The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [248]
The ill deeds done in the steading seemed to her to have departed with the men and women who did them, and to have left none of their spirit behind, but she did seem to sense the spirit of other doings, of her mother’s sight of the Virgin and Child walking in the homefield, of the birth of herself and her sister Gunnhild, whom she remembered with affection, of, perhaps, the love between Margret Asgeirsdottir and the Norwegian, which she knew about well enough, from the gossip of Jona, Thorkel Gellison’s wife. Jona made the Norwegian out to have been a handsome and personable man, very quick with his hands, and as brave as anyone when the time for his deathblow came. It was a pity, Jona said, that Margret had been tricked into marrying Olaf, and that was a fact, for Olaf was more like a farm beast than a man, and always had been. Helga had grown up with Olaf, with his smell and his coarse manner, and she had not thought much of it when he died at last, after years of complaints. That Gunnar had himself killed the Norwegian made both the Norwegian and Gunnar glitter in Helga’s imagination, as the folk in Gunnar’s tales always glittered in her dreams after an evening of stories. She could not remember when any of these folk, Margret, tall and beautiful and as pale-haired as Gunnhild had been, and Skuli, broad-shouldered and handsome and a member of Queen Margarethe’s court, had ever been spoken of at Lavrans Stead, but that didn’t mean that she did not consider them in her heart. Other folk were ready enough to talk about them.
As for Kollgrim, she got along well enough with him these days. When he came home from his trips away hunting, he was eager to chatter about this and that, what he had seen, whose steadings looked trim and prosperous, whose did not, what stratagems he had used to get these birds, and how those foxes had nearly escaped, how he had a new idea for a sort of trap that would hold the foxes better without doing so much damage to their pelts. When he came home and said that he had had conversation with Sigrid Bjornsdottir, she did not think much of the news, since he was ready to have conversation with anyone he might meet, and, like most of those who hunted a great deal, he knew a bit of the skraeling tongue, and even had conversation with them. Anyway, she heard little of his talk, so taken was she with the foxskins he brought her. That very evening she set about scraping and softening them so that she could make herself a hood for Yule, for Thorkel Gellison had sent out messengers announcing a great Yule feast to be held at Hestur Stead, and Helga and Kollgrim were to be guests of honor. The servingmaid, Elisabet Thorolfsdottir, said that she had never seen such skins, of such an unusual color, and it seemed to Helga that everyone would admire her and that therefore she would have great pleasure at the feast.
Of Jon Andres Erlendsson they had seen nothing since coming to Gunnars Stead, and Helga’s fears of him were eased as she became accustomed to the proximity of Ketils Stead. One day shortly after the first snowfall, however, she went out in the morning to look after the sheep, and saw that a strange horse, a very fine beast, was standing with the two horses Thorkel Gellison had given them. It was black, with white on its face, and rather taller than her two. When she had seen to the sheep, she went back inside and found Thorolf at his morning meat and said, “Thorolf, there is a strange horse in the field with our two. When you are finished eating, you must catch it and lead it around the hillside to Ketils Stead, and give it right into the hand of Jon Andres Erlendsson, and say that the folk at Gunnars Stead are returning their stray horse as quickly as can be done, and that they send their neighborly regards.