The Snow on the Cross (3 page)

“Well?”

“Simply because the North Men have
converted does not make them any less of a danger to us, Bishop Arnald.  They
need a man of God, a missionary, to go to them and live with them, to teach
them.”

“Teach them what?  That it’s against
God to sack and burn monasteries?  That rounding up women as slaves throughout
the villages they conquer is a sin?  Do not involve me with this, your grace. 
I am happy here.”

Robert the Pious looked at me for a
long time without speaking.  “Bishop, there is an island about three days west
of
Britain
.  There is an outpost there, a
settlement.  It is there the last main holdout of the new faith lives.  King Olaf
desires his men to accept his new conversion.  He cannot do this unless he has
the support of all his subjects, even the ones who do not live in his immediate
throne.  The leader of the men who live there on the island has sent a request
for a man of God to come to their island to live.”

“Why?”

Robert the Pious then shrugged.  “I
do not know, for the man stands against our entire faith here.  Yet, he still
wants someone to come to them.  No one will go.  Not one single man has
volunteered.

“There is a reason why,” I said.  “It
is too cold.  The land there is frozen, and the sun never sets.”

Robert the Pious sighed.  “I
understand, Bishop.  You do not want to go, either.  But,
Norway
would be satisfied if a French
bishop undertook the missionary ways to convert his people for him. 
Politically, it would be helpful to form an alliance.”

“No,” I said.  “I don’t know anything
about these people.  They are barbarians, and they will kill me if I go.  I
can’t even help my own people.  Why do you think I can help these men who have
a reputation of killing men like me?”

Robert the Pious simply shook his
head and smiled.

* * *

As the winter faded into an early
spring, there was more news from the north, and I began to hear the name Eirik
more frequently.  Although most of the tales I had heard were speculative and
had no basis in fact, strings of different stories seem to link together, and
it was from these stories I was able to piece together the story of the man who
had settled as far west as he could go and still survive.  Young Jonah, not so
young anymore, returned that spring to
Le Mans
.  Over a meal of fresh cheese and bread, he told me this:

“Eirik the Red, as they called him,
went to the west as an outlaw, presumably because the death sentence on his
father had passed on to him.  He settled a large tract of land to the west with
his men and set up a farm there.  He returned briefly to tell the story of the
land he had founded.  He called it the
Green
Land
.”

I pause here because after seeing the
land myself, I assumed that Eirik was either a liar or completely insane for
naming this land
Greenland
.

“Nonetheless,” Jonah continued.  “He
attracted quite a following to go back with him to this land.  Fourteen ships,
I heard.  Most of the men who traveled with him shared his beliefs.”

I nodded.  Eirik would have followed
his father not only in his crime, but also his faith. 

“Jonah,” I asked him.  “Why does this
barbarian want a man of God to live there?  Is he playing some sort of joke? 
Robert the Pious has asked me to go to this ‘
Green
Land
’ to convert these men.”

“Bishop, it is not for Eirik that you
would go, but for his wife, I suppose.  I hear she is a Christian, but he wants
nothing to do with the faith.”

“Then God is using her as a tool to
convert the others there.  It is her request through the mouth of Eirik that
will save them.”

Jonah nodded, and I retired for the
evening after recording my news about the man called Eirik the Red. 

Thordhild

I had sent a letter to Robert II the
Pious about my decision later that month.  By late March, the rumble of horses
greeted me as his caravan pulled up.  Once again, they found me in my garden
where I had just set my new fledgling plants.  This time I had constructed a
wire and rope fence all around them, and as the riders approached, I made sure
I showed them where the boundaries were.  Robert laughed and apologized and
ended up donating twelve gold coins to the church.

“Now, Bishop,” he said.  “We must
talk.”

Robert the Pious told me of a visitor
he had just two weeks ago, shortly before my letter had arrived.  The man was
from Eirik’s
Green
Land
,
and he had brought a gift with him.

“How nice,” I said.  “Is it useful? 
Perhaps it can help the poor.”  I was assuming it was a monetary gift, for I
had heard the North Men were fond of silver.

Robert frowned and twiddled the edge
of his moustache.  “I don’t know, Bishop.  Unless the poor have a taste for
bear.”

I laughed at that.  It turned out
that the emissary from
Greenland
had brought with him a large white
bear on a silver and gold chain.  A gift, he had said, from Eirik.

Robert’s worried frown turned into a
half-smile.  “The damned thing is growling all the time and has already eaten
most of our stock of venison.  The servants are afraid of it, and as far as I
can tell, it might make a nice rug or drape of some sort.  I don’t know what to
do with it.  I told that heathen that I didn’t want it, but he left without
taking it with him.  I could take the chain off of it and melt it down, but no
one can get close enough to it to remove the collar.”

Robert the Pious shouldn’t have
worried about the bear.  Two weeks later it was dead.  Robert, unknowingly I’m
sure, kept it locked up in the lower chambers, and the poor bear simply
sweltered to death (either that or it had eaten something that disagreed with
it).  As a sign of thanks for the gift, Robert had the bear skinned and a
rather elaborate cloak was made of its fur.  Robert insisted on wearing it on
royal business in the winter, especially when dealing with political situations
of the North Men.

“Your grace,” I asked him.  “Tell me
about Eirik’s wife.”

“She is named Thordhild,” Robert the
Pious told me.  “And she has converted, against her husband’s wishes
apparently.  She was a peasant girl from the
Ice
Land
when Eirik arrived there with his
father.  When Eirik left
Ice
Land
,
she went with him to his
Green
Land
.”

“And am I to believe she is the one
who made the request for the missionary?”

“That is what I believe.  Does it
make a difference in your decision?  That a woman has summoned you?”

“Your grace,” I tried to explain to
Robert as carefully as I could.  “I thought I made it clear that I had no
desire to go.  Find someone else.  Someone better.  I do not have the patience
or the skill to convert those men.”

Robert stared at me for a long time
as if waiting for me to say something else, but I remained silent and still,
hoping the moment would pass.   I had made it clear.  If I left
Le Mans
, who would tend my garden?  How
would I record my histories?  No.  It was better that I stayed home.

It wasn’t long after the last visit
from Robert the Pious that word came from the east.  North Men ships had
entered the
Seine
River
. 
They left a charred path along the riverbanks as they burned everything they
came to. 
Paris
was looted. 
Tours
was sacked.  I received word that the buildings
smoldered for weeks after, and the sky had turned permanently black from the
smoke.  My old friend, the Bishop of Tours, was found hanging from the top
spires of his cathedral, his abdomen split open from belly to throat.   Robert
the Pious was raising an army to counter their attack, but by the time
preparations were made, the North Men had vanished.  They slipped their long
ships back into the river and drifted away like the smoke they left behind.

Wave after wave of wounded and sick
flooded into the courtyard of my cathedral.  Most were refugees whose villages
had been plundered.   Although the monks and I tried to help, the bodies began
to stack up, and we burned them like cordwood to stifle the outbreak of
disease.  My cobblestones were stained forever after with their blood and
ashes, and no matter how hard I or anyone else scrubbed them, the stains
remained.

I recorded these events with a weary
heart.  From my chamber window I could see the lands beyond, and I imagined I
could see the smoke after all.  It lingered, and the smell drifted for hundreds
of miles: the scent of blood and wood smoke.  The barbarians had taken few
prisoners in their attacks.  Their ships left no room for anything but
themselves and their loot.  Prisoners were a waste of space, so they were
executed.  I listened with horror at the tales some of the peasants told about
how the first target of the attacks was always the church.  It was the least
guarded and contained the most gold, not to mention the bottles of wine for
communion.

God had sent this plague upon us, but
he left
Le Mans
untouched.  I was spared from the
invasions.  I sat and looked around at my towers and my holy icons that
decorated the walls.  I asked myself why
Le Mans
was spared.

Robert II the Pious moved an army
north along the
Seine
, and the monks who were recovering
from the attack on
Tours
reported he had ten thousand men on
the march.  Robert had camped them along the beaches of
Aquitaine
near the city of
Nantes
.  The barbarians had sacked
Tours
while traveling down the
Loire
River
, so Robert
was assuming they would try to return down that river. 

However, the raids never came, and
news came of another attack to the north, this time near the city of
Abbeville
.  Robert the Pious tried to split
his army and sent half to the north for Abbeville’s protection, but it was too
late.  The slaughter there was unmatched of anything that had gone on before.

I sat quietly in my cell at
Le Mans
and listened to the silence of the
night outside my window.  There were no great fires blazing, no panicked
screaming of an attack.  There was simply the hum of night insects that appear
in early summer, and the glimmer of the stars.   I scratched my words onto my parchment
and waited for the news.  We were untouched by war, and the wrath of the North
Men had been averted from us.  The people of my city were sleeping well tonight
despite the ravages that had gone on around the countryside to the west and
north.  It would have done me no good to try to understand why.  God’s plan
works for us all.

***

Jonah and his brothers from the
monastery at
Toulouse
returned from a pilgrimage to
Rome
and brought me news of more raids from the south. 
This was in the early autumn of 998, and the Pope had issued a decree of
conversion upon us all.

“He writes that all men of God who
have taken vows to uphold the faith are now commanded to convert these pirates
to prevent future raids upon the church,” Jonah reported.  “The Pope thinks that
if they are converted to Christianity, they will be hesitant to attack the
monasteries and churches along the coasts.”

“It is simple thinking upon the part
of the Pope,” I said.  “There have been countless atrocities committed by those
who have professed their faith.  Having one religion over another is not going
to change that behavior.”

“It is your duty, Bishop,” Jonah told
me.  “You are commanded by the Pope himself to attempt conversions.”

“I know,” I sighed.  “The king thinks
it would be good politically for me to go as well.”

My thoughts returned to the request
to go to
Greenland
.  If I were to take the signs as
they had been shown to me: the invitation by Thordhild, the sparing of
Le Mans
from the invasions, the appeal by
the king himself, then all indications would be for me to leave
Le Mans
and go to
Greenland
.  I thought about my father and what
he would do.  His reputation was such that he wouldn’t have even been given a
choice.  He would go on the next ship and do God’s good work.

But I am not my father, then or now,
and I didn’t know why the signs were all pointing to me to bring Christianity
to
Greenland
.  I was an insignificant Bishop from
a small city and, moreover, I had not left
Le Mans
since I entered the church at fifteen.  I knew there was an entire
civilization out there beyond the walls of my cathedral, but still I wanted
nothing more than to simply sit and let the news come to me.  My imagination
had been set afire by all the stories the monks told me, all the things they
had seen on their travels, and I had recorded it all faithfully, but to see the
sights for myself was not something I greatly wanted.  I was a disappointment
to Robert the Pious, I know, for he held such hope in his eyes when he told me
about the North Men settlements.  He wanted me to go, and the monks didn’t
understand why I insisted on staying home.