Iceland's Bell (20 page)

“My father does not threaten people. He condemns them if they are found guilty,” said the magistrate’s daughter.

“I started thinking about Copenhagen,” he said, “and I remembered an Icelandic aristocrat, a really straightforward man in that huge house where they hold high court, who explained these letters to me on the same day that I thought they’d finally cleaned me up for my execution, and I caught a glimpse of my friend Árni Árnason standing near their great curtained glass window. He didn’t look at me and he didn’t greet me, but he knew what was happening, since it was all his own work. And I said to my lady’s father, my judge: ‘You are the most powerful man in Iceland,’ said I, ‘and you can most certainly have me beheaded right here and now. But these letters are signed by my Supreme Highness and Grace Himself, my Hereditary King and Lord.’ When my honorable lord magistrate saw that I wasn’t afraid and that I really only wanted to make a friend, he wasn’t angry with me any longer.”

“My father lets nothing threaten him,” she said.

“No,” said Jón Hreggviðsson, “I know that very well. But my friend, the friend of my lady, is also a man no less than my judge, my lady’s father.”

Snæfríður looked aloofly at Jón Hreggviðsson for a moment, then suddenly gave a sharp laugh as if the man had touched a nerve.

“Magistrate Eydalín said, ‘For these letters I return to you your property and belongings, adding interest from the time when your livestock was taken away; everything shall be as it was.’ And he said plenty of other things useless to mention, since there were no witnesses. I asked, ‘What will my king say if his letters aren’t published?’ ‘I will take care of that,’ he said. ‘Just turn them in tomorrow in court when your name is called.’ ”

She asked what had happened next and he answered that he might have done worse under the circumstances, because when his sheep were driven back home to him at Rein there were two heads on every beast.

“My father bribes no one,” she said. “And the letters?”

He said that on the next day, when his name was finally called in court and he was questioned about his business there, he answered that he’d come with letters from our Most Gracious Highness and requested that they be given a reading. Then Guðmundur Jónsson, his bailiff from Skagi, had stepped forward, grabbed the letters from him, looked them over for a moment along with the king’s regent from Bessastaðir, and handed them to the magistrate. The magistrate asked the bailiff to read the second letter, his travel pass, aloud, and when this reading was completed the magistrate said that they had read enough, Jón Hreggviðsson had been shown great mercy, and he should now return to his home and quarrel with men no longer.

The farmer was silent and when she asked if there was anything more to the story he said that there was only this letter, written fourteen years later, signed by Arnas Arnæus.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“I’m an old man,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “And I’ve got a fifteenyear-old daughter at home.”

“Even so,” she said.

“I’ve come to ask you to tell him that Jón Hreggviðsson was once young and black-haired and didn’t know what it meant to be afraid; but that time is now past. I want to ask you to tell him that a tearful old man with white hair has come to see you.”

“I don’t see any tears,” she said. “And your hair isn’t white, it’s gray. And I can’t see how you, an innocent man, would have anything to fear even if your case were opened again. If the court proceedings were in error the first time, then it will only be to your benefit, even if it is somewhat after the fact, if your innocence is confirmed.”

“It’s all the same to me whether I’m innocent or guilty as long as I’m left in peace with my sheep and my boat,” he said.

“Is that so?” she said. “Then why did you run across those soft and hard lands? Wasn’t it in the hope of justice?”

“I’m a simple commoner,” he said, “and I understand nothing but what I can touch. An ax I understand. And water in a jug. A poor man considers himself lucky if he can get by on his own.”

“Has it never occurred to you that life and justice are close cousins, and that justice can be used to save poor men’s lives?”

“I’ve never known justice to be used for anything other than the taking of poor men’s lives,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “That’s why I’m begging you, since you know how to speak to great men, to protect Jón Hreggviðsson from justice.”

“You’ve lost your mind, Jón Hreggviðsson. I don’t know how to speak to great men. And no one these days puts any stock in a woman’s idle chatter. In my opinion your case is in good hands. Is anything left in the pitcher? If you are no longer thirsty, then I think you had better be going.”

Jón Hreggviðsson stood up, extended a small, dirty hand to her, and expressed his deepest gratitude for the drink.

He stood there and two-stepped for a short time but made no effort to leave.

“I know,” he said, “that in the ancient sagas no one was thought more contemptible than a coward who begged for mercy. King Óðinn never forgives a man who pleads for mercy. This ugly gray head here might as well blow away. But what would my lady say if the ax were to slip off course, toward higher-born necks?”

“Oh, now I finally understand your business here,” she said, and she smiled. “You’ve come to warn me that my head will blow away at the same time as yours, as punishment for having redeemed yours here many years ago. As you please, my friend. You are a most charming old man.”

At the housewife’s words Jón Hreggviðsson knelt down upon the floor and started crying into the palms of his hands—of all the hardships that he’d been forced to endure in his days nothing hit closer to his heart than these words, he said with a whimper.

She stood up and walked over to him—“Allow me to wipe your eyes,” she said, but he refused; his eyes were dry. He stood up.

“It doesn’t really matter whether Jón Hreggviðsson kills the hangman or the hangman kills Jón Hreggviðsson,” he said. “But if my judge Eydalín did hand down a true verdict sixteen years ago, then my helper Arnæus, the king’s envoy, might find himself in the dungeon, and our king’s reputation might suffer serious damage. On the other hand, if Jón Hreggviðsson is declared innocent, then the magistrate over Iceland is in danger of losing what a man of power values more highly than his own head: his honor.”

The smirk on his face was cold and impudent, his white teeth in his hoary beard reminding one of a dog that bares its teeth after a beating. She noticed that he was girded with a new piece of cord.

7

A few days later the squire was gone. He must have ridden away during the night, because one morning the hammer ceased to sound from the smithy. The ax lay in the woodchips. It started raining again. Ferocious winds drove the rain on, day and night. The lakes and rivers flooded their banks. The earthen walls and turf roofs of the buildings at Bræðratunga continued to sop up the flood until they turned into mounds of mire. Emanating from these mounds was a foul, house-penetrating damp, colder than frost. Cesspools formed in the farmhouse’s passageways and entryways, making it nearly impossible for anyone to get anywhere. The housewife wrapped herself in her duvet and refused to rise, as if succumbing to eternal dusk. One night so much water leaked into her loft that she was forced to spread a horsehide over the bed. The drops kept falling, and every hollow in the hide became a pool. Then the rain stopped. One day at twilight cloudless skies returned, and the moon and stars reappeared.

Later that night Magnús came home. Iron bits rattled outside—at least he hadn’t sold his horse. After a considerable amount of time he came up the stairs steadily, without reeling. He knocked upon her door and waited until she told him to step in. She sat holding her needlework beneath her pilastered lamp. She looked up and he greeted her with a kiss; there was not much of a stench upon him. All his movements, however, had a certain quality of airy emollience, different from those he made when sober, and there was a kind of alien barbarism frosted over his eyes, the type of frozen, placid crapulous-ness sometimes seen in sleepwalkers and others who are aware of their deeds the moment they are done but are oblivious to them afterward.

“I had to run south to Selvogur,” he said, as if pleading for forgiveness for having ridden away—“I had to meet someone about buying land.”

“Buying land,” she said.

“Yes. Don’t you think we ought to start buying some land?” he said. “It makes no sense at all to sell land and to buy none in its place. Now I’ve finally decided to buy some land. I’ve bought an estate in Selvogur.”

“At what price?” she asked.

“Well, that’s that, you know, dear Snæfríður,” he said, and he drew closer and kissed her. “How wonderful it is for a man to come home to his wife, after he’s been inundated for four days.”

“Yes, how thoughtful of you to mention water,” she said. “I was nearly drowned here at home.”

“It won’t be long before I’ve plugged all the holes,” he said. “Everything will be perfect. You won’t feel a drop. But first I’ve got to buy land.”

“If you’re planning to start buying land, Magnús mine,” she said, “why don’t you start by making a deal with me? How would you like to buy the estate from me? Bræðratunga is for sale.”

“A man who is related by marriage to great aristocrats does not have to pay to sleep with his wife,” he said. “And who needs to wait for the father-in-law to discharge the dowry?”

“Alright,” she said, “then go ahead and buy your own land.”

“Man and wife are one,” said he. “The land I buy is yours. The land your father gives you is mine. Those who love each other share everything in common. Your father forced wealthy Fúsi to relinquish Bræðratunga and he gave you the title to the estate. You love me. That is why Bræðratunga is mine. I am going to buy an estate in Selvogur. That is why the estate that I am going to buy in Selvogur is yours.”

“It’s not a fair deal,” she said. “On the one side we have a magnificent creditor, and on the other a poor female simpleton: though I love you a thousand times more than you love me it is still you who’ll lose in a half-share partnership.”

“General report has it that I’m the most happily married man in Iceland,” he said.

“And one should always pay heed to general report,” she said— “which reminds me, have you had anything to eat?”

The squire was in no mood to answer such an everyday sort of question: “In any case, Snæfríður mine, the deal is already done— except for a matter of a hundred rixdollars I need by tonight—and then the estate is ours. The seller’s waiting for me south of the river.”

“You’re certainly not any more short of money now than you’ve been in the past,” she said.

“You know it yourself, woman—you have absolutely nothing to do with a tenth or even twentieth part of the baubles you keep in your coffers. Out with the silver, out with the gold, woman, and show your husband you love him so that we can acquire some land. You yourself know that Bræðratunga was taken from me by fraud, and I won’t stand for anything less than having an estate in my own name. How can a squire and cavalier look in other men’s faces when he has no estate? Kiss me, my darling, and tell me the estate will be mine.”

“When I was a child I was told that whoever swallowed a hock-bone would one day own land,” she said. “Have you tried that? I was told a sheep’s hock-bone brought a croft, a cow’s an estate.”

“I know there’s only one type of land you wish was mine,” he said. “A churchyard. I know you want to kill me.”

“I didn’t realize you were drunk, dear Magnús,” she said. “But now I can see it. That’s enough. No more. Go downstairs and get something to eat from Guðríður.”

“I swallow whatever I please whenever I please with whomever I please,” he said.

She said nothing; when he was in such a state it was difficult to predict his reactions.

“You can see it yourself, dear,” he said, once again behaving clemently toward her. “Silver is not for great aristocrats, it’s for misers’ hoards, stashed away in trunks, of no use to anyone, losing its luster year from year.”

“Many a man has taken great delight in sitting up at night, polishing his coins by the light of the moon,” she said.

“Yes, but land is what makes great aristocrats,” he said. “We are great aristocrats.”

“You,” she said. “Not I.”

“You’ve always been so good to me, my Snjóka,” he said. “If you’ll just let me have a bit of a clasp-belt or a dented frontlet, and maybe three or four tarnished brooches, even if it’s only worth fifty rixdollars.”

“I may not be much of a woman,” she said, “but my silver was owned by great women in Iceland, some of whom lived as far back as the eleventh century. They adorned themselves with it on holy days, and it is their style, the spirit of their time, that resides in these things. Because of this they own them still, those old women before me, though they are in my keeping. Their material value makes no difference.”

“Here, I’ll show you the title deed to my new estate, so you won’t think I’m going to drink away your silver,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I’ve quit drinking, Snæfríður mine. I feel nothing but hatred for brennivín. At the very least I don’t enjoy drinking any longer. My one and only comfort is to be here at home with you, my dear—to this I call my Creator as witness. Dear Snæfríður, a dented frontlet, a brooch, even if it’s worth only twenty-five rixdollars—”

“I think you should go to sleep, dear Magnús. We’ll see each other in the morning.”

“—even just a couple of half-licked-away silver spoons from the time of the Black Death, just so they can see the silver, so they can see that I’m able to pay, so they can see that I’m a man and that I have a wife.”

“I don’t know whether you’re a man, dear Magnús,” she said. “Nor do I know whether you have a wife.”

He recoiled from her and she continued to look aloofly, but unastonishedly, at this stranger.

“Open the chest,” he said.

“Those are not your eyes that look at me, dear Magnús, nor is it your voice that speaks to me.”

“I know what’s in the chest,” he said. “It’s a man.”

She kept looking straight into his eyes.

“I saw him riding ahead of me through the homefield. And I recognized him. I order you to open the chest.”

“We’ll allow the man to remain in peace,” she said. “He’s tired.”

“He’ll never have peace,” said the squire. “I’ll kill him; I’ll hack the life out of him.”

“Alright, my dear,” she said. “Do that. But first we’ll all go to sleep.”

He walked over to the chest, kicked it with a booted foot with all his might, and screamed thief, dog, thief-dog. But the chest was made of oak, thickly planked and powerful; kicking it was most like kicking a boulder.

“Where’s the book you stole from me—the half-finished one— the one whose covers you threw at me!?” he screamed at the man in the chest as he kept on kicking it.

The man in the chest did not respond.

“I demand my book back!”

Silence.

“All those golden illuminations and those sweet lais* you blotted out, all those lustrous white blank pages you ripped out, leaving me with nothing but the covers, stinking cold and empty! You vermin, give me back my book!”

He kept this up for a good long time, kicking the chest and shouting threats and curses at the man inside, but the chest didn’t budge.

“Magnús,” said his wife in a low voice. “Sit down beside me.”

He quit his kicking and looked at her without lifting his head, his eyes white and red, like those of a bull foraging in the grass. It was her voice that touched him more deeply than anything else. When she spoke to him in this way, temperately, moderately, her voice soft and tinged with melancholy though its tones were woven with gold, it was always as if she hit one of his nerves, so quickly did the strength drain from him.

He sat beside her for some time and wept, and she stroked him several times with her slender hand, firmly, untenderly, somewhat distractedly, like someone petting an animal. Her touch relaxed him somewhat—but then he started in again.

“Snæfríður mine,” he said, “lend me a tiny ring, even if it’s worth only two rixdollars. I owe a man down in Eyrarbakki for some iron, and my manhood, my nobility, my pride, depend on my paying him back tonight; I’m certain, Snæfríður, that you who are even more of an aristocrat than me can’t bear to see me so humiliated.”

“Sleep here at home tonight, dear Magnús, and we’ll pay for the iron tomorrow,” she said.

“I beg you,” he said. “Even if it’s just a few measly pennies to throw at the lice-ridden riffraff who gather to jeer at vagabond aristocrats.”

“Tonight we should sleep,” she said. “We’ll go down to Bakki tomorrow and throw a penny at any lousy lad who makes fun of us.”

He wept and sighed heavily.

“Has anyone seen a more wretched beggar than me?” he asked through sobs.

“No,” she said.

He continued to weep.

The night was bright with moonlight. He had long since gone down to his room, but she was restless and lay awake in bed, tossing and turning. Moonbeams played across the floor. She rose and looked out her window; the weather was still and the earth sparkled, its wetness frozen before the next debacle began. She lay back down. She was lying there for some time when suddenly she thought she heard a creaking on the steps to the loft, the sound of furtive passage that is heard nowhere and at no other time than in an old house at night. This creaking, in such a graceless house, clapped upon her sleep-deprived and sensitive ears like a death knell. Finally there came a clumsy, secretive fumbling at the doorlock, the kind of sound that’s exaggerated to shrill trumpet-blasts by anxious ears in the dead of night. The door was lifted from its posts. She watched him come prowling into the room, dressed in his shirtsleeves, wearing thin shoes, with an ax in his hand. He peered around in the moonlight, and she could see his face and his eyes, how he stared into the darkness of her bedcloset without seeing her. She was convinced that he would promptly take a swing at her, but this is not what happened; the chest was uppermost in his mind. He fell to his knees before the chest and poked at the lid and the lock, but soon discovered that it was shut fast. He groped about to find a place where he could thrust the ax-blade in under the lid and lever the box open, and in the end the woman realized that he’d succeeded in getting the ax-edge under in one place and was putting the lid to the test.

“Leave the chest alone, Magnús,” she said.

He stopped and gave her a sidelong glance, somewhat hesitantly, and she could once again see the white and the red of his eyes. He rose slowly to his feet, pulled the ax free, and hoisted it up, gripping it more like a carpenter than a warrior, then reeled his way over to the bedcloset where his wife lay. Now everything happened in a flash. The curtains were half-drawn before the bedcloset and it was dark inside. He had to stoop at the knees and shoulders to strike at her through the low-lying bedcloset doors, but he’d forgotten that the bed was also open at the other end, and no sooner had he lashed out before someone came up from behind and threw a blanket over his head: here was the woman whom he had hoped to strike. She yelled as keenly as she could for her maidservant Guðríður, who shared quarters with another woman down the hallway at the other end of the loft. By the time the women arrived on the scene the squire had unwound the blanket from his head, and he had his wife in his grasp with his thumbs at the base of her throat. The ax had fallen to the floor. It was too late for him to accomplish the deed he had in mind—the two women rushed at him and overpowered him. In a short time he was sitting in a heap on the chest, dead-tired, his head hanging low.

“Everything goes badly for me and this is the worst,” said the daleswoman. “And I’m certain that the madam my mistress will never forgive me for this. The only proper thing for me to do would be to ride home and lay my neck under the magistrate’s heel.”

When Snæfríður asked her where she’d gone wrong, all she could say was that it wasn’t because of any virtue of hers that the blessed madam’s daughter had survived. She said she wanted to ride west and tell her mistress to send her daughter a more faithful servant than herself. Then she wiped the tears from her face and begged merciful God to forgive her sins.

“I’m riding away, dear Guðríður,” said the mistress of the house.

“You will remain here in charge of the estate. Bring out my finest clothing and valuables and pack them well, and be quick about it. Put the rest in storage. I’ll be in Skálholt for a while. Wake up some of the farmhands and tell them to fetch horses and prepare themselves to accompany me over the river tonight.”