"Steinar"s tale was otherwise, Iduna. He said that you went first, and that he followed."
"Were those his words, Olaf? For, if so, how can I give the dead the lie, and one who died through me? It seems unholy. Yet in this matter Steinar had no reason left to him and, whether you believe me or no, I tell the truth. Oh! hear me out, for who knows when they will come to take me, who have walked into this nest of foes that I may be taken?
Pray as I would, the ship was run out, and we sailed for Lesso. There, in my father"s hall, upon my knees, I entreated him to hold his hand.
I told him what was true: that, of you twain, it was you I loved, not Steinar. I told him that if he forced this marriage, war would come of it that might mean all our deaths. But these things moved him nothing.
Then I told him that such a deed of shame would mean the loss of Steinar"s lordship, so that by it he would gain no profit. At last he listened, for this touched him near. You know the rest. Thorvald, your father, and Ragnar, who ever hated me, pressed on the war despite all our offerings of peace. So the ships met, and Hela had her fill."
"Aye, Iduna, whatever else is false, this is true, that Hela had her fill."
"Olaf, I have but one thing more to say. It is this: Only once did those dead lips touch mine, and then it was against my will. Aye, although it is shameful, you must learn the truth. My father held me, Olaf, while I took the betrothal kiss, because I must. But, as you know, there was no marriage."
"Aye, I know that," I said, "because Steinar told me so."
"And, save for that one kiss, Olaf, I am still the maid whom once you loved so well."
Now I stared at her. Could this woman lie so blackly over dead Steinar"s corpse? When all was said and done, was it not possible that she spoke the truth, and that we had been but playthings in the hands of an evil Fate? Save for some trifling error, which might be forgiven to one who, as she said, loved the worship that was her beauty"s due, what if she were innocent, after all?
Perhaps my face showed the thoughts that were pa.s.sing through my mind.
At the least, she who knew me well found skill to read them. She crept towards me, still on her knees; she cast her arms about me, and, resting her weight upon me, drew herself to her feet.
"Olaf," she whispered, "I love you, I love you well, as I have always done, though I may have erred a little, as women wayward and still unwed are apt to do. Olaf, they told me yonder how you had matched yourself against the G.o.d, with his priests for judges, and smitten him, and I thought this the greatest deed that ever I have known. I used to think you something of a weakling, Olaf, not in your body but in your mind, one lost in music and in runes, who feared to put things to the touch of war; but you have shown me otherwise. You slew the bear; you overcame Steinar, who was so much stronger than you are, in the battle of the ships; and now you have bearded Odin, the All-father. Look, his head lies there, hewn off by you for the sake of one who, after all, had done you wrong. Olaf, such a deed as that touches a woman"s heart, and he who does it is the man she would wish to lie upon her breast and be her lord. Olaf, all this evil past may yet be forgotten. We might go and live elsewhere for awhile, or always, for with your wisdom and my beauty joined together what could we not conquer? Olaf, I love you now as I have never loved before, cannot you love me again?"
Her arms clung about me; her beautiful blue eyes, shimmering with moonlit tears, held my eyes, and my heart melted beneath her breath as winter snows melt in the winds of spring. She saw, she understood; she cast herself upon me, shaking her long hair over both of us, and seeking my lips. Almost she had found them, when, feeling something hard between me and her, something that hurt me, I looked down. Her cloak had slipped or been thrown aside, and my eye caught the glint of gold and jewels. In an instant I remembered--the Wanderer"s necklace and the dream--and with those memories my heart froze again.
"Nay, Iduna," I said, "I loved you well; there"s no man will ever love you more, and you are very fair. Whether you speak true words or false, I do not know; it is between you and your own spirit. But this I do know: that betwixt us runs the river of Steinar"s blood, aye, and the blood of Thorvald, my father, of Thora, my mother, of Ragnar, my brother, and of many another man who clung to us, and that is a stream which I cannot cross. Find you another husband, Iduna the Fair, since never will I call you wife."
She loosed her arms from round me, and, lifting them again, unclasped the Wanderer"s necklace from about her breast.
"This it is," she said, "which has brought all these evils on me. Take it back again, and, when you find her, give it to that one for whom it is meant, that one whom you love truly, as, whatever you may have thought, you never have loved me."
Then she sank upon the ground, and resting her golden head upon dead Steinar"s breast, she wept.
I think it was then that Freydisa returned; at least, I recall her tall form standing near the stone of sacrifice, gazing at us both, a strange smile on her face.
"Have you withstood?" she said. "Then, truly, you are in the way of victory and have less to fear from woman than I thought. All things are ready as you commanded, my lord Olaf, and there remains but to say farewell, which you had best do quickly, for they plot your death yonder."
"Freydisa," I answered, "I go, but perchance I shall return again.
Meanwhile, all I have is yours, with this charge. Guard you yonder woman, and see her safe to her home, or wherever she would go, and to Steinar here give honourable burial."
Then the darkness of oblivion falls, and I remember no more save the white face of Iduna, her brow stained with Steinar"s life-blood, watching me as I went.
BOOK II
BYZANTIUM
CHAPTER I
IRENE, EMPRESS OF THE EARTH
A gulf of blackness and the curtain lifts again upon a very different Olaf from the young northern lord who parted from Iduna at the place of sacrifice at Aar.
I see myself standing upon a terrace that overlooks a stretch of quiet water, which I now know was the Bosphorus. Behind me are a great palace and the lights of a vast city; in front, upon the sea and upon the farther sh.o.r.e, are other lights. The moon shines bright above me, and, having naught else to do, I study my reflection in my own burnished shield. It shows a man of early middle life; he may be thirty or five-and-thirty years of age; the same Olaf, yet much changed. For now my frame is tall and well-knit, though still somewhat slender; my face is bronzed by southern suns; I wear a short beard; there is a scar across my cheek, got in some battle; my eyes are quiet, and have lost the first liveliness of youth. I know that I am the captain of the Northern Guard of the Empress Irene, widow of the dead emperor, Leo the Fourth, and joint ruler of the Eastern Empire with her young son, Constantine, the sixth of that name.
How I came to fill this place, however, I do not know. The story of my journey from Jutland to Byzantium is lost to me. Doubtless it must have taken years, and after these more years of humble service, before I rose to be the captain of Irene"s Northern Guard that she kept ever about her person, because she would not trust her Grecian soldiers.
My armour was very rich, yet I noted about myself two things that were with me in my youth. One was the necklace of golden sh.e.l.ls, divided from each other by beetles of emeralds, that I had taken from the Wanderer"s grave at Aar, and the other the cross-hilted bronze sword with which this same Wanderer had been girded in his grave. I know now that because of this weapon, which was of a metal and shape strange to that land, I had the byname of Olaf Red-Sword, and I know also that none wished to feel the weight of this same ancient blade.
When I had finished looking at myself in the shield, I leaned upon the parapet staring at the sea and wondering how the plains of Aar looked that night beneath this selfsame moon, and whether Freydisa were dead by now, and whom Iduna had married, and if she ever thought of me, or if Steinar came to haunt her sleep.
So I mused, till presently I felt a light touch upon my shoulder, and swung round to find myself face to face with the Empress Irene herself.
"Augusta!" I said, saluting, for, as Empress, that was her Roman t.i.tle, even though she was a Greek.
"You guard me well, friend Olaf," she said, with a little laugh. "Why, any enemy, and Christ knows I have plenty, could have cut you down before ever you knew that he was there."
"Not so, Augusta," I answered, for I could speak their Greek tongue well; "since at the end of the terrace the guards stand night and day, men of my own blood who can be trusted. Nothing which does not fly could gain this place save through your own chambers, that are also guarded.
It is not usual for any watch to be set here, still I came myself in case the Empress might need me."
"That is kind of you, my Captain Olaf, and I think I do need you. At least, I cannot sleep in this heat, and I am weary of the thoughts of State, for many matters trouble me just now. Come, change my mind, if you can, for if so I"ll thank you. Tell me of yourself when you were young. Why did you leave your northern home, where I"ve heard you were a barbarian chief, and wander hither to Byzantium?"
"Because of a woman," I answered.
"Ah!" she said, clapping her hands; "I knew it. Tell me of this woman whom you love."
"The story is short, Augusta. She bewitched my foster-brother, and caused him to be sacrificed to the northern G.o.ds as a troth-breaker, and I do not love her."
"You"d not admit it if you did, Olaf. Was she beautiful, well, say as I am?"
I turned and looked at the Empress, studying her from head to foot. She was shorter than Iduna by some inches, also older, and therefore of a thicker build; but, being a fair Greek, her colour was much the same, save that the eyes were darker. The mouth, too, was more hard. For the rest, she was a royal-looking and lovely woman in the flower of her age, and splendidly attired in robes broidered with gold, over which she wore long strings of rounded pearls. Her rippling golden hair was dressed in the old Greek fashion, tied in a simple knot behind her head, and over it was thrown a light veil worked with golden stars.
"Well, Captain Olaf," she said, "have you finished weighing my poor looks against those of this northern girl in the scales of your judgment? If so, which of us tips the beam?"
"Iduna was more beautiful than ever you can have been, Augusta," I replied quietly.
She stared at me till her eyes grew quite round, then puckered up her mouth as though to say something furious, and finally burst out laughing.
"By every saint in Byzantium," she said, "or, rather, by their relics, for of live ones there are none, you are the strangest man whom I have known. Are you weary of life that you dare to say such a thing to me, the Empress Irene?"
"Am I weary of life? Well, Augusta, on the whole I think I am. It seems to me that death and after it may interest us more. For the rest, you asked me a question, and, after the fashion of my people, I answered it as truthfully as I could."
"By my head, you have said it again," she exclaimed. "Have you not heard, most innocent Northman, that there are truths which should not be mentioned and much less repeated?"