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It seemed to him that he had more than his share of the stores, because so mighty a frame of his needed feeding mightily, as he said. And so for two days after my father died and was left in his last resting, Havelok went silent about the place. Here by the shore the pestilence hardly came, and so that trouble was not added to us, though the weak and old went, as had Grim and Leva, here and there.
But I saw that he was right, and that we who were strong to take what might come should go away. It was likely that a day of our meals would make a week's fare for Arngeir's three little ones, and they were to be thought for. Now for a little while Arngeir tried to keep us back; but it was plain that he knew also that our going was well thought of, and only his care for Havelok stood in the way.
Many times Havelok might have slain him, but such was not his purpose, and, taking a cord from his waist, he bound the traitor's arms, and bade one of his knights ride and fetch Goldborough, whom he had left under a guard at a little distance. When she drew near, Havelok commanded that a flag of truce should be waved, so that the fighting might cease.
Now Havelok hove up the stone over his head, and a sort of gasp went up from the crowd below. One saw what was coming, and ran to drag back the men with the beam, and stopped short before he reached them in terror, crying to them to beware. But their heads were down, and they were starting into a run. "Halt!" cried Havelok, but they did not stay. "Stand clear!" he shouted in the sailor's way.
And when Goldberga had heard all, she was silent for a long way, and then wept a little, but at last told Withelm that all this had been foretold to her in her dream. "Yet I am glad," she said, "that I did not know this for certain, else had my Havelok thought that I did but wed him for his birth.
But Havelok smiled a little, and set his hand to his neck, and I remembered one thing that he had a ring which had always hung on a cord under his jerkin since he came to Grimsby, and which my father had bidden him keep ever. "This give I," he said, setting it on the floor at his feet, "and with it all that I am, and all that I shall hereafter be, and all that shall be mine at any time."
Havelok took the ring from his pouch, and set it in the jarl's hand without a word; and long Sigurd looked at it. I saw the red on his cheek deepen as he did so, but he said never a word for a long time. And next he looked at Havelok, and the eyes of these two met. "This is beyond price," said the jarl slowly. "Not my whole town would buy this. It is such as a queen might wear and be proud of."
So he was shown the king's hall, and the arms on the wall, and the high seat, and the king's own chamber, and many more things, and all the while they seemed nothing strange to Havelok. "This Berthun watched me as a cat watches a mouse all the while," he said, "and at last he asked if I had ever seen a king's house before.
As for me, I thought that it was hardly likely to be the latter. Then came three thanes from the hail with the message, and it was this, "Alsi bids Havelok go back to his own land and bide content therewith." "What word is there for Goldberga, then?" asked Arngeir. "None. She has thrown in her lot with the Dane, and it is he with whom we will not deal."
Our king on the west coast of Denmark, where the story of Havelok the Dane must needs begin, was Gunnar Kirkeban so called because, being a heathen altogether, as were we all in Denmark at that time, he had been the bane of many churches in the western isles of Scotland, and in Wales and Ireland, and made a boast thereof. However, that cruelty of his was his own bane in the end, as will be seen.
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