Chapter IX: The Plighting

Thorkel spoke to Stangerd about Cormac. It was on the evening of the day after the battle, when he had gone early. “My girl,” he said, “what is wrong with this man of yours?”

She flushed, and looked away from him. Her eyes were cloudy. “He is no man of mine,” she said.

“Well,” said Thorkel, “he slew a couple of fine fellows last night, and I suppose that was not for nothing.”

She flashed him a look. “He was set upon by three at once--and there would have been a fourth at him but for me.”

Thorkel could not deny it. “And what is to be done now?” he asked her instead. “Is he to make free of my house, and of you; to sit here scowling at you, looking you over, and no one to say a word? Are you not ashamed to be so treated? If your brother were here, things might go differently, I think. They don’t call him Toothgnasher for nothing.”

Stangerd was angry; her cheek-bones showed it. She twisted her hands about and stared out of doors. “Cormac would not be afraid of his teeth,” she said. “He has teeth of his own, and has shown them.”

“Little sense has he shown in this affair,” says Thorkel. “What does he mean by his singing and nonsense? He calls you every sounding name he can get at, and talks two-score to the dozen. He’ll tell you by the hour together what he is going to do with you--and you suffer it. He sets you up sky-high, but can’t see you because your head is in the clouds. What do you make of it, you who are a sensible girl, or were so before he ran on about your good looks?”

Stangerd looked stormy, but handsomer than ever. Her father could not but notice how fine she was, with her rich colour and golden hair and dark blue eyes. But she had not much to say because she did not know what to make of Cormac herself, and she had a feeling that, sweet as his kisses were, she ought not to allow them until he declared himself. Cormac had a way with him which was hard to resist. He had a way of looking at her with narrow eyes, and of saying, “O Stangerd, how sweet and lovely you are!”--and of taking her. She found that very pleasant. But what baffled her was that at another time he would treat her as if she was unearthly--a being of the other world--and as if he dared not to touch her at all. Lastly, there was his manner of to-day, when he had sat dull and troubled before her, neither looking at her nor avoiding the sight of her, but preoccupied, with his thoughts elsewhere.

Meantime Thorkel had nothing to conceal. He did not understand Cormac any better than she did; but he did not want to understand him.

“I see that you choose to sulk with me,” he said; “but look you here, my girl. If this man of yours comes after you, he must deal with me for you; and let him get it into his head that I will not have my daughter talked about. That would be a disgrace upon my house which I should not put up with. If he don’t want you, let him say so, or prove it by keeping out of your way. I can get a husband for you any day; and so I shall if I am to be bothered by this hankering and moon-gazing.”

With that he took himself off.

* * * * *

In the morning she was troubled, finding the need of Cormac, and she did what she had never yet done. She went out across the meadows and on to the fell-side to look for him. There was a fine rain falling, but the light was behind it, and it was more like silver mist than rain. She saw him coming and went down to meet him. The rain was shining in her hair; her cheeks and lips were wet. He saw her in his turn, and his feet answered to the leap of his heart. They met without words; but he took both her hands. She could not look at him, but let him hold her hands. She felt the might of his eyes, and liked the feeling.

Presently he said: “Stangerd, now you shall tell me truly why you have come out to meet me.”

She hung her head and would not let him see her face. But he did see it. She was burning red.

“By that,” he said, “you have answered me. And now I ask you this--Whom would you choose to wed?”

After a little she shook her fear from her and showed him her face. The love-light was in her eyes, and made her bold. “I should choose to wed the blind woman’s son,” she said.

Cormac was very grave. “You have chosen as you ought,” he said. “You have chosen me, who have courted you long. So it shall be.” He drew her in and put his arm about her. So they stood awhile together. Then Cormac stooped his head to her, and kissed her mouth. He did it just so, deliberately, and without passion. No words were said. She did not know what to make of it. His mood was very strange.

They went together to the house, and by degrees Cormac’s tongue was loosened and he told her of the battle, and spoke of his glumness of the other day. “I felt as if I had been enticed into cheapening you by that bout. I felt on a level with those snarling swine--one of a pack about your skirts. I felt that I had been digging a dyke between you and me; it was full of black sludge and slipping eels. When I loved you first you were glorious to me--as you are to-day; but yesterday there was a skin over my eyes. I did not see you glorious. If I cannot love you well, I will not love you at all. You shall be more than wife to me--or nothing.”

He kissed her very often after that and comforted her. She was not bewildered any more, and could talk to him freely.

“Will you not make peace with my father now?” she asked him. “Do it for my sake. He says hard things to me, and I can’t answer him for fear he may say what I could not bear.”

Cormac promised her that, and she was pleased. “Nobody could refuse you anything when you are like that,” she said.

“Ho!” said he; “but I shall not kiss your father.”

“If you are friendly to him, he will take it well,” she told him. “You are of good fortune--as good as he is--and of good descent. That is what he will look to.”

“Such things mean little to me,” said Cormac. “The best thing I can say for myself is that you, who might choose the King of Norway, choose me, Cormac Ogmundsson of Melstead.”

She laughed. “You must find a better thing to say than that. If I don’t believe you, how shall he?”

“Shall I make you believe me, Stangerd?” he said with eagerness.

But she would not let him. “Ask for me,” she said, “as the custom is, and not in the way of skalds and minstrels. He does not like your rhyming about me.”

“But you, Stangerd, are pleased when I sing of you?”

She thought for a little while, then cast herself upon his breast. “Oh,” she said, “I am pleased, whatever you do with me.”

Then he said fondly: “I will tell you what I would do with you now, Stangerd. I would carry you in my arms out of the house, and through the meadows, and up into the fells. I know a place--a high place where there is a holm, and the grass grows green, and there are tall trees, and within them a hush. And there I would wed you upon a bed of rock-rose, under the stars. And I would build you a house there, and make an altar of stones before it, and keep a fire of fragrant wood burning there perpetually. Nobody should see you for a long time but the sun, the moon, the stars, and me. And you should be loved as never woman was loved before, your body by my body, and your spirit by mine. When you were a mother, I would summon all men to come and do you worship. And the songs I would make of you would go all over the world, and your name would be whispered about like the name of Fricka, the goddess who gives love and life to men.”

She blushed at his ardent talk, and welcomed it, for she was susceptible to his moods, though she did not at all understand them, and knew that this was the one that became him best. “Oh,” she said, “what wild words! But you must woo me as a girl and not as a goddess. Therefore you shall ask for me properly of my father, and then you shall take me where you will.”

“Well,” he said, “I will do it; but it is proper to have witnesses and upholders with me. Therefore I will come to-morrow with my brother Thorgils, and then everything will be in order. But for all that I should like it best that I might carry you away now in my arms.”

She believed that that was very true, but she had an orderly mind, and could not consider such wild-goose plans.

He stayed with her till it grew dark, and then left her. She felt very much drawn to him; more than she had ever been when he was away from her, for his power was strong upon her when he was with her, and seemed little when he had gone. But now she knew that she had desire of him and was ready for the day when he should take her home to Melstead. For all her beauty and high colour she was a slow-blooded girl; nobody had ever stirred her as Cormac had now done. Many men had courted her, and she had been pleased with their attentions, and flattered by them; but this man had awoken the woman in her.

* * * * *

As for Cormac, he went homewards with feet of lead. He had no idea what was the matter with him; but matter there was. Once he stopped short and rubbed his eyes. “What is the meaning of this? I leave Stangerd, the wonder of the world, her accepted lover, and my heart is like cold plum-pudding. And at the sheep-homing, after I had been a day with her, I came flying, with feet that scarcely touched the heather tufts! What is this? She is the same--nay, she is more beautiful than she was. She is like golden fruit upon a wall. To lie in the arms of Stangerd is a thing scarce to be thought of--to love her at night under the stars--a man might go mad waiting for such a joy. But I am not mad; though now I wait. There is something the matter with me. When I talk to her of her beauty I grow by degrees to believe it; but when I think of it, or see it, I don’t believe it. And yet I am the same man that I was; I am that Cormac who believed because he knew. Am I so truly? If I am not--but I tell you that I am. Love her? Ah, but I do love her--I do--I tell you I do.” Then he went on his way, but at the edge of his heart there was fear like a blanket of fog, threatening to muffle, and deaden, and stifle it.

He told his mother and brother about his doings, and asked Thorgils to go with him on the morrow to ask for Stangerd. Thorgils said he would certainly go; and “They say that you have got a fine, tall girl for a wife, and a handsome girl, and a good one.”

“She is all that,” Cormac said, “and much more than that. I believe she is the most beautiful girl that ever was born.”

Dalla, his mother, shook her head. “I shall never see her; but I shall tell by the feel of her. I hope she is even-tempered; for your wife will need to be.”

Cormac said, “I am sure that she has given me her heart. I am sure that she has mine in exchange. With that, all is well, I take it.”

“If you are sure of these things, all is well indeed,” said Dalla.

Cormac grew hot.

“It does not become you to doubt me. I tell you again that I have loved her so much that I have slain two men to prove it. I have loved her night and day. I have made good songs, I have been in great heart. Love has made me taller than other men. When I first saw her it seemed to me that she was like the core of light--that strong light enclosed her like a sheath--and that she lay quivering within it like a sword.”

“All this,” said his mother, “is very fine,” and put Cormac into a rage.

“Ah, you scoff at my way--as if by a lip curled back you could refute a lover. Well, you must find out for yourself how much I love her. You will have time.”

“I shall find out,” Dalla said. But Cormac had gone out of the house.

Dalla stretched out her hands to the fire. “I am not contented,” she said.

Thorgils looked troubled. “It was a bad piece of work that he outed Thorveig. I backed him, because I could not do otherwise. But he was wrong. Her ill-conditioned boys were dead. He might have left her alone. He has never been the same since.”

“Nay,” said Dalla, “she would have cast misfortune upon him because he would not pay a ransom.”

“A bad business,” said Thorgils, “a bad business. He’ll take it hard.”

Said Dalla, “Do you take me to Thorveig. The spell must be moved.”

“Too late,” said Thorgils.

Dalla did her best to hearten him. “Cormac is moody by nature; there may be no spell at all.”

Thorgils said, “I doubt that she has done it. She read it into him. She has the second sight.”

Next day they rode over the hill to Tongue, to ask for Stangerd. Three of them went--Cormac, Thorgils, and Toste the reeve. They took gifts with them--a fine saddle, scarlet cloaks embroidered with gold and blue, and long horns for drinking, with golden covers and chains--treasure of Ogmund the Viking, long laid up for such a use. They found Thorkel sitting in his hall, in his finest clothes, on the daïs, surrounded by his men and his friends. He loved things to be ceremonious. Stangerd was not present.

Cormac asked squarely for her, promising a good price. “I set this sum upon her,” he said, “not because it represents her worth, which is to me beyond human prices; but because it is the custom.”

“She is worth a good price,” Thorkel said.

One of the company added: “She is the best-made girl I ever saw.” Another said: “Many would be after her if they knew she was to be had. Or Thorkel might take her to Norway and find some earl glad to have her.”

Cormac chafed, and looked very black, biting his cheek.

“The less we say about prices the better,” he said. “I have complied with custom, to serve you. But I can’t go on with it.”

“All in order, Cormac,” Thorkel said. “Law is law, and money is money.”

So the talk ran on in this fashion; and then Thorkel said, “This will want thinking about--a deal of thinking it will want. It seems to me that your offer should be stretched. If my son Toothgnasher were here he would say so--that I know. But he is on the sea, levying war. Should he come home in the spring with a good cargo, that will make us look foolish--to have bargained away his sister to the first comer. Toothgnasher sets great store by Stangerd. We must think of the absent as much as we can.”

Toste said, “Our land is as much as yours, and much of it is better. Your girl will be no loser by coming to Melstead.”

“Nay, it is I will be the loser, it seems,” Thorkel said--and his friends took his side.

Cormac was beside himself with rage. “You shall finish this talk without me,” he said. “My brother knows more of such matters than I do. By your leave, I will go and see Stangerd.” Whereupon he broke away from the company and went through the door which led to the Bower. She was there at the loom, other girls with her. She looked strangely at him. Her eyes were like blue flowers.

Cormac went to her and kissed her, not very gently. “Stangerd, they are haggling over you as if you were a heifer. Such things sicken me. You and I know what is to be, and those dealers can never know. Give me your hand.”

She did. He put a ring upon her finger. “That is a token, my love,” he said. “Let them do their foulest. I have gone to work in my own fashion. Speak to me now and tell me what I wish to hear.”

She asked him. “What is it that you wish to hear?”

“Ah!” said Cormac, “if you don’t know that by this time, I can hardly tell you before these girls.”

She grew red. “You are angry with me. I don’t know why. I thought that a betrothal was otherwise done.”

It is true that he was angry; and if she did not know why, neither could he tell her, for he didn’t know himself. While they were standing there, handfasted but yet far apart, one came in to say that the bargain was made, and that Stangerd must come in for the plighting before witnesses. Cormac said that he would bring her in, but was told that could hardly be. He tossed up his head and tapped with his foot; but Stangerd paid no attention to him. She signalled to her maids that they should follow her, and went into the hall, leaving Cormac to follow as best he might.

He was well called Black Cormac for that day, at any rate. But the thing was done, and there was a feast. He had no songs for them, though.