The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [80]
The red silk gown disappeared. It was not to be found in any of the Gunnars Stead chests. No bits of it or of the remnants of the fabric were used to decorate Gunnhild’s little dresses. It did not appear on any altar or sewn into the vestments of any priest. It was not among the items sent to Lavrans Stead, for Birgitta had packed those herself, not allowing Margret to touch anything until it was time for her to take it out of the boat. Folk said that Birgitta was not a little parsimonious, giving Margret the oldest and most easily spared pots and bits of furniture. One article only was thick and richly made, and that was the white cloak Margret had given Birgitta as a bridal gift.
The little farm, called Steinstraumstead, Margret found to be in great disrepair. Of the three rooms in the house, only one had all four walls, and none was dry or cozy or tightly roofed. The storeroom, being the smallest, was the easiest to put in good order, and this Margret quickly did—setting stones, cutting and replacing turves, clearing the floor with a wooden spade and a broom made of willow brush tightly bound with reindeer sinew. The room was dark and cramped, however, and one oil lamp rendered it smoky and warm, so Margret spent little time there once it was clean and she had arranged her stores. After this she surveyed the byre, which had once been tightly built, with stalls for four cows. As she had no cows, though, and intended to have none, she could leave the byre much as it was, only clearing a protected spot for whatever hay and seaweed she would be able to find, and piling turves along the north wall to shelter her five sheep in the worst of the winter storms. Her own room presented more difficulties, for it was large and nearly roofless and the built-in bedcloset (for there was one, although it was roughly made) was staved in on two sides. For some days, she left these things as they were, and merely followed her sheep in their new pastures, first along the river and then in the other direction, which led toward the bottom of Eriks Fjord. These new walks were some pleasure to her, and though she brought the sheep back at the end of each day, it was only to sleep a little, milk the ewes, and then set off again. The child within her moved but little while she was walking, and sometimes she was seized with the certainty that it had died. When she sat, however, or lay down to sleep, it rolled and jumped until she had to get up.
The hillside, once a little cultivated, although never as rich as Gunnars Stead or any other farm in Vatna Hverfi, was much overrun with herbs and other plants, including ones that she had seen little of in Vatna Hverfi. The fjord, down a little slope from her door, was full of cod and ocean-going trout, although the glacial stream for which the steading was named was cloudy with silt and contained few fish. The strand was narrow and pebbly, and sloped abruptly upward. She had no boat.
The child was little trouble to her. The pains and discomforts of pregnancy, such as Birgitta and Svava spoke about, were absent. Birgitta, in particular, had often complained of the baby’s head catching her just below the heart so that she had no air for walking, and sometimes even for speaking. Another time, rather toward the end of Birgitta’s term, the girl had been seized with a sudden long pain, lasting most of the morning and running from her heart down to her legs. It was the child turning upside-down to be born, she said, and worse by far than any of the pains of confinement. Svava recalled of Kristin of Siglufjord that her feet burst out of her shoes, and her legs could not fit into her stockings, and at times it seemed that the skin itself would burst, for her toes were as big as loom weights, and this with every child, from the first quickening to the birth. There were worse things, and Svava knew most of them.