Iceland's Bell (32 page)

The squire lay there in the grass, sleeping. He was bloody and grimy, his face swollen from a beating, his clothing torn so much that his bare body showed through. She bent down over the man and the dog licked her cheek. His hat was lying a short distance away in the grass and she picked it up and used it to fetch riverwater to wash him off. He awoke and tried to rise, but gave a cry and fell back to the ground.

“Let me die in peace!” he shouted.

When she looked more closely she discovered that one of his legs was broken at midcalf and powerless.

“What hussy are you?” he said.

She lifted the kerchief from her face, revealing the golden complexion and the blue eyes that were like no others in the Nordic lands.

She said: “It is I, your wife, Snæfríður.”

Then she set to work treating her husband’s wounds.

FIRE IN COPENHAGEN

1

There is a celebration in Jaegersborg.*

The queen is hosting a banquet for her husband the king, her mother the German princess, and her brother the duke of Hanover. The highest-ranking men in the land, as well as the most renowned foreigners, have been invited to take part in this gala affair.

The queen had ordered the construction, in Hamburg, of more than fifty exquisite bows and four exquisite arrows for each bow, for today the king would be hunting a stag.

In late afternoon the nobles gathered in a glade encircled by tall beech trees and strewn with canopies. The nobles took their seats and our Most Gracious Highness and Majesty appeared at the edge of the glade, wearing crimson hunting garb, an ell-long feather bobbing above his black velvet beret. The queen and her esteemed brother followed, also outfitted for the hunt; stepping lightly along behind them were the ladies-in-waiting and other honorable ladies of the realm, dressed as huntresses.

Erected on the right side of the field was a kind of counter, a hundred feet long; displayed upon this were the silver trophies that were to be awarded at the conclusion of the contest. Near one end of the counter hung a curtain strung between two wooden posts, and opposite this canopy were the seats for the grandees and their ladies and ladies-in-waiting. The cavaliers, however, were obliged to stand— the same went for the members of a certain delegation outfitted with kalpaks, long sabers, and black beards; this, folk said, was the Tartar delegation.

Now the trumpets are blown, the verdant curtain raised—a stag appears and prances away, gamboling from one tree to the next. The Tartars were given the opportunity to shoot first, but their arrows went quite astray. Then the graceful ladies-in-waiting shot, and the entire company praised their elegant style. Next came the cavaliers, and some of them hit rather close to the mark, though none close enough, and everyone there delighted in this marvelous entertainment. The king and queen were the last to shoot. And without further ado, the king hit the stag with his first shot and thereby claimed the title Most Agile Archer in the North. The other prizes were distributed amongst the cavaliers and ladies, but the queen deferentially and courteously accepted no prize herself.

Alongside this outdoor gaming field a hill had been raised by extraordinarily artful means. Up along the hill ran an archway, the pillars on either side fashioned to resemble lemon or golden apple trees. The king and queen’s seal had been carved into the wooden posts here and there, as well as imprinted upon the vault of blue cloth strung over the archway. Centered on top of the hill was a radiant pond teeming with fish and swarming with tamed ducks and other birds. In the center of the pond a crag had been fabricated, and from this crag sprouted four fountains. Each fountain was nearly half the length of a lance and sent arcs of water shimmering over the pond. Encircling the pond was a bench built of turf, its surfaces covered with grass. A beautiful cloth had been spread over the top of the bench, transforming it into a banquet-board. Chairs were distributed and arranged so that royalty sat beneath the king’s canopy, while the ambassadors, the nobility, and the courtiers sat facing one another across the table. Official functionaries and other dignitaries representing the bourgeoisie, along with their ladies and other invited guests, including merchants, feasted alongside the Tartars on the greensward at the foot of the hill. The king’s table was laden with over two hundred varieties of dishes and close to two hundred types of preserves and fruits in golden bowls. These delicacies stretched away in two rows as far as the eye could see—it was a magnificent sight to behold.

“Ein Land, vom lieben Gott gesegnet.”*

The distinguished, potbellied German who had greeted the Assessor Consistorii et Professor Antiquitatum Danicarum Arnas Arnæus during the hunt, and who had introduced himself as Kommerzienrat Uffelen from Hamburg, took his place at the table beside Arnæus and addressed him companionably.

“Our gracious lady the queen, your compatriot, is a noble and generous woman,” said Arnas Arnæus. “In her grace’s villa, which she calls her summer sanctuary, she and her maidens often costume themselves as wood nymphs and elves. And in the evenings they dance upon the meadow to the strains of fiddles and flutes or bag-pipes and shawms. A man can sail in the moonlight out upon her little whimsical Furusee.* And the evenings are concluded with fireworks.”

The German answered: “I see that my lord enjoys more favor than a German commoner could ever hope to receive from his compatriot. I, however, was granted the privilege of entering the palace of the king’s two daughters in Amager, since, out of sheer galanterie,* I had brought along two hummingbirds for their volières.* As it turned out, unfortunately, the day when young princesses learn to bestow love on little birds is far, far away. The little graces said they weren’t too pleased to have been given small birds in place of the beast they’d really been dreaming of: a crocodile.”

“Ach ja mein Herr, das Leben ist schwer,”* said Arnas Arnæus.

“My attendants and I also shared in the honor of being invited by His Highness to partake in a hunters’ breakfast out at Hirschholm, his summer palace,” said the German. “We dined there in his splendid arbor, which is fifty feet square and enclosed by twenty columns and adorned within with gold and velvet and silk. Hanging inside the cupola are over eight hundred imitation lemons and bitter oranges—you’d have to go all the way south to Welschland to encounter such style again.”

“My queen, your compatriot, recently received a most remarkable monkey, purchased for two hundred special-dollars,” said Arnas Arnæus—“and I won’t even say how much her outstanding parrots cost. If my lord had, instead of giving the princesses two small birds, presented his compatriot with a second pair of Spanish horses as fine as the pair purchased last year for her for two thousand special-dollars burgled from Eyrarbakki, the largest trading station in the Danish realm, the queen’s grief over not owning a four-horse team might have been soothed. And my lord might have spent a grand evening with the nymphs in the sanctuary by the Furusee—and been bidden good night with a fireworks display.”

“I rejoice that my compatriot should finally have found in Iceland an admirer who considers no earthly creature too good for her if it can give her genuine pleasure,” said the German.

Arnas Arnæus said: “We Icelanders would certainly present to her grace a team of four blue whales, if we did not esteem another queen even higher.”

The gentleman from Hamburg glanced inquisitively at the Professor Antiquitatum Danicarum.

“The woman you mention can scarcely have her kingdom on earth if you would presume to place my compatriot in a lower position at her banquet table,” he said.

“You are correct,” said Arnæus, and he smiled. “She is the queen of Iceland.”

The German continued to look askance at his table-companion, his coldly sapient eyes gleaming through folds of flesh, shoving food without pause into his mouth, leaving no tidbit untasted, doubtlessly thinking something completely contrary to whatever he was saying in the meantime. He reached for a crab and tore off one of its legs with these words:

“Isn’t it about time that the woman to whom you refer descended from the airy halls of concept onto solid ground?”

“Things have been very difficult for us lately,” said the Icelander. “The aforementioned queen is more blessed up in the air than she is down on the ground.”

“I hear that the pox has done ferocious damage in Iceland,” said the German.

“The country was poorly equipped to handle epidemic,” said Arnas Arnæus. “The pox sailed in in the wake of famine.”

“I hear that the bishop in Schalholt and his wife have perished,” said the German.

Arnas Arnæus looked with surprise at this stranger. “Very true,” he said. “My friends, hosts, and illustrious countrymen, the bishop and the madam in Skálholt, were called away from us last winter by the pox, along with twenty-five others in their household.”

“My lord has my condolences,” said the gentleman from Hamburg. “His country deserves better.”

“I am delighted to hear you say this,” said Arnæus. “Icelanders are grateful to meet foreigners who have heard of their country. And even more grateful to hear someone say it deserves better. But perhaps my lord should take note—sitting across from us, directly behind the roasted pig resting comfortably there upon its silver plate, is the Bürgermeister in Copenhagen, formerly a ship’s-boy on a merchantman to Iceland, but now the highest ranking man in the Company, the Iceland merchants’ league—it might be unwise to provoke him at this pleasant hour by speaking too loudly of Iceland. To wit, he has been forced to pay several thousand rixdollars in compensation for selling the Icelanders maggoty flour—and for overvaluing it by weight.”

“I hope I don’t seem too audacious,” said the German, “if I mention the old days when my fellow townsmen and predecessors in the Hansa sailed to the island; times were different then. Perhaps after the meal is finished we can find a comfortable nook where an old man from Hamburg can share good memories with the Icelander whom the Danes in the Iceland trade claim to be Satan in the flesh— preferably a place where these our friends can’t overhear us.”

“There are a number of people in Iceland who would probably be willing to admit that the Iceland merchants’ opinions of me are not entirely unwarranted,” said Arnas. “But unfortunately for my countrymen, I have been defeated. I am the serpent that the Iceland merchants crush beneath their heels. Yes, we did get them to pay compensation for the flour, and the king will continue to send something of a grain supplement as long as there is a threat of famine. But it was not compensation that I wanted for my people, and not grain supplements, but rather, better trade.”

The queen had stipulated that no strong liquor was to be found upon her banquet-board. Instead one and all would drink light French wine, served in moderate proportion, so that the celebration would be marked in the very least by coarseness of character, which in her eyes was characteristic of folk from the Nordic lands and which always reared its head whenever these people drank.

Around sunset the tables were cleared. For after-dinner entertainment several small dogs were thrown into the pond upon the hill, and the dogs made quite a show chasing and biting to death the tame ducks and other wing-clipped birds swimming there, to the great amusement of the Royal Majesties and their illustrious guests.

Afterward they paraded with great ceremony to the palace in Jaegersborg, where the dance was scheduled to commence within a short time. Since this was to be a family dance, the court custom of wearing masks or other special costumes was abandoned for the evening by all except the queen and her ladies, who donned black gowns before joining the dance.

After the meal acquaintances amongst the guests spent a few moments chatting. Arnas Arnæus had always been a sought-after guest at all sorts of high-class gatherings due to his immense learning, but now it seemed to him as if various noblemen and other erudite men with whom he was familiar had either forgotten to greet him or else had disappeared sooner than they had a chance to do so. He felt of course that some of the gentlemen in the city government, shareholders in the Company like the Bürgermeister, could be excused for being unable at present to exchange a few words with a man who very recently had been instrumental in obtaining convictions against them on charges of fraud and deceit. On the other hand he found it utterly astonishing when two highborn judges from our Majesty’s Supreme Court hastily looked down and walked away instead of returning his greeting. Even less did he understand why two of his colleagues from the Consistory flinched when they saw him. Even his comrade and old friend, the royal tutor and librarian in Worms, spoke to him distractedly, with a nervous expression on his face, and ended up being the first person to leave the party. He also noticed it quite clearly when a number of cavaliers drew together and fixed him with the mocking stare usually reserved by inhabitants of the Nordic lands for Icelanders—it was a stare that Arnas Arnæus himself had not experienced for a very long time.

He let the throng of people streaming into the palace carry him along. And just as he arrives in the foyer along with the others, and the piping of the minstrels commences, the royal entourage rushes by on its way to the ballroom, and our Most Gracious Highness’s eyes come to rest on the Icelander. An elated gleam spreads over the illustrious face with its bird’s beak and the derangedly mischievous eyes of a lewd, impotent old man as he starts vocalizing in the Low German tongue acquired from his foster parents:

“Na, de grote Islänner, de grote Schöttenjäger”; that is to say, the great Icelander, the great skirt-chaser.

Someone burst out laughing.

The guests bowed to His Highness as the sublime entourage swept by. The Icelander stood apart by himself. When he glanced around at the other guests it seemed to him as if no one had taken any notice of what had just occurred, which only served to increase his doubts as to who he was or where he stood in the eyes of this company. Finally the fat, glib German from Hamburg reappeared at his side.

“I beg your pardon, but my lord did not outrightly refuse to discuss with me a trifle someplace where no one could hear. If you please, my lord.”

Instead of continuing onward into the palace’s inner hall they walked from the foyer out into the orchard. Arnas Arnæus remained silent as the gentleman from Hamburg talked. He talked about Denmark’s grain and livestock, about Copenhagen’s enviable location and the excellent alabaster imported here from Asia. He mentioned the numerous costly palaces in the kingdom and said that His Highness was such a galanthomme* that his equal was not to be found in all of Christendom—one would have to search throughout all the realms of Islam to find his match. To illustrate his point he told the following story, which had earned the king the admiration of folk everywhere: a great feast was held for him in Venice, and His Grace danced continuously for sixteen hours, while the knights and legates from three empires and four kingdoms, as well as others who had come from city-states and princedoms, turned pale or fell over from overexertion. Around dawn they had to send men into town to waken some of the big-boned wenches who sold vegetables and carried barrels of fish on their heads and to decorate them with silk and gold and peacock feathers to dance with this king from the land of the polar bear, as Denmark is called in Venice, since by then the noble ladies of that city-state were either on the verge of collapse or had already sunk to the floor.