The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [115]
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 passed 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 mass of St. Hallvard, Margret would return to Steinstraumstead with Asta and twenty of the Brattahlid sheep for pasturing above the little farm. In