The Snow on the Cross

by Brian Fitts

  They turned me loose at the bottom of the hill and stood glowering at me. I felt no shame at my condition. I had been sick, and I was in a strange land, so I decided they could not judge me. They stared at me as if they expected me to begin floating, as if I was able to perform miracles. I looked back at them. It would have been too easy to dismiss them as mindless brutes, but so far these two Vikings had been my introduction to this breed of man, and it did little to impress me.

  “Come on,” said Bjarni. “What are you waiting for?”

  Brattahild was a sprawling range of pasture near the sea flanked on the edge by a large stone house. As I stumbled to the edge of the pasture where a rock fence had been piled in a straight line for an endless expanse, I could see shaggy cattle grazing mindlessly on the short grass. I estimated about twenty beasts, and I noted they looked quite different from our cattle in France. These animals had thick fur that hung in tangles over their bodies, unlike any type of beast I had ever seen. Some of them looked at me with their watery black eyes then returned to their grazing. Bjarni and Broin had dropped me, unceremoniously, next to the fence and began walking beside it toward the south, winding their way around the fence rather than climbing over it. I watched them go. I peered over the stone fence, which was waist high to me and must have taken many men to build, and saw the house on the other side of the fields.

  By now Bjarni and Broin were specks in the distance, but they knew I would eventually follow them to the house of Eirik the Red. It was my only choice other than beginning the tedious walk back to where I had come from, and I wasn’t even sure if I could find my way back on my own.

  Brattahild. It was the best pastureland in Greenland and so, of course, Eirik had claimed it for himself. The twenty heads of cattle grazing were seemingly oblivious to the cold. I, on the other hand, despite my new fur around my shoulders, was shaking. It was spring in Greenland, and I had heard it was one of the warmest seasons the men here could remember. I shuddered at the thought of winter’s approach. If it was this cold now, I saw winter coming with a white fury. The dead would not be as cold as I would be when winter eventually set in.

  I heard faint voices wafting over the grass, and I saw that Bjarni and Broin had circled the edge of the fence and were now approaching Eirik’s house. Another speck emerged from the house to greet them, and even from my distance, I could hear the power in the voice that shouted to his companions. It was Eirik the Red, and I had finally reached his home. One of the cattle looked at me and lowed gently. I looked into its eyes at its calmness before the slaughter. I knew how it felt. I forced my aching legs to move, and I began the trudge around the fence to meet my destiny.

  Chapter Four

  Blood on the Ice

  I walked with heavy steps around the stone fence. As I walked, I let my hand trail over the roughness of the rock to my left. What kind of endurance did it take for a man to dig up these large, flat rocks, haul them over these hills, and stack them so methodically as a fence around this field? It had to be high enough so the cattle could not step over them and roam free. If a man could do this, what else could such a man accomplish? Could such a man lead other men down the Seine River and butcher helpless monks? Such a man could lead other men as far west as their ships would allow and settle them in a frozen land. I looked at that man standing near his doorway. He stood a full head taller than either Bjarni or Broin, and they were not short by any standard. His eyes cut through me as easily as the axe he gripped. I felt small in his presence, and the closer I walked, the smaller I felt until I seemed truly dwarfed.

  Eirik the Red was his name, and he looked much like he did the first time I saw him standing on the beach. His hair and beard were blazing red, and his eyes held the look of one who would easily anger. I could see Eirik lifting his axe, his face as red as his hair, and cleaving his enemies with it. I began to wonder how much blood he had spilled against the ice in his travels.

  Bjarni was talking to Eirik, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I took another hesitant step through the fence opening, and I was standing on Brattahild. I wondered if Eirik would invite me into his home. My eye caught a glimpse of another building, smaller, off to the right and behind the house. It was the church he had built for Thordhild, a fact that I found out soon enough, for it was to be my home for the next two years.

  Eirik and Bjarni’s conversation died abruptly as they noticed my approach. I saw Eirik smirk as Bjarni stepped towards me.

  “Bishop, welcome,” Bjarni’s voice held a trace of laughter. “Welcome to Brattahild.”

  I could tell Eirik held little interest in me. I was a body, nothing more. What was worse, I could not speak their language. It was as if Eirik could see the weakness in me, and it made me feel even smaller. Eirik touched Bjarni on the shoulder and pointed to the church behind the house then, curtly, turned and walked into the shadows of his house, closing the door behind him.

  “Bishop, Eirik tells me you are to lodge in the church. He thinks it is the best place for you.”

  I looked at the little stone church. It didn’t look constructed very well, and I kept thinking about how well it would hold heat in the wintertime. It perhaps measured ten feet by six feet, not much bigger than my cell would be upon my return to France. I left Bjarni standing there beside Eirik’s door and walked slowly over to the church.

  I thought about my cathedral in Le Mans with its high spires and golden archways, the gardens out in the back courtyard, and the abundance of heat from the fireplaces placed at strategic spots around the building. This was a stone hut that threatened to topple over in a strong wind. I pushed on the wooden door and listened to the wind whistle through the cracks in the walls. There was a single bench that stretched the width of the church in front of what looked like a ragged wooden cross, slightly tilted, hanging by a thin rope from a rafter that spanned across the ceiling. This was the church Eirik had built for his wife. A single bench on which to pray perhaps and the only image of my faith Eirik could muster hanging in front of it.

  I kicked at some rocks that had collected near the door. What had I done to deserve this ending? I was so preoccupied that I did not hear Bjarni come up behind me and place his hand on my shoulder.

  “This is where your faith has brought you,” he said coldly. “It’s not real. It’s a heathen story.”

  His words echoed my own while on his ship, and they stabbed at me. “Come back to Eirik’s house tonight,” Bjarni continued. “He has planned a feast to welcome you. Tonight, you may speak with Eirik the Red.”

  It was a small comfort to be welcomed by pagans, but I needed food, and my appetite was beginning to return. I nodded and sat on the bench, staring blankly ahead at the cross that swayed gently from its rope. I stretched out my legs, hoping to relieve the burning that was shooting up and down them. Bjarni watched me for a moment, and then turned to leave. Where he went, I do not know. I assumed he returned to Eirik’s house to help prepare for the feast, but I would have been mistaken. He had, in fact, left with Eirik and Broin on a hunt to the north to seek wild deer that roamed there. I would not see them again until nightfall.

  The church I was lying in was a bit larger than I had guessed upon first sight. There was a small, although crude, fireplace in an alcove on the left side. Small clouds of ash were there, but they were very cold, as if no one had used it for a long time. I wondered if Thordhild had been here recently.

  I would need fire. Fire would help my frame of mind, I decided, and I stepped outside to chop down some of the scrub bushes that sprouted nearby. I say “chop,” but I had no knife or axe to cut with, so I attempted to pull one out of the ground with my hands. The roots were stuck deep in the frozen ground, and I could not move it. I pulled, yanked, tore, screamed, and kicked at the bush, but it still would not move.

  Perhaps I could have asked Eirik for his axe, but I did not know if he had taken it with him. Instead, I looked down at my hands. They were scratched and quickly turning an offended red color. The
re had to be another way. I had no skill to light a fire on my own, even if I had managed to get some wood. I watched the smoke rolling out of Eirik’s stone roof, and I felt envy jab at me. Perhaps Thordhild was inside. Perhaps she would help me.

  I left that little stone church and began walking back to Eirik’s house. By that time he was gone, and so I decided he would not mind my visiting Thordhild. I stood in front of Eirik’s door, wondering how such a large house could be built here. Although it was not large compared to some of the estates in France, by Greenland’s standard it was enormous, and it certainly put the other small stone houses to shame.

  I rapped on the door and waited. It occurred to me that even if someone answered the door, they would probably not understand what I was trying to say to them, as Bjarni was the only one who could speak my language. I noted the scratches on my hands had begun to bleed, which made for an even more pitiful sight. I knocked again, listening to the sounds within. Yes, someone was home, and as the door opened, I had the sudden, vivid image of an axe whistling down upon my head. There really was no telling what these brutes were capable of.

  But to my surprise, and relief, there was only a young girl standing there, mouth dropping open involuntarily as she looked at me. This was not Thordhild, I assumed, but merely a servant girl of some kind. Her dress was heavy cloth, and I imagined it was quite warm around her small frame. Her eyes were dark and round, and her skin had a brown tint to it. She was from southern Germania, I later found out, and had been captured on one of the Viking’s raids two years ago. Since she was from the south, she knew a little of my language, for which I praised God.

  Her name was Malyn, and upon our first meeting she seemed very afraid of me. I can see why now. My hands were dripping blood all over the ice, and my haggard appearance did little to comfort her. Here I stood, a pale old man, worn and sick, bleeding and cold, staring at the warmth of Eirik’s house like a lunatic. I even had a wild vision of pushing the girl aside and barging in to huddle by the fireplace. But I am a man of God, and I have my manners even in a godless place. I stood there and waited for her to speak, or at least give me a sign that she was not in shock.

  Of course, she eventually let me in, for she knew who I was. She had heard Thordhild talking with Eirik about me, and so she was not as surprised as I had imagined when she saw me. She bowed to me and let me inside where the heat washed over me and made me feel almost human again.

  As I sat down by the fire, she brought me clean cloths to bandage my hands. As Malyn wrapped them around my hands, I looked around at the majesty of Eirik’s home. It was simply decorated, mostly with draped furs and horns mounted on the wall. The stone fireplace flanked the main room I now sat in, and the table that stretched out behind me could easily sit twenty men. I had heard of these pagans and their mead-halls, but I had dismissed them as mere speculative storytelling. The ceiling was laced with interlocking beams that crossed to a point high above, giving the smoke from the fireplace ample room to swirl up and out of the house. Yes, I was impressed. Perhaps a man could live comfortably in this land, but only if he had the luxuries others were willing to give him or he had the power to take. Everything in his home, I realized with a cold feeling, had come from Eirik’s conquests. All of the silver cups and bowls sitting neatly in a row had been pillaged from ancient churches, and the fine wood of the table had been stolen from the lands near Rome on the Mediterranean Sea. Everything had a price marked on it with innocent blood.

  I looked at this young girl who was bandaging my hands. She was unremarkable, save for her youth, which she told me was nineteen. She was taken from her home when she was seventeen. Eirik, apparently, had become enamored of her looks and had insisted on taking her. Her story was not anything I hadn’t heard before. The monks, especially Jonah, had told me similar stories of the abduction of peasants by the Vikings who used them as slaves. This girl had gotten lucky. At least she was living in the largest home in Greenland when she could have been out digging rocks to fence off more pasture.

  I saw no sign of Thordhild, and I did not ask Malyn where she was. I simply sat and let the heat seep into my bones. The feast would be here tonight. Malyn had been in the midst of preparations when I knocked. It was strange that I noticed, but I had seen very little signs of life during my time here. Aside from the men who met me at the shore when I arrived, this girl was the only other soul I had seen here. Fourteen ships had come to Greenland with Eirik, at least that was the story, but I had barely seen ten men. As I began to wonder if I had come to the wrong land, Malyn offered me a cup brimming with steaming liquid. I sipped it. The honey-mead was rich and the sweetness of the fermented honey burned into the pit of my belly. I nodded in thanks. I had indulged in the drinking of wine often in Le Mans, but this was the first time I had tasted mead. I found it soothing, and it seemed to restore my strength.

  “I must finish my chores,” Malyn said in her strangely accented voice. “You may sit here and warm yourself until Eirik and the men return, if you wish.”

  I thanked her and almost considered blessing her, but I restrained myself. The wrong word could be taken as an insult, as I remembered my hasty remarks about Valhalla on Bjarni’s ship.

  Instead, I sipped more mead and watched the girl return to her baking. She was in the middle of pounding out flour into dough to make an impossibly huge loaf of bread. She had her back to me as she went back to work, and I settled by the fire, almost dozing. Brattahild was a rich place, but I wondered what Eirik had done to deserve such a reward for his crimes. I looked to the end of the room where a doorway led into a sleeping room. Perhaps Thordhild was here; perhaps Eirik had killed her and buried her out in the snow somewhere. I thought of the cold ashes in the church fireplace. Not used in quite some time.

  Malyn rapped the dough and flipped it over, shaping it like a lump of clay. Here was the result of Eirik’s conquests in the flesh. The human reward of looting. But Malyn did not seem mistreated. In fact, she seemed to be acting like any other servant in a large household: mindful to her tasks, bound by a sense of duty. She did not seem to be a slave. More like a daughter running the household.

  “Eirik has spoken many words about you,” she suddenly said, still working on the bread. I sat up, taking notice. “He said you will die by the first frost in the autumn because you will have no one’s protection.”

  My hand holding the mead cup shook, and I fought to steady it. “Are you sure?” I asked her. I saw her nod.

  “Thordhild is gone,” she said. “She left for Iceland four days ago. I don’t know if she will be coming back.”

  Malyn’s words struck me, and I felt the chill creeping over me despite the fire. “Thordhild is gone?” I repeated, trying to understand what Malyn was telling me. My only ally in faith. The one person who wanted me here. The one person I was counting on to help me with my mission: gone. I had a sudden desperate longing to return to Le Mans, to rush to the seashore and climb on a ship, any ship, and begin sailing south. I could not stay here without Thordhild’s help. Eirik would either kill me, or I would freeze to death in the snow.

  If Thordhild had left four days ago, then how long had I been in and out with my illness? I know now that I had been drifting in and out for over a week. I began to wonder if Thordhild had still been here, would I have been subjected to moving into the drafty stone church outside? It seemed unlikely. My depression wandered over me, and I sank down into my chair.

  “Where are you from, Bishop?” Malyn asked, and she sounded genuinely interested as she continued on the bread.

  “Le Mans,” I told her, trying to keep the misery out of my voice.

  “France,” she replied, nodding. “Your country borders my homeland. My father used to speak about Hugh Capet many times. He admired your king. He said he was a strong man.”

  “Alas, I do not think any king could help my homeland from the raids of these men.”

  Malyn knew I was speaking about the Vikings, and she looked somber for a moment, as i
f remembering the raids on her own land. She held up her hand where a long scar ran from her wrist almost to her elbow.

  “Do you see?” she asked me. “I am marked.”

  “Marked for what?”

  She turned her attention back to the bread she was feverishly working on, but not before I saw the glitter of tears spring up in her eyes. “Death,” she said, her voice trembling. “When Eirik dies, I have been marked to journey with him into the afterlife. I am told it is a great honor.”

  My own amazement overcame my speech, and I sat in silence. A custom of choosing loyal servants to die with their masters was something I had never heard of before. Certainly in the civilized world, one did not practice such brutal funeral rites. As I write this, my memory serves me well. The girl did die with Eirik two years later, burned alive with Eirik’s corpse. It was a sad thing to witness, for poor Malyn had no choice in the matter. The Vikings had praised her loyalty as they applied the torches to the wood beneath her. Malyn told me, much later after that day in her kitchen, that she would end her own life if given the chance. But somehow, she lacked the courage, and when she came to me one night in the church months later, she had asked me to end her life for her as she pushed the knife into my hand.

  It was not known how close to death Eirik was, and I told her he might live many years. I convinced her that her worries were pointless, for I did not believe the Vikings would carry through with their strange sacrifice when the time came. I even told her that she may outlive Eirik, and that taking her own life was premature.

  I was wrong. It would not have been the last time.

  But until that day came, Malyn seemed somewhat cheerful when she had the opportunity. I sat there and watched her cooking the feast, thinking she should have had a different life; one with choices that she would make, whether it be to have a family or to fall in love and marry, or stay at home to raise wheat. Eirik had taken those choices away from her when he captured her, and now it would seem he was going to choose when her life would end as well.