The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [352]
It happened, of course, that before he became a prophet, Larus had been a cowman in Brattahlid district, and had been somewhat well known for his knowledge of livestock, and it was this knowledge that enabled him to leave serving other men after the hunger and claim his own steading. Upon becoming a prophet, he had not lost this knowledge, and so Sira Eindridi considered him a useful fellow to have about the place, for he himself had no skill in this. In fact, Sira Eindridi considered that he had done well all around with Larus. Without making the fellow a priest he had made him an ally of the Church, and such tirades as the one he had delivered at Sira Pall Hallvardsson’s famous service were in the past now. Sira Eindridi had no fear of being interrupted. In addition to this, those services about his steading table that Larus had fallen into conducting for some years were also ended. Folk sought him out, but they came to Gardar to do it, and when they were there, whatever they spoke to him of privily, the cathedral, and the face of the Lord, and the relics of St. Olaf looked down upon them, and their thoughts could not stray far into dangerous channels. Sira Eindridi was certain of that. Wasn’t it the case that holy places gave off an invisible radiance that recalled the minds of men from such idiosyncrasies as they were prone to, back to the true faith as the consensus of souls dictated it? Someone had told him of this power, perhaps Sira Pall Hallvardsson, perhaps not. At any rate, to have a horse go badly lame, and then to call upon Larus to look at the beast, and to have Larus come out at once and see that the horse had been kicked in a pasture fight, but that no bones were broken, was reassuring in any number of ways. Neither then nor later that day did Larus mention how Lazarus had come to him, or what conclusions were to be drawn from that vision. It seemed to him that this Lazarus would come to him as often as he could bear it, and that he would be a hard master, indeed.
Shortly after this, near to Yule, news came from Vatna Hverfi district that the corpus of Ofeig Thorkelsson had been found on an abandoned farmstead in Alptafjord. To all appearances, the devil had been dead for some time, and perhaps had died of starvation, for the flesh on him was wasted and meager, and hardly like the flesh of a man, being leathery and dry and stretched over the bones. Perhaps, folk said, remembering his great size, Satan had sucked the life out of him, leaving but this shell of a man. He was dead, and there was nothing to fear from him anymore, or there wouldn’t be, when precautions were taken. Skeggi Thorkelsson, who sent the message, respectfully requested Sira Eindridi Andresson or Sira Andres Eindridason to journey to Hestur Stead and perform such rites as were necessary to assure the ghost, and his potential victims about the steading and the district, of peace. And after the feast of the Epiphany, Sira Andres went out with some servingmen, on skis, and came to Hestur Stead.
Sira Andres was a good-looking youth, tall and fair, with a lively countenance, and he was not unaware of his effect on maidens, who always preferred to make their confessions to him, or to converse with him, or to walk along a little ways with him, or even to touch him on the sleeve. Some folk laughed and said that he was a priest in the old style, the style of Sira Nikolaus, whose “wife” had lived with him at Undir Hofdi church for sixty or a hundred winters, and to whom he had not been uniformly faithful