Iceland's Bell (21 page)

8

When Arnas Arnæus sent word from the east at the end of the summer that he expected to be in Skálholt around the time of the roundup and wished to spend the winter at the bishop’s residence, the bishop set to work at once, summoning workers to refurbish the Grand Salon and the two smaller parlors behind it, where noble guests were customarily accommodated. The woodwork was repaired and painted or oiled, the locks and door-hinges mended, the stoves rebricked; in the interior parlor a bed frame was supplied with duvets and piles of pillows, and clean curtains were brought out, recreased, and hung up around it, while the outer parlor was prepared as a study and furnished with an imposing bureau, a writing desk, stools, two pretentious, antiquely carved easy-chairs, and a clothes-chest. Everything metal was polished: tin pitchers, copper pots, and silver-ware; then the house was scoured thoroughly. Finally juniper was burned in the study.

Toward the end of September one of the servants of the royal envoy transported his master’s luggage on several packhorses from the south over the heaths, while Arnas himself came several days later from the east with a packtrain of thirty horses, along with his secretaries, valets, and attendants. Stacks of the books and papers he brought with him quickly filled the rooms.

Although the king’s envoy was by nature a calm and placid man, a great bustle of activity arose around him quite soon after he set up his office in Skálholt. He sent servants on official business in various directions, carrying missives and messages, summoning folk to meet with him, while others came uninvited, some from remote districts. Everyone was curious to hear as many details as possible concerning his mission, since they were aware of the fact that he’d been ordered by our Highness to make a thorough inspection of the country’s economic circumstances and afterward to submit proposals to the king as to how the huge impoverishment pressing upon the countryfolk could most successfully be alleviated. The letters he had published at the Öxará Assembly stated explicitly that he possessed full and complete access to the authorities’ records and could demand that the authorities answer to him in any matter whatsoever, just as he saw fit, that it fell to his jurisdiction to investigate the cases that the Chancery deemed to have been dubiously prosecuted, and that he could demand retrials in cases he determined to have been misjudged and consequently bring those responsible to justice. He was open toward people about most matters and inquisitive about their conditions, but was unwilling to go into details concerning his mission and even less talkative when it came to his authority; instead he came across as the most self-effacing and soft-spoken of men, asking companionably about all sorts of things as if his closest neighbor for most of his life happened to be the person with whom he was currently conversing. He knew no less about the lives and families of hanged thieves and branded beggar-girls than he did of legislators and scholars, and he never held the things that he had seen and experienced over the heads of the persons he interviewed. It became apparent that his most cherished topics for conversation were old books and reminiscences, and those who had expected to be interrogated by some no-nonsense authority about the evil deeds that burdened their consciences were awestruck that his conversation should focus primarily on an old strip of parchment or some useless, miserable old booklet.

This particular autumn day all was quiet in Skálholt—no one had the slightest inkling that anything was afoot, except that it had started to freeze, causing the stench of rubbish and mire particular to the place to diminish slightly. She arrived between matins and prime, the time when folk lie sleeping most soundly, and because of her familiarity with the parish grounds she did not have to inconvenience anyone not belonging to her family; instead she rode straight up to her sister’s window and rapped upon the pane with the head of her riding crop. The bishop’s wife awoke and looked out the window to see who had come. By the time the madam reached the doors Snæfríður’s attendants had left, leaving her standing alone with her luggage behind the house. They conversed quietly in the madam’s loft the whole morning, until the moon sunk down and the housemaids started slamming doors and stoking fires in the front part of the house; then they lay down to rest. Around tierce, when the madam went downstairs, Snæfríður had just fallen asleep. She slept the whole day, and no one knew that a new visitor had arrived.

When the bishop’s wife sent a message to the archpriest Sigurður that he was not to eat his evening meal in the servant’s quarters, but rather at the bishop’s table in the Grand Salon, the learned man of God began to grow suspicious, and he put on his old sleeved dress-cassock, threadbare and glossy, then fetched out his dusty and shrunken boots from under his bed and pulled them onto his feet. However, when he arrived at the Grand Salon at the appointed time, no one was there except for Guðrún, the bishop’s adolescent elder daughter, who walked in and out and snorted when she saw him as if she’d caught a whiff of something rotten. The tables had been set with tablecloths and polished dishes and lustrous pitchers, and two candlesticks with burning three-stemmed candles. Presently the assessor’s secretary walked in, a young man, graduate of the cathedral school at Hólar and baccalaureus* at the university in Copenhagen. He glanced at the archpriest but did not greet him, and instead started circling the room, flicking at the wainscoting with a finger, crooning vain refrains of Latin hymns.

The archpriest took heed not to look up, but could not refrain from muttering, “O tempora, O mores,”* as he gave a low cough.

Soon afterward the bishop made his entrance, his bearing exaggerated, his crucifix hanging from a chain round his neck, broad, sleek, flushed, and radiant, diffusing his evangelical charitable embrace to all in good faith, smoothing away every wrinkle, every knot, because the Lord’s sufferings proclaimed joy, a friend to all because the Lord’s will is that all men be redeemed, honoring each man’s word because no heart remains closed to the Holy Spirit. By the time he reached his finale his cold gray eye had gained the upper hand. Of his smile nothing remained but the creases, like ripples left in sand after ebb tide; and thus was the bishop’s comprehension of things made manifest, in a way profoundly precluded to most.

Arnæus emerged from his bedroom with hardly a sound and greeted the men respectfully. He was pale-complexioned, the gap in his chin wider than it had been sixteen years ago and his eyelids heavier, but his peruke was as carefully curled as ever, his clothing just as precisely tailored; when he looked at something he saw reflexively not only everything around it, but also everything beyond it and behind it. He apparently did not expect any surprises here and immediately took his seat, and the bishop, the master of the house, followed his example as if to sanction his action, and bade Reverend Sigurður take his seat opposite the assessor.

The bishop’s wife and her sister Snæfríður walked together into the hall: he is situated opposite the doorway and sees her come in. When he realized who had come he immediately stood up and walked over to her. She was as slender as of old, though the clumsy and excessive suppleness of her childhood, when she had moved like a foal, had given way to an adult woman’s dignity. Her hair was just as airy and lively, yet both her hair and her eyebrows had darkened by degrees. Her eyebrows were raised higher than before, and her lips, which before had been open, were now closed, while a semblance of mournful distraction appeared in the radiant azure of her eyes. She was wearing a laced mantle, pale of hue, as if both blue and red had been used to discolor the other. He reached out to her with both hands and in his soft, dim voice spoke words he had not spoken in sixteen years:

“Lady Snæfríður.”

She extended a hand to him and bowed courteously, without a trace of delight, looking at him with an air of remote blue grandeur. And he hastened to add: “I know my dear friend foregoes such plaisanterie,* but she was so young when we parted, though it seems to have been only yesterday.”

“My sister has come to visit me,” said the bishop’s wife, with a smile. “She will be my guest for several days.”

Snæfríður greeted all the men with handshakes and they stood up one by one, and her brother-in-law the bishop took her in his arms and kissed her.

“We must celebrate such a distinguished visitation,” said Arnæus as the bishop embraced and kissed her. “We must drink to her health, with Madam Jórunn’s permission.”

The bishop’s wife said that she did not dare to serve her empoisoned wine, least of all to the assessor and his dear friends, old and new, when she knew that he had claret at hand, and he asked his secretary to order the valet to bring in a bottle of claret. It was to no avail though Snæfríður begged to be excused from such an honor by claiming it improper for magnates to drink to the health of poor farmers’ wives; the assessor bade her be unafraid, saying that in this gathering there would be no drinking to old maids. Then he filled their glasses, lifted his cup, and drank her health. His table-companions followed suit—all except the archpriest, who poured only a drop of soured whey into his own glass, saying that he did not partake of wine, least of all at evening, but he sincerely wished all those well who raised their cups, with God’s blessing, in a happy hour. Their guest looked up, though she purposefully guarded her eyes against meeting theirs, lifted her cup once for all of them, moistened her lips, and opened them in a modest, maidenly smile, displaying just a touch of the instinctive sarcasm that ran in her blood; her teeth were slightly forward-jutting, but she still had them all, as white and even as ever.

When they had finished their toast they found nothing more to say, so the bishop closed his eyes and clasped his hands and started to say grace. The others bowed their heads silently, and the bishop’s daughter sneezed. They all responded amen and the bishop’s wife served thick raisin porridge from a polished tureen into small bowls painted with flowers, and though she enveloped the dining room with her winsome, motherly smile, her pupils were dilated and her eyes stingingly hot; red flecks appeared on her cheeks. The assessor glanced at the archpriest, who was ascetical, hunched over his whey.

“It would not harm your Reverence to have a glass now and then,” he said with gentle joviality, “especially not at evening. It lightens one’s mood.”

“I thank my lord Commissarius,”* said the archpriest. “With blame I have enough to contend, even foregoing this.”

“And yet, as our master has said, pecca fortiter,”* said Arnæus, smiling.

“Most of Luther’s maxims abide closer to my heart than this one,” said the archpriest, staring straight ahead, ever more stiffly, as if he were reading from a book placed before him. “It is not, however, out of fear of sin that I do not drink your wine tonight, Commissarius.”

“Foul blather can also beget great sanctity,” said the baccalaureus, but they all pretended not to notice this interjection, except for little Gunna, who hastily squeezed her nose. Then the bishop said, authoritatively:

“It would not harm our friend if he were to partake of the advice of the Commissarius, in this respect, for our friend need not fear sin to the same degree as most of those gathered here. Sometimes, when I reflect on his hard life and his long vigils, I feel that the Anabaptists may in some ways be correct, when they suggest that some men in this life attain to such status perfectionis* that they are no longer afflicted by sin.”

“By your leave,” said the baccalaureus, “isn’t it proper theology to say that the devil never tempts those in whom he already has his hooks?”

“No, young man,” said the bishop, laughing. “That is Calvin’s error.”

Now the guests were thoroughly amused, not least the commissary, who said to his secretary: “You deserved that—and take my advice, my boy, refrain from engaging in any more disputation during this meal.”

Reverend Sigurður had not smiled in the least, but instead ate his porridge under the steadfast weight of earnestness. After the others had finished laughing to their heart’s content, however, he took up the topic again.

“I certainly possess nothing approximating Anabaptist virtue, as my friend the lord bishop says, nor holiness in word and deed, something that learned modernity seeks to attribute to healthy old codgers. All the same it is my hope that I am not naturaliter* a child of the devil like this young cosmopolitan, the eminent royal ambassador, conjectured here at the table. One thing I cannot deny is that I am often compelled to contemplate the state of poor men, not least when I sit amongst the rich and powerful. And then I cease to desire dainties, especially wine.”

“Each word rings more true than the next,” said the bishop’s wife. “Our beloved Reverend Sigurður often eats only one meal a day, for the sake of God’s poor. When I complain that my pea soup is too meager he complains it is too grand—”

“—and he puts the meat back onto the platter on Fridays,” said the bishop’s daughter quickly.

“Guðrún,” said the bishop’s wife. “Will you leave this instant. Forgive us, Assessor, our children’s discourtesy, but there is nothing that we can do about it here in Iceland—”

“Madame,” said the archpriest, still looking straight ahead. “Allow Guðrún to remain. What she said was correct: sometimes I do put the meat back. On the contrary, that I do this on Fridays, following Catholic custom—this she heard from the schoolboys.”

“Oh, never!” shouted the girl in agitation, and her cheeks turned crimson red, since schoolboys were precisely the sort of company that one was not allowed to suspect the adolescent bishop’s daughter in Skálholt of having anything to do with.

“Now I would like to ask your Reverence one thing,” said Arnæus, turning toward the archpriest, “for I have no doubt that within you exists the inner light that is the only thing that makes erudition sweet: are the indigent pleasing to God and are we obliged to imitate them? Or is poverty God’s punishing rod against the evil deeds and muted faith of the countryfolk? Or shall the old rule still stand, that poverty is praised only by paupers?”