a dead man’s skull which she held. But slowly the bird of the Otherworld possessed her, until at last she gazed only upon it as it winged across the new moon. Tauno saw how her form of a maiden grew ever more ghostly, until he could spy the wilderness through her, until she was the faintest glimmer in gathering dark-ness. And then she was gone. The talisman fell to earth.
He stayed in place for the quarter of an hour before he could go pick it up, kiss it, and hang it back where it belonged.
IX
ON their homeward voyage, the crew of Brynhild marked how changed Lady Sigrid was. Had the decision of her brother Herr Carolus to stay in Croatia brought that about? Two or three sailors still believed that she slipped overboard of nights to disport herself in the waves. There was no eyewitness evidence, however, and most denied it. They bespoke her piety; now she did join the rest in prayer, where she was the most ardent person aboard, and she spent hours on her knees before the image of the Virgin at the aftercastle, often with tears streaming down her cheeks. At the same time, she was no longer curt and aloof, but quickly made herself beloved by her mild ways and her readiness to listen to the humblest among them. She became almost a mother confessor to several.
Captain Asbern had been doubtful about setting sail this late in the year. He went cautiously, as near the coasts as was prudent, running for haven at the fIrst sign of a hard blow. Thus he did not reach Denmark until shortly before Christmas. But the passage was free of peril, with no more hardship than seamen should endure.
About midday on the feast of Adam, Brynhild lay alongside a Copenhagen dock. After learning whose she was, the harbor-master dispatched a boy to tell the owner.
Snowflakes drifted thinly out of a sky already dusking. The air was mild and damp. Scant traffic moved between walls and arcades, beneath overhanging galleries; yet light from windows, smoke from roofholes, savory odors, sounds of bustle and laughter and song, told how folk indoors were making ready to honor the birth of Our Lord. Those twelve days would be like a giant candle in the middle of that cavern which was winter. Slush plopped under the hoofs of the mules which man and woman rode. Ahead of them, high-booted against muck, went a pair of armed linkbearers. The flames flared and sparked, casting short-lived stars out among the snowflakes.
“We’ve only time for a few more barebones words ere we reach your house,” she reminded. “The whole tale will be days in the telling.” She thought. “No, years or a lifespan-for the understanding of it.”
“We will have that lifespan, we twain,” said Niels happily.
She clenched a hand tighter than needful around the reins. “It
will not be easy. First, this same eventide-I dread- How. . . what. . . shall I tell Ingeborg? Help me think what may wound her the least.”
He flinched. “I was forgetting.”
“Blame not yourself. Joy can so easily be selfish. Once I would
have forgotten.”
“Eyjan-“
“I am Dagmar.”
He crossed himself. “Could I forget your own miracle? God forgive!”
“It will not be easy for us,” she repeated. “You must needs bear with me more than most men with their wives: I who in flesh and mind am half a mermaid.”
“And the other half a saint,” Niels answered. A bit of his olden grin flashed forth. “That will prove hard on me.”
“No, never say such things,” Dagmar beseeched. “You’ll like-liest find me stubborn, quick-tempered, no real womanly meekness in me, strive though I will for it.” She reached toward him. “But oh, Niels, never will I fail in my love for you.”
He became grave, took her clasp, observed her through snow-
fall and dim yellow light. Finally he asked low, “Do you indeed
love me, Dagmar? You care for me, yes, I know that, and I’ve
no right to crave more. Yet-“
“I give you myself, siIICe you will have me,” she told him in utter honesty. “My inmost heart you have still to win, but my prayer is that you may; and in that quest also, I will fare at your side.”