Iceland's Bell (28 page)

It was completely impossible to determine by the countenances of the men sitting there in church what they thought of this petition; their weatherbeaten faces evoked images of mountainous breccia formations chiseled with human features: some with oblong chins, overly large noses, or horrendous shocks of hair, but all immutable from any point of view, whether in sparkling sunlight or pelting storm and rain.

The archpriest stuck the letter back into a pocket in his cassock and walked out through the choir doorway. Mass had ended; the men stood up; one young chaplain stole forward to look into his superior’s face, but his inquisitive glance was ignored. The men started chatting easily as they walked down the doorsteps and out of the church.

Someone brought this news to Arnæus, and he immediately sent his secretary to the archpriest to make a copy of Magnús Sigurðsson’s letter. This he read aloud to his servants, to their great amusement. Even so, that same day he sent word to the bailiff Vigfús in Hjálmholt, requesting that the author of the letter be subpoenaed. He ordered his men to prepare their baggage for travel tomorrow, and to have the horses shod.

The sun’s course had lengthened considerably, but freezing winds blew as they often do during the closing weeks of winter.

On a cold, cloudless morning a group of horses stands out upon the flagstones; several are fitted with riding gear, others with packsaddles. Trunk after trunk of the winter-sojourner’s belongings was brought out and lifted to the pegs of the packsaddles. The entourage was to travel south, to the royal estate at Bessastaðir.

Arnæus himself, clad in great Russian furs and topboots, was last to exit the house. He kissed the bishop and his wife before their door, mounted a white mare, called to his secretary to follow him closely, and rode out of the yard. The two rooms he had occupied behind the Grand Salon were empty. The Grand Salon was empty. A maidservant came in and cleared the tables. The smell of roasted meat lingered in the house. Red wine remained in his cup—he had not drunk it dry.

15

His Majesty’s royal commissarius and specially appointed judge over diverse lawsuits, Arnas Arnæus, summons your wise and noble honor, Magistrate Eydalín, to Þingvellir by Öxará on the coming 12 June to defend before his court and his fellow jurors a number of your past and recent sentences and decisions, videlicet,* various death sentences pronounced in cases of rapine, wanton acts of adultery, possession and handling of characteres,* etcetera, protracted incarcerations at Bremerholm, flogging, branding, and dismemberment of poverty-stricken men on poorly substantiated grounds, handed down particularly for crimes against the Handelen, such as smuggling, trade with Dutchmen, and the conduct of business transactions outside one’s own trade district during the period when the delineations were valid, as well as for recalcitrance on the part of the lodgers in satisfying the demands imposed upon them by the landlords in general, and by the governor in particular. In generali:* you have, in a multitude of your official acts, overburdened the indigent, making it practically impossible during your term as magistrate for the commoners to maintain their rights against the affluent, and you have denied these rights entirely in cases connected in any way with the church, the merchants, or the crown. Some of your rulings appear not to have been made with complete disregard for justice, but rather, in all respects sine allegationibus juris vel rationum.* It is now the will of our country’s patron and Most Gracious Royal Highness, so clearly communicated in my commission, that such rulings be subject to judicial inquest, and I am ordered by His Highness to accomplish the following: to bring to trial those authorities who have flaunted the law and destabilized the legal system; to annul the rulings that appear to have been handed down more to ensure that the name of the judge will be pronounced complacently by the powerful rather than to fully satisfy and comply with mortal justice and the laws of the land as they were sanctioned by our forefathers; and finally to penalize the authorities who are found guilty.

Following this, precedents were attested and specific charges enumerated.

Although around the country it was considered no insignificant bit of news when Arnæus implemented legal proceedings against the merchants during the previous spring, people were completely taken aback when they received report of the criminal trials that the royal commissarius was convening this spring against several of the highest authorities in the land, crowned by the arraignment of no less an authority than the magistrate himself.

The bishop’s wife Jórunn goes to her sister one day in the spring and without a word hands her two documents, a copy of Arnæus’s indictment of their father, and a letter from their mother.

Snæfríður read the indictment carefully, item by item. Amongst other things, their father was ordered to answer to a certain arrangement or contract he had made in court at the Alþingi with Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein, who had been sentenced to death for murder. The particulars of this arrangement specified that this Jón would be allowed to live his life a free man, uncharged and unindicted, in the district neighboring his judge the magistrate’s own, provided that he did not publicize the Supreme Court appeal issued in connection with his prior sentence, as contained in the royal warrant that he had brought home with him from Copenhagen.

Snæfríður glanced next over their mother’s letter, which was addressed to Jórunn.

After the madam in Eydalur had with several prefatory remarks suitably praised the Lord for the health of her life and soul, which was as good as could be expected in spite of the advance of old age, she turned immediately to the storm clouds now gathering over the peaceable household of husband and wife in the twilight of their lives. She mentioned the rewards in store for her bridegroom the magistrate Eydalín’s long and altruistic service to his native country and Royal Majesty, now that an individual who was to remain nameless was making an attempt to drag him before some sort of drunkard’s tribunal and to use the testimony of scoundrels to either dispossess him of his honor and reputation or even send him, a bedridden old man, to labor in chains for the king. And although the lawsuit had been cruelly implemented, the old woman had no misgivings concerning its outcome. She said that those who had lived upright lives would not be easily oppressed or forced to cower though it might suit the whim of knights-errant, native or foreign, bearing peculiar letters from Copenhagen; such visitations were not without precedent, but this country’s providence had always proven to be too powerful for vagrant knaves, just as it would once again. The country’s guardian spirits had never failed and would not fail now to defend the country’s elders; instead they would strengthen and invigorate them in their adversity, promote their prosperity, and support them in their hour of need in quelling their enemies’ fury.

The aged noblewoman wrote that she had feared only one thing more, that those who were closest to her and her husband by ties of blood and affection might superfluously awaken false report amongst the general public on account of their way of life; she could not deny that news of such report had been borne to her ears concerning her own poor and harassed daughter Snæfríður, who had recently been accused of engaging in disgraceful intimacies with a despised individual. Certainly there was nothing more preposterous than for the magistrate’s couple to take any stock of the drunken gurglings of Magnús Sigurðsson, whether written or spoken, but the causes of these accusations were not at issue here: no matter what, it was a blight to the honor of a noblewoman for her private life to become fodder for the public imagination. She said that her daughter had saddled crime to misfortune by pursuing further, for whatever reason, righteous or unrighteous, her association with her father’s reviler, the man who was as much a curse to his motherland as the endless death-dealing winters and the fire-spewing mountains. She said that she grieved for her long-suffering offspring and that she would never be able to enjoy peace until the reasons for this lawsuit were truthfully confirmed. She bade Jórunn reply candidly and offered to send Snæfríður horses and attendants if she wished to ride west to Breiðafjörður, then, bidding farewell for the time being, wished her two girls the same, though sorrow might rage or the world’s false fortunes smile, and prayed their forgiveness for this tearstained, hastily written missive, their faithful and simple mother.

Snæfríður stared out the window for some time. The countryside was silent but for the sound of thawing streams. “Now then,” said her sister, the bishop’s wife.

The younger sister’s mind cleared, and she glanced at their mother’s letter lying open on the table and with a flick of her finger sent it tumbling into the lap of her elder sister.

“This is a letter from our mother,” said the bishop’s wife.

“We poets recognize letters written by our own kin,” said Snæfríður, and she smiled.

“And you have not a single word of compassion for our father, either?” asked the bishop’s wife.

“It seems that our father has committed the one act that will cost him dearly in his old age,” said Snæfríður.

“Am I also to listen to you speak poorly of him, sister?”

“Very poorly,” said Snæfríður. “He has fathered daughters.”

The journeyman who had delivered the letter was planning to travel west again early the next morning.

“What am I to write?” asked the bishop’s wife.

“I send my greetings,” said Snæfríður.

“Is that all?”

“Tell our mother that I am the matron in Bræðratunga and will not ride west. On the other hand, if my father wishes it, I will be at his side at Þingvellir by Öxará on the twelfth of June.”

That same day she dismantled her loom, rolled up her tapestries, and packed away the belongings she had brought with her in the autumn, taking about the same amount of time it took for Jórunn the bishop’s wife to write her letter.

“Well, sister,” said Snæfríður. “The nights of respite draw to a close. I thank you for the winter: you’re a hospitable woman. Kiss the bishop for me and tell him that he shouldn’t be held liable on my account. Finally, I know you’ll loan me horses and attendants for this short stretch over the Tunga River—home.”

16

It had been a long time since the buildings at Bræðratunga had been in such good condition. Magnús worked throughout the entire winter repairing the timberwork on the farm, sometimes with the help of other carpenters, and as soon as the ground thawed in the spring he employed stonemasons to repair the walls. Now only the doors needed mending. One day he and the others caught sight of someone riding up from Sporður, where the ferry to Skálholt was anchored, and Magnús, who was keen-eyed, recognized immediately who it was. He climbed down from the wall where he’d been busy troweling, went into the farmhouse, washed himself as quickly as he could, put on a clean shirt and new trousers, and combed his hair. Just as he stepped outside his wife rode into the yard.

“Welcome home from your trip, Snæfríður my dear,” he said, and he helped her dismount, kissed her, and led her by the hand into the farmhouse.

Her loft was much the same as it had been when she left, except that the roof had been repaired and planks added where water had leaked in during the previous autumn. Another window had been added, and the fragrance of planed wood filled the room. The floor had been scrubbed clean. She lifted the coverlet to find creased snow-white linen bedsheets. The curtains had been aired and dusted so that the images upon them shone, and someone had used a small paintbrush to touch up the paintings on the dowry-chest, to brighten the roses. Snæfríður kissed Guðríður, her nurse.

“I’ve not yet received any word from the madam my mistress that I’m to stop scrubbing this cubbyhole,” she said respectfully.

The housewife ordered that her luggage be brought in, then she opened the chest and bureau and placed her silver and other jewelry, her embroidery, and her clothing within. That same day she set up her loom again, to make altar-cloths for the cathedral in a heartfelt show of gratitude from a woman who had left home to dwell in Skálholt, but who had now come home.

No man was as skilled at repentance or better understood other’s regret as Magnús Sigurðsson from Bræðratunga. He never mentioned a single thing that had occurred. Neither asked forgiveness of the other for anything. It was as if nothing had happened. He lay silently in her loft for hours at a time, staring at her with a compliant, timorous, obliterated look. He was like a child that’s been spanked after having fallen into a puddle—after exhausting itself with tears it becomes placid once again, its tranquillity deep and glorious.

A few days after her homecoming she sent a man to Seigneur Vigfús Þórarinsson in Hjálmholt, to deliver to the bailiff the message that she had business to discuss with him. It wasn’t long before this tried and true friend of noblewomen appeared at her door, his face drawn, his upper lip long, and his jowls covered with patches of gray stubble; he had coarse black eyebrows and limpid, watery gray eyes. He kissed the housewife carefully, and she offered him a seat and asked him the current news.

He said: “I brought the foal along again.”

She asked, “What foal?”

He said that although he was certainly unskilled when it came to choosing gifts for noblewomen, her foremothers had never thought it a discredit to receive a saddle horse from a good friend.

She recalled the horse he had left tied to the horseblock in the yard the last time he visited, and thanked him for the gift, but said it was her understanding that the horse had been killed and cut up to provide alms to the beggars last spring, when things had been so difficult.

He said that the horse came from stock out west in Breiðafjörður, and after it had bolted from the Bræðratunga pastures last year it had been brought back to him. Since few people had known about the gift, he had simply kept it with his own saddle horses over the winter; might she have need of it this spring?

She said that a poor woman could take a great deal of encouragement from enjoying the protection of such a cavalier, but that the time had come to discuss her business rather than horses.

First she wanted to mention the kindnesses that his son-in-law Jón from Vatn had bestowed upon her husband Magnús last year, when he had not only bought Bræðratunga from him, but had also paid in cash, at a time when others amused themselves by trying to swipe all of her husband’s estates from him by plying him with brennivín, or by engaging him in wagers, dice games, or other ruses so easily used to chicane helpless men. There was no need for her to narrate the rest of the story to the bailiff: he himself knew best how he and her father had haggled over the purchase of the estate later at the Alþingi. The one thing she knew was that she had inherited the estate from her father, as a legal bestowment—she had the title deed in hand. Later in the autumn certain events occurred that by now had become public knowledge: she had left her husband, with the unexpressed understanding that she would not return home until she could be certain that Magnús had given up the habits that had made their cohabitation so strenuous. Now, after residing at Skálholt for half a year, she had received trustworthy report that during that whole time Magnús had never once picked up his old crutch, so she had come home, determined to pick up where she had left off, hoping that her husband would live fully resuscitated for the rest of his days. It was therefore her request that the bailiff invalidate the previous year’s contracts, which stated that the estate, patrimony, and allodium of Magnús Sigurðsson was to be entirely her own possession. She asked instead that the estate and control of its revenues be transferred in full to her husband, following the procedure commonly used by married couples for property that was not specifically covered in written contracts.

Seigneur Vigfús Þórarinsson’s eyelids drooped shut as he sat murmuring and rocking in his seat, stroking his chin with a bony hand.

“I dare say, good madam,” he said finally, “that although Magistrate Eydalín and I have not always been able to come to felicitous terms at assemblies, I count myself amongst the authorities who look with undivided reverence toward our dear friend and chief, who took over the magistrate’s office when he was a bankrupt bailiff in an inferior district twenty years ago and is now counted amongst the wealthiest of men, having purchased more estates, under more favorable terms, from His Majesty than any other Icelander not consecrated bishop. And since Her Virtue has now deigned to invite me into her presence, it is my wish that I might offer her one piece of good advice: that she discuss this matter with her illustrious and well-learned father before she invalidates the deeds that were made in connection with this estate and signed by his own hand last summer.”

She said that she had no desire to haggle with her father over this matter, since she hadn’t been a child for quite some time. And even though he had intervened in the case the previous summer it was doubtless primarily due to the fact that he reproached himself for having withheld his daughter’s dowry for fifteen years.

The bailiff asked whether she thought it urgent that this case be resolved before men met at Þingvellir in the spring.

She said that she did indeed.

Then Vigfús Þórarinsson started in on the same old story: the country was in danger of being swamped by torrential streams, the pox was on the rise in Denmark, and the authority of highborn men was being rebuffed in that country; the burghers and upstarts had broken through the shield-wall raised around the monarchy, thus forcing the king to answer to them; after the head the limbs would be dancing here in Iceland. The air was tinged with malignancy, as the old saying goes,* and it had come to such a pass that no one knew how things could be rectified. One of this century’s novelties was that the authorities could now be indicted, and whoever struck out at an emissary of the crown would sacrifice his life and honor. He said that one particular case of this sort of aspersion against a king’s man had been sent to his court and that a hasty ruling had been demanded. “But,” he said, “since my friend the magistrate’s daughter is possessed of such eminent virtue, it is certain that the prejudicial report contained in the letter that her husband had read aloud in the choir doorway in Skálholt can never be verified. And because of that, the householder in Bræðratunga is now being held liable for serious crimes against an exalted personage.”

Snæfríður said: “Now you’ve cut right to the heart of the matter, my dear bailiff: I would like you to complete this deal and give Magnús total control of Bræðratunga before he is prosecuted for his slander, not just at the Alþingi, but also in your district court. If the penalty for my husband’s words is to be complete forfeiture of his property, then I would prefer that he incur it as a man of means rather than as a pauper.”

He said that it was her choice, but that he would take her saddle horse home for the time being and let it continue to convalesce throughout the spring. Afterward Magnús Sigurðsson was summoned and in the presence of witnesses was once again made the full and lawful owner of Bræðratunga. The bailiff kissed Snæfríður farewell and departed.

It was spring in Iceland, the time between hay and grass when the livestock falls most quickly. The beggars had begun their tottering migrations throughout the countryside to the east. The first two had already been found dead in Landeyjasandur, a man and woman who had lost their way in a fog. Ravens led the way to their remains.

The householder at Bræðratunga rose early each day and woke up his workers. He had stone slabs transported home to the farm, since he wanted to repave the footpath up to and in through the main doorway. He had already torn down most of the barn, leaving no other entrance to the house but the hole at the back of the kitchen where peat was carried in and dung and ashes thrown out. One day around midmorning, after the farmer had been working zealously since dawn, he was gripped by a sudden urge to see his horses and sent someone to round them up. They seemed to him to be in poor condition, and he pronounced them unfit for work and said that two were to be shod at home and allowed to graze in the homefield and brought milk to drink. The daleswoman brought the daughter of her mistress the madam this ominous news.

“Has anyone heard anything about a ship?” asked Snæfríður, and sure enough, there was a dubious story about a ship anchored in Keflavík.

“What would the blessed madam say if she were to hear that the horses were now to be given those few drops of milk I’ve been eking out to give to the workers to keep them alive,” said the daleswoman.

“The master of the estate in Bræðratunga is a nobleman; it does not beseem him to own thin horses,” said Snæfríður.

The horses were given the milk.

That evening the farmer complained, in his wife’s hearing, that some unspecified band of vagrants, at least as far as he could determine, had stolen a copper rod that he kept in his smithy. He’d been planning to use the copper to make a handle for the new farmhouse door. Now, because of this, he had to go south to Ölfus to make a deal with an acquaintance of his who had some copper.

Snæfríður said: “This is the sixteenth year we’ve lived here, and we’ve managed to get on well enough without having had so much as an iron handle in the door, not to mention a copper one.”

“How well I know that you’ve made it out,” said he.

“And you in,” said she.

On the next day he clipped his horses and brushed them. He was never satisfied with the way the flagstones were lying and was constantly ordering that they be torn up. He ordered his workers to crawl through the hole in the kitchen wall. The daleswoman said that it was only great southern aristocrats who had to crawl through the dung-gap in their houses. The squire said that there was no use complaining about things that didn’t concern her, and that he didn’t pity her or any of her kind for having to slip through holes in walls. Late in the afternoon he took two short rides, and a snatch of verse was heard being hummed quickly out in the yard. The sky was red.

Next day he was gone. Heaps of earth blocked the main doorway, and a gap in the roof was left unthatched. The house had no front door. He had left his hammer and his ax lying in a pile of woodchips.