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

So we went up to the great hall in silence, sorely cast down; and that was Halfden's homecoming.

Little joy was there on the high place at the feast that night, though at the lower tables the men of our crew (for so I must ever think of those whose leader I had been for a little while, with Halfden) held high revelling with their comrades. Many were the tales they told, and when a tale of fight and victory was done, the scald would sing it in verse that should be kept and sung by the winter fire till new deeds brought new songs to take its place.

Presently Halfden rose up, after the welcome cup had gone round and feasting was done, and the ale and mead began to flow, and he beckoned me to come with him. Hubba would have come also, but Ingvar held him back.

"Let Wulfric have his say first," he growled; and I thanked him in my mind for his thought.

So we went to the inner chamber, where Osritha would sit with her maidens, and Halfden said:

"This matter is filling all my thoughts so that I am but a gloomy comrade at the board. Tell me all, and then what is done is done. One may not fight against the Norn maidens {xiv}."

There I told him all my story, and he remembered how I had told him, laughing, of Beorn's jealousy at first. And when my tale was nearly done Osritha crept from her bower and came and sat beside Halfden, pushing her hand into his, and resting her head on his shoulder.

Then I ended quickly, saying that Ingvar had done justice on Beorn. And at that remembrance the maiden shivered, and Halfden's face showed that he knew what the man's fate was like to have been at the great jarl's hands.

"So, brother," he said, when I left off speaking, "had I gone to Reedham there would have been burnt houses in East Anglia."

"In Reedham?" said I.

"Wherever this Beorn had a house; and at Caistor where that old fool Ulfkytel lives, and maybe at one or two other places on the way thither. And I think your father and Egfrid your brother would have helped me, or I them."

So he doubted me not at all, any more than I should have doubted his tale, were he in my place and I in his.

Then I said that I myself had no grudge against Earl Ulfkytel, for he had sent me here.

"Why then, no more have I," answered Halfden; "for he is a wiseacre and an honest one, and maybe meant kindly. Ingvar would have slain both guilty and innocent, and told them to take their wrangle elsewhere, to Hela or Asgard as the way might lead them."

Now as he said that, I, who looked ever on the face of her whom I loved, saw that a new fear had come into Osritha's heart, and that she feared somewhat for me. Nor could I tell what it was. But Halfden and I went on talking, and at last she could not forbear a little sob, and at that Halfden asked what ailed her.

"May I speak to you, my brother, very plainly, of one thing that I dread?" she asked, drawing closer to him.

"Aye, surely," he answered in surprise.

"Remember you the words that Ingvar said to the priest of the White Christ who came from Ansgar at Hedeby {xv}, while our father was away in the ships?"

"Why, they were like words. He bade him go and settle the matter with Odin whom he would not reverence, and so slew him."

"Aye, brother. And he said that so he would do to any man who would not honour the gods."

"Why do you remember that, Osritha?"

"Because--because there will be the great sacrifice tomorrow, and Wulfric, your friend, is not of our faith."

Then Halfden was silent, looking across at me, and all at once I knew that here was a danger greater than any I had yet been through. Fire I had passed through, and water, and now it was like to be trial by steel. And the first had tried my courage, and the next my endurance, as I thought; but this would try both, and my faith as well.

"That is naught," said Halfden, lightly. "It is but the signing of Thor's hammer, and I have seen Wulfric do that many a time, only not quite in our way, thus;" and he signed our holy sign all unknowing, or caring not. "And to eat of the horse that is sacrificed--why, you and I, Wulfric, did eat horse on the Frankish shores; and you thought it good, being nigh starved--you remember?"

I remembered, but that was different; for that we did because the shores were so well watched that we ran short of food, and had to take what we could under cover of night at one time. But this of which Osritha spoke was that which Holy Writ will by no means suffer us to do--to eat of a sacrifice to idols knowingly, for that would be to take part therein. Nor might I pretend that the holy sign was as the signing of Thor's Hammer.

"Halfden," I said, having full trust in him, "I may not do this. I may not honour the old gods, for so should I dishonour the White Christ whom I serve."

"This is more than I can trouble about in my mind," said Halfden; "but if it troubles you, I will help you somehow, brother Wulfric. But you must needs come to the sacrifice."

"Cannot I go hunting?"

"Why, no; all men must be present. And to be away would but make things worse, for there would be question."

Then I strengthened myself, and said that I must even go through with the matter, and so would have no more talk about it. But Osritha kept on looking sadly at me, and I knew that she was in fear for me.

Now presently we began to talk of my home and how they would mourn me as surely lost. And I said that this mourning would be likely to hinder my sister's wedding for a while. And then, to make a little more cheerful thought, I told Halfden what his father had said about his wishing that he had been earlier with us.

"Why, so do I," said my comrade, laughing a little; "for many reasons," he added more sadly, thinking how that all things would have been different had he sailed back at once.

Then he must needs go back to the question of the sacrifice.

"Now I would that you would turn good Dane and Thor's man, and bide here with us; and then maybe--"

But Osritha rose up quickly and said that she must begone, and so bade us goodnight and went her way into the upper story of that end of the great hall where her own place was. Whereat Halfden laughed quietly, looking at me, and when she was quite gone, and the heavy deerskins fell over the doorway, said, still smiling:

"How is this? It is in my mind that my father's wish might easily come to pass in another way not very unlike."

That was plain speaking, nor would I hesitate to meet the kindly look and smile, but said that indeed I had come to long that it might be so. But I said that the jarl, his father, had himself shown me that no man should leave his old faith but for better reasons than those of gain, however longed for. For that is what he had answered Eadmund the king when the land was offered him, and he was asked to become a Christian.

"Yet if such a thing might be," said Halfden, "gladly would I hail you as brother in very truth."

So we sat without speaking for a while, and then Halfden said that were I to stand among the crowd of men on the morrow there would surely be no notice taken of me.

Yet as I lay on my wolf skins at the head of the great hall, and prayed silently--as was my wont among these heathen--I asked for that same help that had been given to men of old time who were in the same sore strait as I must very likely be in tomorrow.

Then came to me the thought: "What matters if outwardly I reverence Thor and Odin while I inwardly deny them?" and that excuse had nigh got the better of me. But I minded what our king had told me many a time: how that in the first christening of our people it had ever been held to be a denying of our faith to taste the heathen sacrifices, or to bow the head in honour, even but outward, of the idols, so that many had died rather than do so. And he had praised those who thus gave up their life.

Then, too, I remembered the words of the Prior of Bosham concerning martyrs. And we had been led to speak of them by this very question as to sacrifice to the Danish gods. So I made up my mind that if I might escape notice, I would do so--and if not, then would I bear the worst.

So I fell asleep at last. And what it may have been I know not--unless the wind as it eddied through the high windows clashed some weapon against shield on the walls with a clear ringing sound--but I woke with the voice of Bosham bell in my ears--and Rorik and Halfden each in his place started also, and Rorik muttered a curse before he lay down again, for he sat up, looking wildly.

But greatly cheered with that token was I, for I knew that help was not far from me, and after that I had no more fear, but slept peacefully, though I thought it was like to be my last night on earth.

Very early in the gray morning Halfden woke me, and he was fully armed, while at the lower end of the hall the courtmen were rising and arming themselves also, for Vikings must greet Odin as warriors ready to do battle for him when Ragnaroek {xvi} and the last great fight shall come.

"Rise and arm yourself," he said; "here are the arms in which you fought well in your first fight, and axe and sword beside. Now you shall stand with our crew, and so none of them will heed you, for they love you, and know your ways are not as ours. So will all be well."

Then I thanked him, for I surely thought it would be so; and I armed myself, and that man who had been my own shield man when I led the midship gang helped me. One thing only I wished, and that was that I had the axe which Lodbrok made for me, for then, I told the man, I should feel as a Viking again, and that pleased him.

"However," he said, "I think I have found an axe that is as near like your own as may be."

And he had done so, having had that kindly thought for me. Then we went out, for the horns were blowing outside the town in the ash grove where the Ve, as they call the temple of Odin and Thor and the other gods, was. And overhead, high and unseen in the air, croaked the ravens, Odin's birds, scared from their resting places by the tramp of men, yet knowing that their share in the feast was to come.

I shivered, but the sound of the war horns, and the weight and clank of the well-known arms, stirred my blood at last, and when we fell in for our short march, Halfden and Thormod, Rorik and myself leading our crew, I was ready for all that might come, if need for a brave heart should be.

Silently we filed through the bare trunks of the ashes, the trees of Thor, where many a twisted branch and dead trunk showed that the lightning had been at work, until we came to the place of the Ve in its clearing.

There stood the sanctuary, a little hut--hardly more--built of ash-tree logs set endwise on a stone footing, and roofed with logs of ash, and closed with heavy doors made of iron-bolted ash timber also. This temple stood under the mightiest ash tree of all, and there was a clear circle of grass, tree bordered, for a hundred yards all round it, and all that circle was lined with men, armed and silent.

Before the temple was a fire-reddened stone, the altar. And on it were graven runes, and symbols so strange that neither I nor any man could read them, so old were they, for some men said that stone and runes