Now I did not altogether wonder at this, and made the best thereof, being minded to pass from her ken with Hakon when the time came.  I supposed that we should all go together with the young king to that place which he should choose for his first landing, and thereafter she would bide in his court until Eric had fled the land and the power of Arnkel had ended with his fall.  Then she would go to her own place and be once more as a queen, while I would fare with Hakon, and see what honour I might win.

Still, it was pleasant to sit on the deck in the soft, summer weather, and talk with Thoralf’s wife and daughter, Ortrud, and watch Gerda as she forgot the hard things she had passed through, and grew cheerful and happy once more.  These two ladies were most kind to her, and grew to be great friends in those long days at sea.

One day, after we had left the Shetland Islands, and it wore toward the end of the voyage, and we began to talk of where we might best land and call on men to rise for Hakon, the elder lady, Thoralf’s wife, had been talking to me, and I think my mind had wandered a little as I watched Gerda, who was on the after deck with Bertric and Dalfin.  The men were all clustered forward, and no one was near for the moment.

“You two well bore the care of Gerda,” she said in a low voice.  “See, she might never have passed through aught of peril or hardship.  Yet she will never forget those days of trial.”

“She was very brave through them,” I said.  “The care was naught but pleasure.”

“Yet most heavy to you,” she said.  “I know you will make the least of it all, but she knows well what she owes to you.  Now, I would have you think of what I say.  It pleases you to call yourself her courtman—­well, that may be no bad way of putting your readiness to serve her.  But I would not have you forget that you are Malcolm the Jarl.”

I laughed, for the title never had meant much, even when my father held it.  Now it was altogether barren to me.

“So I am,” I said; “but of no more use to Hakon for all that.  If I had a jarl’s following now—­”

“You are not needed by Hakon so much as by another, Malcolm,” she said.  “To him you are one among many, and that is all.”

“He has my first fealty,” I answered.  “He was the first who has ever claimed it, and he has it, for good or ill.”

“There was one who claimed your fealty before ever he saw you,” she said slowly, and smiling at me meaningly.  “Will you forget that?”

I could not pretend not to understand what she meant, and I answered her with the thought which troubled me.

“Lady, I cannot forget it.  But now it does not seem possible that she should care to remember.  There is no reason why she should.”

“Every reason, Malcolm,” she said, as if angry with me.  “Do you think that all the care you had for her before Hakon came is to go for naught?”

“Bertric and Dalfin are to be remembered in that matter also.”