The Snow on the Cross (21 page)

I spent most of that dark winter
wrapped in prayer in my church.  Thordhild would come when the weather
permitted and we prayed together.  Whether or not Thordhild converted out of
fear for her own safety no longer mattered.  Her faith was at least as strong
as my own, and she was devout in her beliefs.  Each day she came, bringing me
bowls of food or pitchers of mead to shake the chill off, she gave me reports
on Eirik’s health.

His cough was not as persistent as it
was, and he seemed to be gaining some strength.  It was a mixture of good and
bad news.  As much as I despised Eirik the Red, he could not die and take the
girl with him.

“Has he mentioned me?” I asked
Thordhild.

“Some.  He told me he is impressed
that you’re surviving the winter.”

I would not have survived the winter
if Thordhild and Malyn had not been taking care of me and seeing to my needs. 
To them I was endlessly thankful, but my thankfulness seemed balanced only by
my selfishness.  I simply did not want Malyn to die, and I kept feeling that
same plaguing emotion I felt when I saw her and Leif looking at one another.  I
would not call it love, or even lust.  Perhaps I had been too sheltered by my
church, but I hated Eirik for choosing when the girl would die.

I had never hated anyone my entire
life until I arrived in
Greenland
.  Being a Bishop of Le Mans, I was
filled with the helpfulness and kindness that go with that position.  I rarely
ventured away from my church, but I had many visitors, and I greeted each one
of them with love and respect, even the peasants who came to confession. 
Although I felt I could not help them with their troubles, I never hated any of
them, nor blamed them for interrupting my daily routines.  It was a part of the
life one has when one is devoted solely to the church.  Even when I heard the
first tales of the Viking attacks, how could I have hated them?  I was curious
about them and distraught at what they did to my people, but they were an enemy
with no face, and so I could not hate them.  I could pray for them, bless them,
give them absolution for their sins, but I could not hate them.

But Eirik the Red I hated.  And at
the risk of incurring the wrath of my own God, I longed for the day that would
see him in hell.  But he could not die.  It was foolish of me to think he would
live forever, after all, the man rode carelessly into many numbers of battles. 
Any stray arrow or spear could have found him and struck him down.  Now he was
sick, and that was a different story.  The Vikings assumed he was dying, as did
Thordhild.  I refused to think about his imminent death, and what it would mean
to Malyn.

Would my selfishness have been the
cause of Malyn’s death?  It was a question I asked myself many times over.  I
could have put her on the ship with Leif, but I did not.  I began to think the
constant darkness of the winter was playing shadows over my very soul, and it
was a decision that haunted me every day until now. 

I had seen death many times.  I
watched the first wave of peasants coming to my cathedral after the first
Viking attacks, dying there on my floor, their arms raised, asking for
absolution.  Bjarni’s head, rolling across the ice plain at my feet, my
brothers ripped apart during the battle on the Isle of Kells, these deaths,
while they saddened me, did not fill me with the kind of despair that was
agonizing me about Malyn.  I could not love her; it was a sin for me.  Yes, I
could love her as a child of God, but not in a physical sense.  Not ever.  My
vows were sacred, although I had known certain friars in my country who were
known to take liberties with the ladies in their flocks, they were hypocrites,
and they did not heed the vows made to the Lord.

I would look out of my window and see
the girl there on Brattahild, wrapped tightly against the snow, gathering
sticks or dung, or even feeding the livestock, and I wondered sometimes if I
should resign my position as a bishop and apply for the title of a friar.

                                                                           ***

Later, when the snowfall ceased for
more than two days in a row, Malyn came bounding down to my church, her face
glowing from the cold air.  I ushered her in and sat her near the fire.

“Eirik’s cough is gone,” she
reported.  “He was up today, walking around his home.  Already, the color has
returned to his face, and he seems to be recovering fully.”  She looked at my
face, which I assume looked either distressed or unhappy.  “This is good news,
right?”

I nodded.  “Of course it is,” I
said.  “Very good news, indeed.”

I thought about what Eirik would say
to me now that he had recovered on his own, without any help from God.  Would
he kill me now that I had not proven I had the sway of his life or death in my
power?

It was as I had feared.  Eirik came
to my door, pounding on it, shouting for me a few days later.  I slowly opened
the door, wishing I had my dagger handy, for I had glanced out the window and
saw the Viking, axe in hand, as he came to me.  It would have marked the first
time Eirik himself had come to my church, even though he was the man who had
built it.

“Eirik, greetings,” I remarked as I
opened the door, hesitating whether or not to open it the entire way.

But a hand reached in, hooked onto
the front of my robe, and I felt myself being dragged out into the snow.  The
snow immediately saturated my clothes, and I began shaking as the wetness froze
against my skin.  I got to my feet as quickly as I could to prevent any more wetness
from seeping in, but the damage had already been done, and it would take me
days to warm up again.

Eirik took the cross from over my
church door and held it up for me.  “I told you,” he rumbled.  “Your God
apparently has decided to let me live after all.”  He hurled the cross away
from him.  It sailed end over end and plopped in a deep drift vanishing from
sight.  I tried to mark where it had landed for later retrieval, but Eirik had
me and was shaking me profusely.

“Your mission here is ended,” he told
me, jarring me so violently I thought my head would detach from my shoulders. 
“I have no use for you.  My gods, not yours, have seen me through my illness. 
An emissary has come from
France
with a
message for you.”

Through the rattling, Eirik’s words
slipped into my head.  “An emissary from
France
?”

“Bah!” Eirik apparently grew tired of
shaking me and threw me back into the snow.  I sat there, ignoring the biting
the cold was working on me.  Eirik had now hefted his axe, and I feared it was
about to come crashing down over me.

“What is the message?” I shouted, but
Eirik was filled with bloodlust, and he was intent on severing me from this
world.

Malyn, standing up at Brattahild,
screamed for Eirik to stop.  I turned, seeing her looking at Eirik with panic.   
Would she be a witness to my untimely end?    But the axe never came down upon
me.  Instead, Eirik let it sail down to go past my arm, driving it deep into
the snow, where it quivered.

“Eirik, what did the message say?” I
asked, my eagerness to know taking over my common sense.  “Tell me now!”

Eirik picked up his axe again.  He
turned and began walking back towards Brattahild, apparently satisfied he had
made his point.  Malyn turned and ran inside the house as she saw Eirik coming
back.  I sat and let the snow drip into my skin, no longer feeling the cold. 
Slowly, I got to my feet, brushed off the snow, and went inside the church to
pull on my boots.   Perhaps the emissary was still here.  I decided I would
walk down to the beach to see.  I hoped they were here to take me home.

Much to my disappointment, I saw no
one at the seashore other than the brutes who had just returned from fishing. 
There was no French ship, no one to tell me what the message was.  It was as if
Eirik was the only one who knew, if he wasn’t lying, and he was keeping it from
me as part of a game he was playing with me.  The effect was what Eirik had
hoped for.  Not knowing what the message was, if it existed, effectively drove
me mad.  I stood there, quivering, looking at the empty beach, my mind becoming
clouded.

I began the tedious walk back to
Brattahild.  There was nothing to do now but wait for Eirik to decide whether
or not he was going to kill me.    As it turned out, Eirik simply wanted me
gone.  Apparently, I had worn out my welcome.  It was odd that Eirik was so
tired of my presence when in the last year he had barely spoken to me.    I
grumbled all the way back to Brattahild, and I was in no mood to entertain
guests, but Malyn was there, waiting for me as I arrived.  My feet were hurting
from the walk back from the beach, and I decided I didn’t even want Malyn’s
company.

“What’s the matter, Bishop?” She
asked.  “Did you see the emissary?”

“What emissary?” I asked.  “There was
no one there.”

Malyn sighed.  “The emissary was here
earlier.  Didn’t he come down here to speak with you?  I last saw him up at
Brattahild a few hours ago.”

My heart quickened.  “So it’s true?” 
I left Malyn sitting there before she could utter a reply as I raced through
the snow up to Brattahild.  I decided I would make Eirik tell me the truth.

I pounded on the door, but when no
answer was immediate, I opened it myself.  Eirik was sitting there by the fire
drinking from a great golden cup.  From the other room, I could hear Thordhild
weeping.  Cautiously, I approached Eirik, who glanced up at me, then stared
back into the fire.

“Eirik,” I asked.  “What is going
on?  Where is the emissary?”  My suspicions grew as I heard Thordhild’s weeping
rising and falling. 

“He’s out back on the hill,” Eirik
said with a slight smile. 

“Why didn’t you send him to me?” I
demanded.  “Did I not have a right to speak with him?”

Eirik shrugged and said nothing.  A
thought occurred to me.  “Is he dead?”

Eirik nodded.  My mouth, despite my
best efforts, dropped open.  “Did you kill him?” I managed.  Eirik shook his
head no.

“Alas, Bishop, your emissary grew too
cold and sick quite rapidly here in our chilled air.  His feeble body could not
handle it.”

“Liar!”  I shouted.  “God condemns
all liars.  You will burn for this.”

“Whose god, Bishop.  Mine or yours?”

Exasperation filled me.  I left his
house and trudged through the knee-deep snow, head bent, murmuring vile curses
directly at the intolerable Viking who sat sipping his mead like he was
guiltless.    I walked around the cattle fence and began to climb the hills
behind Brattahild.  There, on the top of the white-cloaked hill, was a crimson
patch that had carved deep channels through the snow.  A cross, my cross, the
one Leif had given me, was jutting out of the patch at a crooked angle, the dim
light reflecting off of it.

I fell to my knees, crying bitterly
as I removed the stained cross that was marking the poor emissary’s resting
place.  How could this have happened?  What kind of monster was Eirik?  I
whispered a prayer over the grave and then crawled to my feet.  The cross
dangled from shaking fingers as I turned to walk home.

I found out years later what that
emissary was there to tell me as I sat in my cell upon my arrest and removal
from
Greenland
, where I sit now telling you this. 
Robert II the Pious had negotiated a treaty with King Olaf of
Norway
, who then promptly went on a crusade
and was killed in battle.  The new Norwegian king honored the agreement between
France
and
Norway
, and Christianity was declared the religion of the state. 
All others would be converted or put to death.  I thought it was a harsh
measure, but my opinion didn’t really matter to anyone.

The emissary was there to tell me I
had been appointed permanent custodian of the new church that was to be founded
on
Greenland
under my watch.  As for Eirik and
the others who refused to convert, I was going to be authorized to have them
arrested, under the rule of the crown, and sent back to
Norway
for trial and subsequent execution.

Eirik, apparently, did not take this
news well.

But at the time, I had no knowledge
of this.  I simply hoped to go home to
Le Mans
.  I truly craved a good strawberry- and a warm bed.  But neither were to
be had here, so I journeyed back to my church, where there was a constant,
chilled draft coursing through at all times, and hunched by my fire, shivering
and praying.

When the snows finally broke, I was
able to mark the end of my first year in
Greenland
, much to my disappointment.  The wind had turned slightly warmer, and
many of the Viking men began leaving for fishing trips for weeks at a time,
always returning with thousands of fish that the women of Eirik’s village would
clean, salt and preserve for later consumption.  I noticed some blades of grass
emerging from the snow, and I wistfully thought about something to record the
occasion on, but I looked sadly at my empty inkbottle, and knew I would simply
have to remember on my own.