The Sentimental Vikings Part 5

"You will fight for your name."

"I will not fight," He said once again.

Then I stopped for a moment. Then I went up to Him slowly, and whispering to Him, "I was the husband of Elsa, and you broke my life when you were young, and now that you are old and I am dead, I shall kill you here where the wolves stand"; and with that, lightly, that I might not strike Him down, I hit Him on the cheek.

For an instant He stared at me, one side of His face white as the other grew crimson, and His old eyes flashed for a moment, and His shoulders squared themselves; but His arms, after one quick motion, hung still at His sides, and I heard Him murmur again, "I will not fight!" Then a wrath seized me, and swinging my sword on high I stepped slowly towards Him and let my point drop back slowly over my shoulder till it hung down to the snow, then wheeling suddenly and bringing it forward with a shortening of the arms and a yell that echoed through the empty forest, I hit Him with the rusty blade where the neck branches to go to the shoulder, and my blade travelled till it struck the hip-bone on the other side. Then with my foot on His waist, I drew my sword out and wiped it on the snow; wiping it many times till it was quite clean, then picking up the sheath and buckling the belt around me, I covered my sword and pa.s.sed between two of the wolves and up the hill, and away to where the horse was tied. The moon fell down straight into the valley, and as I rode back again the way I had come under the dark trees and past the glittering hill-tops, I heard behind me melancholy howling coming from the place where the wolves danced.

This is all of my tale, except that I stabled the horse before dawn at the farmer's, and gave him food and drink, and then walked by the sea road as the dawn broke.

THE SACRILEGE

The hall was raised at one end into a square stage, where the smoke would gather when the men sat late near the fire, and from this stage two doors opened at the back corners. One of these doors was curtained and led to the apartments of the men of the castle. The other was carved with strange images, and by it stood a long square table of carved oak.

We men sat below at the long board which ran the length of the hall. It was my lord and the monks who lived upon us who sat upon the raised staging; the monks eating at their carved table apart.

It was after the dinner, and Father Peter rose in his place. Motioning to his followers to pa.s.s through the door that led to the chapel, he came and bent and whispered to my lord, who set down his beer-mug on the instant, frowning; then, after a moment's thought my lord lifted his hand and spoke to us all in a loud, clear voice:

"Father Peter and I would speak alone in the hall. It would please me that you men take your beer on the battlements."

The men went shuffling, all but myself, for I was my lord's own man and counted as nothing more than his follower, doing things which women usually do for men, for he would have no women-folk about him.

Now Father Peter, folding his fat hands across his chest, lowered his head and frowned reflectively. My lord sat silently in the great chair with one leg over the arm.

"Lord Rolf," said Father Peter at last.

"Yes, Father Peter," answered my lord.

"Lord Rolf, Christian of this castle," said Father Peter again.

"Ay! Christian, and certainly lord of this castle," answered my lord, smiling.

Father Peter raised his head, and lifting one arm, pointed at my lord.

"I have caused it that we should be alone, that I might pray with you, for you are not so good a Christian as I would have you be."

"Yes," said my lord.

Then Father Peter, tumbling to his knees, prayed for a long time, while I standing by the fire, cursed his Latin. Then he got up again and coming to my lord he touched him on the shoulder.

"Have you felt that prayer?" he said in a deep voice.

"I have heard it," said my lord looking down.

"Then I will even say something that will appeal to you in a more militant way-something that has been in your mind for a long time, my lord." Father Peter became impressive. "The black frocks that sit and bend over that carved table by that carved door are a greater nation than ever the nation of Denmark will be, or any nation will be, until another nation of such frocks rouses itself against us; and so long as we shall hold the souls of men, and their hopes and fears of the hereafter, in our hands as a sword, so long shall we be more powerful than any sword forged by gnome or fairy."

Father Peter, extending both hands in blessing over Lord Rolf's head, turned hastily and went through the door that leads to the chapel. Now, this I would not stand, nor my lord, and we dared not tell it to the men for fear of violence, that the priests, who had forced themselves upon us in our house, and built their chapel leaning against our keep, should threaten us over the tables where they fed with us. This had been a long time coming, for Christianity sat hard upon us. There were no tortures in the time of Thor and Odin; and, as I said, Christianity sat grievously upon us.

Ah! Well! To the next scene. My lord was in the pa.s.sage before Father Peter's room, and he knew that Father Peter would return alone from the chapel after his last devotions, and when Father Peter's dark bulk turned the corner of the oak stair my lord spoke to him out of the shadow.

"Father Peter, you have said some words to me to-night in my hall. They were not churchmen's words."

Father Peter hesitated a moment, then throwing back his head:

"No," he said; "they were words militant, for the Church is born militant; and she shall ride you as a plough-horse. Let me pa.s.s on from my devotions."

"No, Father Peter," said my lord in a quiet voice, reaching one arm out of the shadow. "You go where you have taught us that there is more devotion than there is upon this earth. For three years you and your crew have eaten, slept, and builded on my lands, until now my house is but very little my own."

Father Peter took a step forward, but the long white arm barred him across his thick throat. He strode one step farther forward, pushing the arm aside, and, turning in the direction of my lord's voice, snarled like a dog, calling him long names from books I never read. Whether my lord was mad, or whether the humiliation of the past three years had hurt his heart, I do not know, but he reached both arms around the priest, and lifting him in the air, flung him face-downward against the window, where it ran to the floor. I went to my lord and caught his hands behind him. Then drawing long breaths, we walked silently toward the black form at the window foot. Stooping, I put my hand over its mouth and over its fat chest. There was a drawing up of legs and something like a laugh, deep in the throat. Then Father Peter died.

The snow chunked under our weary feet and our staffs were useless in the thaw, and ever behind, when the wind was still, and when there were no pines near us to whisper as of safety, we could hear the sound of the horses, and we would look at each other and step higher, and take longer strides for a few yards. My lord was very weary, for he was a man who loved warmth, and he could not bear the cold of the indifferent sky above him and the unfeeling purity of the snow that lay about us.

Far away was the glimmer of sea. There was no dawn, but a streak of yellow in the east, that grew and lengthened and widened, and then became flame-coloured and then disappeared, and a little sun came from the sea, but it had no light and the snow had glimmered more under the moon. There were but two of us left. We had been seven at first, but of the others three had turned back and two lay in the snow on our way. It was the ninth day that we had left the hall; and ever the men of the Bishop of Lund, three hundred and fifty of them, came after us on their light horses, and ever we doubled and crouched over the snow, like hares hungered or hunted. At night we would make fires of the pine-cones, and in our helmets melt the snow into water, lowering our helmets into the snow again to cool them afterwards. We had eaten all our bread, but of fish we had plenty, though I was sorry for my lord. So all that day we hastened, and when the night came we lay back to back in a hollow of the snow on a little hill that looked over a bay. The bay was frozen, and I remember the winter moonlight kept me awake as it shed itself upward from the ice into my face; and whenever I looked out over the snow-sweep, its long white track seemed to point to where we lay. Deep into the night, when the sighing wind had ceased to scud the drift-snow into our hiding-place, my lord turned over and shook me feebly. "Man!"

he said; "he was right when he said the Church was born militant, and that only a greater power like itself shall cast a shadow on men. We broken clans, that call ourselves nations, are little things. What shall I do? Tell me, what shall I do?" I looked at him in the surprise of one just waking, as he knelt above me, one hand on each shoulder. "Man!" he said, again, shaking me, "what shall I do? They are coming; I can hear them under the snow. I can hear the ice of the bay cracking to their boats, and I can hear the whispered warnings of the pine trees when they bend to the stirred air of their innumerable breaths. Man! what shall I do?" Awake now, I saw that my lord was full of terror, like a child, and bringing him close to me, I rolled him in his clothes and put him deep in the snow again, piling some of my own things over him, and he slept complainingly and fitfully like a child who has been punished.

It was just before the dawn when we heard the far-away shouting of the Bishop's noisy troop, and crawling to our feet we left our hole in the snow and crept down the side of the hill toward the water. Here my lord thought it was easier walking on the ice, but soon we heard the sound of horses on the strand, and as it was a road to them not like the snow above, we climbed again to where the deeper drifts were and pa.s.sed unseen. So half that day we travelled, and twice they went ahead of us going by the strand, but both times a few hors.e.m.e.n only; so we dared not turn back, for we knew the others were spread out on the uplands. Late in the afternoon we came to the long point of rock that stretches from our island towards the mainland, and here my lord stopped. "If we had a boat," he said, trembling I think with eagerness; then, pulling his grey beard, he whispered to himself only, "Who can fight against the Church,-who will not fight?" Then turned he again and went on along the sh.o.r.e; and thus late in the evening we came to a solitary beech which rose from out a hollow in the hills. Great formless mounds of white lay near, the fallen ones who had left this old tree lonely; and leaning against this solitary trunk we pa.s.sed our night, until the coming of a glorious dawning fell on our faces as they lay against the smooth beech-bark, and awakened us early-I think earlier than any of the Bishop's men awakened that morning, for though we waited to eat we heard no sound of their pursuing until nearly the noon-time; then from far off came the familiar thud of horses' hoofs and the crisp jingle of the bridle-reins, in the far-carrying, cold, morning air.

It was the next day after this, when my Lord Rolf seemed to hesitate, walking by himself, telling even me nothing, and when it came to the sunset and a cold yellow edged the dark sky over the sea, and the snow-drifts looked ghostly at any distance, he spoke to me after many trials with himself.

"Do you know where we are?"

"No," I said.

"Do you know that by to-morrow at noon we shall have returned?"

I looked at him startled.

"Returned to the hall?"

"Yes," he said; "we shall have been round the island."

"And when we shall have returned?" I asked.

My lord was silent. It was not at noon the next day but toward the dusk when the darkening trees began to seem familiar, and the coast-line stretched in remembered curves, and the ripples along the icy beach seemed home-like. In the dusk, as we plodded crouching behind a drift of snow that ran along the hillside, there rose before us something gaunt and white and very tall and very still in the valley below us, and we stopped, for we saw it was a building: it seemed a keep of the old days that they build no more now. So we stood looking, trying to make out any light near in the dark evening. Suddenly my lord sighed, and, falling forward on his knees, he put his face down in the snow, and when I bent and whispered to him he only answered, "They have burnt it, but the old keep would not burn." It was our own hall that we had come back to. So, the next morning we struck inland again, from the hill-top, thinking to find refuge in a forest of leafless oaks whose rattling branches glittered in the pale sunlight; and when we reached it my lord sat down on a great root of one of the trees and would go no farther into the forest. So I stayed by him all day feeding him on the last of our fish, and making him cold water to drink, for though he shivered very much he drank always. Thus it was that midway between the noon and the evening there came three men, cross-bowmen, suddenly, from over the hillside, and seeing us they stopped; then after a moment's speaking one with another they ran forward, their cross-bows stretched.

My lord was sitting dejectedly at the foot of the ice-sheaved oak, and I was cooling water for him in my helmet. The three men ran toward us, shouting. My lord heard the sound and looked up; then rising slowly to his feet, he hesitated a moment and unbuckled his sword, at which the three cross-bowmen stopped, for they were not great men. Then my lord spoke to me, half turning: "You have followed me faithfully, though to a bad end, and I can give you nothing; nor do you want it; but I will not be killed by Bishop's men. My fathers knew how to die, and their G.o.ds took them, so I-- and my G.o.ds will take me." Then ramming the hilt and the upper part of his sword into the snow, my lord fell over it awkwardly and lay groaning, the sword through him. All this before I could do aught but cry out.

Well-- Then came the bowmen, who shot him so that, after a few minutes, he was dead indeed, and they brought his body and his sword down to the snow-covered keep in the valley, where they delivered it to the Bishop of Lund's legate; and they showed me over the doorway the heads of many old women whom they said had been "left behind." I do not know. And there were children's heads hanging from them. What became of the men of the hall? It is something that I cannot remember. They bound thongs of leather round my brows to make me tell of Father Peter and how he died, and again in Roskilde, and they twisted them. But at last they permitted me to enter the church here, as a server, and I look out on the fair fiord of Roskilde now.

I am very glad that the story is done.