In the Wilderness Read Free Page A

Norse squire, Eirik Olavsson from Hestviken?”—for the tale has spread all over London town. And one day when the governor of the castle rides abroad, he meets him. The White Tower is the name of London’s castle; it is built ofwhite marble. And one day when he has gone up to have a sight of it—this castle is even greater and more magnificent than Tunsberghus, and the rock on which it stands is much higher—the governor comes riding down the steep path with all his men, and some of them whisper to their lord, pointing to the lad from Norway—
    Nay, stay behind in London when his father goes home, that he will not, after all. Not even in play can Eirik imagine his father leaving him and going back to Hestviken, and the life here taking its wonted course, but without him. In his heart Eirik harbours an everlasting dread; even if of late he has been able to lull it to sleep, he goes warily, fearing to awake it—what if one day he should find out that he is not the rightful heir to Hestviken? Even if he lies here weaving his own story from odds and ends that he has heard—the house-carls’ tales of the wars in Denmark, the wonderful sagas of old Aasmund Ruga—the boy does not forget his secret dread: if he should be renounced by his father and lose Hestviken. Then let him rather play at something else—at strangers who make a landing here in the creek; his father is not at home, he himself must be the one to urge on the house-folk to defend the place, he must rouse the countryside—
    But in any case his father shall soon have proof of what stuff there is in this son of his. He shall have something to surprise him, his father. Then maybe he will give up walking as one asleep, taking no heed of Eirik when they are together.
    But the next day Olav set Eirik to bring home firewood for the summer, and his father said he was to have it all brought in today. The snow still lay over the fields here on the south side of the creek, but tomorrow most of it might well be gone.
    The going was good early in the morning. Anki loaded one sledge while Eirik drove home the other. But as the day wore on, it grew very warm, and even before the hour of nones Eirik was driving through sheer mud a great part of the way.
    Eirik spread snow along the track, but it turned at once to slush. Olav went higher up and spread snow on the fields there; he called down to the boy to drive round under the trees. But this was many times farther, around all the fields—and Eirik made as though he had not heard.
    When Olav looked down again, the load of wood had stuck fastat the bottom of the slope leading to the yard. Eirik heaved off billets, making the rocks ring; then he went forward, jerked the bridle and shouted, but the horse stood still. “Will you come up, you lazy devil!”—and back went Eirik, dragging at the reins. Then he threw off more wood.
    The sledge was stuck in a clay-pit at the bottom of the rock under the old barn, where the road from Kverndal turned up toward the yard. The sun had not yet reached this spot, so the rock was covered with ice, but water trickled over the surface. Eirik took hold of the back of the sledge and tried to wriggle it loose. But the horse did not move. The boy strained at it all he could, stretching to his full length over the ground; then he lost his foothold in the miry clay, dropped on his hands and knees, and some billets of wood slid off the load and hit him on the back—and there was his father standing on the balk of the field beside him. Fear at the sight of him gave Eirik such a shock that he was on the verge of tears; he plunged forward, tore at the reins, and belaboured the horse with them: the horse floundered, threw its head about, but did not move from the spot. “Will you come up, foul jade!” Quite beside himself, seeing that his father did nothing but stand and look on, Eirik struck at the horse with his clenched fist, on the cheeks, on the muzzle. Olav leaped down from the balk and