Thereafter was feasting and rejoicing enough to please all, if the notice had been short; and then Bertric must go his way, promising to see us again as soon as might be.  So we watched the ship pass down the fjord and into the narrow seaward channel, and he waved to us, and we to him, and the men cheered for Hakon, and so we turned back to the new life of peace that lay before us.

There was not much fighting ere Hakon came to the throne in earnest.  Eric fled the land as man after man rose for his rival, and at last took to the Viking path, and thereafter made friends with Athelstane of England, and held Northumbria for him as under-king.  So he troubled Norway no more.

But for the spreading of the new faith Hakon would have had no man against him; but therein he had unrest enough.  Maybe it was to be expected, as he went to work with too high a hand in that matter in his zeal; for here we had no trouble.  Phelim and Gerda won the folk with ways and words of love, and before two years had passed all were working to frame a church here with much pride in the building, giving time and labour for naught but the honour of the faith.

Hakon came to the consecrating of that church, and with him were Bertric and Dalfin, and then those good friends of ours stood sponsors for us at the first christenings that were therein.

Thereafter Bertric went home to England, and we have seen him no more.  Only we know that he is high in honour with his king, and happily wedded in his Dorset home.  Dalfin is still in Norway, and high in honour with Hakon, and here he will bide, being wedded, and holding himself to be a very Norseman.  There might be worse than he, in all truth.  And Asbiorn is with Hakon, as the head of his courtmen, silent and ready, and well liked by all.  Those two we see when Hakon goes on progress through the land, and comes in turn to us, as he ever will, or else when we go to the court, when that is near us.

Still over the hall against the black cliff glows the bright cross at times, clear and steady.  Men say that it does but come from some unseen openings in the roof of the hall when the lights are set in some unheeded way—­but I cannot tell.  However it comes, it has been a portent of good, and minds me of that night when we brought home at last my sea queen, Gerda.  Surely it is a token of the peace which has come to us and to her folk, under the wise rule of Norway’s first Christian king, Hakon the Good.

Notes.

1.  The Norns were the Fates of the old Norse mythology.

2.  Thrandheim, now Trondhjem, the ancient capital of Norway.