The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [185]
“It is true, though,” said Sira Isleif, “that Gudrun gave me good gifts and handsome things to wear when the time came for me to leave. Those who do ill do not always intend it.”
“And those who do good often do it for the eyes of others.” And so they chatted, and Freydis looked on with undisguised interest, for Sira Isleif’s identity was known to all, and it was easy to see that he spoke to Margret as to an old friend.
Sira Isleif had much to say of Bjorn Bollason’s household. Bjorn Bollason’s wife, Signy, was a very fine woman, who had previously been married to another man named Hrolf, who was the youngest son of a man named Hoskuld, who was the most important man in Dyrnes. Hrolf had been lost looking for some sheep in a great storm only one winter after he and Signy were married, and Signy had then married, at the advice of Hrolf’s father, his foster son Bjorn Bollason, and Hoskuld had given as a dowry Hrolf’s farm, but this farm was contracted to go through Signy to Hrolf’s son, Hrolf, who was born only a little while after the death of his father, and who went to live with Hoskuld. Then Hoskuld advised Bjorn Bollason to take a boat and look about from fjord to fjord for goodly steadings that had newly fallen vacant. It was on the first of these trips that Bjorn Bollason saw that Ragnvald’s steading at Solar Fell was deserted, and indeed, no skraelings were anywhere about there, and so Hoskuld claimed that giant steading as vacant, and Bjorn Bollason took the place over. All the folk from Dyrnes found Solar Fell much more comfortable than Dyrnes, and were intending to claim more farmsteads in the area, should they become vacant. And so Hoskuld, who was an ambitious man, had seen his ambitions realized, though in Bjorn, not in his own sons, and for that reason he preferred Bjorn Bollason to his own sons, and there was a touch of bitterness between them.
At any rate, Signy was as liberal and stately as ever the famous Marta Thordardottir had been, and as well dressed, and if anything more courteous, and to meet her a person would never think that she was from Dyrnes, but would assume that she had been raised in Brattahlid or Vatna Hverfi district. Between her and Bjorn Bollason, Isleif declared, was as deep an affection as you could care to see, and in the four years of their marriage they had produced four children, a girl, Sigrid, who was very bright and appealing, and three boys who were very manly little fellows, and played especially noisy and active games, and they were encouraged in this by their mother and father. In fact, Signy and Bjorn Bollason had this habit, that as soon as a child could talk, he was addressed with questions at his meat, questions about what he might do in such and such a case were he seal hunting or reindeer hunting or sailing to Markland or fighting Saracens in the Holy Land, and Bjorn Bollason judged their answers, and those who spoke foolishly were teased by the others. And in this way Sira Isleif passed the morning in Eyvind’s booth, and Margret saw that he was much enamored of everything about the new lawspeaker’s household.
On the fourth day of the Thing, Eyvind came to the booth in the afternoon, and declared in a loud voice that he had found yet another husband, this one for Brenna, and a man from Vatna Hverfi to boot, but when the man came with his relatives to see the bride and talk about the arrangements, they