The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [324]
It was interesting to Sira Pall the way Eindridi and Larus had become friends, where they had once been as suspicious as two male dogs. Larus seemed to Sira Pall to be a sly little man, with his soft voice and his neatly delivered tales. Sira Audun would have appreciated him, Sira Pall thought. It was hard to believe now that Larus had been a servingman all of his life before the hunger: he spoke of everything, from the Virgin to the spoons on the table before him, with such mild fluency. He had the sort of voice that did not announce itself immediately, but caught the ear after a bit, and held it, dropping and dropping to a fascinating whisper, and folk were fascinated indeed at the tales he reported. Sira Pall did not himself know what to make of them, did not know whether the man was a true mystic or just an inventive fellow. Anything was possible, after all, and he had not the perspicacity to see into such things. Sira Eindridi was well meaning, but hard, with some verbal fluency of his own, though it was of a rather bombastic sort, and fascinated no one but Sira Eindridi himself. It was hard to know who had wooed whom, in this case, but these days Larus and Sira Eindridi were often together, and though Sira Eindridi always had the most to say, and spoke in the louder voice, and led the other man about, Sira Pall had little belief that the priest was the top dog. Now they both turned and came over to him, and spoke to him with the respect due to age, and asked after his health and his soul and his business, and the short result of it was that after but a few moments of this conversation, Sira Pall Hallvardsson conceived a great longing to go into his chamber and sleep like an old man.
The news of Birgitta Lavransdottir’s self-murder came to Dyrnes shortly after Yule, with the folk who were returning from Solar Fell, where they had feasted with the Icelanders. Margret Asgeirsdottir had stayed in Dyrnes with Signy’s brother’s household after Sigrid went back to Solar Fell, because not only did she care little to go there, but she was little welcome there. Bjorn Bollason and Signy agreed that it was rather inconvenient, the way they had taken the woman up after the great hunger, considering how things had turned out, but it was not the way of such folk as themselves to turn her out of her place. In addition to this, Signy’s mother rather liked having Margret in Dyrnes, as she was quiet and useful. Margret was much cast down by the news of Birgitta’s death and kept very much to herself. During Lent, it occurred to her that she must now be some sixty-four winters old, as old as the nurse Ingrid had been in the year of her death. Still she was little afflicted with the joint ill. Only her finger joints and the joints of her big toes throbbed in wet weather. She thought often of Eyvind Eyvindsson, and less often of Skuli Gudmundsson.
But most often, she thought of Gunnar and Kollgrim, and mixed them in her mind. She remembered things she had said to one as if she had said them to the other. She remembered Kollgrim’s fur clothing, but saw it in her mind upon the figure of Gunnar, who had never worn fur clothing. She remembered Gunnar in his bedcloset, still beneath the bearskin, but his face was Kollgrim’s face. The child Gunnar, whom she had carried about on her back, she remembered as Kollgrim. The staring blue eyes of Kollgrim looked at her in her dreams out of the sockets of Gunnar. The mouth opened and spoke in Gunnar’s tones, but said Kollgrim’s words: “Folk say that sisters must be given up.” When she overheard folk about the steading describing the burning, it was Gunnar’s face she saw peering out of the smoke, his peculiar striped clothing that she saw going up in flames. It did not occur to many folk to avoid this talk