Iceland's Bell (7 page)

8

A small, sturdy man wearing a priest’s outfit stands in the doorway. He is dark-skinned, with black eyebrows and red lips, and he is accustomed to moving slowly. He is somewhat afraid of the light.

“Good day, mademoiselle”—he is also accustomed to speaking slowly and determinedly.

Her dense locks fall about her cheeks and shoulders. In the early morning the tranquil azure of her eyes reminds one of being far from home.

“The archpriest! And I’ve only just woken and haven’t had the least chance to put on my wig.”

“I apologize, mademoiselle. Put it on. I shall look away. Mademoiselle must not be frightened.”

She made no rush to put on her wig.

“Am I usually frightened of the archpriest?”

“Mademoiselle’s eyes look unacquaintedly and aloofly at things that occur in time. It is true—the things that occur in time are coarse. And mademoiselle’s eyes have no home in time.”

“Then am I dead, my dear Reverend Sigurður?”

“Some have received the gift of eternal life here on earth, mademoiselle.”

“Monsieur on the other hand has his home in his cathedral, a man through and through—but for his eyes, perhaps; he forgives! The first time I came here to Skálholt and heard monsieur preach, when I was a child, it seemed to me as if one of the carved and painted apostles on the pulpit had come to life and was speaking. Your dear departed wife gave me a box of honey. Is it true that you sing the
Ave
Maria
in secret, Reverend Sigurður?”

“Credo in unum Deum, mademoiselle.”*

“Oh, do you really want to squander your Latin on a little girl? And yet, Reverend Sigurður—I can conjugate ‘amo’ in most modi and tempora.”*

“I have often praised God for the sanctity and beauty of the blossoms in this land,” said the archpriest. “When men cease to rise from the dust, the blossoms give us the promise of eternal life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let us take the forget-me-not. The forget-me-not is slender, but it has received the natural gift of charity, and because of this its eyes are beautiful. When you came to Skálholt for the first time—”

“I don’t like slender blossoms—I want huge flowers thick with perfume,” interrupted the girl, but he paid no attention and continued.

“When you and your sister, that great woman who was to take charge of the keys to the bishopric, came here for the first time, you were only a little maiden—and it was as if the forget-me-not had come here itself, clad in the likeness of a human.”

“Yes, you are a famous poet, Reverend Sigurður,” said the girl. “But you seem to have forgotten that the forget-me-not has another name—cat’s eyes.”

“I come to you in the brightness of dawn and greet you in the name of Jesus and say: Forget-me-not! Other guests come to you at other times with other thoughts and whisper in your ears other words.”

After saying this he finally looked up at the girl. His eyes were dark and fervent, and his mouth trembled slightly.

She looked him in the eye and asked coldly: “What do you mean?”

He said: “I am your suitor, awaiting your answer. You have permitted me to be called as such.”

“Indeed,” she said. “In Jesus’ name? Yes, perhaps. Yes, hm.”

“You are a young girl, Snæfríður, only seventeen years old. The audacity of youth is the most incredible thing on earth—next to the meekness of youth. I am a thirty-eight-year-old man.”

“Yes, Reverend Sigurður, I know that you are an experienced man, a gifted man, a learned man, and a widower. I also respect you very much. But whoever comes and whenever they come and whatever they say, you must know that I love only one man.”

“Your suitor is not making enquiries. He also knows most assuredly that there is only one man hewn from Icelandic stone who befits you. The one who loves you best cannot wish for you anyone better than him. When he comes I cease to exist. I vanish. But while he is away, heed me well, mademoiselle Snæfríður—I listen, I wait, I watch. I might perhaps hear hoofbeats in the night—”

“I cannot bear innuendo. What do you mean?”

“In as few words as possible, mademoiselle, I am a man in love.”

“Indeed—I have never been able to imagine anything so ridiculous as an archpriest in love; no—do me no ill though I do the same to you. And promise me that you won’t mention this again until all of the ships have come, Reverend Sigurður.”

“All of the ships have come.”

“No no no, Reverend Sigurður, you can’t say that. The Bakkaship has come, but there may still be ships in the east, or the west, that haven’t come. And no one knows yet who might be on those ships.”

“This man’s presence could never be concealed, no matter where he steps onto land. And if you truly believed that he has come then you would not have received another guest.”

She stood up, stamped her feet on the floor before him, and said: “If I’m a whore then I demand that you have me drowned in Öxará!”

“God forgive mademoiselle for giving voice to a word so vile that by pronouncing it just once she stains the same veil by which heavenly grace covers her virginity.”

“What have my guests to do with this? You sneak here in the morning in Jesus’ name. Others come riding at evening in the devil’s name. I’m human. Testify against me and have me drowned, if you dare!”—and she stamped again before him.

“Beloved child,” he said, extending his hand. “I know that you are not angry with me. You are speaking to your own conscience.”

“I love one man,” she said, “and you know it; I love him while awake; while sleeping; living; dead; love him. And if I can’t have him then God doesn’t exist, Reverend Sigurður; and you, the archpriest, don’t exist, nor does the bishop, nor my father, nor Jesus Christ; nothing—except for evil. Dear God almighty, help me.”

She cast herself down onto her divan and pressed her face into her hands, icy in her despair. She looked up again with dry eyes at the archpriest and said in a low voice, “Forgive me.”

He raised his closed eyes to heaven and prayed tearfully to God, stroking her hair at the same time; she leaned up against him, her mind elsewhere, then she stood up and walked away from him, picked up her wig, and put it on. He continued to pray for her, piously and consolingly.

“By the way,” she said coldly, from somewhere within her sleeplessness, as a certain trifle crossed her mind. “Does a man named Jón Hreggviðsson exist?”

“Jón Hreggviðsson,” repeated the archpriest, opening his eyes. “Does mademoiselle speak the name of such a man?”

“Oh, then he exists,” said the damsel. “I thought I’d dreamed him. What has he done?”

“Why does mademoiselle want me to speak with her concerning that miserable scoundrel? I know nothing more than that he was sentenced to execution out west in Borgarfjörður in the fall, for having murdered the hangman from Bessastaðir one night, and that the verdict will soon be confirmed at the Alþingi.”

She burst out laughing and the archpriest looked at her in surprise, but when he questioned her she answered only that she found it ridiculous that His Royal Majesty’s hangman should be murdered by an out-and-out scoundrel—“It seems to me as if I, a vulgar sinner, am to preach to the archpriest! Or perhaps it’s no trouble to kill a man?” she asked.

The archpriest did not join in her laughter, not because her suggestion offended him, but rather because a poor cleric raised strongly in the theological doctrines concerning the freedom of the human will in choosing between good and evil could not understand the frivolous viewpoint of a young maiden, sprung of the seed of blossoms, to whom mortal deeds appeared to operate independent of law, and who considered not only sins, but also deadly crimes, as ridiculous, and even asked whether it was difficult to commit them.

She stopped listening to him and went back to work tidying up her bower, with a look of earnestness. Finally she said, distractedly:

“I’ve changed my mind. There’s nothing left to wait for here. Ask the steward to find me a good horse. I’m bored. I’m going west to Dalir, home.”

9

“Child,” says the magistrate Eydalín. He and his drinking companions look up in amazement as the damsel Snæfríður, wearing a riding frock, steps quickly in through the doorway of the magistrate’s booth at the Alþingi on a bright night at the close of the assembly. They all wait silently. “Welcome, child—and what brings you here? What has happened?”

He stands up and walks toward her, somewhat hesitant in his stride, and greets her with a kiss.

“What has happened, good child?”

“Where’s my sister Jórunn?”

“The bishop and his wife have ridden west to your mother’s. They delivered your greeting, and said that you would remain at Skálholt this summer. They said that they had left you under the care of the schoolmaster and his wife. What has happened?”

“Happened? Why do you ask me this thrice in one breath, father? If something had happened then I wouldn’t be here. But nothing has happened and that’s why I’m here. Why can’t I ride to the assembly? Hallgerður Langbrók* rode to the assembly.”

“Hallgerður Langbrók? I do not understand you, child.”

“Aren’t I human, father?”

“You know that your mother does not care much for independent-minded girls.”

“Who knows?—maybe I’ve changed my mind. Who knows but that certain things are afoot?”

“What things are afoot?”

“—or, phrased more correctly, are not afoot. Who knows—maybe I suddenly wanted to go home—to my father. I’m just a child. Or maybe I’m not a child?”

“Child, where am I to find a place for you? There is no lodging here for women. The assembly is at an end, and these gentlemen and I will sit here tonight and keep watch until dawn, when we must stand witness to the execution of several criminals. Immediately afterward I will ride south to Bessastaðir. What do you think your mother would say—”

A cavalier in topboots with spurs, a long goatee and a peruke that hung down to his ruff, girded with a sword, rose to his feet with the festive and self-contented air of an adequately drunken man, stepped forward, struck his heels together German-style, bowed deeply to the damsel, gripped her hand and raised it to his lips, then addressed her in German. Since he would be sitting here, he said, at the invitation of his Lordship the father of his gracious lady, until the time came for them to attend to their business in the morning, his gracious lady was heartily welcome to make his pavilion and everything she might find therein her own, and he would immediately wake his cook and his page to serve her. He himself, he said, the king’s regent at Bessastaðir, was, to be sure, the most humble of all the servants of his lady. She watched him with a smile, and he proclaimed that the night did honor to her eyes and, bowing before her, kissed her hand again.

“I want to see Drekkingarhylur,”* said the girl as she and her father stepped out to go to the regent’s booth. Her father said that it was too much trouble to go out of their way, but she pleaded urgently and when he asked why, she answered that she’d long been pining to see the place where condemned women were customarily drowned. In the end she got her way. They could hear a hammering sound from somewhere within the ravine and the cliffs lent a musical murmur to the noise. When they reached the pool the girl said:

“No, look, there’s gold at the bottom. Look at how it shines.”

“That is the moon,” said her father.

She said: “Would I be drowned here if I were a condemned woman?”

“Do not speak vainly of justice, child,” he said.

“Is God not merciful?” she asked.

“Yes, good child: in the same way as the moon in Drekkingarhylur,” said the magistrate. “Now let us leave this place.”

“Show me the gallows, father,” she said.

“Such things are not for young maidens,” he said. “And I must not be away from my guests for too long.”

“Oh, papa,” she said whiningly, as she took him by the arm and leaned up against him. “I do so want to see men killed.”

“Ah, then you have never left your room in Skálholt, my poor child?” he said.

“Oh, please say that you’ll let me see men killed, papa dear,” whined the girl. “Or maybe you don’t love me?”

He consented to take her to see the gallows on the condition that she go straight to bed afterward. They walked through Almannagjá in the still of night, stopping at an open space as green as a homefield and encircled by overhanging rock walls. A spar had been placed over a cleft in one wall, with a removable platform beneath. Two nooses of newly spun wool were coiled around the spar.

“Goodness, these are beautiful cords,” said the girl. “One hears so often that Iceland is in need of cord. Who’s going to be hung?”

“Ah—two outlaws,” said the magistrate.

“Did you sentence them?” she asked.

“They were sentenced in district court. The Alþingi confirmed the sentences.”

“And what is that log for, lying there on the grass?”

“Log?” said the magistrate. “That is no log. That is a chopping block, my child.”

“Who’s going to be beheaded?”

“Ah—a knave from Skagi.”

“Not the one who killed the hangman?” asked the girl. “I’ve always thought that’s such a funny story.”

“What did you learn in Skálholt this winter, child?” asked the magistrate.

“Amo, amas, amat,” she said. “Amamus, amatis, amant.* And what strokes are these, so regular and so heavy, echoing so strangely in the silence?”

“Are you still unable to fix your mind on any one thing, child?” he said. “Learned men carry on serious discussions, and the same goes for well-bred women. They’re cutting up brushwood.”

“Now, what were we talking about?” she said. “Weren’t we talking about murder?”

“What nonsense is this?” he said. “We were discussing what you learned in Skálholt.”

“Would you have ordered my execution, papa, if I had killed the hangman?” asked the girl.

“The magistrate’s daughter is not a killer,” said he.

“No, but she might commit adultery.”

The magistrate stopped in his tracks and stared at his daughter. The effects of the brennivín had worn off him in the presence of this unfamiliar young woman. He looked her over: she was much too thin, with the eyes of a seven-year-old child and glimmering locks. He started to say something, but stopped.

“Why don’t you answer me?” she said.

“There exist young girls who cause everything around them to become unstable—air, earth, and water,” he said, and he tried to smile.

“That’s because they have the fire, papa,” she said immediately. “The fire alone.”

“Quiet,” said her father. “No more nonsense!”

“I won’t keep quiet until you answer me, father,” she said.

They walked together silently for a few steps and he cleared his throat.

“A naive act of adultery, my child,” he said, in a staid, bureaucratic tone of voice, “is a matter which people must take up first and foremost with their consciences. On the other hand, such an act is often the precursor and cause of other crimes. But magistrate’s daughters do not commit such crimes.”

“But if they did, then the magistrates, their fathers, would work quickly to exculpate them.”

“Justice exculpates no one.”

“Then you wouldn’t exculpate me, father?”

“I do not understand what you are getting at, child. I am not in the business of exculpation.”

“Would you demand that I perjure myself, like Bishop Brynjólfur* did of his daughter?”

“Bishop Brynjólfur’s mistake was that he did not estimate his daughter any higher than a common girl. Such things do not occur amongst people of our standing—”

“—even though they occur,” added the girl.

“Yes, my child,” he said. “Even though they occur. Your lineage is the finest in the country. You and your sister are the only individuals in Iceland who have a better lineage than I.”

“Bishop Brynjólfur misunderstood justice then,” said the girl. “He thought it applied to everyone.”

“Beware of the poet’s tongue that you inherit from your mother’s side of the family,” said the magistrate.

“Father,” she said. “I can’t walk alone—let me lean against you.”

They headed toward the regent’s booth, he broad-shouldered and ruddy in his flowing cloak, his small white aristocrat’s hands sticking out from the sleeves, she short-stepped and slender, in her riding frock with its soft hood, holding on to his arm and stooping forward; at their sides rose the precipitous cliff walls.

“The copse you see there,” he said, “is named Bláskógar or Bláskógaheiði. The mountain just beyond the copse is called Hrafnabjörg and is said to have a beautiful shadow. Then come other peaks. Farthest away you see a low heap, like a shadowy image. That is Skjaldbreiður, which is actually the highest of all the peaks—much higher than Botnssúlur, towering there to the west of Ármannsfell. The reason for its—”

“Oh, father,” said the girl.

“What is wrong, good child?”

“These cliffs frighten me.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you that the place where we are standing is called Almannagjá.”

“Why is there such an awful silence?”

“Silence? Do you not hear me speaking to you, child?”

“No.”

“I was saying, child, that when a man regards the mountain Botnssúlur, it appears to be frightfully high only because it is close by. But if he then looks toward Skjaldbreiður—”

“Father, haven’t you received any letters?”

“Letters? I have received hundreds of letters.”

“And none with greetings for me?”

“Hm, yes, you are absolutely right. The assessor Arnæus sent his regards to your mother and to you two sisters.”

“But nothing for me?”

“He asked me to make enquiries concerning whether a page from any of Helgafell cloister’s old books, which had been torn apart and thrown away, might not have been saved by some chance.”

“And he said nothing else?”

“He said that the books were worth more than all of the most fertile farmland in Breiðafjörður.”

“Didn’t he say anything about himself? Why did he decide not to come on the Bakkaship, like he said he would in the fall?”

“He mentioned unfavorable prospects and various other curae.”*

“Curae? Him?”

“I have been informed by a reliable source that his collection of handwritten as well as printed books concerning the ancient history of Norway and Iceland is in danger. On the one hand, the books are in danger of damage from poor storage conditions, and on the other, the assessor has accumulated so much debt that it seems imminent that he will lose them.”

She gave her father’s arm an impatient tug and said: “Yes, but he’s a friend of the king.”

“As far as that goes, we have occasionally witnessed examples of kings’ friends being stripped of their rank and thrown into debtor’s prison. No one has as many enemies as a friend of a king.”

She released her father’s arm and stood erect and unsupported on the path, facing her father, and lifted her eyes to meet his.

“Father,” she said. “Can’t we help him?”

“Come, good child,” he said. “It is time that I returned to my guests.”

“I own farms,” she said.

“Yes, you and your sister were given several small farms as tooth-money,” he said, and he took her by the arm again and continued on.

“Can’t I sell them?” she asked.

“Although an Icelander might think it an achievement to gain possession of a mediocre farm, a few hundreds of land* is of little worth in foreign countries, good child,” said the magistrate. “The gemstone upon the ring of a rich count in Copenhagen is worth more than an entire district in Iceland. I could collect rent for many years and still not have enough to pay for this new cloak. We Icelanders are prohibited from trading or sailing and because of this we have nothing. We are not just oppressed—we are a folk in danger of our lives.”

“Arnas has given up everything he owns collecting old books so that the name of Iceland might be saved even if we perish. Are we then supposed to stand by and watch as he’s locked away in debtor’s prison in a foreign country for the name of Iceland?”

“Love for one’s neighbors is a beautiful doctrine, good child. And a true one. But when one’s life is in danger, the general rule is that each man helps himself.”

“Then we can do nothing?”

“What matters most to us, my child, is that the king is my friend,” said the magistrate. “There are many people who envy me, who importune the counts and slander me in the hope of preventing me from obtaining the king’s rescript for the office of magistrate, which is, as we know, called the most important office in Iceland, though it is nothing but a trifle compared to the office of floor sweeper in the Chancery, especially if that man can claim to be descended from German pirates or coxcombs.”

“What good is a rescript, father?”

“Having the king’s rescript for such an office provides numerous privileges. We can own more and larger farms. You become an even better match for a man. Good men will be asking for your hand.”

“No, father. Trolls will take me; monsters in the shape of beautiful animals that I would like to hold and pet will lure me into the forest and tear me apart in a cave. Have you forgotten all of the fairy tales you told me?”

“That is not a fairy tale, it is a wicked dream,” he said. “By the way, your sister told me something about you, something that I am sure will sadden your mother.”

“Really.”

“She said that a distinguished man had asked for your hand this winter and that you had shown little interest in his offer.”

“The archpriest,” said the girl, and she laughed coldly.

“He is descended from some of the finest men in Iceland. He is an exceptionally learned man and a poet, and he is wealthy and virtuous. I have no idea what sort of a match you have in mind if you cannot consider him good enough for you.”

“Arnas Arnæus is the most splendid of all Icelanders,” said the damsel Snæfríður. “Everyone is agreed on that. A woman who has met a splendid man finds a good man ludicrous.”

“What do you know about a woman’s feelings, child?” said the magistrate.

“Rather the worst than the next-best,” said the girl.