The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [157]
And now, by the Brattahlid calendar, which Sira Isleif himself had made, the time for Yule came on, although by Margret’s calendar it was still some eight days off, and Gudrunn asked Margret and Asta to slaughter and roast two sheep for the feast, as was always done at Brattahlid, and indeed on most of the wealthier farms, for Yule. And it was as they were getting ready to do this, building the fire, that Asta began to vomit, and so she was taken with the vomiting ill, and shortly after her the child Bryndis, and within three days they were dead. And now one of the servingmen was pretty fully recovered, and he carried Asta out of the steading and buried her with Bryndis in her arms in the snowbank beside the others. Margret was not subject to the sickness at any time, and Sigurd became only a little ill, but managed to hold onto his food, and this, Margret told Gudrunn, was the way folk recovered, by keeping their food inside them to fortify them. As there still had been no news from Ragnleif’s steading, a servingman who had a daughter living there went off to see how things stood with those folk.
One day Gudrunn was sitting up in her bed and sipping some broth, and she said to Margret, “How is it that you go about your business with such strength when you have just lately looked upon the death of Asta Thorbergsdottir? But folk say that this is not the first death you have looked upon.”
Margret did not reply.
“Folk say you looked upon the death of your lover with indifference though his blood spurted over your dress.” But she spoke in a neutral voice, as if merely curious.
Margret said, “Everyone has many chances to practice with death. If you have not, then you are indeed rare among the Greenlanders.”
“It is practice, then, that makes you cold?”
Margret turned back the sleeve of her gown and exposed her arm. The flesh was thin and wiry, the skin white and dry. Margret lifted her arm toward Gudrunn. “Many deaths have worn me down, and soon I will be as bony and hard as Death himself. Then I will be cold indeed.” She took the basin that had contained the broth and turned away.
On this same day, the servingman returned from Ragnleif’s steading, and this was his news, that Ragnleif had not been ill, after all, only somewhat injured from a fall on the ice, but some five or six days after the coming of Sira Isleif, many at the steading had fallen sick all at once, with only Sira Isleif, who remained healthy, and one old servingman to take care of them. The short tale was this, that Ragnleif’s wife, Finna, and his youngest child, Steinthor, as well as a servingmaid and her child and two serving boys who were brothers, all of these had died, but all the others were recovering. And this, too, had happened, that in the midst of the sickness some unknown men had broken into Ragnleif’s storehouse and taken all of the mutton and dried reindeer meat and a moiety of the sourmilk, so that provisions were low at the other farmstead. And at this news, Gudrunn grew angry at Margret and berated her for handing out foodstuffs to all and sundry with such a generous hand, for now they would suffer the curse of seeing strangers fat and satisfied while near kin went hungry.
On the day after this, a messenger arrived from Gardar, carrying news for Osmund Thordarson from Sira Jon, but he was not much surprised to discover the fate of Osmund, he said, for such an outcome had been speculated about at Gardar. It was said that a farmer who had a place at Dyrnes would take over two abandoned farms not far from Solar Fell and become lawspeaker. And the other gossip was that the vomiting ill had struck hard at Hvalsey Fjord, where some twenty were dead, and in the southern part of Vatna Hverfi, and