Iceland's Bell (39 page)

“I ask for nothing more than the honor and the estates befitting my father’s name,” she said.

Gyldenløve put down the ramrod and picked up his golden snuffboxes.

He said: “There are two forces in the Danish realm. When the one that works in collusion with sorcerers and thieves is in power, many a good man is forced to bow down. But if those who demand full rights for good, highborn men are raised up under my kinsman, the new king, then life will be better; it may be that certain knavish brewers and libertines will be shown the noose, with God’s help. There are no contracts made between good and evil men. Unfortunately, ma chère, many a man must bide his time.”

“There is an Icelandic criminal named Jón Hreggviðsson,” she said. “He killed the king’s hangman. The entire country knows it. My father sentenced him to death twenty years ago, but an infant amused itself by freeing him the night before his execution. The law still has not caught up with him. The royal commissarius convicted my father because of this case, and he acquitted the lawbreaker. At the last Alþingi the old man’s case was reopened and he was sentenced to prison at Bremerholm. But he barely passes through the castle gate before the magnates drag him out of there and offer him refuge. And while this oft-sentenced convict, this murderer of a servant of the king, lives in luxury in the capital, my parents lie in their graves, branded as thieves.”

“Icelanders are, shall we say, quite shrewd, and crafty when it comes to law,” said the governor. “They’ll leave no stone unturned to prove that whatever law-article is used to convict them comes from a corpus that some fool of a Norwegian king invalidated hundreds of years ago; or from some Danish laws never recognized in Iceland; or that it is at variance with some valid prescript given in the laws of St. Ólafur; or is from their
Gray Goose,
that collection of utterly heathen statutes.* They presume that the only laws valid for them are the ones that acquit them of all criminal liability. I can tell you for certain, madame, that many a fine Danish functionary has sweated over the case of this despicable Icelandic rogue.”

The same distressed official look came over this huntsman’s face as he started explaining to her how there were few others more knowledgeable than he concerning just how worthy a servant her deceased father had been on behalf of the king and the realm, though he had actually been quite overzealous when promoting his own interests in the Treasury, and thus had been able to appropriate, dirt-cheap, several large estates that had been taken over by the Danish king during the Reformation. But the government in Copenhagen put up with that excellent old aristocrat since he was a trustworthy individual. And it was a cause for great sorrow amongst his friends in the city when they received news of the conviction and the disgrace that he was forced to suffer in his old age. Gyldenløve said that he wished the magistrate’s daughter could know, understand, and acknowledge the fact that neither the government nor he himself, Gyldenløve, nor any other Danish functionary serving under him had anything to do with the case—that the only party responsible was, in fact, as he put it, “the man whom madame doubtless knows much better than I.”

She said:

“Even though my name has been disgracefully connected with the man to whom Your Excellency refers, through a reprehensible lawsuit certain merchants duped my poor husband into pursuing, the so-called Bræðratunga case, I do not know Arnas Arnæus. The discredit that I have incurred in the case is of no consequence to me; I have not once felt the slightest desire to ward off this drivel—which hardly becomes any more noteworthy just because it has found its way into the trial records here in Denmark. I would like Your Excellency to understand that it is not on my own account that I have come to ask you for justice.”

When Gyldenløve heard what his visitor had to say about Arnæus, he let loose concerning this dangerous enemy, proclaiming the man hateful and treacherous: he had long pretended to be a friend of the king, but had always been planning to betray him, having despised him with all his heart; he said he knew for certain that Arnæus had once in the presence of witnesses spoken words to the effect that there had never been a criminal in Iceland except for the king of Denmark. He said that Arnæus hated every respectable Dane, no less than he hated those compatriots of his who affirmed their sincerity and earnestness in their service to their Royal Highness: he wished the deaths of such men wherever they could be found and would string them all up if he got the chance, so that he and his henchmen could take control of the country ad arbitrium.* He was convinced that her departed father would never be vindicated until this man and his comrades were hanging from the gallows. “One of them,” he said, “was wrong in principio,* either your departed father or Arnas Arnæus.” He asked whether her father’s reputation was so valuable to her that she would prefer it if he, Gyldenløve, were to subjugate this man, and if she would lend her testimony and oaths to support his case.

She thought for a moment, then answered in a voice more deep and melancholy:

“And yet, I will not bear false witness against anyone.”

11

Nearly half a year had passed since Jón Hreggviðsson, farmer from Rein, had been fetched from the castle and elevated from enchained evildoer to tranquil water bearer and woodcutter at the residence of none other than the Assessor in the Consistory and Master of Danish Antiquities. When the scholar from Grindavík brought him home to the mansion from the castle, the erudite master greeted him and smiled indulgently at him, and said that while they were still in the process of finding a solution to his case he would be permitted board and bed here in his home, but only if he conducted himself with the utmost dignity, otherwise he would be sent to serve under the king’s standard, to fight with the king’s soldiers in foreign lands.

Every time his countryman and master came upon him in the garden or met him as he was delivering buckets of water from the well, he greeted him by name, asked him amicably how he was getting on, and gave him snuff. On the other hand, he wasn’t accorded any excessively propitious respect by the resident rabble. Since the Danes found the Icelandic odor so disgusting that they could barely stand to mingle together under the same roof with a single Icelander, the steward assigned Regvidsen a sleeping-place in the hayloft over the stables. The coachman, however, prohibited him from coming too near the horses, for fear that the beasts would pick up lice or some other sort of vermin from Iceland’s farmer of Christ. This charioteer paid such close attention to his four-footed friends by washing them and clipping and combing their hair morning and night that even those unmarried homebodies in Iceland who were thought to be most suitable for marriage, the daughters of better sorts of men, could hardly have been described as being better tidied and decorated. At first the farmer thought it would be best, to help set the others’ minds at ease, if he were to eat elsewhere than at the servants’ table, since in Iceland it was customary for commoners to eat elsewhere than at table except during important feasts; instead they all sat upon their own beds with their own wooden dinner pots. Thus a girl was sent to bring the farmer’s bowl of food out to the woodshed, where he spent most of his day, except when he went to eat with the beggars, ragamuffins, and rascals who were fed twice a week in the vestibule of the main doorway in order to buttress support for the king.

One day toward the end of summer the farmer was granted something of an unexpected honor when there came to his woodshed no less a person than the housewife herself, his housemistress, the assessor’s eminently virtuous and honor-bedecked wedded wife, Dame Mette. She greeted the Icelander. It had been twenty years since this gentlewoman cursed Jón Hreggviðsson to Hell in soldier’s German through her own front door, and during that time her chin had sunk even further away from her mouth. Besides this so much fat had piled up on the woman that she looked similar to a clay statue that has fallen from a shelf and compressed itself into a lump before being put in the kiln. She had dabbed her face with white powder and bore upon her head a broad lace mantle that reached down to her hump, and she wore a wide, extremely wrinkled, full-length black skirt. Jón Hreggviðsson tore his hat off his head, wiped his nose, and declared his praise for God. She looked with a housemotherly expression at his pile of wood. He asked whether she wanted the sticks shorter than around three spans, or approximately, might he be permitted to say, the length of one medium-sized horse’s penis, but she said that that would be a suitable length. Concerning water, he asked whether she would rather have it from the well on the west side, where the Danish boy was drowned last year, or from the one on the east side, out of which a German woman was fished in the spring.

She told him that the water and the wood were not laughing matters, and that there was one thing even more important: he had conducted himself in an exemplary manner here at the mansion. She said that her husband Arnæus customarily assigned someone to keep an eye on new recruits to the ranks of the mansion’s servants, to see whether they might be cheaters or complainers; if so, the newcomers were swiftly driven away. Now, since Regvidsen had shown during the past year that he was not one of these undesirables, she felt that the time had come for her to look in on him and to inquire about his health. Jón Hreggviðsson replied that he’d never had any physical or spiritual health, neither good nor ill—he was an Icelander, after all. Everything depended on what the king wanted. He said he hoped that the good king, whom he could never praise highly enough, might have the heart not to let one fool from Skagi remain, for the rest of his days, an encumbrance to Christian countesses and baronesses in Denmark, and to their husbands, especially since this could very well result in the noble and honor-bedecked horses in Denmark contracting lice.

Whether the madam understood the farmer’s courtesies or not, it turned out that she was quite eager to talk to him about something, not least due to the fact that her lord and wedded spouse belonged to the same race. She said that she had been casting it about in her mind for quite some time as to whether she should ask Regvidsen the news from Iceland, which certainly was a peculiar country—some even said that the mouth of Hell was located there, but since her dearest was a good Christian man, even though he was Icelandic, she would not believe it without further proof.

Maintaining his modest attitude for the sake of his country, he said that his exceptionally virtuous countess, baroness, and madam should not make the mistake of thinking that there was much in the way of news to be had from that cursed dog’s ass that people call Iceland, except for that old bit of news that is and will always be the truth, even if good folk do themselves an injustice by even mentioning it in words, that Hell is and will always be located in that country throughout eternity—for those who deserve to be punished.

The madam asked, “How does it go for the Icelanders now that our Lord has sent them the merciful and blessed pestilence?”

“Oh, they’ve been slaughtered like sickly lambs and have gone straight to the devil,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“Their pest-masters should have bled them,” said the woman.

“Oh, all the blood was drained out of those scum a long time ago, good woman,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Ever since they killed my kinsman Gunnar of Hlíðarendi there hasn’t been any blood in Iceland.”

“Who killed him?” asked the woman.

He looked away and scratched his head.

“I’m not going to go into that again,” he said. “When a man’s dead, a man’s dead and gone to the devil. It’s no use crying about it. But Gunnar of Hlíðarendi was a great and respectable man when he was alive.”

“Yes, you Icelanders think we Danes have killed you all,” said the woman. “But may I ask who it was that planned to kill my husband Magister* Arnæus when he went there to help them? Not the Danes—it was the Icelanders themselves.”

“Yes, you see how those folk are,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “First I stole a bit of cord. Then, when I couldn’t stand my son any longer, I killed him. And what’s more, some people say I drowned a royal official in a waterhole.”

“Even though my husband is called an Icelander, he is as fine a Christian as any other Danish man,” said the woman.

“Yes, all the worse for him,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “He’s been running around all over the place trying to save those Icelanders, first from the noose, then from the ax; or else from eating Danish maggots, which I for my part feel are just about right for them, and too good for them when they complain. And what’s he gotten out of all this? Shit and shame. No, woman, you mustn’t think I have any pity for those Icelanders. As for myself, I’ve always tried to keep some cord for fishing line up my sleeve. That’s the only thing that pays. I’d gotten together a little fishing operation at Innrihólmur, in defiance of the Innrihólmsmen. A six-oared boat, woman, that’s three oars a side, one two three four five six. I called it Hretbyggja, understand that, woman? Reetbygge in Danish. That’s because southwesters crash against the shore on that side. In Skagi, good woman, understand? Akranes. Rein—under the mountain up from Innrihólmur, which is owned by the Innrihólmsmen. What more should I tell you? Oh, twice I’ve had daughters. The first one, the one with the big eyes, she was on her bier when I got back from the war. The other one’s going to live, the pox didn’t stick to her, she’d started sleeping with the farmhand sometimes at night, and she stood in the doorway when I left. She didn’t look after the dog well enough, though, and it chased me west to Ólafsvík. It’s Christ’s farm. Jesus Christ owns the farm, understand that, woman?”

“How lovely of you to say that Jesus Christ owns the farm,” said the woman. “It shows that your heart is contrite. He who repents shall be forgiven his sins.”

“Sins,” said Jón Hreggviðsson, and his nostrils flared. “I’ve never committed any sins. I’m a great and honorable criminal.”

“God forgives those who admit that they are criminals,” said the woman. “And the scullery girl has told me many times that you’ve never shorted them even a quarter of a rixdollar after they send you to market. That’s another reason why I’m speaking to you like a man of honor even though you’re an Icelander. Now what was I going to say? Oh yes, by the way, who is this whore of Babylon who has come to Copenhagen from Iceland?”

Jón Hreggviðsson looked away somewhat sheepishly and tried to solve this riddle, but since he found no clues in anything they’d just been discussing, he gave up.

“Babylon,” he said. “You’ve put me in check with that one, good madam. I’ll stop lying now.”

She said, “Oh, that woman in Iceland who could have cared less even if they’d murdered my husband because of her; but of course they knew that she was worse than murder, so they kept on trying to implicate him with her until the king himself started believing their stories and ordered them to condemn this good Christian man, who could be a Dane or even a German—that woman. What kind of woman is she, anyway? And how could my husband, this good Christian man who is always lying amongst his old books at night, have had any interest in chasing after her?”

Jón Hreggviðsson scratched himself in likely as well as unlikely spots as he puzzled over this question, until he started to thread together an answer.

“Although my mother’s side of the family has always had books, I’ve never read one,” he said. “And I can’t write any letters except for runes. So I wouldn’t blame any man for it if he exchanged a book for a woman, if he’s determined to stay up all night delving into things, because there’s no two things that can be read as alike as those two.”

“There is no excuse for an Icelandic man to cheat on a Danish woman,” she said. “But luckily, as my dearest says, nothing is true that cannot be proven—and therefore, it’s not true.”

“Yes, as for me and myself, when I was in Rotterdam, which is in Holland, where the doggers come from, I met a priest’s wife there one night. Mmhmm, what can I say? I had an ugly, boring old woman back in Iceland—”

“If you are insinuating that I am ugly and boring, in an attempt to excuse my husband for sleeping with that whore of Babylon, then let me tell you, Regvidsen, that even though he, Arnæus, thinks he’s a man, he doesn’t fetch criminals out of Bremerholm Castle without my giving him leave to do so. And this I can tell you, Icelander, you who emit such a stench of rotten shark and whale oil and all that other shit that one finds out in Iceland that it turns all the perfume of all the lavender in Denmark into powerless vapors, that my former husband, who was a real man even though the king never invited him to dinner, said that I knew well how to please a man. And where would this man be now, the one who’s supposed to be called my husband, if I hadn’t put up the money and the house and the carriage and horses? He didn’t own a single book. So I have every right to know what sort of woman it is out in Iceland who’s supposedly come here to Copenhagen.”

“She’s thin,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“How thin?” asked the woman.

“Almost clean through, almost nothing,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “Not like anything I’ve ever seen.”

“Like what then?” asked the woman.

He closed one eye and peered at the woman.

“Like the plant called the reed—the thinnest and most flexible of all plants,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.

“Are you insinuating that I’m stout?” said the woman. “Or that she’s some sort of switch to be used against me?”

“My magnificent dame mistress and baroness mustn’t credit one Icelandic Bremerholmer with more wisdom than he really has; and she mustn’t take offense at his dim-witted babble. If this ragamuffin didn’t have a mouth, if you could call it that, which has so often been the cause of injury to God and men, he would kiss her esteemed toes.”

“Now what was that nonsense about the switch?” said the woman.

Jón Hreggviðsson said: “All I really meant was a kind of staff that can’t be broken—a staff that rights itself when you let go of it; it becomes as straight as it was before.”

“I order you to answer,” said the woman.

“You’d do better asking Grindavík-Jón,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “He’s a learned man and a philosopher.”

“The insane Joen Grindevigen,” she said. “The kind of people Icelanders call learned men and philosophers are here in Denmark called village idiots and it is against the law for them to take one step outside of their own villages.”

“Or Jón Marteinsson then,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “He knows what kind of women there are in both Iceland and Denmark, because he’s slept with bishops’ daughters. I would never ever compare to such a man.”

“My house is a Christian house—hen-thieves are not permitted here,” said the madam. “And if you don’t tell me this instant everything there is to tell about this woman you’ll be going to Jón Marteinsson yourself—then he can look after you.”

“The long and short of what I know about this woman is that she rescued me from the ax at Öxará and tied me to a horseblock in Ólafsvík.”

“Does she have money?” asked the woman. “And how does she dress?”

“Did you say money? She’s got more money than any woman in Denmark,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “She’s got all the money in Iceland. She’s got silver and gold from throughout the ages. She owns all the estates in the land and all the cottages along with them, whether she’s able to steal them back from the king or not; forests and salmon-rivers, woman; all those beaches so rich in driftage—a man could build his own Constantinople from just one of those tree trunks if he only had a saw; marshy meadows and sedged morasses; pastures up in the highlands with streams full of fish and grazing land right up against the glaciers; out on remote stretches of ocean islands so full of seabirds that you wade up to your knees in eiderdown, woman; eddying bird-cliffs sheer to the sea where on midsummer’s eve one can hear happy egg-hunters cursing at the ends of their ropes sixty ells down. But that’s just the least of what she owns—I would never reach the end counting it all up. But she’s richest of all on the day when all her wealth has been seized by the court and the murderer Jón Hreggviðsson throws her a rixdollar as she sits there by the road. How’s she dressed? She’s got a golden band around her waist, where the red flame burned, good woman. She’s dressed like the elf-wife’s always been dressed in Iceland. She comes clad in blue and adorned with gold and silver to the place where one black-haired murderous dog lies beaten. But she was never dressed any better than when she was put in wool socks and a shift of wadmal by beggarwomen and whores, when she turned those eyes upon Jón Hreggviðsson, those eyes that will rule over Iceland upon the very day when the rest of the world falls under the weight of its own evil deeds.”