The Greenlanders (88 page)

About the kitchen and the rest of the residence, things were in as much disrepair as they were in the cathedral, or more. The cook and the other servingfolk complained repeatedly of making do, of having little to eat or wear, of being cold, of the dampness of their chambers. And the storehouses were nearly empty. Here and there, some provisions, enough for a day or so, were stacked in a corner. The fact was that none of the tithes were collected any longer. During the hunger, Greenlanders had gotten out of the habit of bringing their dues, and Sira Pall had not had the patience or the heart to demand them when times improved. Now folk expected Gardar, which anyway had the largest and best fields, to take care of itself. Sira Pall thought that it might have, with a more practical man in charge of things, but it had not. It had not taken care of itself at all. These were his thoughts when he sat in the high seat in the hall.

Awake in bed in the dark of night, he thought not a little of Steinunn Hrafnsdottir, who still lay close to death at Solar Fell, wasted and silent, but alive. What sort of man might have saved her, and the boy Kollgrim Gunnarsson? A harder man, such as Sira Eindridi, who would have bullied her sins out of her? He saw now, had seen at once after the Icelanders broke in, that she had been about to confess to him that day at the loom, when he put his cloak about her shoulders. But what had he been thinking of? Sira Jon, no doubt, who filled his mind always. It was the Lord’s principle that folk had choice in these matters, and Steinunn had had this choice as well. She might have opened her heart to him, and she had chosen wrongly, with poor judgment, to hug her sin unto her bosom, and not trust in the Lord’s forgiveness. It was hard to tell. It was always and ever hard to tell with women why they chose one way and not another. Even so, it was also the Lord’s principle that His stewards on earth must see and hear and act so that sin does not go forward, and result in more sin, and this little sin, of adultery, had gone forward, and blossomed in the great sin of wrongful death, or so Sira Pall thought, in spite of Sira Eindridi, who was vocal in his approval of the measures that had been taken against the powers of darkness, and Bjorn Bollason, who was less vocal, but no more doubtful. As he lay on his pallet, Sira Pall thought of Kollgrim, too, a man of the old style, full of fate, as lost as if he had worshiped the old gods and not the True Lord. He turned over in his mind this thought, that there must be a language to speak to such folk, a hoard of words that they could hear, and would listen to.

But indeed, he had not found it in time, had he? He had not found it in time to save either the son or the mother, and it was with the greatest regret of all that thoughts of Birgitta Lavransdottir came to him, for she had always turned her gaze upon him with friendship and concern, had learned so quickly to read, in those early days, picking up words and sentences as if she were gathering little stones to keep, had mystified him always with her view of things that were unseen by others, had carried food and pieces of weaving to him at Hvalsey Fjord, making sure that he was comfortable and had some small pleasures to beguile himself with, always she had come after him, and peppered him with opinions, about the Lord, about himself, about the Greenlanders, about her own folk and the thoughts that came to her, opinions that he was drawn to attending, although it is well known that the views of women are worthless and false. He had made sure of her friendship, told her all the best things that he knew, spoken to her at length of the duties of folk on the earth, watched her as carefully as a shepherd may watch but one of his sheep, but then she, too, had sunk away from him, drawn to death by the deaths of her children, and now a self-murderer, unshriven, unforgiven.

How was it, Sira Pall sometimes thought in the darkness of his chamber, when the seal oil lamp had gone out, that the Lord gathered these folk together in one spot for only a long enough moment so that they came to love and depend on one another, and then wrested them apart for eternity, some to perdition, some to Heaven, some to bide their time in purgatory? And how could it be that the soul should endure perpetual separation, when even the little separations between deaths were hardly bearable? And it was also the case that he knew the answer to these questions, that men must love the Lord above all else, that these other loves must burn away in the fire of love for the Lord, a fire that should burn so hot that not even ash survives it. But although he knew the answer to these questions, he did not know how to make the answer part of himself.

When he sat on a bench in the church, praying, he prayed and thought about Sira Jon. Concerning this brother of his, he strove to feel no sorrow, for the man had been shriven and blessed, and had spoken all such words as were needful to assure himself of his heavenly reward. As at the death of Sira Audun, Sira Pall Hallvardsson saw that it was himself that he had to labor against, against his own regret and loneliness more than against sorrow for the departed soul. It was always a sin to sorrow for the departed soul, for it showed no real knowledge of God’s grace. But even so, as he sat and prayed, or merely gazed upon the cloven face on the crucifix, his heart seemed a hole into which these comforting thoughts disappeared without a trace, a hole that breathed forth sorrow and despair, as vapors come out the earth in places like Iceland, for example. The real case of Sira Jon’s death was somewhat different from appearances, and if Sira Pall Hallvardsson could see this, could not the Lord Himself, more readily, and without struggling to understand this sign and that mark?

For it was the case that although Sira Jon never spoke without speaking the proper words, such words as he had learned at his uncle’s knee, and in school, such words as he had repeated over and over for the sixty-four winters of his life, the words were inflected in such a way as to cast doubt over everything he said. “Our Father, who art in Heaven.” How many times had Jon said that? And how many times had a lifting of his voice thrown suspicion over one word or the other, slipping into Sira Pall’s own thoughts the suspicion that some of us have no father, or that there is no father, or that such fathers as there are do not dwell in Heaven. How many times had the two priests’ eyes flickered toward one another as such words were being spoken, and what had been communicated then, if not a sense of conspiracy, but a conspiracy that Sira Pall was not party to, and hardly recognized. He readily saw that he was a dull fellow in comparison to Sira Jon, hardly capable of dividing the Peter’s pence from the tithes by throwing them into different chests, as he used to do in Hvalsey Fjord days. And he had been a dull fellow all along, never knowing what to do in the days of Sira Jon’s madness, running after him when he was wild, hardly doing more than gaping with the servingfolk. After that, when his brother merely refused to eat, or wash or dress, he had been even more at a loss, sometimes thinking it best to force him, sometimes thinking it best to let him be, sometimes seeking the answers to these questions in the man’s own words and actions, sometimes overlooking those words and actions completely. Oh, he was a dull fellow, indeed, and he sat on a bench in the cathedral, and looked away from His face, and cursed his own dullness. He was a dull fellow who stood with his hands outstretched before him, and what he wished to fall into them he had no idea of.

Here was another of his sins, that he longed to care for Sira Jon, still; that he would have called back the other man’s suffering if he could have called back his life, so that he could have brought his meat to him, and held his arm under the other’s head, and spooned his broth into his mouth, and smoothed the lengths of wadmal that were spread over his pallet, and carried him to the chamber pot, and done for him all the other services that had filled his days for so many years; so that he might have prayed with him more convincingly, and drained the other man’s words of those doubting tones that he now thought of without ceasing, when he was sitting on a bench in the cathedral, and repeating those same prayers himself.

Sometimes, out of doors, looking at the dark faces of the mountains looming over the blue fjords and the green strips of pasture, he considered Erik the Red, who held onto his faith in the old gods until death, and it seemed to him that such events as had overtaken the Greenlanders would hardly have surprised him. Darkness, darkness. That’s what Erik expected: Odin paid with his eye for a little insight, and the measure of the strength he gave away was the measure of how short he was to be when Fenrir snapped his chain and the powers of evil came forth to battle the Aesir. Old stories. Sira Pall Hallvardsson knew little about them, and cared not to think upon them.

Now the boy came to him with news that the cook was looking for him, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson lifted himself carefully, with the boy’s help, and took his sticks, and made his way toward the kitchen. As difficult as it was sometimes to move, his very slowness passed the time, and the attention he must pay to his movements so as to mitigate the pain of them occupied his thoughts.

When he came out of the cathedral, Sira Pall Hallvardsson saw that Bjorn Bollason and Larus the Prophet had come, and that they and Sira Eindridi were deep in talk, but not so deep that Bjorn Bollason did not break off at once, and make his way across the grass to Sira Pall Hallvardsson. This was Bjorn Bollason’s way, always to show respect and concern, and it was Sira Pall Hallvardsson’s way always to be charmed by the other fellow’s manner, charmed in spite of the distrust he felt for the lawspeaker. Now Bjorn Bollason came forward quickly, with a great grin upon his face, and he said, “Well met, Sira Pall Hallvardsson. I come to announce the betrothal of my daughter Sigrid, and indeed, may this be the last such announcement I have to make. The fellow seems to have enough resolution for the both of them, and he has subdued her with jokes and rhymes and merriment, so that she knows not what to think, or at least, what to say.”

“That is a good state for a wife to be in, folk say.”

“Few are, though. But Signy is pleased with this betrothal. The man is Thorstein Olafsson the Icelander.”

“I cannot say that this bit of news surprises me.” Sira Pall Hallvardsson saw that Bjorn was beside himself with pleasure at this news, and indeed, of all the Icelanders, only Snorri Torfason, the shipmaster, was a more powerful or respectable man. It was a marriage to please anyone, especially after the cloud cast upon Sigrid’s marital prospects by the death of the man Kollgrim, even though that betrothal had been broken off long before his crime was committed. Sira Pall smiled, and said, “After many a storm, sometimes the little ship does come into harbor.”

“And there is this, too. My son Bolli intends to take ship with the Icelanders and seek his fortune upon the sea. There is no reason why he cannot learn what there is to know from Snorri Torfason, and then bring a ship back to Greenland. The Greenlanders have been little enterprising in past years, compared to what they once were.”

“Snorri seems to have made a prosperous life for himself upon the sea, and I am sure he is fond of the boy, for Bolli is a good boy.”

“Yes, he is. I have four good boys.” Bjorn said this with his usual self-congratulatory candor, and Sira Pall smiled. But, indeed, what circumstances had ever challenged Bjorn Bollason’s opinion of himself or his good fortune?

“Things go well for you, Bjorn Bollason.”

“It seems to me that it was a moment of great good luck for me when I first looked upon Snorri’s ship in Einars Fjord, and that is the truth.” And so he took some deep breaths, and his chest swelled in pride, and he parted from Sira Pall and went back to where Sira Eindridi and Larus were still having converse.

It was interesting to Sira Pall the way Eindridi and Larus had become friends, where they had once been as suspicious as two male dogs. Larus seemed to Sira Pall to be a sly little man, with his soft voice and his neatly delivered tales. Sira Audun would have appreciated him, Sira Pall thought. It was hard to believe now that Larus had been a servingman all of his life before the hunger: he spoke of everything, from the Virgin to the spoons on the table before him, with such mild fluency. He had the sort of voice that did not announce itself immediately, but caught the ear after a bit, and held it, dropping and dropping to a fascinating whisper, and folk were fascinated indeed at the tales he reported. Sira Pall did not himself know what to make of them, did not know whether the man was a true mystic or just an inventive fellow. Anything was possible, after all, and he had not the perspicacity to see into such things. Sira Eindridi was well meaning, but hard, with some verbal fluency of his own, though it was of a rather bombastic sort, and fascinated no one but Sira Eindridi himself. It was hard to know who had wooed whom, in this case, but these days Larus and Sira Eindridi were often together, and though Sira Eindridi always had the most to say, and spoke in the louder voice, and led the other man about, Sira Pall had little belief that the priest was the top dog. Now they both turned and came over to him, and spoke to him with the respect due to age, and asked after his health and his soul and his business, and the short result of it was that after but a few moments of this conversation, Sira Pall Hallvardsson conceived a great longing to go into his chamber and sleep like an old man.

The news of Birgitta Lavransdottir’s self-murder came to Dyrnes shortly after Yule, with the folk who were returning from Solar Fell, where they had feasted with the Icelanders. Margret Asgeirsdottir had stayed in Dyrnes with Signy’s brother’s household after Sigrid went back to Solar Fell, because not only did she care little to go there, but she was little welcome there. Bjorn Bollason and Signy agreed that it was rather inconvenient, the way they had taken the woman up after the great hunger, considering how things had turned out, but it was not the way of such folk as themselves to turn her out of her place. In addition to this, Signy’s mother rather liked having Margret in Dyrnes, as she was quiet and useful. Margret was much cast down by the news of Birgitta’s death and kept very much to herself. During Lent, it occurred to her that she must now be some sixty-four winters old, as old as the nurse Ingrid had been in the year of her death. Still she was little afflicted with the joint ill. Only her finger joints and the joints of her big toes throbbed in wet weather. She thought often of Eyvind Eyvindsson, and less often of Skuli Gudmundsson.