The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [144]
Now this Ulfhild was only some eighteen winters in age, and the daughter of a servingwoman herself, and it was easy to see that she was not a little defeated by the variety of business at Ketils Stead. She did not see how it happened that the storehouses that had once been full had become empty and the servants who had once sat happily at the benches with their trenchers were now departed. As for Erlend, folk said that he fell upon the girl without resting or ceasing, even in the sinful time when she was with child. His antics raised a good deal of laughter about the district, and folk recalled how quickly Vigdis herself had produced a daughter and four sons, although only one of these was still alive.
At Gunnars Stead, though the summer was a cool and damp one, Vigdis’ folk were out early and busily, manuring the fields where they could and making expeditions to the fjord for seaweed and to the hillside for angelica and bilberries. At Ketils Stead there was none of this, and what work the remaining servants did was done late and with little will, for the servants saw the idleness of the master and mimicked it.
The short tale of this is that Ketils Stead sheep were lost, cheeses went unmade, cows died in calving because no one was there to help them. Birds in the mountains went unsnared, herbs and berries went ungathered, and Ulfhild gave out things from the storehouses in the middle of summer. Still, everyone in the district was much taken with surprise when Erlend failed to send out messengers with invitations to the usual Ketils Stead feast, and were surprised again when only a few of the Ketils Stead folk appeared at Undir Hofdi church for the Yule services of Sira Audun. But it was also true that Erlend now drove people off sometimes when they came toward Ketils Stead, and so no one cared to go there. It was said that any number of new young women would have no effect on Erlend’s temper, which used to be sour, was sour now, and would always be sour. In this fashion the days went by before and after Yule, until at last Vigdis yielded and sent one of her servingmen to Ketils Stead with a message, and this man went on skis and found the door to the steading drifted shut with snow, and when he got it open, he discovered only the dogs alive, and that because they had been gnawing the bones of the folk, which numbered five—Erlend, Ulfhild, two elderly servingmen, and the babe. And this was a tale told avidly in Vatna Hverfi district for a few weeks, until it became clear during Lent that this tale might not be the last such of the winter.
This mischance was followed by another one, this one in Hrafns Fjord and Siglufjord, where the nuns’ cloister and the monastery lay. Here it happened that the January thaw was followed by a driving storm of rain that drenched the sheep that had been let out to forage, and filled their eyes and noses so that they were maddened and panicked, and many of them fell over cliffs into the fjords or stumbled into clefts and broke their necks and died, and by the time the rain was over and folk had found their lost sheep, the carcases were rotten from the warm weather, and so Thord Magnusson of Siglufjord and four other farmers and their men went north to Vatna Hverfi district on horseback, although the mud was very deep, and they went seeking food from the Vatna Hverfi folk, who had little to spare. After this Thord and his friends and two men from Vatna Hverfi district went on skates to Gardar, though after the thaw it was considered by many that the ice in Einars Fjord would be treacherous and thin. But Thord would not be dissuaded, and the men arrived at Gardar safely, and at Gardar all was much as usual, and folk were getting up from their meat sated before