The Greenlanders (47 page)

And in the middle of the summer, a boat came from Brattahlid, from Sira Isleif, who sent word that he was now entirely blind and confined within doors, for the light gave him throbbing headaches, but he sent his goodwill to Margret and also a boatload of dried sealmeat from the hunt, which had been especially good this year. He also said that he would send another boatload of reindeer meat in the autumn. The servant had much gossip of Ragnleif and Gudrunn, who, he said, were not suited to each other, but happy enough in the size of their farm, and this was what kept them together. Sira Isleif, he said, was so little thought of by Gudrunn, in spite of the fact that he was Ragnleif’s brother, that sometimes he didn’t even get his dinner, as an oversight, and then when someone pointed it out, Gudrunn would say, “Well, he can eat more in the morning, then,” and not let any of the servants rectify the matter. It was true that Sira Isleif had become a querulous and complaining dependent who had little to contribute to the work on the steading, but indeed, there was too much work, with all the fields, no respite from raking manure, manuring the fields, forking it in, repairing fences, herding sheep, making cheese. Too few servants and too much land.

Now Margret wondered aloud whether Gudrunn might need some help in the autumn, but the servingman gazed upon her skeptically and said that she should go elsewhere, for all of Marta Thordardottir’s former favorites had a hard time of it, and were blamed for everything that went wrong, and Ragnleif had no control over this, or over much else, even the treatment of his only remaining daughter by his first wife, who acted the part of a servant herself, though she was but ten years old. Now they sat silently for a while, and then Margret said aloud, “How was it that Sira Isleif could send such a quantity of sealmeat, then?”

The servingman shrugged and smiled. After a moment, he said, “Sira Isleif has one or two friends among the servingfolk, it might be said, who have their own schemes for this and that.”

“But Gudrunn Jonsdottir will be angry with you.”

“But indeed, there is plenty of work to do about the place, and experience is valuable. She will only be angry, she won’t act upon her anger.”

Now their talk turned to others. Among the guests about the place recently, the new lawspeaker had turned up and been greatly honored. He was a very young man, not more than twenty-five winters or so, this Bjorn Bollason. Already he had a daughter and two sons by his wife, who was some five winters older than he. He was a proud man, well dressed and haughty, but for all that much interested in Sira Isleif, with whom he had spent most of his visit, and it turned out that Sira Isleif had been teaching him some of the laws, for he did not know half of what he needed to know. It was said that Gudrunn planned to send Sira Isleif to the man in the winter, since he was so fond of him, and Sira Isleif was not loath to go. But nothing of these things had actually been spoken aloud, only in whispers among the servants. “However low folk have fallen,” said the servingman, whose hair was gray and who had a habit of rubbing his fingers, for they were afflicted with the joint ill, “sending away a priest and a brother and a blind man into the care of strangers is still something they hesitate before doing.”

After the servingman departed, with a promise to listen for word of any farms that needed servants during the winter, Margret told Sigurd that she felt uncommonly low, for this was the effect of unexpected company, to leave you more in silence than you had been, and farther from others. Such a thing as this Margret could not remember ever having spoken of to anyone, not even Skuli Gudmundsson, for she had always been of a taciturn bent, so much so that all the folk she had ever known complained of it, but indeed, unlike all the folk she had ever known, Sigurd was nearly as reticent as she was, and so if talk was to be made, she had to help make it.

Also unlike all the folk she had ever known, Sigurd occasionally aroused her to anger, and most often it happened in the same way, that the boy would take a notion to do something and would not be moved from this, no matter what sort of work needed to be begun or finished about the steading. One time, Margret had finished milking the ewes and had set the milk on the shady side of the steading, and was ready to go off with the sheep to their pasture. One of the younger ewes took a fright, for Margret made a noise behind her, and she veered away from where the others were standing, and Margret looked about for Sigurd to herd the beast back in. She saw that the boy had taken to pitching stones into the water and called him over, but indeed, he had no intention of stopping his game, or even acknowledging her shout, but stood there tossing rocks as if entranced. Another instance, later in the summer, took place in the early morning, when the boy would not rise from his bed, but lay there with his eyes open, ignoring her, and on this occasion she gave in to the temptation to strike him, not, after all, when he refused to help her, but when he showed no interest in his morning meat. But indeed, he went his own way even so, as all folk do, whether they are fully grown or not, and Margret resolved upon no more blows.

Shortly after this incident, Quimiak reappeared. He was now a much changed fellow, no longer with anything of a boy about him, and on his upper lip he sported a few long threads of mustache in the skraeling fashion. His furs were very rich. He bounded up the hill as Margret was folding the sheep for the night and without speaking to her, for skraelings do not like to look at or speak to women if they don’t have to, he searched all about the steading, and opened the door of the little house. Margret saw that he was looking for Asta and Bryndis, and she gestured to him that they were dead of sickness. Now he stood there staring at her for a long moment, and it seemed to Margret that he was much disturbed by this news. Just then, Sigurd came from behind the steading.

Now Quimiak smiled broadly, as if surprised, and Margret saw that he had understood the boy to be dead, as well. Sigurd, not being used to visitors, perhaps, or not recognizing the skraeling, ran over to Margret and pressed against her robe. At this, Quimiak stepped up to her and took the boy by the shoulders and pulled him away from her and turned him about, and Margret said, “Indeed, child, you must stand up straight, for this is your father, whom you have seen many times before and should remember.” Quimiak was much pleased with the boy, and pinched his flesh between his forefinger and thumb, then ran his hand down the boy’s side, then put his hand on top of the boy’s head, and regarded how tall Sigurd was. Then he began talking in the skraeling tongue and smiling. After this, he pulled something from underneath his fur shirt, and this was a smaller shirt, in the same style as his own, and made of white rabbit and blue fox skins sewn together in a pattern of chevrons. This he handed to Sigurd, who looked at Margret as he took it. Margret said, “This is a handsome gift, Sigurd, and your father has brought it to you from the Northsetur or the eastern lands. Other children do not have such things.” Sigurd thanked Quimiak in the Norse tongue, and Quimiak seemed to understand the gist of his reply.

Now Quimiak held out his hand, and, with a look at Margret, Sigurd placed his within it. Thinking that this was some sort of skraeling custom, Margret nodded and smiled, but then she was surprised to see Quimiak begin half to lead and half to drag Sigurd down the hillside toward his skin boat. When Sigurd balked, Quimiak picked him up with ease and began to carry him. At this, Sigurd began to shout to Margret, but it was as if she could not respond or move, as if she were entranced by a spell, and she suddenly remembered the same sensation from the killing of Skuli Gudmundsson as freshly as if that death were but a day old and not some sixteen summers in the past. It was not until they were nearly at the boat that it came to her that she could run after them, and so she did, across the trackless willow scrub that caught at her feet and made her stumble, and she, too, was crying out, but Quimiak paid no heed, and simply put the screaming boy into the skin boat. Margret fell down and got up again, and by the time she was to the water, the skin boat was far out into the fjord, and Sigurd’s frightened voice came back to her, amplified by the water, calling for her to come and to save him and to help him, and the sound of these cries lasted almost as long as she could see the boat.

In this same summer, a pair of messengers came to St. Birgitta’s church from Gardar, and they were the steward Petur and the servingwoman Olof, and they spoke to Sira Pall Hallvardsson for an afternoon, an evening, and a morning, and the result was that Sira Pall Hallvardsson got into the Gardar boat and returned with them to the bishop’s residence. It could not be said that the Hvalsey Fjord folk were much surprised by these events, but they were put out even so, as they had become used to much activity about the church, and more than a few of the farmers visited Sira Pall Hallvardsson rather often.

When Sira Pall Hallvardsson came to Gardar, he found Sira Jon locked in his chamber, as Olof had said he would, and when Olof unlocked the door and he went in, Sira Pall Hallvardsson’s nose turned at the odor of the tiny place. Sira Jon had nothing on, and his flesh was covered with scratches that he had made with his own fingernails before Olof had had the sense to cut them. When Sira Pall Hallvardsson entered, Sira Jon, who had been sitting by the wall, stood up and approached with his old haughty manner. Sira Pall Hallvardsson greeted him. He had never seen a man go naked in Greenland except to swim in the hot springs of the south, such was the coolness of the climate. Now Sira Jon gave him the episcopal kiss on his cheek and held out his hand for Sira Pall Hallvardsson to kiss. To get down upon his knee and kiss the other man’s ring, or in this case, his finger, for there was no ring, was something Sira Pall Hallvardsson had never been asked to do before. He did it with difficulty, for his knees were much affected by the joint ill. The mad priest stood shamelessly and apparently unchilled, for his arms hung loosely at his sides though his skin was bluish. Sira Pall Hallvardsson rose to his feet. The top of his head brushed a beam of the ceiling.

Now Sira Jon said, “Welcome, then, Pall Hallvardsson. You are come to ask for money, I suspect, as you are always wanting to improve your church at the expense of everything else in the bishopric.”

“No, indeed, the church is in good repair, and even the priest’s house is—”

“It was a sight to see, indeed.”

“What was that?”

“After they carried him out, such rot! Mice were living in the bedcloset, and indeed, making use of his hair for their nests and his clothing for their litters. Folk say he was a hundred and fifty years old, and she wasn’t far behind. They say that only such a disease as the vomiting ill could have killed him, because of the relics in the church.”

“The relics in the church?”

“Those stolen from Gardar when Bishop Arni died. That’s why they lived so long. They kept the relics in their bedcloset. The bedcloset glowed from the holy radiance. Many people saw it. But then some mice carried off the relics to their nesting site away from the steading, and the vomiting ill came on, and they were as mortal as anyone, the demons.” Now he began to laugh.

“These tales seem to me to be rumors inflated by the passage of time. It is true that Sira Nikolaus and his wife lived in poor conditions and to a great age, but everything folk say about them is not truth.”

“Indeed?” Sira Jon smiled. “Well, it is a habit of yours to tell me what is true and what is false, and to correct me at every turn, and to contradict everything I say, with that respectful tone, and to deny me. False humility and priggishness are sins, as well.”

“As well as what?”

“No doubt you would like to know, for it is generally thought that you are a nosy fellow.”

“Would it soothe you to have confession, or to pray with me?”

“Even the boards were rotten, and chewed away by mice. And listen to this. The dogs were gnawing on their bones.”

“Sira Nikolaus didn’t keep any dogs.” And so the conversation went on in this vein, sometimes about Sira Nikolaus and sometimes about how Pall Hallvardsson had betrayed Sira Jon at every turn in the last twenty-five years. What seemed most peculiar to Pall Hallvardsson was not the other priest’s manner, or even, in the end, his nakedness, but the persuasiveness of his case against himself, for indeed, he saw now that his secret sin for all these years had been the pleasure he took in setting the other man right, in undermining his self-confidence and stature among the Greenlanders. Even, perhaps, in seeing him go wrong with them and then turn away in amusement. At last Sira Jon asked Pall Hallvardsson what he was lingering for, and Pall Hallvardsson went off to find Sira Audun.

Now when he had knocked twice upon Sira Audun’s door without any response and was turning away to seek him elsewhere, Olof appeared and said to him in a low voice, “Indeed, he is in there, but he will say that he was sleeping, or he didn’t hear you knocking so softly, or he was sunk in his work, or he was at prayer. You must beat upon the door so that in the end he cannot stand it any longer and knows that he can’t wait you out.” And she approached the door and struck it with great force over and over, and after some two dozen blows, the door opened a bit and Sira Audun peeped out. When he saw Olof, he opened his mouth to speak, but when he saw Pall Hallvardsson, he stepped back and allowed him in. When Olof looked as though she, too, might enter, he closed the door hastily in her face.

Sira Audun’s was a cell Pall Hallvardsson had not visited before, and, though small, it was very neatly contrived, with a small lamp for light, a large lamp for heat, an old door set up as a desk, and a pleasantly carved three-legged stool beside it. The dirt floor was covered with two layers of reindeer skins, and more furs were piled in the corner for a bed. Some hooks had been made of antler pieces, and Sira Audun’s other robe and some additional clothing hung from these. In a line on a shelf that occurred naturally in the stone wall were a series of figures carved out of walrus teeth. These numbered thirteen, and Pall Hallvardsson could see that they were Christ and His apostles, each carrying his particular emblem, two crossed keys, a winged lion, but they were dressed as Greenlanders. Pall Hallvardsson stood admiring them. It soon became apparent that each man wished the other to speak first. At length Sira Audun said, “I was sleeping, for I have been to the churches of the south. Indeed, I am set to go to Dyrnes tomorrow or the day after.”