The Snow on the Cross (7 page)

“For the love of God!” I shouted.  “Stop!” 
My voice echoed through the valleys, and as it came back to me, it sounded
small and sad.

I do not remember much after that.  I
do know that the two came back to me, looks of anger and amusement etched on
their faces.  They were enjoying my torment, especially Bjarni.  Broin seemed
confused most of the time, and again I assumed because something was lost in
the translation as Bjarni spoke to him about me.

They picked me up again, and began to
drag me.  My feet scraped the ground, and I struggled to break free so I could
regain my footing, but they seemed to insist on carrying me.  We started down
the side of the hill, and I kept worrying they would slip and send me tumbling
down to the ravine below.  They held their steps firmly, and they whisked me
along with them as they walked.

They turned me loose at the bottom of
the hill and stood glowering at me.  I felt no shame at my condition.  I had
been sick, and I was in a strange land, so I decided they could not judge me. 
They stared at me as if they expected me to begin floating, as if I was able to
perform miracles.  I looked back at them.  It would have been too easy to
dismiss them as mindless brutes, but so far these two Vikings had been my
introduction to this breed of man, and it did little to impress me.

“Come on,” said Bjarni.  “What are
you waiting for?”

Brattahild was a sprawling range of
pasture near the sea flanked on the edge by a large stone house.  As I stumbled
to the edge of the pasture where a rock fence had been piled in a straight line
for an endless expanse, I could see shaggy cattle grazing mindlessly on the
short grass.  I estimated about twenty beasts, and I noted they looked quite
different from our cattle in
France
.  These
animals had thick fur that hung in tangles over their bodies, unlike any type
of beast I had ever seen.  Some of them looked at me with their watery black
eyes then returned to their grazing.  Bjarni and Broin had dropped me,
unceremoniously, next to the fence and began walking beside it toward the
south, winding their way around the fence rather than climbing over it.  I
watched them go.  I peered over the stone fence, which was waist high to me and
must have taken many men to build, and saw the house on the other side of the
fields.

By now Bjarni and Broin were specks
in the distance, but they knew I would eventually follow them to the house of
Eirik the Red.  It was my only choice other than beginning the tedious walk
back to where I had come from, and I wasn’t even sure if I could find my way
back on my own.

Brattahild.  It was the best
pastureland in
Greenland
and so, of course, Eirik had claimed
it for himself.  The twenty heads of cattle grazing were seemingly oblivious to
the cold.  I, on the other hand, despite my new fur around my shoulders, was
shaking.  It was spring in
Greenland
, and I
had heard it was one of the warmest seasons the men here could remember.  I
shuddered at the thought of winter’s approach.  If it was this cold now, I saw
winter coming with a white fury.  The dead would not be as cold as I would be
when winter eventually set in.

I heard faint voices wafting over the
grass, and I saw that Bjarni and Broin had circled the edge of the fence and
were now approaching Eirik’s house.  Another speck emerged from the house to
greet them, and even from my distance, I could hear the power in the voice that
shouted to his companions.  It was Eirik the Red, and I had finally reached his
home.  One of the cattle looked at me and lowed gently.  I looked into its eyes
at its calmness before the slaughter.  I knew how it felt.  I forced my aching
legs to move, and I began the trudge around the fence to meet my destiny.

Blood on the Ice

I walked with heavy steps around the
stone fence.  As I walked, I let my hand trail over the roughness of the rock
to my left.  What kind of endurance did it take for a man to dig up these
large, flat rocks, haul them over these hills, and stack them so methodically
as a fence around this field?  It had to be high enough so the cattle could not
step over them and roam free.  If a man could do this, what else could such a
man accomplish?  Could such a man lead other men down the
Seine
River
and
butcher helpless monks?  Such a man could lead other men as far west as their
ships would allow and settle them in a frozen land.  I looked at that man
standing near his doorway.  He stood a full head taller than either Bjarni or
Broin, and they were not short by any standard.  His eyes cut through me as
easily as the axe he gripped.  I felt small in his presence, and the closer I
walked, the smaller I felt until I seemed truly dwarfed.

Eirik the Red was his name, and he
looked much like he did the first time I saw him standing on the beach.  His
hair and beard were blazing red, and his eyes held the look of one who would
easily anger.  I could see Eirik lifting his axe, his face as red as his hair,
and cleaving his enemies with it.  I began to wonder how much blood he had
spilled against the ice in his travels.

Bjarni was talking to Eirik, but I
couldn’t hear what he was saying.  I took another hesitant step through the
fence opening, and I was standing on Brattahild.  I wondered if Eirik would
invite me into his home.  My eye caught a glimpse of another building, smaller,
off to the right and behind the house.  It was the church he had built for
Thordhild, a fact that I found out soon enough, for it was to be my home for
the next two years.

Eirik and Bjarni’s conversation died
abruptly as they noticed my approach.  I saw Eirik smirk as Bjarni stepped
towards me.

“Bishop, welcome,” Bjarni’s voice
held a trace of laughter.  “Welcome to Brattahild.”

I could tell Eirik held little
interest in me.  I was a body, nothing more.  What was worse, I could not speak
their language.  It was as if Eirik could see the weakness in me, and it made
me feel even smaller.   Eirik touched Bjarni on the shoulder and pointed to the
church behind the house then, curtly, turned and walked into the shadows of his
house, closing the door behind him.

“Bishop, Eirik tells me you are to
lodge in the church.  He thinks it is the best place for you.”

I looked at the little stone church. 
It didn’t look constructed very well, and I kept thinking about how well it
would hold heat in the wintertime.  It perhaps measured ten feet by six feet,
not much bigger than my cell would be upon my return to
France
.  I left Bjarni standing there
beside Eirik’s door and walked slowly over to the church.

I thought about my cathedral in
Le Mans
with its high spires and golden
archways, the gardens out in the back courtyard, and the abundance of heat from
the fireplaces placed at strategic spots around the building.  This was a stone
hut that threatened to topple over in a strong wind.  I pushed on the wooden
door and listened to the wind whistle through the cracks in the walls.  There
was a single bench that stretched the width of the church in front of what
looked like a ragged wooden cross, slightly tilted, hanging by a thin rope from
a rafter that spanned across the ceiling.  This was the church Eirik had built
for his wife.  A single bench on which to pray perhaps and the only image of my
faith Eirik could muster hanging in front of it.

I kicked at some rocks that had
collected near the door.  What had I done to deserve this ending?  I was so
preoccupied that I did not hear Bjarni come up behind me and place his hand on
my shoulder.

“This is where your faith has brought
you,” he said coldly.  “It’s not real.  It’s a heathen story.”

His words echoed my own while on his
ship, and they stabbed at me.  “Come back to Eirik’s house tonight,” Bjarni
continued.  “He has planned a feast to welcome you.  Tonight, you may speak
with Eirik the Red.”

It was a small comfort to be welcomed
by pagans, but I needed food, and my appetite was beginning to return.  I
nodded and sat on the bench, staring blankly ahead at the cross that swayed
gently from its rope.  I stretched out my legs, hoping to relieve the burning
that was shooting up and down them.  Bjarni watched me for a moment, and then
turned to leave.  Where he went, I do not know.  I assumed he returned to
Eirik’s house to help prepare for the feast, but I would have been mistaken. 
He had, in fact, left with Eirik and Broin on a hunt to the north to seek wild
deer that roamed there.  I would not see them again until nightfall.

The church I was lying in was a bit
larger than I had guessed upon first sight.  There was a small, although crude,
fireplace in an alcove on the left side.  Small clouds of ash were there, but
they were very cold, as if no one had used it for a long time.  I wondered if
Thordhild had been here recently.

I would need fire.  Fire would help
my frame of mind, I decided, and I stepped outside to chop down some of the
scrub bushes that sprouted nearby.  I say “chop,” but I had no knife or axe to
cut with, so I attempted to pull one out of the ground with my hands.  The
roots were stuck deep in the frozen ground, and I could not move it.  I pulled,
yanked, tore, screamed, and kicked at the bush, but it still would not move.

Perhaps I could have asked Eirik for
his axe, but I did not know if he had taken it with him.  Instead, I looked
down at my hands.  They were scratched and quickly turning an offended red
color.  There had to be another way.  I had no skill to light a fire on my own,
even if I had managed to get some wood.  I watched the smoke rolling out of
Eirik’s stone roof, and I felt envy jab at me.  Perhaps Thordhild was inside. 
Perhaps she would help me.

I left that little stone church and
began walking back to Eirik’s house.  By that time he was gone, and so I
decided he would not mind my visiting Thordhild.  I stood in front of Eirik’s
door, wondering how such a large house could be built here.  Although it was
not large compared to some of the estates in
France
, by
Greenland
’s standard it was enormous, and it
certainly put the other small stone houses to shame.

I rapped on the door and waited.  It
occurred to me that even if someone answered the door, they would probably not
understand what I was trying to say to them, as Bjarni was the only one who
could speak my language.  I noted the scratches on my hands had begun to bleed,
which made for an even more pitiful sight.  I knocked again, listening to the
sounds within.  Yes, someone was home, and as the door opened, I had the
sudden, vivid image of an axe whistling down upon my head.  There really was no
telling what these brutes were capable of.

But to my surprise, and relief, there
was only a young girl standing there, mouth dropping open involuntarily as she
looked at me.  This was not Thordhild, I assumed, but merely a servant girl of
some kind.   Her dress was heavy cloth, and I imagined it was quite warm around
her small frame.  Her eyes were dark and round, and her skin had a brown tint
to it.  She was from southern
Germania
, I later
found out, and had been captured on one of the Viking’s raids two years ago. 
Since she was from the south, she knew a little of my language, for which I
praised God.

Her name was Malyn, and upon our
first meeting she seemed very afraid of me.  I can see why now.  My hands were
dripping blood all over the ice, and my haggard appearance did little to
comfort her.  Here I stood, a pale old man, worn and sick, bleeding and cold,
staring at the warmth of Eirik’s house like a lunatic.  I even had a wild
vision of pushing the girl aside and barging in to huddle by the fireplace. 
But I am a man of God, and I have my manners even in a godless place.  I stood
there and waited for her to speak, or at least give me a sign that she was not
in shock.

Of course, she eventually let me in,
for she knew who I was.  She had heard Thordhild talking with Eirik about me,
and so she was not as surprised as I had imagined when she saw me.  She bowed
to me and let me inside where the heat washed over me and made me feel almost
human again.

As I sat down by the fire, she
brought me clean cloths to bandage my hands.  As Malyn wrapped them around my
hands, I looked around at the majesty of Eirik’s home.  It was simply
decorated, mostly with draped furs and horns mounted on the wall.  The stone
fireplace flanked the main room I now sat in, and the table that stretched out
behind me could easily sit twenty men.  I had heard of these pagans and their
mead-halls, but I had dismissed them as mere speculative storytelling.  The
ceiling was laced with interlocking beams that crossed to a point high above,
giving the smoke from the fireplace ample room to swirl up and out of the
house.  Yes, I was impressed.  Perhaps a man could live comfortably in this
land, but only if he had the luxuries others were willing to give him or he had
the power to take.  Everything in his home, I realized with a cold feeling, had
come from Eirik’s conquests.  All of the silver cups and bowls sitting neatly
in a row had been pillaged from ancient churches, and the fine wood of the
table had been stolen from the lands near
Rome
on the
Mediterranean Sea
.  Everything had a price marked on
it with innocent blood.