The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [292]
“You have strayed from the flock gathered to hear the priest.”
“And you, as well.”
“Priestly talk does not much interest me.”
“This Sira Eindridi likes to attract attention.”
“That may be. I know nothing about it.”
“Then why have you come to the feasting?”
“I heard there would be Icelandic tales. I thought they would beguile the mother of my son.”
“Why does she need to be beguiled?”
“Because she is a woman, it seems to me. I know not what she is determined upon, whether life or death. Tales are entertaining to most folk. Perhaps they will draw off her thoughts from whatever they linger over now. Why have you strayed from the flock?”
“I grew breathless among them.”
“I have seen you before. Among the chatterers, you have the least to say.”
“Is that the case?”
“It seems so to me.”
Now they fell silent, and he took her hand and placed it through his arm, and led her among the boats to a space above them, where she would have clear walking back to the cathedral, but as they stood in this space, she did not want to give up his arm, nor did he give up her hand. They stood silently for some little while, neither looking at one another nor looking away from one another, and it seemed to Steinunn that her earlier disquiet was stilled by the fellow’s presence. Now he released her, and put his hand lightly on her shoulder, and pushed her away from him, and she began up the hillside, and he went back to the strand, and continued with whatever he had been doing. When she got to the cathedral, Steinunn recollected the fellow’s name, Kollgrim Gunnarsson, a great object of joking among the Icelanders for his betrothal to Sigrid Bjornsdottir.
Now the time came for the first evening’s feast, and all the folk poured into the great hall of the bishop’s house, and sat themselves at the benches, and the women and servingmaids went about with bowls of ptarmigan stewed with seal flipper and seasoned with thyme, and this was considered a good dish, even among the Icelanders. After this came bowls of sourmilk, thick and cold, sweetened with bilberries, and these had been gathered for the feast over three separate days in the hills between Gardar and Hvalsey Fjord, and they were fat and juicy. After this came svid and also roast mutton, and this mutton was a little tough and overgrown, but savory all the same, and folk considered that they had done well to make their way to the Gardar feast. Now there was another dish, and this was dried capelin with sour butter, and this is a dish that Greenlanders are very fond of, for the little fish snap and crackle between the teeth and the butter makes the lips pucker. The Icelanders were not especially taken with this dish. Now was the moment in the feast when folk begin to push themselves away from the table, but even so, look around a bit for just a single last thing to taste before they finish. And so the women and servingmaids came about with something most folk had never tasted before, and this was angelica stalks seethed in honey, and this was so delicious and sweet that folk’s teeth ached with the pleasure of it.
After this, the tables were taken away, and folk pushed the benches back, and the Icelanders began their entertainments, and it was the case that the Icelanders had been among the Greenlanders for a year, long enough for some of the Greenlanders, but especially the Solar Fell folk, to learn steps and words to a few of the rhyming songs, and so eight women, including Sigrid Bjornsdottir, and eight men stood up and made the figures while Thorstein Olafsson shouted out the song. And this was a song, an outlandish rhyme about a fellow named Troilus, who was a hero of early times, and his concubine, named Criseda, who sinned and was greatly punished for her sin. Some time passed, through the telling of other, less scandalous tales, and folk were called again into the cathedral for the second service. The first to enter the church discovered Larus the Prophet