Part 13 (2/2)

Indeed, those seals that the skraelings get in the winter, which can only be gotten by skraelings and never by men, are hard enough even for skraelings to get. Finn stayed with the skraelings for two days, for they are hospitable beings, and he watched two men hunting, and this is what they do. A man stands with a spear poised above his head, looking down at a seal hole in the ice, and he waits without moving or breathing for as much as a day or even two. The highest winds and the most blinding storms do not move him, for he is enchanted with a spell that turns him to stone. Now a seal comes to the hole to take air, and the spear flies downward, as if by magic, into the mouth and head of the seal, and then the same spear is used to pull the seal up through the ice, for somehow it catches in the seal's flesh. Finn greatly admired such skills, but it is like admiring the work of the Devil, for as soon as a man declares his faith in G.o.d, and puts himself in the hands of the Lord, then he loses the power to hunt in this skraeling way, for men must choose between this world and the next and not do as Esau the son of Isaac did when he sold his birthright for a bowl of broth.

It was the case in this year of the hunger, that the skraelings seemed everywhere fat and happy, and most folk considered that they were put before the Greenlanders as a test of their faith, and some folk were tested and did not endure, for there was a man in Kambstead Fjord who took his wife and child and went with the skraelings and afterwards was not seen for many years. His name was Osvif and his wife was named Marta and their son was named Jon, but sometime later it was heard that they had changed their names to skraeling names and that Osvif had taken a second wife, a skraeling woman with almost no hair on her head.

Now the time came for Sira Audun to set off on his yearly journey to the south, and some days before the journey, Sira Pall Hallvardsson came to him and asked him not to go, for there were not the provisions to support two men on such a journey, both Sira Audun and a servant. ”Indeed,” said Sira Pall Hallvardsson, ”we have not enough for you to take with you by yourself to the southern part of Vatna Hverfi district. If you go among them with a little, it will not be enough to save anyone, and yet will look like a great deal to them, and if you go among them with nothing, they will feel obliged to support you out of their own stores.”

”This may be so,” replied Sira Audun, ”but indeed, some of these folk haven't seen a priest or made confession or had the sacraments in a year, those whom I did not see in the autumn. It will be a great sin for them to be denied.”

”It has always seemed to me that the Lord sees our condition better than the Church Fathers do, and that He is merciful to us in our transgressions, at least those such as this one.”

”But folk will be looking for me, and will be cast down if I do not come.”

Now Sira Pall Hallvardsson smiled and said, ”These are the same folk whom you complain of and who complain of you. They do little enough to deserve you, that is what you have said to me privily in the past. A dispute in every parish between here and Herjolfsnes, and two disputes there, that is how Sira Audun makes his journey. This is what they say of you.”

”Are you saying that men don't look for a little disputing to refresh a long winter? Greenlanders consider Christ to be a fighting man, and are disappointed if his representatives do not castigate them and quarrel with them a bit.”

”Even so-” But Sira Pall Hallvardsson did not go on, for it seemed to him an impossibility that Sira Audun should make his journey, and he felt no need to say more. Nevertheless, some days hence, Sira Audun was not present for his daily meal. It was the case the folk at Gardar, as at all other steadings in Greenland, now ate one meal each day instead of two. After eating, Sira Pall Hallvardsson went to the other priest's chamber, and saw that, though as neat as possible, and even cozier and more well appointed than ever, the chamber was empty. He stepped back, and was about to close the door, but then was moved to go in and sit down upon Sira Audun's stool. There was no writing upon the table, and yet there might have been, so certain was Sira Pall Hallvardsson upon looking at the desk that Sira Audun had gone off to the south.

Even as Sira Pall Hallvardsson was sitting in Sira Audun's room, Sira Audun was out upon the frozen surface of Einars Fjord on his skis, and he was making excellent time, for he was burdened only with his vestments, and carried no packs of food. The weather was fine and clear and the ice of the fjord covered with a thick, smooth powdering of snow, so that his skis sank and slid with great swishes that carried him three or four steps at a time. His face was shrouded in a mask made of two thicknesses of wadmal, with only the tiniest slits for sight, to protect against s...o...b..indness. It seemed to Sira Audun that the past twenty years of his life collapsed into this one feeling, the feeling of setting out for the south in the middle of winter, on the Lord's work. Except that never before had he truly trusted the Lord, and gone forth alone, without the insurance of plenty of food and extra goods. Never before had he cast off his lower self in just this way, although he might have done it, it was so simple to do, any one of these twenty years. This time he felt such confidence in what was to come that if he could have skied faster, or cast off his skis and run toward it, or, perhaps, cast off his humanity and flown toward it as a bird does, he would have. At evening he made out the sand flats and the valley of the river that runs into the fjord near Undir Hofdi church, and soon he was standing in the church itself, lighting a little lamp.

The light flickered and spread around the small room, and shone upon the wooden countenance of the Lord hanging above the altar, and the Lord's face seemed to change expression as the light fell upon it, and to welcome Sira Audun to this cold and deserted church, and at that moment, Sira Audun knew that he had done the proper thing, no matter what the outcome of it might be, for it seemed to him that the Lord would have missed him, had he not come to Him. Sira Audun knelt on the cold floor and prayed a great prayer of love and pleasure, and after a little while the light in the church attracted the local folk, who had been looking for their priest, and waiting to confess to him. Sira Audun stood up and went to the confessional, and it seemed to him that he could have swooned from hunger as he stood, but that the Lord lifted him up and helped him to the booth. Now the folk began coming to him, and they were a sorry lot this year, even sorrier than the year before, and rather than confessing their sins, their talk wandered off to tales of the hunger and enumerations of who had died, and who would die soon, and pleas with Sira Audun, or with the Lord, to have some mercy on the Greenlanders. Sira Audun did not turn these digressions back to the proper channels, but only absolved these folk, and rea.s.sured them of Christ's mercy in such eloquent tones that they went off believing that he knew of something, some cache of food or some stranded whale that they did not know of.

These confessions went on most of the night. Last to come was Vigdis of Gunnars Stead. She made her confession in the usual way, and welcomed the priest, and when she was gone, Sira Audun came out of the booth and found a large cheese waiting for him, a thoroughly salty and savory goat's cheese, white and melting, the most delicious goat's cheese he had ever tasted. He cut it up and served bits of it for communion instead of the hard wafer made from dulse that the Greenlanders were accustomed to having. After the ma.s.s, he cut up the cheese into large pieces and pa.s.sed them out to the poorest families, and when he went into the church, he saw that the Lord looked down on him with a flickering, secret glance of pleasure.

Just then there was a disturbance outside that rapidly spilled into the church through the open door. Sira Audun turned to acquaint himself with the source of some shouting, and saw a poor man, Thorstein Steinthorsson, who had already buried two of his children in the snow this winter, stumble backward through the door of the church, clutching his parcel of cheese to himself. He was followed by Ofeig Thorkelsson, who was shouting curses and grabbing for the cheese. Now Thorstein came against the stone wall of the church, where there was a soapstone carving of St. Jon the Baptist attached to the wall, and with his free hand, Thorstein grabbed this carving and pulled it off the wall and attempted to bring it down on Ofeig, but he was so weakened by hunger, and the carving was so heavy, that it fell from his hand and Ofeig bent to pick it up. But Sira Audun was there before him, and some of Ofeig's friends were on him just then, and pulling him back.

Sira Audun stepped up to Ofeig, with whom he was of a height, and slapped him hard across the face, saying, ”Ofeig Thorkelsson, are you so sunk in sin that you would steal a man's sustenance, and kill him, too? What are you doing here? It cannot be that you have come to pray, as you have not taken confession in five or six winters, and your soul is even now in mortal danger.” Ofeig showed no sign of having heard the priest, and his friends were about to drag him off when Sira Audun stopped them, for it seemed to him that if Ofeig could be brought before the sad and inspiring wooden countenance above the altar, he would be melted. He gestured to them to drop Ofeig's arms, and they did so reluctantly, for they were more used to his ways than the priest was. Now Sira Audun began to lead Ofeig toward the altar, and Ofeig followed with apparent docility. They came to the altar, and Sira Audun told Ofeig to get to his knees, and Ofeig did so. Then Sira Audun began to pray as follows, ”Lord, fill this sinner not with fear but with joy, as You have filled me of late, for I was no better than he is, except through Your grace. Lord, it may be that his heart is so hard that he knows not that it exists, but You can find it and warm it. Lord, it may be that the demons who are as plentiful on the ground as mosquitoes in the summer have made a happy home in this man, but You can drive them out, and whiten his soul again. No man who breathes is lost to You, Lord. He has done evil, but if You come into him, he will repent, and sin no more.”

Now Ofeig looked up and around. Those at the back of the church whispered expectantly. Sira Audun went on, ”Lord, it has pleased You in Your mystery to make us look closely upon death, and yet some of us do not know what we see. Open our eyes, we pray to You.” Just then Ofeig lifted his fist, and a sly smile flitted across his face. Suddenly, however, Ofeig was on his back on the ground, and Sira Audun was sitting on his chest. Ofeig was screaming in pain, for Sira Audun had b.u.t.ted his head into Ofeig's belly. Now Sira Audun's voice rose. ”Lord, hear the demons screaming. How they hate to be driven off!” And he continued praying in a loud voice until Ofeig was silent, and then he stood up, and helped Ofeig to his feet. As Ofeig staggered off, Sira Audun said, ”Go, then, and sin no more,” but no one could say whether Ofeig heard him or not.

When the church was empty, Sira Audun knelt and thanked the Lord for filling him with such power against Ofeig's demons, and he prayed there for a while before coming out of the church and going about his business of visiting the farmsteads of the district.

This was a distressing business indeed, for at every farmstead he had to p.r.o.nounce burial rites over one or two folk who had died, and give last rites to one or two others who seemed doomed. And it was also true that at every steading he was offered refreshment, even if it was only a few dried berries. At first he only said that he was not hungry, but he saw that folk were disappointed that he spurned what they had, and so he began telling them the truth, that the Lord had filled him with miraculous strength, and was feeding him some sort of invisible food that made him strong and able. And then he could induce the folk at the steadings to eat their own refreshments themselves.

Finally at the end of the second day, he came to Gunnars Stead, and he looked forward to seeing Vigdis after seeing her neighbors, for indeed, such sights as he had witnessed in Vatna Hverfi were wearing and fearsome, even to someone in such an exalted state as he was in. But Vigdis' mood had changed, or so the servants said who greeted him as he neared the steading. She was abusive and angry toward everyone, and rained curses down continually upon the heads of such absent folk as Erlend Ketilsson and Ketil the Unlucky and Gunnar Asgeirsson, as if the injuries that had been done to her had just taken place. It was best, the servants said, to wait her out, for her mood would change again in an evening, or a day. But Sira Audun was filled with the power of the Lord, and he went forth boldly toward the steading, and pushed open the door.

Inside, Vigdis stood with her clothing in disarray and her dark hair falling out of her headdress, arrested by the opening of the door in the midst of cutting some dried meat at the table. The room, in fact, as Sira Audun looked about, was full of food. Vats of sourmilk and whey-pickled pieces of sealmeat and blubber, rounds of cheese, hanging birds. And Vigdis was hugely fat, fatter than she had ever been, so that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s hung down to her waist and her chins hid her neck completely. Sira Audun saw at once that she had responded to the hunger of the settlement by consuming and consuming without cease. Even as he watched, she jammed some of the meat into her mouth and began to cut some more. But now she stopped doing this, and put down the knife and began yelling at him so that the food fell out of her mouth. ”So even the priest is come to steal from me, eh! You had your cheese, and a fine cheese it was, the best on the place. But I see you are not satisfied and crave to eat me out of house and home! But indeed, I'll drive you off, I will. I'll have my servants chase you off with the dogs. They're hungry enough, I tell you, the dogs are!” She flourished the knife, which had been sharpened so many times that its blade was honed into a crescent moon shape. Sira Audun stepped forward, feeling the power of the Lord in his breast.

”The Lord steals nothing, but only gives grace and eternal life. Woman, your soul is in peril! You cut your path to h.e.l.l with your own knife, for indeed, gluttony is a mortal sin in good times, but in times such as these, such gluttony amounts to murder! Your neighbors are failing all about you for the want of a bit of meat or a dish of broth. Today I have spoken the burial service over seven children who died for lack of food, such a little food as would fill the mouth of a small child, such as fell out of your own mouth just now, it makes me weep to tell it, their little faces were so thin, all forehead, and their mothers wept over their graves in the snow so that they could not lift themselves up to go into the warmth of the steading.”

Vigdis listened to this in silence, but indeed, when she was not talking, she seemed not to be attending at all, and when Sira Audun fell silent, she said, ”I cannot sit up every night as hard as I try. Folk must sleep, and that's the truth, but some folk are not folk, and sleep nary a moment, but wait till you're gone and then take all the best bits. They think I can't see it, the devils, but a bite here and a bite there, all the best bites, and then the next best bites, the sweetest, tenderest morsels. They think I don't see, but I do. Sometimes I am only pretending to be asleep, and that's the truth. I see them go about, biting this and biting that even as it hangs!”

”Woman!” Sira Audun was shouting, as if Vigdis were hard of hearing. ”You must attend me! Satan awaits you, and the door is wide open, and your feet are steady on the path! You are old, and time is short. Satan himself is beginning to smile his knowing smile. But the Lord can cheat him at this late moment! Give up these demons!” He knelt down beside the door.

Vigdis went on, ”Isn't that loathsome? It astonishes me what folk are brought to these days, but I know what I'm doing, and I see it all, indeed I do, and these folk shall be driven off by the dogs, and that's a fact, and for every bite they have taken, they shall be bitten about the flanks and nipped about the calves and they shall feel it, and that's the truth!”

”The Lord beseeches you, put off this burden of gluttony, give your food as alms to your neighbors. What rots in you shall nourish them! What turns to vermin in your hand becomes wholesome when your neighbors feed it to their starving children. Indeed, this may be the curse that brings the Lord's anger down upon us. What you give away shall be returned to you a thousandfold, when the reindeer run across your fields, and the seals teem in the waters of the fjord. It seems to me that you can do this for us all, if you turn away from sin as the Lord wishes you to!”

But Vigdis paid no attention, and fell to muttering and pulling at the meat on the table with her fingers. Sira Audun was panting, and he felt himself go limp, as if the power of the Lord had left him, and so he called out, ”Lord, be with me, for I am in the presence of sin, and we sinners cry out to You to show us Your mercy!” But he was not strengthened, but instead, began to sway with dizziness and hunger, and also sickness at the odor of the food hanging about. He stood up with what felt like his last strength and went out of the steading, and sat down in the snow.

After a while, one of the servingmen approached him and sat down. He was a grizzled fellow named Gizur, and his hands were much bent with the joint ill. He sat down with a groan. He said, ”So, priest, she was too much for you, eh? Well, you are not the first. She has been too much for every man, and that is a fact, I'm telling you. She is my second cousin, and that's a fact, and she is a rich woman and the mistress of the steading, and I spent my life sleeping in the cowbyre. Well, such a rise tells on a person, and it tells on her. She has her bad days.”

”The steading is all hung about with food!”

”Oh, yes, that's her way. She has a magic touch with food, yes she does, like Jesus with his loaves and fishes, maybe. Never been a day without two meals at Ketils Stead, or at Gunnars Stead, since she's been here. Makes up for a lot of things, always has, though she doesn't lay the strap on us anymore, she's too old for that.”

”Everyone in the district is dying of hunger!”

”Are they now? Well, I wouldn't know about that, and they don't know much about Gunnars Stead, and that's a fact. We keep to ourselves, and that's the way we always have done, and I expect that that's the best way for everyone.” The old man put a crooked hand upon Sira Audun's arm. ”That's the best way. Don't you think? But indeed, you are the priest, and you do look a little weak, and so let me go into the storeroom over here.” Gizur crept back with a pair of cheeses and slipped them into Sira Audun's bag, and then he and another servant accompanied him to the boundary of the steading and pointed him toward Undir Hofdi church. He hadn't skied but a short ways, though, before he stopped and pulled the cheeses out of his bag, and indeed they were beautiful, and he could not resist pulling one of them apart and eating about a quarter of it.

Now Sira Audun had a poor night, for he could not forget how the Lord had left him just at the critical moment, and he spent much of the night in prayer and in examination of his soul for the sin that might have caused the Lord to give up on him or turn away. He could find nothing, everything. He took refuge in his usual prayers, and in the morning, felt somewhat better. In fact, it seemed to him that he was himself again, Sira Audun, the same man he had been all his life, self-satisfied, easily annoyed, content with his own schemes, and far from the Lord, farther than he had ever known himself to be. He divided the cheeses in a large number of segments, ate one with some water, and began to carry the others about the district, and when folk asked in wonder where he had gotten them, he told them simply and with humility, that he had called upon the Lord to bend the heart of Vigdis of Gunnars Stead, but the Lord had abandoned him. The next day he left for the south, and his trip was slow and difficult. He saw that his arms were visibly thinner, and his knees seemed to tremble with every stroke of the skis.

Folk in Vatna Hverfi district now began to talk about Sira Audun's three cheeses, the one he had given out at the church, and the two he had taken about to the farmsteads, and their talk first concerned how miraculously good these cheeses had been-soft, salty, free of mold, obviously made the previous summer, but then Vigdis had huge flocks of sheep and goats and some cows, for as spa.r.s.e as the hay crop had been, Vigdis had more farms than just Gunnars Stead and Ketils Stead, and the men to care for them, didn't she? When this talk had been going on for a few days, for hungry folk chew over and over the news of food as if it were the choicest morsels, some men went to Gunnars Stead one night and looked about, in spite of the dogs, for one of the men knew spells, and cast a spell over the dogs so that they would not harry, or even bark. And these men saw that Vigdis had plenty of hay hidden at the end of the cowbyre, and also that the storehouse had food in it, although it was hard to tell how much. The cows in the dark byre felt warm and sleek to the touch. And the priest had said to Magnus Arnason himself that the steading was crammed with food. After a while Vigdis' dogs began to grow restive, and the men crept away.

Now it is the case that folk who have set themselves to look upon their deaths with resignation, and to antic.i.p.ate the mercy of Heaven for themselves and their children are easily distracted by the knowledge of a store of food in the neighborhood, and their lot seems less bearable to them as they think upon these stores. So it was with Vigdis' neighbors. Folk recalled how fat she was, how proud, though only the daughter of a cowman, and how n.i.g.g.ardly. Serving boys had been beaten for taking a bit of honey, and neighbors had been summoned before the Thing on suspicion of hay stealing or sheep stealing, when anyone could see that the hay had only been used up, and the sheep had only been lost in the hills above the steading. In addition to this, everyone in the district had received one of Vigdis' tongue-las.h.i.+ngs, and in the time of Ketil the Unlucky, more than a few had had verses made against them, and been held up for ridicule. As folk talked about Vigdis' h.o.a.rd of food, they began remembering these things, too, and, as it often happens, these injuries came upon them the more freshly for not having been thought of in many years.

Among those who talked about these things, Ofeig Thorkelsson and Mar Marsson were not the most backward, even in the presence of Jon Andres Erlendsson. Indeed, of late no one had suffered injuries from Vigdis as her son had, for the sight of him seemed to concentrate in her mind all the ills that had ever been done against her, and she was often moved to attack him and box his ears. Even so, Jon Andres never joined in the talk among his friends about his mother, and when Ofeig opened his mouth, Jon Andres would get up and go outside.

It was the case that the hunger was not so bad at Ketils Stead as it was at other steadings. For one thing, servingfolk at Gunnars Stead would send food to their relatives at Ketils Stead from time to time. For another, the Ketils Stead shepherd was a talented fellow, and had acc.u.mulated a large flock, so that in the autumn many sheep had been killed, and their meat dried for the winter and their heads singed into svid and their brains made into sausage and their feet boiled into broth. Even so, Jon Andres and his friends had little notion of household economy, and by Yule much of this food was eaten, or wasted, and Ofeig and Mar and the others were impatient at the prospect of shorter meals and eking things out as their neighbors did. Mar, in particular, could not stop talking of what there was to eat at Gunnars Stead, and urging Jon Andres to get some of it from his mother. But Jon Andres paid him no attention. After the argument at the church, Jon Andres had been avoiding his friends, and one evening he told Ofeig that it was tiresome to have these boys around him. ”Indeed,” he said, ”they are not boys anymore, but men with no occupations and no inclination to return to the steadings of their fathers, where they might be made to do some work,” and this was true. For some years, Jon Andres had fancied his band to be something on the order of a band of Vikings, Harald Finehair and his hirdmen was what they were called in the neighborhood, and Jon Andres did not mind this nickname, but after the conflict at the church he grew impatient, and spoke to his friends sharply if at all.

One day he came among them where they were lounging on the benches of the steading, and he said that it was his desire to send them away, back to their fathers, for the life he had been leading oppressed him, and he wished to change it. As a going away gift, he would give them each a suit of clothes, the horse that each had been riding, and some dried meat to take away with them to their fathers' steadings.

Ofeig Thorkelsson was not the only one of these men to be on bad terms with his father. Mar and Einar, who were brothers, had neither spoken to nor heard news of their father, who lived in the southern part of the district, since the summer, and they feared that he with much of his household had died in the hunger, for the steading was not a prosperous one. Even so, Jon Andres told them, they must find another place to live, for his intention was fixed, and he intended to be free of them by the evening, or at the latest, the next morning. Andres Bjartsson and Halldor Bessason now got up and began to gather their belongings together, and it seemed to Jon Andres that Halldor was actually relieved and pleased to go, while Andres was resigned, as he had had news of his father at Yule, and all had been well at his father's steading at that time.

Mar and Einar began to grumble. Jon Andres said, ”After these years of friends.h.i.+p, it would not please me to throw you out, or for us to part with ill feelings. But it is the case that times are different now than they have been, and such bands as ours do not repay in good fellows.h.i.+p what they cost in wasted provisions and trouble with neighbors, for I will not hide from you the fact that folk in this district are angry at me for the mischief we all have done, and they speak against me, and declare that I have incited you. Arnkel Thorbergsson is especially angry at the seduction of his daughter and threatens action against me if he and she do not chance to starve before the Thing. But I knew nothing of this seduction until he told me of it.” And Jon Andres glared at Einar Marsson, for he was to blame in this.

Ofeig settled back against the wall, and Jon Andres turned to him. ”Do not think, Ofeig, that I exclude you from these arrangements. Although we have been companions since boyhood, your pranks no longer amuse me. I think it would be well for you to reform your charact

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