Gudrid the Fair Part 13

Thorstan's heart jumped, and then fell quiet. "Do you see me there, mistress?"

"You are standing there in the shadow of the byre. He will not touch you. Round and round. No rest in the snow." Then she turned to him and screamed: "Don't let him touch me!" She caught at him and he tried to draw her into the house; but she struggled fiercely, and before he could stop her she was outdoors racing through the snow. Thorstan shouted to his host, who came to him in a hurry. "She's gone," said Thorstan Red. Thorstan Black and he went out together, but by now she had pa.s.sed through the garth and was deep in the snow beyond. They got her home at last, but she was quite mad and fought against them all the way.

They put her to bed and kept her there by main force until she was exhausted. They were up with her all night, and she died in the small hours of the morning. There was nothing for it but to bury her in the snow.

Gudrid laid her out while Thorstan and his host were making the coffin.

She put candles at her head and feet in the Christian fashion, with a cross of wood between her hands. Then she knelt by the bed to watch the corpse. It was piercingly cold, and she grew numb with it, and then drowsy. It is likely that she dropped off to sleep as she lay, for she came to herself with a start and saw the corpse sitting up, staring with open and gla.s.sy eyes. Her heart stood still, she neither felt nor thought. How long they were, the living and the dead, staring at each other, Gudrid could never have told--she was incapable of moving, being frozen with terror and cold. Presently the dead woman's mouth opened, as if she were going to speak; and then her head fell forward and she dropped. Gudrid staggered to her feet and ran out of the house. She found the men in the outhouse, and caught Thorstan Black by the wrist. Her face told her story; it was no longer that of a sane woman. Thorstan went back with her.

That night they buried Grimhild in the snow; and Thorstan Red took the sickness. He told Gudrid of it when they were in bed. He held her closely in his arms and spoke with pa.s.sion: "My love, I am sick, and it may go hard with me. Remember now what I say--that the thing which I may be is not I. Be not afraid of it. You have had the best I could be--and it was you who made me. Remember what we have been, and think of me as dead already. And when I am dead, take my body back to Ericsfrith."

She clung to him, but not with tears. Tears were denied her now. The cold had mastered even them. For now she knew what must come.

XXI

The Greenland sickness took mainly the same course, varying with the patient's personal quality. It began with a high fever, intense surface irritation; there ensued violent rheumatic pains, mental alienation, delirium, madness and death. It was characteristic, as has been said, that the sufferer turned from his kind, and turned markedly from whom he knew best.

Thorstan made his preparations carefully, and instructed Gudrid. As a wife who may be allowed a last word with her husband condemned to die, she took and gave her kisses. The time was too great for tears, the heart too faint for strong embraces. All she could do she did. She would obey him, she would not show herself; but she would be always at hand. She sat mostly at the head of his bed in the wall, hidden by a curtain, but ready to fetch and carry; to bring him food which Thorstan Black could give him; hot stones for his feet, hot rags to ease the pain in his limbs. He hardly opened his eyes, hardly ever groaned; but when the fever ran high he talked incessantly, in fierce and rapid whispers--and she heard told over again the week of rapture and dream under the snow in the empty ship. She suffered greatly under this affliction, both by the memories it evoked and the knowledge that such things could never be again. Her modesty might have been offended; but Thorstan Black was very kind to her. He used to go gently away when the sufferer began to speak, and would contrive his returns so as not to intrude on any privacy. Her heart was full of grat.i.tude to the black-bearded giant, so huge and so gentle.

The fever seemed to eat Thorstan up; he became so thin that his cheeks sank away into hollows, and his bones stuck out so sharply that the skin cracked. Gudrid began to have horror of him. She thought that her lover was dead, and that this was some terrible mock-image of him sent there to haunt her. She seemed to become younger as he grew more like an old man. She was afraid to be left alone with him. Love had been frightened out of her, and even pity scarce dared to be there.

She could not believe that this was the man who had so keenly loved and worshipped her body, and by his music had uplifted her soul. She had seen Th.o.r.e die and had been compa.s.sionate to the end. She remembered how she had kissed him in the very article of death, and shuddered as she thought of kissing this living corpse. Her eyes besought Thorstan Black not to leave her, and he rarely did--for by this time her husband's weakness was such that, whatever he may have said in his fever, he could hardly be heard.

Towards the end--as Thorstan Black knew it must be--he persuaded Gudrid to lie down at night while he kept watch by the bed. And so she did.

The poor girl was worn out, and went to sleep almost at once.

About midnight she was awakened. Thorstan Black stood by the bed with a taper. She gaped at him, cold to the bones.

"Come, my dear," he said. "He is asking for you." She said nothing.

Then in the silence she heard her husband's voice, calling "Gudrid, Gudrid, Gudrid." She fell trembling, and knew not what she said.

Thorstan Black put his cloak over her, and helped her out of bed. Her knees shook. "Is he dead? Is he dead? Oh, don't leave me. I'm frightened--he looks so strange--don't leave me, Thorstan."

"No, my dear, I won't leave you," he said, and put his arm round her, for she seemed about to fall. "Come," he said, "I'll take you, and stay by you."

She mastered her fear. "Yes," she said, "I must go. Oh, but you are so good to me."

"Don't go if you are afraid," said Thorstan. "He may be dead by now."

"No, no," she said, "not yet. I must hear what he says, for it may be he knows what the course of my life must be. If G.o.d will help me, I will go. But you will come too--you promised."

Thorstan thereupon lifted her up in his arms, and carried her into the room where Thorstan Ericsson lay. He went to the side of the bed and sat down, holding Gudrid on his knee. So they waited fearfully for the dead man to speak.

Thorstan Ericsson sat up in his bed; his eyes were so deep in his head that nothing showed of them but dark caves. His mouth was open, as if his jaw had dropped. But no sound came from him.

Then Thorstan Black said: "My namesake, you called to Gudrid, and I have her here beside you. What do you desire of her?"

The dead man spoke. "Gudrid, are you there?"

"Yes, Thorstan," she said quaking.

"I will tell you, my wife, that you need not grieve for me, nor fear me, for I shall never hurt you now--nor could I have the heart. I am come to a good place, and am at peace. Now you are to know that you will be married to an Icelander who will be kind to you, and give you what your heart desires. But your life will be longer than his, and your end will be pious--and that, too, you will desire before you reach it. And I pray you to take my body back to Ericsfrith and give me holy burial. Farewell, Gudrid, and have no fear for me."

Gudrid, cold as a stone, sat on Thorstan Black's knee as if she had been a child, and stared at the figure of her love. She could not say anything to him, she dared not touch him. His head sank forward, and he fell back in the bed and lay still. Thorstan Black touched him. He was stone cold.

The good giant thought now of Gudrid only, and talked to her gently for a long while, comforting her. He promised that he would never forsake her until he had brought her safely home to Ericsfrith. He would take Thorstan Ericsson to his own ship, and all the bodies of the crew who were dead should be put with him there until such time as they could sail. "And as for you, dear child," he said, "remember that you and that true man have had the best that life can give you--for than wedded love there is no more blessed thing. Think of me, my child, who lived happily with my good wife a twenty years, and think that you are better off maybe than I. For love such as yours is not a thing that can live--no, but it must needs change as it grows older. You change, and the world comes in between; and so it changes too. Now you have had love at the full--and it is ended at the full. You should be thankful for that. And be thankful too that he is at peace, and his fate rounded--and nothing for him now but folded hands and quiet sleep.

Why, look at him now, Gudrid. Even now he smiles quietly, as who should say, I have done with it all. Look at him, and have no more fear of so gentle a thing."

Gudrid turned her haunted eyes towards the dead man. It was true.

Thorstan smiled to himself wisely. And now she could see that his eyes were shut. She slipped off Thorstan Black's knee and knelt beside the bed. She looked at her dead lover, and without remembering her fear or thinking what she did, she put his hair off his forehead and tidied it.

Then she leaned over him, looking tenderly down at him, and stooped and put her lips to his forehead.

Thorstan Black left her, and returned presently with candles and a cross which he had made. So they laid out Thorstan Ericsson, and Thorstan Black watched him all the rest of the night.

XXII

She stayed out the long and bitter winter alone in the house with Thorstan Black. No man could have been kinder to her than he was. She felt with him the happy relation which there is between a father and his married child, when you have the equality which comes of experiences shared and have not lost the old sense of degrees--but that lingers still like a scent which recalls times past.

He was as good as his word, when the spring came. The bodies of all the crew were redeemed from the snow and put aboard ship; the settlement at Lucefrith was broken up. He gave the survivors their freedom, and free pa.s.sage to Ericsfrith; for he himself intended to settle there when he had restored Gudrid to Brattalithe. So they set sail, and made a good pa.s.sage, and came into the frith on a day of fresh southerly wind and strong sunshine. Gudrid, standing on the afterdeck, looked at the little town and the green fields about it, at the snow-peaks whose shapes she knew well, whereunder, as she felt, her life had been pa.s.sed; and then she saw old Eric in his red cloak being helped into his boat, and Freydis, bareheaded, with her yellow hair flying in the wind, and her strong arms folded over her chest--and felt the comfort of home growing about her, and the dew of happy tears in her eyes.

Eric's eyes looked anxiously up at her. "Is all well, daughter?" he called out in a brave voice--but she could only answer with her own wet eyes. He was hauled on ship-board, and soon had her in his arms. Her hidden voice and shaking shoulders told him the rest. "There then, my sweetheart, it is done. Yet cry your fill. I have a fine son left--and you into the bargain. Come home now, and leave me no more."

So said old Eric Red, a man not easily downed by fate. He made Thorstan Black free of Brattalithe for as long as he would, and promised him the best land that he had. So they all went ash.o.r.e, and Freydis hailed Gudrid and made much of her. Freydis was not changed at all. She was very fond of Gudrid, and for her sake put up with her father and mother who, without Gudrid, would have fretted her to a rag.

Leif came in that evening and embraced Gudrid like a sister. He heard her dreadful story and shook his head over his brother's fate.

"Thorstan was born to misfortune," he said. "He had the second sight, and there is no worse gift for a man than that. Brave as he was, that foreknowledge always baulked his effort. But he was a fine man. You have had the best of us, Gudrid."

"I love you all so much," she said, "that I must have been happy with any one of you, since he would have made me free of the others. I would not have my Thorstan back again. He told me that he was at rest--and how can you look for rest in this life?"

She went to see Theodhild in her hermitage. To her only she told Thorstan's prediction, that she should be married yet again, and outlive her husband, and then find the life that she loved the best.

Theodhild nodded her head. "That was a true saying of my son's. You will find the only rest there can be in this life." Gudrid asked her more, but she would not tell her. "I know, I see," said Theodhild, "but G.o.d will reveal it to you when the time comes."

Gudrid, who had left Ericshaven still a girl in her bloom, had come back to it a woman, made so by pity and terror. Her beauty was now ripe, and her mind in accord with it. They held her at Brattalithe for the fairest and wisest of women. She was rich, too, for she had her father's and Th.o.r.e's estates, as well as her share of Eric's wealth which had been Thorstan's. She sold her father's house and land to Thorstan Black, who settled down there, and came to great honour in Ericshaven, as he deserved to do.

XXIII

The spring and summer of that year pa.s.sed quietly enough at Brattalithe, but after harvest a fine ship from Norway came into the haven and the owner came ash.o.r.e. Eric Red, Lief and Gudrid rode down to town to meet him and hear the news. He soon explained himself, for he had a copious flow of speech. He treated Gudrid with great deference, thinking her the lady of the land, and when it was explained to him that she was n.o.body's wife, but a widow, he smiled, saying, "So much the better," and continued to treat her as before. He was a large man, broad-faced and broad-shouldered, with light-blue eyes, and much fun in them. He looked at you when he spoke as if he wished to make you laugh, but hardly hoped it.

His friends called him Karlsefne, which means "a proper man," and his real name was Thorfinn Thordsson. "Thord of Head was my father," he told Gudrid, "and was called Horsehead, not without reason, for I will tell you that no man born could be more like a horse to look at than my father was. He was the son of Snorre who was a Viking in Earl Hakon's day; and that Snorre was the son of Thord, the first of Head." It seemed that he was well-to-do, and that he had on board his vessel, besides a crew of forty hands, a notable cargo of goods. He offered Gudrid what she pleased to take of it. "I do that," he told her, "to win your good will, for I see very well that you rule the roost here--and rightly enough. I have never been to Greenland before, and tell you fairly that I never knew there was the like of yourself to be found here. If I had known that I should have been here long ago--and then, who knows? Maybe you would not be a widow this day." He said it as if in joke, but yet he meant it. He was greatly taken with her beauty.

Eric offered him winter quarters at Brattalithe and he accepted it gladly. His goods were landed, and stood in Eric's warehouse, his ship was laid up for the winter, his men boarded in Ericshaven. As for himself, he was very soon at home in Brattalithe, and everybody liked him well. He was a good poet, and sang his own songs; he told tales, he made jokes--but was always good-tempered.

Towards Christmas Eric Red, who was now very much aged and apt to worry himself over trifles, became sad and depressed. They thought that he was grieving for the two sons he had lost, but he would not talk to any of them of his troubles. Karlsefne asked Gudrid what was the matter with his host. He always talked to her when he had a chance.