The Axe by Sigrid Undset

the two children, the man let go the girl; they stopped laughing, whispered, and followed them with their eyes.
    Instinctively Olav had halted for a moment, so that Ingunn came up beside him and he placed himself between her and the fence. A blush crept slowly over his fair features and he looked down at the path as he led Ingunn past. These houses in the town that Steinfinn’s house-carls had talked so much about—for the first time it made him hot and gripped his heart tothink of them, and he wondered whether this was one of those houses.
    The path turned and Olav and Ingunn saw the huge grey mass and pale leaden roof of Christ Church and the stone walls of the Bishop’s palace above the trees a little way in front of them. Olav stopped and turned to the girl.
    “Tell me, Ingunn—did you hear what Brother Vegard said—and the smith?”
    “What mean you?”
    “Brother Vegard asked if Steinfinn had sent for the armourer to Frettastein,” said Olav slowly. “And Jon smith asked if we made ready our axes now.”
    “What meant they? Olav—you look so strangely!”
    “Nay, I know not. Unless there is news at the Thing—folk are breaking up from the Thing these days, the first of them—”
    “What mean you?”
    “Nay, I know not. Unless Steinfinn has made some proclamation—”
    The girl raised both hands abruptly and laid them on Olav’s breast. He laid both his palms upon them and pressed her hands against his bosom. And as they stood thus, there welled up again in Olav more powerfully than before that new feeling that they were adrift—that something which had been was now gone for ever; they were drifting toward the new and unknown. But as he gazed into her tense dark eyes, he saw that she felt the same. And he knew in his whole body and his whole soul that she had turned to him and clutched at him because it was the same with her as with him—she scented the change that was coming over them and their destiny, and so she clung to him instinctively, because they had so grown together throughout their forlorn, neglected childhood that now they were nearer to each other than any beside.
    And this knowledge was unutterably sweet. And while they stood motionless looking into each other’s face, they seemed to become one flesh, simply through the warm pressure of their hands. The raw chill of the pathway that went through their wet shoes, the sunshine that poured warmly over them, the strong blended smell that they breathed in, the little sounds of the afternoon—they seemed to be aware of them all with the senses of one body.
    The pealing of the church bells broke in upon their mute and tranquil rapture—the mighty brazen tones from the minster tower, the busy little bell from Holy Cross Church—and there was a sound of ringing from St. Olav’s on the point.
    Olav dropped the girl’s hands. “We must make haste.”
    Both felt as though the peal of bells had proclaimed the consummation of a mystery. Instinctively they took hands, as though after a consecration, and they went on hand in hand until they reached the main street.
    The monks were in the choir and had already begun to chant vespers as Olav and Ingunn entered the dark little church. No light was burning but the lamp before the tabernacle and the little candles on the monks’ desks. Pictures and metal ornaments showed but faintly in the brown dusk, which gathered into gloom under the crossed beams of the roof. There was a strong smell of tar, of which the church had recently received its yearly coat, and a faint, sharp trace of incense left behind from the day’s mass.
    In their strangely agitated mood they remained on their knees inside the door, side by side, and bowed their heads much lower than usual as they whispered their prayers with unwonted devotion. Then they rose to their feet and stole away to one side and the other.
    There were but few people in church. On the men’s side sat some old men, and one or two younger knelt in the narrow