The Greenlanders (55 page)

Even so, food was even scarcer in the south, and Sira Audun made presents of the food in one of his packs to all the nuns at the nunnery, who numbered seven, and when folk nearby learned that the nuns had some food, they came begging for a portion of it, and so the nuns gave it all away. Sira Audun said three masses there on Sunday, and two more on the days after, and at every mass, all prayed fervently for relief. The next day, Sira Audun made the short trip to Vagar Church, and there met his nephew Eindridi and the boy Andres.

And now it was the evening before the second Sunday in Lent, and Sira Audun prepared himself to receive the confessions of the folk around Vagar Church, but few came, and those who came seemed to drag themselves through the snow and they spoke in the faintest of voices, both women and men. Now Sira Audun turned to Eindridi, and asked if conditions were indeed so bad as this, that men could not bring themselves to church without risking death, and Eindridi said that conditions were actually worse, since many could not get out of their bedclosets to look into the bedclosets of their children or their parents, so weak were they. And so Sira Audun spoke a hurried mass in the morning, and then went around to the farms in the Vagar Church district, visiting folk, saying prayers, and doling out bits of food from the second pack Vigdis had given him. There would be plenty at Herjolfsnes, Sira Audun felt certain, and he gave with a liberal hand. Even so, some folk of the district had already died, and more were so far gone that bits of cheese or dried meat could do nothing for them but please the tongue. And so Sira Audun stayed for a longer time than he had expected in the district around Vagar Church, and on the last day there he went without food entirely, though he gave some to Ingvald. At last he set out for Herjolfsnes, and on the way there, he and his servingman spoke at length and without ceasing of meals they had eaten, and Sira Audun made up the following verse:

A stew of seal and hare, and a cup of milk
And a morsel of cheese, some butter and dried sealmeat
,
My heart remembers every bite since my mother
First chewed my meat for me
.

And so they came to Herjolfsnes, and as it happened, conditions were little better there than they had been elsewhere, but the wife there had put by a welcoming feast for the priest, for when he should get there, and Sira Audun and his servingman ate this with relish and thanks.

At Gardar, just after the departure of Sira Audun, Sira Pall Hallvardsson got up one morning and went outside to wash, as he always did, and there before him in the dark was an array of men, and at once he saw that they were armed. Bjorn Bollason, who carried a crossbow, stepped up to him, and said in a mild tone of voice, “We have come to help you assure the orderly distribution of the bishop’s stores, for indeed, the Greenlanders are desperate for sustenance and neither God nor the bishop can continue to turn his face away.”

Now it began to lighten, and Pall Hallvardsson saw about two score men standing about in a semicircle, and all of these men were friends of Bjorn Bollason, and powerful men, both of Brattahlid district and Dyrnes. Pall Hallvardsson said, “Even so, the southern districts are not represented, and the bishop must look equally upon everyone.”

Bjorn Bollason smiled at the easy success of his plan, and then spoke to certain of his men, who ran to the Gardar boats that were moored at the Einars Fjord jetty. The next day, powerful men began appearing in boats from every district, even Herjolfsnes district, and on that day, Pall Hallvardsson had the stones that sealed up the storehouses taken down, and the stores broken open, and it was the case that men trampled over the wadmal and sheepskins to get at the stores of deer meat and seal meat, and rendered blubber and dried mutton and dried beef and the many cheeses, goat and sheep as well as cow cheeses. After the first storehouse was emptied, the walls of the second were taken down on two sides, and that one was emptied, as well, and in spite of Bjorn Bollason’s promise, the plundering of the storehouses was disorderly in the extreme, and indeed, Bjorn Bollason himself was in the forefront of the raid, for this is what Pall Hallvardsson considered it, although he made no attempt at defense, and only stood aside as the stocks of ten years were taken out.

Bjorn Bollason and his men were much impressed with the abundance of food at Gardar, and when it was all given out and taken away, Bjorn Bollason came to Sira Pall Hallvardsson and said, “I expected to find a mouthful for everyone and found instead a week of feasts. All your extra prayers have done naught for the Greenlanders compared to these actions of ours. Men go away thanking the benevolence of the bishop, for which the bishop should be grateful.”

Pall Hallvardsson replied only, “Time will show where gratitude should lodge,” and he turned away from Bjorn Bollason and went to his chamber. The case was that he, too, had been much surprised by the quantity of reserves, but indeed, after all these years of Sira Jon’s madness, he still hadn’t solved the puzzle of the bookkeeping, and each winter the time he spent huddled over those pages, either reading Sira Jon’s hand or making his own confusing and incomplete entries grew less and less. He did not know as much about these things as he had at Hvalsey Fjord, when at least he had looked daily into the two cupboards, and Sira Jon had looked twice a year at his offerings. At Gardar he could not even frighten himself with the thought of the coming bishop, or of a ship removing all of the obligated stores to Nidaros, for indeed, after so many years, who would know what was to be expected, or how much the tithes would amount to? And so, perhaps, he had spent even less time over the books in the previous winter than before. Perhaps he had spent no time at all, but only said to Olof and Petur and everyone else who came to him to do as they thought best, and use what they had to, and perhaps he had taken all of the tithes from all of the farms without looking at them very closely, or asking after the sheep and the seal hunt—those probing questions that Sira Jon had been so good at and that had made him detest the Greenlanders, who always seemed to be reserving something, even the smallest part of their due. Perhaps they were, perhaps they only appeared to be, as he himself had always told the other priest. But what man, who had not the eye of God, could see how much there was and how much was really owed? In the abbey where he had grown up, a score of monks had spent their days traveling about the abbey lands and reporting the activities of every peasant, every cow, every pig, so that when a peasant brought in his rent or his tithe, the abbot could say, “There is nothing here from that field of barley you planted at the edge of the forest,” or, less often, “The illness of your wife brought hardship during the harvest, and you have paid too much here.” Such was not the case in Greenland, where the priest knew nothing about a farmer’s success except what the farmer himself told him. But indeed, all of this carelessness little mattered, as there had been so much of everything. Perhaps, Sira Pall Hallvardsson thought, it was not only uncounted, but also uncountable.

Sira Pall Hallvardsson sat in the high seat in the great hall and looked out into the dimly lit room, and saw this, that the Greenlanders would remember the prayers and masses he had said, and the broth he had given out and the meals he had given to the servants and such pilgrims as came by, and they would take them as deceptions, meant to hide a mountain of provisions and greed for hoarding them, and he wished, only for a moment, that there had been less abundance, or that it had been stored differently, or that men’s eyes hadn’t widened in disbelief at the sight.

He got up and went to the door of Sira Jon’s room, and put his ear to it and listened. From inside he heard a scratching and swishing sound that he could not recognize, but when he pushed open the door, he saw the lunatic priest sitting quietly, as he always did, and awaiting him. Sira Jon, although just of an age with Sira Pall Hallvardsson, seemed to everyone to be older, for his beard and his hair were nearly all gray and his eyebrows grew in great gray tufts, like those of old men. He was squatting by the wall, with his hands in his sleeves, but now he presented his finger to be kissed, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson kissed it. Sira Jon peered at him, and then said, “I see that you will have to be bound today, for your mood is gloomy and inward. Such days are your worst.”

“And your mood?”

“No mood has come to him today. He has eaten nothing in three days. He is especially good.” Sira Jon always referred to his earthly corpus as if it were another man, unruly and capricious. Sira Pall Hallvardsson had seen him denounce this corpus in the roundest tones, vividly depicting the hellfire it was bent upon achieving.

“Surely he has had a drink of water?”

“The merest mouthful. And then he pissed it away at once.”

“May I feel his arm?”

“His arm is indeed thin, but not too thin.” Sira Jon’s eyes widened, and he began to breathe heavily. “You may not feel it. It is not too thin. I am watching him closely.” They fell silent. Sira Jon regained his composure, and after a bit said, “I see you have let these Greenlanders get by you. They are a devilish lot, indeed.”

Sira Pall Hallvardsson smiled and said, “How have they gotten by me, then?”

“How should I know? There’s no telling. You are a simple fellow. They play upon your sensibilities though they have none themselves.”

“They are starving.” This was the first Pall Hallvardsson had spoken of the famine to the other priest.

“If that were true, it would be good for them. But if they tell you of it, it can’t be true.”

“They creep into church and their arms and hands are like birch twigs lashed together, and also their faces are without flesh.”

“These Greenlanders can do as they please with their flesh. It is not so long since I myself have seen them turn into devils and fetches. They may come to you all honey soft and full of prayers, but when they round the corner of the cathedral, those who crept along stand up straight and those who sucked in their cheeks let them out again. I have seen it enough. I don’t have to be there to know it is happening. I am reminded of something that Bishop Alf saw when he was a boy in Stavanger district.”

Pall Hallvardsson settled himself for the tale, as the fantastic adventures of Bishop Alf often formed a theme of Sira Jon’s talk, even though Pall Hallvardsson happened to know that the former bishop had lived a life that was dry and bureaucratic in the extreme before coming to Greenland. But the mad priest kept silent, perhaps meditating upon his tale, but not telling it. He said no more, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson went off a while later.

The bishop’s stores of food spread like a balm through the eastern settlement, from Isafjord to Herjolfsnes. Some folk spoke of the largess of the bishopric, but more folk talked of how Bjorn Bollason had looked on as the men brought out the stores, and how he had made certain that men from every district got a share equal to the numbers of folk they estimated still to be alive in that district, and when some men from his own district of Dyrnes had attempted to steal more for themselves, Bjorn Bollason himself had taken it from them and given it to the party from Hvalsey Fjord. At the last, when the food was loaded into the sledges and the skiers were about to set off, Bjorn Bollason had gone around to each sledge and greeted everyone by name, for he had a prodigious memory for names, and he had reminded everyone of the thanks that were due to God and the bishopric, for these provisions were the belongings of God Himself, and therefore especially wholesome, and this was generally considered a fine sentiment.

While Eyvind and the men from Isafjord were away at Gardar, Brenna Eyvindsdottir died in her bed of the coughing ill, and Freydis and Margret carried her corpus out of the steading and put it into a snowbank. Freydis was much cast down by this death, for it seemed to her that if Eyvind had gone away sooner, or returned more quickly, Brenna would have been saved, and it was in vain that Margret told her that Brenna had died of the sickness and not of the hunger. So it was that Freydis was very bitter toward Eyvind when he returned, and as bitter toward the provisions he brought with him, so that when they were put out upon the table and the family was ready to eat them, she swept them to the floor with her arm and began to scream.

It was the case that Eyvind had been on skis for three days since leaving Gardar, a trip which customarily went quickly in the winter. The parties from the north, weak from the famine, had encountered snow and bad weather, so that they had gotten lost between Brattahlid and Isafjord. Now, when Freydis began screeching, Eyvind grabbed her shoulders and shook her, and when she fell to the floor, he carried her out to the cowbyre, where the sheep were huddling in the warm dung, and he left her there, for he was much vexed at her. Afterward, he came in and sat down at his place and began to eat, and he made the others, Margret, Finna, and the two servingmen, eat as well, and as they were very hungry, they needed little encouragement. He said, “Freydis will soon come to herself and come scratching at the door.” But the mealtime passed, and the folk went to their bedclosets, and Freydis did not come scratching at the door, so that Finna went to her father, and asked him to go out after the girl, but he would not, so much did he abominate the child’s pride and willfulness. And so everyone, even Margret, who greatly feared the outcome of this fight, fell into a doze, as folk do when they have just eaten well for the first time in many days, and in the morning Freydis still had not come in, although the door to the steading was not barred in any way.

Now Margret got up and she saw that Eyvind was putting on his sheepskin, and he smiled at her, and said, “She would not be an Eyvindsdottir if her pride did not match mine, but I suspect that her remorse will match mine, as well,” and he went out carrying some dried whalemeat and some bits of cheese, and he did not come in for a long while. Margret went about her tasks, and the others began to stir, and still Eyvind did not come in, and so Margret donned her cloak and went out into the yard. Eyvind and Freydis were not to be seen, although there was much crying of sheep from the cowbyre. Margret approached slowly. The door was ajar. She opened it a little more, and it seemed to her that some sights could not be prepared for and that this would be one of them. Inside the door, Eyvind squatted in the warm sheep dung. Above him, in the half light of the warm, turfed-up byre, Freydis hung by her neck from a beam, and she was dead. Now Eyvind began to cry out and weep with such violence as she had never seen before. He rent his clothing, and hammered his head against the stones of the byre, and the sheep ran about his legs and raised a great riot. He cried out that she was his favorite, his snow bunting, his darling, his baby, and Margret saw that he was afraid to touch the maiden’s corpus. And at this sight, tears started from Margret’s eyes for what she thought might be the first time in her life. Then the servingmen came out to begin their work, and Finna followed them, but none could get near Eyvind or Freydis, so wild was the father at the daughter’s death.