The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [58]
“Five cows is not a lot for a beam that is close at hand.”
“Does someone in the district need a beam?”
“There is a half-built house on a farm in the district that could be weathertight before Yule.”
Now Gunnar settled his back against the wall of the farmhouse, and let his eyes close. After a long time, he said, “We have a new building on our farm, just by chance. But we don’t need any beams.” Then he was silent for a long time, as if he had fallen asleep. After a while, Vigdis motioned to Margret to help her to her feet. As Margret did so, Vigdis said, “It is my opinion that the Gunnars Stead folk have done little in this matter to make friends, and all in the district know how Gunnar Asgeirsson cherishes ancient disagreements.” She glanced once or twice at Gunnar, but his eyes did not open. Margret accompanied her a little way on her walk back to Ketils Stead. Soon, Gunnar returned to the new building, and set about helping Olaf put turves into place. The ground was too frozen, now, to cut new ones, and Olaf declared that it was a bad time of year for such work. That evening, after eating, Gunnar declared that if Hrafn’s sons were old enough to sleep alone beside the cowbyre when their father was across the field in a new building, then they could sleep alone there if their father and Katla were sleeping in Ingrid’s old bedcloset, and Hrafn agreed that this was so, and in this way Katla and Hrafn moved into the farmhouse for the winter.
Now Yuletide came on, and since the ground was hard and good for traveling, and there had as yet been snow only to the north, in Isafjord, many more souls than usual went to the cathedral at Gardar for the Christmas mass and feasting. Since the fjords were frozen over, many traveled on skates made from reindeer bones, and others traveled on horseback, and the horses were turned out in the giant Gardar homefield. Of the Gunnars Stead folk, only Olaf and Hrafn’s sons stayed behind to look after the livestock. Olaf declared that Gardar was too busy for him, and too full of the bishop. Then Margret said that she, too, would stay behind, but went after all, because Birgitta Lavransdottir wanted her to.
Now it happened for the first time that many of the Greenlanders got a good look at Kollbein Sigurdsson and his retainers and sailors, who sat together near Kollbein’s high seat. Margret saw that Kollbein was a dark man with a round face and small round eyes, who dressed in furs, like the bishop, but wore them casually, half thrown off his shoulder, rather than for warmth. Skuli, Margret saw, sat next to him, and repeatedly, Kollbein turned to Margret’s friend and asked him who those present might be. Once or twice his eyes fell on Margret herself, and once she saw Skuli’s lips make the words “Margret Asgeirsdottir,” but although her friend was looking right at her, his glance did not distinguish her in any way. Kollbein’s gaze slid quickly past Gunnar, but lingered on the more prosperous farmers, such as Erlend Ketilsson, until it was almost a stare. Birgitta Lavransdottir, the sharp-eyed, was watching Kollbein, too, and now she whispered to Margret that the ombudsman looked as if he were counting Erlend’s head of cattle as they filed into the byre for winter. Erlend and Vigdis were regarding, with smiles, the bishop and Jon the Priest, to whom they had brought six Ketils Stead cheeses.
In fact, the gifts brought by the Greenlanders to Gardar made a great array, though there was an especially large number of things of humble home manufacture—lengths of wadmal, sheepskins, and some fancy weaving in the form of bands for the decoration of vestments. This was not a year in which the benches of Gardar Hall were piled with bear hides and walrus ivory and silver from Ireland and manuscripts from Normandy and York and silk from Italy and wine from France, as they had once been, when Greenlanders traveled widely in every direction. Even so, the farmers and their wives nodded and gaped at the collection and spoke, as they