The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [363]
Now he and the servingman looked frantically among the birch and willow scrub, and paused from time to time to listen for cries or moans, but at first they saw nothing and heard nothing. Soon enough, they had a view of the fjord, where white icebergs floated silently in the dark water, and then they had a view of the remains of Ketils Stead, and still they saw nothing, and Gunnar was tempted to have hope, and he sent the servingman back to Gunnars Stead to see if Margret had returned. But, indeed, there was her cloak, dark in the gathering dusk, and beneath was her corpus, and much had been done to it in the way of hacking and poking. Even so, her head was still upon her neck, and her face was whole and recognizable, and her long braids coiled about her in the grass. Now he knelt down in the grass and willow scrub, and he wept as only old men weep who have no hope left.
And it was the case that in his weeping, he cursed the hearts of the Bristol men, that gave them to do such injury. And after that he cursed his own heart, for he, too, had turned his mind and his strength to such killing as this. Eight men had fallen by his hand, and through his enmity, and he made himself think carefully upon their names: Skuli Gudmundsson, Ketil the Unlucky, Hallvard Erlendsson, Kollbein Erlendsson, Bjorn Bollason, Sigurd Bjornsson, Hoskuld Bjornsson, and Arni Bjornsson, and then he fell upon his face in the grass, and he wept for these eight men, all of them his enemies, all of them who had done him injury, but all of them men. And then he saw what he was, an old man, ready to die, pressed against the Greenland earth, as small as an ash berry on the face of a mountain, and he did the only thing that men can do when they know themselves, which was to weep and weep and weep.
Epilogue
After the destruction of Gardar and of most of the steadings that looked upon the fjords of the south, news between the districts was slow, and every district turned in upon itself. Cattle and sheep that had been few enough were fewer still, and the same was true of men and boats. Some things were said: that women and children in Hvalsey Fjord had been left without men entirely, and had gone off with the skraelings; that the conflicts in Brattahlid district intensified after the visitation of the Bristol men, and all the families were in a turmoil of accusations and retaliations; that if the coming winter was a hard one, few households would get through it, but indeed, this was said every year, and no man could judge in advance whether it would be true or not.
Margret Asgeirsdottir was buried with as much of a ceremony as Jon Andres and Gunnar between them could remember, next to Helga Gunnarsdottir in the lee of Undir Hofdi church, though no services had been held there in six or eight winters. Jon Andres and Johanna and their children and servingfolk reclaimed such belongings as they could from Ketils Stead, and moved to Gunnars Stead. Folk no longer considered it lucky to live in view of the fjord, in case the Bristol men should return. Gunnars Stead prospered well enough. The fields were wide, still, and well watered, though folk were on their own now, without support from Gardar, and without many neighbors. Inside, there was the rubbing