THE SWEEPING OF THE HALL:[1] AN OLD DANISH TRAGEDY[2]

And now this is the story of Witlaf the[3] harper, that he told in the great hall of Gorm, the king of all Denmark, ten centuries ago, waving his handless arms in the flickering glow of the firelight.

I tell the tale of Snorē, the lord of the north of the island of Zeeland, years ago; and of how he swept his hall as the day broke.

First, as to his birth. Men say that the heavens were darkened, and that tumultuous clouds swept low over the battlements, and that voices were heard, meaningless, in the air. I do not know—wonders are kind to great names when they have been memories a little time.

But this much is true, that we in the hall of the castle were told by a white-faced woman, just as the sun set—I remember how red its light fell on the rush-covered floor, and how the woman[4] leaned half through the door and told us, holding the curtain—that the child was born, and was strong, and a man; but that the mother was dead, and that the Lord Sigmund was with her.

That night in the hall, by the light of the fire, as we men were talking in whispers, and telling kind deeds of our lady (for she was ever about in the cottages, and she and her women made soft-sewed clothes for all the men of the ship-crew), came, from behind the curtain that is to my lady’s chambers, a long, low wail of a child, strong and insistent, and then a man’s tread for a few paces, and then silence again, save for the men’s whisperings and the sound of the squeaking of their leather-belts as they moved, and the gentle rubbing of the wooden shields on the walls as the wind blew through under the rafters.

And afterwards, when the fire burned low, the men departed for their beds and left the hall empty, and then I also went, because I did not like the shadows, but to the battlements, not to my sleep, for I felt that this night meant something,[5] and I was not yet enough settled in my mind to lie and think in the darkness. So, lonesomely, I paced the battlements, while the moon rose, and all around me lay the great forest reaching almost down to the edge of the moat, and throwing its shadows over the silver water and on the white walls of the house. And in the distance, the long, still, snake of the fjord stretched out under the moon, till it curved and a black point of trees cut it off suddenly.

And at last, when the woods had become dusky, and the distant water where it passed out of sight was grey instead of silver, and then slowly turned to pink, I went down the steep stairs, through the yet dark galleries, where the carving on the corners was worn so smooth and stained with smoke—down to the chill, dark hall, and, kneeling on the hearth, built up and lit a fire of good beech twigs among the ashes, while the first day of the life of Lord Snorē, who swept this same hall of his at another dawning, broke through the long windows and shone on the armour.[6]

There are truer ways of reckoning time, O king, than by the indifferent passage of the meaningless years. Some moments, of the flying of a thought in length, fill more space in our lives and memories than much of everydays.

Yet something remains to me of those light-footed years till I see again clearly. Thus, I remember Lord Sigmund, my Lord Snorē’s father, set forth that year after the grain-planting was over, and until it was tall, he sailed the high seas, and brought back white furs from the North, and stories of mountains and ice-floors.

Next, I remember a strange ship come rowing one day up the fjord, and of her landing, and the men coming up to the hall, where they stayed many days; and of how they ran in the fields, shouting, and throwing the grass at each other; for they were sea-weary.

Then they departed, and there passed some more seasons and harvests, with sometimes hunting of bears or of deer, and the hewing of pieces of woodland.

Thus the years trod by softly while the Lord Snorē grew to his manhood.[7]

And Lord Sigmund would sail away with his men every spring when the planting was over, and my young lord would sit in his place in the hall, and, when need was, give justice unto the townsfolk. Good years, O king, when the fields grew wide, and the board was filled for a hundred men who sat there every evening.

When, looking back from where I now sit—I hope near the end of my life—I see again clearly, it is the time of mid-summer in the meadows that stretch by the side of the fjord, where the woods fall back, an hour’s boat-row from the castle. There, just when the still noonday drew to its close, and the slanting sun was beginning to throw its afternoon brightness in our brown faces, my Lord Snorē and I lay stretched out in the long, sweet grass, he with a heavy cross-bow—a new weapon then—and the carcasses of two brown deer lying beside him, I idly talking and ever looking forth over the blinding waters for sight of his father’s ship that we might begin to expect now, the grain being tall.[8]

Suddenly, from behind a point of jutting woods round which the fjord ran curving, grew and took shape a something long that the sun shining on made painful for the eyes—a long, low something that, curving in again, glided between me and the dark green point of trees. It was the ship! The young lord sat up on the grass, and putting his hand on the carcasses of the deer, rose to his feet. “It moves too slowly,” he said. It was true. Now we could see the swing of the oars, and the pause between the strokes was very long.

“Look at the dragon,” he said again, shading his eyes with his hand. I saw now that the great beak that had used to be so fierce in its red-and-gold painting was broken off, so that only its curving neck rose from the bow. And, looking again, I saw that the sides of the ship were battered, as if by rocks, and that many of the oar-blades were broken and tied to their stems with ropes. I ran to our boat that lay against the side-of-grass, and hurriedly tumbled its stone anchor on board.[9]

“He must have sunk the other ship or he would have come home in her,” I said, shipping the steering-oar.

Lord Snorē raised himself from the bottom of the boat where he had been stooping to place the two deer, and turning his shaggy head, looked at me curiously. “I will sit in my own right now!” he answered.

Beneath the lord’s long strong strokes the sharp-prowed skiff went rapidly over the still water, and now we could see the broken dragon’s-neck and the rents in the shields hung over the sides more plainly. We were almost within the shadow of her mast when a tall man—I knew his face for that of Esbiern the oar-captain—with a great red cloth round his head, leaped on the bow, waving his long arms wildly and shouting to us over the sunny waters, wild words of some sea-fight.

Our prow cut the shadow; half-unwilling hands reached over the gunwale to grasp our boat; we clambered over the side and turning, we looked along the length of the battered ship, over the half-empty rowers’ benches, past the pale faces[10] of five or six men with linen-swathed heads and arms—on, over the confusion and wreckage that littered the centre of the ship, to where, leaning against the edge of the fore-deck, lay the body of Sigmund the lord with the half of the crew of his returned ship arranged in a long sitting row beside him.

So, with Lord Snorē at one of the big oars to help the weary men with one more rower, and I heaving on the great steering blade and guiding the ship slowly over the shallows, we went silently up the fjord through the afternoon.

That night, when the men and the household were done eating and only the horns and wooden tankards of beer stood along the board, my Lord Snorē spoke from the great seat where he sat moodily, with his fist on the table, and the chair-cushions thrown on the floor beside him; and thus he spoke, with the men leaning silently forward to hear him:

“The men of the ship have told ye of the fight; how in the south, off Lolland, they met a Viking-ship which attacked them. How they fought and drove[11] the Viking; how that the Viking led them along the coast till, our men weary with rowing, there came two fresh ships from a bay, hidden, friends of the Viking; and how that Lord Sigmund died in the fight, and how that our men fled north, while the Vikings shouted; and our ship ye have seen!

“On the sixth day after this, at the sunrise, let the ship be ready with new oars; the ship’s men will stay here to rest. I shall take the men that I call my guard; those who hunt bears with me in the forest. But let the dragon’s-neck remain broken.”

This he said, and the men were silent, the old ship’s crew sitting, looking dejectedly along the board, their ale undrunk, and shuffling their feet in the rushes. Then there was drinking one to another while the women took down the men’s axes and armour-coats from the walls and carried them off to their houses to clean them; and there was laughter and boasting and talking loud making up courage, and some got up from their places and went seriously out[12] of the hall to the houses and to their children, and some talked to the men of the ship’s crew.

Thus the evening passed, and the men went home to their beds early, save for a few who sat down with made-up indifference and talked, while their beer-mugs stood on the benches till they grew warm in the firelight.

So the next six days we worked and made ready, hewing and smoothing new oars, and whetting our knives on the grind-stone; and at sunrise on the sixth day, with a long crowd of men and women on the strand and the rain pouring down out of the misty brown sky, we hauled our ship down the beach and setting ourselves in our places rowed splashingly away from the castle; while the fine rain ran down our faces and the shouting grew faint in the distance.

And so passes that part of my tale and I take up the second.

Now there come two months, O king, that are as difficult to see clearly as the length of a flame in the sunshine.[13]

We sailed south to Lolland, but we could find no word of a large ship with a plain prow and a new crew.

And we landed on many shores, and much I learned of the art of minstrelsy.

And Lord Snorē managed his men well and was a kind lord over us, though fierce, and long of anger.

We sailed, passing along the coast, sometimes running so near that the coolness of the trees was grateful to the sun-burned men—where we could see the bottom over the side of the ship, as we glided, stilly, over the white stones that glimmered through the clear water.

And sometimes we would pass by grey castles with small villages and houses over the fields, where the people would come out and look at the ship, and when they saw the broken dragon and that it was a ship for fight, run in again, or hurry towards the castle from the fields. Then we would call out to them to go back to their oxen, or to go on with their thatching, and wish good marriages unto the maidens, and laugh at them while they stood staring.[14]

And we would land sometimes and hunt in the forests; and then we would cook our meat all through over great fires, and not eat it half-fresh as on shipboard.

Once we chased a great ship and came up with her, but on calling out, we found they were Northmen; and the ship that we wanted was of our own race. So we gave them some rope in exchange for some leather, and drank “skaal” to them over the bulwarks as they spread their brown sail going northwards.

Sometimes we landed at some lord’s castle, sending a man before that they might know us as friends. And here were we entertained for many days, and were well liked, both on account of the kindness and manhood of my Lord Snorē and on account of the sturdiness of the ship’s men, and on account of the quest we were on.

Sailing thus, O king, come I to that part of my tale when the ladies smile, and when the lords in the hall look away and seem not to listen—yet would I be prompted if I forgot it.

Now, my Lord Snorē was a fierce man[15] of manner and face, being very large, with his shaggy head held high on great shoulders—a man more for fighting and combat than for young women’s eyes—and old ones’ tongues.

Yet like some ugly men he seemed the manlier by his ugliness.

We sat in the hall of Lord Rudolf of Lolland, anxiously waiting the coming of the ship of his brother, gone Viking—hoping for word of the ship we had searched for. And Lord Snorē hunted and rode with Lord Rudolf every day, till it came to the evening that he had set for departure.

And, drinking health to the lord, as he raised his great mug to his lips, I saw his eyes glance over the edge, and they met the eyes of Lord Rudolf’s fair daughter. And I saw a slight surprise come into his face; it grew into amazement; and he drank the cup slowly still looking at her.

We stayed many days at Lord Rudolf’s.

It was when the men were growing weary of waiting and the household that eat in the hall knew all of my songs—when the keel of the ship was fast[16] grounded—that one night as I lay asleep with my back to the bulwark I felt a hand shaking my shoulder. And, as I grasped his arm in the darkness, Lord Snorē’s voice came to me whispering:

“Awake; and come out of the ship, silently—here in the darkness,” he whispered, as I came over the side and let myself drop by my arms to the sand.

I saw that he was dressed in his armour, and had his great axe in his hand, as he pulled me into the shadow of the steering-oar, where it stuck over the stern, its blade of broad silver where it shone to the moonlight.

“Do you hear the noise up at the castle?” he whispered.

“It is surely Lord Rudolf’s brother returned,” I answered when I had listened; for a sound like the grounding of swords and the tramping of men passing in and out over the drawbridge came to me, faintly, from where lay the castle beyond the black line of trees: the night was very still.

“Nay, it is not that,” whispered Lord Snorē, looming up dim by the ship’s side. “Listen, Witlaf: I love Lord Rudolf’s[17] daughter—ah! so thou knowest?—and this night have I gone up to look at her window where the light is—nay, listen—and as I was standing there dreaming, I think, sudden and soft her voice came to me out of the darkness, from just within the great window that is at the side of the hall, and looking up, I heard her call to me gently, saying, ‘Snorē, Snorē; come here to the window-ledge, silently—quick! Back to your ship, Snorē—my father is arming himself in his chamber; I heard the clang of his armour: he is angry because that I—love thee. The castle is filled with his men, and—I love thee!’”

And the lord’s great hand was raised in the darkness.

“Now, Witlaf,” he whispered, and I heard his voice tremble, “the maiden is safe in the ship; but thou knowest,” and his voice grew firm, “that the half of our men lie drunk on the fore-deck—and ’tis hard to move ship with so few. Say, Minstrel, wilt thou hold the ship while I, with the rest, warm my hands at the castle?”

And thus it was that I, the harper of Lord Snorē, came to be sitting in the[18] moonlight inside the ship, with my harp by my knee, and my axe in my hand, and a pale-faced maiden beside me who listened in silence to the distancing tread of my lord and his men as they stealthily passed up the path towards the castle.

So, seemingly for years and years, we sat there, with the water lapping against the side of the ship, and the sound of the straining of leather and the shuffling of feet as the men sleepily put on their arms on the fore-deck. Then, more years passed, and the maiden shivered and crept closer, and I put my great skin-cloak around her.

So we sat and waited; and the moon sailed grandly overhead throwing flakes of white on the dancing water to seaward; and save for the lapping of water and occasional sounds from the fore-deck, there was stillness—out of which an owl cried, thrice, with its long, strange, mournful note, and then ceased; leaving the silence more silent.

Then, suddenly, from out the darkness, seemingly miles away, there rose, and rose, and hung on the air, and slowly died away, a great cry in a man’s voice. Then[19] there was silence once more for a moment. And now began a confused dull rabble of sound that I knew well enough; with a skin-moving swish in it like the whetting of knives. And there were far sounds of voices, and sometimes a curious hollow drubbing, like a hammer on the side of a ship; this, I could tell, was the sound of my Lord Snorē’s great axe as it beat on the door, and when it ceased presently I knew that the door was down.

Now, for a long time only the far sounds and the occasional voices came to us; and the years grew long again, and I heard the water lapping against the side of the ship.

Suddenly, out of the darkness and into the strip of moonlit beach that lay between the edge of the black forest and the silvery ship, came running a man, silently, and swaying as he ran, and just midway in the moonlight, he stopped, ran round uncertainly twice in a little circle, and then pitched forward with his face in the sand and lay still. The maiden by me gave a little cry and hid her face on the edge of the bulwark. Then we waited[20] again and listened to the barking of dogs in the distance; and so more years passed, and the lapping of the water grew loud again.

Now began to come wounded men in pairs, stumbling groaningly over the side, and soon with these began to come back other men out of the darkness, unwounded, but bloody enough, and these waited in a little crowd outside the ship panting, and wiping the sweat from their foreheads, and leaving the prints of their hands on the planks where we found them next morning. And, last, with a little knot of unwounded men around him, came Lord Snorē walking heavily, swinging his axe, with the blood dripping from his shaggy foretop and from the ends of his hands. He stood while the men slowly shoved off the ship, then plunging through the water like horses and splashing it over their red armour and faces, they all came clambering aboard, and throwing off their steel hoods and sword-belts, sat them down to the oars to get the ship out of shoal water. But my Lord Snorē came to the gunwale, and taking the maiden’s hand[21] drew her to him, wrapped in the great wolf-skin, and lowered his head on her shoulder.

Thus we left that shore; and when far out, we saw first a flicker and then a glow of fire, and the burning of Lord Rudolf’s castle lit up the sea, and we heard the cocks crowing over the water as we turned our prow homeward, while the oar-blades rose and fell, dripping silver.

Now, as we sailed homeward the maiden was given the after-part of the ship, save for the steersman, and because, that, loving Lord Snorē, she was afraid of him; yet ever looking towards the forward part of the ship where he sat with his men: thus she would have me come and harp to her and tell her sagas and tales; and she told me many things in return.

And then Lord Snorē would come to the edge of the raised deck and leaning upon it, talk to her, while my harp made low music.

In the years that have passed, O king, a mist like the autumn mist that lies white on the earth in the morning has grown between my eyes and the past, so that only the hill-tops break through it.[22]

Now, I will tell of the passing of Snorē and Helga, and like the scenes of a play, the last scene of my tale is the bloodiest—for fighting was the half of men’s lives in those days—thank the Gods! So, to the end of the tale.