In the Wilderness by Sigrid Undset Page B

open doors the fading daylight paled in a grey mist. Folk came strolling in to hear evensong; the echo of their chattering whispers murmured incessantly through the lofty pillared church; their footsteps rang softly on the stone flooring. Then came the hushed but penetrating beat of many footfalls in the choir, the clatter of seats being turned up; the tiny flames of the candles were lighted on the monks’ desks, throwing their faint gleam on the rows of white-clad men standing up in the carved stalls. And down in the body of the church there was a rustle of people rising and drawing nearer, while a hard, clear, man’s voice began to intone andwas answered by the chant of more than half a hundred throats, the first short sentences and responses—till the whole male choir raised the song of David on sustained, monotonous waves of sound.
    Olav sat down again when the psalm began. Now and again he sank into a half-doze—woke up as his head dropped—then the veil of sleep wound about him again and his thoughts became entangled in it. Till he grew wide awake at the notes of
Salve Regina
and the sound of the procession descending from the choir. The people moved forward into the nave as the train of white and black monks advanced, singing:
    “Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende. O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria!”
    Olav strode quickly down toward the wharf; it was dusk outside now, bats flitted like flakes of soot in the darkness. He must be aboard the
Reindeer
before it was quite dark—the other evening the river watch had called to him from
their
boat. To his very marrow he felt the good this evening service had done him. It was the same as he had heard in Hamar, in Oslo, in Danish and Swedish ports—in good and evil days he had always attended evensong, wherever he found a convent of the preaching friars. He had also heard the singing of nuns one evening here in London—for the first time in his life. He had never chanced to enter the church of a women’s convent before, but Tomas Tabor had taken him one evening to a nunnery. Marvellously pure it had been to listen to—but nevertheless it did not stir the depths of him in the same way. The clear, sharp, women’s voices floated like long golden streaks of cloud on the horizon between earth and heaven. But they did not raise themselves above the world over which the veil of darkness was falling as did the song of praise from a choir of men on guard against the approach of night.
    Tomas Tabor appeared at the gunwale as Olav came alongside. Now it was dark already, he complained, and Leif had not yet come—likely enough he would stay ashore again tonight, and tomorrow he would make the same excuse, that he could not get a boat in time. Olav swung himself over the gunwale.
    “You must refuse him shore leave, Olav! He cannot be so steady as we thought him, Leif!”
    “It seems so.” Olav shrugged his shoulders and gave a little snorting laugh. The men walked aft and crept in under the poop.
    “I trow that serving-wench out at Southwark has clean bewitched him.”
    They snuggled into their bags and ate a morsel of bread as they lay.
    “ ’Twill end in the boy getting a knife between his shoulder-blades. That place is the haunt of the worst ruffians and ribalds.”
    “Oh, Leif can take care of himself—”
    “He is quick with the knife, he too. You must do so, Olav, you must forbid him to go ashore alone.”
    “The lad is old enough; I cannot herd him.”
    “God mend us, Master Olav—we ourselves were scarce so wise or heedful that it made any matter, at seventeen years—”
    Olav swallowed the last mouthful of bread. After a while he answered:
    “Nay, nay. If he cannot come back on board betimes, he must not have leave. And he should have had his fill of playing now, enough to last him a good while.”
    Presently: “I think we shall have rain again,” said old Tomas.
    “Ay—it sounds like it,” said Olav