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

But all the people of Kungahälla have assembled at the landing-stages. Old and young are busy unloading goods from the ships. They fill the storehouses with salt and train-oil, with costly weapons, and many-coloured rugs. They haul large and small vessels on to land, they question the returned seamen about their voyage. But suddenly all work ceases, and every eye is turned towards the river.

Right between the big merchant vessels a large galley is making its way, and people ask each other in astonishment who it can be that carries sails striped with purple and a golden device on the prow; they wonder what kind of ship it can be that comes flying over the waves like a bird. They praise the oarsmen, who handle the oars so evenly that they flash along the sides of the ship like an eagle’s wings.

“It must be the Swedish Princess who is coming,” they say. “It must be the beautiful Princess Ingegerd, for whom Olaf Haraldsson has been waiting the whole summer and harvest.”

And the women hasten down to the riverside to see the Princess when she rows past them on her way to the King’s Landing-Stage. Men and boys run to the ships, or climb the roofs of the boathouses.

When the women see the Princess standing in gorgeous apparel, they begin to shout to her, and to greet her with words of welcome; and every man who sees her radiant face tears his cap from his head and swings it high in the air. But on the King’s Landing-Stage stands King Olaf himself, and when he sees the Princess his face beams with gladness, and his eyes light up with tender love.

And as it is now so late in the year that all the flowers are faded, the young maidens pluck the golden-red autumnal leaves from the trees and strew them on the bridge and in the street; and they hasten to deck their houses with the bright berries of the mountain-ash and the dark-red leaves of the poplar.

The Princess, who stands high on the ship, sees the people waving and greeting her in welcome. She sees the golden-red leaves over which she shall walk, and foremost on the landing-stage she sees the King awaiting her with smiles. And the Princess forgets everything she would have said and confessed. She forgets that she is not Ingegerd, she forgets everything except the one thing, that she is to be the wife of Olaf Haraldsson.

One Sunday Olaf Haraldsson was seated at table, and his beautiful Queen sat by his side. He was talking eagerly with her, resting his elbow on the table, and turning towards her, so that he could see her face. But when Astrid spoke the King lowered his eyes in order not to think of anything but her lovely voice, and when she had been speaking for a long time he began to cut the table with his knife without thinking of what he was doing. All King Olaf’s men knew that he would not have done this if he had remembered that it was Sunday; but they had far too great a respect for King Olaf to venture to remind him that he was committing a sin.

The longer Astrid talked, the more uneasy became his henchmen. The Queen saw that they exchanged troubled glances with each other, but she did not understand what was the matter.

All had finished eating, and the food had been removed, but King Olaf still sat and talked with Astrid and cut the top of the table. A whole little heap of chips lay in front of him. Then at last his friend Björn, the son of Ogur from Selö, spoke.

“What day is it tomorrow, Eilif?” he asked, turning to one of the torchbearers.

“Tomorrow is Monday,” answered Eilif in a loud and clear voice.

Then the King lifted his head and looked up at Eilif.

“Dost thou say that tomorrow is Monday?” he asked thoughtfully.

Without saying another word, the King gathered up all the chips he had cut off the table into his hand, went to the fireplace, seized a burning coal, and laid it on the chips, which soon caught fire. The King stood quite still and let them burn to ashes in his hand. Then all the henchmen rejoiced, but the young Queen grew pale as death.

“What sentence will he pronounce over me when he one day finds out my sin,” she thought, “he who punishes himself so hardly for so slight an offence?”

Agge from Gardarike lay sick on board his galley in Kungahälla harbour. He was lying in the narrow hold awaiting death. He had been suffering for a long time from pains in his foot, and now there was an open sore, and in the course of the last few hours it had begun to turn black.

“Thou needest not die, Agge,” said Lodulf from Kunghälla, who had come on board to see his sick friend. “Dost thou not know that King Olaf is here in the town, and that God, on account of his piety and holiness, has given him power to heal the sick? Send a message to him and ask him to come and lay his hand upon thee, and thou wilt recover.”

“No, I cannot ask help from him,” answered Agge. “Olaf Haraldsson hates me because I have slain his foster-brother, Reor the White. If he knew that my ship lay in the harbour, he would send his men to kill me.”

But when Lodulf had left Agge and gone into the town, he met the young Queen, who had been in the forest gathering nuts.

“Queen,” Lodulf cried to her, “say this to King Olaf: ‘Agge from Gardarike, who has slain thy foster-brother, lies at the point of death on his ship in the harbour.’ ”

The young Queen hastened home and went immediately up to King Olaf, who stood in the courtyard smoothing the mane of his horse.

“Rejoice, King Olaf!” she said. “Agge from