by Born, Jason
As jarl or chief or whatever I was, I felt it in my right to do whatever I wanted. But as I read the first book I had laid hands on all those years ago during my raid on Wales, I found that that is the way of a foolish ruler. The words of the One God say that a king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord. So Torleik was correct. I could not torture and kill Hassun.
But a ruler must see justice done or else his people will not stand for him. How could I allow Hassun’s weak-minded treachery to go unpunished because he professed a belief in the One God, a god my new people did not know?
In the end I did what I thought best. Neither my prayers to the One God, nor my trips to the spirit world in the steam house brought answers.
When I could walk securely without aid, I gathered all the men of council together – I even invited Alsoomse to stand beyond the circle. It was the first time in the lives of all those present that a woman had come into the mamateek for council, though Achak said his grandfather spoke of a woman in his grandfather’s time who actually acted as chief for many seasons. With her wild success against the Mi’kmaq, no one mumbled about her presence.
“Since Hassun wished for his hand to grasp the axe of leadership,” I began. “I will see that he loses his right hand. Our people will know that is what happens to those who ally with the Mi’kmaq.” Approving grunts spread around my home.
I went on, “But there is a powerful One God about whom I read and to whom I pray. Hassun has seen fit to accept this One God and his son the Christ. For that, Hassun has become my brother, Torleik’s brother, and he joins thousands of brothers across the sea. The One God will not permit me to kill my brother. His death must come from the arrows of God.” Their faces said they disagreed.
“But we cannot look on the face of such a man, not after what he did. So when Torleik has seen that Hassun’s arm stump has healed. I will exile the traitor to the large island where I first came into contact with you.” Silence. Stewing anger. To justify my actions, I again said, “This is my will and so that you all understand that I punish traitors, I will take his hand.”
With my sword I took his hand that very day. Hassun actually thanked me for my mercy as he roiled, clutching the bloody mess. My people grumbled for weeks about my decision, second guessing me at every turn while Hassun happily ate of my food. Then on the day he was to leave, I called the council men and even Torleik to the shore to watch him leave in an old canoe. Torleik gave him an extra supply of dried fish for the journey and an extra hide for warmth. I did not approve, but let the matter go.
The traitor had a hell of a time managing the paddle with one hand and his stump, but eventually he caught a rhythm, such as it was, and began to move into the sea, calling his gratitude as he went. The council grumbled about letting him go, and very soon some wanted to trudge back to the village to have him out of their sight. “You’ll stay,” I commanded. The men weren’t happy. Torleik was happy, even telling me that I laid up treasures in heaven by my actions that day. I scoffed.
When Hassun was fifty or more ells from the shore, he suddenly dropped the paddle and wavered in the canoe. We heard a faint shriek carried over the waters. In another moment he fell over the gunwale into the sea. The shocked council men watched his lifeless body slowly taken further and further out to sea by the powerful current. Torleik stood, mouth agape.
“There,” I said slapping the priest’s shoulders. “We’ve given our brother mercy from the One God, but the One God saw fit to agree with Glooskap and punish him anyway. We’ve done our duty and Hassun was given up to the spirits of the dead.”
As the other men filed away finally satisfied, laughing, Torleik stayed behind a moment, his eyes wide as he thought through what he had just witnessed. “Father, remember a wise king winnows out the wicked; he drives the threshing wheel over them. The One God has merely done the work for us. Now off to the village with you. I want to pray here alone.” The priest nodded and walked away shaking his head.
I lowered myself down to my knees and did pray. I thanked the Lord for his grace in my life. I thanked him for my daughter and wife. I may have even nodded off after a time since the weather and sounds were nearly perfect. One of my dreams came to me then. The Jesus I had encountered on the beach when I made my first solo visit to these shores, returned. He called me by my Algonkin name. “Enkoodabooaoo,” said the mighty Christ. “You have served your people well.”
I said nothing.
“It is time for you to live up to your name. Your Alsoomse shall reign in your stead. Take your woman and return to the homes across the sea. Live up to your name and spend the rest of your days on the hunt.”
I said nothing. I felt comfort from his words for I was tired. I had lived seventy years. My body was spent, exhausted. It was time to die.
I was awakened by Alsoomse’s boot in my ribs. I shielded my eyes from the sun over her head. “Nice shot,” I said.
“I know,” she smiled, still clutching the new bow she had just used to slay Hassun.
. . .
So I explained to the council I would take my moose antlers down from my mamateek and take them with me to Leifsbudir. I took those antlers and the growing stack of parchment from my journal. The whole village thought me mad for caring so much about those fragile pages. In truth, in my youth before I ever learned my letters, I would have scoffed at a frail old man doting on his writings.
The people were to listen to Alsoomse as they would to me. My woman and I would spend the summer at Leifsbudir alone in prayer, I told them, returning after the warmth of summer had faded. I half expected to die that summer because no one was older than I. That was twenty-nine years ago.
Hurit, whom I called Nuttah, died next to me in her sleep during our twenty-first year alone. It was on a warm summer night and I scooted far from her so that I didn’t cling to her skin due to the humid air. Sometime between patting my head good night and the dawn her heart beat for the last time. When she didn’t awaken after I lightly shook her, I swung my feet over the side of the sleeping platform in the old long house built by the Icelandic brothers Helgi and Finnbogi at the shores of Black Duck Pond. I sat like that for the whole day, I think, chewing on my lip, neither happy, nor sad – just reflective. Eventually I buried her body amongst the bones of the mass grave left from Freydis’ madness a lifetime ago.
Alsoomse and her son, he was born about nine months after our victory over the Mi’kmaq at Pitupok, came at least twice every year to visit and exchange stories. As far as I knew my daughter had never accepted a husband and I never bothered to ask. The boy, I thought, resembled Rowtag the Younger who had admitted to me all those years ago that he thought my daughter beautiful. I suppose the two of them found comfort in each other’s arms as they waited for low tide to escape from that sea cave after the battle at Pitupok.
I played with that boy for a half-a-day at a time when he came. Eventually, he and I both grew too old for play and so we sat around the central hearth smoking a pipe together, until he rarely came at all. The path of life, I suppose.
Alsoomse led her people well. They thrived as there were at least sixteen years of peace following her great victory. But as can be expected from stiff-necked fools like the Mi’kmaq, when their ranks were replenished with endless crops of new, young men, they became more and more bold. Deer and moose were taken and gutted from our lands. Soon captives were taken. It was a familiar story.
In my twenty-ninth year of self-imposed exile, Alsoomse came to me with a question beyond her normal meaningless drivel. “What will become of our people? My people, I mean,” she asked while her son stalked a bear out in the forest.
“I don’t know. I suppose they’ll hump, live, and die like they always have. Why do you ask?”
“I am afraid that soon we won’t hump or live, but only die. We are too few. We’ve never allied with any other tribes or peoples. The Mi’kmaq have made friends among themselves and others.”
“And they are beholden to those friends,” I
pointed out.
“Yes, but they will survive. It is only a matter of a month or year or years before they band together and push us off our land, into the sea. When they do this, our lucky surprise attacks won’t always work,” she fretted.
“Huh, you worry about the future which is best left for those living in it.”
“Perhaps. But I think before I leave this world for the next I ought to see my people live the way they desire without the incessant Mi’kmaq threat.”
“Ah, you speak in nonsense.” I waived her off. The older I got the less patience I had for discussing shoulds and oughts and maybes and perhaps. Even writing the words exhausts me.
“I do not, father. I rule, but you are chief. I wish you to order us to again move the village. This time I do not want to move fifty paces up or down the river to leave the pests behind. This time I want you to bring us to this very island so that we have two days worth of sea travel between us and our enemies.”
I panicked. My own comfort was all I had considered for years and now this woman who served as a steward in my stead wanted to bring hordes of her people to live here. I shuddered. I took a deep breath, letting it out loudly through my nostrils. I did not want them here. But the girl was correct. My island was enormous and other than the occasional visitor from the Skin Boat people, I was alone.
“Daughter, you will move my people to a new village on this very island. You will send a shaman into the cave beneath the tree and he will bring the bones of our ancestors with him. He will find a new place, a proper place for their remains to rest in this new land. You will hunt, fish, and populate this land, making it a territory for countless red chiefs long after I am dead and long after your own bones rest in a hillside.” I ended, shuffled away like the old man I was, proud of my speech.
It only took my daughter two weeks to bring all of her people to the island. She honored an agreement we struck and kept those people out of my hunting grounds – really just trapping or snaring grounds at my age – until such time as I died. Then they could traipse wherever they pleased for the tribe would be hers, she would be chief.
Soon after the people fled to the safety of these shores, I awoke with a massive headache. My one eye had flashes of light before it. I went back to bed and slept throughout the next day or longer. Alsoomse visited me soon thereafter.
“My eyesight has failed altogether,” I told her. “Well, I see hints of images.”
“How will you write on your precious pages?” she asked.
“I won’t. I am done writing. I am just too tired. Talk to me in the morning. I want you to write my words. If I am still alive at your next visit, you may write for me then as well.”
So I, Alsoomse, took over writing for my father the very next morning. My time as his scribe was short-lived. He spoke little, making even less sense.
He said only, “Write my exact words. King Olaf came to visit last evening. We had a marvelous time. I drank more ale than I had in years. What a headache, by the One God it remains.”
Then, later that morning, my father said, “I shit myself silly all morning. I should not have eaten with the Irish.” I do not know who exactly the Irish are and why they make him loosen his bowels.
After skipping his meals all day, he strung together several disparate sentences, “Hurit looks fine, but I dream of Gudrid’s long blonde hair. I sweat constantly now. Have you seen Leif, lately? I intend to strap my sword and my father’s saex about my waist and chop down a moose today. Why did Kenna die?”
EPILOGUE
My father, Halldorr Olefsson, who is known to my people as Enkoodabooaoo has gone to the Earth Mother. He walks with the One God, Christ Jesus leading him. He celebrates in Valhalla, drinking with the mighty Thor and all the men he has had to kill in battle throughout his long life.
His priest, Torleik, taught me my Latin letters since I was but a girl and so some of the words you read near the end of his journal were written by my hand. His eyes simply became too muddled for him to see the page any longer, his hand a bit too shaky, his heart not in it. But I was there to write down the words he spoke even though at the very end they did not make much in the way of sense. On the last day I saw him, he did, however, wrap his belt around his thin, wiry frame to hunt a moose as he put it. My father must have died in the forest that day, but I have never sent out our runners to find his body or his bones. Best to let them rest. My best guess is that he lived one hundred years, longer than anyone I had ever heard of by at least a decade.
Regarding his words and why he wanted so badly to write them, I do not understand. No one reads this language. No one reads. My father often told me that some of the peoples who lived across the sea could read more than one type of writing. I thought that strange. Why not have everyone use the same writing if you are going to go through the effort of learning it in the first place? But I do not understand as my people, the Algonkin, are all I know.
I read these works, his memoirs, with great interest for as most men, he only shared bits of his life’s story with those around him, even less with his son, for though I am his daughter he treated me as no less than a man – as is common among all cultures, I am sure. While reading his words I was struck time and again by my father’s dedication to those whom he loved.
Bitterness springs into his writing time and again. Many of those times it seems warranted, but on the whole I believe my father’s life among the most pleasurable I can imagine. To find love even once is a gift from the One God. It must be his gift because of the many mentions love gets in God’s Word – I have read my father’s books through once, that was enough. My father, Chief Enkoodabooaoo, has found love countless times in his life. He loved his mother with the full breadth of his being, despite never knowing her. He loved his father Olef, talking of him frequently as he aged. He loved his second and third fathers, Erik and Olaf, respectively, proving his honor with faithful service to them both. He even loved his adopted people, especially my mother, serving them until his body was so broken that all he could do was stew.
At times he is angry over his fate, other times accepting. Rarely did he seize hold of it with a ravenous appetite. He grabbed it tightly when he bled the life out of Bjarni, but for the rest he accepted his fate and did his duty to those he loved. What more can a man do?
I place his words, his trinkets, treasures, and books into this chest and bury it as he told me to.
Signed – Alsoomse Halldorrsdottir, the Skjoldmo, Chief of the Algonkin
POSTSCRIPT
By my own hand have I discovered the accompanying manuscript. I swear to this by the Almighty God, Maker of all things, who saw fit to place it in my path.
I was turning a long-fallow piece of ground at the outskirts of a new parcel of property I had recently acquired. My success at farming the earth was marginal at best and so I had one more year’s worth of savings to make another go of it. My single, broken-down, sway-backed horse slowly pulled the plow through the earth while I ambled behind, fighting the reins and handles as they danced in my hands. The horse gingerly stepped over a rock.
As we cut the straight furrow toward it, the rock appeared manageable on the surface, no bigger than my balled fist, so I lazily decided to pick it up another day after the plow had dislodged it. But we did not dislodge it. My borrowed plow made a frightful noise and rattled my hands as it went beneath the stone and stopped. I’m ashamed to say that I took the Lord’s name in vain at that moment, seeing the plow broken in two.
How would I ever repay the neighbor who lent me the implement? I walked around between the horse and plow to inspect the damage. I kicked the beam several times until my foot hurt, then fell to my knees in self-pity.
It was then that I saw the leather strap or satchel wedged between two rotted pieces of wood sticking out from the furrow as the whole mess lay across the moldboard. I became curious so I dug. That rock, which was much larger than it appeared, sat atop some type of old box or chest.
After a full da
y of digging the rock out and then an entire morning to dig out the box, I discovered Halldorr’s chest. In it was his hacksilver, his beads, his gaming pieces, and most importantly for him, this very book and his two beloved works of the Lord.
My sister, a school teacher from St. John’s on the easternmost tip of the island, was fluent in Latin and she read the works to me on her next visit. At first, I fully intended to keep the treasure as my own, but after hearing the story of Halldorr and his outstanding adventures and hardships, I believe that the Providence of which he speaks brought me that chest to provide just enough to repay my neighbor for his plow. And I’ve kept enough to get us through just one more year. The rest of the treasure and two of his books I’ve donated to the national museum.
This last book, his memoirs, I keep for myself and my family. I hope them to be inspired by Halldorr’s successes and failures. To learn perseverance. To fight with Halldorr’s spirit. The good Lord knows my family will need it if they continue to till this land.
Signed – John Kent, 1872
THE END
(Dear Reader, See Historical Remarks section to help separate fact from fiction.)
HISTORICAL REMARKS
There are many famous dates with which we fill our heads when we are confined to the uncomfortable chairs and institutionally-painted classrooms of our youth. Many of my American readers remember July 4, 1776 as the day our independence from the crown of Britain or December 7, 1941 as the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Some of my British readers (and even I) remember learning that in 1215 King John signed the Magna Carta, or in 1805 Admiral Nelson defeated the combined fleets of the French and the Spanish navies off the coast of Cape Trafalgar.
