The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [199]
And now it was the evening before the second Sunday in Lent, and Sira Audun prepared himself to receive the confessions of the folk around Vagar Church, but few came, and those who came seemed to drag themselves through the snow and they spoke in the faintest of voices, both women and men. Now Sira Audun turned to Eindridi, and asked if conditions were indeed so bad as this, that men could not bring themselves to church without risking death, and Eindridi said that conditions were actually worse, since many could not get out of their bedclosets to look into the bedclosets of their children or their parents, so weak were they. And so Sira Audun spoke a hurried mass in the morning, and then went around to the farms in the Vagar Church district, visiting folk, saying prayers, and doling out bits of food from the second pack Vigdis had given him. There would be plenty at Herjolfsnes, Sira Audun felt certain, and he gave with a liberal hand. Even so, some folk of the district had already died, and more were so far gone that bits of cheese or dried meat could do nothing for them but please the tongue. And so Sira Audun stayed for a longer time than he had expected in the district around Vagar Church, and on the last day there he went without food entirely, though he gave some to Ingvald. At last he set out for Herjolfsnes, and on the way there, he and his servingman spoke at length and without ceasing of meals they had eaten, and Sira Audun made up the following verse:
A stew of seal and hare, and a cup of milk
And a morsel of cheese, some butter and dried sealmeat,
My heart remembers every bite since my mother
First chewed my meat for me.
And so they came to Herjolfsnes, and as it happened, conditions were little better there than they had been elsewhere, but the wife there had put by a welcoming feast for the priest, for when he should get there, and Sira Audun and his servingman ate this with relish and thanks.
At Gardar, just after the departure of Sira Audun, Sira Pall Hallvardsson got up one morning and went outside to wash, as he always did, and there before him in the dark was an array of men, and at once he saw that they were armed. Bjorn Bollason, who carried a crossbow, stepped up to him, and said in a mild tone of voice, “We have come to help you assure the orderly distribution of the bishop’s stores, for indeed, the Greenlanders are desperate for sustenance and neither God nor the bishop can continue to turn his face away.”
Now it began to lighten, and Pall Hallvardsson saw about two score men standing about in a semicircle, and all of these men were friends of Bjorn Bollason, and powerful men, both of Brattahlid district and Dyrnes. Pall Hallvardsson said, “Even so, the southern districts are not represented, and the bishop must look equally upon everyone.”
Bjorn Bollason smiled at the easy success of his plan, and then spoke to certain of his men, who ran to the Gardar boats that were moored at the Einars Fjord jetty. The next day, powerful men began appearing in boats from every district, even Herjolfsnes district, and on that day, Pall Hallvardsson had the stones that sealed up the storehouses taken down, and the stores broken open, and it was the case that men trampled over the wadmal and sheepskins to get at the stores of deer meat and seal meat, and rendered blubber and dried mutton and dried beef and the many cheeses, goat and sheep as well as cow cheeses. After the first storehouse was emptied, the walls of the second were taken down on two sides, and that one was emptied, as well, and in spite of Bjorn Bollason’s promise, the plundering