The Son Avenger Read Free Page B

regret Aslak—not much, anyway. And she was only fifteen.—Fifteen had been Ingunn’s age. But that was different altogether.
    He had nothing to regret. The youngest son from Yttre Dal—Cecilia Olavsdatter of Hestviken might well look for a better match than that. It was natural that she should like Aslak; she had seen so few young men, and the boy had winning ways; but she would forget him sure enough when she met others.
    It had made a stir in Olav’s mind, an insufferable welter of conflicting emotions, to find that there were still folk in the north who remembered his and Ingunn’s love and talked about it. As a pattern.—And rumours—he knew not what sort of rumours they might be. He had believed them both forgotten in those parts, both himself and her. Here none remembered Ingunn save himself alone, and he no longer remembered her so well that he thought of her often; it was only that he knew of all that had been, that he was aware of the origin of all that had befallen him.
    Sin and sorrow and shame, and, beneath it all, the memories of a sweetness which might well up as water wells up over the iceand flood his whole soul whenever a break was made in the crust of his peace of mind.—And there in the north all this lived among folk as a legend, true or false. Not for anything in the world would he resume fellowship with men who perhaps talked behind his back of his youth’s adventures.
    And this merely for a young maid’s fancy, which she would surely have forgotten ere a year was out, if only none reminded her of it. Was he to return alive to such a purgatory for the sake of two children’s childishness? Never would he consent.

2
    A MONTH later Eirik Olavsson came home to Hestviken. He had sent word in advance that he was bringing with him a friend, Jörund Kolbeinsson from Gunnarsby, and he begged his father to receive the guest kindly.
    The sun-warmed air of the valley was charged with the scent of hay and of lime blossoms as Eirik rode down by the side of the Hestvik stream. At Rundmyr the hay was still lying in swaths, dark and already somewhat spoiled, in the little meadows; around the poor homestead stood the forest, deep and still, drinking in the sunlight. Anki came out when he heard the horseman, shading his eyes with his hand, and then he broke into a run, with his thin neck stretched out, his back bent, swinging his overlong arms. After him came the whole flock of half-naked, barelegged children, and last of all waddled Liv herself, carrying her last baby in her arms and with the next one already under her shift; she was so marked with age that with her chinless face she looked like a plucked hen.
    Eirik stayed in the saddle, so that they might have a good sight of him. But when the first greetings were over, he had to dismount, and Anki looked his horse over and felt him, while Liv sang the praises of Eirik and his companion. He had to go back to the hut with them.
    The very smell within, sour and putrid as it was, seemed grateful and familiar. The round mud hut, with no walls and a pointed roof like a tent, was divided into two raised floors with a passage between, and this passage was wet like a ditch of stinking mud:one had to sit with legs drawn up. The dark hole was full of a litter of rubbish. Eirik’s memories were of all that was strange and lawless: here he had lain listening, all ears, to vagabonds’ tales of a life that lurked, darkly and secretly, like the slime of Liv’s floor, beyond the pale of law-abiding, workaday men, in bothies and caves in summertime, on the fringe of the great farms—the life of husbandmen, townsmen, priests, as seen from the beggar’s pallet. He heard of smuggling in wares banned by the King, of robbery and of secret arts, of illicit intercourse between men and women who kept company for a while and then parted, of St. Olav’s feast and the consecration of churches, and of sheer heathendom, sacred stones and trees. Here he had won in gaming a