The North Star/Chapter 6
VI
“WHO ART THOU?”
Stunned and speechless, Eogan O’Niall listened to Gyda’s decision. At last he turned to his father. “Heard I aright? The princess, she of Malachy’s royal line, King Kavaran’s sister, chooses to wed this nameless stranger, who may be a spy of the Danes, for aught we know otherwise?”
“Even so, my son! Think no more of her! But yon stranger hath a lordly look. Didst mark how he never flinched, when the crowd was threatening loudest? How he holds my lady’s hands as if this were but a gathering of merry maids to see his wedding, and not the throng of angry warriors who will not lightly let him take the princess.”
“But she hath chosen him, my father,” answered Eogan, too loyal to condemn Gyda even though his heart was sorely wounded by her choice.
“True, my son, and a dark day it may be for King Kavaran. When an Irish princess married Sitric the Dane, years of war came after. But see who presses through the crowd! Ah, my brave Norseman, thy bride must be dearly won! It is Alfwine!”
A man of powerful frame had leaped upon the platform. Drawing his sword, he cried, in a voice like a trumpet’s blast: “I have vowed that no man shall claim the princess before me! Touch not her hand, Sir Norseman, until thou hast won the right to hold it in a fair combat.”
At the sight of Alfwine the princess grew pale, and her fingers closed a little tighter in the stranger’s grasp.
Without releasing her hand in the least, the Norseman turned and coolly looked at the new-comer. “And who art thou that doth so loudly proclaim against the choice of the princess?”
“I am Alfwine, the Man-Slayer.”
“And thou wilt slay me if I claim the princess?” the Norseman calmly questioned, throwing aside his cloak and standing, sword in hand, before the champion.
They were splendidly matched. Alfwine was a trifle heavier in build, but the Norseman’s muscles and sinews were perfect. His blond head of curls was on line with Alfwine’s black shock of hair. Shoulder to shoulder they stood. A backward glance the Norseman gave Gyda, as if to fire his heart and temper his sword, and the combat began. If the crowd had been silent before, then they were breathless. Several knights had leaped upon the stage to judge the contest fairly. The swords flashed up and down, now at the Norseman’s heart, to be swiftly turned aside and his own blade perilously near Alfwine’s throat. A combat long drawn out it proved, for well-matched in strength, they were equally well-matched in skill. Alfwine’s sword had seemed to enter the vital left side of the stranger, and a sharp little cry had been wrung from Gyda. This gave the Norseman new strength and before the sword had pierced his tunic, he dashed it aside and drove his own into Alfwine, just above his heart. Dexterously stopping the weapon, he turned and looked at the princess. “One inch further, fair princess, and he dies. His life is thine, if so thou wilt command me.”
“Spare him! Spare him!” Gyda pleaded.
The Norseman drew out the sword, and Alfwine fell, wounded, but not unto death. Flinging the sword aside, the Norseman called to his bard. “Wipe the blood from it, Thorgills. It were an ugly sight for my lady, and I would not look upon it myself this happy day.”
The physicians had carried off Alfwine; and the Celts, even in their disappointment, were generously applauding the Northern hero.
“It was a noble fight, my father!” said Eogan, to whom the spectacle had given a flash of the warrior’s enthusiasm.
“I never saw fairer nor better,” old Fergus replied.
King Kavaran called the stranger to him. Taking Gyda by the hand, the monarch said impressively: “She is thine by every right of fair combat; but she is a king’s daughter, of Malachy’s royal blood, and stranger as thou art, thou must know that blood is too noble to mingle with unknown, perhaps with base streams. Therefore in all honor I require thee to say who thou art.”
The Norseman, instead of answering himself, turned to his scald. “Sing, Thorgills! Twang thy harp to my saga!”
Thorgills touched the strings of his instrument, and in a voice mellowed by pathos and love for his master, told in strong, rude verse the story of the Norseman. He sang of a widowed queen, Aastrid, in Norway, a young mother flying from her own and dead husband’s enemies, and hiding with her baby boy, on a bleak little island in Rand’s Fiord. Sang how she found a few months’ rest in her father’s home, and then, her son’s enemies seeking his life, changed her queenhood for a beggars robe, and attended by a harper only, she asked for their bread through the length and breadth of her kingdom. Sang of the slaying of the faithful harper Thoralf, that the peasants might take the handsome boy. The voice of the scald was shaken with sobs of sorrowful anger, as he told of the death of the harper, who had left wife and child to serve his exiled queen and his baby king. Told of his queen’s marriage to the powerful Chief Lodin, of Viken, and how the kinsmen sheltered the boy and hid his name until the time was ripe for gaining his crown. Sang how the boy, meeting the murderer of faithful old Thoralf, slew him upon the spot, and with only a young harper, the son of Thoralf, fled from Norway. Then the scald’s song followed the youth to Russia, to the court of Olga and Vladimir. Then followed him in the ship, where as a boy sea-king he went viking. Sang of his marriage to the Princess Geira, the daughter of King Burislav, in Wendland.
An anxious look fastened upon Gyda’s face when this theme was touched, but the anxiety was lifted, when the softer note of the scald’s song went with the tale of Geira’s death. Then harp and voice went wandering with the young king to Greece, where he renounced Odin and Thor, and was signed with the Sign of the White Christ. Then the young king in his gratitude sent the message of the Cross to Russia to his friends, Vladimir and Olga. The saga went with the hero to the land of the Danes, and over the seas to the farther lands of the Scoti and the Angles.
The scald sang too of the darkness over the king’s own land. How the storm of rival claims to the throne shook the kingdom from sea to sea; and Norway waited for the great North Star that would rise when the son of Trygge Olafsson came. Somewhere they knew his light was quenched, and they prayed the White Christ it would soon rise over them. His viking ship had been seen on the North Sea, and passing the shores of the Scoti and the Angles had sailed up the dark tide of the Liffey.
Kavaran, the king, leaned forward to listen. Gyda’s blue eyes were wide with wonder. Every Celtic knight was thrilled at the song. Then, sang the Norse bard, there came to the wanderer a face of matchless beauty, as he watched an Irish princess choose her husband.
“Who art thou?” questioned Kavaran, full of the adventures he had heard, and his heart touched by the thought of the wronged and exiled king. “Who art thou?”
The stranger smiled, and throwing back his hood of white fur, cried aloud, as one proclaiming a mighty truth:
“I am Olaf Tryggevesson, the rightful king of Norway.”