The Greenlanders (84 page)

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 shipmaster 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 ship, and they fought with the Greenlanders for two winters about driftage rights, and in the end they burnt the ship 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 friendship 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 friendship 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 grass, 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 assembly 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 ship 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 furnishings 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 glass, 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 Ashild 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 grass, and only those steadings with large systems of streams and canals 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 assembly 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.

It was the case that Gunnar had not actually visited Gunnars Stead since removing himself to Lavrans Stead—that is, for the entire life of Kollgrim Gunnarsson, some thirty winters—and when he and Jon Andres and the servingmen came on their horses around the hillside, and the broad fields of Gunnars Stead with their peaceful buildings lay spread before him, he stopped and gazed and knew not what to say, for indeed, the steading had a wide and pleasant aspect. The blue of the sky was cast back by the blue of the lakes that dotted the fields, and the ancient water system ran through the thick grass, glinting here and there. The great hillside where he had gone to gather blueberries with Margret, and where he had later gone to kill Skuli Gudmundsson, rose, pale and serene, off to the west, and the sun shone upon it. Now he gave his horse a little kick, and the animal trotted into the scene that Gunnar had just been gazing upon, and it seemed to him that he was indeed an unlucky man, but that his ill luck had always taken this lovely shape, so that as it destroyed him, still he clutched it to his breast.

Kollgrim took no interest in their plans for his defense, and they got little satisfaction from him, and so, though they lingered through the day, at last, toward evening, all agreed that there was no more to be said on this subject. Gunnar and Jon Andres returned to Ketils Stead for the night. And now, after their evening meat, when Helga and the child Gunnhild had gone to their bedcloset, and all of the servants as well, Gunnar and Jon Andres sat on the slope that looked from the steading down toward the water of the lake.

Gunnar said, “It seems to me that I have never told you a tale, although it is my habit to tell such tales as I know.”

Jon Andres looked at him with some pleasure, and said, “It would please me to hear such a tale as you might have told my Helga when she was a child.”

“I will tell this one, then. It is said by folk that some seventy-five winters ago, when my father Asgeir was a boy and folk still lived on the farmsteads of the western settlement, there was a certain man there named Kari, who went out one spring and slew a great she-bear, the greatest that was ever taken in Greenland. This bear was some ten ells from nose to tail and stood on her hind legs as tall as two men. But her cub, which Kari saw after he had made the kill, was as tiny as a puppy, and so Kari, who was a softhearted fellow after all, forbore to kill it, and took it home with him. But instead of putting it in the byre, he brought it into the steading. Now Kari’s wife, whose name was Hjordis, had a new baby at the breast, and Kari gave her the following choice, she could either suckle the bear and the child together, or she could milk herself and and feed the bear through an eagle’s quill, as folk do when a child is unable to suck. This woman Hjordis was a lazy and not very particular sort of person, and so she chose to suckle the bear and the child together.”

Gunnar’s voice was nearly a whisper, as if he were speaking to children huddled together in the bedcloset, and Jon Andres moved closer and closed his eyes, for indeed, he had had a fondness for tales as a boy, though gossip had been more the rule with Vigdis and Erlend than tales had been.

“Now the baby and the bear grew apace, and each looked at the other while they were suckling, and each thought that the other was his brother, or himself, and the two began to chatter to each other, bear and boy. Kari was rather pleased with this, and Hjordis, too, but the priest of the parish was less pleased, for men must look upward to the angels, rather than downward to the beasts. Even so, Kari and Hjordis paid little attention to the priest. They named the bear Bjorn, and the boy’s name was Ulf. It happened that after the bear came, Hjordis had no more children, and so they looked upon these two as their children.