A sound of soft music fell upon his ear. Looking up, the king saw, but a few paces in the rear of Gudrun’s funeral, another procession of followers of the dead. The bier held the body of a young girl, white-clad and flower-strewn, and was borne by white-robed maidens. A large silver cross was carried before the bier, and dark-robed priests and acolytes, with swinging censers, followed. A choir of maidens sang a plaintive requiem. All the thanes of Nidaros and their ladies surrounded the sorrowful father and mother to help them to mourn their young and beautiful dead. The cortège was concluded with all the retainers of the household, whose weeping came in between the notes of the harpers and the voices of the singers.
“Whose burial is that?” again Olaf questioned Unas.
“It is Jarl Gormo’s daughter, the fair Lady Freda,” the guard answered, with a note of honest sympathy in his words.
Olaf knelt down as the cortège passed, and Unas fell upon his knees beside the king. Olaf prayed aloud: “O Christ, be merciful to the dead and bring them to Thy kingdom.” Then, under his breath, “And forgive them, O God! that have ever sorrowed this thy pure, Christian handmaid.”
