by Jane Smiley
Soon enough the end of summer came round, and the Norwegians looked about themselves at the snowy waste, and in the spring they set sail for Bergen. The Greenlanders considered their ship to be poorly provisioned and ill-repaired, and no Greenlanders chose to go off with them. In later years it was said by some that the ship had been wrecked on the ice at Cap Farvel, and that pieces of it had drifted back to Herjolfsnes, and others said that the ship had come to Norway late in the year, all aboard safe. But these tales were merely Greenlanders’ tales and the truth of the matter was never discovered.
And it came to pass that a year to the day after the death of Kollbein Sigurdsson, that is, two days before the mass of St. Bartholomew, the servingwoman Anna Jonsdottir discovered Bishop Alf dead in his bed when she went to him in the morning, and she saw that his eyes were open wide and his hands gripping the coverlet so tightly that she could not take it from them. Anna stood quietly near the bedcloset for a long while, for though she was an old woman and had seen many dead folk, as had every Greenlander, she had never known such a one as Sira Jon, priest or layman, and she shrank not a little from carrying her news to him. The talk among the servants was that he didn’t even know how ill the bishop was, so little notice did he seem to take of the old man, but each day spoke to him of all the episcopal concerns. Nor did he prepare his uncle to meet the Lord of Heaven, as the servingwomen considered that he should, saying prayers with him or confessing the old man’s sins, but he chattered on and on about masses or cattle or the weather or the accounts, as if Alf had not left that behind him months or years past. Anna looked at the bishop’s face and the grip of his hands. It was said among the Greenlanders that every man saw something in his mortal moment. Anna always imagined seeing her brother Bjartur, who had drowned as a boy, standing among the saints.
Anna went out of the room and found the priest, Audun, and gave him the news. Before she could suggest that he tell Sira Jon, he said, “Sira Jon will want to know that. He is sitting in the great hall,” and he slipped into his chamber and closed the door behind him.
Anna went across the yard to the kitchen house, where the women were making soap. Now the other five women looked at Anna in the face, and after a moment she nodded, and the other women sat back from their soapmaking, and shook their heads and were greatly downcast and one of them, a girl with a harelip, said, “The Lord retreats from us,” but an older woman declared that such words were foolish, for the Lord never retreated from those who loved him. Now Anna went toward the great hall.
Sira Jon sat at a table under the window, bending over his account book and squinting. For a moment he put his face in his hand, and then he went back to his work. As always he was neatly attired, his robes clean and carefully arranged, much more colorful than the clothing of the Greenlanders. She stepped in front of him, and he smiled at her. So it was that she sometimes had summoned him into the bishop’s presence. Now she said, “Sira, I have gone to the bishop this morning, and I have found him in his bed. I saw that he has been gathered to the saints.”
Sira Jon sat gazing upon her, his smile still fixed on his face, and he sat thus for so long that Anna grew afraid, but then he said, “Thank you, Anna Jonsdottir, I will go to him. You may return to the other women and begin the preparations for laying out the corpus.” Anna curtsied and began to move away, when all at once the priest closed his eyes and groaned, saying, “Lord, Thou hast retreated from us indeed,” and Anna was so startled that she stumbled backward. Now Sira Jon stood up and began to stagger in the direction of the bishop’s chamber and he looked to have lost his senses. Anna ran to the door of Sira Audun’s chamber and beat upon it, calling the young priest’s name, but there was no answer, until Anna declared aloud that she was well aware that the Greenlander was inside. He came sheepishly to the door.
They found Sira Jon in the bishop’s chamber, with the door open. He had closed the dead man’s eyes, and was now praying loudly, and Sira Audun stepped inside the room and began to pray with the older priest, but at the sound of his voice, Sira Jon looked around and glared at him so bitterly that he rose with as much dignity as possible and went out past Anna, declaring that there were many things to be done. Anna went to the cooking house, and the women left their soapmaking for other tasks. Some of the servingmen set out by horse and by boat for Brattahlid, Vatna Hverfi, Hvalsey Fjord, and other districts, to carry the news. The Greenlanders, who had not had a glimpse of the bishop in two summers, were little surprised. Sira Pall Hallvardsson accompanied the Hvalsey Fjord messenger back to Gardar, arriving late in the evening. Sira Jon, he was told, was still with the bishop’s corpus, and had declared that he intended to carry it into the cathedral and place it before the altar of the saint and pray for its revival, through a miracle.
Sira Jon could not stay away from the women who were laying out the body, and he walked around and around them, pulling his hair and wringing his hands, talking not about the bishop, but about the power of relics. He spoke in matter-of-fact tones, but tears ran down his cheeks. “Why do the Greenlanders not have some blood of St. Nikolaus,” he said. “This is a great scandal, to have as the only relics belonging to the see the last joint of the littlest finger of the left hand of St. Olaf.” The women made no reply, and Sira Jon seemed to need none, but went on, “The relics of a powerful saint like St. Nikolaus, now they give off a potency that is like a fragrance, in that it spreads through the space around the relics, and makes oil lamps burn more brightly, and gems grow purer and more deeply colored.” His voice gained strength and passion. “Objects placed near by grow heavier. Such things have been measured. We need this sort of power here in Greenland, where every endeavor is fraught with more risk than elsewhere.” He stopped and gazed down upon the corpus. “What can the tip of a finger do?” He let out a great cry, and began pacing again. The women did not know what to make of him.
In his former chamber, on a pile of reindeer hides taken from the storehouses, Sira Pall Hallvardsson awakened and sat up. On the east wall of the room was a small metal cross. He knelt before it and said his morning prayers, concluding with a long thanksgiving for the mercy of the Lord upon Bishop Alf, who yearned, as all men do, to come into the house of the Lord after stumbling about for years in the wastelands of the sublunary world. Pall Hallvardsson had not seen Gardar since assisting Jon the previous summer at his St. Bartholomew’s mass, for there had been no Yuletide feast, and Pall Hallvardsson had celebrated Easter at Hvalsey church. After prayers, he straightened his clothing and went out into the yard to wash.
In this summer, the grass on the homefield was as thick as it had been in any year, and the cattle in their pen were numerous and glossy. Five boats, ranging in size from one-oarsman to eight-oarsmen, were tied up in Einars Fjord. As he watched, ten men and boys ran toward the cattle pen with neatly coopered buckets and one-legged stools and began upon the milking. After the thin prosperity of Hvalsey Fjord, such sights made a man dizzy. Soon the yoked pails were being carried at a run to the dairy, where the milk was poured into large vats, and the milkers ran back to the field, seeking without the least hesitation each unmilked cow, and missing none. After what seemed to be the briefest while, they washed out their pails and went into the kitchen house for their morning meal. Of all the men and women he saw, Pall Hallvardsson could pick out no more than half a dozen whose names he knew.
After washing his face and hands in the cold water of the washing vat, he took a simple wooden comb out of his pocket and ran it through his hair. He did not look either prosperous or polished. The great church of St. Birgitta at Hvalsey Fjord, the newest in the settlement and, aside from the cathedral, the finest, was about all the folk in that district could support. The lands around the church were rather small and the mountains behind them high and rough. Recent repairs to the church roof had, in the end, meant short rations for Pall Hallvardsson, in that the parishioners added less to what he could raise himself in the way of wadmal or furnishings, although there was enough food for himsel
f and his beasts and the two servants he had with him. One of the servants, whose name was Magnus the Bent because of his humped back, was an excellent fisherman and hunter of game. These were Sira Pall’s blessings. Sira Jon, however, would soon greet him dressed in red silk, sitting in the bishop’s high seat, with many fine things arrayed about him, and he would have little respect for such a brown mended robe and hood as Pall Hallvardsson was wearing. He would, in fact, look above his head and allow his eyes to fall on Pall’s humble form only with reluctance. After he considered these things, Pall Hallvardsson asked for forgiveness for the sin of anger, and went off to find the other priest.
Come upon him suddenly he could not, for two servants and Audun delayed him and escorted him in, so that indeed Sira Jon was in the high seat, and he was arrayed magnificently, surrounded by whale oil lamps which glittered on the eye but made it hard at first to see about the room. Pall Hallvardsson approached the high seat. He said, “Our grief is eased by the sure knowledge of the love with which our Lord has received him into Heaven.”
Sira Jon nodded.
“As for ourselves, although it is late in the season, it may be that a ship will arrive in answer to our prayers and carry this news to Nidaros.” He smiled. “Isn’t it true for us in Greenland that ships always come from the Lord, bringing His grace to us, and sometimes His trials of our spirit? If any place is the perfect picture of the world, it must be Greenland.”
Sira Jon spoke in a low voice. “This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight.”
“And yet, these Greenlanders declare it a fresh and lovely spot, in the way that all men look about themselves at the earth and think themselves at home.”
“And all are deceived.” Jon spoke this in such a bitter tone that Pall Hallvardsson stepped closer. Jon sat up straighter and appeared to press himself against the back of the seat.
Pall Hallvardsson stepped back, and went on in an even voice. “It must be said that Gardar is thriving with your stewardship. The Greenlanders say that they have the Garden of Eden in their midst.”
“The new bishop, whoever he may be, must bring with him some relics. The see is far too poor in such things, and folk suffer from it.”
“Perhaps—”
“In Nidaros when I was a boy, an old man was carried on his bier into the cathedral, and set for a moment near the bones of St. Olaf so that the tomb could be opened, and in this moment St. Olaf in his mercy gave him life again, and after that he lived in the chapter house as a lay brother for eleven years, so that he was eighty-four years old when he died, and this was an attested miracle.”
“All, of course, have heard of such things, but not every man can hope to escape death.”
“No right-thinking man hopes to escape his reunion with our Lord, but alas, those on earth who have great needs dearly wish that death would—” He stopped, then went on. “May the Lord look down with mercy on His helpless flock.” At last he looked at Pall Hallvardsson, and for a long moment, then said, “Sira Pall Hallvardsson, you are welcome to sit down. Sorrow makes me careless.”
Pall Hallvardsson drew a stool forward from under the table beside him and settled himself upon it. This table was piled with the books in which Pall Hallvardsson knew that Jon had always kept the accounts. There were three of them, so large that a year’s business usually took only a spread of two pages, in Jon’s minuscule hand. The books themselves were valuable enough—most writing in Greenland was done on rolls of parchment, and all books were owned by the bishopric or folk who had been across the ocean. It had been the bishop’s wish that some of the Greenlandic boys would learn the art of bookbinding, but with the vomiting ill and one thing and another, this had not come to pass. Although there was plenty of calfskin and goatskin in Greenland, manuscripts illuminated at Gardar or in the monastery were poorly bound things, crude and easily damaged.
Pall Hallvardsson said, “I well remember these nine summers past, when we embarked with the bishop for Greenland, and all the treasures he carried with him. Only he guessed how low a state things would have come to. St. Nikolaus Church was a great cold place, with the wallhangings tattered and black with mildew and a fungus growing over the stones, and the altar furnishings tarnished and dinted, and the servants and other folk careless about their work and the dishonor they brought to the Lord’s house. He brought such a change upon the state of Greenland that his loss need not destroy it, or take us back to earlier days. It may be that we long for the magnificence that speaks the glory of the Lord, so that what we have seems poor to us, but the Lord sees our means and our endeavors as well as our handiwork.”
Sira Jon turned his eyes upon the other priest and said, “Every day, summer and winter, I have gone into the chamber of Bishop Alf and sat below him and imparted to him all the intelligence of the day.” He stopped, then went on, “And for many days he has not seen fit to speak to me, or to raise his hand as a sign, and this was my only prayer and hope, that once before death he would hear my voice and know my presence. Had he cast his gaze upon me, I would have been surfeited. Had his hand moved under mine, I would have been content, but nothing came. His flesh was cold and shrinking to my touch. No prayer, no multitude of prayers brought the slightest flicker of his eyelid.”
“Sometimes men are so very old and ill—”
“My uncle had but sixty-two winters. He came to this place a strong and vigorous man. Once, you may not know, and not as a young man, he went on skis from Stavanger to Nidaros, accompanied only by a dog, and this took him but seventeen days in the depths of winter. When he lived among the Flemings, a walk from Ghent to Bruges was little to him, not worthy of remark. My mother, too, was known for the hardiness of her sanguine nature. It was said that her cousin refused to die in the Great Death, but recovered even as he was being carted to the burial pits.”
Pall Hallvardsson made no response.
“This may or may not be a true account. Many tales were abroad during the Great Death.”
Pall Hallvardsson nodded, then said, “Is it not the case that all who survived that time, even you and I, who were but little children, have received God’s grace, and a sign that our work on earth was worthy?”
“Perhaps, but the import of the signs granted us by the Lord during the Great Death is much debated. What can be said about signs and portents, after all? The fate of men is to yearn for an answer from the Lord.” After speaking thus, Sira Jon sighed a deep sigh.
Now Sira Pall Hallvardsson shifted on his stool, for he had never heard such speeches from the other priest. After a while, he said, “I recall as well the three priests the bishop saw fit to carry with him. It has often occurred to me that the first lost and least regarded of us was in fact the straightest and most solid. After Sira Petur’s death, I was even less eager for this day.” Jon gave an audible sniff. “The Lord has laid upon the hands of any priest a deal of work, but I say humbly that this work in the western ocean is work that not a few would shirk. Not a few did, after all, when Bishop Alf was seeking priests to accompany him. The folk about us are unlike even those with whom they share a tongue, Norwegians. They are half-wild, like horses left in the mountains to fend for themselves. They have made their own paths through the wilderness, and they balk at being led. And anyone who would lead them must sometimes confess that the paths they have made are as good as or better than those he would bring them to. They are not, perhaps, men of our world, as men in France or men in Flanders or Germany are, though they seek after the fashions and ways of the world and consider themselves like us. But they are new men and Vikings at the same time. This was something that Petur didn’t have to think of or to be told. For myself, every time I am among them, I must consider everything very carefully, as if I were learning a new tongue, except that each day it gets no less difficult. For you, please pardon me if I say that you expect them to mold themselves and their habits to yours. But they are like horses who come when they are called because such peculiar noises arou
se their curiosity, although the farmer esteems himself for the success of his training.” Sira Jon sat still as a post. “And now I must speak hardly to you, for guiding these folk has come to you and not to me. Before Bishop Alf, twenty-six years went by after the death of Bishop Arni. It was always true when Bishop Alf spoke of the Lord, he spoke of Him as the king of Heaven, whose steward upon earth the bishop was, so that the power of God’s law flowed through him and into the settlement of the Greenlanders. And the Greenlanders, for the most part, saw the rightness and truth of this, and brought their disputes and crimes to his wisdom. But you never speak of God’s law. You speak only of His love and His displeasure, and signs from Him, as if He were but your Heavenly Father and not your Heavenly King.” Now he stopped, and waited for a reply.
Sira Jon spoke. “You have little experience with many servants or a large establishment. You were raised among monks. You would not know what to do with the means at Gardar, or how to rule the men.”
Pall Hallvardsson stood up. “This is indeed true, and about this I will never contradict you, nor will I ever challenge your authority at Gardar or among the Greenlanders. I am pleased to place in your hands my faith and my friendship, and I ask only to serve the see as you consider fit.”
Now Jon inhaled deeply, and looked at Pall Hallvardsson with a flicker of pleasure. “On such a day as this, there is no little difficulty in attending to all that folk wish to say to us. But this speech is clear and easy to grasp, and we thank you for it. It shall be the staff that steadies our steps.”
