The North Star/Chapter 16
XVI
THORGILLS SINGS FOR MAIDOCH
On the day following their rescue, Fiachtna asked Thorgills: “As thou art a scald, or a bard as they say in my land, canst thou not cheer us with the notes of thy harp? In my home, the harpers sang to us every day, and at evening we sang with them the Virgin’s hymn.”
Maidoch looked eagerly at Thorgills. Her lips parted as if to speak, but she was silent, although she longed to add her pleading to her father’s for the comfort of a song. Nothing could soothe her sad heart like the tender touch of music.
Thorgills brought out his harp, and as they watched him fixing the strings, Fiachtna said: “My little maid too can draw out sweet notes of music.”
“Thou canst play the harp?” Thorgills asked eagerly.
“Nay,” came from the low voice, “not the harp, but sometimes I play the lute.”
“Shall I sing the saga of King Olaf? It is the one I sang at the great fair of Dublin, when the Princess Gyda chose him for the lord of her life. Never until that morn had she beheld him, but the wisdom that dwells in a true woman’s heart, and that is wiser than all the learning of the sages, bade her choose him, the stranger and all unknown.”
Maidoch listened intently as Thorgills sang. Often in her Leinster home she had heard of the choice of the Princess Gyda; and now she marvelled not that the Irish princess had chosen him, as she glanced at the king, so valiantly handsome.
As Thorgills sang, he was thinking of how King Olaf had won the princess, and how the saga of the viking had conquered the consent of King Kavaran. Would this little maid be moved also by the recital of all the dangers Thorgills and his master had braved? In the saga Thorgills spoke not his own name, but often dwelt on the love of the faithful scald who had followed the exiled king.
“It is a right brave song,” Fiachtna cried heartily, when Thorgills laid aside his harp. “King Olaf, though he is but young in years, hath seen many adventures.” Then the old man repeated Thore Klakka’s prophecy: “Thy brave king hath been held safe for some great station. God’s hand hath held him for some mighty purpose.”
Maidoch’s gentle voice sounded: “Thy great king hath seen many dangers, and braved them all, but I like full well to hear of the faithful scald who followed him.”
Thorgills looked at her with shining eyes. “Thou didst know this scald, this loving friend of thy king?” Fiachtna queried.
“Aye—I knew him.” Thorgills’ face flushed like any maiden’s, and he bent down to take up his harp.
“Lives he still?” Fiachtna asked.
“Aye, my Jarl, he doth still live to serve his king.”
Fiachtna was looking smilingly at the scald. Then noting his confusion, said earnestly: “I can see full well that thou knowest him. Keep him ever for thy friend, as the king hath kept him.”
As Fiachtna ceased speaking, the four priests came up. Fiachtna and Maidoch rose to receive them.
“My children,” said Father Breasal, though Fiachtna had the snows of more winters upon his brow than did the monk, “ye have passed through many perils, and have seen many sorrows. Now ye are the guests of the great Christian king, Olaf, who goes to claim his throne. Yon holy Bishop, Sigurd, and my brethren here and my unworthy self, go with him to help him to spread the faith of Christ. King Olaf will welcome you to his own land because you are Christians, for he loves to fill his kingdom with the children of the cross.”
Fiachtna bowed his head devoutly. “Truly I love my own land, but if after my many sorrows I am deemed worthy to labor for Christ, even in a strange land, I will be content.”
“And thou, little maid?” Father Meilge turned his dark, penetrating eye upon Maidoch, while Thorgills listened breathlessly for her answer. The girl clasped her hands, as if in prayer. “Holy father, I would gladly serve the Christ all the days of my life; but not in Norway—not in the stranger’s land. If the great king will but give us leave to go back to Ireland, never will I let sunrise or sunset of any day in my life find my lips empty of prayer for him.”
Fiachtna took the girl’s hand tenderly. “It is even as she says, holy father. This poor little bruised heart clings so strongly to our own land, that it will not rest upon any other thought; but there is naught for us to return to. My home is in ashes. My fields are plains of desolation. My sheep and my kine are scattered far and wide. Even the holy Abbey, where the monks taught me my Latin psalms, is in ruins. We have nothing in the world.”
Maidoch shook her head despairingly. Thorgills, watching her, felt a sudden anger rise within him. Why should she grieve so greatly for her native land? Her father said truly there was naught for them to return to, unless—but he banished the jealous suspicion. She was but a child; surely there could be no lover in that Irish land. If there was—Thorgills frowned menacingly.
Father Tuathal, the youngest of the priests, spoke with smiling kindness to Fiachtna. “Sayest thou that thou hast nothing in the world,—thou with thy learning and thy holy faith? Thou hast too the love and care of this little maid. We shall surely find full work in King Olaf’s land, thou and the little maid and ourselves.”
Maidoch looked up inquiringly. What would there be for her in that strange, stern land, save to hunger for the fair, green home of her heart? No one answered the question in her look, and the girl fell to wondering why one so wise as Father Tuathal should speak of any work that she might accomplish.
King Olaf at the prow of the ship was talking to Thore Klakka. His glance fell upon the group around Fiachtna and Maidoch. “Is not yon aged man the father of the maid?” Thore nodded in assent.
“A right heartsome picture it is to see them. The maid so young, so gentle, and the old man so sturdy in his protecting love.”
“It were easy to mark, my King, that they are neither Saxons nor Angles. Think thou how short a space a Saxon father would hold the girl when there would have been full gold for her from the Danes. The Norseman’s gold has bought many a son and many a wife and daughter from a Saxon father. But the Irish sell not their women and their children for gold, or even for blood, while there is yet a drop to be spilled. I remember me of a feast I held with the Saxons in Northumbria. We drank our ale and our bragget out of the skulls of them that had been slain in battle. It seemed to me a right merry thing to drink at a feast from the skull of an enemy. And when next we fight in Norway—”
“Hush!” commanded Olaf sternly. “When next we fight in Norway it will be as Christian men, and there will be no such heathen manners. Even as I learned in Ireland, the dead are sacred, and whether slain in battle or dying in their homes, their bones must rest and not serve any heathen use.”
Thore bowed his head, as if humbly accepting the rebuke; all the while he was thinking grimly with what tender Christian care Earl Haakon would treat the body of King Olaf, when it came into his keeping.
One evening, their last upon the “Alruna,” for they skirted the coast of Norway, Olaf sat with Bishop Sigurd. The king was gazing at his cross-hilted sword. “My father,” he said, with a humility in his tone very touching in the sturdy viking, “there was the Emperor Constantine. He saw the Cross in the heavens as the sign of his conquest. I would I could conquer my kingdom by the Cross. I am but a sinful man, and know but how to meet my enemy with my sword. Now I seem to see all the old gods, Odin and Thor, and the war hosts of Valhalla, looking angrily down upon me because I would give their land, the Norraway they have held so long, to the Christ. Last night I dreamed me of a combat in the heavens. There were the war-gods, with Thor at their head, and he did challenge the Christ upon His cross,—the silent, dying Christ. Thor held his swinging, crashing hammer before the face of the Nazarene, who answered not his defying. Then I sprang out of my couch, and I seized my sword and kissed the cross of the hilt and brandished it on high, and hurled back the challenge of Thor. So I have sworn out of my dream to be the champion of the Christ. But I am a sinful man, and the burden of my sins seems too heavy, since I have sworn my vow. I would crave to be shrived of my sins, and when at the altar to-morrow, thou, my father, wilt give me the Bread of Life, at the mass, then will I consecrate anew my life, my sword, and my kingdom to the Christ.”
Olaf knelt down and made the humble confession of his sins; and with fatherly tenderness Bishop Sigurd admonished him, and pardoned him in the name of the Christ, whose champion he had sworn to be. Following the king’s example, and that they might partake of the Holy Eucharist on the morrow, all of the Christian crew made confession of their sins. Thorgills had knelt to Father Breasal, and was now leaning over the side of the ship softly repeating his prayers. When Fiachtna left her to kneel at Bishop Sigurd’s feet, Maidoch walked over to the place where Father Meilge sat. She knelt down, and began the recital of the simple failings of her girl’s soul.
“And now, my child, thou wilt say, often and often, ‘Thy will, not mine, O Lord, be done.’”
Maidoch’s voice broke in a sob. “I cannot, my father, I cannot. I will serve the Christ and His Holy Mother. I will fast—any penance you may lay upon me—only let me but ask of God mine own desire, mine own heart’s will.”
“And what is thy service, and thy fasts, and thy prayers, to the conquest of thine own self? Nay, child, it is all the penance I can lay upon thee. The conquering of thine own heart is thy best service.”
“But I cannot will to go to this strange land. Never again to see mine own dear land!”
“Even so, if God so wills. Never again to see thy land.”
“My father, thou surely dost not know how dear—”
“Do I not know?” There was a vibrating cadence in the priest’s voice, like one awakening the chords of a slumbering harp. “Years ago, I knelt down and kissed the sod of my Irish Leinster, and never again will I see that land that holds my heart, and its longing makes every hour so keen a sacrifice. And thou, child, must learn thy lesson of self-sacrifice. Take the cross in thy hand, thy faith in thy heart, and go forth to the stranger land and share the great gift of Christ’s love; and thine own sorrow will give thy message such strength as comes to the children of St. Patrick when they spread his tidings afar. Go now and conquer thine own heart, that, like a true child of Erin, thou mayest conquer the world to Christ.”
And tearfully, but with a strengthening peace in her soul, Maidoch went back to sit beside her father.
When supper was over, and the cushions placed for slumber, Fiachtna drew the girl closer to him. “Hast dried thy tears, little one?” he asked.
Maidoch laid her head upon his breast, looking up with full sad tenderness in her deep blue eyes. “I have grieved thee, my father, in my longing for our own land. I will strive to grieve thee no more. If only I am at thy side what matter how stern the land, how strange the faces.”
Fiachtna drew her closer in his arms. “My little one! My only one! Chord of the heart that must break without thee. Only say thou wilt look up and smile.”
“Aye, my father.” And in the starlight the old man saw the brave smile struggling on the trembling lips.
Thorgills, standing a space apart, hearing not their words, but marking how the old man held the girl, and her brave smile into his loving eyes, said, softly, touching his harp strings as if his whispered thought were sweet enough for music, “If the feeble arms of her father so hold this snow-white blossom, how safe might she not rest in the arms of her lord.”