Part 20 (2/2)

”Mortal folk, preparing to seek their fate.”

”What trouble have you made for yourself?”

”Some men are angry with me. I care not about that. But I am parted from my soul, and so there is little left of me to entertain you here.”

”Is it true that you have been with one of the Icelandic women? If you keep apart from her, it is not such a great crime. They will be unable to kill you, and the penalty in law must be small these days, for the ways of folk are looser than they once were. I cannot see how this could be such a great trouble, and yet...”

”And yet, indeed. Gunnars Stead seems to me to have been transported northward by devils, so dark is it about the place.” He smiled. ”Take your child away, my Helga. Here is the last thing I will say to you: all of my life, I have sought to take everything from you, to have you to myself, for I thought this was my due, and whenever you turned away from me, even to fetch me something, I hated you for it, and wanted more of you. Oh, my Helga, I am heartily sorry for this, and I beg your forgiveness, and as much as I always desired you, so much do I now desire you to stay away, and not be drawn to me or to this trouble, neither you nor your husband, nor our father, and so you must go off with the child, and say nothing to Jon Andres, and send no messages to our father, who has been trying to save me from my fate for my whole life. You must make me this vow.”

”How can I?”

”You must, or I will take you by the arm and not let you go until you do, as I did once before.”

”I will say nothing, but I will pray, as I did once before.”

”And it will have the same result as it had once before, I trust. Now be off.” And Helga turned and went off, and for two days she kept her vow not to speak of this matter to Jon Andres, but after that he came to her, with news of his own that he had heard from other folk, and she answered the questions he asked her.

Now Easter came on, and Bjorn Bollason had agreed with the Icelanders that if Steinunn Hrafnsdottir made no change in her insensible condition by Easter, then he would summon the case as seduction by witchcraft, and as Easter approached, and the woman sank deeper and deeper, he sent for Sira Eindridi, for he wanted to speak to the priest about witchcraft, and Sira Eindridi came as fast as he could on skis, although he had other duties to attend to. Bjorn was sitting at his evening meat when a servingman came into the steading with news that Sira Eindridi and another man were approaching, and Bjorn jumped up and went out of the door to the steading, feeling the eyes of the Icelanders upon his back. Now he went down the slope, and met Sira Eindridi below the shrine to St. Olaf the Greenlander, and before the priest even had his skis off, Bjorn was walking back and forth in perplexity, pouring out the tale of Steinunn Hrafnsdottir. ”Indeed,” he said, ”with Sigrid, and now Steinunn, it seems to me that these women are unaccountable. As soon as they grasp a man, they cease to want him, but want another.”

”Desires flow through them like the breezes, that is all we know about them,” said Eindridi.

”Now Snorri and Thorstein have been convinced by Thorunn Hrafnsdottir that the fellow used witchcraft to win her sister, and they say they have seen such things many times before. Indeed, they are common as flies in Norway and other places like that.”

”Such a thing would not surprise me. The Devil works among us, and he has his agents. This fellow Kollgrim spends all his time in the waste districts, where the Devil holds sway. And he goes there alone, not with other men. How hard would it be for the Devil to come to him and speak privily into his ear? How hard would it be for the Devil to take the shape of a hare or a fox or a seal, and speak unto him, and tempt him? And how hard would it be for such a man to resist? The Gunnars Stead folk have always been wayward, even for Greenlanders. Does this woman Margret Asgeirsdottir take communion or confess herself? Nay, she keeps her own counsel, does she not?”

”You speak as hardly as the Icelanders.”

”We have known each other for many winters, Bjorn Bollason, and surely by this time you know that I speak my mind. Sira Pall Hallvardsson has done the Greenlanders an ill service by being so weak and kindly. They think that sin is a little thing, and that the Lord is their mother, who pats them on the head and sends them off to find another pleasure when they have destroyed their own playthings.”

”Even so, what are the laws about witchcraft? Know you those of the Church? I'll warrant you are as ignorant of them as I am.”

”What we don't know of the letter, we know of the spirit. This Snorri is full of notice. I suspect that he knows more than he tells of such things. And the laws of most places are the same in regard to most grave crimes.”

”That is what the Icelanders say.”

”If there is a devil among us, then it is a greater sin to let him go free than to punish a guiltless man, for as soon as a guiltless man receives his death, he is forgiven in the eyes of the Lord, and welcomed all the more fervently into Heaven for the injustice of his punishment. But a devil who goes free turns others away from the Lord, and brings them into the kingdom of Satan, does he not?”

And Bjorn had no answer for this, and it seemed to him right and proper that in this circ.u.mstance, he should give his judgment over to Sira Eindridi, who, as a priest, would know more of such things.

In Hvalsey Fjord, the winter weather was somewhat colder and snowier than it was in districts farther inland, and it seemed to Gunnar that he and his household folk had a difficult time of it this year, for indeed, he saw that everyone was old now, and more or less afflicted with the joint ill, or other ills. Only Johanna and Thorolf's son Egil could not be called elderly, but Johanna was getting past the marriageable age without suitable offer, and Gunnar was getting past the age of having the vigor to go to every Thing and negotiate a match for her. The fact was that her virtues were those that become known after long acquaintance-at first she might seem to a shallow young man rather forbidding and unpretty, for though she had the Gunnars Stead features, they were not softened by anything from Birgitta, and in repose, her face seemed to be carved from stone. That out of this stone mouth often came remarks of such pungency that Gunnar was delighted for days was not a marketable quality in a wife. In addition to this, she seemed pleased enough with her condition, and, like Helga before her, considered finding a match more of a duty than a pleasure. Gunnar was nearly decided not to go to the Thing this year, although he had never missed the a.s.sembly in his adult life, even when most farmers of the settlement were keeping away.

But it was the case that Birgitta would not be capable of making the trip, and Gunnar did not care to go away from her. These days she was much afflicted by the joint ill, in her fingers, and her shoulders, and her hips, so that there was little she could bear to do for the pain of it. The dampness of the winter helped her not, but instead increased her pain and the red swelling of her finger joints so that Gunnar had to take her hands in his and rub them gently for long periods of time, and also to feed her, and carry her about, for it was the case that he was hardly afflicted with the joint ill at all, and stood as straight as a young man. It was also the case that as he stayed with her and carried her about, he tried to convince her to remove with him to Gunnars Stead, where she could be with Kollgrim and the girl, Elisabet, who certainly needed guidance, and also near Helga, and also out of the dampness of Hvalsey Fjord, but she was unaccountably stubborn in her opposition to this notion. Her only argument against it was her age-she was too old and close to death for a new life, she would miss the scenes of her childhood, Gunnars Stead had always been too grand for her. She even told Gunnar that her reasons were paltry ones in her own eyes, but her disinclination was firm for all that. It could not be done.

And so it became a game between them. If he beat her at chess in the evening, then they would go off to Gunnars Stead the next day. If a spoon dropped to the floor, and landed bowl upward, they would stay at Lavrans Stead, but if it landed bowl downward, they would go off to Gunnars Stead. If a black lamb was born, they would go, a white lamb kept them where they were. If Birgitta could guess the answer to a riddle Gunnar made up, then they would stay, if not, they would go. One day Gunnar said to Birgitta, ”It did not seem to me before that the world was so full of signs.”

”It seems to me the case that all these signs point in one direction only.”

”What is that?”

”That Gunnar and Birgitta are elderly, doting folk, who must fill up their time in some wise.” But she smiled, then, and said, ”Here is a fellow coming on skis. My eyes are still sharp enough to see whoever comes before he knows he is coming. If it is a stranger, then we will stay here, and if it is a friend, we will go off to Gunnars Stead.”

”Agreed, then.” And they watched the skier for a long while, and then Gunnar got up from where he was sitting, and went to greet the fellow, and saw that it was Jon Andres Erlendsson, and he knew that the news would be ill.

Jon Andres greeted his wife's mother with a great smile, and an affectionate embrace, and then sat down beside her and spoke at length of the child Gunnhild, how large and active she was, and how fondly Helga cared for her, and how plentiful Helga's milk was, so that she had enough for two, if there had been twins, and indeed, such a case might turn out, for she was with child again, she had felt it quicken some days hence, and expected the birth in the autumn again, a good time for another birth, and she thought herself much stronger for this one, and everyone about Ketils Stead was sanguine. Now Birgitta said to him, ”Even so, Jon Andres, I see in your countenance that this good news is not the news you are bringing to us.”

”Indeed, there is a matter that I might consult Gunnar upon.”

Birgitta looked at him sharply. ”This is not so small a matter as you are making it out to be.”

”I know not what to make of it, myself.” And now Jon Andres sat silently, for he knew not how to speak of Kollgrim to his mother, and he hoped that Gunnar would take her off. But it did not appear to occur to Gunnar to do such a thing, for Gunnar was staring off toward the ice in the fjord. Birgitta followed his gaze for a moment, down the slope to the strand and the foggy blankness of the ice sheet, and then she said, ”My boy, I have seen all of these things long before this. When Johanna was within me, I looked across the strand, just at the place where we are looking now, and I saw all of my five children vanish before my eyes, and now I see from your coming that the fate I thought to avert will come to pa.s.s.”

Still Gunnar was silent, and so Birgitta said, ”My boy, you must speak what you know. No man reports that his wife is well when she isn't, and so the trouble must be from Kollgrim.”

”He has been with this Icelandic woman, Steinunn Hrafnsdottir, when she was staying apart from her husband at the cathedral, and they have been discovered. Now these folk are preparing a case against him, but I have been unable to learn the nature of the case. It does not seem to me that they will settle for lesser outlawry, or anything less than death, if they can get it.”

Now Gunnar spoke. ”Is Bjorn Bollason the lawspeaker in on this case?”

”The husband and the s.h.i.+pmaster were staying at Solar Fell, and now some other Icelanders are there as well. The woman and her sister are there, too.”

”Bjorn Bollason is my sworn friend. It seems to me that we may rely upon him.”

”If we may get him apart from the Icelanders long enough to confer with him, this may be the case. But the tale is that he clings to them even more tightly than before.”

”That may be appearance. A Greenlander must know where he is living, mustn't he? And what of Kollgrim? Does he attend to the gravity of this pinch?”

”Helga says that he thinks only of the woman, and cares not what happens to him.”

Now Gunnar looked at the other man, and said, ”But it seems to me that little can happen to him, for folk do not think so much of this sin as they once did, and if the Icelanders have not killed him before this, they will not get at him now. Even if he is outlawed and must go into the waste districts for a while, what of it? His real home lies there, anyway.”

”Even so, and knowing all of this, Helga is much cast down about him. The case does not fit the facts, it seems to me. We must go about to our friends and neighbors, and prepare them for this case, for it seems to me that the Icelanders have a plan. Perhaps there will be a fight at the Thing, for they are well armed, with iron weapons, and Icelanders always resort to fighting if they can, especially if they have some advantage, like these weapons.”

”That is their reputation. When you were a child, some Icelanders were in Greenland with a damaged s.h.i.+p, and they fought with the Greenlanders for two winters about driftage rights, and in the end they burnt the s.h.i.+p to the waterline rather than leave it to the Greenlanders without sufficient payment. They are a hard folk.”

”Then we must meet their hardness with our own.” But the fact was that neither man knew just how this might be done.

Now Bjorn Bollason and Bolli Bjornsson began going about on skis every day to farms in Brattahlid district, where Bjorn had many friends, but Gunnar Asgeirsson and Jon Andres Erlendsson were not so well known, and at every farmstead, Bjorn Bollason gave gifts, and enlisted the friends.h.i.+p of everyone, and all remembered how he had distributed food during the great hunger, and how he had kept the Thing together when most of the judges had died off, and all of the farmers swore their friends.h.i.+p to him, without, however, knowing the nature of the case that was being prepared, for Thorstein and Snorri had insisted upon the secrecy of this. This also happened, that Bork and Thorstein went back to Nes in the southern part of Vatna Hverfi district, where they had been staying and talked privily among the other Icelanders there, but because this was Jon Andres Erlendsson's and Kollgrim Gunnarsson's district, the Icelanders spoke not to their hosts concerning these matters, but hung together and kept their peace.

Gunnar now went to his cousin Thorkel, and he explained the case to him, and Thorkel was as sanguine as could be. Indeed, no man that Gunnar or Jon Andres spoke to about the case could understand how things could go badly for Kollgrim. The greatest penalty for such a crime was lesser outlawry, and he had, after all, gone with an Icelandic woman, not a Greenlandic one. None of the judges were related to the woman, were they? And she had gone off from her husband to live by herself with the priests, had she not? Does a man, seeing a trinket lying before him in the gra.s.s, fail to pick it up? And so Gunnar and Jon Andres went about Vatna Hverfi district, both the northern and the southern parts, and they garnered a great deal of support, and in every farmstead they told what they suspected, that the Icelanders would try to break up the Thing through fighting, and men vowed to carry what weapons they had to the a.s.sembly fields, spears and bows and arrows and bone axes and such. And after going about Vatna Hverfi district, Jon Andres went farther south, to where he had other farms, and he found what support he could find there, and Gunnar went about Hvalsey Fjord and over the hills to Kambstead Fjord. Still it was the case that the Icelanders did not summon Kollgrim, and though all folk knew that the case was pending, there was no common talk of it, nor any talk of the woman, only enough to say that she was ill, and had been since early in Lent.

Now Larus the Prophet began going about, as the spring came on, with news of more visions, this time from the angel Gabriel, who, he said, had called him by the most endearing names, for example, my child, and my brother, and my boy, and who had been clothed in his angelic robes, which could not be seen as much as they could be felt, for it seemed to Larus that his fingers became as eyes and his eyes became as fingers, this was how he saw the angelic robes, the halo, and the great wings, which opened out like the wings of an eagle diving for a strike, and each feather was barbed with light. That, said Larus, was the angel Gabriel, and here was his news, that a new age was at hand, and the sign of this new age would be the taking of a certain devil who had long lived among the Greenlanders, and folk, especially those of the southern parts, knew this to be Ofeig Thorkelsson, for his sins and depredations grew season by season, and the folk of the south felt much oppressed by them. When this fellow was taken, the angel Gabriel said, the sign of the new age would be that men would bring bits of wood and planking and furniture and they would comb the beaches and gather up every burnable thing they could find, and they would build a great pyre, and the fellow would be tied to the pyre and burnt up, and the Devil would take the fellow's soul for his own, and all other men would be saved. But men, the angel said, must deprive themselves and their own families of light and heat in order to make up this pyre, or otherwise they would not be saved, and these were the rewards that they would find after the burning was completed: a s.h.i.+p would come, ornately carved, painted, and decorated with purple, and on it would be the longed-for bishop, a young man in purple robes, with half a dozen trained priests, who would, right there upon the strand, go among the Greenlanders and shrive them and give them the true wafer of wheat and the true drink of wine made from grapes. These folk would bring news that the two popes had died off, and a single pope, the pope of Jerusalem, had risen up and returned his church to holiness, and they would also bring new furnis.h.i.+ngs for the cathedral-tapestries of silk sewn with golden thread, ewers and chalices of gold chased in silver, altar cloths from far to the east, also made of silk, new gla.s.s, of many colors, for the cathedral window, and another set of bells, so that the ears of the Greenlanders would thrill to the rising and falling tones of many bells, not just the booming of the one that hung in the belfry now. This would also be the case, that the new bishop would recognize the holiness of Larus himself, and establish a house for him, where he and his neighbors could have their simple meetings. Such were Larus' predictions, and for lack of anything better to do, most people talked of them, as they had of his other predictions. He went from farm to farm, and there was always something special to eat for him, and something for him to take home to As.h.i.+ld and little Tota.

The spring weather was of a piece with the winter weather, that is, there was much wind and little rain, and sand got in everywhere, and folk were not hopeful for the summer season, for such winds as these carry off the moisture in the gra.s.s, and only those steadings with large systems of streams and ca.n.a.ls manage to get by with hay for the winter. Even so, the seal hunt was a prosperous one, with many large and small seals for every steading. And after the seal hunt, Thorgrim Solvason brought his case against Kollgrim Gunnarsson, and named his witnesses, and declared that this case would be tried at the Thing. And still Gunnar Asgeirsson had been unable to talk privily with Bjorn Bollason, but at any rate, he was rather sanguine about the case, and considered that unless the Icelanders killed Kollgrim at the Thing, through a pitched battle, the penalty would be one of lesser outlawry, next to nothing for such a man as Kollgrim.

Gunnar and Jon Andres quietly made their plans to defend themselves in a pitched battle, and those were these, that they and the Thorkelssons and some other men from Vatna Hverfi district would arrive at the a.s.sembly fields early in the day, and lay down such weapons as they usually had with them, as by law men must do at the beginning of every Thing, but they would keep other weapons with them in their booths. Their booths they would set up on the high ground above the spot where the law courts normally were held, four or five booths in a row across the hill, and men would always be in these booths, so that when the Icelanders should begin disrupting the court and fighting, these men could quickly run down the hill and fall upon them with such weapons as they had.

Some time before the Thing, Jon Andres and Gunnar went to Gunnars Stead, to explain these precautions to Kollgrim, and also to enlist him in his own case, for he had said nothing all spring about his plans for the Thing. It was the law that every accused man had to be present to hear the case against him, and also to hear his defense, if he chose not to make it himself. Gunnar went first to Ketils Stead and spent the night there, and had talk with both Helga and Jon Andres about Kollgrim, but neither of them could surmise how he would receive the plans, for Helga said that he was much confused, it seemed to her, as he had often been years before, after his dunking. If he spoke, she said, he spoke only of his fate and his mortality. Elisabet Thorolfsdottir was no help to him, Helga said, because she was very angry against him for going with the Icelandic woman, and could not swallow the bitter words that came into her mouth. Even so, Kollgrim stayed about the place, and heard the girl out, and seemed not to care what was being said.

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