The Thrall of Leif the Lucky
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Ottilie A. Liljencrantz >> The Thrall of Leif the Lucky
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CHAPTER XXIX
THE BATTLE TO THE STRONG
He is happy
Who gets for himself
Praise and good-will.
Ha'vama'l
It was a picture of sylvan revelry that the sunset light reddened, as it
bade farewell to the Norse camp on the river bluff. On the green before
the huts, two of the fair-haired were striving against other in a
rousing tug-of-war. Now the hide was stretched motionless between them;
now it was drawn a foot to the right, amid a volley of jeers; and now it
was jerked back a foot to the left, with an answering chorus of cheers.
The chief sat under the spreading maple-tree, watching the sport
critically, with an occasional gesture of applause. Over the head of the
bear-cub she was fondling, Helga watched it also, with unseeing eyes.
Those who had come in from hunting and fishing sprawled at their ease on
the turf, and shouted jovial comments over their wine-cups.
They welcomed Rolf and the Norman with a shout, when the pair appeared
on the edge of the grove.
"Hail, comrades!"--"It was in our minds to give you up for lost!" "Your
coming we will take as an omen that Kark will also return some
time."--"Yes, return and cook us some food."--"We are becoming hollow as
bubbles."
Rolf accepted their greetings with an easy flourish.
"You will become also as thin as bubbles if you wait for Kark to cook
your food," he answered, lightly. "I bring the chief the bad tidings
that he has lost his thrall." Pushing his companion gently aside, he
walked over to where the Lucky One sat. "It will sound like an old
woman's tale to you, chief," he warned him; "yet this is nothing but the
truth."
While the skin-pullers abandoned their contest and dropped cross-legged
upon the hide to listen, and the outlying circle picked up its drinking
horns and crept closer, he related the whole experience, simply and
quite truthfully, from beginning to end.
From all sides, exclamations of amazement and horror broke out when he
had finished. Only the chief sat regarding him in silence, a skeptical
pucker lifting the corner of his mouth.
Leif said finally, "Truth came from your mouth when you foretold that
this would appear to me as strange as the tales old women tell. Until
within the last month we have passed through that district almost daily;
and never yet have we found aught betokening the presence of human
beings. That they should thus appear to you--"
"They came like the monsters in a dream, and vanished like them," Rolf
declared.
"Saving in the fact that dream monsters do not leave mangled bodies
behind them," Leif reminded him; and his eyes narrowed with an
unpleasant shrewdness. "Rolf Erlingsson," he advised, "confess that they
are the dreams you liken them to. That Kark was no favorite with you or
your friend"--he nodded toward the Norman--"was seen by everybody.
Confess that it was by the sword of one of you that the thrall met his
death."
For once the Wrestler's face lost its gentleness. His huge frame
stiffened haughtily, as he drew himself up.
"Leif Ericsson," he returned, fiercely, "when--for love of good or fear
of ill--have you ever known me to lie?"
The chief looked at him incredulously.
"You will swear to the truth of the tale?"
"I will swear to its truth by my knife, by my soul, by the crucifix you
wear on your breast."
After a moment, Leif arose and extended his hand. "In that case, I would
believe a statement that was twice as unlikely," he said, with honorable
frankness. And a sound of applause went around as their hands clasped.
From the spot where the Norman had halted when his companion pushed
forward, there came the rustle of a slight disturbance. Sigurd had
caught his friend by his cloak and was pleading with him in a passionate
undertone, growing more and more desperate at each resolute shake of the
black head. The instant Leif resumed his seat, the Fearless One wrenched
himself free and strode forward. Rolf strove to bar his way, but Robert
Sans-Peur evaded him also, and took up his stand before the bench under
the maple-tree.
"The Fates appear to be balancing their scales to-night, chief," he
said, grimly. "For the dead man whom you believed to be alive, you see
here a living man whom you thought to be dead. For the thrall that you
have lost, I present to you another."
Winding his hand in his long black locks, he tore them from his head and
revealed the crisp waves of his own fair hair.
From either hand there arose a buzz of amazement and incredulity mingled
with grunts of approval and blunt compliments and half-muttered pleas
for leniency. Only two persons neither exclaimed nor moved. Helga stood
in the rigid tearless silence she had promised, her eyes pouring into
her lover's eyes all the courage and loyalty and love of her brave soul.
And the chief sat gazing at the rebel brought back to life, without so
much as a wink of surprise, without any expression whatever upon his
inscrutable face.
After a moment Alwin went on steadily, "I hid myself under this disguise
because I believed that luck might grant me the chance to render you
some service which should outweigh my offence. Because I was a
short-sighted fool, I did not see that the better the Norman succeeded,
the worse became the Saxon's deceit. My mind changed when your own lips
told me what would be the fate of the man who should deceive you."
The chief's face was as impassive as stone, but he nodded slightly.
"A man of my age does not take it well to be fooled by boys," he said.
"It is a poor compliment to his intelligence, when they have the opinion
that they can mould him between their fingers. Though he had rendered me
the greatest service in the world, the man who should deceive me should
die."
Silence fell like a shroud upon the scattered groups. With a queer
little smile upon her drawn lips, Helga softly unsheathed her dagger and
ran her fingers along its edge. Alwln, earl's son, drew a long breath,
and the muscles of his white face twitched a little; then he pulled
himself together resolutely. With one hand he plucked the knife from his
belt and cast it into the chief's lap; with the other, he tore his tunic
open from neck to belt.
"I have asked no mercy," he said, proudly.
Leif made no motion to pick up the weapon. Instead, a glint of something
like dry humor touched his keen eyes.
"No," he said, quietly. "You have asked nothing of what you should have
asked. You have even failed to ask whether or not you have deceived me."
With her dagger half drawn, Helga paused to stare at him.
"You--knew--?" she gasped.
Leif smiled a dry fine smile. "I have known since the day on which
Tyrker was lost," he said. "And I had suspected the truth since the
night of the day upon which we sailed from Greenland."
He made a gesture toward the shield-maiden that was half mocking and
half stern. "You showed little honor to my judgment, kinswoman, when you
took it for granted I should not know that love alone could cause a
woman to behave as you have done. Or did you think I had not heard to
whom your heart had been given? That my ears only had been dead to the
love tale which every servant-maid in Brattahlid rolled like honey on
her tongue? Or did you imagine that I knew you so little as to think you
capable of loving one man in the winter and another in the spring? Even
had the Norman borne no resemblance to the Englishman, still would I--"
"But..." Helga stammered, "but--I thought that you thought--Rolf said
that Sigurd--"
For perhaps the first time in his life, Rolf's cheeks burned with
mortification as a derisive snap of the chief's fingers fell upon his
ear.
"Sigurd! Your playmate! With whom you have quarrelled and made up since
there were teeth in your head! By Peter, if it were not that the joke
appears to lie wholly on my side, I could find it in my heart to punish
the four of you without mercy, for no other crime than your opinion of
my intelligence!"
Alwin took a hesitating step forward. He had been standing where his
first defiance had left him, a light of comprehension dawning in his
face; and also a spark of resentment kindling in his eyes.
Now he said slowly, "It is not your anger which appears strange to us,
chief. It is the slowness of your justice. That knowing all this time of
our deceit, you have yet remained quiet. That you have allowed us to
live in dreams, and led us on to behave ourselves like fools! We have
been no better than mice under the cat's paw." He glanced at Helga's
thin cheeks and the pain-lines around her mouth, and the full force of
his indignation rang out in his voice. "To us it meant life or death,
heaven or hell,--was it worthy of a man like you to find amusement in
our suffering?"
Though it was as faint as the rustling of leaves, unmistakable applause
swept around. Rolf dared to clap his hands softly.
The chief replied by a direct question, as he leaned back against the
maple and eyed his young rebel piercingly. "Befooling and bejuggling
were the drinks you prepared for me; was it not just that you should
learn from experience how sour a taste they leave in the mouth?"
Though moment after moment dragged by, Alwin did not answer that. His
eyes fell to the ground, and he stood with bent head and clenched hands.
The chief went on. "You who could so easily fathom the workings of my
mind, should have no need to ask my motives. It may be that I found
entertainment in playing you like a fish on a line. Or it may be that I
was not altogether sure of my ground, and waited to be certain before I
stepped. Or perhaps I was curious to see what you would do next, and
felt able to gratify my curiosity since I knew that, through all your
antics, I held you securely in the hollow of my hand. Or perhaps--" Leif
hesitated for an instant, and there crept into his voice a note so
unusual that all stared at him,--"or perhaps, in becoming sure of my
ground, I became uncertain of the honor of the man whom I wished to
place highest in my friendship, and so deemed it wisest to remain under
cover until he should reveal all the hidden parts of his nature. It may
have been for any or all of these reasons. You, who have come nearer to
me than any man alive, should have no difficulty in selecting the true
one."
Was it possible that reproach rang in those last words? It sounded so
strangely like it, that Tyrker involuntarily curved his hand around his
ear to amend some flaw in his hearing.
Alwin's face underwent a great change. Suddenly he flung his arms apart
in a gesture of utter surrender.
"I will strive against you no longer!" he cried, passionately. "You are
as much superior to me as the King to his link-boy. Do as you like with
me. I submit to you in everything." He fell upon his knee and hid his
face in his hands.
Then the tone of Leif's voice became so frankly friendly that Helga's
beautiful head was raised as a drooping flower's by the soft spring
rain.
"Already you have heard your sentence. The fair words I spoke to Robert
the Norman I spoke also to Alwin of England. When I promised wealth and
friendship and honor to Robert Sans-Peur, I promised them also to you.
Take the freedom and dignity which befit a man of your accomplishments
and--with one exception --ask of me anything else you choose."
With one exception! Helga sprang forward and caught Leif's hand
imploringly in hers. And Alwin, still upon his knee, reached out and
grasped the chief's mantle.
"Lord," he cried, "you have been better to me, a hundredfold better,
than I deserve! Yet, would you be kinder still... Lord, grant me this
one boon, and take back all else that you have promised."
The chief's brawny hand touched Helga's face caressingly.
"Do you still believe that I would rub salt on your wounds, if it were
in my power to relieve you?" he reproached them. "But one man in the
world has the right to say where Helga shall be given in marriage; he is
her father, Gilli of Trondhjem. Already I have done him a wrong in
permitting, by my carelessness, that one of thrall-estate should steal
his daughter's love. In honor, I can do no less than guard the maiden
safely until the time when he can dispose of her as pleases him. I do
not say that I will not use with him what influence I possess; yet I
advise you against expecting anything favorable from the result. I think
you both know his mercy."
CHAPTER XXX
FROM OVER The SEA
At night is joyful
He who is sure of travelling entertainment;
A ship's yards are short;
Variable is an autumn night;
Many are the weather's changes
In five days,
But more in a month.
Ha'vama'l
It developed, however, that the lovers' chances for happiness did not
hang upon so frail a thread as the mercy of Gilli of Trondhjem. While
the exploring vessel was still at sea, with the icy headlands of
Greenland only just beginning to stand out clearly before her bow,
unexpected tidings reached those on board.
Watching the chief, who stood by the steering oar, erect as the mast,
his eyes piercing the distance ahead, Sigurd put an idle question.
"Can you tell anything yet concerning the drift-ice, foster-father? And
why do you steer the ship so close to the wind?"
Without turning his head, Leif answered shortly, "I am attending to my
steering, foster-son."
But as the jarl's son was turning away, with a shrug of his shoulders
for the rebuff, the chief added in the quick, curt tone that with him
betrayed unwonted interest, "And I am looking at something else. Where
are your eyes that you cannot see anything remarkable? Is that a rock or
a ship which I see straight ahead?"
Sigurd's aimless curiosity promptly found an object; yet after all the
craning of his neck and squinting under his hand, he was obliged to
confess that he saw nothing more remarkable than a rock.
Leif gave a short harsh laugh.
"See what it is to have young eyes," he said. "Not only can I see that
it is a rock, but I can make out that there are men moving around upon
it."
"Men!" cried Sigurd.
Excitement spread like fire from stern to bow, until even Helga of the
Broken Heart arose from her cushions on the fore-deck and stood
listlessly watching the approach.
Eyvind the Icelander muttered that any creatures in human shape that
dwelt on those rocks, must be either another race of dwarfs, or such
fiends as inhabit the ice wastes with which Greenland is cursed; but an
old Greenland sailor silenced him contemptuously.
"Landlubber! Has it never been given you to hear of shipwrecks? When
Eric the Red came to Greenland with thirty-five ships following his
lead, no less than four of them went to pieces on that rock. It is the
influence of Leif's luck which has caused a shipwreck so that the chief
can get still more honor in rescuing the distressed ones."
The Icelander grunted. "Then is Leif's luck very much like the sword
that becomes one man's bane in becoming another man's pride," he
retorted.
While he threw all his strength against the great oar, the chief
signalled to Valbrand with his head.
"Drop anchor and get the boat ready to lower," he commanded. "I want to
keep close to the wind so that we may get to them. We must give them
help if they need it. If they are not peaceful, they are in our power,
but we are not in theirs."
As the boat bounded away on its errand of mercy, every man and boy
remaining crowded forward to watch its course. In some way it happened
that Alwin of England was pushed even so far forward as the very bow of
the boat, and the side of the shield-maiden.
The sun rose in her glooming face when she turned and saw him beside
her.
"I have hoped all day that you would come," she whispered; "so I could
tell you an expedient I have bethought myself of. Dear one, from the way
you have sat all the day with your chin on your hand and your eyes on
the sea, I have known that you needed comfort even more than I; and my
heart has ached over you till once the tears came into my eyes."
Her lover gazed at her hungrily. "Gladly would I give every gift that
Leif has lavished on me, if I might take you in my arms and kiss away
the smart of those drops."
A fierce gleam narrowed Helga's starry eyes. "Before we part," she said
between her teeth, "you shall kiss my eyes once for every tear they have
shed; and you shall kiss my mouth three times for farewell,--though
every man in Greenland should wish to prevent it."
Suddenly she hid her face against his shoulder with a little cry of
despair.
"But you must never come near me after I am married!" she breathed. "The
moment after my eyes had fallen upon your face, I should turn upon my
husband and kill him."
"If it had not happened that I had already slain him," Alwin murmured.
Then he said, more steadily, "This is useless talk, sweetheart. Tell me
the thought which comforted you. At least it will be a joy to me to
cherish in my heart what you have treasured in your brain."
Helga looked out over the tumbling water with eyes grown wide and
thoughtful.
"I will not be so hopeful as to call it a comfort yet," she said, "too
vague is its shape for that. It is a faint plan which I have built on my
knowledge of Gilli's nature. As well as I, you know that he cares for
nothing but what is gainful for him. Now if I could manage to make
myself so ugly that no chief would care to make offers for me... is it
not likely that my father would cease to value me and be even glad to
get rid of me, to you? I would disfigure myself in no such way that the
ugliness would be lasting," she reassured him, hastily. "But if I should
weep my eyes red and my cheeks pale, and cut off my hair... It would all
come right in time; you would not mind the waiting?"
Alwin looked at her with a touch of wonder.
"And you would go ugly for me?" he asked. "Hide your beauty and become a
jest where you have always been a queen, for no other reason than to
sink so low that I might reach up and pluck you? Would you think it
worth while to do that for me?"
But his meaning was lost on Helga's simplicity. She gathered only that
he thought the scheme possible, and hope bloomed like roses in her
cheeks.
"Oh, comrade, do you indeed think favorably of the plan?" she whispered,
eagerly. "I had not the heart to hope much from it; everything has
failed us so. If you think it in the least likely to succeed, I will cut
off my hair this instant."
In spite of his misery, Alwin laughed a little.
"Do you then imagine that the gold of your hair and the red of your
cheeks is all that makes you fair?" he asked. "No, dear one, I think it
would be easier to make Gilli generous than you ugly. No man who had
eyes to look into your eyes, and ears to hear your voice, could be
otherwise than eager to lay down his life to possess you. Trust to no
such rootless trees, comrade. And do not raise your face toward me like
that either; for, in honor, I may not kiss you, and and you are not ugly
yet, sweetheart."
Shouts from those around them recalled the lovers to themselves. The
returning boat was almost upon them; and from among her burly crew the
wan faces of several strangers looked up, while a swooning woman was
seen to lie in the bow. Her face, though pinched and pallid, was also
fair and lovable, and Helga momentarily forgot disappointment in pity.
"Bring her here and lay her upon my cushions," she said to the men who
carried the woman on board. Wrapping the limp form in her own cloak, the
shield-maiden pulled off such of the sodden garments as she could,
poured wine down the stranger's throat, and strove energetically to
chafe some returning warmth into the benumbed limbs.
While the boat hastened back to bring off the rest of the unfortunates,
those of the first load whom wine and hope had sufficiently revived,
explained the disaster.
The wrecked ship belonged to Thorir of Trondhjem; and that merchant and
his wife Gudrid and fourteen sailors made up her company. On the voyage
from Nidaros to Greenland with a cargo of timber, their vessel had gone
to pieces on a submerged reef, and they had been just able to reach that
most inhospitable of rocks and cling there like flies, frozen,
wind-battered, and drenched. The waves, in a moment of repentance, had
thrown a little of their timber back to them, and this had been their
only shelter; and their only food some coarse lichens and a few
sea-birds' eggs.
It was little wonder that when Leif had brought the last load on board,
and drowned their past woes in present comforts, the starved creatures
were almost ready to embrace his knees with thankfulness.
"It seems to me that we should be called 'the Lucky,' and you 'the
Good,'" Thorir said, as the two chiefs stood on the forecastle, watching
the anchor and the sail both rising with joyful alacrity. "Without your
aid, we could not have lived a day longer."
And Gudrid, opening her eyes to see Helga's fair face bending over her
to put a wine cup to her lips, murmured faintly, "A Valkyria could not
look more beautiful to me than you do. Tell me what you are called, that
I may know what name to love you by."
"I am called Helga, Gilli's daughter," the shield-maiden answered, with
just an edge of bitterness on the last words.
Gudrid's gentle eyes opened wide with wonder and alarm.
"Not Helga the Fair of Trondhjem," she gasped, "who fled from Gilli to
his kinsfolk in Greenland? Alas, my unfortunate child!"
In the eagerness in which she clasped her hands, the wine-cup fell
clanging from Helga's hold. "Is he dead?" she cried, imploringly. "Only
tell me that, and I will serve you all the rest of my life! Is Gilli
dead?"
But Gudrid had sunk back in another faint. She lay with her eyes closed,
moaning and murmuring to herself.
Leif, biting sharply at his thick mustache, as he was wont to do when
excited, turned sharply on Thorir.
"What is the reason of this?" he demanded. "What are these tidings
concerning my kinswoman, which your wife hesitates to speak? Is Gilli of
Trondhjem dead?"
Thorir answered with great haste and politeness, "No, no; naught so bad
as that. Naught but what I expect can be easily remedied. But it appears
that when Gilli attempted to follow his daughter to Greenland, last
fall, he suffered a shipwreck and the loss of much valuable property,
barely escaping with his life. From this he drew the rash conclusion
that his daughter had become a misfortune to him, as some foreknowing
woman had once said she would. And he declared that since the maiden
preferred her poorer kinsfolk in Greenland, she might stay with them;
and--"
The words burst rapturously from Helga's lips: "And he disowned me?"
Thorir stared at her in astonishment. "Yes," he said, pityingly.
It was just as well that he had not attempted a longer answer, for he
never would have finished it. Madness seemed suddenly to fall upon the
ship. In the face of her disinheritance, the shield-maiden was radiant.
Down in the waist of the ship, two youths who had caught the words threw
up their hats with cheers. Leif Ericsson himself laughed loudly, and
snapped his fingers in derision.
"A mighty revenge!" he said. "My kinswoman could have received no
greater kindness at the churl's hands. Could she have accomplished it by
a dagger-thrust, I doubt not that she would have let his base blood run
from her veins long ere this."
He turned to where Helga stood watching him, her heart in her eyes, and
pulled her toward him and kissed her.
"You chose between honor and riches, kinswoman," he said, "but while
there is a ring in my pouch you shall never lack property; you have
behaved like a true Norse maiden, and I am free now to say that I honor
you for it. Go the way your heart desires, without further hindrance."
Helga stayed to press his hand to her cheek; then, before them all,
without a thought of shame, she went the way that ended in her lover's
arms.
They stood side by side in the gilded prow, and he kissed her eyes twice
for every tear they had shed; and he kissed her mouth thrice three
times, and not a man in the whole world rose up to prevent him. Side by
side, they stood in the flying bow, a divinely modelled figure-head,
gilded by the light of love.
CONCLUSION
As the sun's last beams were fading from the mountain tops, the
exploring vessel dropped anchor before Eric's ship-sheds and the eager
groups that had gathered on the shore at the first signal. Not only
idlers made up the throng, but the Red One himself was there, and
Thorwald and every soul from Brattahlid; and with them half the
high-born men of Greenland, who had lived for the last month as Eric's
guests, that they might be on hand for this occasion. They shoved and
jostled each other like schoolboys, as they crowded down to meet the
first boat-load.
The ten sailors who stepped ashore were a prosperous looking band. Their
arms were full of queer pets; their pouches were stuffed with samples of
wood and samples of wheat, and with nuts and with raisins. All were
sleek and fat with a year's good living, and all jubilant with happiness
and a sense of their own importance. Even while their arms were clasping
their sweethearts' necks, they began to hint at their brave adventures
and to boast of the grain and the timber and the wine. The home-keepers
heard just enough to set their curiosity leaping and dancing with
eagerness for more. And each succeeding boat-load of burly heroes worked
their enthusiasm to a higher pitch.
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