The Greenlanders (19 page)

Now she watched for a time when everyone would be away from the farmstead, and this came soon enough, the next time Birgitta and Katla walked over to Undir Hofdi church for services, for Gunnar had gone to Gardar and Olaf was up in the hills with Hrafn and his sons, shearing the sheep. Now Margret found the silk, spread it out, and fell upon it as if in a fury, and in very little time she had cut it into pieces for a gown. Now she sat back and the fever was quenched, and she saw what she had done and became sorely afraid, so she rolled up the pieces and put them away again in her chest.

Not long after this, she met Skuli once again in the mountains, and he was wearing an especially colorful suit of light blue and green, while Margret was wearing her same gown of purplish Gunnars Stead wadmal, and Margret asked him, as if idly, “How came you by clothing of such outlandish colors?”

Skuli stepped back and looked down at himself and laughed. “My former master would be little obliged to you for your words, since every retainer on his estate wore such colors every day, except those engaged in field work. Such bright dress is much thought of in Norway now, and no one goes about like a Viking princess as you do.” After this, he took her in his arms, and they spoke no more of dress, but their lovemaking did nothing to abate the fever that was once more upon Margret, and she parted with Skuli quickly and returned home.

Now the farmstead was well populated, for everyone was about, especially Birgitta, who was in and out of the house, chattering and asking questions. For this reason, Margret stayed far from her chest, although it glowed in her eyes like an ember, and drew her much as Skuli did. First there was the preparation of the evening meal, and then the eating of it, and after this Gunnar and Olaf sat over their trenchers and talked at length about Olaf’s sheep shearing. Then Birgitta sat at Gunnar’s elbow and asked him for a tale, so he told the tale of the two women, Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir and Freydis Eriksdottir, both of whom were related to Leif Eriksson, the lucky.

Now this is a famous story among the Greenlanders, for it treats of some of their favorite subjects, namely Vinland, and the kin of Erik the Red. And in this story, there is a good woman and a bad woman, and so folk often tell it as a lesson concerning the wills of women, for Freydis Eriksdottir was always resolved to have her will, and caused the deaths of a number of men, as well as herself killing seven women with an ax. Though this story went on for a long time, and Olaf and Hrafn fell asleep and Katla went off to her house, Margret could not leave off listening, although it seemed unbearable to her. Gunnar finished the story, thus, “For Gudrid things went much differently, for she had three husbands, all of whom died wealthy, and each was followed by another handsomer and more agreeable than the last, until Gudrid died in her bed with her sons, including Snorri, who had been born in Vinland, about her.” And Birgitta pinched his arm and yawned, and said, “I didn’t foresee such a long story. Indeed,” she smiled, “Vigdis would like this tale, for I’m sure she fancies herself such a woman as Gudrid is, prosperous and pious. But, Gunnar, you must tell me, how is it that those seven women that Freydis murdered stood still for it, and how is it that twenty men stood about and watched it? This Freydis must have been fierce indeed.” Gunnar shrugged and laughed and so the two went to their bedcloset, and their talking died down after a bit.

After this Margret went to her chest and opened it and drew forth a piece of red silk and a spindle whorl and she began to pull threads from the silk and spin them together into sewing thread. Such work was easily done in the half light of the spring night, and her hands worked quickly, sometimes spinning and sometimes winding the spun thread onto a length of reindeer antler. Once or twice she got up to put away the pieces of silk that she was not spinning from, but each time she sat down again with the tissue in her hand. After she was done, and had spun all of the threads together, she sat with the roll in her hands. Just before Olaf got up for the morning work, she put everything away again.

As usual, Olaf went out while Margret dished up his morning meal. There were many things she could say to him when he returned, about how Asgeir had loved him, and how familiar and necessary he was about Gunnars Stead, and about her gratitude at the way he had saved them from starvation before, and the way they depended on him to do so even now. Some of these things she formed with her lips, trying out how she would say them when he was sitting before her. But when he was sitting before her, scooping up his sourmilk with a piece of dried sealmeat, she said none of these things, for these things could not be said to this Olaf, who tied a band of wadmal around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes, and whose shoulders hunched over his trencher as if to protect it from polar bears. Soon enough, telling her he would be manuring the homefield for the rest of the day, he pushed himself to his feet and went out, carrying a skin bag full of cheese and dried reindeer meat.

Margret ran to her chest and drew forth the pieces of silk. It seemed the only virtue now to sew them together as quickly as possible. She took fine stitches with Skuli’s finest needle, and the thread she had spun pulled through the silk as if it were water. Birgitta and Gunnar arose late, laughing, and she had sewn a long seam.

One day not long after this, she went into the mountains wearing her cloak, although the sun was warm on the scree of the mountain sides, and then she lingered here and there in some of the clefts where Skuli had a habit of meeting her. Now she saw him at the bottom of the hill, looking back over his shoulder toward Undir Hofdi church. Then he turned and began again to climb the path. He was wearing simple blue clothing that she had seen many times before, and an ornate band of blue and white tablet weaving around his hair, which hung luxuriantly to his shoulders. He climbed confidently, knowing where to step without looking. From time to time he picked up twigs and threw them down again. No wood in Greenland except driftwood was satisfactory for carving, but Margret smiled that he liked to handle bits of it anyway. Now he looked up, and perhaps caught sight of her, for he seemed to smile and quicken his pace. Margret stepped out of sight into a copse of willow brush, removed her cloak, and waited. The red dress was too long, and fell in folds over her shoes, a good fashion for court ladies with nothing to do, of little use in Greenland, but it pleased her, the flow of the red silk and the cool sway of it against her skin.

Now came the crunch of Skuli’s foot on the scree, a foot she could see, shod in blue, then another one. He spoke her name. She reached forward and pushed aside some branches of willow brush and his face was so close that it startled her and she snorted. He turned toward her, and at first his face had no expression, and then she saw his jaw drop and his eyes widen into perfect admiration and surprise, such as she had never seen on his or any face before in her life, and at the same time that she knew this as sin and vanity she also fell into the terror of never seeing such a look on his face again.

On this afternoon, the two stayed together much longer than usual, walking back and forth along the side of the hill and talking of many things. Skuli told Margret of two or three men of the court, who had fallen deeply in love with ladies who were married to other men, and one of these men was the brother of the king of Sweden. By subterfuge, the knight and his lady saw one another two or three times during the year, and the rest of the time the lady stayed with her husband and children and the knight governed his estates, and it was said by all that the good sense with which he did all of his works was the direct result of the love that he felt for the lady, and the way in which that love showed him the proper love of God, so that he was never cruel toward his tenants, and was always hospitable and openhanded to strangers and visitors. And she, too, was without anger or pride or envy or sloth, and was considered an excellent wife and loving mother, and this love between the two lasted many years, until the lady’s children were grown and her hair was gray. But when, at last, the Great Death came upon the world, and the lady was lying ill and ready to repent of all her sins, the only sin she could not repent freely of was her love for the king’s brother, and so she held this in her heart, and died unshriven of that sin, and her maids feared for her soul, until not long after her death, when her corpus lay on its bier and the maids were washing it, there arose from it a great fragrance, as of the purest flowers in spring, so that it filled the lady’s steading with a pleasing odor, and this fragrance continued in the lady’s chamber for many years after she was buried, and was seen as a sign of her virtue. And no one who was about her during her last days died of the contagion, for the fragrance served to repel bad airs from the steading.

There was another story, said Skuli, of a poor man who went on a crusade against the Turks, and he, too, was much in love with the wife of a fellow knight, who stayed home. And this man was made very bold in his crusade, so that he slew great numbers of the infidel, and was rewarded with many lands back in Denmark, where his concubine lived, but his love for the lady moved him to give away these prizes to the Church, and keep for himself only his horse and a sufficiency of plunder so that he could provide for his manservant and himself. It so happened that after twenty years of fighting, he was grievously wounded and near to death when his servant carried him from the field, but he grieved more over the knowledge that he had nothing to send back to his lady as a reminder of himself and a keepsake except a fragment of a green banner that he had won in the day’s battle. This the servant vowed to take to the lady, and he did so, traveling for five more years. But when he had made his return, he discovered that the lady was dead, and when he found her tomb near the church, he saw that she had died on the selfsame day as the knight had died, and that hanging from her tomb was an unfaded sleeve of the same color of green as the banner, and the fragment of the banner fit into the sleeve as if they had been cut from the same cloth. Margret could not hear enough of such stories, and when Skuli came to the end of the ones he knew, she begged him to repeat them, which he gladly did. When she returned to Gunnars Stead, the evening meal was finished, and all the Gunnars Stead folk were asleep. Margret was not a little pleased with this great piece of luck.

Now Skuli persuaded Kollbein Sigurdsson to allow him to lodge at Undir Hofdi church, in order to help the old priest, Nikolaus, with the summer work. Kollbein was not a little reluctant to do this, since he had great plans of his own for Skuli’s time, but Skuli pointed out to him that Nikolaus’ steading was within easy visiting distance of all the farms in Vatna Hverfi, and it would be convenient from there to judge the wealth of the district. Kollbein declared that indeed this was so, and allowed Skuli’s departure. Even so, Skuli put off the move for a few days, and seemed to himself almost afraid, and yet he found the thought of Margret Asgeirsdottir irresistibly alluring, as if she had changed into a person he had never seen before. In the red dress, she seemed to burst forth like a phoenix, burning up everything around her, more beautiful than any court lady he had ever seen, and yet not proud at all, as frightened by him as he was by her. The stories he told her came out of him willy-nilly, ones he knew fairly well and ones he barely remembered hearing, and they gave him a feeling of intoxication that he had never had in Greenland before, for the lack of beer and ale. If she showed the least mote of doubt, he felt himself swell with the knowledge that everything he said was perfect truth. But then it seemed to him after a while that she never showed any doubt at all.

In this same spring, Pall Hallvardsson the Priest and Jon the Priest had a disagreement about some of the revenues of Hvalsey church, where Pall Hallvardsson was now living and preaching. With the great snows of the past two winters, the church and especially the priest’s house had fallen into disrepair, so that rain and wind came in upon the parishioners as they knelt at their prayers, and in addition, three of the six rooms of Pall Hallvardsson’s house were unusable most of the time. Gunnar Asgeirsson agreed to supply three beams of wood and some men in Hvalsey Fjord agreed to work at repairing the church and at least one room of the priest’s house, if these services could be applied against the tithe and the Peter’s pence that were owed to Gardar. But Jon declared that the bishop could not afford to forgo these revenues, for Gardar itself was in poorer straits than it had been before the sickness. Jon said that the most important endeavor was to rebuild Gardar to the same degree of richness and splendor as two years before, for the greater glory of God, and that temporary repairs of Hvalsey church would do until the following year. The men of Hvalsey Fjord were greatly angered by this, for they said that it showed in what little esteem they and their families were held by the men at Gardar, and in addition to this, it showed how little Jon, and perhaps others, had learned about Greenland since coming, for it took no time at all for a Greenland building, once the wind and windborne sand got in, to be utterly laid waste, and at least those at Gardar had four solid walls about them when they worshiped.

One day Pall Hallvardsson got on his horse and rode to Gardar, and met with Jon, for although he was accustomed to bowing to the other man, he was also much disturbed at the complaints of his parishioners. Now when Pall Hallvardsson was announced, Jon retired to his cell and put on a red monsignor’s gown and the ring and the other paraphernalia of his rank, so that Pall Hallvardsson would know that it was permissible for him to seek redress, but that the power for giving or withholding lay with Jon, especially now, when the bishop was weak and ill. When the servant showed Pall Hallvardsson to Jon’s working chamber, Jon was sitting very upright in his seat. Pall Hallvardsson went to him and kissed his ring, and asked politely after his health and that of the bishop.

Jon looked down upon him. “The bishop finds it difficult to throw off his illness of the spring, and keeps mostly to his bed and is often dozing. It is in our power these days to make all but the most important decisions.” He closed his eyes once, in exasperation. “We have not seen fit to disturb his peace with the unreasonable demands of the Hvalsey Fjord farmers.”