“Here, I’ll show you the title deed to my new estate, so you won’t think I’m going to drink away your silver,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I’ve quit drinking, Snæfríður mine. I feel nothing but hatred for brennivín. At the very least I don’t enjoy drinking any longer. My one and only comfort is to be here at home with you, my dear—to this I call my Creator as witness. Dear Snæfríður, a dented frontlet, a brooch, even if it’s worth only twenty-five rixdollars—”
“I think you should go to sleep, dear Magnús. We’ll see each other in the morning.”
“—even just a couple of half-licked-away silver spoons from the time of the Black Death, just so they can see the silver, so they can see that I’m able to pay, so they can see that I’m a man and that I have a wife.”
“I don’t know whether you’re a man, dear Magnús,” she said. “Nor do I know whether you have a wife.”
He recoiled from her and she continued to look aloofly, but unastonishedly, at this stranger.
“Open the chest,” he said.
“Those are not your eyes that look at me, dear Magnús, nor is it your voice that speaks to me.”
“I know what’s in the chest,” he said. “It’s a man.”
She kept looking straight into his eyes.
“I saw him riding ahead of me through the homefield. And I recognized him. I order you to open the chest.”
“We’ll allow the man to remain in peace,” she said. “He’s tired.”
“He’ll never have peace,” said the squire. “I’ll kill him; I’ll hack the life out of him.”
“Alright, my dear,” she said. “Do that. But first we’ll all go to sleep.”
He walked over to the chest, kicked it with a booted foot with all his might, and screamed thief, dog, thief-dog. But the chest was made of oak, thickly planked and powerful; kicking it was most like kicking a boulder.
“Where’s the book you stole from me—the half-finished one— the one whose covers you threw at me!?” he screamed at the man in the chest as he kept on kicking it.
The man in the chest did not respond.
“I demand my book back!”
Silence.
“All those golden illuminations and those sweet lais* you blotted out, all those lustrous white blank pages you ripped out, leaving me with nothing but the covers, stinking cold and empty! You vermin, give me back my book!”
He kept this up for a good long time, kicking the chest and shouting threats and curses at the man inside, but the chest didn’t budge.
“Magnús,” said his wife in a low voice. “Sit down beside me.”
He quit his kicking and looked at her without lifting his head, his eyes white and red, like those of a bull foraging in the grass. It was her voice that touched him more deeply than anything else. When she spoke to him in this way, temperately, moderately, her voice soft and tinged with melancholy though its tones were woven with gold, it was always as if she hit one of his nerves, so quickly did the strength drain from him.
He sat beside her for some time and wept, and she stroked him several times with her slender hand, firmly, untenderly, somewhat distractedly, like someone petting an animal. Her touch relaxed him somewhat—but then he started in again.
“Snæfríður mine,” he said, “lend me a tiny ring, even if it’s worth only two rixdollars. I owe a man down in Eyrarbakki for some iron, and my manhood, my nobility, my pride, depend on my paying him back tonight; I’m certain, Snæfríður, that you who are even more of an aristocrat than me can’t bear to see me so humiliated.”
“Sleep here at home tonight, dear Magnús, and we’ll pay for the iron tomorrow,” she said.
“I beg you,” he said. “Even if it’s just a few measly pennies to throw at the lice-ridden riffraff who gather to jeer at vagabond aristocrats.”
“Tonight we should sleep,” she said. “We’ll go down to Bakki tomorrow and throw a penny at any lousy lad who makes fun of us.”
He wept and sighed heavily.
“Has anyone seen a more wretched beggar than me?” he asked through sobs.
“No,” she said.
He continued to weep.
The night was bright with moonlight. He had long since gone down to his room, but she was restless and lay awake in bed, tossing and turning. Moonbeams played across the floor. She rose and looked out her window; the weather was still and the earth sparkled, its wetness frozen before the next debacle began. She lay back down. She was lying there for some time when suddenly she thought she heard a creaking on the steps to the loft, the sound of furtive passage that is heard nowhere and at no other time than in an old house at night. This creaking, in such a graceless house, clapped upon her sleep-deprived and sensitive ears like a death knell. Finally there came a clumsy, secretive fumbling at the doorlock, the kind of sound that’s exaggerated to shrill trumpet-blasts by anxious ears in the dead of night. The door was lifted from its posts. She watched him come prowling into the room, dressed in his shirtsleeves, wearing thin shoes, with an ax in his hand. He peered around in the moonlight, and she could see his face and his eyes, how he stared into the darkness of her bedcloset without seeing her. She was convinced that he would promptly take a swing at her, but this is not what happened; the chest was uppermost in his mind. He fell to his knees before the chest and poked at the lid and the lock, but soon discovered that it was shut fast. He groped about to find a place where he could thrust the ax-blade in under the lid and lever the box open, and in the end the woman realized that he’d succeeded in getting the ax-edge under in one place and was putting the lid to the test.
“Leave the chest alone, Magnús,” she said.
He stopped and gave her a sidelong glance, somewhat hesitantly, and she could once again see the white and the red of his eyes. He rose slowly to his feet, pulled the ax free, and hoisted it up, gripping it more like a carpenter than a warrior, then reeled his way over to the bedcloset where his wife lay. Now everything happened in a flash. The curtains were half-drawn before the bedcloset and it was dark inside. He had to stoop at the knees and shoulders to strike at her through the low-lying bedcloset doors, but he’d forgotten that the bed was also open at the other end, and no sooner had he lashed out before someone came up from behind and threw a blanket over his head: here was the woman whom he had hoped to strike. She yelled as keenly as she could for her maidservant Guðríður, who shared quarters with another woman down the hallway at the other end of the loft. By the time the women arrived on the scene the squire had unwound the blanket from his head, and he had his wife in his grasp with his thumbs at the base of her throat. The ax had fallen to the floor. It was too late for him to accomplish the deed he had in mind—the two women rushed at him and overpowered him. In a short time he was sitting in a heap on the chest, dead-tired, his head hanging low.
“Everything goes badly for me and this is the worst,” said the daleswoman. “And I’m certain that the madam my mistress will never forgive me for this. The only proper thing for me to do would be to ride home and lay my neck under the magistrate’s heel.”
When Snæfríður asked her where she’d gone wrong, all she could say was that it wasn’t because of any virtue of hers that the blessed madam’s daughter had survived. She said she wanted to ride west and tell her mistress to send her daughter a more faithful servant than herself. Then she wiped the tears from her face and begged merciful God to forgive her sins.
“I’m riding away, dear Guðríður,” said the mistress of the house.
“You will remain here in charge of the estate. Bring out my finest clothing and valuables and pack them well, and be quick about it. Put the rest in storage. I’ll be in Skálholt for a while. Wake up some of the farmhands and tell them to fetch horses and prepare themselves to accompany me over the river tonight.”
8
When Arnas Arnæus sent word from the east at the end of the summer that he expected to be in Skálholt around the time of the roundup and wished to spend the winter at t
he bishop’s residence, the bishop set to work at once, summoning workers to refurbish the Grand Salon and the two smaller parlors behind it, where noble guests were customarily accommodated. The woodwork was repaired and painted or oiled, the locks and door-hinges mended, the stoves rebricked; in the interior parlor a bed frame was supplied with duvets and piles of pillows, and clean curtains were brought out, recreased, and hung up around it, while the outer parlor was prepared as a study and furnished with an imposing bureau, a writing desk, stools, two pretentious, antiquely carved easy-chairs, and a clothes-chest. Everything metal was polished: tin pitchers, copper pots, and silver-ware; then the house was scoured thoroughly. Finally juniper was burned in the study.
Toward the end of September one of the servants of the royal envoy transported his master’s luggage on several packhorses from the south over the heaths, while Arnas himself came several days later from the east with a packtrain of thirty horses, along with his secretaries, valets, and attendants. Stacks of the books and papers he brought with him quickly filled the rooms.
Although the king’s envoy was by nature a calm and placid man, a great bustle of activity arose around him quite soon after he set up his office in Skálholt. He sent servants on official business in various directions, carrying missives and messages, summoning folk to meet with him, while others came uninvited, some from remote districts. Everyone was curious to hear as many details as possible concerning his mission, since they were aware of the fact that he’d been ordered by our Highness to make a thorough inspection of the country’s economic circumstances and afterward to submit proposals to the king as to how the huge impoverishment pressing upon the countryfolk could most successfully be alleviated. The letters he had published at the Öxará Assembly stated explicitly that he possessed full and complete access to the authorities’ records and could demand that the authorities answer to him in any matter whatsoever, just as he saw fit, that it fell to his jurisdiction to investigate the cases that the Chancery deemed to have been dubiously prosecuted, and that he could demand retrials in cases he determined to have been misjudged and consequently bring those responsible to justice. He was open toward people about most matters and inquisitive about their conditions, but was unwilling to go into details concerning his mission and even less talkative when it came to his authority; instead he came across as the most self-effacing and soft-spoken of men, asking companionably about all sorts of things as if his closest neighbor for most of his life happened to be the person with whom he was currently conversing. He knew no less about the lives and families of hanged thieves and branded beggar-girls than he did of legislators and scholars, and he never held the things that he had seen and experienced over the heads of the persons he interviewed. It became apparent that his most cherished topics for conversation were old books and reminiscences, and those who had expected to be interrogated by some no-nonsense authority about the evil deeds that burdened their consciences were awestruck that his conversation should focus primarily on an old strip of parchment or some useless, miserable old booklet.
This particular autumn day all was quiet in Skálholt—no one had the slightest inkling that anything was afoot, except that it had started to freeze, causing the stench of rubbish and mire particular to the place to diminish slightly. She arrived between matins and prime, the time when folk lie sleeping most soundly, and because of her familiarity with the parish grounds she did not have to inconvenience anyone not belonging to her family; instead she rode straight up to her sister’s window and rapped upon the pane with the head of her riding crop. The bishop’s wife awoke and looked out the window to see who had come. By the time the madam reached the doors Snæfríður’s attendants had left, leaving her standing alone with her luggage behind the house. They conversed quietly in the madam’s loft the whole morning, until the moon sunk down and the housemaids started slamming doors and stoking fires in the front part of the house; then they lay down to rest. Around tierce, when the madam went downstairs, Snæfríður had just fallen asleep. She slept the whole day, and no one knew that a new visitor had arrived.
When the bishop’s wife sent a message to the archpriest Sigurður that he was not to eat his evening meal in the servant’s quarters, but rather at the bishop’s table in the Grand Salon, the learned man of God began to grow suspicious, and he put on his old sleeved dress-cassock, threadbare and glossy, then fetched out his dusty and shrunken boots from under his bed and pulled them onto his feet. However, when he arrived at the Grand Salon at the appointed time, no one was there except for Guðrún, the bishop’s adolescent elder daughter, who walked in and out and snorted when she saw him as if she’d caught a whiff of something rotten. The tables had been set with tablecloths and polished dishes and lustrous pitchers, and two candlesticks with burning three-stemmed candles. Presently the assessor’s secretary walked in, a young man, graduate of the cathedral school at Hólar and baccalaureus* at the university in Copenhagen. He glanced at the archpriest but did not greet him, and instead started circling the room, flicking at the wainscoting with a finger, crooning vain refrains of Latin hymns.
The archpriest took heed not to look up, but could not refrain from muttering, “O tempora, O mores,”* as he gave a low cough.
Soon afterward the bishop made his entrance, his bearing exaggerated, his crucifix hanging from a chain round his neck, broad, sleek, flushed, and radiant, diffusing his evangelical charitable embrace to all in good faith, smoothing away every wrinkle, every knot, because the Lord’s sufferings proclaimed joy, a friend to all because the Lord’s will is that all men be redeemed, honoring each man’s word because no heart remains closed to the Holy Spirit. By the time he reached his finale his cold gray eye had gained the upper hand. Of his smile nothing remained but the creases, like ripples left in sand after ebb tide; and thus was the bishop’s comprehension of things made manifest, in a way profoundly precluded to most.
Arnæus emerged from his bedroom with hardly a sound and greeted the men respectfully. He was pale-complexioned, the gap in his chin wider than it had been sixteen years ago and his eyelids heavier, but his peruke was as carefully curled as ever, his clothing just as precisely tailored; when he looked at something he saw reflexively not only everything around it, but also everything beyond it and behind it. He apparently did not expect any surprises here and immediately took his seat, and the bishop, the master of the house, followed his example as if to sanction his action, and bade Reverend Sigurður take his seat opposite the assessor.
The bishop’s wife and her sister Snæfríður walked together into the hall: he is situated opposite the doorway and sees her come in. When he realized who had come he immediately stood up and walked over to her. She was as slender as of old, though the clumsy and excessive suppleness of her childhood, when she had moved like a foal, had given way to an adult woman’s dignity. Her hair was just as airy and lively, yet both her hair and her eyebrows had darkened by degrees. Her eyebrows were raised higher than before, and her lips, which before had been open, were now closed, while a semblance of mournful distraction appeared in the radiant azure of her eyes. She was wearing a laced mantle, pale of hue, as if both blue and red had been used to discolor the other. He reached out to her with both hands and in his soft, dim voice spoke words he had not spoken in sixteen years:
“Lady Snæfríður.”
She extended a hand to him and bowed courteously, without a trace of delight, looking at him with an air of remote blue grandeur. And he hastened to add: “I know my dear friend foregoes such plaisanterie,* but she was so young when we parted, though it seems to have been only yesterday.”
“My sister has come to visit me,” said the bishop’s wife, with a smile. “She will be my guest for several days.”
Snæfríður greeted all the men with handshakes and they stood up one by one, and her brother-in-law the bishop took her in his arms and kissed her.
“We must celebrate such a distinguished visitation,” said Arnæus as the bishop embraced an
d kissed her. “We must drink to her health, with Madam Jórunn’s permission.”
The bishop’s wife said that she did not dare to serve her empoisoned wine, least of all to the assessor and his dear friends, old and new, when she knew that he had claret at hand, and he asked his secretary to order the valet to bring in a bottle of claret. It was to no avail though Snæfríður begged to be excused from such an honor by claiming it improper for magnates to drink to the health of poor farmers’ wives; the assessor bade her be unafraid, saying that in this gathering there would be no drinking to old maids. Then he filled their glasses, lifted his cup, and drank her health. His table-companions followed suit—all except the archpriest, who poured only a drop of soured whey into his own glass, saying that he did not partake of wine, least of all at evening, but he sincerely wished all those well who raised their cups, with God’s blessing, in a happy hour. Their guest looked up, though she purposefully guarded her eyes against meeting theirs, lifted her cup once for all of them, moistened her lips, and opened them in a modest, maidenly smile, displaying just a touch of the instinctive sarcasm that ran in her blood; her teeth were slightly forward-jutting, but she still had them all, as white and even as ever.
When they had finished their toast they found nothing more to say, so the bishop closed his eyes and clasped his hands and started to say grace. The others bowed their heads silently, and the bishop’s daughter sneezed. They all responded amen and the bishop’s wife served thick raisin porridge from a polished tureen into small bowls painted with flowers, and though she enveloped the dining room with her winsome, motherly smile, her pupils were dilated and her eyes stingingly hot; red flecks appeared on her cheeks. The assessor glanced at the archpriest, who was ascetical, hunched over his whey.
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