The Greenlanders (76 page)

“This is special punishment indeed, but even so, the Icelanders have ships, and go off to Norway and Germany for goods. The Greenlanders sit idly in their steadings and hope for life or death, whichever seems to them the most desirable at the time.”

“Do the Norwegians have much for us Icelanders? Folk differ in their views on this. Most folk say that the Germans have stolen it all. They are an evil folk, but much preferred by the queen even so. At any rate, a dozen ships in the harbor cannot replace all of the lost cattle, or the sheep, or the grazing lands, or the steadings. And when these ships come, they bring goods, but, indeed, they also take away the queen’s impositions of tax. Men are better left to themselves. That is my opinion.”

“You have a bishop, the folk are blessed and married and buried, and prevented from falling away from the Lord through ignorance.”

“You may say so.”

“Indeed, we Greenlanders have had no bishop in nearly thirty winters, and of our old priests, the best educated one wastes away as a madman in a tiny chamber here at Gardar.”

“We have had bishops, indeed, but they have been fighting men or fools. We are better without them. Folk do not want to hear the Lord speaking through such fellows. And here is another thing. I have heard this summer from ships at Bergen that the Great Death has swept through the Icelanders, and many folk have been taken, although there has been no recent rising of this black miasma elsewhere, not in Norway or in Germany or even in England, where the venality of the folk makes them especially susceptible to this evil.”

And to these speeches Gunnar had no reply except the usual remark that the priests say that the people can bear their burdens well enough, and to this Snorri grunted, and then he went back to his morning meat, and Gunnar went out of the bishop’s house.

Now the winter came on, and folk were making their preparations, and it happened that some svid was stolen from a steading in Vatna Hverfi district, and after that some reindeer meat and some sealmeat, and from this, folk knew that Ofeig had returned to the district. Now men came together, and they agreed that any outlaw could be captured and killed, if his pursuers were sufficiently determined, and so Jon Andres Erlendsson, Arni Magnusson, and Hrolf, the brother-in-law of Thorkel Gellison, made it their purpose to find Ofeig and kill him. Sometimes Kollgrim Gunnarsson joined them, and he was especially valuable in his knowledge of signs and spoors, and folk say that this is a God-given boon that all men may not have, however attentive they are.

In this winter, there were three occasions when Ofeig was seen, and two when it seemed to Jon Andres that they might catch him. The first of these happened shortly after the first winter nights. Early one morning, long before sunrise, Jon Andres was lying with Helga in their bedcloset, when a boy came into the steading, and declared that there was a bear in the byre at Mosfell Stead, and that the farm folk had risen up upon realizing that Ofeig was in the byre and set boulders by the door, but indeed, there were some sheep and goats and other goods in the byre, and if Ofeig were to wake up, then surely he would kill these. Now Jon Andres leaped from his bed, and found his ax and his crossbow, and gathered his men, and they went on horseback over the frozen ground to this steading, which was not as nearby as Jon Andres might have wished it to be.

Mosfell Stead sat on a neck of land between two ponds that flowed out of Broad Lake, which was the second lake of Vatna Hverfi district. The steading sat on a hill looking down upon the lake, and the byre sat lower, so that from the steading, the turves over its roof seemed to blend into the hillside. The farmer on the steading was a woman who had three sons, but whose husband had died in the hunger, and it was this woman, whose name was Ulfhild, who had thought of rolling the stones against the byre door. When Jon Andres and his men rode up to the steading, Ulfhild and her sons and their children were standing in front of the steading and looking down at the byre, and the bleats of sheep and the cries of goats were coming from the byre, but muffled by the turves. Ulfhild said to Jon Andres, “Now, my man, you must kill this devil, for a poor woman loves her sheep more than she loves her children, for the one puts food in her mouth, and the other takes it out, and I can tell the voices of my beauties as they cry out below.”

But the eldest son was discontented with this, and fell to bickering, saying that the whereabouts of Ofeig Thorkelsson was no business of theirs, and that they were better to have let the fellow sleep out his fill and rise up and go off.

Ulfhild tightened her lips. “And who is to say, my fool, that he would not have gone off up the hill to our steading and rummaged about there? It seems to me that you think of nothing, and had better close your mouth than open it.” And Jon Andres and his men dismounted and tethered their horses to the birch scrub that stood about the steading.

Jon Andres went down the hill to the door of the byre and shouted, “Folk say that bears have returned to Greenland.” There was no reply. Now Jon Andres went on, “Folk say that in former days, it took ten men to capture a bear, but only six to kill it. We have ten men here, and would hate to use only six of them, for all are ready for a fight.” Still there was no sound of human words, only the crying of beasts. But suddenly there was a great crash against the door, and the door shook with it. There was another crash, and the door shook again, and Jon Andres stepped back, and gestured to two of his men to come up to him, and this was their plan, that they would quickly and silently roll back the stones, so that Ofeig would crash out of the door and fall forward at their feet, and then they and the others would use their weapons against him, and capture him or kill him. The other seven men gathered in a tight circle some paces below the door, and the first three began to roll back the stones, but it happened that as one of the men was pushing on his stone, quite a large one, Ofeig crashed against the door, which slammed into this fellow and knocked him down, then broke, and fell somewhat open. Instead of tumbling at their feet, Ofeig leaped out of the byre and jumped over the fallen man, and began to run down the hillside, and when he came to the circle of men, he dived and rolled through them, then regained his feet and ran down the hillside. A horse was grazing at the bottom of the hillside, the widow’s only horse, and Ofeig jumped on this and began to beat it, and by the time Jon Andres and his men had climbed the hill to their tethered horses and mounted them, he was far away across the lake, and though they pursued him, they did not catch sight of him again.

When they returned to the steading later in the day, they saw that the partitions in the byre were knocked down and that some sheep had their necks broken. In addition to this, the horse was lost, and so Ulfhild said, “It seems to me that you men are of little use in this.” Jon Andres promised her two sheep and another horse, and they returned to Ketils Stead, and sat there quietly for a while.

It was the case that Helga went every day from Ketils Stead around the hillside to Gunnars Stead, and she prepared a meal for Kollgrim and set it out for him. It was also the case that she talked every day with Elisabet Thorolfsdottir, who was growing rounder and rounder with Kollgrim’s child, and this child was expected to be born before Yule. Helga wished Elisabet to return to Lavrans Stead, or at least to remove to Ketils Stead before the confinement and the arrival of Sigrid Bjornsdottir after the wedding. But Elisabet Thorolfsdottir would have nothing of this, and whenever Helga spoke to her of it, she would sit patting her great belly and weeping. She wept shamelessly and without cease, soaking the front of her robe with tears, but this weeping seemed not to relieve her at all, nor to give her any strength to get up and move about the steading, even to prepare food or make a fire. In fact, the weeping had no strength, but rolled out of the girl as water rolls out of the mouth of a stream into the fjord. Helga was by turns sorrowful, angry, and amused, but nothing that Helga said or did had any effect on this weeping at all. Kollgrim came and went. He was tender and friendly toward Helga, more so than he had been in a year, and he paid no heed at all to Elisabet Thorolfsdottir.

This grieving cast a pall over Helga’s spirits, so that she especially dreaded to see Jon Andres go off on one of his expeditions after Ofeig, and the whole time that he was gone she dreaded his return, for it seemed certain to her that he would come back to the steading injured or killed, as Greenlanders often do. Toward Yule it happened that Ofeig was seen again, this time at Undir Hofdi church, in the priest’s house, and all the men at both Ketils Stead and Gunnars Stead, plus some others from nearby, went off in the middle of the night to capture him. Helga had to get up with them, and bring bowls of sourmilk around to the men, to her brother and her husband. They stood talking in the moonlight, their weapons in the snow at their feet, one tall, straight, and blond, so turned in upon himself that he did not raise his eyes from his feet, even when he was giving orders about the arrangements of things. The other, as tall, was supple and dark, and his eyes ranged over the horizon, over the other men, over Kollgrim himself, always taking measure, comparing one thing to another. When Helga handed him his bowl of sourmilk, these eyes fell upon her, and regarded her with pleasure, and this look, at such a time, seared her to her boots, but she only smiled in return and cast her own eyes down, as priests always say that it is good for a woman to do. Now the men mounted their horses, and rode off.

The first snowfalls of the season covered the ground with thick powder, and the horses kicked up great plumes of white in the moonlight as they trotted and galloped toward Undir Hofdi church. After no long time, both horses and men were silvery white from hood to hoof. The scheme was this, that they would arrive at the priest’s house and surround it, but do nothing, and make no sound, only wait for Ofeig to arise and go outside to relieve himself in the snow, and then some men would close upon him with their axes. Should he escape these men, others would attack him with their crossbows as he was running off. No unarmed man would get near him, for such an unlucky fellow would surely gain his death, so strong was Ofeig known to be.

They came up to the dark bulk of the church in the moonlight, and they dismounted their horses and led them into the church, so that any noises the beasts might make would be muffled by the turfing around those walls. The steading was dark and silent. Kollgrim estimated that it was still some time until dawn, for the days were nearly their shortest now. The men sat down in the snow with their cloaks and furs about them, and they watched for the door of the steading to open. Kollgrim had forbidden any talking at all.

Jon Andres sat cross-legged, warm inside his furs, and set himself to watch the door to the steading. Kollgrim was beside him to the left, and a servingman, Karl, who was especially good with a crossbow, beside him to the right. He looked over the heads of all the men, and back at the door to the steading, and he wondered if Ofeig was indeed inside, or if they were, with great effort, silently waiting out silence while Ofeig slipped away to another steading, to steal more food or kill more sheep. Folk in the district now habitually referred to Ofeig as “that devil,” and more than a few looked to the Icelanders to do something about him, according to the predictions of the fellow Larus. It had been so long since Jon Andres himself had seen Ofeig, that when he heard of the deaths of the fellow Arnkel and his wife Alfdis, he, too, had seen something devilish in it. Now, however, it was not Ofeig’s devilishness that made Jon Andres want to kill him, but the knowledge that Ofeig was a man like any other. If anything had brought this knowledge to Jon Andres, it was the sight of the fellow running and rolling down the long hillside at Mosfell, in clothes that were ill-fitting and too small, boots that were mismatched, a threadbare cloak. And he had Ofeig’s face and hands and manner. He was Ofeig, whatever corruption seethed within.

Now it seemed to Jon Andres that much time had passed since they had sat down, although the sky was no lighter, even to the east, and he was still warm in his furs. He looked over the other men. They sat as if cursed with spells, such spells as the skraelings know, that make a man motionless for days at a seal hole in the ice. Only Kollgrim had changed position, although soundlessly, without even a rustle of clothing. He was looking toward the church, and when Jon Andres followed his gaze, he, too, began to hear an intermittent noise, as if one of the horses had broken loose, and was moving among the others. Kollgrim turned and caught his eye, cocked his head, and shrugged. Jon Andres was relieved. The noise was indeed a small one, and would be doubly muffled to Ofeig’s ears, inside the turves of the priest’s house. Kollgrim turned back to the door of the steading, and watched intently. He had a predator’s concentration, or a skraeling’s. Jon Andres did not know what to make of his wife’s brother, only that Kollgrim had not put aside the enmity between them, except for appearance. He would not, Jon Andres thought, ever put it aside, though he might save Jon Andres’ life, or Jon Andres might save his. It seemed to him that unfriendliness formed the other man’s backbone, unfriendliness and melancholia. And it was also the case that however much Jon Andres disapproved of this trait among the Greenlanders, he loved rather than hated Kollgrim for it. Helga had nothing to say to this. Her devotion to Kollgrim was a habit with her.

But still the darkness did not lighten, and no movement relieved the scene, and now Jon Andres himself felt the spell descend over him, yet he dared not move or change position, for he had not the talent of soundless movement. A strong memory came to him, of Ofeig as a child, when he sometimes came to Ketils Stead with Magnus Arnason, his foster father, the memory of Ofeig sitting over his trencher, and dipping his spoon into his broth, for he did it always in this wise, he would press the bowl of the spoon ever so slowly into the steaming liquid, as if protracting the pleasure of its filling, as if every mouthful was almost unbearably delicious, and Jon Andres, to whom meat was indifferent, watched every spoonful that went into Ofeig’s mouth as closely as Ofeig did. Now, in the darkness, staring at the door of the steading, Jon Andres half expected it to open and disclose Ofeig the child, his spoon in his fist. And it seemed to him that the spell covered him more deeply, and only the alertness of Kollgrim offered hope for release from it. He grew afraid, although he was not by nature a fearful man.