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By Root 2165 0

Andres was so agreeable and mild about it, that they did talk of it after all, and they did speculate about how it had come about that a man had been burned for such a little thing. What man had not gone with another’s wife? or at least another’s daughter or sister? If such things were to be punished in this wise, well, there would be no men left in Greenland, and that was a fact. Jon Andres nodded and smiled. He gave gifts, cheeses, dried sealmeat. He gave advice. He offered his rams and bull for breeding. He was a prosperous farmer and a well-known man. Folk were flattered at his attention. He came back to Gunnars Stead and he said to Gunnar, “It was Bjorn Bollason who suggested that they douse our brother in seal oil. If they had not done such a thing, there would not have been wood enough to carry out the burning.”

“Who has told you this?”

“Folk speak of it everywhere.”

“But perhaps only those who have something against Bjorn Bollason?”

“Nay, they praise him for it, though rather shamefacedly in front of me. They consider that he showed a little wit, as he did during the hunger, when he took provisions that had been stacked up at Gardar. Folk speak of him as an enterprising fellow, as good as the Icelanders in his way.” Now Jon Andres smiled bitterly.

It seemed to Gunnar that this talk brought Kollgrim’s death throes into his mind more vividly and with more completeness than when he had stood there as a witness to them, so vividly that the pictures took his breath away, and he felt the burning smoke in his eyes that Kollgrim must have felt, and his own flesh shrank as Kollgrim’s must have shrunk from the heat, and this happened, also, that he felt a little flame in his innards that was the desire to crush Bjorn Bollason. And this desire came to him with as much urgency as any in his life—the desire to marry Birgitta, the desire to look upon his children, the desire to preserve Kollgrim from his fate. He said, “I have killed men twice in my life, and one of those times, the men who met their fates were your brothers. We dug that pit, and set the trap for them, and we were serious, but antic at the same time. It was a great chase, for deadly stakes, but our hearts were high with trickery, and running, and the secrecy of nighttime, and it might have been that they would have caught us and killed us and the contest would have gone the other way. When another man died, the Norwegian Skuli Gudmundsson, my foster brother Olaf and I went to the killing with heavy heart and more anger at the perfidy of women than at the fellow himself. Now I feel something else in my bosom that frightens me, and it is the will to make Bjorn Bollason suffer and suffer and suffer. To bring him into such agonies as a man should never know, to deny him shrift, to tear his flesh shred from shred. And how will I ever be forgiven for such a lust as this?”

Jon Andres looked Gunnar in the face, and Gunnar saw that his daughter’s husband, a peaceful man, carried the same desire in his heart. The younger man shrugged his shoulders, and the two sat silently for some little time.

Now it became known among the Greenlanders that Larus the Prophet and Sira Eindridi Andresson were much seen together these days, with Larus going back and forth to Gardar in the small Gardar boat, and Sira Eindridi going to Larus Stead, and standing outside and looking in when Larus was carrying on one of his little services. After this, Sira Eindridi said nothing about it, neither for it nor against it, and so some folk were made bolder in their attendance at them. Larus pretended not to care one way or another, but went on, always in low rounded tones, always telling this bit or that bit of his visions, always having a little something to eat after. Where there used to be three women for every man who came to the services, now there were almost as many men as women, and folk spoke openly about these things, even when they were with others who did not participate in them. He and Ashild and little Tota dressed as simply as possible, all in the same sort of long robe woven