Part 51 (2/2)
Swanhild puts down her hand once more. Lo! it is wet and warm. Then she bends herself and looks, and behold! the dead eyes of Gudruda glare up into her eyes. She can see them plainly, but none know what she read there. At the least it was something that she loved not, for she reels back against the panelling, then falls upon the floor.
Presently, while Gizur stands as one in a dream, she rises, saying: ”I am avenged of the death of Atli. Let us hence!--ah! let us hence swiftly! Give me thy hand, Gizur, for I am faint!”
So Gizur gives her his hand and they pa.s.s thence. Presently they stand in the store-room, and there lies Skallagrim, still plunged in his drunken sleep.
”Must I do more murder?” asks Gizur hoa.r.s.ely.
”Nay,” Swanhild says. ”I am sick with blood. Leave the knave.”
They pa.s.s out by the cas.e.m.e.nt into the yard and so on till they find their horses.
”Lift me, Gizur; I can no more,” says Swanhild.
He lifts her to the saddle.
”Whither away?” he asks.
”To Coldback, Gizur, and thence to cold Death.”
Thus did Gudruda, Eric's bride and Asmund's daughter, the fairest woman who ever lived in Iceland, die on her marriage night by the hand of Gizur, Ospakar's son, and through the hate and witchcraft of Swanhild the Fatherless, her half-sister.
x.x.x
HOW THE DAWN CAME
The dawn broke over Middalhof. Slowly the light gathered in the empty hall, it crept slowly into the little chamber where Eric slept, and Gudruda slept also with a deeper sleep.
Now the two women came from their chamber at the far end of the hall, and drew near the hearth, s.h.i.+vering, for the air was cold. They knelt by the fire, blowing at the embers till the sticks they cast upon them crackled to a blaze.
”It seems that Gudruda is not yet gone,” said one to the other. ”I thought she should ride away with Eric before the dawn.”
”Newly wed lie long abed!” laughed the other.
”I am glad to see the blessed light,” said the first woman, ”for last night I dreamed that once again this hall ran red with blood, as at the marriage-feast of Ospakar.”
”Ah,” answered the other, ”it will be well for the south when Eric Brighteyes and Gudruda are gone over sea, for their loves have brought much bloodshed upon the land.”
”Well, indeed!” sighed the first. ”Had Asmund the Priest never found Groa, Ran's gift, singing by the sea, Valhalla had not been so full to-day. Mindest thou the day he brought her here?”
”I remember it well,” she answered, ”though I was but a girl at the time. Still, when I saw those dark eyes of hers--just such eyes as Swanhild's!--I knew her for a witch, as all Finn women are. It is an evil world: my husband is dead by the sword; dead are both my sons, fighting for Eric; dead is Unna, Thorod's daughter; Asmund, my lord, is dead, and dead is Bjorn; and now Gudruda the Fair, whom I have rocked to sleep, leaves us to go over sea. I may not go with her, for my daughter's sake; yet I almost wish that I too were dead.”
”That will come soon enough,” said the other, who was young and fair.
Now the witch-sleep began to roll from Eric's heart, though his eyes were not yet open. But the talk of the women echoed in his ears, and the words ”_dead!_” ”_dead!_” ”_dead!_” fell heavily on his slumbering sense. At length he opened his eyes, only to shut them again, because of a bright gleam of light that ran up and down something at his side. Heavily he wondered what this might be, that shone so keen and bright--that shone like a naked sword.
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