The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [361]
It seemed to Gunnar, perhaps because he was an old man now, that these years passed as in a spell. Margret grew very old, he saw, but she went every day as far as she could into the hills. She did not look for anything, or bring anything back. She simply could not abide spending the day in the steading. One of these days she came back smiling a little, and he asked her her news, and she said, “Indeed, there were skraelings upon Einars Fjord, numbers of them in their skin boats, and they were fat and prosperous, and it seems to me that I saw Sigurd Kolsson among them, and he was tall and sturdy and had two wives.” Gunnar himself sat beside his parchment. His eyes were good, and his hands were unafflicted with the joint ill, and sometimes he wrote a sentence or two. News came: Sira Eindridi died of a stomach ill. Other news came: two ships had been sighted entering Einars Fjord. They were much unlike any ships that the Greenlanders had ever seen before. Folk went down to the strand, curious. The ships moved slowly up the fjord. They were wide and heavy-looking, with many sails. Ungraceful, but exceedingly large, as if carrying a great cargo. The faces of men, oddly deformed and silvery, stared over the gunwales.
The ships sailed on, past the staring Greenlanders, and this is what happened when they got to Gardar. The men upon them disembarked in a great rush, and ran through the water, and up the strand, and they were wearing plate metal armor and helmets, and carrying various iron weapons, not only swords, but shields and pikes and halberds, and they at once set about slaughtering all of the animals that they could see about the cathedral compound, and when the steward, whose name was Odd, came to them and told them that they were on Church land, they killed him. Now other servingfolk came out, and were standing about, and of course, Larus the Prophet, and Sira Andres as well. And these sailors at once set about preparing to cook and eat the animals that they had killed, for it is always the case that folk who travel to Greenland arrive hungry. But there was little or no wood to be had, except some driftage and some small stocks in the kitchen at Gardar, and these men were so enraged by this that they set about killing the servingfolk, at random, or beating them, or, in the case of women, raping them and then beating them.
Now Larus the Prophet approached them with his hands out in front of him, to show that he had no weapons, and he began to expostulate with them in his usual way, namely by calling on the saints and other holy folk who were his friends to witness that these things being done were great evils, and that the Lord would exact his due punishment against these devils. It happened that one of these sailors spoke a bit of Norse, from travels to Norway and Denmark, and he understood some of what Larus was saying, so in the midst of the turmoil, he shouted, “What is your name, then?” in the Norse tongue, and Larus shouted, “I am Larus the Prophet!” and when the sailor heard this, he began to laugh, and to relay this information to his fellows, who also laughed, and Larus was much put out, and repeated his words about the Lord’s punishment. The sailor said, “The Lord may find us if he can, then!”
Now Larus said, “What manner of men are these, O Lord, that they plunder us without mercy?”
“We are Bristol men!” shouted the sailor. “And we are unpleased to find ourselves in Greenland so late in the year, you may be sure of that!”
Larus did not know what Bristol men were, but it was evident to everyone that they