It happened that Thorbjorn still had two cows and one bull, and he went out one day to the byre to feed them. It was about twenty steps to the byre from the farmstead, and as Thorbjorn was making his way, a great storm blew up, suddenly, as storms do in Hvalsey Fjord, and in the midst of this storm, Thorbjorn saw that there was a man standing beside the byre, wrapped in a beautiful cloak of marten fur from Markland. The man came up to him, and spoke to him, and his words could be readily made out, even in the din of the storm, and the man said, "Thorbjorn, you need a little steading cloaked in turf. I have one, may I give it to you?" And Thorbjorn said, "Nay, a big hall is a fine thing to look at."
And so the man said, "Thorbjorn, I have some sheep trotters in my pouch here. You might seethe them up and eat them." And Thorbjorn said, "Hungry though I am, I have never cared for sheepsfoot. That is poor man"s fare."
And the man said, "Here in my pouch I also have this bit of a lamp. You might put some seal oil in it, and have both light and warmth."
"Nay," said Thorbjorn, "the smell of seal oil turns my nose."
Now the man laughed and said, "Thorbjorn, thy neighbors have been eager to help you in your trouble." And Thorbjorn said, "They are lowly men, these neighbors, and none of them has been made into an earl by the Norwegian king. It is for us to help them, not for them to help us." And so this man, who was the Devil himself, opened his great black cloak and said, "My Thorbjorn, the light of your pride has been like a beacon in the darkness to me, and I have come to take you for my own. You can go with me now. Your folk, I a.s.sure you, will follow shortly, one by one." And that was the last of Thorbjorn.
Now all the a.s.sembled folk who were listening to Lavrans" tale laughed at this, and Lavrans himself laughed, and Birgitta said, "Indeed, my father, there was never such a lordly family in Hvalsey Fjord as this one." Lavrans grinned and raised little Helga onto his lap. But Olaf was not made more contented by this tale, and he sulked about all winter.
On moonlit winter nights, Gunnar got into the habit of skiing or skating across the fjord and spending the evening in conversation with Sira Pall Hallvardsson. And it happened that one of these nights, he asked the priest what he remembered of the ways of Europeans, for now that he was no longer at Gunnars Stead, Gunnar declared, he had a new longing to go on ship as his father had done, when he traveled to Norway and the Orkney Isles and Iceland, and returned with Helga Ingvadottir, Gunnar"s mother.
Sira Pall Hallvardsson now laughed heartily, and when Gunnar asked him why he was laughing, he said that in his many winters in Greenland, he had never been led to recall his youth or his education, for no Greenlander had asked him about it before this.
"It is true," said Gunnar, "that we Greenlanders are like most men in this, we think that what is important is what is taking place in Greenland. And the men of Hvalsey Fjord are the same. To them, the disputes of Vatna Hverfi are small things, hardly worthy of remark, even though Vatna Hverfi is a larger district with greater farms and richer men."
Sira Pall Hallvardsson said, "And the men of Vatna Hverfi consider that Eriks Fjord has lost much of its importance in late years." Now Gunnar and the priest both laughed. Gunnar said, "When we went to the south, to Kollbein Sigurdsson"s swimming contest at the hot springs, the farmers of the south were a little perplexed by us and our concerns, and thought of Kollbein as a peculiar and insignificant man, although he was the ombudsman of the king. It seems to me that folk have smaller minds than they once did, in the days of my grandfather Gunnar Asgeirsson. My father, too, was a great one for having news of distant places."
Now Pall Hallvardsson grew sober, and nodded, and said that all things were worse than they had been, that the decline of men from a state of grace was proven by Church authorities. Gunnar said, "My wife and her father say that even the weather is worse, and every year worse, although Finn declares that of seals and birds and other game there are such numbers as he has never seen before. I know this, that in earlier days, a man who wished to take ship and sail away for wealth and adventure had but to wait a year or so, and now he may see the birth of many children before he sees a single ship."
Some time after this, Sira Pall Hallvardsson began to speak of his school, for he could remember nothing before this school, although it was said that his mother had been the daughter of a Flemish cloth dyer and his father an Icelander who was part owner of a small ship, and who had visited Greenland as a young man, before Bishop Arni died. But these people, Pall Hallvardsson"s mother and father, along with her parents and brother, all died during the Great Death, as did many of the folk of Tournai, where they dwelt. But Pall Hallvardsson had been taken to the Augustinians of Drongen, and this entire monastery had been spared by a miracle of prayer and fasting, so that no monk or servingman or schoolchild had died during the whole of the first visitation of the Great Death.
"Flanders," Pall Hallvardsson declared, "is such a place as can hardly be imagined by Greenlanders, or even by folk such as myself, whose eye has become familiar with the wastes of the western ocean. In Flanders, a man did not wait for folk to visit him, or look out his door for them, squinting into the breeze and making of every shadow the longed-for guest, but was instead so beset with folk that he might rather wish to be left alone to hold his thoughts in peace. And all of these folk were seized with aims and desires many times every day, for the very commerce that they had among themselves put them in a frenzy of conflicting notions. All men rushed about as fast as possible, and in addition spoke quickly. Well, these things are outlandish for me to think upon now, but when I was a boy they seemed ordinary. I spent enough time bemoaning the tedium of Drongen. How I longed to be taken along when the cellarer of the monastery went to do business in Ghent, which was not far away."
Gunnar said, "Was this Ghent another and larger monastery, then?"
Pall Hallvardsson"s eyes opened wide, and he ran his hands over his head. Finally he said, "No, indeed. Ghent is such a compounding of mankind and buildings and animals and machines and noises and smells and sights and colors that it might seem to be h.e.l.l at one moment and Heaven at the next." Then he considered for a moment and added, "Or h.e.l.l to one man and Heaven to the next. For folk lie about in the street who have neither arms nor legs, but only a voice to cry out to those pa.s.sing for alms, and children raise their faces to you as you pa.s.s and they are lepers, with no noses and great sores eating into their flesh, and many of these folk have no homes, but only lean against a particular bit of wall, day and night, summer and winter, until they are no longer there, and have died and been tossed into ma.s.s graves, for these cities sp.a.w.n cities of the dead, as well."
Gunnar said, "But there is Heaven, too?"
"Of a sort. There are houses where rich men have gathered together belongings of such grace and beauty of form that the eye rather eats them up than looks at them. Many statues might be placed about a garden where flowering trees and a carpet of blossoms perfume the air, and fountains spew mists into sky, and amidst it all, a dwelling rises thirty ells with towers and winding staircases and banners afloat and the sunlight bouncing off a galaxy of window lights. Such a thing might be called heaven, or paradise, although those men who dwell within are fallen, as all men are, through the sin of Adam."
Now Gunnar reflected for a moment, and asked, "When as a child you looked out in the morning, what did you look out upon?"
Sira Pall Hallvardsson closed his eyes. "Neither mountains nor oceans, neither sheep nor fish drying racks, but always this, a little s.p.a.ce of green between the dormitory and the church which was a neat pattern of herbs and vegetables planted in the form of a cross with four equal arms inside a circle which was itself inside a square, and behind this a row of ancient apricot trees set against the church wall. Along the edge of this garden ran a paved path, and upon this path, no matter how early I might look out, I would see robed monks or else servingmen going among the dormitory and the kitchen house and the church and the rectory offices, and if the stones of this path were not flat and smooth and clean, it was said that in this way the path to heaven was strewn with snares and overgrown with sin, unless all were to exercise the utmost vigilance, and so the little boys went out and tore up the gra.s.s and moss growing between the stones, and swept the stones carefully with bunches of twigs. That is one thing I remember clearly."
"Where did the sheep pasture, then? Were they never allowed into this homefield?"
Pall Hallvardsson smiled. "I was a grown man and had gone far from this place before I ever saw a sheep, although the monks kept two cows and a few chickens and geese for eggs. On the other side of this church there was a small hospital for old men, and beyond that a row of houses. In front of the church ran a road paved with flagstones and along the other side of that was another row of houses, so, you see, sheep would have had to look far and wide for the merest blade of gra.s.s. And when I lifted my eyes, I saw towers, but never mountains, for the earth was as flat as the surface of the fjord in midsummer, and ran this way as far as a man could see in any direction."
Sometimes Gunnar related these wonders to Olaf as they were repairing the stone fences, or to Birgitta as they lay with little Kollgrim between them in the bedcloset. But Olaf merely grunted at the news that Pall Hallvardsson had never seen a sheep until he was a grown man, and said, "It is true that he goes among his sheep in this way, like a man stepping into a cold pond on a spring morning, as if he would rather not." Birgitta listened with more care, but then asked Gunnar questions he could not answer, such as where were the mothers of these children whose noses were gone, or what folk did inside these rows of houses, or how, with things cramped together in this wise, children were able to get such air and sunlight as they needed to grow? And did each family keep a cow when there was no pasture, and what did folk eat in such a place? Some turnips, some bread, oats cooked with water, greens, wine, and beer, said Gunnar after his next talk with Sira Pall Hallvardsson, and Birgitta replied that she had never heard of such things before, and pitied folk if they were true, for though winter famine and hardship were the lot of Greenlanders and all northern folk, yet at the end of the famine, when a ptarmigan was roasting on the spit, or reindeer meat seething in a stew, such odors arose as were nearly rich enough to fill the belly, and how could some oats boiled with water do the same? And after this, when Helga complained of her whalemeat or her fish seethed with milk into a kind of soup, Birgitta asked her if she would like to eat oats boiled with water, as cows eat, and people in the East, or green gra.s.s, for according to Sira Pall Hallvardsson, such greens were their daily meat, as well. The result of this was that Helga ate without complaint.
One day before Yule, a man came from Sira Jon at Gardar, with greetings, and a neatly carved soapstone ewer, the work of one of the Gardar servants. There was other news from the south as well, for the skraeling Kissabi had succeeded in killing Ragnvald Einarsson at his new home in Hrafns Fjord, after casting a demon spell upon him and causing him to fall to the ground in fear. Then the skraeling had shot an arrow at him from a close distance, and this arrow had lodged in Ragnvald"s throat, and Ragnvald"s folk had themselves been thrown into such a state by this spell that they had been too frightened to defend themselves, and allowed Kissabi to come into the steading and kill the daughter, Gudny, as well, and her little son who was at the breast. And when this devil had cut off Ragnvald"s arm and raised it above his head and shouted a great curse in the skraeling tongue, they had not known what to do, and allowed him to get away. Folk who traded with the skraelings said that he was already gone off to the wastes of the east, where he had disappeared among the hordes of his fellows, and he would probably never be seen again. When he heard this, Gunnar only said that it surprised him that a respected man such as Ragnvald should have fallen so low, and proved himself so cowardly. Lavrans continued to trade with the skraeling man he had always traded with, and Finn consorted with the demons as much as ever, but Yule was not held with any great joy, either at the steading or in the church of St. Birgitta, or anywhere else in Hvalsey Fjord.
And this was another piece of news, that Isleif Isleifsson had come to Sira Jon from Brattahlid and told him in secret that Margret Asgeirsdottir had gone mad at her little steading. But Gunnar would hear no more of this news, and forbade Pall Hallvardsson from relating it to him, and went out of the door of the house. Birgitta was just then taking Kollgrim from the breast. Now she sat him upon her knee and looked up toward the roof, saying, "Where is my Kollgrim? Where is my boy Kollgrim?" Now she looked behind herself and said again, "Where is my little Kollgrim?" Gunnhild and Helga peeked out from the bedcloset where they were keeping warm and began to laugh, and Birgitta looked over her other shoulder and spoke in a louder voice, "Where is that little boy? Oh, Kollgrim, where are you?" And at this the little boy managed to creep toward her face and grab her chin, bringing her eyes to his. "Ah! My Kollgrim! There you are! Why do you run off like that, where your mother can"t find you?" Now Gunnhild and Helga were jumping up and down and laughing, and Lavrans and the priest were laughing, too, and Sira Pall Hallvardsson leaned forward and looked in Kollgrim"s face, so that Kollgrim opened his eyes wide and stared back and then pinched the priest"s nose.
But when Sira Pall Hallvardsson got up to leave at dusk, Birgitta put Kollgrim into the bedcloset with his sisters, and followed the priest out into the snow, and she declared that it was her hope that Margret Asgeirsdottir was not afflicted with a frenzy, nor left alone in her suffering, for it was said that devils sought out those who were alone and entered into them and possessed their souls, and this was something folk who lived far from others must fear above all things.
Sira Pall Hallvardsson tied the thongs of his skis without speaking. Now he stood and looked down at her and took a pole in each hand, and asked what news the Gunnars Stead folk had had of Margret since their parting with her, and Birgitta said that none had come to her ears. Did Birgitta know of the death of the boy Jonas Skulason of starvation, perchance? Birgitta replied that she did not, nor had she known how the boy was baptized, or whether, indeed, it had been a boy or a girl. Sira Pall Hallvardsson glanced across the ice at the church, then back at Birgitta, and said, "This thing I told Gunnar Asgeirsson was overheard by a servingwoman, and related to two or three people before it came to me through my visitor from Gardar, and so the cup is much cracked, and most of the truth has spilled out before it was our turn to drink. Isleif Isleifsson lives at Brattahlid with his mother, Marta, the sister of Osmund the lawspeaker. They are prosperous folk. It is said that Margret Asgeirsdottir is spending the winter with these folk." After this, he skied away, and Birgitta returned to the house. Gunnar came back after the evening meat had been cleared from the table and folk had gone to their beds.
Birgitta lay with her eyes closed and her cloak wrapped tightly about herself and Kollgrim. In the next bedcloset, Thora, the servingmaid, lay with the little girls, for the frost in these last nights since Yule had been especially deep. Gunnar piled turves against the bottom of the door to keep out the draft and renewed the seal oil in the lamp that always burned through the night, then slipped under the polar bear skin. After a moment he said, "Where is she?" Birgitta replied, "With Marta the sister of Osmund Thordarson." And this was all that pa.s.sed between them.
At this Yule, Margret Asgeirsdottir and Asta Thorbergsdottir gathered their things together and removed themselves to Brattahlid, where they went to work serving Marta Thordardottir. Margret was to weave her a large piece of fine two-by-two wadmal and then to decorate this with a wide band of tablet weaving, such as she had learned to make from Kristin of Siglufjord. It was agreed that after the ma.s.s of St. Hallvard, Margret would return to Steinstraumstead with Asta and twenty of the Brattahlid sheep for pasturing above the little farm. In the autumn she would bring the ewes and the lambs back to Brattahlid, and spend another winter there, weaving and spinning. Marta was much pleased with this arrangement for, she said, anyone who had been taught by Kristin of Siglufjord would know the patterns Kristin"s mother had learned as a child in Jaemtland, and she spoke of this woman, Ashild, who had been most jealous of her skills at the tablet and loom, and had never allowed her servants to see how she threw her shuttle or set up her warp. And Marta spoke so much about this woman Ashild that Margret was persuaded, and she spent her days at the great Brattahlid loom.
But she spoke little, and had little flesh on her bones, and even after staying among the Brattahlid folk from St. Andrew"s ma.s.s to the feast of St. Stephen, she looked to be starving, and so Isleif had gone, without consulting Marta Thordardottir, to Sira Jon just before Yule, and declared that the woman was mad with melancholy, but that it was not the habit of Marta to note such things, nor, said folk in the district, to consider the views of her son, Isleif, with much seriousness. Since Osmund always paid heed only to his sister, he, too, had no concern for the young woman, and cared little where she was sitting or where she was staring, but only that she was out of the way. And Isleif asked Sira Jon what he, as the woman"s priest, might do to encourage her to look to G.o.d for help.
It was not Sira Jon"s wont to leave Gardar during the winter, for Gardar was low and damp and warm and everywhere else in Greenland was high and dry and chill. And so Sira Jon told Isleif that it did not sound to him as though the woman was making any trouble for these folk at Brattahlid, but was calm and self-contained, and Isleif said that this was so, and Sira Jon declared that it would be best to watch her, and see if the grace of the Lord came to her in the course of the spring. To this Isleif replied that it might happen that she would starve herself before the spring was over, but Sira Jon said that this could not be done, that treatises of the Church showed that the flesh must cling to the flesh, and could not become spirit through an act of will, and so the body could not deprive itself of life, but the woman must eat in the end. To this Isleif replied that she might be possessed with a devil, and Sira Jon inquired after her behavior. But she was not speaking aloud in strange tongues, nor averting her eyes from the Cross nor turning her prayers backward, and so she could not be possessed in this way, although Jon admitted that such slackness as she showed was as a door left ajar for demons, true enough. And to every question Isleif made, Sira Jon answered with the observations of such authorities as would know about these things, and so Sira Isleif went back to Brattahlid somewhat confused in his thoughts, but rea.s.sured.
And so it happened that Sira Jon grew very restless during Lent and complained bitterly of the winter cold, although others of the Greenlanders were remarking that this winter was less difficult than others, with a thaw in January, so that the sheep could get to some forage, and then another deep snow, but no ice storm such as every district had been receiving every winter, not once but three times and more. The priest was displeased at every bit of news, whether good, such as the news that there would be plenty of hay for the winter and some left over to give to more desperate folk, or bad, such as the news that two cows had gone through the ice of the big Gardar pond and been lost. He always looked out for folk from Brattahlid, and when they came, he asked them about the madwoman living with Marta Thordardottir, and sometimes they had news of her and sometimes they did not. For Lent, Sira Jon set himself a strict regimen of fasting and prayer, so that he grew very thin and big-eyed, and Sira Audun was left to look after the daily business of the household, although folk said that after so many years, the servingwoman Anna Jonsdottir looked after all the business that needed to be looked after. Sira Audun, it was said, was working at composing another hymn, or perhaps some other sort of verse.
At Easter, Sira Jon broke his fast and celebrated the Resurrection of the Lord in the company of Sira Pall Hallvardsson at Gardar. It happened that after the meal. Sira Pall whispered to Sira Audun that all the folk must go from the table, leaving only Sira Jon, and after a time, this was accomplished. When they were alone, Sira Pall Hallvardsson went and sat close beside the other priest, and he said, "My brother, do you recall the time we rowed the big Gardar boat together to Undir Hofdi church? I sat in the bow, and marveled at the power of your stroke."
"Young men have pride in their strength as maidens have pride in their beauty, but all forms of pride are sinful. It seems to me that the task of old men such as we are now is to repent of the pride they had in their youth."
"It seems to me that you repent at the expense of your own flesh."
Now Sira Jon turned and looked at Sira Pall for the first time, and Sira Pall saw in his face a look of both fear and bitterness. Sira Jon said, "Is our own flesh not the first thing that we must repent of?"
"Even so, it is not possible to live in Greenland without a goodly store of flesh. It is the Lord"s mercy upon His beasts here that He gives them a goodly layer of fat and a pleasant, rounded form. So He is merciful to the men of the place, as well, for they are bigger than other men, and st.u.r.dier."
Sira Jon sat stubbornly silent.
Now Sira Pall spoke in a low soothing voice, and said, "My brother, you are more learned than I am, but it seems to me that the Lord asks two things of men, and one of these is penitence, devotion, and sacrifice, but the other is the wise husbandry of the goods of the world, for the care of His servants and their charges. But the Lord does not ask both things from a single man. Instead He has made room in His church for both St. Francis and St. Augustine, and neither one sits before the other at the foot of His throne."
Now Sira Jon sat for a long time, at first staring at Sira Pall, and then staring away. Finally, he said, "When meat sticks in the throat, it must be spit out, and when prayers burn within, their smoke must fly upward."
And Sira Pall said, "Will you not speak to me of what is troubling you?"
And Sira Jon sat silent, and would not speak.
Soon after Easter, the ice broke up in Eriks Fjord, as it always does, in the s.p.a.ce of a day or so, and a warm wind off the glacier blew the ice to the mouth of the fjord and out into the ocean. And soon after this, Sira Jon and three Gardar servingmen took the big Gardar boat, and they went to Brattahlid and made a visit to Osmund Thordarson.
Sira Jon went with his men into the farmsteading and the table was set up for them, and several women brought them food. None of these was Margret Asgeirsdottir. Isleif, he was told, was visiting his brother Ragnleif and conducting ma.s.ses there. Nothing was said of the madwoman. After the eating was over, Marta Thordardottir took the priest to the high seat, and sat him there, then, in her commanding way, she began to quiz him about news from Gardar and the other districts. And this wish he had to know of Margret Asgeirsdottir was so great that he could in no way speak of it. His desire for knowledge of her felt unaccountably so like a sin that even when Marta herself mentioned the name and showed Sira Jon the lovely piece of cloth Margret had woven and decorated in the course of the winter, he could not ask, and Marta did not say, whether the woman had died or had gone away, or was simply not present in the room. The four men rowed back to Gardar after the evening meat, and made their way from the Eriks Fjord jetty to the residence in the dark, and even as they were walking along, it came to Sira Jon how he might have asked after the woman, what his manner might have been, and his words, and he thought of what he would say upon his return to Brattahlid-how he would incline his head and refer to Margret Asgeirsdottir as "that woman you had with you in the winter, what was her name? I believe Sira Isleif mentioned her to me."
The fact was that Margret Asgeirsdottir had indeed served Sira Jon at his meat, but that in looking for the tall blond girl claimed ten years before by Olaf Finnbogason, he had overlooked a certain old woman, as he thought she was, although she was but of an age with himself. If, however, he had not rushed away, but stayed the night with Osmund, he would have known her from her dreams, for every night she awoke either weeping or calling out, and it was said that Skuli Gudmundsson prevented her from sleeping out of malice, for it is the case that even ghosts who were formerly gentle and considerate folk become ferocious and hateful after death. Nevertheless, although talk of this went about, Skuli neither appeared to nor harmed anyone other than Margret Asgeirsdottir, and so no one cared to do anything about it, for it was said, a man could draw the anger of ghosts upon himself by meddling. In addition to this, Margret never spoke of her dreams nor identified her tormentor, and so no one felt called upon to bring the topic up, not even Sira Isleif.
Now it happened that some days after Sira Jon"s visit, around the ma.s.s of St. Hallvard, Margret and Asta returned to Steinstraumstead with a flock of twenty sheep and ewes and began putting things in order there. Where Margret seemed to have grown smaller, Asta Thorbergsdottir seemed to have grown larger, and her strength, always that of a man, now seemed equal to that of two men. Cutting turves and piling them up was as nothing to her, and she hardly grunted when lifting the heaviest stones. Her arms were so long and so strong that she could carry two struggling sheep with no trouble, and her hips were wide as the beam of a boat. It was her habit always to ask Margret Asgeirsdottir for advice and instructions, and always to look to her if someone else, even Marta Thordardottir, asked her to perform any service. On the day when they rowed across Eriks Fjord to Steinstraumstead, they found upon the sh.o.r.e a deserted arrangement of stones, such as skraelings build when they desire to cook, and Asta went over to these stones, and kicked them apart with her foot, and found another large boulder and lifted it and set it among these stones, but the two women said nothing of this, but only went about sweeping out the steading and moving into it.
Some days after their coming, they looked out in the morning and discovered three skin boats pulled up on the sh.o.r.e and another two out in the fjord. There were some twelve or fifteen skraeling men and boys on the sh.o.r.e and in the boats, but after a short while, they pushed the beached boats back into the water and paddled swiftly away. Margret was not a little afraid of these signs, for in addition to the news of Ragnvald Einarsson, she knew well from the stories of her childhood the sorts of indignities skraelings were prepared to perpetrate upon the children of men, especially the female children, and she did not hesitate to relate them to Asta.
It was true, she said, that they took particular pleasure in preventing the worship of the Lord among their captives, and often cast spells upon these unfortunates so that they forgot all of their prayers. It was also said by some, including her old nurse, Ingrid, that the feet of these demons were covered with fur, as was their skin inside their clothing, and this was the reason they could endure such cold as they did. Only their hands and faces were hairless, but these didn"t freeze, either, for some reason, and even in the bitterest cold the demons went without hoods or mittens. Asta looked fixedly at the fjord where the skin boats had turned into specks in the distance. She made no response, but went down the hillside and kicked the cooking stones even farther apart. After this, they saw nothing of the skraelings for a long while.
It happened that one day around the feast of St. Jon, Margret and Asta set about shearing the twenty ewes that they had brought with them to Steinstraumstead. Asta was good at this work, but Margret was clumsy, for Hrafn and Olaf did the shearing at Gunnars Stead, and so it was Margret"s task to take the fleeces and lay them across the side of the hill, to cool and loosen so that they could be broken into wool for spinning. These fleeces were laid out for the s.p.a.ce of one day, then rolled up at nightfall and put away. With the bleating of the ewes and the crying of the lambs, there was such a clamor that neither Asta nor Margret, who was farther down the hillside, noticed the approach of two skin boats until they were drawn up on the sh.o.r.e and the skraelings in them had already gotten out and begun to cook their meal over a fire they built. This group of demons included three men, a young woman, an old woman, and two children, and these children came up the hillside and surprised Margret at her work so that she cried out. Now the young woman appeared behind them and took their hands and backed away. Unlike the children of men, these children stared into Margret"s face as a cat might, never needing to blink or turn away. The demon woman smiled and nodded.
Now Asta came down the hillside carrying the sheep shears and two of the demon men came up from the sh.o.r.e, one of them carrying a bow and some arrows. This man appeared to be younger even than the young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen winters old. He stopped as if startled by the sight of Asta Thorbergsdottir, and let his gaze wander over her. Seeing this, Asta raised her shears above her head and brandished them, and the skraelings and their young turned and went down the hillside. But the young man looked back twice at Asta, although she scowled mightily at him. Now a sheep scampered down the slope, and Margret and Asta saw that the three unshorn ewes had escaped from the ewe fold and scattered themselves among the shorn ewes, and that the fleeces were in danger of being stepped on and broken, so they began to run about the slope chasing the sheep back to the fold. They thought no more of the skraeling group until the next morning, when Asta stepped out of the steading and discovered a fine sealskin upon the doorstone that could only have come from the skraelings. This she carried down to the strand and pitched into the fjord. After that, she went to the cooking spot and scattered the stones once again.
Now it was usual during the summer days that Margret would take the sheep back into the hills behind Steinstraumstead that overlooked the stony creek known as Steinstraum, and were well watered by the glacier, so that they were green all summer, and she would herd them out each morning and back each evening, and also gather angelica and other herbs such as she found and put them in her sack. It was true that in spite of the fact that Margret had lost her girlish appearance, she was still little burdened by pain of the hips or any of the other ills of maturity, and she stepped about the hills with as much speed and grace as she always had. It was also true that such movement was a pleasure to her in all weathers, for the sunlight and the breezes and the rain drove away thoughts of past things. This had been a great trial to her, that the cloth she had fashioned for Marta Thordardottir had been all woven of memories and regrets, so that when Marta brought it out to admire it, the very smell of it brought Margret grief, and she foresaw that this would be the case again in the coming winter and every succeeding one, that her memories, all alike but eternally repeating themselves, would cl.u.s.ter about her as she sat quietly at the loom and bear down upon her and smother her. And yet, Marta was herself growing old and her sight was dimming, so that if she wished to have Margret about her, Margret desired to fulfill her wish.
Going with the sheep, however, was so like her childhood wanderings in the mountains above Gunnars Stead that it seemed to her that she was returned to that time, and the ghostly figure she sometimes caught sight of just ahead of her or half hidden among the scrub birch was only her father"s brother, Hauk Gunnarsson, setting bird snares. And this figure was so quiet and elusive, as Hauk himself had been, that its appearance hardly even surprised her. It was true, she sometimes said to Asta, that her father"s brother had visited every part of the eastern settlement, and must have known Steinstraumstead and the stony river as well as anywhere else. At the end of each day with the sheep, Margret returned to the steading to receive her dreams, and as night fell, grew melancholy, so that she did not welcome talk with Asta, and Asta did not offer it.
Perhaps as a result of these habits, Margret came and went without knowing that Asta was much oppressed by the attentions of the young skraeling man. He came every day alone in a fine skin boat, and at first he was content to demonstrate his skills to Asta, she thought for her admiration. He was agile in the skin boat, and capable of great speed and almost magical maneuvers. Of course, she dared not look at them at first, but kept to her work of cheese-making, spinning, and repair of the turf and stonework about the little steading, but in the end it was difficult never to look, for his feats were such as she had never seen before performed by men. And as the devil tempts folk little by little out of the path of the Lord, so these sights tempted Asta Thorbergsdottir first to glance and then to stare and then to come down upon the strand and gaze out into the fjord, where demon and boat together acted like playful fish, leaping in and out of the water, disappearing and reappearing in the waves, shooting from one place to another. At least, so these things appeared to the sight of Asta Thorbergsdottir, but she would not have admitted them to others, for fear of being thought possessed. But even so, when the skraeling approached the sh.o.r.e, Asta had the sense to run up the hillside, and in addition to this, to cast away every gift that the devil left for her, no matter how desirable some little trinket might be, for the fact was that the beauty of such things hid their corrupt nature-were someone to cut open a hunk of whalemeat, for example, such a hunk left as a gift by a demon, one would find it crawling with maggots, and what was more, even gifts not naturally p.r.o.ne to such transformations, a bone needle or a piece of walrus tusk, were transformed by the skraelings into crawling and corrupt objects.
After some days of this, she was willing to admit that the way this corruption came about was not intended by the skraelings themselves, but came as a result of their demon natures. Even so, she resolutely threw everything away and brandished whatever might be in her hand when the skraeling appeared in as threatening a fashion as she could muster. Also, on some days she looked for Sira Isleif to come and relieve her fears, or at least stiffen her resistance against this skraeling, for, say what one wished, she had come to look for his gifts and his antics in the fjord. Life at Steinstraumstead, especially after the winter at Brattahlid, was a solitary undertaking. Other days she feared that Sira Isleif"s visit might be upon them, and that he would castigate her sin in paying any notice to this devil at all, and she turned over in her thoughts what she might say in her own defense, but the fact was, that for deserting the ways of G.o.d, even in thoughts, there is no defense. And so she wished away the visit of Sira Isleif on these days.
Margret and Asta were in the habit of arising with the sun to milk the ewes, then eating a bit of dried sealmeat together before Margret drove the animals to their pasture, and on one such morning it came to Asta that she should speak of her distress to the other woman, for she had come far from the days of kicking apart the skraelings" stone cooking spot, and although she had seen the young woman and the two children only that once, she remembered their faces clearly, but not with the fear or hatred that she remembered feeling at the time. At morning meat she held in her hand a little trinket, a man carved in the skraeling fashion from a bit of ivory, with a few incised lines to depict his parka and his fur boots and his eye slits. This trinket she had been unable to make herself cast away, and yet it weighed heavily upon her soul. In addition to this, she knew that the skraeling was hiding in wait for Margret"s departure, as he had for each of the last few mornings, and that he would appear, smiling, as soon as the little flock disappeared over the brow of the hill. Were she to put the charm upon the tiny table she had made for them, Margret, she knew, would lift her eyes from it to Asta"s own face, and she would be preserved, and yet she kept it tight and warm in the palm of her hand.
For her part, Margret Asgeirsdottir was still in the grip of her dreams, as she was every morning, and looked upon the face of Asta Thorbergsdottir with the same sense of distance as she always did. She longed to be off.
Now it happened that shortly after Margret went away, Asta stepped out of the steading with the intention of going to the privy, and the skraeling leapt out from behind the corner of the house and grabbed Asta by the arm. Then he took her wrist and squeezed it, so that her hand opened and disclosed the ivory figure. At once the skraeling gave a great shout and began to grin in a diabolical fashion, and then, greatly to Asta"s surprise, he grabbed her hair at the nape of her neck and began jerking her about him, attempting to throw her down upon the ground. With his other hand, he slapped her bottom, not hard, but like Thorkel Gellison slapping the flanks of a favorite mare. Asta readily saw that she was a good deal taller than the demon, and probably heavier as well, though like all skraelings, he was clothed in furs summer and winter. Now she turned toward him and grabbed him around the chest as folk do in wrestling contests, and squeezed him as hard as she could, all the while listening with her head jerked back by his hand gripping her hair for the crack of his ribs. This never came, but she did manage to drive the wind out of him and overpower him so that he fell to his knees and his face grew red and swollen. She, in turn, was nearly overpowered by the rank odor of seal blubber on his hands and face, but she pushed him away and turned and ran up the hillside. Sometime later, she looked out and saw that his skin boat was gone, and this was a good example indeed of the wages of walking with the devil, for some of her hair had come out in a large patch and the back of her head throbbed painfully. In the evening, she spoke of this misadventure to Margret, and wept mightily in remorse at her weakness. But when they awakened on the second day, it was to discover not just the one skraeling, but a whole group of them standing about outside the steading, all men.
Margret stood inside the doorway and Asta behind her with a weighty soapstone lamp concealed in each of her hands. One of the men, who had graying hair and a little beard upon his chin, stepped forward and addressed Margret as follows, "Old woman, where are your men?" His Norse tongue was almost unintelligible, and Margret stepped forward two paces so that she could make it out. The men stepped back.
She said, "We have no men here." Now Asta stepped in front of her and lifted the pieces of stone above her head as if to throw them. The group of men conferred among themselves, and the leader spoke once again. He said, "It is a shame to all men when they have to do business with women."
Margret shrugged and turned to go inside the house.
"Even so," he went on, "a certain young man finds his heart set upon this young woman here, for she is a fine fat girl, and he can hardly keep his eyes off her, and so he wishes to take her for his first wife."
"I think," said Margret, "that I don"t understand your words." And indeed, much of what he had said had escaped her, but it appeared that he was asking to have Asta Thorbergsdottir marry the young skraeling who had pulled her hair out.
The demon spoke more slowly, gesturing at the young skraeling, who stepped forward. "This fellow, Quimiak, wishes to have your girl for his wife."
Margret and Asta looked at each other.
"He is a good hunter and a prosperous man. Soon he will have another wife to help her, and her life will be an easy one, although it is true that he is young to marry."
Margret turned to Asta and said, "I think he is marrying someone else, too."
"This courtship has gone on for many days, and Quimiak is most anxious to bring it to a conclusion."
Now Margret spoke loudly to the older skraeling. "My friend and I must consult together about this." She waved her hand toward the bottom of the slope, and the leader said a few words. Soon the skraelings were out of sight of the house, although the breeze carried sounds of their talking to the two women. Margret and Asta sat down upon a stone that lay against the south wall of the steading, and a little time pa.s.sed before they began to converse. At last Margret said, "It seems to me that things have pa.s.sed that I have known nothing of."
Now Asta smiled and said, "And it seems to me that things have pa.s.sed that I have known nothing of, as well." And they sat silently for another short time.
Margret said, "This is the smallest of steadings, and will never support both of us in both summer and winter, and in addition to that, Marta Thordardottir is growing old, and I doubt that Isleif or Ragnleif will greet us with such pleasure as Marta does every autumn."
"And though it may not be able to support two, yet one would not be able to live in such a lonely spot."
"That may be or may not be."
"No one knows how the skraelings live. And this one smelled like an old sealskin that hasn"t been cleaned properly, and yet-" But she fell silent.
"And yet?"
"And yet, like as not one such as I will get few enough offers from others."
"But skraelings aren"t men. They are demons, and do the work of Satan."
"Many men marry skraeling women and father children. Their wives" mothers come to live with them on their steadings."
"And all are baptized, and they live as Nors.e.m.e.n, and change their names, and worship in church as others do."
"I was greatly fond of Jonas Skulason, that is a fact."
"My father"s brother, Hauk Gunnarsson, used to go to the Northsetur as a young man, and he had much to do with skraelings, and he used to say that these folk, for he considered them folk and not demons, were used to traveling great distances in the darkest part of winter, and in fact in the places where they go, the sun never shines after the winter nights."
"Why is it that they make these journeys?"
"They have no sheep, and spend all of their time hunting walrus and whale and seal and bears."
"It may be that they are never hungry."
"It may be. My father"s brother was not a little impressed with their skills."
"Hauk Gunnarsson was himself well known as a hunter."
"It may be that they are never hungry." Now Margret looked steadily at Asta and said, "Sira Pall Hallvardsson would say one thing, and that is, what availeth a man to gain the world if he loseth his soul? And it may be that the children of G.o.d are meant to go hungry in this world. It is not for us to walk with demons in order to have full bellies."
"It is true that as few priests as we have among us here, there are fewer than that in the wastelands. And we know nothing of these folk. And yet, I think often of little Jonas. More often now than I did."
Margret looked at Asta, then out toward the fjord. Finally she said, "The pain of such thoughts always turns to pleasure, and the pleasure of them always turns to pain, it seems to me." Now they stood up and walked down the slope, and the skraelings turned to them at the sound of their steps, and Margret declared to the older man that Asta would speak for herself, then Asta said, "It is true that a daughter leaves her folk and takes up the ways of a husband"s folk, as skraeling women have come to live among the Greenlanders. But a daughter of G.o.d must not turn away from Him, and embrace unholy ways."
Now the older skraeling spoke to Quimiak, and then said to Margret, "This girl is oddly unwilling, since she received Quimiak"s gift, and kept it with her in her hand. When a girl does this, that means she has accepted a man for her husband, and is willing to go away with him. Does this woman demand more gifts?"
Most of this talk was intelligible to Margret and she answered as follows, "It is true that we are not familiar with your ways, and the girl may have done one thing and meant another. For this you should blame our ignorance and forgive us. But it was not her intention to encourage this Quimiak, and she has no desire to marry him." Now she looked at Asta, and the two women were a little afraid, for the skraelings numbered half a dozen at least, and all carried such skraeling weapons as bows and arrows and harpoons.
The bearded man took Quimiak aside and began to parley with him, and Quimiak looked often and admiringly at Asta. He was not tall, but he was straight-limbed and clothed in fine furs, finer than those of some of the other men, although they were older than he was. Margret saw Asta looking at him, and stepped back into the house with Asta by the hand. Asta declared that it might happen this time as she had heard it had happened with others, that the demons would try to steal her away by force, and Margret did not know how to respond to this observation. But the skraelings did not try to steal her away, rather the older man came away from his talk with Quimiak and addressed Margret with thanks for listening to their plea, and then all of the skraelings slipped silently down the slope, and in an eye blink they were in their skin boats in the middle of the fjord. On this day, Margret kept the sheep folded, and did not take them to their pasture, and Asta went about her business in somewhat low spirits.
It happened that some days after this Margret and Asta were looking out for Sira Isleif, who was to come to them on the feast of Mary Magdalen and confess them and administer communion. Because of the priest"s dim sight, the two women always looked for him rather than suffering him to thread his way up the slope from the strand, for the scrub willow was thick and treacherous, and few paths had been worn in it. And so one morning they were looking out and spied a small boat in the fjord with two rowers in it, and when it came to sh.o.r.e, Sira Isleif was not one of these men, but Sira Jon from Gardar was. Margret was much put out by this chance, for she and Asta had been gathering dried sheep"s dung from the fold to spread on a bit of flat ground near the steading that Margret thought to use as a homefield. In addition to this, there was nothing prepared to give the priest to refresh himself. Sira Isleif liked to sit inside the steading and gossip with the women as they prepared him something, but someone such as Sira Jon, Margret knew, expected to be led to the high seat and have various meats placed before him for him to pick and choose among.
Now the priest and his servant began to climb the slope, and Margret wiped her hands upon her gown and stepped forward to greet them and show them the faint path. But when she came to the priest and inclined her head courteously, he only stopped and stared at her so that she was discountenanced and forgot to say the proper words of greeting. The servant declared in a loud voice that Sira Jon had come to visit the unfortunate Margret Asgeirsdottir and her servant Asta Thorbergsdottir. And they began to climb again and soon they came to the tiny steading, where, once again, Sira Jon stared about himself, first at Margret and then at her dwelling place and then at her sheep, who were scattered about the slope, foraging among the scrub. Now Margret offered such food as she had on hand-some dried sealmeat and dried reindeer meat with new b.u.t.ter and that day"s ewe"s milk, humble fare indeed. But the two men ate greedily. As a last dish, she placed before them sweet dried bilberries, and they ate these, too, always turning to look at Margret as she moved about the tiny room.
After the meal, Margret said to the priest, "Sira Jon, it is our hope that you have come to confess us and give us communion, for we are in a state of sin here, as men are everywhere, and we have been looking eagerly for Sira Isleif."
Now Sira Jon smiled and nodded, and took Margret off away from the steading and bid her to kneel down and make her confession. And after she was finished he asked her, "Have you more to say to me, or any other sins to confess, or even any news for me, or questions, or any wish to confide in me?" He pressed her so with these inquiries that Margret began to look toward the steading for Sira Jon"s servant and Asta, but they were lost in conversation, and afforded her no aid. Finally, Sira Jon declared, "It is said, my child, that you are afflicted with dreams and melancholia."
Margret said nothing.
"It may be that you wish to speak to me about these dreams."
But Margret did not reply to this, either.
Now Sira Jon became somewhat agitated, and said, "You come from a prideful lineage, and wayward. Your brother has killed men and been driven from his patrimony and only narrowly escaped outlawry. You choose to live apart from folk, and disdain their aid. The Lord looks with little kindness upon such doings, and his punishment is swift and sure. It is truly said that pride is the greatest sin."
Now Margret spoke softly, and said, "My dreams are as those of others, and my melancholy is such as comes and goes, which seems to me not unusual. The snares of pride are many and much tangled together. You may truly say that I fail to avoid them."
Now Sira Jon grew gentler and leaned toward Margret. "My child, do you not grow desperate with loneliness in this place, so that it seems to you that voices speak or faces appear where you know there can be none?"