Gudrid the Fair Part 5

This third charm I make-- If the dark thee take On the road thou goest For this man's sake, May the hags of night Do thee no spite.

Look forth, My heart is awake.

The fourth charm I tell Is the loosing spell-- Though they bind thee in fetters And cast thee in cell, No walls shall clip thee, The irons shall slip thee-- Look forth, All shall go well."

The song was to a strange wild air, very beautiful, known to many, of whom many had tears in their eyes to hear it again, and sung so well.

Thorberg sat with her eyes closed, and nodded her head to the beats of it. It made a great effect, and Gudrid was praised by everybody. When it was over, Thorberg, being squarely on the spell-seat, said to her: "I thank you for the song, and for the good heart which was in it. I tell you that many beings besides those whom you see have been drawn in by the sound of your voice, beings who without it would have pa.s.sed over our heads and paid no heed to us and our concerns. They have been here, they are here now all about us, and by their means I see many things clearly. And first, you, Heriolf, need not fear the death nor the sickness which are rife at this time. They will pa.s.s with the winter, and return again with another winter; and for a long time the winter will be hard upon you men in Greenland."

So much she said to Heriolf, but she had not ended her soothsay. Her eyes returned to Gudrid, who stood just below her.

"As for you, my daughter," she said, "I can read what is in store for you as if it was written in a book. You will have three husbands here in Greenland, and shall not go far to get them. All will be honourable men. One will be a famous man, and one an ugly man; but he will be kind. With all of them you will go great journeys over sea, but they will not all last long. One journey you will go, to a country far from here, which will be of the greatest length, and have hardships in it, and wonders, and a good gift for you. But all your ways lead to Iceland, and thither you will return. Out of you will come a great race of men, and you shall end your life-days in the way that pleases you best." Then her eyes grew less blank, and seemed able to see more clearly. She held out her hand towards Gudrid, who stood rooted, staring up with great eyes. "Farewell, daughter, and I give you hail,"

she said. Gudrid ran up the steps and kissed her hand.

IX

Gudrid's fortune was envied by the girls of the house, who expressed themselves freely about it. "With your looks," they said, "it was to be expected she would take notice of you. But to see so much, and to tell you all!" The poor girl herself, however, took it very hard, and saw herself punished for impiety. She felt as if she was branded for ever--the girl who was to kill two men, and perhaps a third. In her mind's eye she could see that doomed first husband of hers, the shadow coldly upon him, herself looking sorrowfully at him, seeing him in the shadow but not able to speak of it. Her heart gave a leap of grat.i.tude that Einar had been sent away by her father. It might have been he in the shadow. But would he be the second? Ah, no, she vowed he should not. Or would he be the third? Not if the third was to be an ugly man. Then there was the promise of the end: "Your ways tend to Iceland . . . thither you will return . . . you shall end your life-days in the way that pleases you best." Could that mean that Einar----? But after three honourable men had received death at her hand! She shuddered and hugged herself against the cold. Not even the promise of Einar seemed fortification enough for that. Nevertheless, there was comfort in the last days. She told her bedfellow stoutly that she did not believe a word of it, but the girl merely stared at her. Then she said: "I know who your first husband will be if he can persuade Thorbeorn. It is Skeggi of Whitewaterstrand." After that Gudrid had to be told all about it.

She told her father too--but not so stoutly--that she did not believe it; but in her heart she felt that it must be true. As for Thorbeorn, who had heard it all through the wall, whatever he may have thought, he was very indignant, and angry with her too. "Put such mummery out of your head. We are not Christians for nothing, I should hope. A scandalous hag with her bell-wether voice and airs of a great lady!

What has she to do with good women, well brought up? A woman's duty is to leave match-making to her parents, and the future to G.o.d and His Angels. Who can foretell his end? Can the priest? Can the bishop?

No. And who would wish to know it? Ask yourself. I am vexed that we should have fallen upon a heathen house, and much more that you should have lent yourself to its wicked customs."

Gudrid excused herself. "I couldn't help myself. They are kind people. It would have been ungracious. And I did know the songs. How could I have said I did not?"

"And who taught you such songs?"

"Halldis sang them," she said; "I learnt them of her."

He had to allow for much that she urged. "Well, think no more of it,"

he bade her.

"No, I must not," she said.

"When the time comes, when we are settled by Eric Red, I shall find a good husband for you, beyond a doubt."

"Yes," said Gudrid.

"Then we shall have the laugh of these mystery-mongers."

"Yes."

"As for me, I never heard such nonsense in my days."

"No," said Gudrid, looking about for a way of escape. She could neither put it out of her head, nor believe it nonsense. Fate hung heavy on her like a pall of smoke.

She had Skeggi of Whitewaterstrand pointed out to her by her room-mate, and recognised him as a young man she had often seen at the house. Now immediately she looked upon him with tenderness, and received his advances to acquaintance with such kindness that he conceived high hopes and went about with his chest swelling with pride. But all the time he was talking to her, or at her, rather, with the other girls, her heart was calling to him, "Do not marry me, do not, do not----"

which he, unfortunately, interpreted in the opposite sense.

Oddly enough, though every one in the Settlement had heard the soothsay, and n.o.body doubted it, she was the only person concerned who took it closely to heart. Young Skeggi was earnest to have her to wife, and asked Heriolf to put his case forward to Thorbeorn.

Thorbeorn, however, would have nothing to say to him. Skeggi disappeared, and Gudrid had a moment's ease.

The first things foretold by Thorberg came about with the quickening of the year. With the first blowing of the warm wet wind of the west, the fogs began to roll away off the land and pile themselves upon the flanks of the mountains. Then, when the earth had warmth enough in her body to thaw the iron mail about her ribs, the sickness in the Settlement abated. Men felt the light, and saw whence it came. The sun showed himself, first like a silver coin, then with sensible heat.

The cattle were put out to pasture, the sheep could move and nibble about the foothills. Hens began to lay, cows to give milk, sheep to drop lambs. Thorbeorn made ready to sail to Ericsfrith, and Gudrid was able to forget that she was marked with a curse.

So the day for sailing came, a bright spring day with a soft wind, which crisped the waters of the bay and heaped froth upon the stones.

At parting, old Heriolf twinkled his kind and frosty eyes upon Gudrid.

"Farewell, my child," he said; "you are a notable woman who will do great things." She smiled, but sadly. "It seems I am to bring unhappiness to many," she said. "No, no, that's not how I look at it,"

said Heriolf. "Men must die, we all know. But more than one are to have your love and kindness while they live--and that is more than they ought to expect. If I were not so old, or my son Biorn were at home, we would keep you in the family. Who wants a long life? Not I, though I have had it. But who wants a good wife? Who does not?"

Gudrid said, "To be good is the least I can do. It seems very easy.

But to be happy is difficult."

"I never found it so," said old Heriolf. And so they parted, she whither Fate beckoned her, and he to go fishing.

X

Eric Red, who lived at Brattalithe in Ericsfrith, had been a notable man all his life, and a man of mettle. In Earl Hakon's day in Norway he had been a Viking, had made a few friends and many enemies; then he had gone out to Iceland and founded a family in the west country, which might have endured to this day if it had not been for his headstrong way of doing. But, as before, he made more enemies than friends; and when he killed the son of Thorgest the Old, and was pursued for the slaughter at the Thing, he found that there was more feeling against him than he had reckoned on, and that Iceland could not hold him much longer. By what shifts a ship was hidden for him among the islands, and how his friends got him down by night, and rowed him aboard, and how he slipped his cable and escaped pursuit, cannot be told here.

Enough to say that he found his way to Greenland, and chose out a fair haven for himself and his company. When he was settled in, and had his town of Ericshaven marked out, and his house built, he felt himself like a king and cast about for alliances. He sent out messengers to Iceland calling upon all men who had been his friends to rally about him. Many came, and by the time his friend Thorbeorn had decided to join him there was a strong settlement at Ericshaven.

Eric was now grown old, and was very fat. He thought himself that his work was over, but had hopes to see it continued in his sons. He had three sons by his wife Theodhild; the eldest was Leif, who was abroad at this time, supposed to be in Orkney. Leif was a fine tall man who took after his mother, and had none of Eric's fiery colour; the second son was Thorstan, who was as red as a fox; the third was Thorwald, and resembled Leif, but was of slighter build. Then there was a tempestuous daughter, named Freydis, a strongly made, fierce girl, who was fated to do terrible things. She was married to one of Eric's va.s.sals, a man called Thorward of Garth, but treated him with great contempt and did just what she pleased. As for Theodhild, Eric's wife, she was a Christian at this time, and had taken herself out of Brattalithe for religion's sake. She had built a church in Ericshaven and found a priest to serve it; and now she lived in a small house hard by and practised austerities. She was a very stately woman, and held in great estimation all over the settled country. Eric Red was uneasy with her, because he believed that she scorned him; but her sons used to go to see her. She had quarrelled with Freydis irrevocably, and if she met her anywhere would never take any notice.

Thorbeorn was made welcome at Brattalithe and great attention shown to his fair daughter. Women were scarce in Greenland. Eric's two sons, Thorstan and Thorwald, immediately wanted her; but Thorstan was the elder and stronger, and soon came to terms with Thorwald. "My mind,"

he said, "is set upon Gudrid, and I am older than you by a good deal.

I advise you to be my friend in the affair, otherwise no one knows how it may turn out." Thorwald said that that was fair enough: "But I advise you to be sharp about it." "Why so?" said Thorstan. Thorwald told him that he would be only one of many. He named one or two, and Thorstan frowned. Thorstan was a very honest man; he was a good poet and a great man for dreams, but slow and heavy minded. "A man must not be driven in such a matter," he said. "A man should not need it,"

Thorwald replied. "As you have spoken to me, so do you speak to Gudrid's old iron father. Hammer him smartly; knock sparks out of him.

If you do not, some one else will, and I shall have wasted benevolence upon you. If you are not to be the lucky man, why am I to be thrown aside?"

This was in the very early days, before Thorbeorn had taken up lands in the Settlement. He was all that summer the guest of Eric at Brattalithe, and there was a great deal to do. Eric and Thorbeorn rode about the country, talking of this land and that. Gudrid fell into the ways of the house and made herself useful. She was taken to see Theodhild, and became friends with the stern, lonely woman. Theodhild spent much of her time in the little dark church she had had built.

Until Gudrid came, she and the priest had had it pretty much to themselves, for the people in the Settlement stood by Eric, their great man. But Gudrid went to church with Theodhild, and renewed her emotions. She seemed to escape from her shadow in there. One little twinkling light before the altar shone to her through the fog and bade her still to hope.

Then there was Freydis. Oddly enough Freydis took to her, though she pretended to despise her. "You are one of those women whom men go mad about--one of the meek, still women who madden men," she said. "But I am one whom men madden rather; for I hate them and detest their ways, and yet cannot get on without them." Gudrid denied her maddening qualities, and denied that she was meek or still. She a.s.sured Freydis that she herself could get on very well without marriage. "I used not to think about it at all until I came to this country where, it seems to me, n.o.body thinks of anything else. The first thing that happened to me was dreadful. It is no wonder if I think about it now."

Freydis wished to hear what dreadful thing it was, and with a little pressing Gudrid told her what Thorberg had prophesied. Freydis stared.

"Is that all? You have only to live in Greenland and live to be a hundred and you might have as many husbands. People die here in the winter like tadpoles in a dry summer. Three! Her moderation alarms me."

"But I must be sure of the death of two men!" said poor Gudrid.

"You must be sure of the death of every man in the world," said Freydis. "It may be that you will be glad enough to be sure of it before you have done with them. I am sure that I should be."

That was all the comfort she got out of Freydis; but happily she had a diversion of her thoughts. Biorn Heriolfsson, who had come round the Ness soon after Thorbeorn sailed, now came up to see Eric Red.

He was a brisk, vivacious man, with a good conceit of himself, and had much that was interesting to say of the new countries he had visited.

Gudrid was rapt in attention, for every word he said seemed to make Einar visible to her, with his bright eyes, his ear-rings, his soft eager voice and his white teeth. Einar now stood for all sorts of things besides himself to Gudrid. He stood for home; he stood for Halldis and Orme who had loved her well; and he stood for the days when no heavy fate hung between her and the blue sky. He stood to her as to us the song of a lark may stand, when we are shut up within the walls of a town. She would have married him gladly, but for the Fate; but she no longer thought of him as a lover.