The Greenlanders (99 page)

Soon enough there was nothing left at Gardar, and the Bristol men went on to their ships, and began to sail out of Einars Fjord, and as they went, they stopped in many places along the strand, where there were steadings on the hillsides, and they raided these places, as well, and one of these steadings was Ketils Stead. All of the animals were stolen, and all of the furnishings stolen or destroyed, and the turves torn from the walls of the buildings, and the stores in the storehouses taken or fouled or tipped out of their vats. Jon Andres had not hoped to defend his steading, for he had no weapons and no men for it, but he stood in the hills and looked down upon the devastation, and wondered at the ferocity of the Bristol men. And though it was the case that Ketils Stead had belonged to someone of his lineage since the time of Erik the Red, he watched the destruction rather coolly, and it seemed to him that the death of Helga had tempered his spirit and prepared him to endure any other loss.

Gunnars Stead, where Johanna and the servingfolk had gone with the children, was far enough from the fjord so as not to attract the gaze or the interest of the Bristol men, and so escaped untouched, but there was this misadventure. On that day when the Bristol men plundered Ketils Stead, Margret Asgeirsdottir went out of the steading for her usual venture into the hills, and no one thought to stop her, for indeed, with the children and the servingfolk from Ketils Stead, everything was in great disarray. When Jon Andres returned to Gunnars Stead with the news of what had been taken or demolished on his steading, there was much consternation, so that it was not until nightfall that Gunnar thought to seek Margret in the hills, and even then he did not think much about it, for danger is hard to see even when it is upon one. But now, in the long blue twilight, he donned his vest and went with one of the servingmen in the direction Margret was used to going, and as soon as he set his foot on this path, he realized that it could easily have taken her to the strand, and toward the Ketils Stead lands, and he was sorely afraid, and began to run.

Now he and the servingman looked frantically among the birch and willow scrub, and paused from time to time to listen for cries or moans, but at first they saw nothing and heard nothing. Soon enough, they had a view of the fjord, where white icebergs floated silently in the dark water, and then they had a view of the remains of Ketils Stead, and still they saw nothing, and Gunnar was tempted to have hope, and he sent the servingman back to Gunnars Stead to see if Margret had returned. But, indeed, there was her cloak, dark in the gathering dusk, and beneath was her corpus, and much had been done to it in the way of hacking and poking. Even so, her head was still upon her neck, and her face was whole and recognizable, and her long braids coiled about her in the grass. Now he knelt down in the grass and willow scrub, and he wept as only old men weep who have no hope left.

And it was the case that in his weeping, he cursed the hearts of the Bristol men, that gave them to do such injury. And after that he cursed his own heart, for he, too, had turned his mind and his strength to such killing as this. Eight men had fallen by his hand, and through his enmity, and he made himself think carefully upon their names: Skuli Gudmundsson, Ketil the Unlucky, Hallvard Erlendsson, Kollbein Erlendsson, Bjorn Bollason, Sigurd Bjornsson, Hoskuld Bjornsson, and Arni Bjornsson, and then he fell upon his face in the grass, and he wept for these eight men, all of them his enemies, all of them who had done him injury, but all of them men. And then he saw what he was, an old man, ready to die, pressed against the Greenland earth, as small as an ash berry on the face of a mountain, and he did the only thing that men can do when they know themselves, which was to weep and weep and weep.

Epilogue

After the destruction of Gardar and of most of the steadings that looked upon the fjords of the south, news between the districts was slow, and every district turned in upon itself. Cattle and sheep that had been few enough were fewer still, and the same was true of men and boats. Some things were said: that women and children in Hvalsey Fjord had been left without men entirely, and had gone off with the skraelings; that the conflicts in Brattahlid district intensified after the visitation of the Bristol men, and all the families were in a turmoil of accusations and retaliations; that if the coming winter was a hard one, few households would get through it, but indeed, this was said every year, and no man could judge in advance whether it would be true or not.

Margret Asgeirsdottir was buried with as much of a ceremony as Jon Andres and Gunnar between them could remember, next to Helga Gunnarsdottir in the lee of Undir Hofdi church, though no services had been held there in six or eight winters. Jon Andres and Johanna and their children and servingfolk reclaimed such belongings as they could from Ketils Stead, and moved to Gunnars Stead. Folk no longer considered it lucky to live in view of the fjord, in case the Bristol men should return. Gunnars Stead prospered well enough. The fields were wide, still, and well watered, though folk were on their own now, without support from Gardar, and without many neighbors. Inside, there was the rubbing of elbows that many people on one steading have with one another. Gunnar was not sanguine. One winter or another, he thought, would surely kill them all. Onto his parchment he wrote such sentences as occurred to him.

In the winter, as always in Greenland, every day was much the same, and every night. About the eaves, the snowy wind howled, but was muffled by the turfing. Snow mounded against the door, pressing it closed so that two men, or three, must press it open in the morning. The children sat in the bedcloset, by the light of a seal oil lamp, and played or slept. Jon Andres and Johanna sat over the chessboard, for folk may not contemplate their fates all the time, and must play as well as work. The great loom, upon which Margret Asgeirsdottir had woven her lengths of wadmal, and before her Helga Ingvadottir, and before her Maria Steinsdottir, and before her Asta Palssdottir, and many generations of wives before them, cast its black shadow across the wall. In front of Gunnar, on the table, the small seal oil lamp that he used flickered and burned for a moment more dimly and for a moment more brightly. He thought of going to his bedcloset and huddling under the old bearskin that his uncle Hauk Gunnarsson had left him, but then Johanna looked up from the game, with her cool and serious countenance, and said, “My father, it is very silent, except for the wind. You might enliven us with a tale.” And the children peeped out of the bedcloset, and Gunnar told his tale.