Gudrid the Fair Part 12

"Hush, my dear one--it is better. She is not cold now." He made her lie down, with a hot stone for her feet and another for her arms to hold instead of her Walgerd. When she was asleep he said a prayer over the child and sank it in the sea. Then he comforted her as only he could have done it.

There was a good deal of sickness on board and plenty for Gudrid to do.

The wind blew gaps in the fog, and as it stiffened tore it into flying shreds and rags. The ship heaved and lurched in water now inky-black.

They got steerage way, and ran before a gale which they judged came from the south-west; they held this course for many days, hoping to get a sight of land. And land was nearer than they thought, for one morning Thorstan saw a darkening in the fog, a kind of shape, and then, quick as the thought, he put the ship about. She came round slowly, and at that moment the spars and rigging seemed alive with sea-birds.

As the ship went round a huge black wall reared itself a-starboard, and he heard the waves at its foot. As nearly as might be he had broken up his ship on the rocks.

Thorstan ran out to sea for half a mile or more and stood off until the weather cleared a little. When it did they all saw the crags and headlands of an iron coast. The only thing to do was to keep within hail of it until they found some sort of haven. Thorstan said he would spend the winter there, whatever country it might be. Already it was cold, and wherever the land stooped low enough there was snow to be seen lying.

An opening in the land was reported next day, and as they drew near they could make out a firth and a m.u.f.fled ship lying at anchor within it. The tide serving, Thorstan ran in between low hills all smothered in snow. A settlement of white, m.u.f.fled houses lay on the sh.o.r.e of a bay, a deserted quay, a few boats drawn up on the beach: not a soul was to be seen; the winter swoon was over all.

He drew up within hail of the silent ship and anch.o.r.ed in that black water. The rattling of the chain and splash of the anchor echoed among the hills, but awoke no man. "Are we, dying, come to a city of the dead?" he thought. The chill lay on his heart like lead; the thought of Gudrid gave him a dull ache; even the pa.s.sion of desire to save her was dead within him. He did what came up before him to be done, but could not provide nor foresee.

"Here we must see the winter out," he said, and had the boat out so that he might go ash.o.r.e and seek quarters. First he went below to see Gudrid.

He found her in the bed, rigid with cold, almost too cold to shiver.

He leaned over her in an agony of pity. "Oh my heart! Oh my poor heart!" She looked up at him and smiled in his face. She was not able to speak.

"I shall see the winter out here," he told her. "I must find out where we are--I believe that we have beaten back to Greenland. If that be so, then we may be able to reach home; but if that is not possible, then we stay here. I will get quarters for the men, and for ourselves, please G.o.d. My love, trust me to do for the best--and wait for me here."

She nodded her head two or three times, but her eyes were shut and she did not look at him again. He dared not kiss her for fear of finding out how cold she was. How could it be that men were allowed to suffer so? He found some more covering for her bed before he left her.

The boat took him ash.o.r.e; he went to the nearest house he saw and thumped on the door. There was no light to be seen, and for long there was no sound to be heard inside; but at last he heard the bolts drawn back. A white-faced woman peered at him through a crack.

"Let me in, for the love of G.o.d," said Thorstan. Then she beckoned him in.

A sick man lay muttering in a bed; children huddled about a turf fire.

The place was very nearly dark, but he made out some six souls to be there. He found out that he was come to Lucefrith in West Greenland; the winter sickness was heavy on the place. The woman did not refuse to take one of his men, and did not agree. She seemed stupid with misery. He told her that he should send her a man, and went out. In every house in the Settlement was much the same story. Sickness and death on all hands, but no refusals. At the end of his rounds he had managed to place out all hands. There remained himself and Gudrid.

There was no place for them--not room enough to die in. He had asked if there were no headman in Lucefrith, and was told of one Thorstan Black; but he, it seemed, lived far off--over the hills, they said--and no way of getting at him through the snow.

Then he went back to the ship and told his men to get ready to go ash.o.r.e. He took them off by companies in the boat, and saw them all indoors before he left them. The last man under cover, he rowed back alone to the ship. At this extremity, with frozen death and silence all about him, he felt a strange uplifting of the heart in the thought that he and Gudrid were now alone indeed--they two and Love. And what if Death were a fourth in the party? Ah, he was welcome too. But before Death came Love should be there. He rowed gaily, fiercely, that he might be with her the sooner.

He was warmed by his exercise when he was on deck again, and wildly happy in the thought which possessed him.

He went below and saw his love watching for him. "My heart, I am coming to you," he said. He took off his furs and most of his clothes and got into the bed with her. He held her close to him, with a pa.s.sion which despair may have quickened into flame. Wildly as he had loved her since she had given him herself, he never loved her as he did now, when the end seemed close upon them.

For a week they lived so, the supreme week of Thorstan's and Gudrid's lives. They were utterly alone, and they never left each other's arms, but when Thorstan was busy mending the brasier fire, or getting food.

They cherished each other, the fire in them at least never went out; they loved and slept, they loved again and slept. It was the last leap of their fire, it was the swan-song of their love maybe; but it was beautiful, and as strong as if they were breasting a great flight through s.p.a.ce. Thorstan sang to Gudrid, he told her tales of lovers, he put their joint lives into verses; but he had not a word to say of the future. Here fate was too heavy for either love or religion. Fate stood with stretched-out arms holding a black curtain over what was to come. Thorstan had seen behind it. He knew. But Gudrid had forgotten, and he would not tell her. As for Gudrid herself, the glory was to have Thorstan find her so lovely, and her love so full, was enough for her. She lived on his needs. To fill them was her utmost desire, and to be to him a never-failing well was a crown of stars.

She seldom spoke; she was as silent as the earth below the rains and heats of heaven, and as receptive. She neither asked nor pondered what was to be the end of this rapturous dream. If she had, her utmost desire would have been that they should die together in some nuptial sleep, and lie still, folded under the snow.

But Fate ordered it otherwise. The day came when they heard the knocking of oars, and then while they lay clasped, listening, a great voice hailing the ship. They looked at each other. "The dream is over," Thorstan said. "My love, the world is about us again." She clung to him. "Let us stay here--let n.o.body forbid us that." "Nay, but I must go out and see who is coming."

He dressed and went on deck. A large man m.u.f.fled to the eyes in a bearskin was below him in a boat, standing up in it holding on to the side. He pulled open his hood and showed a red face, black beard and a pair of merry eyes.

The two hailed each other, and then the new-comer said, "They told me in the Settlement that you were under the weather here. It will have gone hard with you, I doubt. And your lady with you! Now I make known to you that I am Thorstan of this place, called commonly Thorstan Black, and at your service."

Thorstan said: "Then I must be Thorstan Red, for Thorstan is my name, and the red is of Nature's doing, and my father's. I am Eric's son of Ericsfrith. I was making the western voyage, but was driven out of my course in a gale, and forced to beat up here against my will. My men are in the Settlement, but I and the good wife could find no better quarters than these."

"I will show you better," said Thorstan Black. "I knew nothing of your coming till last night when a man came up asking for fuel. You shall come off with me now if you will. In a week's time you will be able to walk ash.o.r.e. My mistress will be glad of your company, and so shall I be."

"Thank you for that," said Thorstan. "We take your offer gladly." He asked him up, but Thorstan Black said he was very well where he was.

Gudrid was dressed when he came down for her. The dream was broken, and neither of them spoke of it. Their preparations were soon made, and then they left the ship.

Thorstan Black rowed them ash.o.r.e with strong and leisurely strokes. He told them that he lived over the ridge beyond the Settlement. He had a sleigh of dogs waiting for him, packed up Gudrid, put Thorstan one side of her and himself the other, cracked a great whip, uttered a harsh cry; and they were off. The dogs panted and strained at the ropes; sometimes one yelped in his excitement. And so they came to a broad-eaved house, and were welcomed by the good wife, whose name was Grimhild.

XX

The winter fell upon them in bitter earnest within the next fortnight.

The snow was up to the top of the windows, and being there, froze hard, and had to be cut away with an axe. That was how they made a road to the byres where the stock were, and where they must be fed. The two Thorstans worked hard at this and at fuel-getting, and hewing of wood.

Gurth the reeve helped them, but he was ailing already with the sickness, and not much use.

Grimhild, a strong-faced, huge woman, managed all the house, but Gudrid helped her now willingly. There were no maids there. In the evenings they sat by the fire and told tales. It was as merry as might be, and with Thorstan Black there was always some fun to be had. He was the lightest-hearted man and the happiest whom Gudrid had seen in Greenland, where mostly, it seemed, men had to fight with life at too long odds to have any heart left over for pastime. Thorstan Black owned to it. "There is no people but ours of Iceland, I do believe, who would hold out against this white death," he said. "So fast as we come we die of it. Then come others, and so the game goes on. It is the fighting we love; we were always fighters--what with horses, or our young men. But here we fight with the earth, sea and sky, and do little slaughter of our own kind."

"It is the fog that kills us," said Grimhild; and Gurth smothered his cough and hugged himself over the fire.

Gudrid said: "Why should you stay here? I think it is a terrible country. We shall go to Wineland as soon as the spring comes." Then she told them of that good country--of the tall trees, and the clear sky, of the dew which was sweet to the taste, of the vines tumbling over the hot rocks, the birds' voices in the forest, and the strange stars at night. Grimhild was moved by the recital.

"Ay," she said, "I have heard tell of such lands, and you may see them, being young. But this place has made me old, and almost broken my heart. In a little while I shall ask no better than to be laid in the snow."

Thorstan Black patted her on the back.

"Courage, old la.s.s," he said. "You and I have seen the worst of it. I think it may be better hereafter. As for your land of summer all round the year, I know not that it would suit Icelanders. If you take our hardihood from us, what have we left? That which swills and eats heavily, and plays the mischief. Nay, give me a dark ghyll in Iceland, with a river racing down its length, and the sea never far off. That means more to me than your vines and soft winters. As for this stricken land, we shall beat the sickness yet. A man tempers himself.

There should be a fine race here one day, of them who have got through."

Gurth turned up the whites of his eyes. He was very sick.

By and by they had news from the Settlement, where things were going badly. The sickness was very rife. Many of Thorstan's men from Ericsfrith were dead of it. They took down stores in the sleigh, and were much concerned at what they saw and heard. The strangers from the east were all sick; six were dead, and could only be buried in the snow. Thorstan promised that he would take all the bodies back to Ericsfrith if he had to heap the ship with dead men. When they returned to the homestead the first thing they heard was that Gurth was dead.

Gradually, as the winter thickened, gloom began to fall upon the housemates. The hall grew cold; it was as if there were no heat in the burning coals; as if the cold was become master of the fire. Grimhild grew strange in her ways. She was always listening, waiting for something. She said she expected a visitor, but would never say who it was. She became very silent, and tried to avoid the others. Thorstan Black told Thorstan Red that he feared the worst. "The trustiest woman!" he said. "She has stood by me in sickness and health for twenty years--and now she turns her back on me--hunches her poor shoulders and will take no comfort from me. That's a sure sign of the sickness. You distrust your old friends first." "Is that the way of it?" said our Thorstan, with fear in his heart.

Grimhild grew more and more remote, but remained on terms with Thorstan Red, in whom she confided some of her growing fancies. "The dead are unquiet," she told him when she had him out of range of the others, "and how should I be quiet? They are all about us. So soon as it grows dusk they come out of the snow. I hear them quarrelling, murmuring, and some of them grieve. I shall be with them soon--and perhaps you will see me there. It has been bad enough other winters, but none so bad as this. There are strangers here--that's how it is.

We shall never quiet them till we have burned the bodies. That's the only way."

"They shall be burned, mistress," said Thorstan. "I will see to it."

She looked at him queerly, with one eyebrow arching into her hair.

"You?" she said, then turned away her face. "Well, well--Christ have mercy on us."

When the fever took her and seemed to stretch her skin to cracking-point, she would not go to bed, and n.o.body could persuade her.

She huddled by the fire, rocking herself, until the evening; but directly it was dusk she was restless. The wind used to moan about the house, and she heard in it the voices of the dead. She thought she could distinguish one from the other. "Gurth is railing--hark to him. . . . That was Wigfus answering, and that deep one is Kettleneb.

Oh, let me rest--have done!" She wandered forth and back, but was mostly in the kitchen, listening at the door. Thorstan Black grieved for her and used to try to coax her back to the fire. She scowled at him as if he were a stranger, and would not let him touch her. Gudrid was afraid to go near her.

Once when she was out there on a wild moon-lit night, the others by the fire heard her cry aloud; and then she called on Thorstan. The two Thorstans looked at each other. Thorstan Black said, "It's you she wants. Go and talk to her." Thorstan Red went out.

Grimhild had the kitchen door open; dry snow was sweeping in upon her; the front of her gown was white with it. "Look at them there," she said; "look at them. Gurth is whipping them round the garth. See how they huddle--heed their crying. There, there--and there go I among them, wringing my hands." She clutched his arm. "Hush--and there go you."