Short Fiction Selma Lagerlöf (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

“Who can that woman be?” thought the King. “It seems to me that I have seen her before. She is undoubtedly a highborn woman who is in trouble.”

However great a hurry the King was in to go to Storräde, he could not take his eyes away from the woman. It seemed to him that he had seen these tender eyes and this gentle face before, but where, he could not call to mind. The woman still stood in the church door, as if she could not tear herself away. Then the King went up to her and asked:

“Why art thou so sorrowful?”

“I am turned out of my home,” answered the woman, pointing to the little dark church.

The King thought she meant that she had taken refuge in the church because she had no other place to go to. He again asked:

“Who hath turned thee out?”

She looked at him with an unutterably sorrowful glance.

“Dost thou not know?” she asked.

But then the King turned away from her. He had no time to stand guessing riddles, he thought. It appeared as if the woman meant that it was he who had turned her out. He did not understand what she could mean.

The King went on quickly. He went down to the King’s Landing-Stage, where Storräde’s ship was lying. At the harbour the Queen’s servants met the King. Their clothes were braided with gold, and they wore silver helmets on their heads.

Storräde stood on her ship looking towards Kungahälla, rejoicing in its power and wealth. She looked at the city as if she already regarded herself as its Queen. But when the King saw Storräde, he thought at once of the gentle woman who, poor and sorrowful, had been turned out of the church.

“What is this?” he thought. “It seems to me as if she were fairer than Storräde.”

When Storräde greeted him with smiles, he thought of the tears that sparkled in the eyes of the other woman. The face of the strange woman was so clear to King Olaf that he could not help comparing it, feature for feature, with Storräde’s. And when he did that all Storräde’s beauty vanished. He saw that Storräde’s eyes were cruel and her mouth sensual. In each of her features he saw a sin. He could still see she was beautiful, but he no longer took pleasure in her countenance. He began to loathe her as if she were a beautiful poisonous snake.

When the Queen saw the King come a victorious smile passed over her lips.

“I did not expect thee so early, King Olaf,” she said. “I thought thou wast at Mass.”

The King felt an irresistible inclination to contradict Storräde, and do everything she did not want.

“Mass has not yet begun,” he said. “I have come to ask thee to go with me to the house of my God.”

When the King said this he saw an angry look in Storräde’s eyes, but she continued to smile.

“Rather come to me on my ship,” she said, “and I will show thee the presents I have brought for thee.”

She took up a sword inlaid with gold, as if to tempt him; but the King thought all the time that he could see the other woman at her side, and it appeared to him that Storräde stood amongst her treasures like a foul dragon.

“Answer me first,” said the King, “if thou wilt go with me to church.”

“What have I to do in thy church?” she asked mockingly.

Then she saw that the King’s brow darkened, and she perceived that he was not of the same mind as the day before. She immediately changed her manner, and became gentle and submissive.

“Go thou to church as much as thou likest, even if I do not go. There shall be no discord between us on that account.”

The Queen came down from the ship and went up to the King. She held in her hand a sword and a mantle trimmed with fur which she would give him. But in the same moment the King happened to look towards the harbour. At some distance he saw the other woman; her head was bowed, and she walked with weary steps, but she still bore the child in her arms.

“What art thou looking so eagerly after, King Olaf?” Storräde asked.

Then the other woman turned round and looked at the King, and as she looked at him it appeared to him as if a ring of golden light surrounded her head and that of the child, more beautiful than the crown of any King or Queen. Then she immediately turned round and walked again towards the town, and he saw her no more.

“What art thou looking so eagerly after?” again asked Storräde.

But when King Olaf now turned to the Queen she appeared to him old and ugly, and full of the world’s sin and wickedness, and he was terrified at the thought that he might have fallen into her snares.

He had taken off his glove to give her his hand; but he now took the glove and threw it in her face instead.

“I will not own thee, foul woman and heathen dog that thou art!” he said.

Then Storräde drew backwards. But she soon regained the command over herself, and answered:

“That blow may prove thy destruction, King Olaf Trygveson.”

And she was white as Hel when she turned away from him and went on board her ship.

Next night King Olaf had a strange dream. What he saw in his dream was not the earth, but the bottom of the sea. It was a grayish-green field, over which there were many fathoms of water. He saw fish swimming after their prey; he saw ships gliding past on the surface of the water, like dark clouds; and he saw the disc of the sun, dull as a pale moon.

Then he saw the woman he had seen at the church-door wandering along the bottom of the sea. She had the same stooping gait and the same