I welcomed him as a guest should be welcomed, and called for more meat
to be placed before him and some ale; but the ale he only sipped and I
sent to the back of my cellars for some bottles of Southern wine, which
he liked much better and thanked me for, and which I liked him the less
for liking better than the ale. When we had drank and eaten, we rose,
and taking my arm, he walked with me up and down the end of the hall.

“Old Father Cefron,” he began, “is a learned man, but a man who has kept
too strictly within the rules of his order; he lacks blood, therefore he
lacks heart; he has only a head, but that head is one whose like will
not be seen in Skandinavia again in this century”; and the youth’s voice
was touched with enthusiasm. “Now why it is I do not know, but having
killed the man in him over ponderous books, he feels he must have me to
put some laughter in his life, and give him something human to think of
for the moment when he is tired of the battles and treaties and that of
dead kings; therefore it is, my lord and host, that I would venture to
ask of you as Father Cefron has asked me to ask of you—indeed has
commanded—that you let me stay with him here in the castle till the term
of his life is ended, which seems not very long.”

So young Heinrick became one of my household, and though I never liked
him for his dainty ways and foreign prettinesses, yet I became used to
him, and his figure was familiar on the edges of my fish-ponds, in the
corridors of my hall, and was seldom absent when the time for eating
came. He seemed to be much with Father Cefron in the early evening, and
I could hear Father Cefron’s groans come from his chamber sometimes when
I passed by the door; and he was good at wrestling tricks, and quick to
a wonder at southern fence, yet I liked him none the better, and I could
see that the men liked him neither, for they would not learn his
wrestling tricks till pressed almost to command, and I could see them
whispering and glancing after him as he passed by. By this time my Lady
Elsa and myself lived as most loving people. I would take her to the
fish-ponds, and she would scream and find delight in the excitement; or
sometimes she would come to meet me through the wood with some of her
women and some men to follow, and I would come making the wood hoarsely
musical through my curved horn, and bring her deer from the uplands and
great hares shot with cross-bow, and sometimes little birds, very hard
to come near, which dwell among the sand-hills to the westward; then she
would always have flowers in her room; in the winter evergreens and the
mystical, bunched, mistletoe, and ever my favourite meats and green
things, cooked or wild, all the year were before me.

It was as the winter came on that I fell ill and the fever came into me;
and after lying for three days I tried to get up out of my bed. I can
remember them carrying me back there, and I can remember them saying,
“He has gone mad with the fever.” Then I think that in the night I did
go mad with the fever, for they told me afterwards that I howled and
yelled and screamed for my sword to fight the gnomes and hobgoblins, and
the things of hell and air; but, as I say, this I only learned long
afterwards. I strove with death hard-handed, and I held him in my grasp,
and he could not throw me; and at last the wrestle came to an end, for
he slipped from me and disappeared, and I lay on the bed with wide-open
eyes, my white face making the rough men who were in the room use words
of which they were ashamed after, to me. Then came my wife, and her hand
pulled the last of the fever from me; but the wrestle had left me very
tired, and I lay many days knowing little. At last I could sit in the
great chair by the window on sunny days, and look forth over the snows
that covered my uplands and count the familiar trees which stuck up
black out of the snow-drifts. Then they wrapped me in many coats, and
with a man on each side of me I came down into the hall again, my wife
behind me. It was the time of noonday meat, and the men rose with a
hoarse shout as they saw me and pressed forward with outspread hands;
but my Lady Elsa was before them in a moment, and her green robe shone
strangely against their skin-clad bodies. She stopped them with gentle,
firm words, asking them to let me get to the great chair that I might
sit down, for I was come to eat a bite with them and drink a sup of ale;
and the men sat down with a sigh, such as dogs give of contentment after
full feeding. So I sat me down, and they brought me a tiny bird on a
little plate and I could only eat half of it. Then they brought me a
great tankard of ale, and I raised it to my lips and drank the half of
it, and I felt the manhood rush to my feet, and then to my head again,
and through my arms as I put the mug back on the table, and the men
nodded to one another as saying, “It is well done for a sick man.” Then
slowly I finished the rest of the ale, then walked feebly to the fire
and stood there warming myself. Then the two men who stood by me led me
back to my chamber, and my wife followed, laying cool cloths on my
head. Now every day I walked feebly to my meat in the hall, but it was
not till the third day that I began to notice something strange about
the men. They would look at me with a great curiosity, and some of them
with seeming contempt, at which I said nothing; and one of the two men
who had been my nurses in the sick chamber would follow me even through
the gardens, as I walked slowly abroad with a staff for the keen frosty
air; so that after some weeks I spoke to my lady about it, but she
answered me, shaking her hair about her shoulders, that she knew not
these western peasants as I did, and that in her father’s hall there had
been no suspicions and no glances of double meaning. Then spoke I to the
man who followed me so faithfully as I have said, but he would answer
nothing save that he thought that something was in the air, and that the
spring would bring new flowers. Then asked I of young Heinrick, who
still awaited the death of Father Cefron, with those laughing eyes under
the wild light hair; but he laughed at me again, and told me that I was
a sick man on one side of my head now and suspected everybody, and that
I should send for a physician to plaster me—if he could find the side.
Now old Father Cefron seemed to have dried into one of his own
parchments, and his hide wrinkled, and almost rattled, as he walked.
Though he came to eat with us in the hall on holy days, and said long
prayers with somewhat worldly warnings after, yet he would on most days
eat in his own chamber, and that of the least and coarsest, and would
drink only of the ice-cold water from the well. I went to him at last
and questioned him, and asked him if he had noticed the glances cast
upon me, and the whispering and the sudden ceasing of the women’s
tongues when I came into the room, but he answered “No!” that he had
noticed none of these things, for he was too much taken up in battles
and kings and the histories of nations, to see aught that passed about
him; and then he told me of the ancient days, and of the mighty, warm,
strange, empires of the south and east, and spoke a hundred names of
battles and knew every half-month of the history of the Church; and so I
left him, comforted with learning, and went and sat and looked out on
the snow, and thought of all that he had said.

The acts of the night that broke my life were short and quick, yet they
are too long for the telling; still I will try, for without them you
will not understand the strange end of this tale by the grey wolves.

It was the next night after this, and I had sat late in the hall, just
beginning now to find strength enough to think of what I should do with
my lands and cattle when the soft weather and spring-time came at last.
Sighing and putting these thoughts away from me as something too far off
to be yet of use, I rose and through the darkened hall passed through
the tapestried doorway and up the dimly-lighted stair, where the candles
were distant, to my wife’s room, before which hung a curtain that I had
bought her in the Port of Swenborg from a ship that had come from the
east countries, and as I raised the curtain in my hand, seeing by the
faint light of one candle high on the wall behind me the great oak
panels of her familiar door, I stopped. I stood still, the curtain in my
hand, and the light flickered over the saints’ heads carved on the oaken
panels, and over my head. At the arch of the doorway stood an oak figure
of a saint only the projecting edges of whose robe and face could be
seen in the candle-light. I stood there while the candle blew and
flamed; I heard its dripping on the floor; I glanced once toward the
staircase, where the descending uncertain lights led down into the dusk
and darkness. Somewhere in the distance outside the hall I heard a man
singing in a coarse voice, then his comrades joined in the chorus, and I
heard their “skaals.” I stood there holding the curtain while the stairs
creaked mysteriously as to the ears of a weary and sick man, and while,
through the window near me, curtaining clouds flitted past the face of
the moon as she looked down on the infinite purity of the untrod white
below.

Then I dropped the curtain, and stealing down the stairs like a thief in
my own house, I came again into the great hall, and I went and took down
my sword from its place, and I sat me down in the great arm-chair piling
the cushions around me, with my sword across the arms and my hands
resting on its sheath. At last the dawn came faintly; then a long stain
of yellow light struck across the ribbed and worn floor; then for a
moment, a glorious red glowed through the windows, and then this faded
and the ashes of the dead fire, and the broken meats that strewed the
table, and the tankards that lay on the floor, sprang out under the
truthful day. Then began to come in the women to carry out the things of
last night, and when they saw me sitting there alone, they curtseyed and
looked frightened and would have turned back, but I spoke to them
quietly to clear the floor and build up the fire, for it was a cold
morning and the men must have good meat; and after a while came in some
ragged boys carrying bunches of branches and some hauling great bundles
of logs with roots, and these they rolled into the fireplace piling the
branches above them. Then one of the women, bringing a sack of dry
leaves arranged them carefully among the branches and under the places
where the bark of the logs was rough. Then, with a flint and steel, an
old woman knelt and touched the dry leaves into a flame that was dull in
a moment. The branches caught, and crackling, sent ends of flaming twigs
wild up the chimney. Then at last the great logs at the back began to
smoke, and soon their bark caught fire, and their chopped ends played
with the eager flame, so all the hall was warmed and a thin smoke
sailing up about the rafters. Then came they with great hooks that were
made fast to turning cranes driven in the fireplace wall, and on these
hooks were sides of deer and legs of sheep, with pans below and ladles
that no richness might be lost, and thick brown cakes were piled along
the table-centre in a row; and now four men came rolling in two casks of
unbroached beer, and these they set below the table’s edge down at the
end. The women lifted a great cauldron on to the fire, that glowed like
some sprites’ cauldron of black-art; it held fowls and green things
floating in the midst, the gravy sizzling at the sides. Then the old
woman who had lit the fire went to the doorway and took down a great
sea-shell that hung there and she blew a hateful blast that broke the
very air, and all the men came trooping to their meat.

That morn was the holy morn of Easter, and Cefron came to share our
meat, his elbow sideways over Heinrick’s shoulder. My wife came later,
and was blessed and sat. When Father Cefron had done his prayers, and
given his pious warnings to the men, the food went from the table in a
turn of the hand, for the morning was very cold and the men were hungry
and the ale warm from the fire, where the men placed it. It flowed down
thirsty throats like strong streams into caverns. When all had eaten and
turned their stools apart from the board and leant their backs thereon
or stretched their legs and arms in full content, I rose from my great
chair at the head of all the table of my house, and with no word to her
who was my wife, I pointed and I spoke to Heinrick quietly:

“You will meet me in holmgang, in the cleared snow, before the hall’s
great door, when the sun is even overhead, and you will fight me till
you are dead, or I am dead.”

He rose slowly to his feet, his face grew a dark red and his eyes seemed
to go back under his brows in his anger. He said no word but stood there
steadily looking at me. I seemed to feel his question how much I knew,
and with one glance at Father Cefron’s lifted claw-like hand, and one
glance at the white face of Elsa, who was my wife, I answered in a low
voice:

“I stood outside the door of Elsa, my wife, last night, after the moon
had risen, and I held the curtain, and I listened to the voices, and I
listened for a long time, and then I came away.”

There was a sudden tearing of cloth, and a flutter behind me, and
looking I saw Elsa, who was my wife, fall through the doorway which led
from the banqueting-hall. Then young Heinrick turned the broadness of
his back to me and stood a moment his right hand to his chin. Then he
came to his place at the board again and sat down and began to eat; but
as he raised the first mouthful of meat to his lips, he nodded to me, as
to a horse-cleaner. I sat down and drank, for I would eat no more, while
Father Cefron wept the tears of a very old man in a corner, laughing
sometimes, and then raising his hand and seeming to curse us in
laughing. The men sat silent with their brows drawn down. Only there was
a smile on some of their faces when they looked at me—a heavy smile of
kindness.

As the shades grew shorter and we could hear the sound of the swish of
the brooms in the snow outside the door, Father Cefron regained his
senses, and rising, and tottering toward me, and grasping each shoulder
with a clutching hand, he tried to shake me, murmuring curses on the old
gods meanwhile and sending them all to Hell in Latin and Danish. Then he
began to blame me, and though he did not curse me as he had done the
gods, yet he so poured out words that I had need to stop my ears to get
away from their cold reasoning. Then he spoke for a long time on the
hereafter, and told me the stories of the saints, and then he cursed the
devil and his works, and then he prayed for me. Then rising, he
commanded us both by name, his hands raised in the air and his white
sleeves falling back from his bony forearms, to leave this holmgang or
else we were cursed. He sank upon his knees and prayed to us, and then
the shadow from a tall, gaunt tree that I was watching from the window
touched its foot, and lifting my sword I turned to where young Heinrick
sat, his deep brows wrinkled and his hair pulled down, and walked to
where he stood. He did not move. I reached and touched him with my
sheathed sword. Slowly he got up, and turning from me he went to the
wall where his fair rapier hung. Then he came back to where I stood, and
stopped. We stood so for a little while; then calling to one of the men
who stood near, I cried hoarsely, “Touch him with the spit,” and I
could see the red of the back of his neck fail into whiteness as he went
before me striding fast down the hall. I turned when we got to the
doorway. Far away, by my great chair, knelt old Father Cefron, his head
covered with the sleeves of his robe, and by the fireplace three or four
women were crying with their faces in the corner.

It was a short holmgang. When we were ready I rushed him quickly, for I
had my old heavy sword and his thing was light; but he sprang aside from
me, and my sword whizzed past his shoulder. Then I turned and rushed him
again, and again he sprang aside, his sword brushing my hair; and again
I rushed him, and again he jumped aside, this time he struck me through
the right forearm. So it went on till the shadows began to creep a
little way from the trees, and I was very bloody and he had but one
hurt; and then as I drew back to hit him, caring little for myself, his
sword was through me, and I fell and kicked up the snow, then turned on
my back. Then suddenly I was still and men pressed around me, saying,
“He is dead”; but, I saw with my open eyes, Heinrick leap upon the
ice-crust, and with his naked sword cutting the air as he ran in rage or
wantonness, he fled, and was so far away that my men stood there
staring. Then they carried me back to the banqueting-hall and through
into my own chamber, and as we passed the kneeling figure of Father
Cefron, I heard the men who carried me answer to the women by the fire,
who whispered to them, “Dead on Easter morning, ’tis an awful day; but
old men die, and so has Father Cefron—though he was a learned man.”


Late that day the women came and washed me in my chamber and swathed me
in white folds, and they pulled down my eyes so that I could not see,
and they pushed up my jaws, but it seemed I needed not to breathe; and
that night three women and a man sat with me all night, and the next
night after that two women, and the next night after that one man, he
who had followed me through the gardens before I had found about Elsa,
who was my wife; and on the fourth morning, late after the sunrise,
they lifted me and carried me forth upon their shoulders, a great white
cloth with fringes hanging over me; and then I heard the tramp of many
feet, and women crying, and the consoling tones of men, and I heard the
pipe of children in the distance, and the crackling of the snow beneath
the feet of the four men who bore me; and at last they laid me down upon
the stones and they pulled down the cloth from my face and then I heard
a voice speaking very low—the voice of Elsa, who had been my wife,
“Peace be to thee where thou art”; and I tried to turn from the cold
breath—for I could feel the cold as I could feel the warmth of that
breath—but I could not, for my flesh was dead but my spirit lived within
me. Then they carried me into some dank-smelling place; I knew they had
to stoop, for I could hear their shoulders scrump along the passage,
they laid me down on a shelf of stone and took the white thing quite
away, and then they left me, and then I heard a sound of labouring at
the door, and then a crash.

Slowly in the darkness I fell away, but the life that runs through the
body gathered itself away from the fallen parts, and when I was brown
and thin my self burnt strong, and then I heard a note of freedom in the
dark. It was like music, as my body went, and as my legs and arms became
slim sticks, and as the years made my hands and feet not like human
hands and feet, and as the inside of my body dried and fell; and one
spring and summer passed and my spirit grew ever nearer its birth, I
heard the soundless music breathing freedom night and day. At last my
brain grew hard as my heart had grown years before, and all the parts of
me decayed and shrivelled up until I was a brown, slim, wrinkled, hide
that held some bones: no more. At last a great storm shook the place one
night, and snow came in and wind and rain, and then my spirit was freed
at last; for, sagging from its place, a rock fell inwards where I lay,
and my brown bones were crushed and scattered.

Then I rose through the storm of the night, and I held to the tops of
the trees, and I dropped and the water drenched me as it rushed past
the banks of the streams, and I seized branches in the moonlight and
threw them aloft and had joy to see the wind carry them. Then I came to
myself again, and coming to the earth, tramped through the wood, to give
me customs as live mortals have; for I was alive, having been killed,
and though my body was dead and myself invisible but potent with hard
grasp of hand, and flight in air, and strength of foot, I walked on the
earth a thing that no God surely ever wished to make in his creation. I
was a man with all a man’s forces and all a man’s heat, but I was as air
to everything, and I held myself as I pleased. Soon I came to the old
hall, and entering through the great door—for doors were nothing to me,
yet I could open and shut them with my hands—I found the banqueting hall
most desolate and only some few seats now near the fire; and passing on
into the upper rooms I heard deep snoring coming from one of them, and
looking in, I saw a young man that I did not know, who lay and slept
beside a great wolf-dog. The wolf-dog turned and raised its head and
howled, and I crept down the stairs again and out and on.

So all that night I journeyed toward the shore, and as the morning broke
the far blue ice stretched before me and I travelled on. I travelled on
over the ice-cakes, shoving on with my rusty sword where water was; and
so from crack to crack and block to block, I crept until I was half-way
across; then I sat down and laughed and nearly fell back into the water,
for the ice-block tipped. I had forgotten that the air was mine, and
that as the birds, or as the winged men and women that the priests have
in pictures, I could go where I would; so I rose from the ice, and the
wind sang across my rusty sword-hilt, and the air was keen, so that I
opened wide my mouth and crossed the ice to land. So in three days I saw
a great smoke rising, and a low stone hill that lay between the last
snow and the bend of the sky. This I passed over in the night time, and
the lights shone there for miles from the city and then I went on
through the moonless night, until a great hall stood against the sea
there. This I knew was Elsinore, and so I stopped and rested in a pack
of straw that lay in a stable near the castle’s rearward gate. The
tempest howled around me and the straw whistled as if for fear, but I
lay quiet, for all long cares had quite dropped away.

The next day and the next night too, I lay and rested there in a strange
content that hurt me sometimes when I felt it most; but on the third
night, having gained great strength, and ground my sword—when lights
gleamed down from the castle windows and Elsinore was gay for some
king’s whim—I went across the moat and through the gates, and by the
side-door of the castle to where a sleeping soldier stood, his lantern
flaring. I entered into a long corridor, and passed down to a door that
just shone at the other end. I opened it, and came into a small, gay
room where three young pages sat, who cried out at the draught from the
opened door: they did not see me, and I kept my sword away from them,
though I remembered that, I being invisible, they could see as well on
whichever side of me I held it. Then opened I the other door: at once
the full lights blazed upon me, and the hum and sweet wail of
dance-music came, with smell of flowers, and I wondered as the old
flowers sent me their greetings if he was here, as I thought he would
be. Then stealing through the room, through the dancers, I passed into a
corner where sat some young tired men who looked like sleeping. He was
not there. I passed between the dancers once again, and came into a
corner where there sat some foreign-looking men with light-haired
dames—bowing and paying them compliments, I think. I passed between the
dancers then again, and passed before where sat the king and queen both
weary-looking; yet with quick eyes, I could not find him. Then the music
ceased and the dancers went back to their seats once more. Then passed I
down the middle of the hall into the farthest corner, where there sat a
group of ladies speaking in low voice, and men who leaned and talked
and laughed and grinned, and as I passed through the crowd I saw the
face of Him, and all the floor trembled. He sat back in the corner, very
old: his long white hair fell on his sloping shoulders; his thin white
hands were clasped upon his knees and his thin legs were thrust in
velvet boots from which the fur stuck out. He had strange gold things on
his chest and front, and a short beard that straggled round the chin,
but his long hair fell over it; and every moment he would lean forward
and mutter to the women near him some tale of woman’s talk forgotten
when half finished. I stood looking, in a corner where the stair ran up
to the musician’s gallery, I stood beneath the stair where I could see
his face from out the shadow and where no one could see the sword, and
there I stood and I hated him until there was a sound of rustling in the
hall and of men’s feet upon the smooth wood floor; and as I turned to
look I saw the king and queen rise and go out, and then after a little
time the others also went, and nearly last, he rose. A man had come to
him from the pages’ room and now held him under one arm as he tottered
across the floor. I followed slowly, my old sword tight grasped. At last
we reached the little gay-draped door. The pages’ room was empty, and
the corridors laughed to our heel taps as if mocking the dancers. And so
we went out. There was a great chair there held by two men; into this he
went; but I had my own mind of where to go so my old rusty sword was
through the back of the hind chairman in a moment’s time, and as he
fell, the forward man ran round to try the door again, crying out; but I
swung my sword and hit him in the side, and the old blade grided in so
that the stuff came out, and he fell down dead on the steps. When the
noise these men were making had stopped, I went and opened the door and
sat me down inside with Him, and in a very few soft words told Him who I
was; but being so old He could not understand though He was very
frightened and knelt down trembling in the bottom of the chair. Then I
asked Him where were horses, and He told me, mumbling, and I went to a
farmer’s stable and took a horse out, first feeding him well and giving
him drink; then on this horse I put Him and wrapped Him in the
horse-cleaner’s old rugs and cloths. Then mounting up behind him, I
guided the beast to the main road that runs along the water, and for
many hours we travelled, jolting, in the darkness. Then the moon rose,
and all the world was silver, and the sea lay black except where the
sword-blade from the moon was laid across it. The moon was high. It was
as light as day when I turned inland from the sea at last, and
underneath great trees, and past small hills that rose and left dark
hollows where drifts lay, we went. It was as light as the light of day,
when all the hills seemed to rise up about us in their whiteness, and
the trees stood black on the summits, white on their tops, and casting
huge shadows that moved.

“Here,” I said; and getting down from the horse, I turned to Him and
lifted Him down also. “This is the place,” I said; and taking Him under
the arms as I had seen the serving-man do, I led Him down into the
valley where the snow did not break to our tread, and standing there in
the valley, holding Him under the arms, I called aloud three times the
cry of a wolf. For a long time we stood there in silence till the cry
had long echoed away; then from the right of me there slid a white wolf
from the hill-top. He slid to the bottom of the hill a little way from
me, and then sat on his haunches and looked at us with his red eyes.
Then came three more wolves, slowly, over the snow; they came down from
under the beech trees that were in front of us, and these also sat down
on their haunches and stayed looking at us with their eyes. Then came
one wolf more from in front of me, who did as the others had done. Then
others came, till there were almost thirty of them, and they sat and
stared at us; but whether they could see me I know not. The moon was
just over us, and neither He nor the wolves cast any shadow. I turned
and took Him in my arms, and holding Him to me, I whispered in a low
voice, “You will fight holmgang here with me to-night.” He did not
understand, and His fine white hair lifted a little in the breeze. From
above on the hill-top looked the horse that we had ridden, stupidly; I
had tied him to a branch of beech, and the wolves sat round making no
noise except the whispering and the brushing of their tails in the
snow-glaze. I still held Him in my arms. “You will fight now,” I said,
“before the moon casts its shadow, and then I will leave You”; and he
shuddered a little, and shook his head, this time half-understanding. I
held Him close, pressing the horse-cleaner’s cloths about Him. “You must
take out your sword, and you must fight with me—you must fight with me
here, now.”

“Why?” He murmured feebly, His head sinking on my shoulder.

“Because I say it!” I answered in the same low voice; and with that I
held Him from me and began to untie the cloths. When He was free, I drew
myself apart and unsheathed my old sword, leaving the belt and scabbard
lying on the snow by one of the wolves. Now I went up and whispered to
the trembling figure again, “You shall fight!” I whispered, still in a
low voice.

“I will not fight!” He said.

“You will fight for your honour!”

“I will not fight!” He replied.

“You will fight for your name.”

“I will not fight,” He said once again.

Then I stopped for a moment. Then I went up to Him slowly, and
whispering to Him, “I was the husband of Elsa, and you broke my life
when you were young, and now that you are old and I am dead, I shall
kill you here where the wolves stand”; and with that, lightly, that I
might not strike Him down, I hit Him on the cheek.

For an instant He stared at me, one side of His face white as the other
grew crimson, and His old eyes flashed for a moment, and His shoulders
squared themselves; but His arms, after one quick motion, hung still at
His sides, and I heard Him murmur again, “I will not fight!” Then a
wrath seized me, and swinging my sword on high I stepped slowly towards
Him and let my point drop back slowly over my shoulder till it hung down
to the snow, then wheeling suddenly and bringing it forward with a
shortening of the arms and a yell that echoed through the empty forest,
I hit Him with the rusty blade where the neck branches to go to the
shoulder, and my blade travelled till it struck the hip-bone on the
other side. Then with my foot on His waist, I drew my sword out and
wiped it on the snow; wiping it many times till it was quite clean, then
picking up the sheath and buckling the belt around me, I covered my
sword and passed between two of the wolves and up the hill, and away to
where the horse was tied. The moon fell down straight into the valley,
and as I rode back again the way I had come under the dark trees and
past the glittering hill-tops, I heard behind me melancholy howling
coming from the place where the wolves danced.

This is all of my tale, except that I stabled the horse before dawn at
the farmer’s, and gave him food and drink, and then walked by the sea
road as the dawn broke.




THE SACRILEGE


The hall was raised at one end into a square stage, where the smoke
would gather when the men sat late near the fire, and from this stage
two doors opened at the back corners. One of these doors was curtained
and led to the apartments of the men of the castle. The other was carved
with strange images, and by it stood a long square table of carved oak.
We men sat below at the long board which ran the length of the hall. It
was my lord and the monks who lived upon us who sat upon the raised
staging; the monks eating at their carved table apart.

It was after the dinner, and Father Peter rose in his place. Motioning
to his followers to pass through the door that led to the chapel, he
came and bent and whispered to my lord, who set down his beer-mug on the
instant, frowning; then, after a moment’s thought my lord lifted his
hand and spoke to us all in a loud, clear voice:

“Father Peter and I would speak alone in the hall. It would please me
that you men take your beer on the battlements.”

The men went shuffling, all but myself, for I was my lord’s own man and
counted as nothing more than his follower, doing things which women
usually do for men, for he would have no women-folk about him.

Now Father Peter, folding his fat hands across his chest, lowered his
head and frowned reflectively. My lord sat silently in the great chair
with one leg over the arm.

“Lord Rolf,” said Father Peter at last.

“Yes, Father Peter,” answered my lord.

“Lord Rolf, Christian of this castle,” said Father Peter again.

“Ay! Christian, and certainly lord of this castle,” answered my lord,
smiling.

Father Peter raised his head, and lifting one arm, pointed at my lord.

“I have caused it that we should be alone, that I might pray with you,
for you are not so good a Christian as I would have you be.”

“Yes,” said my lord.

Then Father Peter, tumbling to his knees, prayed for a long time, while
I standing by the fire, cursed his Latin. Then he got up again and
coming to my lord he touched him on the shoulder.

“Have you felt that prayer?” he said in a deep voice.

“I have heard it,” said my lord looking down.

“Then I will even say something that will appeal to you in a more
militant way—something that has been in your mind for a long time, my
lord.” Father Peter became impressive. “The black frocks that sit and
bend over that carved table by that carved door are a greater nation
than ever the nation of Denmark will be, or any nation will be, until
another nation of such frocks rouses itself against us; and so long as
we shall hold the souls of men, and their hopes and fears of the
hereafter, in our hands as a sword, so long shall we be more powerful
than any sword forged by gnome or fairy.”

Father Peter, extending both hands in blessing over Lord Rolf’s head,
turned hastily and went through the door that leads to the chapel. Now,
this I would not stand, nor my lord, and we dared not tell it to the men
for fear of violence, that the priests, who had forced themselves upon
us in our house, and built their chapel leaning against our keep, should
threaten us over the tables where they fed with us. This had been a long
time coming, for Christianity sat hard upon us. There were no tortures
in the time of Thor and Odin; and, as I said, Christianity sat
grievously upon us.

Ah! Well! To the next scene. My lord was in the passage before Father
Peter’s room, and he knew that Father Peter would return alone from the
chapel after his last devotions, and when Father Peter’s dark bulk
turned the corner of the oak stair my lord spoke to him out of the
shadow.

“Father Peter, you have said some words to me to-night in my hall. They
were not churchmen’s words.”

Father Peter hesitated a moment, then throwing back his head:

“No,” he said; “they were words militant, for the Church is born
militant; and she shall ride you as a plough-horse. Let me pass on from
my devotions.”

“No, Father Peter,” said my lord in a quiet voice, reaching one arm out
of the shadow. “You go where you have taught us that there is more
devotion than there is upon this earth. For three years you and your
crew have eaten, slept, and builded on my lands, until now my house is
but very little my own.”

Father Peter took a step forward, but the long white arm barred him
across his thick throat. He strode one step farther forward, pushing the
arm aside, and, turning in the direction of my lord’s voice, snarled
like a dog, calling him long names from books I never read. Whether my
lord was mad, or whether the humiliation of the past three years had
hurt his heart, I do not know, but he reached both arms around the
priest, and lifting him in the air, flung him face-downward against the
window, where it ran to the floor. I went to my lord and caught his
hands behind him. Then drawing long breaths, we walked silently toward
the black form at the window foot. Stooping, I put my hand over its
mouth and over its fat chest. There was a drawing up of legs and
something like a laugh, deep in the throat. Then Father Peter died.

       *       *       *       *       *

The snow chunked under our weary feet and our staffs were useless in the
thaw, and ever behind, when the wind was still, and when there were no
pines near us to whisper as of safety, we could hear the sound of the
horses, and we would look at each other and step higher, and take longer
strides for a few yards. My lord was very weary, for he was a man who
loved warmth, and he could not bear the cold of the indifferent sky
above him and the unfeeling purity of the snow that lay about us.

Far away was the glimmer of sea. There was no dawn, but a streak of
yellow in the east, that grew and lengthened and widened, and then
became flame-coloured and then disappeared, and a little sun came from
the sea, but it had no light and the snow had glimmered more under the
moon. There were but two of us left. We had been seven at first, but of
the others three had turned back and two lay in the snow on our way. It
was the ninth day that we had left the hall; and ever the men of the
Bishop of Lund, three hundred and fifty of them, came after us on their
light horses, and ever we doubled and crouched over the snow, like hares
hungered or hunted. At night we would make fires of the pine-cones, and
in our helmets melt the snow into water, lowering our helmets into the
snow again to cool them afterwards. We had eaten all our bread, but of
fish we had plenty, though I was sorry for my lord. So all that day we
hastened, and when the night came we lay back to back in a hollow of the
snow on a little hill that looked over a bay. The bay was frozen, and I
remember the winter moonlight kept me awake as it shed itself upward
from the ice into my face; and whenever I looked out over the
snow-sweep, its long white track seemed to point to where we lay. Deep
into the night, when the sighing wind had ceased to scud the drift-snow
into our hiding-place, my lord turned over and shook me feebly. “Man!”
he said; “he was right when he said the Church was born militant, and
that only a greater power like itself shall cast a shadow on men. We
broken clans, that call ourselves nations, are little things. What shall
I do? Tell me, what shall I do?” I looked at him in the surprise of one
just waking, as he knelt above me, one hand on each shoulder. “Man!” he
said, again, shaking me, “what shall I do? They are coming; I can hear
them under the snow. I can hear the ice of the bay cracking to their
boats, and I can hear the whispered warnings of the pine trees when they
bend to the stirred air of their innumerable breaths. Man! what shall I
do?” Awake now, I saw that my lord was full of terror, like a child, and
bringing him close to me, I rolled him in his clothes and put him deep
in the snow again, piling some of my own things over him, and he slept
complainingly and fitfully like a child who has been punished.

It was just before the dawn when we heard the far-away shouting of the
Bishop’s noisy troop, and crawling to our feet we left our hole in the
snow and crept down the side of the hill toward the water. Here my lord
thought it was easier walking on the ice, but soon we heard the sound of
horses on the strand, and as it was a road to them not like the snow
above, we climbed again to where the deeper drifts were and passed
unseen. So half that day we travelled, and twice they went ahead of us
going by the strand, but both times a few horsemen only; so we dared not
turn back, for we knew the others were spread out on the uplands. Late
in the afternoon we came to the long point of rock that stretches from
our island towards the mainland, and here my lord stopped. “If we had a
boat,” he said, trembling I think with eagerness; then, pulling his grey
beard, he whispered to himself only, “Who can fight against the
Church,—who will not fight?” Then turned he again and went on along the
shore; and thus late in the evening we came to a solitary beech which
rose from out a hollow in the hills. Great formless mounds of white lay
near, the fallen ones who had left this old tree lonely; and leaning
against this solitary trunk we passed our night, until the coming of a
glorious dawning fell on our faces as they lay against the smooth
beech-bark, and awakened us early—I think earlier than any of the
Bishop’s men awakened that morning, for though we waited to eat we heard
no sound of their pursuing until nearly the noon-time; then from far off
came the familiar thud of horses’ hoofs and the crisp jingle of the
bridle-reins, in the far-carrying, cold, morning air.

It was the next day after this, when my Lord Rolf seemed to hesitate,
walking by himself, telling even me nothing, and when it came to the
sunset and a cold yellow edged the dark sky over the sea, and the
snow-drifts looked ghostly at any distance, he spoke to me after many
trials with himself.

“Do you know where we are?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you know that by to-morrow at noon we shall have returned?”

I looked at him startled.

“Returned to the hall?”

“Yes,” he said; “we shall have been round the island.”

“And when we shall have returned?” I asked.

My lord was silent. It was not at noon the next day but toward the dusk
when the darkening trees began to seem familiar, and the coast-line
stretched in remembered curves, and the ripples along the icy beach
seemed home-like. In the dusk, as we plodded crouching behind a drift of
snow that ran along the hillside, there rose before us something gaunt
and white and very tall and very still in the valley below us, and we
stopped, for we saw it was a building: it seemed a keep of the old days
that they build no more now. So we stood looking, trying to make out any
light near in the dark evening. Suddenly my lord sighed, and, falling
forward on his knees, he put his face down in the snow, and when I bent
and whispered to him he only answered, “They have burnt it, but the old
keep would not burn.” It was our own hall that we had come back to. So,
the next morning we struck inland again, from the hill-top, thinking to
find refuge in a forest of leafless oaks whose rattling branches
glittered in the pale sunlight; and when we reached it my lord sat down
on a great root of one of the trees and would go no farther into the
forest. So I stayed by him all day feeding him on the last of our fish,
and making him cold water to drink, for though he shivered very much he
drank always. Thus it was that midway between the noon and the evening
there came three men, cross-bowmen, suddenly, from over the hillside,
and seeing us they stopped; then after a moment’s speaking one with
another they ran forward, their cross-bows stretched.

My lord was sitting dejectedly at the foot of the ice-sheaved oak, and I
was cooling water for him in my helmet. The three men ran toward us,
shouting. My lord heard the sound and looked up; then rising slowly to
his feet, he hesitated a moment and unbuckled his sword, at which the
three cross-bowmen stopped, for they were not great men. Then my lord
spoke to me, half turning: “You have followed me faithfully, though to a
bad end, and I can give you nothing; nor do you want it; but I will not
be killed by Bishop’s men. My fathers knew how to die, and their Gods
took them, so I—— and my Gods will take me.” Then ramming the hilt and
the upper part of his sword into the snow, my lord fell over it
awkwardly and lay groaning, the sword through him. All this before I
could do aught but cry out.

Well—— Then came the bowmen, who shot him so that, after a few minutes,
he was dead indeed, and they brought his body and his sword down to the
snow-covered keep in the valley, where they delivered it to the Bishop
of Lund’s legate; and they showed me over the doorway the heads of many
old women whom they said had been “left behind.” I do not know. And
there were children’s heads hanging from them. What became of the men of
the hall? It is something that I cannot remember. They bound thongs of
leather round my brows to make me tell of Father Peter and how he died,
and again in Roskilde, and they twisted them. But at last they permitted
me to enter the church here, as a server, and I look out on the fair
fiord of Roskilde now.

I am very glad that the story is done.




THE STORY OF THE OAR-CAPTAIN


This is the story of the Oar-Captain, that they used to tell to harps;
and that, after, was made a saga of. The story is rough, like the
natures of men, and full of storm of Nature and sea, as if a fury had
run down the pages. But there are soft threads in its rough woof—I tell
it just as the Oar-Captain told it.


The sun sank over the right-hand side of the ship—red, while the sky was
cloudless. And the light breeze fell, just as the dusk came, and our
brown sail trembled for a moment, and then sank back against the mast.
The men, laughing, leaned in a row along the bulwarks, while my lord
paced up and down on the aft-deck. The steersman pulls in his oar, the
ship swings idle, and soon the blue smoke ascends in a straight, fine
line through the evening air from the open dish of black charcoal where
they cook at the mast-foot.

It is evening, and soft clothes are spread about on the deck. Far away
the sea stretches, till it fades into the glow of the almost dark sky;
while on the other side, where no man looks, is dusk-darkness, cold,
abandoned, the dead regions of what was morning. After a while, when the
glory has quite faded out of the sky, the men murmur and slowly lie down
on their clothes talking for a while. That gradually ceases, and we lie
silent, while there comes faint creaking of cordage as the ship lazily
swings. My lord has ceased pacing the aft-deck. We lie watching the
stars come out.

Slowly they come, the eyes of other worlds. Lying close under the rail I
see a little track of lights come from far away, till it seems they
become scared and stop, and other lights come out behind them—a
twinkling row, till they reach the bulwark over my head. Next me a man
sighs in his sleep.

I lie thinking of the lands to the south, and of my lord. When I turn
my head I can still see him in the gathering dark, where he leans dim by
the black line of the steering-oar. Looking up my soul leaves the ship,
and seeming to gaze down from the stars I feel very far away. Slowly
they come, silent lights. I remember old sagas and faces—old faces——

It is morning. The fresh wind lifts the sail outward; the hair is blown
in the men’s faces; the water whispers and chuckles merrily under the
side of the leaning ship. The thin ropes creak, the shields over the
sides rattle and jerk. I and another swing on the steering-oar, and the
men run along the decks with glad faces.

It is afternoon. The ship lies on her side; the flying water runs over
as it goes by. Dark clouds have come out of the east, and are streaked
from their low-lying bank in long streamers along the sky. The mast
bends, the bows shoot the spray up into the winds, where it is whirled
away before us. The water hisses; the wind moans and sings; and the ship
is full of the rattle of the oars along the benches.

It is evening. The moving sky is as black as the water between the
foam-streaks, by which we rush; through a vapour-veiled hole, dimly, the
pale sun is going down. Men shout to each other in the dark, and the
water splashes in waves along the benches. My lord gives orders for the
sail to be rolled fast and that all men shall come off the fore-deck.

Morning. By the hazy light from far up in the heavens, I see our bare
mast with the tangled bunch of ropes whipping forward from the top.

Broken oars swim in the water in the waist of the ship, and from
outside, heard in the twilight, comes the sound of mermaids singing I
think, answered by the dull roar of the mermen’s shells. I look around;
before me are the men holding to anything that is firm on the
after-deck, where my lord stands, looking forward. They are pale, and
the glistening of their clothes shows in the misty light, that shows the
foam hissing over the side of the ship.

So, all day we crouch, gnawing pieces of bran-bread, and holding fast
to the sides of the ship.

Evening. The sun has gone out, and a roaring that sounds like the
rushing of pine-trees falling, comes from the dark. The shields are
gone, and the men laugh grimly thinking of death, when the seas rush
over the flying bulwarks.

It is morning again, and the clouds rolling and flying in jagged flags
in the wind, are broken at sunrise, and the wind sings now, not roars.

The ship shows, a bare-sided, dripping, unfamiliar thing beneath the
morning light; full of wreckage and ropes, the sail lying, and the yard
gone, the bunch of ropes at the top of the mast. The pale men that have
ceased to laugh now, untie themselves from the bulwarks and creep
stiffly forward to the food-chest. The sea rises in waves, but the still
stiff breeze keeps them down and we ride on, plunging; our bare mast
shakes in the wind.

That is how, when Lord Uffē stood on the seaweed-brown beach four days
later, he was cried to over the side of a bare-masted ship as it rowed
round the point along the rocky shore, and asked the name of the
country.

Lord Uffē brought us up to the hall where his people ran to cook meat
for us, and where we sat gladfully drinking the warm ale by the fire.
Then the great platters of meat came in seething, and we sat and ate,
warming ourselves, while Lord Uffē talked to my lord at the end of the
table—sitting by a great red-haired man that he ever glanced at kindly,
but who with thoughtful eyes sat gazing as one seeing nothing.

As we sat there, when our first hunger was done and men were beginning
to stretch out their legs under the table, I looked about the hall. And
there was something that seemed strange about it. For some time gazing,
I could not see; then with a half-afraid feeling, a wonder, I saw that
everything was old—the benches, the arms rusted on the walls—it was as
if men had been dropped back three centuries. Even while I was yet
wondering at this and looking curiously at the old-patterned arms on
the walls—such as I had seen in the old halls we had stopped at in our
sailing, kept from ancestors—the lord of the place, Lord Uffē—a short,
stout, strong, old man, with kind face and a beard to his waist and eyes
that shut in his laughter—rose, and standing with his hand on my lord’s
shoulder, spoke to him and to the table so that all might hear.

“Ye care to know,” he said, smiling, “what country this may be. Then I
will tell a story to you all—see that ye are comfortable—

“Four men’s lifetimes ago if they were old men there was a ship blown
off the coast while it bore a boat-load towards the south, from a burnt
town in the hard north; searchers for new places. And for days a great
wind blew them the same as it has blown you, till, in the night, no
moon, they fell upon this place, the ship shocking onto the sands and
falling in pieces, and some of the men killed. They sat in the hiding of
the rocks till the sunrise, then with the strong wind blowing in their
faces, they found their home, built it, and saved some things from out
of the ship—they were my fathers. A pleasant country; we are content; no
ships ever come; we are alone; we mow our easily-sown fields while our
children grow about us; we cut timber in limitless forests—why should we
leave it? The name of the place?” And he stood, his great beard falling
on his chest, his eyes looking kind along the board to see if we wanted
anything.

“We are lost in the seas,” he said again. “Whether far or near, or north
or south, no man knows; no ship ever comes; the forest begins behind us;
nothing that shows sign of man’s hand is washed to the shore; we are
alone, lost and contented. Listen to the sound of the sea; we have never
crossed it; no man has crossed it to us; we know not where it goes; or
where we are.”

The old man spoke grandly, but his kind eyes ever glanced along the
table to see if we wanted anything.

We men drew long breaths, and I saw my lord draw down his brows, and
tug the fair hair over his forehead. Some of us got up, and began to
walk about.

Then in the midst of the silence my lord spoke hesitatingly.

“We thank my Lord Uffē for his kindness. What can we do—can we sail
home—and where? Still, for the present, we thank my Lord Uffē for his
kindness.”

The old man, pulling his beard, stood, looking at my lord for a moment;
then, a smile coming to his lips and showing in his eyes, he held out
his hand and said, “Stay.”

It was some days before we got the things out of the ship and the ship
well hauled up on the beach. Then we looked about for a place for our
houses; for we had decided to stay, at least for a while.

The land seemed good; the sand, broken with rocky points, stretched
straight along the bright sea; and, protected from the sea-winds and
storms by a line of oak forest left standing, lay fields now just green
in the spring-time. Beyond these fields, fenced off from one another by
little walls of stone, drew in the forest again, the colour of the
light-green of a curling wave, and as limitless as the sea. In the edge
of the forest, surrounded by a few of the great trees, the others being
taken away, on a little rise in the ground, stood the old wooden hall of
Lord Uffē, shaded by the green branches, or crossed by the patches of
sunlight when they waved—the hall, a low building, old, with many
passages inside and far-away little rooms, and the one great
dining-chamber; built very stoutly. Around, in the edge of the forest,
were little houses of wood from which the smoke curled lazily up in the
spring air, and about which ran children playing while their happy-faced
mothers watched from the doorways. The sky was very blue, birds sang in
the trees, and about the fields hopped little hares.

We decided to build our hall, not a large one, but enough for us,
farther down the row of fields in a little point of great old trees that
ran out a little way toward the cleared place. Here with our axes we
hewed for many days, cutting great timbers and raising them upright
along the sides of our house-floor. Then came dragging of logs through
the forest and the laying them one on the other along the timbers for
the walls of the house and the driving of wooden pins and hewing of
doorways.

All this time we lived at the hall of Lord Uffē, except some of us who
stayed in the houses round.

I lived at the hall. Thus I saw from the beginning, the trouble that
came to us, and that brought storm and madness. Here, lost from all men,
with the unknown sea between us and all things but the birds and woods
and trees and waters and our little selves, was played a thing that was
unchanged from the far places we had left, as though we had never left
them.

While the fields grew greener, and the birds sang, and our house was
growing nearer finishing, while Lord Uffē walked in the forest and our
ship lay on the beach and our men ate in the hall, my lord, with his
yellow hair, and his soft harping, made love to the daughter of Lord
Uffē’s dead brother, the betrothed of the friend of Lord Uffē, the
great man who had sat in the hall silently when we found welcome there.

It was this way. One day, when the noon held all the fields in stillness
and the little singing things were silent in the grass, I walked—for the
day was too warm to work in the mid-day—slowly, along one of the forest
paths, just shut off from the glare of the sun in the open by a screen
of trees whose leaves hung still in the silence. Then, far before me, I
saw at the end of the path two figures, and stopped, I do not know why.
I saw who the figures were—my own lord and Hilda, the betrothed of his
friend.

They were coming toward me, but their heads were bent down, and they did
not yet see me. I waited; though they walked slowly it seemed but a
moment till they were close to me; they were walking in silence. I know
not why, but I turned softly and went back, they not seeing me. As I
went back the silence oppressed me and I wanted the sound of the
crickets in the grass.

When I came into the hall that night for my meat, and looked up at the
end of the table where she sat by the great man, I sat down in the
shadow and was ashamed, for I saw it all.

Perhaps it was that we were new and strange, or perhaps it was my lord’s
harping, and songs, and gentle ways, that took the maiden’s liking—she
to whom the world was a legend. The people about her were rough; she, in
her simple dress, had learnt from the delicate flowers and things of the
woods where she had lived, to find them so perhaps. But when I looked up
from the shadow and caught the gleam of my lord’s eyes as they met hers,
looking across the forms of Lord Uffē who had welcomed us, and her
betrothed, in this old hall; where below, sat our men and Lord Uffē’s
together, all their hands hard from the work on great timbers—I grew
sick.

I have no heart for this part of the tale; let me go on to the ending.

For many days I stayed by our unfinished hall where the men were busy
thatching the roof and making the fireplace and windows; it was almost
done. At last one night I trod wearily up for my meat at Lord Uffē’s,
while the air felt heavy and the occasional thunder that had rumbled far
away all day, growled in the west, as the sun sank. I came into the hall
when they were all seated, and without looking up at the end of the
table sat myself down silent, while the man next to me growled like the
thunder as he shoved me the meat-dish.

After dinner they called on my lord for a song. He took down his harp
from where it hung on the back of his chair, and striking it three
times—I remember all these small things—bent his head for a moment as if
listening. Then turning, and facing down the hall, he lifts his head;
and, playing softly, his voice rings out in a love song, that brings the
tears into the eyes of the women by the fire in a moment. As it rises,
it wakes even us men—what was that? Only thunder. The song goes on. It
speaks of love and despair, softly, but with a strange tenderness in the
notes that makes each man apply it to himself. The sorrowful notes
droop through the hall to the running music of the strings—he turns
toward the figure in white behind him—What a roar of thunder!—the song
goes on.

It speaks of division and of sorrow, and love unknown; it speaks of the
tenderness of love that is hid, of longing. A crash and volley of
thunder just overhead, and the hall is lit up for a moment by the
lightning—it is gone and the fire shines out again.

My lord is standing facing her; he leans forward, his eyes on hers, and
plays softly, his voice falling low. We bend forward to listen. He is
singing of love and its fulfilment; he sings of love, and the tenderness
of it. Slowly the words fall, his head is bent forward and his eyes gaze
into hers. Slowly she rises from her place, slowly she comes toward him,
her head raised, her eyes on his, slowly she sinks at his feet—the notes
fall—low——

Crash and roar! and a dying-away of the tumult into a distant roll while
the hall is lit up for a moment by the lightning. The light flickers on
the walls, showing the still raised harp, the kneeling figure, the men
half-risen from their places. It is gone, and the fire that has died
down glows feebly.

As I awake from the waking sleep I hear voices raised angrily, and in
the dusk see two figures, one tall, risen by the bench at the end of the
table. Someone throws a log on the smouldering fire and the sparks fly
up. In a moment it is light.

I hear a voice shouting, “Dost thou love this man?”

And Lord Uffē’s voice raised in remonstrance; and from the white figure
now standing leaning against my lord comes a low voice saying something
we cannot hear.

Then there is more tumult that gradually thins down to a single voice
speaking, and Lord Uffē’s words are heard as the silence falls. “Before
thou cam’st we were content; but thou hast brought the noises of the
world with thee, and broken peace. Thou cam’st to us out of the storm;
go back into the storm, my guest!”

Slowly my lord went down the hall, we behind him. Turning my head—I was
the only man who turned—I saw the white figure on its knees again by the
bench, its head hidden. Our host stood, his hand out towards us; away by
the fireplace a face shone over a huge black form on whose hair the
firelight played. I wish I could forget that face!

As we passed in silence through the door the thunder roared and died
away.

Soon we were at the ship in the darkness; we shoved her off in the
darkness; we men hoisted the mended sail in the darkness; we heard the
water begin to sound under our sides, then—a faint roll of thunder from
far away, a long flicker of light across the sky. We saw my lord
standing alone on the hind-deck, the beach, the lights of the hall—the
lightning gone, and we heard the water rushing around our bow in the
darkness.

Not a drop of rain fell; the air was very still.

When the day broke pink over the far level waters, my lord was leaning
on the rail yet. As the yellow light reached over the water till it
touched our ship I saw his face, and it surprised me, being quite gay. I
went up to him, and, the men gazing silently at us, spoke to him.

“The men,” I said, “will carry you home, or east, but then——” I stopped,
for there was something in his face that made me stop.

“Yes,” he said.

“And then we will leave you. If you wish, you can get a new crew.”

“Ah,” he said.

“I do not know how many days—when——”

“Yes,” he said.

I stood silent; in the silence again; “Yes,” he said, smiling to himself
as if in fun.

I moved myself so as to get a look at his face. There seemed a horror in
the eyes, and a stopping of all hope, that made me uncomfortable.

Waiting for a little time, I said again:

“If we come home——”

He did not answer. I was angry with him, and stood one foot
uncomfortably over the other for a little while, and then went back to
the men.

“He will answer only ‘Yes,’” I said angrily. The men grunted, and I sat
down, angry, yet not quite understanding, leaving him still smiling.

All day I sat, angry, and when evening came and we had eaten, grumbling,
and cursing—all save my lord, who had eaten nothing—I got up and
clambered again on to the hind-deck.

When I came to him I stood, all the words having left me. I seized my
courage hard and spoke.

“When we get back, if we ever do, the men will leave you.”

I waited; he gave no answer. I started to speak again, but no words
would come. I tried again. Then, with a sudden movement I leaned round
on the bulwark and saw his face. For a moment yet I stood impatient;
then with a cry of rage and pity I seized his hand and held it a moment,
then dropped it and rushed back among the men, and hid my face in a dark
corner, and sat there cursing weakly in a childish feeling of
impotency—oh, the shame; and the great woe he carried in his smiling
face!

Toward evening the wind fell, and as the sun went down the water shone
smooth, and the light blazed in our faces. The cool of the dusk was a
relief, and long after the great red moon had risen, we lay, restlessly,
surely a strange ship-load, lost on the limitless seas.

When morning came we pushed out our oars and toiled regularly,
creakingly, over the level water. The sun blistered the wood of the
bulwarks and burned our faces, and we longed for evening. So for twelve
days; till the yard was crooked, and our faces the colour of tanned
skin. The men used to groan at the oars. On the twelfth day, midway
between sunset and dark, came a little breeze over the water, that made
the men shout. And for two days we went unsteadily eastward and
northward with the little puffs of wind.

All this time we saw no land and no streak of foam upon the sea, that
was the colour of wood-ashes; only brown seaweed drifting northwards.
My lord had become very brown, and had a way of always turning toward
the light, looking east when the sun rose and west when it set.

Now, for some days we went northward; then for more days we went east,
till one morning, just after sunrise, we saw land, black hills which we
had come near to during the night. And for two days we coasted along the
great cliffs where the water beat white at their black bases. Then we
came to some houses, then to a curve and dying down of the cliffs. Then
a great wind took us and we were blown in, and all the rest was storm.
Once we drove past a sandy desolate point of land that was gone in an
instant; and once the ship grew almost full of water which we baled out
in the darkness.

On the second night, as we were flying through the half-dusk—the moon
shone sometimes—we heard a deep rushing before us just a little louder
than the sea’s rushing. In a moment there grew up in the darkness a
shore of waving trees—we were among rushes—the ship high on the ground.
We were splashing ashore in the dark and the swishing wind, and we sat
and listened under the tossing, complaining trees till daylight.

Two days’ travelling under darkly-dripping branches brought us to a
hall. It looked familiar—it was our own hall!

We had come home!

How quickly wonders fade under joy, though sorrow preserves them long.
By that evening we had come to think of it as very natural.

Three days we passed in eating and drinking, and on the evening of the
third one we sat pale from our drinking along the board. Outside the
ship lay, having been brought round by those sent.

My lord sat on a low stool by the corner of the fire. The talking grew
slack and we yawned, the edge of our home-coming having been ground down
by welcoming. Some of us rose to go to our sleep.

Then my lord stirred, uneasily, for a moment, got up, walked slowly to
the end of the long room, and sat down. We glanced around at the sound
of his tread and then the little talking ceased, for we saw that he
meant to speak. After a moment he spoke.

“I will go there to-morrow, and I would know what men would accompany
me.” His lips were tight closed and he was pale across the forehead.

No one spoke.

“Will no one go?” he asked softly.

After a moment, I said, “Where?” all the men frowning.

“To where we have come from, across the water,” he answered, pressing
his lips together till he showed white round the mouth.

The men sat, perfectly silent.

He came slowly to his feet, stopped, and then began to speak, softly and
strangely, with a great kindness.

“Ye do not ask it, but though I believe ye do not even want it, I will
speak in justification. I would tell ye a few things. In that far place
she had seen but few men, only woods and trees and natural things. The
man to whom she was betrothed not against her will—I will be fair—was
little more than these to her in that dreamy place. Slow and dull, he
had nothing to answer in her own-taught beauty. When we came, she did
love me, truly, but in her kindness, she would stay his wife. She had
Freya’s soul. Her father’s brother liked me. Thus things were when the
night came of our leaving.

“One more—I had never asked her to be not true to her betrothed, so, I
was dreaming, my soul drawn all one way.

“That night when I sang her the love-song—oh ye men of my house, have ye
never done wrong? Are ye sure that the souls within ye would stand firm
while they were pulled with mighty cables? Have ye never had an evil
thought? Have your spirits always been level within ye? Can ye never be
mad, and rock to the torment of it? Do ye understand?

“Well, the music went out of my harp, and tore me—Are ye stone walls,
that ye would not have shaken down like the leaves of trees? I could
have wailed like a child for its mother, or, like a hammer on beams,
crushed a man’s head with my hand.

“Are ye more than are men? Have ye never done any ill? I say, I stood
there, dreaming, playing; my soul drew her to me; I stood there playing
the old love-song, in agony. Then there was a noise of voices, and we
went to the ship, and were many days coming home, being becalmed.”

He stared straight before him—a wakening came into his face—he on a
sudden raised his hands in the air, and, the shaking fingers widespread,
called through the hall in a strange voice. “Oh great Gods, come!”

We sat silent in the lit hall, and the call died away into silence.

“Shame!” cried a woman’s voice; “ye are not men!”

We stirred not even at this reproof from a woman.

“I will go!” cried the voice again, and one of the women who helped in
the cooking stood forward with her great ladle held like a sword.

“Ay, and leave the ladle for the men to manage!” cried a second, a
bare-armed, laughing woman, ranging herself by the other one, and
turning a saucy face on my lord.

“Will ye lend us your swords, stay-at-homes?” called a third from beside
the fire.

“We need not your help to shove the ship off the beach,” said a young
girl, haughtily, as she swept forward to the others and looked up at my
lord from her little height.

There was stillness in the hall, while the three women stood looking up
at my lord. Then some of the men got up, and frowning, hesitated, and
then said they would go. Six of them. We others sat silent. The women
fell laughing and pointing at us, and the lights flared merrily.

The next morning we watched the ship hauled down the beach and put out.
And when she passed round the trees going by the shore, we lost her
suddenly.

For months we waited—for a year. She did not come back. Did they find
the hall lost beyond the waters? Did my lord marry the maiden? Or were
they drowned or lost?

I an old man write this now in “justification,” as my lord said.




THE LAST VOYAGE


The ceiling was broken through in the corner over our heads, and
clean-tongued splinters pointed downward; the big room was smoky from
the roaring fire, and the table was covered with bottles; around sat
some forty men. We were in our armour, except our head-pieces, for we
had ravaged the country round, and had killed or driven away all living
things. All but one; for the old woman of the house stood even now
grinning in the corner. Round the walls were piled plate and beautiful
armour, such as we had never seen before, and there were gold crosses
and gold pots and chains; yet the men grumbled, till at last one threw
his little cup into the fire and strode heavily to the door. He kicked
it and it tumbled outward on one leathern hinge. The rest of us looked
lazily up. A brown expanse of burnt vinelands, and in the distance a
broken-roofed church and the black walls and chimneys of a few cottages
that looked ugly and lonely and pitiful against the blue depth of the
sky. The thought came into the minds of all of us I think, to leave this
brown path that we had trod free of grass, for our ship lay only one
day’s march somewhere westward, and the half of our number again cursed
the lots that they had drawn as they waited; but the old woman, who
always grinned, poured yellow wine into our cups and took the old ones
away, and we drank, and it made us courageous, so that we spent the
evening wrestling by the firelight.

It was just before sunrise that I stirred sleepily and raised myself on
my hands and knees. In a moment I heard clank and clash coming from the
darkness all around me, then silence, but my mind saw grey things that
crept in nearing circles. Ay, grey as sleep, around the house. As I woke
my companions shaking them by their sword-belts, there broke out on the
stillness of the night a loon’s cry, from beyond some bushes by a narrow
pond. We were lying outside under the overhanging front roof of the
inn. We crept through the door, our swords in our hands, and each man
hastily buckled on his armour. When we were ready we turned. Before the
fire stood some twelve mail-clad men, with curious helmets and coverings
for their elbows, and their swords were long, reaching from their
shoulders to the floor. We stood looking each other in the face for a
long time, then we backed slowly to the door and out of it, still gazing
at them, into the pale uncertain light of the watery dawn, leaving them
standing there in front of the glowing embers. We stole toward the
narrow path in the growing light, and waited there in the bushes for
sound from the house, our cross-bows strung. At last, as we waited and
watched, a crouching figure ran hastily round the corner of the house to
the doorway. After this we waited for a very long time till the east was
all gold, then suddenly a file of men, in plate to the waist, with long
bows in their hands, stepped forth from the bushes on either side of the
door.

Men who had grown up on these ravaged vinelands, and who had come from
nowhere on vengeance they were; and as they grouped themselves around
the corner of the house a sudden flare of red came through the doorway,
and we could hear the crackling of lit wood from inside. Then there were
shouts from our men in the upper chambers, and we heard their steel
shoes on the stone stairway. There came the clank of steel on steel, and
the steps on the stairway ceased. Now the smoke came from the windows in
the upper chamber, and in a moment we heard a great rush across the
upper floor—a rush that ended in falling bodies, and yells, and the
breaking of wood, and three of our men broke through the doorway. In a
moment they were down, each man with a goose-shaft in him. The bowmen
closed in the doorway, and the house was filled with a roaring as of
bulls, and the clanking as of a thousand anvils in caves; and the flames
poured from the chimney. Now came the old woman who always grinned,
rushing out through the doorway, but as she came, one of the
men-at-arms who stood behind the others raised his bow, and she fell
kicking over the pot-helm of one of our men. Last, came six more of our
men, their clothes singed off outside their armour, and their faces deep
red. They came through the door sideways, their sweaty swords turning in
their hands as they struck, but in a moment they fell also, two by two;
and then the tumult within the house died down, but the flames roared
through the crumbling rafters, and the burning wisps of thatch lit up
the distant poplar tops where the wide road curved in the distance. So
we crept away over the burnt fields, crouching in ditches, with our
swords drawn; we had no water all day, but we passed many cottages where
no one came to the doors to stare at us nor smoke rose from the
chimneys, and there was no waving of yellow grain on the hill-tops. We
passed the bones of a horse, and after, part of the armour of a
man—rough armour—and as the sun sank we passed a woman’s head-covering
lying dirty by the road. It was after the dusk, which comes stealing in
these countries, and blinds you from behind, sudden and soft, that we
smelt the sea, and we stumbled forward hastily over a charred hillside.
The ground grew softer as we descended, though now we could see nothing.
Soon we were on level, and our feet sunk in the sand, and we heard a
rustle and a whispering just before us. We ran forward and waded to our
waists in the unseen water. Ah! ’twas good. Then we crept back to the
hillside again, where we lay until morning in a hollow, covered with
dead leaves; and in the morning we were awakened before the sunrise, by
the strong salt wind in our faces, and the lashing of what last night
had been dainty with playfulness. The beach was brown with seaweed cast
up, and the spume of the light waves that broke on the shore retreated
in streamers and circles far out from the land again. The keen wind
whistled on the edges of our armour and sang round us, and we turned our
faces from it, and it blew our long hair into our eyes, stinging us.
Now, we knew that the ship lay somewhat to the north of us, for our
lord had said that she should not pass a certain great rock, round whose
top many gulls circled, but stay to the northward; so we tramped the
heavy sands the gathering wind at our backs, and we stumbled over the
piles of slippery seaweed and passed round the promontory, where was the
Gull Rock. So it came to late in the afternoon and we were very weary,
having had no meat or drink. Yet we kept on in silence, bending as we
pulled our heavy feet from the sucking sand-holes. The spume blew in our
faces now when the waves broke; the beach was narrow, and to our right
were rocks which rose up straight into the air. So, as I say, it came to
late in the afternoon. We were walking, each man in the other’s
footsteps, and I, being the largest and having the largest feet, went
first. Suddenly I heard a sharp sound from one of the men in the line,
and turning, I saw that the last man of us was on his hands and knees in
the sand, with his head lowered. I ran to him. Sticking from the side of
his back was a great goose-shaft, the feather and some three inches of
the wood showing; and when I raised him till he came to his knees, I
saw the point coming out at his armpit, for he wore no back-plate. We
laid him on his side under the rocks and waited till he died. It was not
long; he rolled himself as I have seen an acrobat do, talking hastily of
small affairs of our old hall. So we left him on the sand and tramped on
under the rocks. We turned a point where the beach ran out a little and
the great waves reared themselves like angry clouds, on end, and then
another man fell with a sharp sound as of the bird who pecks on the side
of trees. It was a cross-bow bolt that had hit him in the side of the
head. Even as we were turning from him the man next to me gave a sharp
cry and put his hand on my shoulder, and pointing upwards to the heights
above, spoke in a trembling voice, “They have found us.” He had a long
arrow shot through his right forearm just above the wrist, where there
was a space between his leather glove and the sleeve of his chain-shirt.
Then we went on, with him cursing and groaning and he pulled off his
glove and emptied the blood on the sand, and it dripped from his fingers
as he plodded along leaning on my shoulder. Then another man fell, this
time quite dead, shot between back and breastplate, for he had no
chain-shirt. Then the four of us, one behind the other hurried cursing
along the narrow beach, catching occasional glimpses as we glanced
upward, of brown and grey figures running, against the torn clouds of
the moving sky. Soon another man fell, shot through the leg and not able
to walk. There was no carrying him, and we could not leave him there,
for there is torture for the sacking of churches and burning of towns
and the razing of homesteads; so we told him this; and he asked us to
lift him and bring him and put him in the edge of the sea where the
white foam would break over him; and we did so and drew back and stood
in silence. In a moment he turned to us, and with a word—“Farewell”!—he
drew his dagger, and as the green of the surf curved over him I saw it
go under his shoulder that he had bared, and when the green of the wave
had changed to the retreating, and whispering spume again, there was
only something dark in the wash of the water. Then we three others left
that place and staggered on over the sucking sands. There was a headland
before us, from which great fragments of rock had fallen and blocked the
beach, and we could hear the sea dashing and roaring and moaning among
the hollows, and see the great waves strike and leap up and scatter in
sunlit spray. When we saw this bar across our path our hopes sank low,
and we hurried that we might die like men or perchance get over it, and
ever as we followed the curve of the beach the sputter of cross-bow
bolts came from the sand behind us, and twice long arrows whizzed from
my breastplate and glittered into the sea. At last we came to the rocks.
I went first, climbing, my sword in my hand as a staff. We fell over the
great blocks of dripping black, and we slimed our hands and armour on
the seaweed that lifted with every wave; our clothes were heavy with
water, and the wounded man who leant on my shoulder groaned as I
hoisted him up and down. At last we gained the top of the largest rock,
the outermost black fragment on which the great waves rent themselves. I
knew we must not linger, and sliding down the side with my other
companion, I turned for the wounded man, but he sat upon the rock his
face drawn all sideways with pain, for he had raised his helmet for
breath, and there was a cross-bow bolt sticking firmly out from one of
his eyes. One glance was all; then the world was a green fairyland with
rushing music and the noise of mighty crowds; then a soft rolling as in
tons of fleece, and then the air again, and sunlight.

The rock was bare. We staggered up, and crawling over stones like
children before they have learned to walk, came at last to the sands
again, the seaweed hanging from our shoulders and a weight as of leaden
anchors driving us down.

We pressed the water from our eyes and turned and looked at each other,
and then turned to the beach again; and gave a great shout, for our
ship lay high on the sand, and we could see the heads of our men over
the bulwark already watching us; then an arm waved, and down the gale
came a fine sound of welcome in our own language. Heavy as we were we
could not run, but we stumbled forward as an old horse to stable, and
after we had crossed the beach, without a sound my companion fell
against me, and when I held him from me and held him up, and saw the
goose-shaft through his neck, I dropped him on the sands, and, cursing
as I hobbled, broke into a shambling trot, using my sword as I ran. The
arrows struck against my back-plate as I bent over, but I had no time to
look above, and the cross-bow bolts whizzed and volleyed past my ears,
and sang, but I came to the ship at last and was lifted in, for I could
not climb myself, and there I fell down between two of the rowers’
benches and hid my face in my hands, while the arrows sang over us from
the cliffs and the men looked up wondering as they crouched inside the
bulwarks.

But soon they came and whispered to me for news of the expedition, and
when I told them that of our lord and his forty men I only would stand
before them, they groaned as men who have no to-morrow and who know not
what to do. This could not go on. The bow of the ship was feathered with
arrows and they began to strike into the benches and the after-deck.

“Can we not shove off?” I asked.

“Look at the sea,” answered the oar-captain pointing; and as he pointed,
his hand was broken by a cross-bow bolt. “I shall never hold oar again,”
he said. No more.

While they were binding his hand, I crept to the bulwark, and raising a
shield between my head and the cliffs, looked past the stern of the ship
at the white waters that reached for us, and the brown arms that opened
to us, and I thought of the suffocation of the sea and of its
indifference in its anger, and of its beautiful white carelessness, as I
went down—down—down—to the bottom-most seaweeds, where the eyeless cold
things crawl.

I was very weak; now they brought me meat and strong, flame-coloured
water to drink; and the meat did me much good, but the flame-coloured
water sent me to sleep under one of the forward benches, out of the
arrows’ flight. And when I waked a new dawn was breaking, and I heard
the shouting of men outside the ship, the shouting of men in the
language of those countries; and I lifted my sick head and gazed at
them, but they curved and numbered and unnumbered themselves, till at
last I heard in my brain a twanging of bows, and looking upward to the
fore-deck, I saw our few men gathered there, crouching, and sending
their arrows fast. The sea had not gone down, but the wind did not
whistle, and in the west the clouds looked like heavy rain and thunder.
As the mist that is over the sea-beach in those countries in the morning
cleared off, I looked again, and I found that the men who disputed with
us from the beach were few, they being but six knights in half-armour.
Now, lying and watching, for I felt that I could do nothing till the
world was level again, I saw the fifteen of our men jump from the
fore-deck at a word from the oar-captain, and thrusting the long oars
over the sides, strain on them in the sand as each wave came in, and as
they strained upon them the ship would lift and glide out more, and
faster; till at last we were quite afloat and the great waves took us,
and turned us about, like a piece of bark. Then the men fell into their
places and we headed the white seas, the half-armed men on the beach
riding knee-high on their horses into the foam, and calling curses at
us. So, after weary rowing, and every man of us wet as the sea, we came
out of that bay and rode the great smooth waves that had been white the
day before.

Well, we kept far from the land, only seeing, one dusk, a white cliff on
our right from a distance; then the gale took us again and drove us
westward and then northward, till the men would throw down their oars
and cry out to the gods of the sea, to say which one of them should be
sacrificed to their hate.

We were half mad with the drink we had in the ship—for we had no
beer—and as we lurched and swayed in the depth between two seas, or as
we climbed up sideways and balanced for a moment while the foam flew and
then surged down with sick motion, the men would trail their oars on the
water and sink their heads on the handles. So, for many days we were
driven as the wizards drive the storm-ships across the face of the icy
moon, as the waves kiss her wet sides and the clouds break over her. So
northward we went, till the cold struck into our bones and we ate fried
fat like the savages of Finland; and we passed great ice-fields
sometimes, at night, when the moon shone on them for miles and gave them
smoothness which the sun took all away again, and made them grey and
rugged and small.

Still we went north; our water was almost gone and we had only the
devil’s drinks, and the wet bread and fish. Now, when we passed the
ice-fields the oar-captain would order us to fasten to them, and we
would bring into the ship great chunks of ice and melt them in the
cauldron by the mast-foot. But there came a time when for three days we
saw no ice and the men’s tongues were stiff for thirst. Their eyes
looked cruel and sad. Thus, one night, as I lay at my place under the
forward seat, wrapped in a bear-skin, I saw the black figure of a man on
the rail at the other side of the ship. He crept to where the rail ends
in the lift of the fore-deck. Then, dropping to the bench under which I
lay, he crawled to the cauldron where a little water was left, and
putting in his hand he broke off, little by little, pieces, until I
could see by the long time that his hand rested in the cauldron that
there was no more there. Then I reached out and grasped him by the leg
and pulling him off the bench I rolled myself about him and called out
for the oar-captain. The oar-captain came and all the men came after and
they lit a light, and I lay off him, and we saw his face; and the
oar-captain said—and to every man it seemed just—

“You have stolen the last of our water, more than your share, therefore
you shall go to join your comrades under the sea; when you are ready.”

The man drew himself up and walked the length of the ship stepping from
bench to bench, we all following, our feet making a clatter as we went.
He came to the upper-deck and climbed up, and went to the rail and stood
there and looked on the moveless sea under the moonlight.

“Are you ready?” asked the oar-captain.

“Get out your oars,” answered the man.

Some half of the men went to their places and shoved the oars out.

“When I go, row!” he said, in a loud voice.

Then, climbing across the bulwark, he stood at the edge a moment his
hands on his hips, then suddenly he raised his clenched fists in the
air, and in perfect silence met the sea. As we rowed away, we could see
his dark head in the moonlight as he swam, and until we had shifted the
position of the ship many times we could not lose it, as the men rowed
on, the oars creaking, and the indifferent moonlight silvering their
slow dips.

       *       *       *       *       *

We are bound in by the ice, and the ship lies high in the bow, white,
like a lord’s tomb in the snow. It has been snowing all day, and the
oar-captain makes us tramp one after the other round the half-buried
ship till we can walk no more, when we sleep in the skins under the
fore-deck till a comrade shakes us, and we groan and rouse and walk
again. The dull sky has turned to the colour of ashes. Sometimes the air
lifts for a moment into a slight wind that sends the frost-lace
scurrying over the ice-blocks, and then falls still again. Our feet
leave great tracks; we can hardly see through the white drift, we are
silent in the wonderful white feathers ... and the silence!

Lars puffs near me, swinging his arms. The Icelander is staring out into
the storm, with his hands thrust into his belt. When at last we rest in
our furs, we are huddled, leaning, against one another for warmth. We
cannot see the sunset; only a dying-out of the pale half-light of the
snow-drift. The men grow superstitious, and begin to talk of robbing
churches, and making no restitution to the widows of killed men; and
they mutter about old days—talking crossly of things we have long
forgotten.


On the third night, Kai, a good man, died; on the fourth night three
other men, on the fifth night, none; on the sixth day we had eaten the
last of our fish, and Rudolf of Schleswig went out into the mist with
his cross-bow to see if he could find anything. So, we lost him, for
though he was a very strong man he never came back. It was on this same
day that one of the men, Hans, a man from the south countries, little
liked, went mad, and became a child again, till he wandered off and I
think killed himself by a fall from a great ice-block, for we saw his
black figure there, and then we heard a sound as of something striking
on the ice; then more men died, I do not know, until old Olē, the
oar-captain, and I only were left strong. The rest ate snow and
wandered off cursing the sacking of churches or prattling nonsense of
house affairs; sometimes they would come back, but I do not know if I
spoke to them, for they were very dim.

It was some time in the light, when, after sitting against the side of
the ship for a few moments I got up to walk again, that I saw come
hopping toward me over the snow a white rabbit with white eyes.

He hops almost to my feet and then jumps into the ship; then comes a
snow-ball rolling itself, of the height of a small man, and when it
comes just before me it breaks into smoke and I cannot see through the
smoke for a moment.

Music—light music, daintily, faintly playing.... It comes from far away
... it is just over my head ... then it tinkles, trills, breaks, and
jingles, and falls down into the inside of my head making darkness. Now
comes a long waste of clouds over the snow-fields, and the ship seems to
rise to them as they billow under her bows.

They come, innumerable long fat white clouds; clouds of no shape; clouds
that I hate.

I awake; I am leaning against the side of the ship; I stagger; we are
tramping on the old path. A fine snow sifts down into my neck; my skin
is so hot and my bones are so cold. There is no sky, only something that
moves above there. Then, as I turn to the stern of the ship, I seem to
hear in the distance the sound of great drinking, and the echoing of the
warm beer-tankards as they strike in the air, and there comes a small
and weak voice beyond me neither above nor below:

“I am Odin, the thunder-holder, and I speak to you greeting, thus,
passing on.”

And again the voice comes as I lean against the ship with my arms
outspread.

“I am Thor, of the hammer; hail to you, man, passing on.”

The sounds of the mirth of the gods die down. Then a voice speaks
deeply, with no ringing in it as was in the voice of Thor, and I do not
understand. The snow comes driving into my eyes, and the ship seems to
lean toward me, and then away again, then all is still.

The snow comes into my eyes again, and I hear faint music as of churches
and sweet voices singing, and it seems to me when I can see again that
there are dim ships before me; ships whose names only I have learnt from
scanty books no more; and all those gods come dancing toward me; then
the music breaks, and there is great cracking of the ice, and I fall
down. There is no voice of Christian God, for I have sacked his
churches. The snow is in my eyes, and I am mad. I lean my head against
the ship. There is no warmth, and I am afraid, alone.

                               THE END.


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