The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [31]
At once a cloud passes in front of the moon and a great wind comes up and the stars are hidden and a storm begins. The servant can only just see the byre in the darkness, and he directs his steps there with difficulty, on account of the storm. He is greatly afraid, for he hears, he thinks, voices crying out to him, and he recollects a dream that he, or perhaps someone else of the household, has had, about a walking ghost who tears the eyes out of the heads of men if they try to see, and tears out their throats if they try to speak. The servant is so afraid that he can hardly move, yet he knows that the cows and the horses will starve if he doesn’t give them their feed. He says a Hail Mary and then cries out to our Lord Jesus Christ, and the storm only grows worse and the cries louder, so that he is buffeted about and no longer knows where he is, near the byre or near the storehouses or near the bathhouse. Now he gets down on his knees and prays fervently to Christ to preserve him, and he is preserved, but at the same time the storm increases in power, and there are great crashes of thunder and repeated flashes of lightning, so that the man is sorely afraid and he calls on Thor to save him, promising Thor the sacrifice of a good sheep or a goat or even a cow, although these are his master’s animals, if Thor will only make the storm diminish a wit. And the storm does diminish, and the servant thanks Thor and declares that Thor is more powerful than Jesus Christ.
And then the servant makes his way into the byre in the darkness, and he sees a man amongst the cows, and he thinks that the man is stealing a cow, and so, in the darkness, with the howling of the storm and the crying of many voices in his ears, the servant sneaks up behind the man in the byre and he bashes him on the head with a great club that has come into his hand, perhaps thanks to Thor, and the intruder falls senseless to the ground. And then the storm subsides, and members of the household come out with torches and lamps looking for their faithful and hardworking servant, and they find him in the byre, and they discover that he has beaten and killed, not an intruder, but the master’s only son, who has seen the hunger of the livestock and begun to feed them. And the bishop declared that this is a true tale, one that took place on a farm in Vik, when the bishop himself was a boy on the neighboring farmstead. And now Asgeir turned to Thorkel Gellison, who was standing beside him and said, “This case will be the death of me, and that is truth.”
“Thus it is,” said the bishop, looking at Asgeir, “that the servant succumbed to two temptations. First of these was the temptation to think that our Lord Jesus Christ was powerless, although his prayer was promptly answered, and he was spared. This was the temptation that led Thorunn into sorcery and casting spells. But the other temptation, the temptation to act ignorantly on behalf of his master, was a more powerful and still more evil temptation, for any man can recant his belief in demons such as Thor, but no man can undo the murder of his master’s only son.
“It may be,” the bishop went on, “that the killing of Thorunn was duly announced, so that Asgeir is not guilty of murder, and therefore not subject to a sentence of outlawry. And it may be that Thorunn was a sorceress, and guilty of casting injurious spells. After fourteen years these things cannot clearly be proven. There is no evidence that the old woman abjured her savior, made a pact with the devil, or engaged in witchcraft as it has recently been defined among the Italians and the Germans and the French by the holy inquisitors