“According to this country’s laws I am of course a criminal for having set you free,” she said. “What else have you done, from the beginning? Are you a robber? Or a murderer?”
“I stole a piece of cord, good lady,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
“I see,” she said, “I was like every other stupid little girl. It would have been far better if you’d been beheaded.”
“Then they said that I’d slandered the king and murdered the hangman,” he said. “And now I’ve supposedly murdered my son, but such a thing makes little difference—the authorities don’t bother about it when a man kills his children during a famine if a man does it well. There’re enough beggars left anyway. The only thing that’s been weighing me down all these years are the letters.”
“Letters?” she asked distractedly.
He explained to her how he’d returned to Iceland with two letters from the king many years ago, and how he’d traveled from a remote corner of the country back home to his farm on Akranes, only to discover his household in ruins: his sixteen-year-old daughter with shining eyes lay upon her bier and his half-wit son was laughing; his two leprous kinswomen, one nodous, the other ulcerous, were praising God, and his decrepit mother was singing the half-rhymed Kross School Hymns written by Reverend Halldór from Presthólar, while his pitiable she-creature of a wife sat with their two-year-old child in her lap, cursing her husband. But what were these compared to the tragedies that had befallen the man’s livestock in his absence? The sheep and cattle the farmer had birthed himself had been confiscated and handed over to the king as payment for the crimes he’d already answered for, and the chattel that had come with the farm and were owned by Christ had dropped dead like beggar-folk, because his miserable family had been so busy praising God that it had forgotten to cut and store hay to give to the creatures while the man was fighting for his king in a foreign land.
Next he told her how he’d had to start from scratch on a new life, after he’d nearly turned fifty, and what’s more, how he’d had to get accustomed to new children after the old ones were dead. He said he’d asked himself: “Maybe I’m not really descended from Gunnar of Hlíðarendi?” Many years had passed now since Jesus Christ had taken back his chattel. And he, Jón Hreggviðsson, had built himself a fisherman’s hut at Innrihólmur, and named it Hretbyggja,* and there outfitted an eight-oared fishing boat.
“Nothing’s cast shadows but the letters,” he said finally. But since she knew very little, if anything at all, about his case, and was unenlightened concerning the letters that had cast their shadow over the joy of this farmer from Skagi, he explained everything to her in detail regarding his Supreme Court appeal, which was supposed to have been published in court, and the travel passes that granted him protection and a four-month leave of absence from the king’s army while he tried to resolve his case in Iceland.
“Indeed,” she said.
“The letters were never published in court,” he said.
“So what was?” she said.
“Nothing at all,” he said.
“Why didn’t they behead you, since the letters were never published?”
“That’s where my lord magistrate’s story picks up again,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
“My father never stabs anyone under the table,” she said.
“I’d always hoped,” he said, “that the blessed magistrate would be the last man Jón Hreggviðsson could ever criticize, except, in the very least, for his overkindness toward me and others. And if I’d been in his shoes I wouldn’t have let Jón Hreggviðsson off a second time with his head raised.”
Now he explained how, after his return home all those years ago, he’d gotten himself a horse and taken the letters to the Alþingi at Öxará to meet with Magistrate Eydalín. As could be expected, the magistrate did not return the greeting of the man whom he’d condemned to death, but he did read the letters carefully, then gave them back to him and said that he should bring them with him to court, where they would not be ignored. So for three days in a row Jón Hreggviðsson took the letters to court. He sat waiting on a bench with others tangled up in lawsuits, staring up at the judges who’d condemned him to death two years ago, but his name wasn’t called. On the third day he received a message from the magistrate that he should come again to his booth, and when he did so the magistrate spoke these words: “Jón Hreggviðsson, I advise you not to wave these papers around in public; instead, leave this place as quietly as you can. Know this—it is in my power to have you beheaded right now, here at this assembly. And know this as well, that if your case comes before a higher court out in Copenhagen, you will not lift your head a third time before me. Although you have now succeeded in getting those rogues out in Copenhagen to help you procure these documents, which they have obviously done more from their habitual desire to swindle us than out of any concern for a beggar and murderer, we will make sure that you never have another chance to raise a troop of cacklers and meddlers against the authorities in this country.”
“My father does not threaten people. He condemns them if they are found guilty,” said the magistrate’s daughter.
“I started thinking about Copenhagen,” he said, “and I remembered an Icelandic aristocrat, a really straightforward man in that huge house where they hold high court, who explained these letters to me on the same day that I thought they’d finally cleaned me up for my execution, and I caught a glimpse of my friend Árni Árnason standing near their great curtained glass window. He didn’t look at me and he didn’t greet me, but he knew what was happening, since it was all his own work. And I said to my lady’s father, my judge: ‘You are the most powerful man in Iceland,’ said I, ‘and you can most certainly have me beheaded right here and now. But these letters are signed by my Supreme Highness and Grace Himself, my Hereditary King and Lord.’ When my honorable lord magistrate saw that I wasn’t afraid and that I really only wanted to make a friend, he wasn’t angry with me any longer.”
“My father lets nothing threaten him,” she said.
“No,” said Jón Hreggviðsson, “I know that very well. But my friend, the friend of my lady, is also a man no less than my judge, my lady’s father.”
Snæfríður looked aloofly at Jón Hreggviðsson for a moment, then suddenly gave a sharp laugh as if the man had touched a nerve.
“Magistrate Eydalín said, ‘For these letters I return to you your property and belongings, adding interest from the time when your livestock was taken away; everything shall be as it was.’ And he said plenty of other things useless to mention, since there were no witnesses. I asked, ‘What will my king say if his letters aren’t published?’ ‘I will take care of that,’ he said. ‘Just turn them in tomorrow in court when your name is called.’ ”
She asked what had happened next and he answered that he might have done worse under the circumstances, because when his sheep were driven back home to him at Rein there were two heads on every beast.
“My father bribes no one,” she said. “And the letters?”
He said that on the next day, when his name was finally called in court and he was questioned about his business there, he answered that he’d come with letters from our Most Gracious Highness and requested that they be given a reading. Then Guðmundur Jónsson, his bailiff from Skagi, had stepped forward, grabbed the letters from him, looked them over for a moment along with the king’s regent from Bessastaðir, and handed them to the magistrate. The magistrate asked the bailiff to read the second letter, his travel pass, aloud, and when this reading was completed the magistrate said that they had read enough, Jón Hreggviðsson had been shown great mercy, and he should now return to his home and quarrel with men no longer.
The farmer was silent and when she asked if there was anything more to the story he said that there was only this letter, written fourteen years later, signed by Arnas Arnæus.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
“I’m an old man,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “And I’ve
got a fifteenyear-old daughter at home.”
“Even so,” she said.
“I’ve come to ask you to tell him that Jón Hreggviðsson was once young and black-haired and didn’t know what it meant to be afraid; but that time is now past. I want to ask you to tell him that a tearful old man with white hair has come to see you.”
“I don’t see any tears,” she said. “And your hair isn’t white, it’s gray. And I can’t see how you, an innocent man, would have anything to fear even if your case were opened again. If the court proceedings were in error the first time, then it will only be to your benefit, even if it is somewhat after the fact, if your innocence is confirmed.”
“It’s all the same to me whether I’m innocent or guilty as long as I’m left in peace with my sheep and my boat,” he said.
“Is that so?” she said. “Then why did you run across those soft and hard lands? Wasn’t it in the hope of justice?”
“I’m a simple commoner,” he said, “and I understand nothing but what I can touch. An ax I understand. And water in a jug. A poor man considers himself lucky if he can get by on his own.”
“Has it never occurred to you that life and justice are close cousins, and that justice can be used to save poor men’s lives?”
“I’ve never known justice to be used for anything other than the taking of poor men’s lives,” said Jón Hreggviðsson. “That’s why I’m begging you, since you know how to speak to great men, to protect Jón Hreggviðsson from justice.”
“You’ve lost your mind, Jón Hreggviðsson. I don’t know how to speak to great men. And no one these days puts any stock in a woman’s idle chatter. In my opinion your case is in good hands. Is anything left in the pitcher? If you are no longer thirsty, then I think you had better be going.”
Jón Hreggviðsson stood up, extended a small, dirty hand to her, and expressed his deepest gratitude for the drink.
He stood there and two-stepped for a short time but made no effort to leave.
“I know,” he said, “that in the ancient sagas no one was thought more contemptible than a coward who begged for mercy. King Óðinn never forgives a man who pleads for mercy. This ugly gray head here might as well blow away. But what would my lady say if the ax were to slip off course, toward higher-born necks?”
“Oh, now I finally understand your business here,” she said, and she smiled. “You’ve come to warn me that my head will blow away at the same time as yours, as punishment for having redeemed yours here many years ago. As you please, my friend. You are a most charming old man.”
At the housewife’s words Jón Hreggviðsson knelt down upon the floor and started crying into the palms of his hands—of all the hardships that he’d been forced to endure in his days nothing hit closer to his heart than these words, he said with a whimper.
She stood up and walked over to him—“Allow me to wipe your eyes,” she said, but he refused; his eyes were dry. He stood up.
“It doesn’t really matter whether Jón Hreggviðsson kills the hangman or the hangman kills Jón Hreggviðsson,” he said. “But if my judge Eydalín did hand down a true verdict sixteen years ago, then my helper Arnæus, the king’s envoy, might find himself in the dungeon, and our king’s reputation might suffer serious damage. On the other hand, if Jón Hreggviðsson is declared innocent, then the magistrate over Iceland is in danger of losing what a man of power values more highly than his own head: his honor.”
The smirk on his face was cold and impudent, his white teeth in his hoary beard reminding one of a dog that bares its teeth after a beating. She noticed that he was girded with a new piece of cord.
7
A few days later the squire was gone. He must have ridden away during the night, because one morning the hammer ceased to sound from the smithy. The ax lay in the woodchips. It started raining again. Ferocious winds drove the rain on, day and night. The lakes and rivers flooded their banks. The earthen walls and turf roofs of the buildings at Bræðratunga continued to sop up the flood until they turned into mounds of mire. Emanating from these mounds was a foul, house-penetrating damp, colder than frost. Cesspools formed in the farmhouse’s passageways and entryways, making it nearly impossible for anyone to get anywhere. The housewife wrapped herself in her duvet and refused to rise, as if succumbing to eternal dusk. One night so much water leaked into her loft that she was forced to spread a horsehide over the bed. The drops kept falling, and every hollow in the hide became a pool. Then the rain stopped. One day at twilight cloudless skies returned, and the moon and stars reappeared.
Later that night Magnús came home. Iron bits rattled outside—at least he hadn’t sold his horse. After a considerable amount of time he came up the stairs steadily, without reeling. He knocked upon her door and waited until she told him to step in. She sat holding her needlework beneath her pilastered lamp. She looked up and he greeted her with a kiss; there was not much of a stench upon him. All his movements, however, had a certain quality of airy emollience, different from those he made when sober, and there was a kind of alien barbarism frosted over his eyes, the type of frozen, placid crapulous-ness sometimes seen in sleepwalkers and others who are aware of their deeds the moment they are done but are oblivious to them afterward.
“I had to run south to Selvogur,” he said, as if pleading for forgiveness for having ridden away—“I had to meet someone about buying land.”
“Buying land,” she said.
“Yes. Don’t you think we ought to start buying some land?” he said. “It makes no sense at all to sell land and to buy none in its place. Now I’ve finally decided to buy some land. I’ve bought an estate in Selvogur.”
“At what price?” she asked.
“Well, that’s that, you know, dear Snæfríður,” he said, and he drew closer and kissed her. “How wonderful it is for a man to come home to his wife, after he’s been inundated for four days.”
“Yes, how thoughtful of you to mention water,” she said. “I was nearly drowned here at home.”
“It won’t be long before I’ve plugged all the holes,” he said. “Everything will be perfect. You won’t feel a drop. But first I’ve got to buy land.”
“If you’re planning to start buying land, Magnús mine,” she said, “why don’t you start by making a deal with me? How would you like to buy the estate from me? Bræðratunga is for sale.”
“A man who is related by marriage to great aristocrats does not have to pay to sleep with his wife,” he said. “And who needs to wait for the father-in-law to discharge the dowry?”
“Alright,” she said, “then go ahead and buy your own land.”
“Man and wife are one,” said he. “The land I buy is yours. The land your father gives you is mine. Those who love each other share everything in common. Your father forced wealthy Fúsi to relinquish Bræðratunga and he gave you the title to the estate. You love me. That is why Bræðratunga is mine. I am going to buy an estate in Selvogur. That is why the estate that I am going to buy in Selvogur is yours.”
“It’s not a fair deal,” she said. “On the one side we have a magnificent creditor, and on the other a poor female simpleton: though I love you a thousand times more than you love me it is still you who’ll lose in a half-share partnership.”
“General report has it that I’m the most happily married man in Iceland,” he said.
“And one should always pay heed to general report,” she said— “which reminds me, have you had anything to eat?”
The squire was in no mood to answer such an everyday sort of question: “In any case, Snæfríður mine, the deal is already done— except for a matter of a hundred rixdollars I need by tonight—and then the estate is ours. The seller’s waiting for me south of the river.”
“You’re certainly not any more short of money now than you’ve been in the past,” she said.
“You know it yourself, woman—you have absolutely nothing to do with a tenth or even twentieth part of the baubles you keep in your coffers. Out with the s
ilver, out with the gold, woman, and show your husband you love him so that we can acquire some land. You yourself know that Bræðratunga was taken from me by fraud, and I won’t stand for anything less than having an estate in my own name. How can a squire and cavalier look in other men’s faces when he has no estate? Kiss me, my darling, and tell me the estate will be mine.”
“When I was a child I was told that whoever swallowed a hock-bone would one day own land,” she said. “Have you tried that? I was told a sheep’s hock-bone brought a croft, a cow’s an estate.”
“I know there’s only one type of land you wish was mine,” he said. “A churchyard. I know you want to kill me.”
“I didn’t realize you were drunk, dear Magnús,” she said. “But now I can see it. That’s enough. No more. Go downstairs and get something to eat from Guðríður.”
“I swallow whatever I please whenever I please with whomever I please,” he said.
She said nothing; when he was in such a state it was difficult to predict his reactions.
“You can see it yourself, dear,” he said, once again behaving clemently toward her. “Silver is not for great aristocrats, it’s for misers’ hoards, stashed away in trunks, of no use to anyone, losing its luster year from year.”
“Many a man has taken great delight in sitting up at night, polishing his coins by the light of the moon,” she said.
“Yes, but land is what makes great aristocrats,” he said. “We are great aristocrats.”
“You,” she said. “Not I.”
“You’ve always been so good to me, my Snjóka,” he said. “If you’ll just let me have a bit of a clasp-belt or a dented frontlet, and maybe three or four tarnished brooches, even if it’s only worth fifty rixdollars.”
“I may not be much of a woman,” she said, “but my silver was owned by great women in Iceland, some of whom lived as far back as the eleventh century. They adorned themselves with it on holy days, and it is their style, the spirit of their time, that resides in these things. Because of this they own them still, those old women before me, though they are in my keeping. Their material value makes no difference.”
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