Wulfric the Weapon Thane: A Story of the Danish Conquest of East Anglia, Whistler [best ebook reader for laptop .TXT] 📗

if you knew, Wulfric of Reedham, how near you have been to this yourself, through his doings, you would not hold your hand," answered Ingvar, scowling at Beorn again.

"Maybe, Jarl," I answered, "but though you may make a liar speak truth thus, you cannot make an honest man say more than he has to speak."

"One cannot well mistake an honest saying," said Ingvar. "And that is well for you, friend."

And so he turned and watched his courtmen, as the Danes called the housecarles, carry Beorn out. Then he went to the walls and began to handle axe after axe, taking down one by one, setting some on the great table, and putting others back, as if taking delight in choosing one fittest for some purpose.

Even as we watched him--Hubba sitting on the table's edge, and I standing by him--a leathern curtain that went across a door at the upper end of the hall was pulled aside, and a lady came into the place. Stately and tall, with wondrous black hair, was this maiden, and I knew that this must be that Osritha of whom the jarl was wont to speak to Eadgyth and my mother, and who wrought the raven banner that hung above the high place where she stood now. She was like Halfden and Hubba, though with Ingvar's hair, and if those three were handsome men among a thousand, this sister of theirs was more than worthy of them. She stood in the door, doubting, when she saw me. Sad she looked, and she wore no gold on arm or neck, doubtless because of the certainty of the great jarl's death; and when she saw that Hubba beckoned to her, she came towards us, and Ingvar set down the great axe whose edge he was feeling.

"Go back to your bower, sister," he said; "we have work on hand."

And he spoke sternly, but not harshly, to her. She shrank away a little, as if frightened at the jarl's dark face and stern words, but Hubba called her by name.

"Stay, Osritha; here is that friend of our father's from over seas, of whom you have heard."

Then she looked pityingly at me, as I thought, saying very kindly:

"You are welcome. Yet I fear you have suffered for your friendship to my father."

"I have suffered for not being near to help him, lady," I said.

"There is a thing that you know not yet," said Hubba. "This Wulfric was the man who took Father from the breakers."

Then the maiden smiled at me, though her eyes were full of tears, and she asked me:

"How will they bury him in your land? In honour?"

"I have a brother-in-law who will see to that," I said. "And, moreover, Eadmund the King, and Elfric, my father, will do him all honour."

"I will see to that," growled Ingvar, turning sharply from where he sought another weapon on the wall.

Not knowing all he meant, this pleased me, for I thought that we should sail together to Reedham for this, before very long. But Osritha, knowing his ways, looked long at him, till he turned away again, and would not meet her eyes.

"Now go back to your place, my sister," he said. "It is not well for you to bide here just now."

"Why not? Let our friend tell me of Father also," she said wilfully.

"Because I am going to do justice on Lodbrok's slayer," said Ingvar, in a great voice, swinging an axe again.

Then the maiden turned pale, and wrung her hands, looking at Ingvar, who would not meet her eyes; and then she went and laid her hands on his mighty arm, crying:

"Not that, my brother; not that!"

"Why not?" he asked; but he did not shake off her little hands.

"Because Father would not have men so treated, however ill they had done."

"Aye, brother; the girl is right," said Hubba. "Let him die; for you gave him to Wulfric, and that is his word."

"Well then," said Ingvar, setting back the axe at last, "I will not carve him into the eagle I meant to make of him. But slay him I must and will, if the life is yet in him."

"Let Odin have him," said Hubba; and I knew that he meant that the man should be hanged, for so, as Halfden's vikings told me, should he be Odin's thrall, unhonoured.

Then the maiden fled from the hall, glad to have gained even that for the man, instead of the terrible death that the Danes keep for traitors and cowards.

Now Ingvar put back the axes he had kept, saying that the girl ever stood in his way when he would punish as a man deserved. After that he stood for a while as if in thought, and broke out at length:

"We will see if this man can sing a death song as did Ragnar our forefather."

And with that he waited no more, but strode out into the courtyard, we following. And I feared what I should see; until I looked on Beorn, and though he was yet alive, I saw that he was past feeling aught.

They bore him out of the village to a place just inside the trenched enclosure, and there were old stone walls, such as were none elsewhere in the place, but as it might have been part of Burgh or Brancaster walls that the Romans made on our shores, so ancient that they were crumbling to decay. There they set him down, and raised a great flat stone, close to the greatest wall, which covered the mouth of a deep pit.

"Look therein," said Ingvar to me.

I looked, and saw that the pit was stone walled and deep, and that out of it was no way but this hole above. The walls and floor were damp and slimy; and when I looked closer, the dim light showed me bones in one corner, and also that over the floor crawled reptiles, countless.

"An adder is a small thing to sting a man," said Ingvar in his grim voice. "Nor will it always hurt him much. Yet if a man is so close among many that he must needs tread on one, and it bites him, and in fleeing that he must set foot on another, and again another, and then more--how will that end?"

I shuddered and turned away.

"In such a place did Ella of Northumbria put my forebear, Ragnar Lodbrok; and there he sang the song {xiii} we hold most wondrous of all. There he was set because he was feared, and Northumbria knows what I thought of that matter. But Beorn goes here for reasons which you know. And East Anglia shall know what my thoughts are of those reasons."

Then two men seized Beorn and cast him into that foul pit, stripped of all things, and the stone fell.

But Beorn moved not nor cried out, and I think that even as Ulfkytel had boded, stripped of life itself was he before the bottom of the pit was reached.

So the justice of Ulfkytel the Earl came to pass. But the lies spoken by Beorn were not yet paid for.

CHAPTER IX. JARL HALFDEN'S HOMECOMING.

From the time when Beorn was made to speak the truth, I was a welcome guest in the hall that had been Lodbrok's, to Hubba at least, and we were good friends. As for Ingvar, he was friendly enough also, and would listen when I spoke with his more frank and open brother of my days with Halfden and his father. But he took little pleasure in my company, going silent and moody about the place, for the snow that began on the day after I landed was the first of a great storm, fiercer and colder than any we knew in England, and beyond the courtyard of the great house men could scarcely stir for a time.

This storm I had but just escaped, and it seemed to me, and still seems, that the terror and pain thereof was held back while I was on the sea, for those nights and days had had no winter sting in them.

Hubba and I would wrestle and practise arms in the hall or courtyard during that time, and he was even beyond his father, my teacher, in the matter of weapon play; so that it is no wonder that now, as all men know, he is held the most famous warrior of his time.

These sports Ingvar watched, and took part in now and then when his mood was lighter, but it was seldom. Yet he was skilful, though not as his brother.

Then at night was the fire of pine logs high heaped, and we feasted while the scalds, as they call their gleemen, sang the deeds of the heroes of old. And some of those of whom they sang were men of the Angles of the old country; and one was my own forefather, and for that I gave the scald my gold bracelet, and thereafter he sang lustily in my praise as Lodbrok's rescuer.

Very pleasant it was in Ingvar's hall while the wind howled over the roof, and the roar of the sea was always in our ears. And these Danes drank less than our people, if they ate more largely. But Ingvar would sit and take pleasure in none of the sport, being ever silent and thoughtful.

But to me, best of all were the times when I might see and speak with Osritha, and soon the days seemed heavy to me if by chance I had no word with her. And she was always glad to speak of her father and Halfden; for she was the youngest of all Lodbrok's children, and Halfden, her brother, was but a year older than herself, so that she loved him best of all, and longed to see him home again.

So longed I, grieving for the news he must hear when he came to Reedham, but yet thinking that he would be glad to find me at least living and waiting for him.

Now, as the snow grew deeper and the cold strengthened, the wolves began to come at night into the village, and at last grew very daring. So one night a man ran in to say that a pack was round a cottage where a child would not cease crying, and must be driven off, or they would surely tear the clay walls down.

Then Hubba and I would go; but Ingvar laughed at us, saying that a few firebrands would settle the matter by fraying the beasts away. However, the man was urgent, and we went out with Raud and his brother, and some twenty men, armed with spears and axes.

The night was very dark, and the snow whirled every way, and the end of it was that Raud and I and two more men, with the dog Vig, lost the rest, and before we found them we had the pack on us, and we must fight for our lives. And that fight was a hard fight, for there must have been a score of gaunt wolves, half starved and ravenous.

And I think we should have fared badly, for at last I was standing over Raud, who was down, dragged to the earth by two wolves, of which the dog slew one and I the other, while the other two men were back to back with me, and the wolves bayed all round us. But Hubba and his party heard our shouts in time and came up, and so ended the matter.

Now Raud must have it that I had saved his life, though I thought the good dog had a share in it, and both he and the dog were a little hurt. However, my shoulder was badly torn by a wolf that leapt at me while my spear was cumbered with another, and I for my part never wished it had not been so.

For Osritha, who was very skilful in leech craft, tended my hurt; and I saw much of her, for the hurts were a long time before they healed, as wolf bites are apt to be, and we grew very friendly. So that, day by day, I began to long to see the maiden who cared for my wound so gently, before the time came.

Now Raud must needs make me a spear from a tough ashen sapling that he had treasured for a long time, because that which I had used in the wolf hunt was sprung by the weight of one of the beasts, and while his hurts kept him away at his own house he wrought it, and at last brought it up to the hall to give to me.

When I looked at it--and it was a very good one, and had carved work where the hand grips the shaft, and a carved end--I saw that the head was one of Jarl Ingvar's best spearheads, and asked Raud where he got it.

"Why,"