Orm, however, insisted that Toke must control his inclinations while they were enjoying King Harald’s hospitality.
Toke, in the meantime, had become somewhat calmer and was now only holding the girl by one of her plaits. He assured Orm that there was no cause for alarm.
“For nobody can accuse me of anything,” he said, “while my leg is in its present state; besides which, you heard with your own ears the little priest say that King Harald expressly ordered everything possible to be done to make us comfortable, because of the snub we served King Sven. Now, as everybody knows, I am a man to whose comfort women are an essential factor; and this woman seems to me to be an admirable specimen of her kind. I cannot think of anything that could be more likely to hasten my recovery; indeed, I am beginning to feel better already. I have told her to come here as often as she can, for my health’s sake; and I do not think she is afraid of me, though I have been flirting somewhat boldly with her.”
Orm grunted doubtfully; but the end of it was that both the women agreed to come the next morning and wash their heads and beards. Then Brother Willibald arrived in a flurry to dress their wounds, and when he saw the spilt broth, he shrieked with fury and drove the women from the room. Not even Ylva dared to gainsay him, for everyone was afraid of the man who wielded power over their life and health.
When Orm and Toke were left alone, they lay on their beds in silence, having much to occupy their thoughts. At length Toke said: “Our luck has turned good again, now that women have managed to find their way to us. Things are beginning to look more cheerful.”
But Orm said: “We shall have bad luck on our hands if you cannot curb your itches; and I should be easier in my mind if I were sure that you could.”
Toke replied that he had good hopes of his ability to do this, if he really tried in earnest. “Though I doubt whether she would be anxious to spurn my advances,” he said, “if I were fit and able to press them; for an old king cannot be much company for a girl of her spirit, and she has been kept under strict surveillance ever since she first came here. She is called Mirah, and comes from a place called Ronda, and is of good family. She was captured by Vikings who came in the night and bore her away with many others of her village and sold her to the King of Cork. He, in turn, gave her to King Harald as a friendship-gift, because of her great beauty; but she says that she would have appreciated the honor more if he had given her to someone younger with whom she could talk. I have seldom seen such a fine girl, so beautifully formed and smooth-skinned; though the girl who sat on your bed is also fine, if perhaps a trifle skinny and less full of figure than she might be. And she seems to be well disposed toward you. Even in such a place as this, our quality is apparent, for we win the favor of women even from our sickbeds.”
But Orm replied that he had no room in his thoughts for woman-love, for he felt more sick and enfeebled than ever and doubted whether he had much time left.
The next morning, as soon as it was light, the women came to them as they had promised, bringing warm lye, water, and hand-cloths, and washed Orm’s and Toke’s heads and beards meticulously. Ylva had some difficulty in attending to Orm, because he was unable to sit up, but she supported his body with her arm and used him carefully, and emerged from her task with credit, for he got no lye in his eyes or mouth and yet became clean and fine. Then she seated herself on the head of his bed, put his head between her knees, and began to comb him. She asked him if he was uncomfortable, but Orm had to admit that he was not. She found difficulty in passing the comb through his hair, for it was thick and coarse, and very tangled as a result of the washing; but she persevered patiently with the task, so that he thought he had never in his life been better combed. She spoke familiarly to him, as though they had been friends for a long time; and Orm felt well content to have her near him.
“You will have your heads washed again before you get up,” she said, “for the Bishop and his men like to baptize people when they are lying sick on their backs, and I am surprised they have not already spoken to you about it. They baptized my father when he was sorely ill and had small hope of recovery. Most people regard a sickbed as the best place to be baptized in during the winter, for if a man is ill the priests merely sprinkle his head, whereas if he is well he has to be completely immersed in the sea, which few men fancy when the water is still sharp with ice. It is unpleasant for the priests, too, for they have to stand in the water up to their knees, and become blue in the face, and their teeth chatter so that they can scarcely speak the blessings. For this reason, they prefer in winter to baptize men who cannot move from their beds. Myself the Bishop baptized on Midsummer Day, which they call the Day of the Baptist, and that was not unpleasant. We squatted round him in our white shifts, I and my sisters, while he read over us, and then lifted his hand and we held our noses and ducked under the water. I remained below the surface longer than any of the others, so that my baptism was held to be the best. Then we were all given garments that had been blessed, and little crosses to wear about our necks. And no harm came to any of us as a result of this.”
Orm replied that he knew all about such strange customs, having dwelt in the southland, where nobody was permitted to eat pork, and with the monks of Ireland, who had tried to persuade him to allow himself to be baptized.
“But it will take a long time,” he said, “before anyone convinces me that the observances of such customs can do a man good or can seriously gratify any god. I should like to see the bishop or priest who could get me to sit in cold water up to my ears, in summer or winter. Nor have I any desire to have water sprinkled over my head, or to be read over; for it is my belief that a man ought to beware of all such forms of sorcery and trollcraft.”
Ylva said that several of King Harald’s men had complained of the backache after being baptized and had requested the Bishop to give them money for the pain, but that, apart from this, they were apparently none the worse for their experience; indeed, there were many who had now come to regard baptism as being advantageous to a man’s health. The priests had no objection to a man’s eating pork, as Orm had doubtless observed during the Yuletide feasting, nor did they lay down any regulations regarding diet, save only that when anyone offered them horse-meat they spat and crossed themselves, and had at first occasionally been heard to mutter that men ought not to eat meat on Fridays; her father, however, had expressed his unwillingness to hear any more talk on that subject. She herself could not say that she had found the new religion in any way inconvenient. There were some, though, who held that the harvest was smaller and the cows’ milk thinner nowadays, and that this was because people had begun to neglect the old gods.
She drew her comb slowly through a tuft of Orm’s hair which she had just untangled, and held it up against the daylight to examine it closely.
“I do not understand how this can be,” she said, “but there does not appear to be a single louse in your hair.”
“That is not possible,” said Orm. “It must be a bad comb.”
She said that it was a good louse-comb, and scraped his head so that his scalp burned, but still she could find no louse.
“If what you say is true, then I am sick indeed,” said Orm, “and things are even worse than I had feared. This can only mean that my blood is poisoned.”
Ylva ventured the opinion that things might perhaps not be quite so bad as he feared, but Orm was much depressed by her discovery. He lay in silence while she finished her combing, acknowledging her further remarks with dispirited grunts. Meanwhile, however, Toke and Mirah had all the more to say to each other and appeared to be finding each other more and more congenial.