Thorgnyr Thorgnyrson the Lawman came that same evening, obedient to the sending of Eric the King, to hold talk with him in a little fire-hall where the King was wont to sit when he would be private. The King made Thorgnyr sit on a low stool before the King’s feet. Old of years was Thorgnyr, and his beard both long and white, and his brow much furrowed, and with great shaggy eyebrows obscuring his eyes, and his cheeks hollow and lined, and his nose like an eagle’s beak. The head of him was bald.
The King said, “Fowls and beasts which herdeth and flocketh: is it to this pass thou wilt bring me the Swede-realm, Thorgnyr?”
Thorgnyr looked at him in silence for a moment. Then he answered and said, “To be free with you, King ’tis a younger than I and a nearer your own blood you should abraid with these unfortunes, not me.”
“So,” said the King: “sith old men’s hands grow feeble and let fall authority, we are to blame it on young blood that it runneth strong? We were best geld our young men, think’st thou, to make ’em docile, so as we may live out our time in quiet? or expose ’em all, and breed up girl-children only, that I and thou in our dotage may still find obedience?”
Thorgnyr bowed his head. “I marvel not, Lord, if you be angry. But if I wrought not my best for your interest so far as in me lay, then ask I no further thing at your hands than the loss of all I can lose: goods, lands, liberty, and last my life withal.”
“By whose authority,” said the King, “was this assembly holden, when the Thing was broken up according to law and I gone otherwhere for a season?”
“There was no authority for it, Lord,” answered he.
“Was it thy doing, Thorgnyr?” said the King.
He answered, “No.”
“Was it against thy strong withstanding?” said the King again.
“Lord, you must not press me over hard,” said Thorgnyr. “It was neither by my will nor counsel: that I can surely swear unto you.”
The King sat very still. Then he said, not raising his tone, yet with a note in his voice that menaced like a great dog’s growl, low and dangerous, “Is it come to this, that it must be tried out at last whether I or the bonders hath the lordship of this land of Sweden?”
The old man was silent, staring into the fire.
“I will have thine answer,” said the King.
Slowly Thorgnyr turned and looked in the King’s face. “Then answer me my question, King: Whether with the sun or with the rain ripeneth the corn unto harvest?”
Chin in hand, the King leaned over the arm of his carven chair, studying that old man where he sat bent in the dancing firelight, one pale fine hand tight-clutched across the other shoulder, holding close about him the gathered folds of his cloak of minivere, as if even by that hot fire his lean body was a-cold, the other clenched on his knee. After a while the King began to say, “Thou and I wax old. And when we are laid in howe the ordering of these things shall lie in other men’s hands, and they will order them as the Fates shall ordain. Belike it were a wise man’s part to let alone: what must be must be. Yet is that not my way. And besides, Thorgnyr,” said the King in an altered voice, “I do love this lad.”
After a pause, “Thou art silent,” said the King. “What dost think on?”
“Must I tell you, Lord?”
“Thou must,” said the King.
For a minute, Thorgnyr abode silent. Then, “This it is, then,” answered he: “that Styrbiorn’s stout stomach shall likely undo both he himself and us.”
“Pshaw!” said the King, “thou’rt jaundiced. Thou seest all yellow.”
“Say rather, Lord,” replied Thorgnyr, “that were a blind goose that knew not a fox from a fern-bush. At this Thing, ill as it was that it should have come to such a pass, I could have smoothed all, but by his row and ruckling was all upsy-turvy turned, and the Thing broke up in an uproar. He first set the ball flying, and returned ’em gibe for gibe and fierce word for fierce word.”
The King said menacingly, “They stoned my kinsman and my Earl, I am let to know.”
“I could not help it,” said Thorgnyr. And he paused. “Will you suffer me to speak plain, Lord?”
The King said, “Speak.”
“You have known the truth of my mind these forty year and more. And afore that, my father served the King your father, and counselled him faithfully with wholesome counsel. Truly I say unto you, King, the Swede-folk will not abear to be spur-ridden; and most unbearable shall be the spurrings of this young man.”
“And I,” said King Eric, swinging round on him in a flash of anger, “will not abear false kings i’ the land.”
“If you will take my rede, Lord,” said Thorgnyr, quailing not at all, “you will be so high-minded as, eaglelike, to disdain this little fowl. I swear to you I had no part in it, but stay them then I could not. ’Twas done in a hot folly of rage, under what stress of provocation you do know. It will die out like a spark, unless you, Lord, by untimely blowing on’t should puff it to flame indeed.”
“I,” said
