The Snake Pit (10 page)

“After that I knew no more till folk came to mass in the morning and found us. Torgils was then as you remember him—his wits were gone, and he was more helpless than a suckling, only that he could go about. If he came near edged tools he roared like a beast and fell down, foaming at the mouth—and he had been the boldest wielder of his weapons that I have known. I have been told that his hair turned white in the very first winter.

“I lay in bed year after year with my broken leg, and in the first years the splinters of bone worked out of the wounds, and the matter ran out and stank so that I could not bear myself—and many a time I besought God, with floods of tears, to be allowed to die, for my torments seemed intolerable. But Father was with me and helped me and bade me bear it as befitted a man and a Christian. And at last my leg was healed—but Torgils knew me not when I came hither—’twas five winters after. And Olav Ribbung bade me keep away, for he could not brook seeing his nephew dragging himself about as a wreck—I went on crutches at that time—when his own son had been the cause of it.”

Olav lay awake long after the old man had fallen asleep. Favourites of fortune they had not been, the men of his race. But they had endured one thing and another—

The broken man there, asleep in his bed. His other namesake, the great-grandfather, whom he remembered living here with his grisly mad son—Olav felt warmed by a fellow-feeling with them. The aged woman, Tora, Ingolf the priest: loyal they had been, to
a lost cause, to dead and doomed ones who were their own flesh and blood.

He thought of the Steinfinnssons—such, no doubt, were the favourites of fortune. Carefree, reckless folk—to them misfortune was as a poison they had swallowed. They held out till they had thrown it up again—but then they died. And tonight he saw it, fully and clearly—Ingunn too was of that sort—she too had been stricken by misfortune as by a mortal sickness; she would never hold up her head again. But it was his fortune to be so moulded that he could endure, even without happiness. His forefathers had not abandoned a lost cause—they had raised the old standard so long as there was a shred left of it. In his heart he never knew whether he regretted or not that he had accepted Earl Alf’s offer and taken his discharge from the service of his lord—but he had accepted it for the sake of the woman who had been given into his hands while both were yet little children. And he would protect her and love her, as he had protected her when a boy and loved her since first he knew he was a man—and if he got no happiness with her, since she could never be aught but a sick and useless wife, that made no difference, he now realized—he would love her and protect her to her last hour.

But in broad daylight he knit his brows when he recalled his thoughts of the night. One has so many queer fancies when one cannot sleep. And she had been happy and well in the summer-fair as never before. She was utterly disheartened now—but then she had never been any great one at bearing trouble, poor girl. After the child was born she would surely be both happy and well.

For an instant it crossed his mind: “Can it be that she is thinking of the child she bore last year?” She had never mentioned it, and so he had not been willing to do so either. He knew no more than that it had been alive when they left the Upplands the summer before.

I
NGUNN
was thinking of Eirik now—night and day. This too had grown pale and unreal to her in the first happy days—that she had had a little son who slept in her arm, sucked her breast, and lay
against her, small and soft and warm, and she breathed the sourish milky scent of him as she flooded him with her tears in the blind, dark nights. And she had parted from him, as though tearing herself in two, before she faced the final horror and the outer darkness.

But all these horrors lay sunk beneath the horizon of her fevered nights of darkness and tumult, when she was tossed high and drawn down into the abyss by waves of dizzy swooning. When she came back into the light of day, Olav was there and took her to him. When she was made happy, it was as though the hapless being of her memory were not herself. Weeks passed without her thinking once of the child; as though she wondered, vaguely and almost indifferently: “Is he still alive?” And she would not have been greatly moved, she thought, if she had heard that he was dead. But then it might chance that an uneasy thought stirred within her: “How
is
he, is Eirik
well—
or is he ill-treated among strangers?” And from among the pale and distant memories of last year’s misery, one shot out and came to life—the little, persistent scream that nothing could quiet but her breast. The truth smote her with a cruel stab: she was mother to a whimpering babe that had been flung out among strangers far away and perhaps at that moment was screaming himself hoarse and tired for his mother—But she thrust these thoughts from her with all her might. The foster-mother had a kind look, so perhaps she was more charitable than the mother who had brought the child into the world. No—she thrust the thought aside, away with it! And the memory of Eirik faded out again. And here she was at Hestviken, as Olav’s wife, in all good fortune—and she felt her youth and beauty flourish anew. She bent her head, radiant with bashful joy, if her husband did but look at her.

But as the new child grew within her—from being a secret, wasting exhaustion which turned her giddy and sick with fear of the shadows it might conjure up to stand between Olav and her, it had become a burden that weighed on her and obstructed her whenever she would move. And meanwhile the most important thing about her now in the eyes of all was that she should bring new life into the old stock. Olav Ingolfsson talked of nothing else. Had she been queen of Norway and had the people’s hopes of peace and prosperity for generations been centred on the expected child, the old man could not have regarded the coming event as
more momentous. But the neighbours too, when they met the young mistress, let her know that they counted this glad tidings. Olav Audunsson, since he was seven years old, had been the only one on whom rested the hope of carrying on the Hestvik race, and ever since that time he had wandered far from the spot where his home was. After twenty years of roaming he had come back to the lands of his ancestors. When children began to grow up about him and his wife, something that had long been out of joint would be put right again.

Her own household also took their share in what awaited their mistress. They had liked Ingunn from the first, because she was so charming to look at, kind and well-intentioned, and they had pitied her a little for being so utterly unfitted for all the work of her house. And now they pitied her, seeing her sorry state. She turned pale as a corpse if she did but enter the cook-house when they were cooking seal-meat or sea-birds—she was not used to this oily smell in the food where she came from, she murmured. The maids laughed and pushed her out—“We will get through it without you, mistress!” She could not stand up to serve out the meat without the sweat bursting out on her face—the old dairy-woman gently pressed her into a seat on the bench and stuffed cushions behind her back—“Let me be carver today, Ingunn—you can scarce stand on your feet, poor child!” She laughed, seeing that the mistress was shaking with weariness. And they were fearful how it would go with her. She did not look as if she could bear much more. And it was over three months to her time, from what she herself said.

Olav was the only one who never showed sign of joy at the expected child; he never uttered a word about it—and his household marked that well. But Ingunn thought in her heart that, when once the boy came into the world, he would be no less wonderful in his father’s eyes than in those of all the others. And the bitterness, at which she herself was terrified, welled up anew.

Not a spark of affection did she feel for the child she bore, but a yearning for Eirik and a grudge against this new babe, whom every good thing awaited and all were ready to caress when he came. And it seemed to her as though it were the fault of this child that Eirik was cast out into the darkness. When she felt that folk looked kindly upon her, took pains to clear her path and make things easy for her, the thought struck her: “When Eirik
was to be born I had to hide myself in corners; the eyes of all stoned me with scorn and anger and sorrow and shame; Eirik was hated by all before he was born—I hated him myself.” As she sat at her sewing she recalled how she had staggered from wall to wall when the first pangs came upon her: Tora made up a bundle of swaddling-cloths, the worst and oldest she had left over from her own babes. And she, the mother, had thought they were good enough and more, for this one. The maid sitting with her looked in astonishment at her mistress—Ingunn tore impatiently at the fine woollen swathing she was sewing, and threw it from her.

Now he was a year old, a little more. Ingunn sat out of doors the first summer evenings, watching the little child, Björn’s and Gudrid’s youngest, as he stumped about, fell and picked himself up, stumped on and tumbled again in the soft green grass of the yard. She did not hear a word of all Gudrid’s chatter. My Eirik—barefoot, poorly clad like this one here, with his poor foster-parents.

Old Olav died a week before the Selje-men’s Mass,
³
and Olav Audunsson made a goodly funeral feast for him. Among the ladies who came out to Hestviken to help Ingunn with the preparations was Signe Arnesdatter, who was newly married and mistress of Skikkjustad. Her younger sister Una was with her, and when the guests were leaving, Olav persuaded Arne and the priest to let Una stay behind, so that Ingunn might be spared all toil and trouble at the end of her time.

Olav was somewhat vexed, for he could not help seeing that Ingunn did not like the girl. And yet Una was deft and willing to help, cheerful, and good to look at—small and delicately built, nimble and quick as a wagtail, fair-haired and bright-eyed. Olav himself had grown fond of his second cousins. He was slow to make acquaintances, with his reserved and taciturn nature, but there were not many folk he disliked. He took them as they were, with their faults and their virtues, was glad to meet them as acquaintances, but not unwilling to make friends with those he liked, if only he were given time to thaw.

Olav Ingolfsson had got together a quantity of good timber, and in the previous autumn Olav Audunsson had already done a good deal to repair the most pressing damage in the houses of the manor. This summer he pulled down the byre and rebuilt it, for the old one was in such a state that the cows stood in a slough of mire in autumn, and in winter the snow drifted in so that the beasts could hardly have suffered more from cold if they had been out in the open.

One Saturday evening the household was assembled in the courtyard. It was fine, warm summer weather and the air was sweet with the scent of the first haycocks. And the fragrance of lime blossom was wafted down from the cliff behind the outhouses. The byre was set up again and the first beams of the roof were in place; the heavy roof-tree lay with one end on the ground and the other leaning against the gable as the men had left it when work ceased for the week.

Now the two young house-carls took a start and ran up the sloping beam, to see how high up they could go. Presently the other men joined in, even the master himself. The game went merrily, with laughter and shouts whenever one of the men had to jump off. Ingunn and Una were sitting against the wall of the house, when Olav called to the young maid:

“Come hither, Una—we will see how sure of foot you are!”

The girl excused herself with a laugh, but all the men crowded round her—she had laughed at them when they had to jump off halfway up the beam—no doubt she would be able to run right to the top, she would. At last they came and dragged her forcibly from the bench.

Laughing, she pushed the men aside, took a run and sprang a little way up, but then she had to jump down. Again she took a run and reached much higher this time—stood swaying for an instant, lithe and slender, waving her outstretched arms, while her little feet in the thin summer shoes, without soles or heels, clutched the beam like the claws of a little bird. But then she had to jump to one side, like a tomtit that cannot get a hold on a log wall. Olav stood below and caught her. Now the young maid had entered into the sport and ran up time after time, while Olav ran backwards below and received her laughing in his arms every time she had to jump down. Neither of them had an idea of any
thing, till Ingunn stood beside them, panting and white as snow beneath her freckles.

“Stop it now!” she whispered, catching at her breath.

“There is no danger, I tell you.” Olav comforted her with a laugh. “Do you not see that I catch her—”

“I do see it.” Olav looked at his wife in astonishment; she was on the point of tears, he could hear. Then she burst out, in mingled sobs and scornful laughter, with a toss of the head toward the girl: “Look at her—she is not so foolish but she has the wit to be ashamed.”