III
Queen Sigrid the Haughty
Styrbiorn now fared abroad according to the King’s command. And summer wore, and winter, and when winter was well past King Eric came south to Arland to guest with Skogul-Tosti, the father of that Sigrid who was with Styrbiorn on King Olaf’s howe, and saw visions there as is aforesaid. Tosti was a great friend of the King’s, and made him noble entertainment; and when the King had sat there three days with his folk that were with him Tosti prayed him sit another three, and when those were done he prayed him yet three days more, so that nine days all told they feasted it in Tosti’s hall.
Skogul-Tosti was a portly man and a stately, and the most open handed of men in all things which belong to housekeeping, and a showy man in his dress. It liked him better that his worthiness should call him to that reputation, to be the greatest man in all the countryside he might overlook from his home-mead at Hawkby, rather than he should exercise larger dominion over lands and folk and yet be called but the King’s man, and the tool of a greatness not his own. He was the greatest of warriors, and spent much time a-warring. His wife was named Gudrid. She was a stirring woman, of the kin of the Earls of West Gautland. She was fair to look on, but folk deemed her over proud and grasping and somewhat hard of heart.
At this ninth night of their feast, when men had well eaten and were fallen now to jesting and story-telling and drinking one to another, the King spake and said, “Early it is, and yet, Tosti, I will drink no more, except thy daughter Sigrid bear cup to me.”
Sigrid was set on the cross-bench on the dais, beside her mother, and the other womenfolk that were at the feast sat out away from them on either hand. She had a gown of blue, collared and purfled with mink’s fur, and about the neck of it sets of gold, in every set four pieces of amber. And she had above her brow a fillet of silk and twisted wire of gold, to keep back from her face the red deep masses of her hair, that came down in two thick and heavy trammels or plaits beside her bosom on either hand, and the ends tucked up under her jewelled belt.
Tosti, from his high-seat on the lower bench, called her by name and said, “Why dally, Sigrid? Are we become so slack as keep our guests waiting? and much more when ’tis the King.”
She, glancing with her dark eyes first in her father’s face then in the King’s, reached out her hand now to the great golden drinking horn which a thrall, obedient to her father’s nod, proffered to her full of mead so that the foam of it ran down the sides. As a ship’s mast, half laid over by a gust of wind, rises erect from the trough of the wave, so rose she, and with modest and downward look came past the benches till she was stood beside the King.
King Eric took the horn with one hand and the lady with the other, and made her sit beside him in the high seat. From this she at first hung aback, but he would have his way. She sat here very demure, answering but ay or no or with a flickering smile to whatso the King might say to her: very quiet and estranged. So, and in such a quietness, Sigrid sat in the high seat beside the King; till the fires burned low, and men’s eyelids waxed heavy, and it was late night, and the feast was done.
“This is what thou hast long set thy mind on,” said Skogul-Tosti to his wife at his coming to bed, “and I think thou mayst be glad at this night’s work.”
“So far, good,” said she. “But the ship’s not beached yet.”
“Not beached yet? Beached it is, and laid up,” said Tosti. “Thou shalt see, ere the King ride hence tomorrow he will bespeak her in marriage for Styrbiorn.”
“That will be well so far,” said she.
“Well? what better?” Tosti, that was sat taking off his shoes, stared wonderingly up in his wife’s smiling and doubting face. “And by thy good schemings he and she have been good friends together too.”
“She hath said no to a dozen ere now, and not one of them but had been a great match such as should do us honour. Hast forgot how thy young messmate fared, Harald the Grenlander? and he is a king now.”
“True enough,” said he. “The lass hath a stubborn will, that is true. And her very scornfulness and haughty ways seem to draw ’em on, only to send ’em packing. But there’s bigger game on the wing here.”
“That is true, too,” said Gudrid. “But, remember: thou’st a wayward daughter.”
“A right daughter of thine, mistress. As skittish as an eel.” Gudrid laughed. “But she hath wit,” he said: “she can lick a dish before a cat. She’ll ne’er say nay to Styrbiorn.”
“I say only this,” said Gudrid: “be not too certain sure.”
“ ’Tis a wonder past guessing,” said Tosti, standing up, “all these doubts and questions of thine. Hast spoke to her on’t?”
“No,” said she. “But I watched her. She smelt well enough what was toward tonight. I liked not the face she put on it.”
“But not say no to this? There’s no higher game to fly at.”
Gudrid shook her head. “ ’Tis thy giving of her her will too much, and cockering of her. She’d ne’er mind me, and now not thee neither.”
“Well,” said Tosti, “she shall have her will, too, whatsome’er she choose. Albeit, I’ll ne’er believe she’d say nay to this.”
Gudrid said nothing, but stood looking at him as on some new and entertaining thing. He, knowing not what to make of her and her looks, took her by the shoulders. “She hath this of thee,” he said, “that she is like to be an ill curse to any man save the man of her own choosing.” And he drew his wife to him and kissed her on the neck and bare shoulder.
Next morning the King took Tosti apart and said to him, “There is a matter I have to move unto thee, Tosti, and I think after last night it will not take thee napping. And it toucheth thy daughter Sigrid.”
Tosti answered, “Your drift, Lord, is not hidden from me, and I do embrace it for the greatest honour and gladness that ever did or could befall me and my kindred. Yet since true is that which is said, ‘There’s many a thing in the carle’s cot that is not in the king’s garth,’ and since this is mine only daughter, I know you will not take it ill, Lord, if I leave unto her the choosing in this. So have I alway done heretofore, and so it seemeth me will be best now, both for her and for all that have part herein.”
“I will talk to her myself,” said the King. “None did yet die of another’s wound, nor should any be content with another’s choosing.”
The King walked with Sigrid forth beyond the home-mead by sheep-ways on to the open fell-sides south toward Balingsdale. For a long while he was silent. Then suddenly he said, “I have a suit unto thee, Sigrid.”
“That is not hard to guess, Lord,” said she, dreaming not that the King had any other purpose than this, whereof she had long since had an inkling in her parents’ minds, to wed her and Styrbiorn.
“What answer,” said the King, “must I have of thee?”
Sigrid, looking straight before her, replied, “I will tell you, Lord, if you will tell me first whether it resteth in my free choice to say yes or no to you.”
“Thy father,” said King Eric, “hath laid all in thine hand, to answer as thou shalt please. Besides, I would take no other answer.”
“Then, Lord,” said she, “my answer is No.”
At that, the King stopped short. Sigrid too stopped and faced him. Her face was very red. “I must have thy reason,” said the King.
She made no answer.
The King said, “I will put no stress on thee, Sigrid. But as well as I am minded to entreat thee, surely so well it befitteth thee to answer me and tell me thy reasons. For this match is not as another, which haply thy high mind might not think honourable enough for thee.”
Still for a minute she faced the King in silence. Very proud she looked, her brown eyes deep and unsearchable like a deer’s; then her eyes dropped and she turned away. “I see,” said the King: “this hath come over sudden upon thee.”
Sigrid laughed. “Nay, Lord, ’tis but the old tale again, the old song.” And she began to say:
“I ken a verse:
An eagle sat upon a stane!
And I ken another:
An eagle sat upon a stane!
And I ken a third:
An eagle sat upon a stane!
The first is like ’em all:
An eagle sat upon a stane!”
She looked up at him, an angry, mocking look. The King’s face hardened. She threw out her hands, and, “What can a maid do withal,” said she, “if men do so plague her? Must I take this untried boy because he is come of kingly blood? and because he hath the King to come a-wooing for him? And truly,” she said, turning her head away, “I do hold Styrbiorn no better than a cat’s son.”
King Eric stared: then, seeing which way the wind set, he brake out a-laughing and reached out and took her by the hand. “Why, here’s a pretty diversion,” said he, “of cross questions and crooked answers. I will woo thee, Sigrid, for no man’s hand but mine own. And this is my suit to thee, to be mine own wedded wife, and Queen in Upsala.”
Her hand yet in the King’s hand, her body poised in free proud lines like the wild birches, daughters of the fell and the free elements, Sigrid stood very still. Her breathing was quickened. After a while the King said, “And now, what answer wilt thou give me?”
They had halted by the margin of a tarn, part thawed. The wind blowing from the far side drove the ice up on to the bank where they stood. The packing ice crackled and moaned with a soft and high-pitched moaning, and the broken bits of it tinkled in the wind-stirred water with a tinkling as of faint bells. Sigrid said, very low, “That was one answer I gave you, when I thought you did speak for Styrbiorn.” Then, starting suddenly out of her quiet, she strove to withdraw her hand from the King’s, but he kept it. “I pray you let me go,” she cried. “You will bruise my hand.” Then her face flamed red and her eyes turned hard and fierce: “Must I answer you, Lord, as to the King? or as to an old man come a-wooing?”
The King, letting go her hand indeed, caught her in his arms. She, frightened as soon as she had spoken it lest her gibe, that she could not bite in, of old man, might yet have lost her that high advancement which her soul lusted for, abode breathless in his strong embrace that taught her how empty was her gibe, and, being empty, harmless. “I will show thee,” said King Eric, speaking hot and close in her ear and hair, “how thou must answer me. Thus would I have thee answer me, Sigrid, as to a great man of war that do love thee, and will not let thee go. And will not let thee go: Sigrid the Haughty.”
Yet, so hard and stiff abode she in his embrace, without word spoken, that he at length did let her go. She stood back now with hands behind her, facing him steadily with those liquid eyes inscrutable. “It is well seen, Lord,” said she, “that you are stronger than I. Yet remember, there be two needed for every agreement.”
“That is but fair and right,” said the King. “There shall no constraint be put upon thee, whether of hand or word. But here in this place shalt thou choose.”
She stood silent.
“Thou shalt have till tomorrow morn, then,” said the King.
But still she stood silent. May be, strange and contrarious thoughts contended within her head, under the braided heaviness of tresses that flung back the weak sun’s radiance in shifting flashes of red-gold fire. At length she turned full on the King those brown eyes of hers: “And which way would you have me choose, Lord?” said she.
“Which way?” said the King. “That is a strange question, and needeth no answer.”
Again for a while she was silent. Her eyes were troublous to a man to behold when they looked so upon him; even as a man might voyage over an undiscovered sea, uncertain whether these were safe unplumbed depths he sailed over, or but shallow rock-strewn waters apt for his destruction. Then suddenly her eyelids flickered and her proud lips sweetened and she became all yielding loveliness. “The strong man’s rede ruleth still,” she said, and came to his arms.