IV
On the evening of All Saints’ Day the moon shone bright and clear. The King had gone the round of the castle, had looked into stables and barns to see that all was well; he had even been to the house where the serfs dwelt to ascertain if they were well looked after. When he went back to the King’s Hall, he saw a woman with a black kerchief over her head stealing towards the gateway. He thought he knew her, and therefore followed her. She went out of the gateway, over the Market Place, and stole down the narrow lanes to the river.
Olaf Haraldsson went after her as quietly as he could. He saw her go on to one of the landing-stages, stand still, and look down into the water. She stretched out her arms towards heaven, and, with a deep sigh, she went so near the edge that the King saw she meant to spring into the river.
The King approached her with the noiseless steps which a life full of danger had taught him. Twice the woman lifted her foot to make the spring, but she hesitated. Before she could make a new attempt, King Olaf had his arm round her waist and drew her back.
“Thou unhappy one!” he said. “Thou wouldest do that which God hath prohibited.”
When the woman heard his voice she held her hands before her face as if to hide it. But King Olaf knew who she was. The rustle of her dress, the shape of her head, the golden rings on her arms had already told him that it was the Queen. The first moment Astrid had struggled to free herself, but she soon grew quiet, and tried to make the King believe that she had not intended to kill herself.
“King Olaf, why dost thou secretly come behind a poor woman who hath gone down to the river to see how she is mirrored in the water? What must I think of thee?”
Astrid’s voice sounded composed and playful. The King stood silent.
“Thou hast frightened me so that I nearly fell into the river,” Astrid said. “Didst thou think, perhaps, that I would drown myself?”
The King answered:
“I know not what to believe; God will enlighten me.”
Astrid laughed and kissed him.
“What woman would take her life who is as happy as I am? Doth one take one’s life in Paradise?”
“I do not understand it,” said King Olaf, in his gentle manner. “God will enlighten me. He will tell me if it be through any fault of mine that thou wouldest commit so great a sin.”
Astrid went up to him and stroked his cheek. The reverence she felt for King Olaf had hitherto deterred her from showing him the full tenderness of her love. Now she threw her arms passionately around him and kissed him countless times. Then she began to speak to him in gentle, birdlike tones.
“Wouldest thou know how truly my heart clings to thee?” she said.
She made the King sit down on an overturned boat. She knelt down at his feet.
“King Olaf,” she said, “I will no longer be Queen. She who loves as greatly as I love thee cannot be a Queen. I wish thou wouldest go far into the forest, and let me be thy bondwoman. Then I should have leave to serve thee every day. Then I would prepare thy food, make thy bed, and watch over thy house whilst thou slept. None other should have leave to serve thee, except I. When thou returnest from the chase in the evening, I would go to meet thee, and kneel before thee on the road and say: ‘King Olaf, my life is thine.’ And thou wouldest laugh, and lower thy spear against my breast, and say: ‘Yes, thy life is mine. Thou hast neither father nor mother; thou art mine, and thy life is mine.’ ”
As Astrid said this, she drew, as if in play, King Olaf’s sword out of its sheath. She laid the hilt in the King’s hand, but the point she directed towards her own heart.
“Say these words to me, King Olaf,” she said, “as if we were alone in the forest, and I were thy bondwoman. Say: ‘Thy life is mine.’ ”
“Thy life is God’s,” said the King.
Astrid laughed lightly.
“My life is thine,” she repeated, in the tenderest voice, and the same moment King Olaf felt that she pressed the point of the sword against her breast.
But the King held the sword with a firm hand, even when in play. He drew it to him before Astrid had time to do herself any harm. And he sprang up. For the first time in his life he trembled from fear. The Queen would die at his hand, and she had not been far from attaining her wish. At the same moment he had an inspiration, and he understood what was the cause of her despair.
“She has committed a sin,” he thought. “She has a sin upon her conscience.”
He bent down over Astrid.
“Tell me in what manner thou hast sinned,” he said.
Astrid had thrown herself down on the rough planks of the bridge, crying in utter despair.
“No one free from guilt would weep like this,” thought the King. “But how can the honourable daughter of the King have brought such a heavy burden upon her?” he asked himself. “How can the noble Ingegerd have a crime upon her conscience?”
“Ingegerd, tell me how thou hast sinned,” he asked again.
But Astrid was sobbing so violently that she could not answer, but instead she drew off her golden arm and finger rings, and handed them to the King with averted face. The King thought how unlike this was to the gentle King’s daughter of whom Hjalte had spoken.
“Is this Hjalte’s Ingegerd that lies sobbing at my feet?” he thought.
He bent down and seized Astrid by the shoulder.
“Who are thou? who art thou?” he said, shaking her arm. “I see that thou canst not be Ingegerd. Who art thou?”
Astrid was still sobbing so violently that she could not speak. But in order to give the King the answer he asked for, she let down her long hair, twisted a lock of it round her arms, and held them towards the King, and sat thus bowed and with drooping head. The King thought:
“She wishes me to understand that she belongs to those who wear chains. She confesses that she is a bondwoman.”
A thought again struck the King; he now understood everything.
“Has not the Svea-King a daughter who is the child of a bondwoman?” he asked suddenly.
He received no answer to this question either, but he heard Astrid shudder as if from cold. King Olaf asked still one more question.
“Thou whom I have made my wife,” he said, “hast thou so low a mind that thou wouldest allow thyself to be used as a means of spoiling a man’s honour? Is thy mind so mean that thou rejoicest when his enemies laugh at his discomfiture?”
Astrid could hear from the King’s voice how bitterly he suffered under the insult that had been offered him. She forgot her own sufferings, and wept no more.
“Take my life,” she said.
A great temptation came upon King Olaf.
“Slay this wicked bondwoman,” the old Adam said within him. “Show the Svea-King what it costs to make a fool of the King of Norway.”
At that moment Olaf Haraldsson felt no love for Astrid. He hated her for having been the means of his humiliation. He knew everybody would think it right when he returned evil for evil, and if he did not avenge this insult, he would be held in derision by the Bards, and his enemies would no longer fear him. He had but one wish: to slay Astrid, to take her life. His anger was so violent that it craved for blood. If a fool had dared to put his fool’s cap upon his head, would he not have torn it off, torn it to pieces, thrown it on the ground, trampled upon it? If he now laid Astrid a bloody corpse upon her ship, and sent her back to her father, people would say of King Olaf that he was a worthy descendant of Harald Haarfager.
But King Olaf still held his sword in his hand, and under his fingers he felt the hilt, upon which he had once had inscribed: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Blessed are the meek,” “Blessed are the merciful.” And every time he, in this hour of anguish, grasped his sword firmly in order to slay Astrid, he felt these words under his hand. He thought he could feel every letter. He remembered the day when he had first heard these words.
“This I will write in letters of gold on the hilt of my sword,” he had said, “so that the words may burn in my hand every time I would swing my sword in fury, or for an unjust cause.”
He felt that the hilt of the sword now burnt in his hand. King Olaf said aloud to himself:
“Formerly thou wert the slave of many lusts; now thou hast but one master, and that is God.”
With these words he put back the sword into its sheath, and began to walk to and fro on the bridge. Astrid remained lying in the same position. King Olaf saw that she crouched in fear of death every time he went past her.
“I will not slay thee,” he said; but his voice sounded hard from hatred.
King Olaf continued for awhile to walk backwards and forwards on the bridge; then he went up to Astrid, and asked her in the same hard voice what her real name was, and that she was able to answer him. He looked at this woman whom he had so highly treasured, and who now lay at his feet like a wounded deer—he looked down upon her as a dead man’s soul looks with pity at the poor body which was once its dwelling.
“Oh, thou my soul,” said King Olaf, “it was there thou dwelt in love, and now thou art as homeless as a beggar.” He drew nearer to Astrid, and spoke as if she were no longer living or could hear what he said. “It was told me that there was a King’s daughter whose heart was so pure and holy that she endued with peace all who came near her. They told me of her gentleness, that he who saw her felt as safe as a helpless child does with its mother, and when the beautiful woman who now lies here came to me, I thought that she was Ingegerd, and she became exceeding dear to me. She was so beautiful and glad, and she made my own heavy thoughts light. And did she sometimes act otherwise than I expected the proud Ingegerd to do, she was too dear to me to doubt her; she stole into my heart with her joyousness and beauty.”
He was silent for a time, and thought how dear Astrid had been to him and how happiness had with her come to his house.
“I could forgive her,” he said aloud. “I could again make her my Queen, I could in love take her in my arms; but I dare not, for my soul would still be homeless. Ah, thou fair woman,” he said, “why dost lying dwell within thee? With thee there is no security, no rest.”
The King went on bemoaning himself, but now Astrid stood up.
“King Olaf, do not speak thus to me,” she said; “I will rather die. Understand, I am in earnest.”
Then she tried to say a few words to excuse herself. She told him that she had gone to Kungahälla not with the intention of deceiving him, but in order to be a Princess for a few weeks, to be waited upon like a Queen, to sail on the sea. But she had intended to confess who she was as soon as she came to Kungahälla. There she expected to find Hjalte and the other great men who knew Ingegerd. She had never thought of deceiving him when she came, but an evil spirit had sent all those away who knew Ingegerd, and then the temptation had come to her.
“When I saw thee, King Olaf,” she said, “I forgot everything to become thine, and I thought I would gladly suffer death at thine hand had I but for one day been thy wife.”
King Olaf answered her:
“I see that what was deadly earnest to me was but a pastime to thee. Never hast thou thought upon what it was to come and say to a man: ‘I am she whom thou most fervently desirest; I am that highborn maiden whom it is the greatest honour to win.’ And then thou art not that woman; thou art but a lying bondwoman.”
“I have loved thee from the first moment I heard thy name,” Astrid said softly.
The King clenched his hand in anger against her.
“Know, Astrid, that I have longed for Ingegerd as no man has ever longed for woman. I would have clung to her as the soul of the dead clings to the angel bearing him upwards. I thought she was so pure that she could have helped me to lead a sinless life.”
And he broke out into wild longings, and said that he longed for the power of the holy ones of God, but that he was too weak and sinful to attain to perfection.
“But the King’s daughter could have helped me,” he said; “she the saintly and gentle one would have helped me. Oh, my God,” he said, “whichever way I turn I see sinners, wherever I go I meet those who would entice me to sin. Why didst Thou not send me the King’s daughter, who had not a single evil thought in her heart? Her gentle eye would have found the right path for my foot. Whenever I strayed from it her gentle hand would have led me back.”
A feeling of utter helplessness and the weariness of despair fell upon Olaf Haraldsson.
“It was this upon which I had set my hopes,” he said—“to have a good woman at my side, not to wander alone amongst wickedness and sin forever. Now I feel that I must succumb; I am unable to fight any longer. Have I not asked God,” he exclaimed, “what place I shall have before His face? To what hast Thou chosen me, Thou Lord of souls? Is it appointed unto me to become the equal of apostles and martyrs? But now, Astrid, I need ask no longer; God hath not been willing to give me that woman who should have assisted me in my wandering. Now I know that I shall never win the crown of the Saints.”
The King was silent in inconsolable despair; then Astrid drew nearer to him.
“King Olaf,” she said, “what thou now sayest both Hjalte and Ingegerd have told me long ago, but I would not believe that thou wert more than a good and brave knight and noble King. It is only now that I have lived under thy roof that my soul has begun to fear thee. I have felt that it was worse than death to appear before thee with a lie upon my lips. Never have I been so terrified,” Astrid continued, “as when I understood that thou wast a Saint. When I saw thee burn the chips in thine hand, when I saw sickness flee at thy bidding, and the sword fall out of thine enemy’s hand when he met thee, I was terrified unto death when I saw that thou wast a Saint, and I resolved to die before thou knewest that I had deceived thee.”
King Olaf did not answer. Astrid looked up at him; she saw that his eyes were turned towards heaven. She did not know if he had heard her.
“Ah,” she said, “this moment have I feared every day and every hour since I came hither. I would have died rather than live through it.”
Olaf Haraldsson was still silent.
“King Olaf,” she said, “I would gladly give my life for thee; I would gladly throw myself into the gray river so that thou shouldst not live with a lying woman at thy side. The more I saw of thy holiness the better I understood that I must go from thee. A Saint of God cannot have a lying bondwoman at his side.”
The King was still silent, but now Astrid raised her eyes to his face; then she cried out, terror-stricken:
“King Olaf, thy face shines.”
Whilst Astrid spoke, God had shown King Olaf a vision. He saw all the stars of heaven leave their appointed places, and fly like swarming bees about the universe. But suddenly they all gathered above his head and formed a radiant crown.
“Astrid,” said he, with trembling voice, “God hath spoken to me. It is true what thou sayest. I shall become a Saint of God.”
His voice trembled from emotion, and his face shone in the night. But when Astrid saw the light that surrounded his head, she arose. For her the last hope had faded.
“Now I will go,” she said. “Now thou knowest whom thou art. Thou canst never more bear me at thy side. But think gently of me. Without joy or happiness have I lived all my life. In rags have I gone; blows have I endured. Forgive me when I am gone. My love has done thee no harm.”
When Astrid in silent despair crossed over the bridge, Olaf Haraldsson awoke from his ecstasy. He hastened after her.
“Why wilt thou go?” he said. “Why wilt thou go?”
“Must I not go from thee when thou art a Saint?” she whispered scarcely audibly.
“Thou shalt not go. Now thou canst remain,” said King Olaf. “Before, I was a lowly man and must fear all sin; a poor earthly King was I, too poor to bestow on thee my grace; but now all the glory of Heaven has been given to me. Art thou weak? I am the Lord’s knight. Dost thou fall? I can lift thee up. God hath chosen me, Astrid. Thou canst not harm me, but I can help thee. Ah! what am I saying? In this hour God hath so wholly and fully shed the riches of His love in my heart that I cannot even see thou hast done wrong.”
Gently and tenderly he lifted up the trembling form, and whilst lovingly supporting her, who was still sobbing and who could hardly stand upright, he and Astrid went back to the King’s Castle.