Ulric the Jarl: A Story of the Penitent Thief

Ulric the Jarl: A Story of the Penitent Thief

CHAPTER I.

Around the Viking House-fire

In the Northland were the roots from which grew the great nations which now rule the earth. The tribes were many, but the principal representative and the absorbent of their thoughts and their traditions may receive from us the general name of Saxons. These were the swordsmen of the sea whom the Roman legionaries declared to be the hardest fighters they had met, whether on land or water.

In the Northland were also the germs of political and religious liberty, and here were to be found the first forms of our highest faith.

But the men of the old race sailed southward and then eastward, at the first, taking their gods with them. Not until centuries later did they march and conquer this far western world, but we, their children, still devoutly believe that the great God came with them.

The landward slope of a vast gray granite headland was thickly covered with towering pine trees. Beyond them, inland, lay a snowy valley without woods, and beyond that arose a blue and misty range of mountains. There were no trees upon the summit of the headland; only bare rocks, storm worn and deeply furrowed, were uplifted to meet the bitter wind that swept down over the flinty ice covering of the North Sea from the yet colder winter which was manufacturing icebergs within the arctic circle. Sheer down, hundreds of feet, the perpendicular face of the cliff smote sharply the glittering level that stretched away westerly over the sea to the horizon, while an arm of it pushed in eastward over the fettered waters of a deep and gloomy fiord, rock-bordered.

Here would evidently be a good harbor in summer, when the waters should be free, but now it had a forbidding, dangerous look, and out of the fiord poured continually a volume of roaring sound, the solemn organry of the wind playing upon the icy and rocky reflectors.

There was another gigantic sea cliff at a distance of about a mile down the shore, southerly. Between that and the headland the ice line curved raggedly inward along the lines of a sheltered cove, which might at another season provide a landing place. Midway, and at the head of the cove, there lay, propped up on either side by timbers, the bare hull of a well-made vessel. It was of goodly size, being over thirty paces in length and of full six paces in width at its middle. At the prow and at the stern it was high built, with short decks, under which was room for stowage and for the sheltered sleeping of men. It was lower made amidships, where were both seats and standing room for rowers, and on either side were twenty thole pins. In appearance the hull was somewhat flat-bottomed, but it had a keel. At the center arose a stout, high mast, but upon it there was yet neither yard nor boom nor sail. Both prow and stern were sharply made. Evident was it that she was new and had never yet floated. Her outline was of much beauty, and all her timbers and planks were heavy and strong, that she might battle with rough seas and with the ice cakes of the spring breaking. From her prow projected a beak of firmly clamped and tenoned oak, faced and pointed with iron, that she might break not only the waves, but the ribs of other ships. All around her and in some parts over her lay the white snow, deeply drifted, but wherever the woodwork was uncovered there could be seen much of skillful carving and smooth polishing.

At other places along the curve of the cove there were boats and ships, larger and smaller. All were hauled up above high-water mark, and snow was on them. The larger craft seemed to be stanch and seaworthy, but not any of them were equal in size or in strength or in beauty to the new warship.

Upon a straight line inland a hundred fathoms, as if the iron beak were pointing at it, stood a long, low, irregular building of wood with high ridged roofs, in which were wide holes at the ridges. From these holes, as if they were instead of chimneys, columns of blue smoke were rising to be whirled away by the wind. Stonework or brickwork was not to be seen. Through the strong timber walls, under the projecting eaves, were many openings, equally cut, window-like, for the entrance of light and air on sunny days, but these all were now closed by wooden shutters, some of which were braced from without. The timbers of the house walls were cleanly hewn and skillfully fitted, and they were tightly calked with moss and tempered clay. The roofs were of shingles riven from the pine trees.

Beyond, landward, there were smaller, ruder structures for the shelter of horses, cattle, sheep, and swine, and there were many ricks of hay and straw and of yet unthreshed grain. In either direction around the cove and scattered irregularly up the valley were a number of less extensive buildings for the abode of men. Some of these were mere huts, built ruggedly of timber and unhewn stone. From every roof was there blue smoke rising to testify that there were no empty houses in this seashore village of the vikings. Around the central cluster of buildings there were palisades, but except for these there were no signs of fortifications. It was as if there need be little fear of the coming of any foeman.

Bitter and cold and strong was the windstorm that blew across the icy sea and smote upon the swaying crowns of the pine forest and howled among the bare boughs of the oaks. It came and knocked at the great door in the front of the house pointed at by the beak which was the forefinger of the ship.

The door swung open for a moment and then it closed, but in that moment there rang out loud voices of rude song and the twanging of sonorous harp strings. Also a great blast of fresh, pure air rushed eagerly into the house, where it was much needed. Not but that the vast room, low-walled, high-roofed, was fairly well ventilated in many other ways, but the fire in the middle of its earthen floor was blazing vigorously, and not all the smoke might readily escape at the round gap in the roof ridge over it. Now and then, indeed, the wind blew rudely down through that aperture and sent the smoke clouds eddying murkily among the rafters.

But for the fire blaze and for sundry swinging cressets filled with burning pine knots the great hall would have been gloomily dark, but these lights were enough, in spite of the smoke clouds, to show many things which told of what sort this place might be. So also might be plainly noted the faces and the forms of the men who sat or stood around the fire, or who lay upon the bearskins and the wolfskins that were scattered here and there upon the earth floor and upon the wooden settles along the walls.

A broad table ran across a raised dais at one end of the room, and on this were not only pitchers and mugs of earthenware variously molded, with many drinking horns, but there were also tankards and goblets and salvers of silver, richly designed and graven by the artisans of other lands than this. Of the articles of furniture for different uses some few had an appearance of having been brought from far, but the great, high-backed oaken throne chair behind the long table, at its center, was rich with the grotesquely elaborate carvings of the old North people. On the walls hung shields and arms and armor of many patterns. The steel caps of the vikings hung side by side with visored helmets that told of Greece and Rome and of lands yet further east. There were many men in the room. Some of them were scarred old warriors, but there were youths of all ages above mere boyhood. Likewise were there numbers of women.

As central as was the fire itself were three figures which seemed to attract and divide the attention of all the others. On the side of the fire toward the door towered one who looked a very embodiment of the warlike young manhood of the race of Odin. His blond beard and mustache were full but not yet heavy. His complexion was fair, notwithstanding its weather bronzing, and his steel-blue eyes seemed both to flash and to laugh as he stood with folded arms and listened. His dress was simple. His shoes, that arose above his ankles, were well made. Above them were leggings of tanned leather, and he wore a tunic of thick, blue woolen cloth. He was unarmed except for the slightly curved, broad-bladed seax in its sheath that hung from his belt. Its blade was not more than a cubit in length. It was sharp on one edge only, and it was heavy. The steel hilt and the crosspiece were thick, for a good grip. It was a weapon terrible to meet if it were in the hand of an athlete like this – more than six feet in height, deep-chested, lithe and quick of motion – and already the short seax had won for its bearers, the Saxons, a dreaded name among all the peoples of the south countries to which their swift keels had carried them.

At the left of the fire was a large, high-backed chair made of some wood which had become almost black with age and smoke. It was not now occupied, but in front of it stood the form of a woman, straight as a pine and taller than any of the men around her. Her face was swarthy, deeply marked, haughty, and her abundant hair fell disheveled down to her waist, as white as the drifts upon the mountains. She was clad in a robe of undyed, grayish wool, falling loosely to her feet. On these were socks and buskins, but her lean, sinewy arms were bare as she stretched them out, waving her gnarled old hands in time to the cadence of a semimetrical recitation. She spoke in the old Norse tongue, with a voice upon whose power and mellowness time seemed to have had little effect. Every head in the hall bent toward her, as if her words were a fascination to her hearers, and none willed to interrupt her.

Weird and wild was the chant of the old saga woman, and the fire in her piercing black eyes brightened and dulled or almost went out as she sang on, from myth to myth, of the mystical symbolisms of the intensely poetic and imaginative North. Gods and demigods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, earth forces and spiritual powers, dwarf and giant, gnome and goblin, fate maidens, werewolves, serpent lore, the nether frost fires, the long night of the utter darkness, the twilight of the gods, the eternal hall of the slain, the city of Asgard – long and wonderful was the saga song of the white-haired woman who had, it was said, seen the ice of more than fivescore winters float out of the North Sea.

She ceased speaking and sank back into the chair as if all life had gone out of her. Rigid and motionless she sat, and there was no light in her eyes, but none went near her, nor did any speak. There was indeed a momentary outburst of approval, but it hushed itself. Even a fierce laugh that came to the lips of the tall young warrior died away half uttered.

Almost at the same moment another sound began to fill the hall. It came, at the first, from a large harp that stood a few paces back from the fire. Over the strings of this harp were wandering the long, bony fingers of a pair of gigantic hands, while behind it, on a low stool, swayed and twisted a form whose breadth of shoulder and length of arm were out of all proportion to its height. The head was bald except for a fringe of reddish-gray hair above the ears. The face was scarred and seamed to distortion, the right eye having been extinguished by a sword stroke which, by its furrow, must have half cloven the frontal bone. Age was indicated by the tangled gray beard which floated down below the belt, but not in the powerful, rich-toned voice of the harper, for the smoke seemed to eddy and the fire to dance as the harp twanged more loudly, and then there came to join it a burst of stormy song – a song of battles on the land and on the sea; a song of the mighty deeds done by the warriors of old time; a song of fierce and stirring incitement to the performance of similar feats by those who listened.

The harp grew then more softly musical, for he sang of the blue waves and the sunny shores of the southern seas; of their islands of beauty; of their harbors of peace and their cities of splendor; of temples and castles; of gold and silver and gems; but he seemed to drift beyond all these into a song of something beautiful, which yet was vague and far away and indescribable. His thought and word concerning it became like a refrain, until the minds of all who heard were filled with ideas of the dim and unattainable glory of the land of heroes, the city of the gods, the return of the White One, and the rising of the sun that will never set. Like deep answering unto deep were the last utterances of harp and harper, and as they suddenly ceased the tall young warrior stepped forward two paces and cried loudly:

"O Hilda! wise woman of the hundred winters, if this is indeed to be thy last – "

"I shall go out with the spring flood," she said, interrupting him, "but thou wilt be upon the sea when they lay me in the cleft between the rocks."

"I will go forth as thou sayest," he responded. "Am I not of the sons of the gods? I will sail as my father sailed and as Oswald has sung. I will crush, like him, the galleys of the Romans. I will look upon the cities of the east and of the south. I am of Odin's line. I will go out in the good ship The Sword, and will sail until I see the hero god and the city of the gods and the land of the living sun."

Loud now rang the shouts of approval from the bearded vikings as they sprang to their feet and began to crowd around their young leader.

"Go, O Ulric, son of Odin! Sail on into the sunset and the farther sea!" came trumpetlike from the white lips of Hilda.

Low sounds arose, too, from the strings of the harp, but the door swung suddenly open and upon the threshold stood a man garbed in wolfskins.

"Hael, Ulric the Jarl!" he shouted, and there were many exclamations here and there around the room.

"Hael, Wulf the Skater!" heartily responded Ulric. "What bringest thou?"

"Good tidings!" replied Wulf, joyously, stepping forward. "I came down the mountain slide and across the fiord. No other foot will cross it this season. During days the ice hath weakened and now the wind is changing southerly. There is already a rift in the sky. O son of Brander the Brave, be thou ready for the spring outing!"

"Odin!" shouted Ulric. "Keels for the open sea! Hael to the cruise of The Sword! Hael to the bright south! And I, Ulric the Jarl, I of the sons of the gods, I will go out and I will not return until I have looked into the face of one of the gods. And he will know me, and he will take me by the hand, and he will bid me walk with him into the city of the living sun!"

Glad were the hearts of all the vikings as they heard, and with one accord they shouted loudly:

"Hael to Ulric the Jarl! Hael to the cruise of The Sword! We are his men and with him we will go!"

Long had been the winter and slow had been the coming of the change for which men waited. Welcome was Wulf the Skater, but Oswald's fingers were slowly busy among the strings of his harp, and they found strange sounds which came out one by one.

"The message of the harp!" muttered Hilda. "It is like the moaning of the sea in the fiord in the long night."

CHAPTER II.

The Going Out of the Ice

Wulf the Skater brought true tidings to the house of Ulric, the son of Brander the Brave, on the day of Saturn. Winter was ending. The word passed on from house to house until all in the village came out and looked upward, seeking for the blue rift in the sky. The wind blew not now as in the morning. The north wind had gone elsewhere, and instead there came up from the south a breathing which was fitful and faint at first. It was cool, also, from having touched the frost faces on its way. Only one more hour went by and the sky was almost clear, so that the sun shone down unhindered and his heat was surprisingly strong.

The south wind grew warmer and more vigorous toward sunset, but with him now came a fog so dense that no man cared to go out into it; for if he did, it was as though darkness touched him. All through the evening the south wind sighed softly among the homes of the vikings, and went wandering up the fiords, and felt its way, shivering, across the flinty levels of the frozen sea, but toward the morning of the day of the sun the breeze brought with it, also, to help it, a copious warm rain. Before the noon torrents were leaping down the sides of the mountains and the sea was beginning to groan and heave and struggle in its effort to take off and put away its winter mail.

"Harken!" said Oswald, the harper, as he sat by the now smoldering fire in the hall of Ulric's house.

"I hear," said Hilda from her place on the other side of the ash heap. "It is the last time that I shall listen to the song of the outing ice, but I shall feel the wind from the sun land and I shall see the grass green in the valley before I go. There will be buds on the trees when I pass down into the earth to meet my kindred. O what a realm is that! The land of shadows. The under world which has the sod for a roof. But the old runes on the rocks tell of wide places. One may travel far in that land, and where I may go I know not."

The gnarled fingers of Oswald were searching among the strings of his harp, but only discords answered his touches.

"I have heard," he said, "that they hang their shields on the roots of the trees, and they see as we see in a twilight. I think I have heard them harping in the summer nights, when the moon was full and the wind was in the pines. I would that my own harp might be buried with me."

"No need," said Hilda. "They have better harps than thine. They will give thee one. It is well that the weapons of a warrior should be placed beside him in his tomb, but they must be marred in token that he useth them no more. He hath left others for his kinsmen. There are many good swords in the old tombs. One day they will all be opened and the blades will be found."

"And also much treasure," grumbled Oswald; but his harp twanged angrily as he said it, for he had ever been a man to hold fast anything in the shape of coined money or of precious metal. Many were said to be the outland coins in his leather bag in his room at the southerly end of the house. He had sometimes shown them to inquiring folk, but grudgingly, and he had always tied them up again tightly, as if he feared that there might be a thief even among the vikings.

Hilda arose and walked slowly across the room to the open door. She looked toward the sea, but the mist and the rain were a curtain.

"Hammers!" she said. "I can hear them. Ulric and his men are at work upon the ship. She will be ready to launch when the ice goeth out. She will sail to the Middle Sea, but when I look for her I cannot see her come again."

Once more she turned, and this time her slow and stately march carried her to the farther end of the hall, on the dais, where many suits of armor were hanging. She went straight to one of these and she touched it, piece by piece, while Oswald leaned upon his harp and watched her.

"When the hour was upon me," she said, "I saw the son of Brander in battle, and the men upon whom his ax was falling bore shields like this. There were dark men with them, wearing turbans. It is well. I think that at the end of this cruise he will come to me where I am. It were no shame to his father's son that the valkyrias, when they come to call the hero to Valhalla, should find him circled with slain Romans. Brander the Sea King took these arms for his trophies in the great fight off the coast of Britain. He drove the Roman galley ashore. He burned it with fire. Not one Roman escaped."

"I have seen Britain," muttered Oswald.

"Brander the Brave liked Britain well," continued Hilda. "It is a fair land, he said. If he could take more men with him, he would drive out of it the Romans and the Britons and keep it. But he said they have no good winters there, and the summers are all too long. It would be no land for me. What would I do in an island where the fiords do not shut up at the right season? I should perish!"

Very thoughtful was the face of the tall daughter of the Northland as she passed along, inspecting the armor and talking to herself about its varied history. Some of it had been won in fights with far-away peoples before she was born, but more of it had been brought into that hall before her eyes, and she had heard the bringers tell the tales which belonged to its pieces and to the swords and spears. Now, therefore, hanging there on the wall, the war treasures of the house of Brander were page-marks for her memory, and she also was a book of the old history of the Northmen from the days of the gods to this hour of her own closing.

Swiftly went by the day of rain and thaw, but their work was tenfold in the night which followed it. The rain fell on the roof in increasing abundance, and the wind threw it with force against the sides of the house. The torrents on the mountains grew into small swift rivers, and they made a continual loud sound of rushing water; but that was not the tumult which so filled the air and smote upon the ear. All other sounds were overborne by the booming and groaning of the ice and by the roar with which its loosened edges ground against the granite cliffs in the fiords.

The day of Saturn had been a day of frost and snow and storm until near its close. The day of the sun had brought the sun's breath from his own land and his smile into the sky, and he had slain the winter at a blow. The morrow would be the day of the moon, and before its arrival came now this night of such uproar that Oswald did not care to touch his harp, and the vikings mended their armor and sharpened their swords in silence. Hilda also was long silent, nor had Ulric the Jarl spoken aught that could be heard by all. When at last his voice arose, and men put by their work to hear, he gave answer to a question of Tostig the Red.

"Aye!" he said loudly, "the ship is ready from stem to stern. We will launch her behind the ice as it leaveth the shore. We will follow the floes as the tides bear them southward; ever do they melt as they go. So shall no other ship sail before us, and we shall be the first of all keels from the Northland, this year, among the islands of the Middle Sea."

Fiercely twanged the harp of Oswald and loud rang the shouts of the men who heard the young jarl speak his purpose, but before the harp could sound again Hilda arose in her place.

"Son of Brander," she said, "thou wilt go. Thou wilt see many things. All day have I been watching thy path, and the clouds are over it. In this thing that I now tell thee, do thou as did thy father: crush the keels of Rome in the seas of Britain and smite the men of Rome on the British island. And in the end of all thou wilt die, as did thy father, at the hand of a spearman of Cæsar."

"So be it," shouted Ulric, with a laugh on his lips and a flash of fire in his bold, bright eyes; "I ask no better!"

He said no more, but seated himself and began to sharpen his seax on a smooth, hard stone.

CHAPTER III.

The Launching of "The Sword."

The day of the moon, the second day of the week, dawned brightly over the village of the vikings. The faces of the cliffs along the shores of the Northland boomed back continuous echoes of the thunderous reports of the splitting ice. The frost had been strong, and the winter mail of the sea was thick and hard, but the sun and the lifting tides and all the torrents from the mountains made a league, and they were more powerful than was the ice. The south wind also helped them.

All the hours since Wulf the Skater brought the news of the coming thaw had been spent by Ulric and his men in getting the good ship The Sword ready for the water. No room in her was to be wasted, and her hollow, to her very keel, was now closely packed with provisions, taking the place of other ballasting. There were tightly stowed barrels of pork and beef, and there were bags and boxes of hard bread, and casks of ale and casks of water. Over the greater part of these were planks fastened down like a deck, for the voyage to be undertaken promised to be long, and all except provisions for immediate use must be sealed until a day of need.

The seats of the rowers were all in, and the short oars, and also the long oars, which a man would stand erect to pull with. The small boats were fastened upon the half decks, fore and aft. The mast was now stayed and rigged and the spars and the sail had been swung in their places. Not of woven stuff was the sail, but of many well-dressed skins of leather, that it might toughly withstand any gale.