Iceland's Bell (8 page)

10

The regent’s booth had an inner lining of brightly colored cloth, a clean wooden floor, a bedcloset, a table, benches, and two armchairs. A statuette of our Most Gracious Majesty on horseback stood upon a shelf. Near the ravine walls behind the booth were two tents. One was large and elaborate, and two Danish-speaking servants emerged from this tent. The other was closer beneath the rocks, small and soiled, made of brown wadmal; sitting outside it was a ruffian who wore hide socks and smoked a pipe.

The regent had sent orders to his servants to prepare lodging for the magistrate’s daughter, and they brought her roasted meat and wine, but the magistrate bade his daughter good night and left for his own booth to attend to his guests. The damsel’s complexion was pale as she stood in the doorway of the booth while the servants set the table, and she looked to the east, at the clouds that shone gold with the light of the unrisen sun. She regarded in turn the black walls of the ravine and the murmuring river, the mountains, the copse, and the lake.

“Why is this huge man sitting outside this little tent?” she asked.

They said, “That’s the guard.”

“What guard?” she said.

“Housed in the tent is a shackled evildoer we brought with us from Bessastaðir—he’s going to be beheaded in the morning, praise God.”

“Oh, I would like to see him,” said the damsel, and her face brightened. “I would really like to see a man who is going to be beheaded in the morning.”

“Our lady is joking,” they said. “Our lady would be frightened. This is that black devil Joen Regvidsen, who stole some cord, cursed His Majesty, and killed the king’s hangman.”

“Go to the regent,” she said to one of the servants, “and tell him that I’m frightened. Tell him from me that I want a guard posted here at the entrance while I sleep.”

She nibbled at the meat like a little bird and ate a few bites of porridge and drank three sips of wine, then spent some time cleaning her fingers and cooling off her forehead with water from a silver bowl. She adjusted her hair and dabbed on perfume that she kept in a small box. The servant came back with the message that Joen Joensen would protect the gracious lady while she slept.

“I want him to sit at my doorstep,” she said.

They called to the guard and told him to stand watch over the gracious lady, who intended to go to sleep.

“But the murderer,” he said.

“Which is more important, one black murderer or the honor of our gracious lady?” they said.

The man stood up ponderously and moved the brazier to the damsel’s doorway, sat down on the stone step, and continued to smoke. He ordered the servants to go to bed.

“Are you Icelandic?” she asked the guard.

“Huh?” he said. “I’m from Kjós.”

“Kjós,” said the girl. “What’s that?”

“A place called Kjós,” he said.

“Are you armed?” she said.

“Huh?” he said. “Puh.”

“What are you going to do if someone attacks me?” she said.

He showed her his pawlike hands, first the backs and then the palms, then he clenched his fists and shook them at her, spat through his teeth, and continued to smoke.

She went in and closed the door behind her. Everything was silent but for the murmur of Öxará coalescent with the calm and rhythmic ax-strokes of the placid and faithful man who was chopping up the brushwood.

In a short time, however, when everything was as still as could be, the magistrate’s daughter winds her way out of the regent’s bed, lifts the door from its posts, and peeks out. The guard was still sitting on her doorstep, smoking.

“I was making sure that you hadn’t double-crossed me,” she said quietly.

“Huh?” he said. “Who?”

“You’re my man,” she said.

“Go to sleep,” he said.

“Why are you so impolite to me?” she said. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Puh,” he said. “All flesh is dust.”

He gave a long yawn.

“Listen, Strong Jón,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m not called Strong Jón,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you like to come in and sit down at my bedside?” said the damsel.

“Who? Me?”

He twisted his head around very slowly and, with one eye half-closed, stared at her through the tobacco smoke, then spat in a long arc. “Aw, damn it,” he added, and he stuck his pipe back in his mouth.

“Don’t you need tobacco?” she asked.

“Tobacco? Me? No.”

“What do you need?” she asked.

“Pipes,” he said.

“What kind of pipes?”

“Clay pipes,” he said.

“I don’t have any clay,” she said.

He said nothing.

“On the other hand, I do have silver,” she said.

“Aha,” he said.

“You’re not much of a talker, are you?” she said.

“Go to sleep now, good madam.”

“I’m not a madam,” she said. “I’m a damsel. I have gold.”

“Oh, yes?” he said. “You don’t say. Huh?”

He turned his head stiffly and looked at her again.

“You’re my man,” she said. “Do you want gold?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I’d be hanged,” he said.

“But silver?”

“If it were minted, maybe. No one would know the difference.”

She took a silver coin from her purse and gave it to him. “Go to the tent at the foot of the cliff,” she said, “and release the man sitting there in chains.”

“Huh?” he said. “The man? What man? Jón Hreggviðsson? No.”

“Do you want more silver?” she asked.

He spat.

“We’re letting him go,” she said, and she handed him more silver, then grabbed him by the armpits and forced him to stand up.

“I’ll be beheaded,” he said.

“If you’re found guilty,” she said, “then remember that I’m the magistrate’s daughter.”

“Puh,” he said, and he looked down into his pipe: it had gone out.

She half-dragged the man behind her, untied the tent-flaps, and peeked in. Jón Hreggviðsson was lying there asleep in tattered clothing, grimy from head to toe, his face upon the bare ground. His hands were behind his back, in chains bolted to the fetters around his ankles. His shoulders trembled slightly with each breath. At his side was a small bucket containing leftover scraps of food. The girl came all the way into the tent and she looked the foul man over, at how calmly he slept with his swollen wrists and his scraped and fettered ankles, his thick hair and beard tangled into a shabby shock.

“So he’s sleeping,” whispered the girl.

It took the guard a few moments to squeeze his way through the tent’s opening.

“Well now,” he said, after finally dragging himself in. He had to kneel in order to avoid bumping his head against the top of the tent.

Jón Hreggviðsson didn’t stir.

“I thought they stayed awake,” said the girl.

“He has no soul,” said Strong Jón.

“Wake him up,” said the girl.

Strong Jón stood halfway up and kicked at the man’s back so briskly that it was impossible that he wouldn’t wake up. Jón Hreggviðsson’s eyes shot open bewilderedly and he sprang up like a hook flying off a steel spring, but the iron ball chained to his feet jerked him back and he fell in a heap to the floor.

“Have you come to take me to the chopping block, you devil?” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “What does this woman want?”

“Quiet,” said the girl, putting a finger to her lips. She ordered the guard to release the farmer, and he took his keys from his purse and unlocked the irons. The man was free, but he remained crouched there on his knees, cursing, with his hands behind his back.

“Stand up, man,” said the girl to the prisoner. And to the guard: “Get out of here.”

When she was alone with the dead man she pulled the golden ring from her finger and gave it to him. It was shaped like a snake biting its own tail.

“Get aboard a dogger to Holland,” she said. “Then go to Copenhagen, find Arnas Arnæus the friend of the king and ask him to rectify your situation for my sake. If he should think that you have stolen this ring, than give him the greetings of the fair maiden; of the slender elf-body;—these words have not traveled widely. Tell him this, that if my lord can save the honor of Iceland, even if I am disgraced, his face shall still shine for this maiden.”

She took a coin from her purse, gave it to the man, and left the tent.

Afterward all was quiet at Þingvellir by Öxará but for the murmur of the stream and the echo of ax-strokes from Brennugjá.*

11

Jón Hreggviðsson got to his feet and licked his wrists. He peered out through the tent-flaps but saw no one and heard nothing suspicious, so he went out. There was dew upon the grass. He kept glancing around—it was the time of year when night is inconvenient for criminals. A whimbrel sat upon a rock. The man climbed out of Almannagjá in a place where a landslide had fallen from the cliff walls, and he concealed himself for a moment in a crevice as he thought about what to do next. Then he started running.

He headed for the uninhabited land east of Súlur and afterward north to Uxahryggir, threading watercourses and gullies and keeping himself as far away as he could from the common routes. The man was good on his feet and didn’t mind being cut by the stones and brushwood, because the dirt here was clean, unlike the offal on the floor of the black pit. He let his feet choose his course and allowed himself no other break than to throw himself down on his stomach at a spring and drink. Curious moorhens pursued him. The sun came up and shone on the man and the mountains.

He arrived around midmorning at a farm on the heath above Lundarreykjadalur and claimed that he was traveling with a packtrain from Skagafjörður. He said he was searching for two horses from the stock south in Kjalarnes that they’d lost up near Hallbjarnarvörður. He was given a bowl of skyr* and sheep’s milk. The old woman gave him tattered shoes. After he ate he set out again, first toward the inhabited areas, but as soon as he was out of sight of the farm he turned up the valley near Ok and climbed onto the glacier to cool off and take his bearings. From the crest of the glacier he could see all of the land to the north.

Midway between nones and midevening he found himself looking down at the parsonage of Húsafell, which sits nestled at the head of a valley just below the highlands, on the main route taken by travelers journeying through the uninhabited areas separating the country’s quarters.

The skyr at Vörðufell hadn’t been enough for the farmer, and he was starting to feel hungry again. The traveler had reached the point where the lowlands gave way to the tremendous heaths that divide the southern half of the country from the north, Arnarvatnsheiði and Tvídægra, and he was without provision. He had no desire to show himself on the road to the parsonage, where he knew that tough, experienced men could be lying in wait for fugitives. He met a shepherd boy and asked if any travelers had passed by on their way north from Kaldidalur, but the boy said that he hadn’t seen anyone riding northward that day, and that they didn’t expect any visitors from Kaldidalur until around midevening. The farmer calculated that since he’d set out so early and had taken the straightest line possible northward he still had quite a jump on the men from the assembly.

Housemaids were making a pile of brushwood and sheep dung behind a house, and Jón Hreggviðsson carried on with his story about the packtrain from Skagafjörður and losing the two horses from Kjalarnes near Hallbjarnarvörður, even though he knew nothing about the latter except for its name. They ran to the farm and told the priest that an outlaw had arrived. The priest, a giant of a man for his age, was sitting in the loft composing a ballad about Illugi Gríðarfóstri,* and now he laid aside his chalk, hitched up his breeches, came singing down the hallway, and stepped out the door of the farm.

“If you’re from Skagafjörður then give us a poem that tells how beer is quaffed and women seduced, and food shall be given you.”

Jón Hreggviðsson sang:

“Daylight is waning. Soon we shall raise
Mead cups brightly glowing.
Hail to you maiden, I sing your praise.
Red blood’s briskly flowing.”

“Neither the tune nor the mood is Skagafirthian; in fact it sounds to me like this is an introductory verse from the
Elder Ballad of Pontus.
It would probably have been better for you if its composer had fallen into a peat-pit—but because you have met my challenge, you shall have food no matter who you are.”

Jón Hreggviðsson was invited into the sitting room, though he made sure not to sit too far from the doorway. He was served moss-mash, soured tripe, hardened codheads, moldy butter, and brown shark meat. The priest sat in the loft and sang his ballad for his guest in a frightful voice; it was all about troll-women with poetic names like Pig-Headed Wrinkleskin, Saggy Socks, and Craggy Hussy, and he sang the entire time that his guest was eating.

When the farmer was finished listening to the ballad and eating the food he kissed the priest in thanks and said that he had to be going.

“I’m going to take you out to the corner of the sheepfold, my boy,” said the priest, “to show you the rock where seven criminals were forced to bow down before my grandfather and where I myself quashed seventy-one devils.”

He brought his guest out through the yard, locking the man’s emaciated upper arm in his bullyish steel grip and pushing him forward. Two women were stretching out wool to dry upon the churchyard walls, one old, the other young, and a pantry-bitch slept on the path. The priest called out for the women to follow them eastward over the homefield wall.

“My mother is eighty-five and my daughter is fourteen,” said the priest. “They’re used to stirring the blood.”

Both women looked vigorous but not in any overblown way.

East of the homefield stood a sheepfold of stone, shaped like a heart, divided in two with gates to the north and south. The surrounding landscape of high glaciers, brush-covered hillsides, and perennial gullies seemed to bow in repose to this place—it was as if the land had its home here. The fold extended northward from a huge turf-grown rock set in a southern gateway; this rock had, according to the priest, proven to be outstanding as both a chopping block for criminals and a tombstone for devils. Jón Hreggviðsson was relieved that there was no ax to be seen in the vicinity of the rock. On the other hand, there was another stone block lying in the field near the southern gate. The cleric called this boulder a slab and invited his guest to lift it up onto the end of the wall to show his gratitude for the hospitality that he had enjoyed on his travels.

Jón Hreggviðsson bent down to take hold of the rock, but since it was sea-beaten basalt and therefore difficult to grasp, he was unable to lift it off the ground, although he did manage to set it on edge and roll it forward a few paces. The female line of Húsafell stood stock-still a short distance away, their faces like stone as they watched the man. Finally the guest said that he really had to be going.

“Good mother,” said the priest. “Will you carry this speck around the sheepfold, to show this boy, before he goes, that there are still women in Iceland?”

The old woman was broad-shouldered and extrusive, strong-looking with hair on her forehead and beneath her chin, her skin as gray and rough-complexioned as a bird’s. She moved in to grab the rock, bowed down and bent her knees slightly, then heaved it first to her thighs and next to her chest. She set off around the fold with the rock in her outstretched arms, her pace steady and ever more measured as she walked. She put the boulder down calmly at the end of the wall. The guest swelled with so much anger at this sight that he forgot he was in a hurry, and he gripped the rock again and pushed harder, but as little happened as before. The daughter watched him with clear eyes and blue cheeks and a face an ell broad, just as the ancient sagas describe young troll-women. Then suddenly her stony expression broke and she laughed. The old woman, her grandmother, gave a tiny monotone bleat from somewhere deep inside. Jón Hreggviðsson stood up cursing.

“Little daughter,” said the priest. “Show this man that there are still young maidens in Iceland, but don’t run more than two or three times with this knucklebone around our little pen.”

The girl bent to her task, and although she was lacking in height she was so well-grown down below that no stronger pillars of support could be found under another adolescent girl in all of Borgarfjörður. She grasped the rock and stood straight up, then laughed and leaped around the fold three times as if she were carrying nothing but a sack of wool, and finally set it down again at the end of the wall.

The priest said: “Go now under God’s care, in that gray belt you wear, Jón Hreggviðsson from Rein. You’ve been fully punished in Húsafell.”

When Jón Hreggviðsson was an old man, he said that he’d never in his life felt greater humiliation before God and men than at that moment. He ran off as fast as he could. The yapping pantry-bitch chased him as far north as the river.