Iceland's Bell (19 page)

“A wise woman, if she devotes herself to virtue and bears concern for the honor of her people together with the same love of justice that made her father an elder in this land, will wield agency and authority higher than any king’s missive. It may be that God has determined that madame shall, like Judith, genially vanquish her father’s enemy.”

“It’s easy to be openhanded with that which a man doesn’t have, dear Reverend Sigurður,” she said, “and excuse me when I say that this conversation reminds me overmuch of the children’s rhyme that starts out, ‘My ship has come to land.’ I shall make no attempt to understand your insinuations about my father’s name and will concern myself even less with your arrangements regarding the king’s envoys. But when you and Madam Jórunn try to relocate me like some kind of blend of loose tramp and dependent pauper, then I will remind you that I am the matron in Bræðratunga, and that I love my husband no less than my sister Jórunn loves her husband the bishop, and therefore neither of us need act as provider to the other—and I thought she would have known that before she sent you on this mission.”

By this time the archpriest had unclasped his hands, which were visibly trembling. He cleared his throat to temper his voice.

“Though I have known you since you were a child, Snæfríður,” he said, “an unskilled poet can never learn how to travel the narrow path of words that leads to the doors of your heart—therefore this conversation shall now cease. But since my words are powerless, the only alternative left to me is to inform you of certain miraculous occurrences that I would rather have chosen to conceal from you.”

He reached into his cloak and took out a torn and crumpled document, unfolded it with a shudder, and handed it to her. It was the contract that had been made in the pigsty in Eyrarbakki the night before, when her husband the squire had sold her, for a cask of brennivín, into a complete and matrimonial conjugation for three nights with a Danish swineherd and an Icelandic murderer. She took the document from him and read, and as she did, his eyes were prepared to swallow any movement on her face. Her face, however, was still; her mouth was closed, her expression perfectly empty, having returned to the state it always preferred, ever since her childhood, whenever her smile disappeared. She read the contract carefully twice, then started laughing.

“You laugh,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and continued reading and laughing.

“It may well be,” he said, “that I am an ignoramus, and deserve from you only scorn and ridicule in place of honest and friendly conversation. One thing I do know is that a proud woman would never laugh, nor pretend to do so, at such an unthinkable disgrace as is found written here.”

“There’s just one thing I’m not sure of,” she said. “What part do you play in this affair, Reverend Sigurður? Where, by chance, is the contract you’ve made on your own behalf with the swineherd and the murderer?”

“You know full well that I have not forged this grotesque text,” he said.

“I never would have thought that either,” she said. “Therefore it’s yours to prove that you played a part in the deal. Otherwise the maiden will just have to wait until the real gentlemen show themselves.”

6

A few days later Magnús from Bræðratunga came home. He sat at midmorning outside her door, soaked to the skin from the rain. He was tattered, bloodied, filthy, foul-smelling, bearded, disheveled, emaciated, and livid. He neither looked up nor moved when she walked by; he just sat there like a deranged mendicant who has crept into an unfamiliar house to take shelter for the night. She led him in to her room and nursed him, and he cried for three days as usual. Then he arose. He stayed put for the time being, going out to the hayfields around midday to cut grass, usually the only one on any given strip of land. He kept himself well away from his folk and had no contact with them. He did not take his meals outside, but went home when there was no longer enough light to work and ate his evening meal in his houseroom before retiring. He went frequently to his smithy and did odd jobs making things ready for his workers, tempered the scythe, tinkered with the tools, but spoke very little or not at all.

Even after haymaking was finished there was still no sign that the squire was likely to disappear. Instead he continued to make himself useful around the household, either by patching up the buildings or, more often, by remaining in his smithy for days on end, repairing various broken household implements: bowls, troughs, churns and buckets, distaffs, wool-boxes, and storage chests. His pale golden complexion and soft skin returned; he shaved his beard and wore clothing that his wife had cleaned and pressed, assuring that not a blemish or a wrinkle was to be seen upon him.

Around the time of the roundup the autumn rains let up. The weather was calm and clear and the night frosts mild, giving the puddles an icy sheen and the grass a glaze of hoarfrost.

Guðríður from Dalir went up to Snæfríður’s loft and told her that an aged man was standing outside, asking to speak with the housewife; he said he’d come from the Þverá district out west.

“Oh, what’s that to me, dear Guðríður?” she said. “It’s not my job to look after tramps. If you want to give him a pinch of butter or a bit of cheese, then do it yourself, but leave me in peace.”

It turned out that the man was not there looking for handouts, but was traveling to Skálholt and had stopped at Bræðratunga to discuss some urgent business with the housewife, who, he said, would certainly recognize him if he were allowed to see her. He was escorted to her bower.

He was middle-aged and greeted the housewife companionably, removing his knitted cap as he walked through the door. His eyebrows were still black but his hair was wolf-gray. She looked at him, answered his greeting coolly, and asked what he wanted.

“You don’t recognize me—that’s unexpected,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Have you had dealings with my father, or what?”

“A little,” he said. “I had a scrape with him one spring, unfortunately.”

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Jón Hreggviðsson,” he said.

She couldn’t recall the name.

He continued looking at her, smirkingly. His eyes were black, but shone red when they caught the light.

“I’m the one who went to Holland,” he said.

“To Holland?” she said.

“I’ve owed you a rixdollar for a long time,” he said.

He reached into his jacket and withdrew several shining silver coins from a pouch of tanned hide wrapped in wadmal.

“Oh,” she said. “Is it you, Jón Hreggviðsson? I remember you as having black hair.”

“I’ve grown old,” he said.

“Stick those coins back in your pouch, dear Jón, and sit down there upon the chest and tell me the news. Where did you say you live?”

“I’m still one of old Christ’s tenants,” he said. “The farm is called Rein. I’ve always gotten along well with the old man. And that’s because neither of us owes the other anything. But once more, I’ve been too long in paying you back your rixdollar.”

“Would you like soured whey or milk?” she asked.

“Oh, I’ll drink anything,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Anything that runs. But I want to pay you back this rixdollar. If I should have to travel again somewhere, whatever God decides, then I want to be free of debt to your good grace, in case I need to come to you again.”

“You never came to me, Jón Hreggviðsson, I came to you. I was a little girl. I wanted to see a man who was going to be beheaded. Your mother walked east to Skálholt. You were black-haired then. Now you’re gray.”

“Everything changes but my lady,” said he.

“I’ve been married for fifteen years,” said she. “Keep your tricks to yourself.”

“My lady endures,” said he.

“I endure,” said she.

“Yes,” said he. “My lady endures—my lady.”

She looked out the window.

“Did you ever deliver my message?” she asked.

“I returned the ring,” he said.

“Why didn’t you bring me his reply?”

“I was told to keep silent. And there was no reply. Except that I wasn’t beheaded—at least not then. The woman’s mouth was in the middle of her belly. He gave me back the ring.”

She looked at her guest aloofly—“What do you want from me?” she said.

“Oh, I hardly know,” he said. “Forgive this poor, hopeless man.”

“Would you like something to drink now?”

“I drink when someone puts drink in front of me. Anything that runs is a gift from God. When I was in Bessastaðir I had a jug of water—and an ax. A well-sharpened ax is a fine tool. On the other hand I’ve never been fond of the gallows, and never less than when I wrestled a hanged man.”

She continued to look at the man from the incredible distance that the azure gave her eyes; her mouth was closed. Then she stood up, called to her servants, and ordered them to bring the man something to drink.

“Well now, it’s always good to get something to wet one’s whistle,” he said—“though those fellows in Copenhagen, my old friends, would have thought such drink a bit thin.”

“Are these your thanks?” she said.

“It’ll be a long time before this farmer from Skagi forgets the beer his honor poured for him from his pitcher when he came out from Glückstadt wearing the king’s boots.”

“Whom are you talking about?”

“The one you sent me to meet—the one I’m going to meet now.”

“Where are you going?” she said.

He reached back down into his pouch and took out a tattered letter with a broken seal and handed it to the housewife.

The letter was written in an elegant hand. She read first the artless words of formal address, simplified for a commoner: “Greetings, Jón Hreggviðsson,” then the signature, “Arnas Arnæus,” in his own hand, hastily signed, though adequately legible, made with the broad strokes of a pliant pen, scripted in such wondrous accord with his own voice that one could hear its echo in his written words. She paled.

It took much longer than she expected to read through such a short letter: it was as if a mist veiled her eyes, but in the end she managed to accomplish the task. The letter had been written at Hólar, around midsummer, and contained the following information: Arnas Arnæus had summoned the Rein farmer to meet with him on an appointed day toward the end of September, by which time he would have arrived in the south from the eastern part of the country. He wanted to discuss the farmer’s old case, since it seemed that it still had not been lawfully concluded in full accord with the explicit instructions contained in the letters that His Most Gracious Royal Highness had formerly issued in connection with the case. The letter’s author informed Jón Hreggviðsson that he had been appointed by the king to investigate those court cases here in Iceland that, for the last several years, the country’s jurists had not prosecuted according to the letter of the law, and to attempt to secure justice in these cases in the hope that the security of the general public might subsequently thrive in future generations.

She looked out the window. Her gaze stretched across the meadow pale with the hues of autumn and came to rest upon the glistening reflection of the sun on the river.

“Then he is here in Skálholt, across the river?” she said.

“He’s summoned me there,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “That’s why I’ve come to you.”

“To me?”

“When you freed me at Þingvellir I was still young and it wasn’t any trouble for me to run across the country,” he said. “Now I’m old and weak-footed and wouldn’t trust myself any longer to run alone over Holland’s soft ground—much less over Iceland’s hard ground.”

“What are you afraid of?” she said. “Weren’t you acquitted by the king many years ago?”

“Well, that’s that, you see,” he said. “A commoner never knows whether he actually owns the head he’s got on his shoulders. Now the day I’ve been dreading for a long time has come—the day they start digging around in this again.”

“And what is it you want from me?”

“I hardly know,” he said. “Maybe someone somewhere listens to what you have to say.”

“No one listens to me anywhere—and so I say nothing.”

“Well, it’s like this, you see, that whoever it is who owns this ugly wolf-gray head you see here has you to thank for it. I was sleeping. Tomorrow you’ll be beheaded. I was awake and you’d set me free. It’s really a frightful story, and now they’re going to hash it all up one more time in front of the judges.”

“According to this country’s laws I am of course a criminal for having set you free,” she said. “What else have you done, from the beginning? Are you a robber? Or a murderer?”

“I stole a piece of cord, good lady,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“I see,” she said, “I was like every other stupid little girl. It would have been far better if you’d been beheaded.”

“Then they said that I’d slandered the king and murdered the hangman,” he said. “And now I’ve supposedly murdered my son, but such a thing makes little difference—the authorities don’t bother about it when a man kills his children during a famine if a man does it well. There’re enough beggars left anyway. The only thing that’s been weighing me down all these years are the letters.”

“Letters?” she asked distractedly.

He explained to her how he’d returned to Iceland with two letters from the king many years ago, and how he’d traveled from a remote corner of the country back home to his farm on Akranes, only to discover his household in ruins: his sixteen-year-old daughter with shining eyes lay upon her bier and his half-wit son was laughing; his two leprous kinswomen, one nodous, the other ulcerous, were praising God, and his decrepit mother was singing the half-rhymed
Kross
School Hymns
written by Reverend Halldór from Presthólar, while his pitiable she-creature of a wife sat with their two-year-old child in her lap, cursing her husband. But what were these compared to the tragedies that had befallen the man’s livestock in his absence? The sheep and cattle the farmer had birthed himself had been confiscated and handed over to the king as payment for the crimes he’d already answered for, and the chattel that had come with the farm and were owned by Christ had dropped dead like beggar-folk, because his miserable family had been so busy praising God that it had forgotten to cut and store hay to give to the creatures while the man was fighting for his king in a foreign land.

Next he told her how he’d had to start from scratch on a new life, after he’d nearly turned fifty, and what’s more, how he’d had to get accustomed to new children after the old ones were dead. He said he’d asked himself: “Maybe I’m not really descended from Gunnar of Hlíðarendi?” Many years had passed now since Jesus Christ had taken back his chattel. And he, Jón Hreggviðsson, had built himself a fisherman’s hut at Innrihólmur, and named it Hretbyggja,* and there outfitted an eight-oared fishing boat.

“Nothing’s cast shadows but the letters,” he said finally. But since she knew very little, if anything at all, about his case, and was unenlightened concerning the letters that had cast their shadow over the joy of this farmer from Skagi, he explained everything to her in detail regarding his Supreme Court appeal, which was supposed to have been published in court, and the travel passes that granted him protection and a four-month leave of absence from the king’s army while he tried to resolve his case in Iceland.

“Indeed,” she said.

“The letters were never published in court,” he said.

“So what was?” she said.

“Nothing at all,” he said.

“Why didn’t they behead you, since the letters were never published?”

“That’s where my lord magistrate’s story picks up again,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“My father never stabs anyone under the table,” she said.

“I’d always hoped,” he said, “that the blessed magistrate would be the last man Jón Hreggviðsson could ever criticize, except, in the very least, for his overkindness toward me and others. And if I’d been in his shoes I wouldn’t have let Jón Hreggviðsson off a second time with his head raised.”

Now he explained how, after his return home all those years ago, he’d gotten himself a horse and taken the letters to the Alþingi at Öxará to meet with Magistrate Eydalín. As could be expected, the magistrate did not return the greeting of the man whom he’d condemned to death, but he did read the letters carefully, then gave them back to him and said that he should bring them with him to court, where they would not be ignored. So for three days in a row Jón Hreggviðsson took the letters to court. He sat waiting on a bench with others tangled up in lawsuits, staring up at the judges who’d condemned him to death two years ago, but his name wasn’t called. On the third day he received a message from the magistrate that he should come again to his booth, and when he did so the magistrate spoke these words: “Jón Hreggviðsson, I advise you not to wave these papers around in public; instead, leave this place as quietly as you can. Know this—it is in my power to have you beheaded right now, here at this assembly. And know this as well, that if your case comes before a higher court out in Copenhagen, you will not lift your head a third time before me. Although you have now succeeded in getting those rogues out in Copenhagen to help you procure these documents, which they have obviously done more from their habitual desire to swindle us than out of any concern for a beggar and murderer, we will make sure that you never have another chance to raise a troop of cacklers and meddlers against the authorities in this country.”