The Greenlanders (33 page)

At Easter, Sira Jon broke his fast and celebrated the Resurrection of the Lord in the company of Sira Pall Hallvardsson at Gardar. It happened that after the meal. Sira Pall whispered to Sira Audun that all the folk must go from the table, leaving only Sira Jon, and after a time, this was accomplished. When they were alone, Sira Pall Hallvardsson went and sat close beside the other priest, and he said, “My brother, do you recall the time we rowed the big Gardar boat together to Undir Hofdi church? I sat in the bow, and marveled at the power of your stroke.”

“Young men have pride in their strength as maidens have pride in their beauty, but all forms of pride are sinful. It seems to me that the task of old men such as we are now is to repent of the pride they had in their youth.”

“It seems to me that you repent at the expense of your own flesh.”

Now Sira Jon turned and looked at Sira Pall for the first time, and Sira Pall saw in his face a look of both fear and bitterness. Sira Jon said, “Is our own flesh not the first thing that we must repent of?”

“Even so, it is not possible to live in Greenland without a goodly store of flesh. It is the Lord’s mercy upon His beasts here that He gives them a goodly layer of fat and a pleasant, rounded form. So He is merciful to the men of the place, as well, for they are bigger than other men, and sturdier.”

Sira Jon sat stubbornly silent.

Now Sira Pall spoke in a low soothing voice, and said, “My brother, you are more learned than I am, but it seems to me that the Lord asks two things of men, and one of these is penitence, devotion, and sacrifice, but the other is the wise husbandry of the goods of the world, for the care of His servants and their charges. But the Lord does not ask both things from a single man. Instead He has made room in His church for both St. Francis and St. Augustine, and neither one sits before the other at the foot of His throne.”

Now Sira Jon sat for a long time, at first staring at Sira Pall, and then staring away. Finally, he said, “When meat sticks in the throat, it must be spit out, and when prayers burn within, their smoke must fly upward.”

And Sira Pall said, “Will you not speak to me of what is troubling you?”

And Sira Jon sat silent, and would not speak.

Soon after Easter, the ice broke up in Eriks Fjord, as it always does, in the space of a day or so, and a warm wind off the glacier blew the ice to the mouth of the fjord and out into the ocean. And soon after this, Sira Jon and three Gardar servingmen took the big Gardar boat, and they went to Brattahlid and made a visit to Osmund Thordarson.

Sira Jon went with his men into the farmsteading and the table was set up for them, and several women brought them food. None of these was Margret Asgeirsdottir. Isleif, he was told, was visiting his brother Ragnleif and conducting masses there. Nothing was said of the madwoman. After the eating was over, Marta Thordardottir took the priest to the high seat, and sat him there, then, in her commanding way, she began to quiz him about news from Gardar and the other districts. And this wish he had to know of Margret Asgeirsdottir was so great that he could in no way speak of it. His desire for knowledge of her felt unaccountably so like a sin that even when Marta herself mentioned the name and showed Sira Jon the lovely piece of cloth Margret had woven and decorated in the course of the winter, he could not ask, and Marta did not say, whether the woman had died or had gone away, or was simply not present in the room. The four men rowed back to Gardar after the evening meat, and made their way from the Eriks Fjord jetty to the residence in the dark, and even as they were walking along, it came to Sira Jon how he might have asked after the woman, what his manner might have been, and his words, and he thought of what he would say upon his return to Brattahlid—how he would incline his head and refer to Margret Asgeirsdottir as “that woman you had with you in the winter, what was her name? I believe Sira Isleif mentioned her to me.”

The fact was that Margret Asgeirsdottir had indeed served Sira Jon at his meat, but that in looking for the tall blond girl claimed ten years before by Olaf Finnbogason, he had overlooked a certain old woman, as he thought she was, although she was but of an age with himself. If, however, he had not rushed away, but stayed the night with Osmund, he would have known her from her dreams, for every night she awoke either weeping or calling out, and it was said that Skuli Gudmundsson prevented her from sleeping out of malice, for it is the case that even ghosts who were formerly gentle and considerate folk become ferocious and hateful after death. Nevertheless, although talk of this went about, Skuli neither appeared to nor harmed anyone other than Margret Asgeirsdottir, and so no one cared to do anything about it, for it was said, a man could draw the anger of ghosts upon himself by meddling. In addition to this, Margret never spoke of her dreams nor identified her tormentor, and so no one felt called upon to bring the topic up, not even Sira Isleif.

Now it happened that some days after Sira Jon’s visit, around the mass of St. Hallvard, Margret and Asta returned to Steinstraumstead with a flock of twenty sheep and ewes and began putting things in order there. Where Margret seemed to have grown smaller, Asta Thorbergsdottir seemed to have grown larger, and her strength, always that of a man, now seemed equal to that of two men. Cutting turves and piling them up was as nothing to her, and she hardly grunted when lifting the heaviest stones. Her arms were so long and so strong that she could carry two struggling sheep with no trouble, and her hips were wide as the beam of a boat. It was her habit always to ask Margret Asgeirsdottir for advice and instructions, and always to look to her if someone else, even Marta Thordardottir, asked her to perform any service. On the day when they rowed across Eriks Fjord to Steinstraumstead, they found upon the shore a deserted arrangement of stones, such as skraelings build when they desire to cook, and Asta went over to these stones, and kicked them apart with her foot, and found another large boulder and lifted it and set it among these stones, but the two women said nothing of this, but only went about sweeping out the steading and moving into it.

Some days after their coming, they looked out in the morning and discovered three skin boats pulled up on the shore and another two out in the fjord. There were some twelve or fifteen skraeling men and boys on the shore and in the boats, but after a short while, they pushed the beached boats back into the water and paddled swiftly away. Margret was not a little afraid of these signs, for in addition to the news of Ragnvald Einarsson, she knew well from the stories of her childhood the sorts of indignities skraelings were prepared to perpetrate upon the children of men, especially the female children, and she did not hesitate to relate them to Asta.

It was true, she said, that they took particular pleasure in preventing the worship of the Lord among their captives, and often cast spells upon these unfortunates so that they forgot all of their prayers. It was also said by some, including her old nurse, Ingrid, that the feet of these demons were covered with fur, as was their skin inside their clothing, and this was the reason they could endure such cold as they did. Only their hands and faces were hairless, but these didn’t freeze, either, for some reason, and even in the bitterest cold the demons went without hoods or mittens. Asta looked fixedly at the fjord where the skin boats had turned into specks in the distance. She made no response, but went down the hillside and kicked the cooking stones even farther apart. After this, they saw nothing of the skraelings for a long while.

It happened that one day around the feast of St. Jon, Margret and Asta set about shearing the twenty ewes that they had brought with them to Steinstraumstead. Asta was good at this work, but Margret was clumsy, for Hrafn and Olaf did the shearing at Gunnars Stead, and so it was Margret’s task to take the fleeces and lay them across the side of the hill, to cool and loosen so that they could be broken into wool for spinning. These fleeces were laid out for the space of one day, then rolled up at nightfall and put away. With the bleating of the ewes and the crying of the lambs, there was such a clamor that neither Asta nor Margret, who was farther down the hillside, noticed the approach of two skin boats until they were drawn up on the shore and the skraelings in them had already gotten out and begun to cook their meal over a fire they built. This group of demons included three men, a young woman, an old woman, and two children, and these children came up the hillside and surprised Margret at her work so that she cried out. Now the young woman appeared behind them and took their hands and backed away. Unlike the children of men, these children stared into Margret’s face as a cat might, never needing to blink or turn away. The demon woman smiled and nodded.

Now Asta came down the hillside carrying the sheep shears and two of the demon men came up from the shore, one of them carrying a bow and some arrows. This man appeared to be younger even than the young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen winters old. He stopped as if startled by the sight of Asta Thorbergsdottir, and let his gaze wander over her. Seeing this, Asta raised her shears above her head and brandished them, and the skraelings and their young turned and went down the hillside. But the young man looked back twice at Asta, although she scowled mightily at him. Now a sheep scampered down the slope, and Margret and Asta saw that the three unshorn ewes had escaped from the ewe fold and scattered themselves among the shorn ewes, and that the fleeces were in danger of being stepped on and broken, so they began to run about the slope chasing the sheep back to the fold. They thought no more of the skraeling group until the next morning, when Asta stepped out of the steading and discovered a fine sealskin upon the doorstone that could only have come from the skraelings. This she carried down to the strand and pitched into the fjord. After that, she went to the cooking spot and scattered the stones once again.

Now it was usual during the summer days that Margret would take the sheep back into the hills behind Steinstraumstead that overlooked the stony creek known as Steinstraum, and were well watered by the glacier, so that they were green all summer, and she would herd them out each morning and back each evening, and also gather angelica and other herbs such as she found and put them in her sack. It was true that in spite of the fact that Margret had lost her girlish appearance, she was still little burdened by pain of the hips or any of the other ills of maturity, and she stepped about the hills with as much speed and grace as she always had. It was also true that such movement was a pleasure to her in all weathers, for the sunlight and the breezes and the rain drove away thoughts of past things. This had been a great trial to her, that the cloth she had fashioned for Marta Thordardottir had been all woven of memories and regrets, so that when Marta brought it out to admire it, the very smell of it brought Margret grief, and she foresaw that this would be the case again in the coming winter and every succeeding one, that her memories, all alike but eternally repeating themselves, would cluster about her as she sat quietly at the loom and bear down upon her and smother her. And yet, Marta was herself growing old and her sight was dimming, so that if she wished to have Margret about her, Margret desired to fulfill her wish.

Going with the sheep, however, was so like her childhood wanderings in the mountains above Gunnars Stead that it seemed to her that she was returned to that time, and the ghostly figure she sometimes caught sight of just ahead of her or half hidden among the scrub birch was only her father’s brother, Hauk Gunnarsson, setting bird snares. And this figure was so quiet and elusive, as Hauk himself had been, that its appearance hardly even surprised her. It was true, she sometimes said to Asta, that her father’s brother had visited every part of the eastern settlement, and must have known Steinstraumstead and the stony river as well as anywhere else. At the end of each day with the sheep, Margret returned to the steading to receive her dreams, and as night fell, grew melancholy, so that she did not welcome talk with Asta, and Asta did not offer it.

Perhaps as a result of these habits, Margret came and went without knowing that Asta was much oppressed by the attentions of the young skraeling man. He came every day alone in a fine skin boat, and at first he was content to demonstrate his skills to Asta, she thought for her admiration. He was agile in the skin boat, and capable of great speed and almost magical maneuvers. Of course, she dared not look at them at first, but kept to her work of cheese-making, spinning, and repair of the turf and stonework about the little steading, but in the end it was difficult never to look, for his feats were such as she had never seen before performed by men. And as the devil tempts folk little by little out of the path of the Lord, so these sights tempted Asta Thorbergsdottir first to glance and then to stare and then to come down upon the strand and gaze out into the fjord, where demon and boat together acted like playful fish, leaping in and out of the water, disappearing and reappearing in the waves, shooting from one place to another. At least, so these things appeared to the sight of Asta Thorbergsdottir, but she would not have admitted them to others, for fear of being thought possessed. But even so, when the skraeling approached the shore, Asta had the sense to run up the hillside, and in addition to this, to cast away every gift that the devil left for her, no matter how desirable some little trinket might be, for the fact was that the beauty of such things hid their corrupt nature—were someone to cut open a hunk of whalemeat, for example, such a hunk left as a gift by a demon, one would find it crawling with maggots, and what was more, even gifts not naturally prone to such transformations, a bone needle or a piece of walrus tusk, were transformed by the skraelings into crawling and corrupt objects.

After some days of this, she was willing to admit that the way this corruption came about was not intended by the skraelings themselves, but came as a result of their demon natures. Even so, she resolutely threw everything away and brandished whatever might be in her hand when the skraeling appeared in as threatening a fashion as she could muster. Also, on some days she looked for Sira Isleif to come and relieve her fears, or at least stiffen her resistance against this skraeling, for, say what one wished, she had come to look for his gifts and his antics in the fjord. Life at Steinstraumstead, especially after the winter at Brattahlid, was a solitary undertaking. Other days she feared that Sira Isleif’s visit might be upon them, and that he would castigate her sin in paying any notice to this devil at all, and she turned over in her thoughts what she might say in her own defense, but the fact was, that for deserting the ways of God, even in thoughts, there is no defense. And so she wished away the visit of Sira Isleif on these days.