“What answer,” said the King, “must I have of thee?”
Sigrid, looking straight before her, replied, “I will tell you, Lord, if you will tell me first whether it resteth in my free choice to say yes or no to you.”
“Thy father,” said King Eric, “hath laid all in thine hand, to answer as thou shalt please. Besides, I would take no other answer.”
“Then, Lord,” said she, “my answer is No.”
At that, the King stopped short. Sigrid too stopped and faced him. Her face was very red. “I must have thy reason,” said the King.
She made no answer.
The King said, “I will put no stress on thee, Sigrid. But as well as I am minded to entreat thee, surely so well it befitteth thee to answer me and tell me thy reasons. For this match is not as another, which haply thy high mind might not think honourable enough for thee.”
Still for a minute she faced the King in silence. Very proud she looked, her brown eyes deep and unsearchable like a deer’s; then her eyes dropped and she turned away. “I see,” said the King: “this hath come over sudden upon thee.”
Sigrid laughed. “Nay, Lord, ’tis but the old tale again, the old song.” And she began to say:
“I ken a verse:
An eagle sat upon a stane!
And I ken another:
An eagle sat upon a stane!
And I ken a third:
An eagle sat upon a stane!
The first is like ’em all:
An eagle sat upon a stane!”
She looked up at him, an angry, mocking look. The King’s face hardened. She threw out her hands, and, “What can a maid do withal,” said she, “if men do so plague her? Must I take this untried boy because he is come of kingly blood? and because he hath the King to come a-wooing for him? And truly,” she said, turning her head away, “I do hold Styrbiorn no better than a cat’s son.”
King Eric stared: then, seeing which way the wind set, he brake out a-laughing and reached out and took her by the hand. “Why, here’s a pretty diversion,” said he, “of cross questions and crooked answers. I will woo thee, Sigrid, for no man’s hand but mine own. And this is my suit to thee, to be mine own wedded wife, and Queen in Upsala.”
Her hand yet in the King’s hand, her body poised in free proud lines like the wild birches, daughters of the fell and the free elements, Sigrid stood very still. Her breathing was quickened. After a while the King said, “And now, what answer wilt thou give me?”
They had halted by the margin of a tarn, part thawed. The wind blowing from the far side drove the ice up on to the bank where they stood. The packing ice crackled and moaned with a soft and high-pitched moaning, and the broken bits of it tinkled in the wind-stirred water with a tinkling as of faint bells. Sigrid said, very low, “That was one answer I gave you, when I thought you did speak for Styrbiorn.” Then, starting suddenly out of her quiet, she strove to withdraw her hand from the King’s, but he kept it. “I pray you let me go,” she cried. “You will bruise my hand.” Then her face flamed red and her eyes turned hard and fierce: “Must I answer you, Lord, as to the King? or as to an old man come a-wooing?”
The King, letting go her hand indeed, caught her in his arms. She, frightened as soon as she had spoken it lest her gibe, that she could not bite in, of old man, might yet have lost her that high advancement which her soul lusted for, abode breathless in his strong embrace that taught her how empty was her gibe, and, being empty, harmless. “I will show thee,” said King Eric, speaking hot and close in her ear and hair, “how thou must answer me. Thus would I have thee answer me, Sigrid, as to a great man of war that do love thee, and will not let thee go. And will not let thee go: Sigrid the Haughty.”
Yet, so hard and stiff abode she in his embrace, without word spoken, that he at length did let her go. She stood back now with hands behind her, facing him steadily with those liquid eyes inscrutable. “It is well seen, Lord,” said she, “that you are stronger than I. Yet remember, there be two needed for every agreement.”
“That is but fair and right,” said the King. “There shall no constraint be put upon thee, whether of hand or word. But here in this place shalt thou choose.”
She stood silent.
“Thou shalt have till tomorrow morn, then,” said the King.
But still she stood silent. May be, strange and contrarious thoughts contended within her head, under the braided heaviness of tresses that flung back the weak sun’s radiance in shifting flashes of red-gold fire. At length she turned full on the King those brown eyes of hers: “And which way would you have me choose, Lord?” said she.
“Which way?” said the King. “That is a strange question, and needeth no answer.”
Again for a while she was silent. Her eyes were troublous to a man to behold when they looked so upon him; even as a man might voyage over an undiscovered sea, uncertain whether these were safe unplumbed depths he sailed over, or but shallow rock-strewn waters apt for his destruction. Then suddenly her eyelids flickered and her proud lips sweetened and she became all yielding loveliness. “The strong man’s rede ruleth still,” she said, and came to his arms.
IV
Jomsburg
Palnatoki of Fion dwelt in those days in Jomsburg, and was captain there. A marvellous sure place had he made it, builded with stone walls about and about, and he had, in the gut of
