“I beg you, Assessor, enough with your worthless vanity,” she said, as she unclasped her hands and raised them momentarily in defense. “For God’s sake.”
“Just as all men are poets when they are young, but never afterward, so are all fair for a time when young; youth connotes these two things,” he said. “But the gods grant these gifts to some through a special grace that they sustain from the cradle to the grave, regardless of the amount of one’s allotted years.”
“You are without doubt a poet, Assessor,” she said.
“I would like for what I have just said to serve as the preface to all that remains for us to discuss,” said he.
She stared off into the distance as if she had forgotten the purpose of her visit. Her appearance was ruled by a kind of primal, empty calm that had more of a semblance of sky than earth. Finally, however, she looked down at her lap.
“Jón Hreggviðsson,” she said—“the only thing I want to discuss with you is him. They say that an almsgiver is indebted to the beggars he supports. Whatever a man does once endures forever. Now this Jón Hreggviðsson returns after fifteen years and claims his debt.”
“I thought you would have been proud to have saved the head of old Jón Hreggviðsson, who killed the king’s hangman.”
“But my father deserved more from me than to have me spirit away his convicted criminals,” she said. “He has never wanted anything but the best for me. You are a friend of the king, and for his sake, you must be angry with me, since, as you say, he killed a man, he killed the king’s man.”
“There’s no doubt that he did it,” said Arnas Arnæus. “But with regard to our king, we can’t be blamed for helping the man. Nothing was ever proven against him.”
“My father does not pass false judgment,” she said.
“How do you know that?” he said.
“I am a part of him,” she said. “He is in me. I feel as if I myself could have justifiably condemned this criminal. That’s why my conscience reviles me for having set him free.”
“A man’s conscience is an unsteady judge of right and wrong,” he said. “Conscience is only a dog inside us, trained to varying degrees. All it can do is obey its master, the statutes laid down by its environment, and its master can be either fair or foul depending upon circumstance. Sometimes its master is nothing but a rogue. Pay no heed to what your conscience deems its obligation as far as Jón Hreggviðsson’s head is concerned. You are not infallible and consequently neither is your father. Imagine that the court has erred, until it is proven otherwise.”
“If the court did err, and Jón Hreggviðsson is innocent, isn’t justice worth more than one beggar’s head?—even though justice itself has been known to fail now and again.”
“If the court proves a man guilty, he loses his head for it—even if he never committed the crime. It’s a hard lesson; but without it we would not have justice. And this is exactly where the court seems to have erred in Jón Hreggviðsson’s case, and actually in the cases of many other alleged criminals in this country—too many.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But I’ve never heard anyone express any doubt as to whether Jón Hreggviðsson killed the man. And you yourself admit it. After all, the old man wouldn’t be so worried about the case if he didn’t harbor doubts about his own innocence.”
“It would have been very little problem to arrest Jón Hreggviðsson and behead him—he’s been sitting at home in Rein for between ten and twenty years now, utterly terrified of the authorities. But no one has touched a hair on his head.”
“My father never condemns a man twice for the same crime,” she said. “The old man returned to Iceland with some letters from the king.”
“Unfortunately not letters confirming eternal life,” said Arnas Arnæus, and he smiled.
“Letters of protection.”
“One letter concerned a retrial of his case. But it was never published in court. And the case was never retried.”
“My father never stabs anyone under the table,” she said. “He’s a compassionate man and has even felt sorry for this scoundrel.”
“Is it right to be compassionate?” asked Arnas Arnæus, still smiling.
“I know that I’m foolish,” she said. “I know that I’m so foolish that before you I’m like a little bug that has rolled over on its back and can’t get to its feet to escape.”
“Your lips haven’t changed: two caterpillars,” he said.
“I’m certain that Jón Hreggviðsson killed a man,” she said.
“You sent him to me for safekeeping.”
“That was coquetterie,”* she said. “I was seventeen.”
“He told me that his mother came to see you,” said Arnas Arnæus.
“More of the same,” she said. “I have no heart.”
“May I try to find it?” he said.
“No,” she said.
“But your cheeks are flushed,” he said.
“I know that I’m amusing,” she said. “But it’s unnecessary for you, my lord, to rub it in.”
“Snæfríður,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Please do not speak my name. Just tell me one thing: if this case is pursued any further, will it really matter at all what happens to Jón Hreggviðsson?”
He had stopped smiling, and, assuming an official air, answered slowly and impersonally: “No decisions have been made. A number of old items, however, require attention. The king has ordered that they be taken into account. Jón Hreggviðsson came here the other day and we discussed his case freely for an hour. Things do not bode well in his case. But no matter how it goes for him, I believe that a reexamination of his case will prove beneficial to the countryfolk in Iceland in the future.”
“And if he’s found guilty—after all these years?”
“He cannot be found any more guilty than he was according to the old ruling.”
“And if he’s innocent?”
“Hm. What did Jón Hreggviðsson want from you?”
She ignored the question, but looked straight at the king’s envoy and asked:
“Is the king my father’s enemy?”
“I believe that it is impossible for me to say no,” said Arnæus. “I believe that our Most Gracious Sire the king and my esteemed friend the magistrate are both equally devoted to the cause of justice.”
She had stood up.
“I thank you,” she said. “Your words befit a king’s man: you reveal nothing, and instead concoct enticing stories when necessary, like the ones you told us today about Rome.”
“Snæfríður,” he said as she turned to leave. He was suddenly standing very close to her. “What else could I have done but give Jón Hreggviðsson the ring?”
“Nothing, Assessor,” she said.
“I wasn’t free,” he said. “I was bound by my work. Iceland owned me, the old books that I kept in Copenhagen—their demon was my demon, their Iceland was the only Iceland in existence. If I had come out in the spring on the Bakkaship as I promised I would have sold out Iceland. Every last one of my books, every leaf and every page would have fallen into the hands of the usurers, my creditors. We two would have ended up on some dilapidated estate, two highborn beggars. I would have abandoned myself to drink and would have sold you for brennivín, perhaps even cut off your head—”
She turned completely around and stared at him, then quickly took him by the hand, leaned her face in one swift movement up against his chest, and whispered:
“Árni.”
She said nothing more, and he stroked her fair and magnificent hair once, then let her leave as she had intended.
11
A poor man, chafed blue in the face and soaking wet from the rain, stands before the bishop’s doors one day in the autumn and demands to speak with someone, but he is ignored. His clothing is tattered and shabby, though it was originally tailored for a man of higher standing. His boots are scuffed and coming apart at the seams, about as ragged as one could expect in the land where eve
ryone shared a single common distinctive feature: wretched shoes. He is apparently sober. His face does not resemble a caricature but rather the relics of a man, displaying occasional traces of his youthful, manly mien. It is clear from the man’s vigorous carriage that he has seen better days. He refuses to mingle with the common folk gathered here; his business, he says, is with the higher-ups.
The first time he knocked upon the bishop’s door his only request was that he be allowed to see his wife. The door was slammed shut in his face. He stood at the door for some time, and when it was finally opened for other visitors, he was ordered to stay outside. He remained standing there and poked at the door now and then, but those within knew who it was and left it shut. He walked around behind the house and tried to get to the bishop’s office through the main bedroom, and even made it as far as the hallway when he ran into angry housemaids who told him that he had to go around to the other side if he wanted to see the bishop. After numerous other attempts he was finally allowed to speak to one of the bishop’s wife’s maidservants, who informed him that the madam’s sister was in poor health, and that the madam herself was preoccupied. He asked to be allowed to speak to the bishop, but was told that the bishop was at a meeting with his priests.
The visitor returns the next day and the events of the previous day are replayed, only now in a southwesterly gale and fierce hailstorms. In between the gusts of hail that tear into the visitor’s clothing one can see that his legs are starting to quiver and his knees to bend, but his boots are still more dismally dry than wet. He wears no gloves and wipes his nose with his bare fingers, sneezing and snuffling. The third time he visits the place he knocks on the front door and hands over a letter addressed to the bishop, then dawdles and loiters until early evening, when someone comes and informs him that he is to appear before the bishop in the Grand Salon. The bishop addressed him, “Dear Magnús,” then took hold of his cold hands, smiling and respectful and dignified; he was not at all angry, but rather patronizing, saying that he thought Magnús had come from more clever stock than this, to imperil himself in such a hazardous course by attempting to initiate legal proceedings touching upon his marital estate, as outlined in his letter. As far as the husband’s wish to discuss the matter with his wife was concerned, the bishop’s only answer was that it was entirely her decision to meet with him or not. And as for the letter’s demand that the bishop impose his clerical power and authority and order the woman back home to her husband, he replied along these lines, that his sister-in-law was welcome to stay at the see whenever she chose. Magnús from Bræðratunga proclaimed that he loved his wife with all his heart and beyond measure, and that to drag her away from him was a tremendously evil deed. The bishop said that he was not a party to their affairs and asked his brother-in-law not to be offended though he could not offer any more advice on matters of the heart, especially since nothing had happened yet between husband and wife that might demand his special and immediate attention.
The husband continued nonetheless to hang about the place, day and night. He came up with various excuses to speak with the steward and persons in other low-level positions when the higher-ups refused to see him. He even took it upon himself to repair the riding gear of gentlemen who had business at the see and did odd jobs in the smithy for the steward. He stayed completely sober, even when surrounded by drunks, and when the louts on the premises invited him to join in their public drinking party after a supply trip to Eyrarbakki he staunchly refused to join in the fun and walked away.
One Sunday morning he planned to waylay his wife as she went to mass. He waited for a very long time but she never appeared, and finally when he went into the church he saw her sitting with her sister and other prominent women in the farthest corner of the women’s pews. She was wearing a faldur.* She stared straight ahead, unmoving, paying close attention to Reverend Sigurður’s sermon on people afflicted with palsy. He had lingered too long outside and when he went to take a seat in the choir he found them all occupied, as was every other seat in the side-nook—Arnas Arnæus was sitting there with his entourage and a number of aristocrats from other districts. The squire slunk back to the nave and sat down. After the priest intoned the collect he saw Snæfríður and the bishop’s wife, along with the housekeeper and a maidservant, stand up and make ready to leave; but instead of walking out through the church after exiting the choir, they turned the other direction, following the par-close around the altar to the sacristy. From there an underground passageway used mainly during winter storms led to the bishop’s residence. She would surely have to take off her faldur before venturing into that dirty hole.
One day not too long after this unlucky churchgoing the husband decides to speak to Arnæus, and is shown to the room where he and two of his secretaries sit working before a fire blazing in the fireplace. The abandoned husband placed his cold-benumbed hand in the warm and blessed hand of the royal envoy. Arnæus welcomed his visitor cheerfully and bade him sit. The husband sat down, glanced about quixotically, and scowled. Opposite the true gentleman with the fire burning behind him, the huge books and the carved chairs, the visitor looked more like a lanky, awkward youth who doesn’t know for certain whether he’s a man though he tries hard to act like one.
“Is there something I can do for you?” asked Arnas Arnæus.
“I wanted to say a few words to you—Your Lordship,” he said.
“Privatim?” asked the assessor.
The visitor looked up with a smirk, baring his gaping teeth and gums. “Yes, just so,” he said. “I haven’t used Latin for a long time: privatim.”*
Arnæus asked his secretaries to leave the two of them alone to talk.
The man’s smirk remained both shy and forward at once, its sting directed both inward and out. He said:
“I was thinking of offering you a couple of old, worn-out books, if they haven’t yet gone rotten out in my storehouse loft; they’re from my blessed father’s farm.”
Arnæus said that he was always curious to hear about opera antiquaria* and asked him what books these were, but the squire wasn’t quite sure, since he hadn’t been much in the habit of digging around in the old fables about Gunnar of Hlíðarendi and Grettir Ásmundarson* and other highwaymen who lived in this country in the old days; he said he’d even give his Lordship the old rubbish if he wanted it.
Arnæus bowed in his seat and thanked the squire for his gift. The conversation halted for a moment. The husband’s eyes had stopped wandering for the most part, but he sat downcast in wordless obstinacy. Arnas Arnæus looked silently at his broad, flat forehead, which resembled the crown of a bull’s head. Finally, when the silence grew unnaturally long, he asked:
“Was there anything else?”
The visitor seemed to awaken suddenly, and he said: “I’ve been wanting to ask the assessor if he would lend me his support in a certain small matter.”
“It is my duty, as far as I am able, to lend every man my support for righteous causes,” said Arnas Arnæus.
The visitor paused for a moment, then began to explain. He was married to an outstanding woman whom he loved very much—she was an extraordinarily sensible woman. He said that he’d always treated this woman like an unhatched egg, watching over her night and day, treating her like a princess in her tower with her gold and silver jewelry and her beautiful embroidery, putting panes of glass in her windows, providing her with delicacies to eat and a stove, while he himself slept in a faraway wing of the house whenever it pleased her. He’d never considered anything too good for this woman, because she was from a noble family, besides the fact that many people considered her to be the most beautiful woman in Iceland. But such is the female race: suddenly she wants nothing more to do with her husband and runs away from him.
Arnæus carefully considered the man before him as he was speaking. It wasn’t clear whether Magnús was telling this story out of naiveté, under the presumption that this dignitary from afar was unfamiliar with the particulars of such a private m
atter, or whether this was in fact sarcastic dissimulation, whereby a crafty cuckold was playing the fool for his old competitor in some sort of test of wits. Although there could still be seen in the eyes of the visitor distilled traces of the attributes that confirmed that he had once been a cavalier and a charmer, their luster revealed the astonishing torpidity of the man’s mind, like that of a prisoner or a beast—it was highly doubtful whether a man was hidden behind them.
“Who is the defendant in this case, the woman herself or someone else?” asked Arnas Arnæus.
“The bishop,” said the husband.
This required some explanation, which ran as follows: the bishop, the visitor’s brother-in-law, and that entire side of the family had long been contriving to belie him to his wife. Now they’d finally achieved their goal—they’d cunningly lured his wife away from him and turned her into a kind of prisoner here at the bishopric, holding her against her will and standing guard over her day and night so that her rightful husband by the laws of God and man would never get the chance to meet with her. The husband said that he’d gone to the bishop to discuss the matter, but had gotten nothing back from him but excuses and hearsay. Now the husband hoped and prayed that the royal envoy would grant him his support in bringing a lawsuit against the bishop, in order to assert his rights and legally reclaim his wife.
Arnæus smiled affably, but said that he would prefer to be excused from bringing legal action against his host and friend the bishop, especially on account of another man’s wife, unless of course a huge breach of justice was at issue in the case; as far as the husband’s old books were concerned, however, he said that if the opportunity arose he would be delighted to have a look at them and assess their value. Then he stood up, took a pinch of snuff and offered some to the husband, then showed him to the door.
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