Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

“I am Thorkell Vilgerdson of Rogaland in Norway,” he replied. “I know nothing of any Miofifirthers or Seydisfirthers or of any foes of yours. I never set foot on Iceland until I leapt ashore from my drifting boat soon after sunrise of the morning on which I encountered your daughter and nieces. I have never, in Iceland, set eyes on any Icelanders except members of your household. What I have told you is true in every particular. But how may I convince you of its truth?”

“As you must know from my name and my sons’ names,” Thorstein answered, “we are steadfast adherents of the old faith. Those who suspect you, and my wife, the most embittered of those against you, in particular, would be at once convinced if you take formal oath to the truth of your statements, an oath sworn upon your own blood and the sacred ring of our holy temple, calling Thor and Odin to witness. If you are willing to take oath, as I suggest, no one here will any longer doubt you.”

“I am entirely willing,” Thorkell declared. “I am more than willing, I am eager. The suspicions of your household are natural, if you have crafty enemies near at hand and live under threat of being raided. I will swear as you suggest.”

“I infer,” said Thorstein, “that you also, then, like all here at Hofstadir, are a firm believer in the gods of our fathers.”

“I am indeed,” Thorkell affirmed.

“Have you met Christians?” his host queried.

“Too many,” said Thorkell, “too many by far.”

“Have you talked with any about their beliefs?” the old man inquired.

“With many,” Thorkell said.

“And what do you think of them?” Thorstein pressed him.

“It seems to me,” said Thorkell, “that they claim to have a system of sorcery and magic far more efficacious and far cheaper than ours. That is about all I can gather from their talk. Their religion costs far less than ours because they hold that no blood-sacrifices are necessary, stating that one man, hundreds of years ago, achieved one sacrifice by which all men may benefit forever, no other being required after that one. How this could be or can be I cannot conceive. But such appears to be their view. Then they seem to think that priests can be largely dispensed with: certainly they have far fewer than we and their priests are cheaper to maintain than ours, as they require less in the way of ornaments, raiment, food and servants. Then, though no one of them has conveyed to me what they mean, they all allege that their invocations win surer and more effective responses than those which we receive from our deities. That is all I can make out about their novelties.”

“Your impressions,” Thorstein said, “tally with mine. Christians are utterly incomprehensible to me. In particular, they all rant about peace on earth and good-will to men. Yet, since they became Christians, the Miofifirthers and the Seydisfirthers are just as implacably hostile to us here as before. My father repeatedly made overtures to them proposing conferences to negotiate for a reconciliation, for mutual concessions, for laying our differences and the damage done to each side before the Althing for reference to the courts and for a decision and settlement, for a termination of the feud and the establishment of harmony and amity. I have made similar proffers. But they have been inexorably hostile. In fact, since they became Christians, they seem, if possible, even more ferocious, rancorous and blood-thirsty than before.”

“That,” said Thorkell, “is just about the attitude towards us heathen of all the Christians I have ever met or heard of. Their idea of peace is unqualified submission or total extermination for us, and complete triumph and unquestioned domination for themselves. Not one will listen to proposals of compromise, accommodation or mutual forbearance. They seem to me opinionated, bigoted, fanatical, overbearing and arrogant. We must fight or perish, there appears to be no other way.”

“You speak sensibly, my son, it seems to me,” the old man said. “You have convinced me that you are sincere. Your oath in the temple will convince all my household and all my retainers.”

Then he rose and went out.

III

Again Thorgils and Thorbrand entered the bedroom and helped Thorkill to dress. This time he needed little assistance. And this time they girt him with a sword-belt, and equipped him with a handy belt-knife, a fine dagger and a sword in a decorated scabbard. Out they escorted him, Thorkell now walking easily and unaided. In the open he found awaiting him Thorstein, his three elder sons, Thorfinn, Thorgeir and Thord; a handsome and very blond young giant who was presented to him as “Finnvard Sigurdson, of Faskrudsfiord, my future son-in-law,” Thorstein’s house-skald, Olmod Borkson; and his seneschal, Ari Gormson. There were a score of men-at-arms lounging about.

After the presentations they set off towards the temple, Thorstein linking arms with Thorkell and leading the way.

“I myself,” he said, “am Gothi of this temple, which my grandfather, Thorleif Vilgerdson, built with timber fetched from Norway.”

The temple, Thorkell judged, was a full hundred feet long. Temple fashion the end under the gable which they approached was doorless. The side-wall had two ample doorways, each near an end. They passed in by that nearest them towards the right end of the side-wall, and turned to their left. In behind them straggled the men-at-arms, who had trooped after them. Thorkell could feel the reverential awe with which the great, hulking, burly, truculent spearmen entered the holy place. Midway of the opposite long-wall they passed the High-Seat, between the tall pillars, each with its three consecrated bolts of gilded bronze. They were visible even in the dim light afforded by the small latticed windows, gut-paned, high up in the gable ends. Towards the end of the temple they entered the oval, defined by a ring of thin slabs of stone set on edge. Inside the oval, near the end of it towards the further gable of the building, was an altar of the customary form, a great thick slab of dressed stone, full three ells square, supported by four stone posts, squared, carved with runes, and set deep in the beaten earth floor. The slab of the altar was also carved with runes. On it lay the great holy ring, of solid silver, weighing full thirty pounds.

Thorstein lifted the great ring and slid it up his right arm to the shoulder. There Thorfinn tied it with a crimson wool ribbon, slipped under his father’s left arm-pit and crossed on his left shoulder; so that the ring would not slide down the arm. Then, standing on Thorstein’s right, Thorkell unsheathed his dagger and with its point lightly slashed the back of his left hand, tilting it till the dagger-blade ran with blood. Then, placing his left hand on the temple-ring and holding the dagger point down over the center of the altar, he swore:

“As my blood drips upon this altar from the point of this dirk, so may my blood and the heart’s blood of all my kin, of any wife I may wed, of any children I may have, of all those dear to me, be spilt upon the earth, if my oath is not truthful. I swear by my own blood, by the holy ring which I grasp, by this altar, by the pillars of the High Seat, by their sacred bolts, before Thor and Odin, that I am Thorkell Vilgerdson of Rogaland in Norway, and that I am newly castaway on the coast of Iceland and have never, in Iceland, seen or spoken with any Icelander excepting dwellers here at Hofstadir.

“If my oath is false may my heart’s blood and the blood of all those dear to me be spilt upon the earth as my blood now drips from the point of my dirk. Before Odin and Thor I have sworn.”

Thereafter Thorfinn removed the Gothi’s ring from his father’s arm and he and Thorstein laid it in its place midway of the altar-slab.

Outside the temple Thorgils dressed the slash on the back of Thorkell’s left hand. Then Thorstein first and after him his sons in the order of their ages, clasped hands with Thorkell, each uttering the formula:

“You are our dear and trusted cousin.”

Finnvard followed. Then Ari, Olmod and the men-at-arms saluted Thorkell, crying:

“We are brothers in arms.”

From the temple Thorstein led Thorkell into the storehouse and into that part of it which was used as an armory.

“Look over these weapons,” he said, “and select a sword, poniard and belt-knife to your mind. Try first those you now have; if they suit you, keep them. But be sure that the balance of the sword is precisely what you prefer and that you are armed as you desire.”

Outside, in the mild sunshine of a day unusually mellow for Iceland, they sat on the benches flanking the doorway and chatted until after midday. Then Thorstein cautioned Thorkell that a man who had been exposed and exhausted as he had had best lie down an hour or so before his first heavy meal after his privations.

When Thorgils wakened and summoned him he found in the great hall a numerous assemblage. He was presented by Thorstein to Thorkatla his wife, to his daughter Thorgerd and his two nieces Thorarna and Thordis, whom he had encountered on the beach. Thorarna was the tall, full-contoured, black-tressed beauty, and Thordis the exquisite blonde whom he had thought the most beautiful of the three. Thorfinn’s wife Arnora and Thord’s wife Valdis were personable young women.

Thorstein occupied the High Seat, facing the fireplace. To the left and right of him sat his family, on benches ranged along that side of the hall, but far enough from the wall to leave space for anyone to walk behind them and to pass in or out of any door. On the opposite side of the hall, flanking the chimney-piece, was a similar row of benches, occupied by the men-at-arms, more than forty together. Towards the ends of the hall sat such dependents and thralls as were not busy serving the feast. The servitors carried in more than eighty light, collapsible tables, each in three parts, a square top and two trestles. One was placed before each diner. The fare was varied and abundant, but notably characteristic of Iceland. There were unlimited supplies of fresh whey in jars, pitchers and bowls; bowls of curd; platters heaped with slices of cheese, both new and aged; there was even an overabundance of smoked and fresh fish, cooked in every known manner; plenty of tender fat mutton, beef and veal, and, each borne in by two brawny thralls, two great platters, one piled with convenient cuts of stewed horseflesh, the other with similar collops of horseflesh roasted. There was a moderate supply of manchets of excellent rye, barley and wheaten bread, handed along in smallish flat osier baskets or on similar trays. Maids continually passed and repassed proffering basins of warm water and towels; for, in those days, forks were unknown, and, besides plates and spoons of beechwood from Norway and belt knives, fingers were the only table implements, and frequent washing of the hands was necessary for comfort.

Thorgils and Thorbrand, between whom Thorkell sat, plied him with offerings of every viand brought in and saw that his goblet was kept full of well-aged, fragrant mead. Even more than the large household and lavish fare Thorkill was impressed by the chimney-piece, which faced him on his left, and by its fireplace, not aglow with smouldering peat, but ablaze with a generous heap of crackling driftwood. He commented on this to Thorbrand.

“I have never seen any other chimney or fireplace except ours,” was his reply. “It is said that two halls in the river-valleys about Faxafloi have chimney fireplaces, and that there is another in a mansion on Breidifiord. But none of us have seen any. My great grandfather had this built of native stone, for there is much fire-resisting rock on our island.”

“This,” Thorkell said, “is the only chimney fireplace I have myself ever seen. My home, like every other hall I have ever entered till now, has only a fireplace midway of its floor, so that the smoke blackens the rafters before it finds the hole in the roof.”

After the feast Thorstein called for silence.

“We have with us,” he said, “what is almost as good as a visiting skald, a guest who has had marvellous adventures. All of us will now listen to Thorkell Vilgerdson of Rogaland in Norway, if he will be so good as to accede to my request that he tell us of his dangers and of his escape.”

Thorkell blushed, but was encouraged by the smiling, eager faces turned towards him. He took courage, stood up, and told his tale, haltingly at first, later more fluently.

After he had finished and sat down Olmod twanged his harp and recited a drapa describing and praising the exploits of Floki Vilgerdson the viking and settler. When he ceased the company dispersed to bed.

During the ensuing days Thorkell became well acquainted with Hofstadir, its denizens and its neighborhood. As soon as he felt his full strength and vigor return he spent his mornings with Thorgir, Thorbrand, Thorgils and Finnvard at fencing, target practice with spears or arrows, wrestling, and other such manly exercises. At all of these he excelled, yet his genial demeanor was so winsome that his easy victories gave no offence to his companions.

They also went swimming together, and fishing, both in the many nearby streams, and offshore in a very handy small boat, heavily built, blunt bowed, yet a good sailor. Thorkell was amazed at the numbers of fish and at the rapidity with which they could be caught. A hook thrown into the water was taken almost at once.

They rode about the neighborhood on fine mounts, for, in those early days, Icelandic horses were still fully equal to Norwegian horses, as the breed was kept up by constant importations of tall, strong, speedy and spirited stallions.

After not many days Thorkell learned the country further afield, for he was invited to accompany Thorstein on a tour of inspection of his district; for he was not only Gothi, that is, priest, of the temple at Hofstadir, but also Gothi, that is, magistrate, of a district called a gothorth, all Iceland being divided into gothorths. Thorstein made his tour attended by his five sons; by several cousins, among whom were Thorlak Vilgerdson of Thelmark and Thorvald Vilgerdson of Husavik; by many thingmen, dependents and yeomen; and by a strong guard of well-horsed spearmen.

Thorkell was much edified by Thorstein’s promptness at settling controversies and redressing grievances. The old man displayed an uncanny intuition and seemed to know all his vassals’ thoughts, motives, wants, desires and needs without being told.

After the tour was over, at a moment when Thorstein was at ease, Thorkell ventured to express his admiration.

His host smiled.

“A chieftain,” he said, “must possess the faculty of seeing into his vassals’ hearts and of knowing their thoughts without question asked and answer given; even without any uttered word. A man who cannot divine the unspoken thoughts of his dependents will not long retain the prestige vital for a Gothi, or for any sort of chieftainship. Necessarily, I know much without being told, with hardly even a glance. Mostly for instance, I can foresee months in advance, sometimes even years in advance, what girl each youth will woo for his wife, what maiden each lad desires, even what lad finds favor in each maiden’s eyes. Such must any chieftain divine.”

At Hofstadir Thorkell was soon at home among the buildings. Not less than by the chimney, inset fireplace and lavish wood fire was he impressed by the fortifications of the homestead. It was protected all round with a dry moat, the earth from which, thrown up on the inner side, formed a considerable rampart, topped on all four sides of the enclosure by a solid wall of large, roughly squared blocks of stone. At the corners were jutting, bulging circular bastions well stockaded with birch logs, set deep in the earth, butt up and touching each other, everyone fully three spans broad at the upturned butt, for, in those early days, the primeval woods of Iceland furnished logs much larger than any now obtainable on the island. The stockades, like the walls, were breast-high. Thorkell had never seen a bastion before, nor heard of one, and was much impressed by the novelty, originality and manifest adequacy of the device. The idea of a bastion, that it affords defenders of a fortification an opportunity of shooting sideways at an assailant crossing the fosse or scaling the parapet, appears so obvious to us that we can scarcely realize that there ever was a time when it was unknown. Yet, hundreds, even thousands of years after it was common and a matter of course in the Mediterranean countries, it had not yet penetrated the ruder northern lands. In fact, in all parts of the world, men were not quick to conceive the idea, and, as with other devices, very slow to adopt it from foemen.

Almost as much was Thorkell impressed by the bath-house, a small structure, one might say a hut, built of sod and stone, with a low door and only one very tiny window. Inside there was room for only one person and a pail of water beside a very small stone stove. This was heated almost red-hot and then the bather, with a dipper, poured on it water which at once filled the hut with steam, both cleansing and refreshing.

On either side of the chimney-piece in the great hall was a sort of trophy of spears, shields and swords arranged in a pattern like a six-pointed star; six short pikes crossed and lashed to pegs, six small round shields set between the radiating spears, and twelve swords, two by each shield. Above the fireplace was another, of six long swords, their points together, their hilts apart, with shields between.

Thorkell, inquiring about these, was told that they had been placed there by Thorstein’s grandfather, Thorleif Vilgerdson, who had built the hall and temple. The spears and swords forming the two flanking trophies were fine and valued weapons of former Vilgerdsons: the trophy over the fireplace was formed of the very sword worn all his life by Floki Vilgerdson the Viking and settler, and of five cunningly exact replicas of it, made at Thorleif Vilgerdson’s command by Hoskuld Vestarson, a famous smith.

“I do not myself know,” said Thorstein, “which is Floki’s blade. My father told me that he did not know. No one knows. No man has used any one of those six swords since before I was born. It is told that Floki’s blade is enchanted, that no one except a Vilgerdson could wield it, that to anyone not a Vilgerdson it would be heavier than a thick bar of iron; but that, in time of peril to Floki’s heirs or kin, it is magical to infuse into its wielder superhuman valor, swiftness, dexterity and strength. It is also told of Floki’s blade that it knows friend from foe and will not smite a friend, no matter how frenziedly its wielder believes him a foe, nor yet will it fail to smite a treacherous foe, no matter how implicitly its wielder trusts the traitor. We have come to regard these swords as almost as holy as the bolts in the pillars by the High Seat in our temple, as almost as sacred as the temple ring itself. Their presence in our hall we regard as a protection and safeguard to us all, as a sort of talisman for Hofstadir. We all and all my men-at-arms and thingmen and retainers reverence and treasure them.”

Thorkell could see that they were very handsome swords.

He learned that Thorstein never had fewer than sixty men-at-arms on duty, but not all of them were ever at Hofstadir itself. Some were on watch along the cliffs, on the lookout for an attack from seaward. There were always two or more patrol-boats on the offing conning the sea northwards. The lookouts on the cliffs also watched the fiord for signs of an attempt to attack in boats from its northern shore. And some men-at-arms were always scattered about at the farmsteads of Thorstein’s thingmen and other dependents, especially towards the head of Revdarfiord, round which must come any attack in force by land.

Thorkatla he found kind-hearted, but taciturn, sharp-tongued when she did speak, and of a very stern, harsh and austere disposition. Thorgerd, staid, astute and shrewd, was yet, by nature, trustful, unsuspicious, confiding, artless and unaffected. She gave Thorkell an experience entirely novel to him. For she displayed for him a warm sisterly interest, as to which she was entirely frank and open, while indubitably ardently in love with her handsome Finnvard.

Thorarna and Thordis he greatly admired and liked. He could not make out at first which he liked better. That both were manifestly deeply in love with him he took as a matter of course. He had long become habituated to having attractive maidens fall in love with him on short acquaintance and show it.

The immemorial usages of Scandinavian life made it absolutely unthinkable, in the Iceland of those days, that a young man and a young woman should ever be alone together, even for a moment. But, on the other hand, life in Iceland was so free, open, frank, spontaneous, unconventional and inartificial that not only were lads and lasses constantly encountering each other about the dwellings, but that not merely was chatting a matter of course and unremarked, but that such young folk as Thorkell, Thorarna and Thordis might and did walk about together out of doors, and sit together side by side conversing for hours in the hall, in full sight of those about them, unnoticed and left to themselves.

In this way Thorkell became rapidly well-acquainted with both his host’s nieces and heard from each her story; stories very much alike and of a kind far too common in Iceland at that period, and for centuries later. The envenomed and unremitting enmity between the Revdarfirthers and their neighbors the Miofifirthers and Seydisfirthers had resulted in recurrent reprisals.

Thorarna was the only survivor of an overwhelmingly successful assault upon her father’s homestead. Her father, Thorstein’s brother Thorleik, had been killed in the fighting, and, when the buildings were set on fire by the victorious assailants, all the family had perished in the flames except Thorarna, who, a child of three, had been saved by her faithful nurse.

Thordis, the only daughter of Thorstein’s brother Thorgest, was the survivor of a similar massacre.

Much of the evening leisure at Hofstadir was taken up with tales of such atrocities as these and of like assaults on homesteads, some by one side, some by the other; some craftily planned, artfully delivered and overwhelmingly successful; others resulting in drawn battles and leaving the homestead in mourning for some of its defenders, but unpillaged and unburnt; yet others unplanned, impulsive, foolhardy, undermanned or bungled in delivery and resulting in the utter discomfiture of the assailants. Thorkell sat in silence and listened to many long tales of this kind from Olmod the house-skald, from Thorstein himself and from his elder sons. From them also he listened to even longer tales of complaints against one or the other side before the Althing at Thingvellir, nearly every year at the two-weeks summer meeting of this national assembly. They told in great detail of the impassioned accusations of the plaintiffs, of the indignant rejoinders of the defendants, of the citations of the respondents before the high court of justice, of the evidence of the witnesses for each side, of the arguments of the lawmen, of the disagreements of the judges, of their occasional agreement, of their verdicts and judgments and of the indemnities they assessed upon the convicted aggressors. In almost every case Thorkell heard of the ignoring or flouting of the court’s decision and of yet further reprisals, duels, forays and outrages. What astonished him most was that, in all these tales of duels, murders, treacheries, ambushes, pillagings, outrages, butcheries, massacres and arson and of their consequences, the narrators talked as if the Althing were an efficient legislature with power to see to it that its enactments be observed as the law of the island; as if the courts had the authority they assumed to have and could enforce their judgments, verdicts, decrees and penalties; as if, in truth, law and justice did exist in Iceland: whereas, in fact, it appeared from every tale he listened to, from every detail of every narrative, that their vaunted Althing was merely a turbulent yearly social gathering, accomplishing nothing except the waste of time in futile wrangling, making a vain show of counterfeiting a sham legislature, which empty pretense all Icelanders kept up with a curious mingling of unconscious self-deception and shamefaced effrontery; that the courts, while generally spoken of with respect, were in fact derided by all malefactors, and unable to give effect to their decrees, judgments and verdicts, to enforce their penalties or to exact the indemnities they granted, so that they were, on the whole, a costly, time-wasting, exhausting and pitiable farce.

It was plain to Thorkell that the Icelanders, if his host and his household were fair samples, had somehow duped themselves into fancying that they had courts which dispensed justice and a government which maintained law and order; whereas it was manifest that they lived in a condition of utter anarchy, where there was no protection for life or property except the fighting prowess of the men of a homestead as concerned themselves, their folk and their possessions; or of the men-at-arms of a chieftain for him and his. It was plain that beautiful Thordis, magnificent Thorarna, lovely Thorgerd, fair Arnora, dainty Valdis and stern Thorkatla were living in daily peril of a horrible death and were safe only in so far as their men could protect them. Yet they, like their men, boasted of the noble freedom of life in Iceland, pitied the servile condition of Norwegians under their tyrannical king, vaunted their island institutions, and lauded the system of local gothorths, yearly elections, yearly assemblies at Thingvellir of their unwieldy and ineffective Althing, and the complex, lengthy, laborious and fruitless procedure of their fatuous courts. Local pride seemed a passion which blinded them to the most glaring imperfections of anything Icelandic.

IV

But it mattered very little what was the subject or the nature of the conversation, Thorkell found himself more than contented with any length of time which he might spend with either Thorarna or Thordis. Yet, after not many days, he was aware of a difference in his feelings for the two and of theirs for him. Thordis never avoided him, but never put herself in his way. If everything was favorable and they happened to be thrown together accidentally, she frankly enjoyed being with him, but never did anything to prolong a chat or to bring one about. Thorarna, on the contrary, was most ingenious in postponing the termination of a colloquy, and was most fertile in clever, adroit, and unobtrusive devices which resulted in their being together.

Before many days life at Hofstadir, for Thorkell, consisted chiefly of endeavoring to be with Thordis. Once, when he was basking in her smiles, her face suddenly clouded and she said:

“There! Thorarna has gone! Please, please try to spend more of your time with her and less with me. From childhood she and I have been happy together, and nothing has ever blurred our love for each other and our unreserved mutual confidence until she began to grow jealous of me. Since she fell in love with you we have become alienated; she is chilly to me, distant, reticent, even unfriendly. I grieve that we are estranged. I love her and I want her to love me. I do not want her to hate me. Please do all you can to placate her. She keeps her countenance and is always outwardly serene, sedate and stately. But she rages inwardly and is so infuriated when you talk to me that I dread her. Please avoid me and propitiate her all you can. Please promise me that you will do as I ask.”

Thorkell promised, and, for some days, barely greeted Thordis and had no converse with her whatever, whereas he spent long hours with Thorarna, and, to his amazement, found that he enjoyed her society keenly; yet, even more to his amazement, felt that, when he was not with Thorarna, he longed for Thordis so acutely that he could hardly restrain himself from seeking her out and telling her how much he loved her.

The long spell of clear, mild weather merged into weather decidedly warm, weather which would have been warm even for Scotland or England. Thorstein, with a large retinue of spearmen, rode out to visit and inspect the outlying fringe of farms tenanted by his dependents or thingmen. It was a very fair day and they had expected an easy jaunt and an early return to Hofstadir. So it turned out for Thorstein and most of his company. But, early in the day, they heard a report, hardly more than a rumor, of distress at a farmstead isolated among uplands at the extreme southwestern point of Thorstein’s gothorth, very much out of their way. Thorbrand offered to ride there and investigate and Thorkell volunteered to go with him. He demurred to his father’s suggestion that he take some of the men-at-arms, declaring that he and Thorkell could make better time alone. Off they set. Their errand was easily accomplished and the rumor found untrue and everyone safe and well at Mossfell. But, on their return, they encountered conditions peculiar to Iceland. There it frequently happens during a prolonged spell of warm weather that great quantities of snow are melted high up on the plateaus or in hollows among the upper foot-hills, and, very occasionally, that the waters are dammed back by ice accumulated in some valley, ravine, gorge or glen, and, if the hot weather lasts on, are suddenly released by the crumbling of the ice-dam. Such a sudden and terrific freshet roared across their homeward way and presented a torrent of deep water not only unfordable, but impossible to swim. They were, perforce, compelled to await the ebbing of the transitory flood and so did not reach Hofstadir until the gradual twilight, insensible gloaming and lingering dusk had melted into semi-darkness.

Thorbrand, sedulously careful of their weary mounts, bade Thorkell go at once into the hall. Between the stable and the mansion, out of sight of either behind the storehouse, he encountered Thordis.

She burst into tears; crying:

“Oh! My Love! My Love! Ref and Karli rode in after sunset on lathered horses reporting that you and Thorbrand had been ambushed and killed. Oh! My Love! My Love!”

Thorkell caught her in his arms and they clung together, she sobbing, her head on his breast, he with one arm about her, his other hand stroking her hair, whispering:

“My Darling! My Darling!”

Suddenly her arms relaxed, she pulled away from him, pushed him from her, and cried, in a strangled whisper:

“Let me go! Thorarna might see us! Be careful! Thorarna must not see us together! Let me go! Avoid me! Keep away from me, hardly speak to me! She must not see us together! Let me go!”

And she sprang away and vanished like a frightened hare.

The weather, for two days afterwards, was not merely warm, but hot, weather which would have been hot anywhere; an occurrence very unusual for Iceland, but not unknown, especially on the east coast. On account of the heat the fire in the hall was allowed to go out entirely, and, at the evening meal, two of the benches of the men-at-arms were set across the fireplace, close against the stone work of the chimney-piece.

During these two days Thorkell spent as much time with Thorarna as he could arrange, and found her fascinating, but moody, high-strung and capricious. He sedulously avoided Thordis. Only for one moment did they have an opportunity to exchange a few words. Then Thordis, on the verge of tears and gasping, said:

“Oh! I am so afraid of Thorarna. I don’t know what I dread, but I am in the most fearful dread of her. She is very suspicious of you. I think she conjectures that you and I love each other. You are too distant with her for her peace of mind. Thorarna, like all her mother’s family, is petulant, choleric, touchy, irascible, hot-tempered, acrimonious, vindictive, impulsive, precipitate and hot-headed. Oh, I am so afraid of her!”

Thorkell tried to calm her, but could not.

Early the third morning, just after dawn had brightened into day, the lookouts gave the alarm.

And too late!

For, when the garrison of Hofstadir had barely armed and were not yet all at their posts, there fell upon them three simultaneous and perfectly coordinated assaults; from the west along the strand, from the south down the slope, and from the north, from across the fiord by a party which had made an unopposed landing on the shore.

Thorkell was among the defenders of the western side of the enclosure, and, despite the hard fight he and his companions put up, their assailants succeeded in crossing the trench and scaling the wall. But thereupon they were beaten back by a desperate rally of the denizens, in which Thorkell played more than his part, for he, single-handed, successively slew five formidable antagonists. As their foemen wavered he sprang at a sixth, parried his thrust and got home a deadly stroke on his helmet.

The sword snapped!

As his adversary was half stunned and wholly dazed by the force of the blow Thorkell whirled about and made a dash for the hall. There he leapt upon one of the benches set across the fireplace, seized the hilt of one of the six identical swords, wrenched it from its fastenings, and, waving it, dashed out.

As he cleared the doorway he heard elated shouts and an exultant cheer. Glancing to his right he saw men in chain-mail hauberks vaulting the eastern wall of the enclosure. He recognized, in the lead, Lodbrok and Halfdan, the chiefs, Gellir, Sigurd and Bodvar, his treacherous friends, and others from the crew of the Sea-Raven. He instantly divined that they had blundered into Miofifiord or Seydisfiord, had fraternized with the Seydisfirthers and Miofifirthers and had readily agreed, for their share in the prospective loot, to take part in capturing and sacking the richest homestead in eastern Iceland.

On fire with his chance of revenge he flew at Lodbrok, and, as he charged, it seemed to him that never had he run so swiftly, never had he felt so strong, so capable, so eager for a fray, so sure of success. He beat back Lodbrok’s guard and swung a full-arm sweep of his blade at his head. The sword went up like a feather and came down like a battle-axe. As if through cheese it clove helm, skull, jaw and chin down into the breast-bone. Lodbrok fell like a pole-axed ox, and, as Thorkell saw him go down, almost in two halves, he realized that he was wielding Floki’s blade.

He whirled on Gellir and the sweep of the sword cut clean through not only both forearms between wrist and elbow, but also through the stout ash shaft of the pike he wielded. Behind Gellir was Halfdan, no mean adversary, truculent, wary and skilled. He held his bright, round, arabesqued shield close against his left shoulder and lunged cunningly and viciously. Barely parrying his thrust Thorkell swung his great sword, and, lo! it shore clean through shield, gorget, hauberk, shoulder and arm, so that his left forequarter fell clear of Halfdan and he was dead before he crumpled on the earth.

Similarly Thorkell slew Bodvar, Sigurd and Hrodmar. Two the sharp sword beheaded at a single sweep; one it cleft under the sword-arm, through his ribs, into his liver; of the fourth its point pierced his heart through shield and hauberk.

Instinct made Thorkell spin round and he faced Kollgrim Erlendson, leader of the Vikings and most redoubtable of them all. Their swords clashed and Kollgrim’s failed, snapped before the hilt, so that Thorkell’s blade shore off his right shoulder, slicing through the rings of his chain-mail hauberk as if it had been of hemp, and he died as his fellow chieftain Halfdan Ingolfson had died.

Although their chiefs were all dead the Vikings, descrying but one defender before them, were swarming over the wall. Among them Thorkell dashed and at each stroke of Floki’s blade a foeman died. Yet Thorkell must have been overwhelmed by mere numbers if some of the Vilgerdsons and their men-at-arms, now victorious to north and south, had not flocked to his aid, amazed to see that Hofstadir had been saved by his unaided valor and spurred on by admiration of him.

Thorkell at their head they drove the survivors of the Sea-Raven’s crew in headlong flight across the wall and trench, and Thorkell beheld in the distance the thralls Erp, Ulf, Hundi, Kepp, Sokholf and Vifill, standing ready with spare shields, spears, bows and quivers, cast away their burdens and turn in flight before the foremost of the fleeing Vikings reached them.

The fight was over. The assailants were everywhere beaten and routed. Thorstein forbade pursuit on foot, and only some twenty of the men-at-arms found horses ready, mounted and sped out of the main gateway of the enclosure to complete the rout of the assailants, who left more than forty corpses behind them.

Of the victors twelve spearmen had fallen and with them seven of Thorstein’s dependent yeomen, four of his thingmen, and two cousins, Thorberg Vilgerdson of Snowfell and Thorod Vilgerdson of Gelsbank. Thorkell, Thorstein himself and Thorfinn were the only unwounded warriors among the defenders. All the rest of the family, all the cousins, thingmen, yeomen, and men-at-arms had suffered one or more wounds; but, of the family, only Thord was wounded seriously. His wounds were at once bound up and the blood staunched.

Then, with one accord, every warrior of them all acclaimed Thorkell as their savior. They cheered him and saluted him as “hero.” Thorfinn and Thorgeir seized him by the elbows, and, following their father and followed by the cheering throng, marched him into the great hall and up to the High Seat. There Thorstein stood aside and motioned Thorkell to mount the dais and occupy the High Seat. Before his dazed astonishment could protest, Thorfinn and Thorgeir had gently forced him into it. There he sat, Floki’s blade, still red, point down between his knees, his hands crossed on the pommel of the upright hilt.

Thorstein shouted:

“Mead for the hero! Not a man of us shall touch horn or bowl to lip until the hero has had his fill of my best mead. Mead for the hero!”

At the call Thorarna appeared from the kitchen through the rear doorway carrying with both hands a great bowl high before her. Down the hall she came, her face lit with a triumphant smile, magnificent and stately. Before the High Seat she knelt and offered the bowl to Thorkell. The fighters cheered again.

As Thorarna held up the bowl, Thorkell, to his horror, felt his right hand grasp the sword-hilt with a grip he could not loosen, felt the sword raise itself and his arm till the blade swung high above Thorarna, felt the magic of the sword drag down his arm in a deadly sweep, felt and saw the blow descend, felt and saw the blade shear through Thorarna’s left shoulder, shoulder-blade, collar-bone and ribs, cleaving her to the very heart.

She crumpled in a horrid welter of spilt mead, gushing blood, disordered raiment and huddled flesh.

The onlookers stood, frozen mute.

Into the hall rushed Thordis and Thorgerd, screaming:

“Do not drink! The mead is poisoned! Do not drink! The mead is poisoned!”

At sight of the High Seat, Thorkell on it and what lay before him, Thordis collapsed in a faint. Thorgerd was at once absorbed in tending her cousin.

Thorstein shouted for his thralls.

“Ref! Karli! Mar! Odd! Remove that carrion! Cleanse the dais!”

And, when his orders had been obeyed and the dais and hall were again seemly, he called once more:

“Mead for the hero!”

Thordis, now restored, though tottering, her golden-haired, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed loveliness amazing even in her confusion, herself carried to Thorkell a horn.

He took it, quaffed it as he sat and handed it back to her. Then Thorstein shouted:

“Mead for all of us, and more mead for the hero!”

Maid servants flocked in with bowls, horns and goblets and behind them thralls with pails of mead to replenish those drained. All drank, Thorkell too, a second horn offered him by Thordis. From her knees he raised her and made her stand beside the High Seat.

Then Thorstein shouted:

“Hail the hero!”

Whereupon all the warriors cheered Thorkell until they were hoarse.

Into the ensuing silence Thorstein spoke clearly and gravely:

“To-morrow we shall revel in honor of our deliverance, victory and safety. And the banquet shall be the wedding feast of my niece Thordis and of her bridegroom, my cousin, Thorkell Vilgerdson of Rogaland in Norway, our hero!”

1924

THE PICTURE PUZZLE

THE PICTURE PUZZLE

I

OF course the instinct of the police and detectives was to run down their game. That was natural. They seemed astonished and contemptuous when I urged that all I wanted was my baby; whether the kidnappers were ever caught or not made no difference to me. They kept arguing that unless precautions were taken the criminals would escape and I kept arguing that if they became suspicious of a trap they would keep away and my only chance to recover our little girl would be gone forever. They finally agreed and I believe they kept their promise to me. Helen always felt the other way and maintained that their watchers frightened off whoever was to meet me. Anyhow I waited in vain, waited for hours, waited again the next day and the next and the next. We put advertisements in countless papers, offering rewards and immunity, but never heard anything more.

I pulled myself together in a sort of a way and tried to do my work. My partner and clerks were very kind. I don’t believe I ever did anything properly in those days, but no one ever brought any blunder to my attention. If they came across any they set it right for me. And at the office it was not so bad. Trying to work was good for me. It was worse at home and worse at night. I slept hardly at all.

Helen, if possible, slept less than I. And she had terrible spasms of sobs that shook the bed. She would try to choke them down, thinking I was asleep and she might wake me. But she never went through a night without at least one frightful paroxysm of tears.

In the daylight she controlled herself better, made a heart-breaking and yet heart-warming effort at her normal cheeriness over the breakfast things, and greeted me beautifully when I came home. But the moment we were alone for the evening she would break down.

I don’t know how many days that sort of thing kept up. I sympathized in silence. It was Helen herself who suggested that we must force ourselves to be diverted, somehow. The theater was out of the question. Not merely the sight of a four-year-old girl with yellow locks threw Helen into a passion of uncontrollable sobbing, but all sorts of unexpected trifles reminded her of Amy and affected her almost as much. Confined to our home we tried cards, chess and everything else we could think of. They helped her as little as they helped me.

Then one afternoon Helen did not come to greet me. Instead as I came in I heard her call, quite in her natural voice.

“Oh, I’m so glad that is you. Come and help me.”

I found her seated at the library table, her back to the door. She had on a pink wrapper and her shoulders had no despondent droop, but a girlish alertness. She barely turned her head as I entered, but her profile showed no signs of recent weeping. Her face was its natural color.

“Come and help me,” she repeated. “I can’t find the other piece of the boat.”

She was absorbed, positively absorbed in a picture puzzle.

In forty seconds I was absorbed too. It must have been six minutes before we identified the last piece of the boat. And then we went on with the sky and were still at it when the butler announced dinner.

“Where did you get it?” I asked, over the soup, which Helen really ate.

“Mrs. Allstone brought it,” Helen replied, “just before lunch.”

I blessed Mrs. Allstone.

Really it seems absurd, but those idiotic jig-saw puzzles were our salvation. They actually took our minds off everything else. At first I dreaded finishing one. No sooner was the last piece in place than I felt a sudden revulsion, a booming of blood in my ears, and the sense of loss and misery rushed over me like a wave of scalding water. And I knew it was worse for Helen.

But after some days each seemed not merely a respite from pain, but a sedative as well. After a two hours’ struggle with a fascinating tangle of shapes and colors, we seemed numb to our bereavement and the bitterness of the smart seemed blunted.

We grew fastidious as to manufacture and finish; learned to avoid crude and clumsy products as bores; developed a pronounced taste for pictures neither too soft nor too plain in color-masses; and became connoisseurs as to cutting, utterly above the obvious and entirely disenchanted with the painfully difficult. We evolved into adepts, quick to recoil from fragments barren of any clue of shape or markings and equally prompt to reject those whose meaning was too definite and insistent. We trod delicately the middle way among segments not one of which was without some clue of outline or tint, and not one of which imparted its message without interrogation, inference and reflection.

Helen used to time herself and try the same puzzle over and over on successive days until she could do it in less than half an hour. She declared that a really good puzzle was interesting the fourth or fifth time and that an especially fine puzzle was diverting if turned face down and put together from the shapes merely, after it had been well learned the other way. I did not enter into the craze to that extent, but sometimes tried her methods for variety.

We really slept, and Helen, though worn and thin, was not abject, not agonized. Her nights passed, if not wholly without tears, yet with only those soft and silent tears, which are more a relief than suffering. With me she was nearly her old self and very brave and patient. She greeted me naturally and we seemed able to go on living.

Then one day she was not at the door to welcome me. I had hardly shut it before I heard her sobbing. I found her again at the library table and over a puzzle. But this time she had just finished it and was bowed over it on the table, shaken all over by her grief.

She lifted her head from her crossed arms, pointed and buried her face in her hands. I understood. The picture I remembered from a magazine of the year before: a Christmas tree with a bevy of children about it and one (we had remarked it at the time) a perfect likeness of our Amy.

As she rocked back and forth, her hands over her eyes, I swept the pieces into their box and put on the lid.

Presently Helen dried her eyes and looked at the table.

“Oh! why did you touch it,” she wailed. “It was such a comfort to me.”

“You did not seem comforted,” I retorted. “I thought the contrast:...” I stopped.

“You mean the contrast between the Christmas we expected and the Christmas we are going to have?” she queried. “You mean you thought that was too much for me?”

I nodded.

“It wasn’t that at all,” she averred. “I was crying for joy. That picture was a sign.”

“A sign?” I repeated.

“Yes,” she declared, “a sign that we shall get her back in time for Christmas. I’m going to start and get ready right away.”

At first I was glad of the diversion. Helen had the nursery put in order as if she expected Amy the next day, hauled over all the child’s clothes and was in a bustling state of happy expectancy. She went vigorously about her preparation for a Christmas celebration, planned a Christmas Eve dinner for our brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives, and a children’s party afterwards with a big tree and a profusion of goodies and gifts.

“You see,” she explained, “everyone will want their own Christmas at home. So shall we, for we’ll just want to gloat over Amy all day. We won’t want them on Christmas any more than they’ll want us. But this way we can all be together and celebrate and rejoice over our good luck.”

She was as elated and convinced as if it was a certainty. For a while her occupation with preparations was good for her, but she was so forehanded that she was ready a week ahead of time and had not a detail left to arrange. I dreaded a reaction, but her artificial exaltation continued unabated. All the more I feared the inevitable disappointment and was genuinely concerned for her reason. The fixed idea that that accidental coincidence was a prophecy and a guarantee dominated her totally. I was really afraid that the shock of the reality might kill her. I did not want to dissipate her happy delusion, but I could not but try to prepare her for the certain blow. I talked cautiously in wide circles around what I wanted and I did not want to say.

II

On December 22nd, I came home early, just after lunch, in fact. Helen met me, at the door, with such a demeanor of suppressed high spirits, happy secrecy and tingling anticipation that for one moment I was certain Amy had been found and was then in the house.

“I’ve something wonderful to show you,” Helen declared, and led me to the library.

There on the table was a picture-puzzle fitted together.

She stood and pointed to it with the air of exhibiting a marvel.

I looked at it but could not conjecture the cause of her excitement. The pieces seemed too large, too clumsy and too uniform in outline. It looked a crude and clumsy puzzle, beneath her notice.

“Why did you buy it?” I asked.

“I met a peddler on the street,” she answered, “and he was so wretched-looking, I was sorry for him. He was young and thin and looked haggard and consumptive. I looked at him and I suppose I showed my feelings. He said:

“Lady, buy a puzzle. It will help you to your heart’s desire.”

“His words were so odd I bought it, and now just look at what it is.”

I was groping for some foothold upon which to rally my thoughts.

“Let me see the box in which it came,” I asked.

She produced it and I read on the top:

“GUGGENHEIM’S DOUBLE PICTURE
PUZZLE.
TWO IN ONE.
MOST FOR THE MONEY.
ASK FOR GUGGENHEIM’S”

And on the end--

“ASTRAY.
A BREATH OF AIR.
50 CENTS.”

“It’s queer,” Helen remarked. “But it is not a double puzzle at all, though the pieces have the same paper on both sides. One side is blank. I suppose this is ASTRAY. Don’t you think so?”

“Astray?” I queried, puzzled.

“Oh,” she cried, in a disappointed, disheartened, almost querulous tone. “I thought you would be so much struck with the resemblance. You don’t seem to notice it at all. Why even the dress is identical!”

“The dress?” I repeated. “How many times have you done this?”

“Only this once,” she said. “I had just finished it when I heard your key in the lock.”

“I should have thought,” I commented, “that it would have been more interesting to do it face up first.”

“Face up!” She cried. “It is face up.”

Her air of scornful superiority completely shook me out of my sedulous consideration of a moment before.

“Nonsense,” I said, “that’s the back of the puzzle. There are no colors there. It’s all pink.”

“Pink!” she exclaimed pointing. “Do you call that pink!”

“Certainly it’s pink,” I asserted.

“Don’t you see there the white of the old man’s beard,” she queried, pointing again. “And there the black of his boots? And there the red of the little girl’s dress?”

“No,” I declared. “I don’t see anything of the kind. It’s all pink. There isn’t any picture there at all.”

“No picture!” she cried. “Don’t you see the old man leading the child by the hand?”