The Snow on the Cross

by Brian Fitts

  I nodded, but did not speak. Instead I sipped my mead and wondered if I was growing a bit too fond of the drink.

  “You were missed,” I finally said, speaking only God’s truth. “But I am here for a reason, and that is to spread God’s truth to your people.”

  Thordhild nodded. Eirik looked wistfully at the door.

  “There is nothing you can tell me, Bishop, that I will accept,” said Eirik, his voice echoing around the room. “I will not change my faith for you or for my king.”

  “Then you will die,” I said flatly. “When Olaf’s soldiers come, they will hunt you down and kill you. If I cannot get a conversion, then I am ordered to bring your head back to the king.”

  God excuses liars when they are lying for the sake of salvation. Even though I knew I would never cut off anyone’s head, I knew King Olaf’s death sentence on Thorvald, Eirik’s father, was for his head, and I was hoping to scare Eirik with what I knew. I had not thought far enough ahead to realize what I would do if Eirik simply got angry enough to take my head by my saying those words to him.

  Eirik actually laughed. I suddenly hoped he didn’t think I was challenging him.

  “Is that a fact? Come, little Bishop, take my head now, because I will save you the trouble of trying to talk me into your faith.” He handed me his axe, which I promptly dropped. It was unbelievably heavy. Nevertheless, I managed to pick it up, but I knew I could not swing it.

  Eirik saw me pick up the axe, and he nodded. “I have been watching you, Bishop,” he said as I struggled with the weapon. “I am surprised you’ve managed to survive here this long. How will you get through the winter?”

  “My God will see me through,” I said, putting the axe down. “He has saved me this far, and I will not die here on Greenland, I have no reason to.”

  Those last words seemed to resonate with Eirik, as if he was suddenly remembering the misplaced axe strike on the beach and the raid on his hunters during the night. Both times I had been spared. Perhaps Eirik was wondering if I truly was leading a blessed life. Perhaps he was realizing his gods were doing nothing to save his men from countless slaughter. Maybe I was indeed the messenger sent to deliver him. I let Eirik think all these things.

  I didn’t hurry to tell him otherwise.

  ***

  As I left Eirik’s house, I saw Malyn sitting with her back to the stone fence, sobbing. She had abandoned her sticks, which lay scattered all around her, and looked as if she had given up. I didn’t know if I should go to her and comfort her or not. I decided since she had not seen me, I would go on to my church and stay there. I knew Malyn would come later that night, or what passed for night in this strange land, and I would see her then.

  I had just gotten my fire roaring again, and the chill from the stones of my church vanished, leaving me in warm comfort. I settled on the bench and began reading over my pages of parchment I had recorded long ago. Since I had lost all track of time since my arrival (and the sun never set to mark the days) I was unaware of how close we were to the onset of winter. I knew Leif said it was close, and I assumed he would know, but I couldn’t help think about Eirik’s next planned raid. The monks on the Isle of Kells were noted for their libraries, and I knew they would be Eirik’s first target. Absorbed in my reading, I almost didn’t hear the faint knock that sounded on my door.

  It was Thordhild, and she entered without my invitation. I humbly stepped aside and allowed her to sit. It would be good to talk with her alone without Eirik’s presence.

  “My husband,” she said, looking around at my unassuming decor, “built this church for me a year ago. I wish we had better accommodations for you, Bishop Arnald.”

  Her statement confused me. There were a number of buildings near the sea I could have taken up residence in. Any one of them would have been better than this drafty structure. But I suppose Thordhild still bowed to Eirik’s wishes on certain issues. I began wishing she had brought some mead with her on her visit.

  “My lady,” I said. “I don’t think I can stay here much longer.” I was hoping to appeal to her weaker side so she would see my distress at being here. Perhaps she would take pity on me and let me see my homeland. Instead, she merely laughed.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  I frowned. “Back to Le Mans, madam. Back to France.”

  She stopped laughing and looked at me. I felt myself falling into the pits of her black eyes. “We cannot allow that. God has blessed your arrival here. Your presence here is the only thing keeping Eirik in check. God is here as long as you are here.”

  I shook my head. “My presence here has nothing to do with Eirik’s behavior,” I said, trying to get through to her. “He’s just waiting. I don’t know why he is waiting, but he would still act the same whether I was here or not.”

  “No, Bishop,” her voice had changed. “There is a change in him. You did not know him before. You have no basis for comparison.” She sighed. “I have been with him for many years. I know he has changed since you arrived. Since you have come, God walks these hills.”

  I tried not to laugh. Perhaps I was the messiah, after all. “What about his planned raid on the Isle of Kells? Surely if God was here, Eirik would not be thinking of going.”

  “There is no planned raid.” Thordhild said, staring into my fire. “Especially not on the Isle of Kells. I won’t allow it.”

  Her words almost echoed my own. Maybe she was the appointed one, not me. “Forgive me, madam,” I said. “But Leif said. . .”

  “Do not speak to me about Leif,” she snapped. “If Leif was talking about the Isle of Kells, it is probably only because he is planning a raid there himself. Not my husband.”

  I almost hated to bring up her name, but I had to know about the girl. “What about Malyn?”

  Thordhild’s eyes burned. “She is a wench and a whore. She is only in our household for my husband’s service, nothing more.”

  I was shocked to hear Thordhild speak about Malyn in such a manner. Surely a devout Christian would not feel that way about another, especially about a girl who had been forced to come here against her will. The decidedly charitable thing to do would be to give her freedom to go home.

  “I will convert Eirik,” I said. “Although I do not know how.”

  Thordhild shook her head and smiled mournfully. “Alas, Bishop. You will do many things while you are here, but converting Eirik will not be one of them. He will go to his grave clutching to the old ways. Him and most of his men.”

  “Then why do I stay here?”

  Thordhild looked at me blankly. “Because, Bishop, Eirik is afraid of you.”

  ***

  I did not believe Thordhild. Unless Eirik believed I had magic powers, I could not see how such a man would be frightened of me. No one in my entire life had ever been afraid of me, and such a man as Eirik, one who would leave the known world for this island and carve his home out of the rock here, should not have been frightened either. After Thordhild had gone, I trailed after her and stared at the landscape all around me. The gray hills, the dull grasslands, and the little scrub bushes: these were the things I saw. Not a home. Not a paradise on earth. I looked up at Brattahild. This was Eirik’s refuge. Supposedly this was his paradise.

  I thought about Eirik clutching to the old ways, as Thordhild had said. If he was afraid, he was only afraid because I represented something new to him, and he was a man who did not deal well with change. Eirik was not afraid of me. He was afraid of what I represented: the new faith. I thought this would be a good stepping stone to begin with if I was going to talk to him about his conversion, but my thoughts were disrupted by the crack of a stick. I saw Malyn, still breaking sticks in half, crying while she did so.

  “Malyn!” I called to her. “Come here, child.”

  She looked up and shook her head, going back to pick up more sticks. I prayed for her, and began to wish I had put her on that ship with Leif.

  Chapter Ten

  The Request

&nbs
p; Eirik the Red was a social man. He often gathered with his men at Brattahild to tell boastful tales and drink lots of mead. I watched these celebrations without cause almost on a nightly basis. I would sit outside my door and watch the procession of men come and go, and I would hear the laughter bounce through the hills. I was never invited to any of Eirik’s gatherings, but I assumed I was not missing anything but insults thrown in my direction.

  The key to conversion was to convert those around Eirik, I decided. Start with the others. I estimated Eirik’s settlement at approximately three hundred at the time. Not an impossible number, certainly not overwhelming, but daunting, nonetheless. I would go to the others first and convince them. I would show them Thordhild and Leif, two people highly respected among Eirik’s community, as examples of the one true faith. I made careful plans, and I made most of them in my head as I watched the men come and go from Brattahild.

  After the nightly revel had subsided, I saw Malyn slipping out of Eirik’s house to come toward my church. She held something in her hand, but I could not see what it was. It was the first time Malyn had come to see me in a while, and I truly felt glad of her company.

  We went inside, and I shut the door behind me. I shouldn’t have ever worried about any of the Vikings disturbing us. Only Malyn and Thordhild had ever actually entered the church while I had been here, but I could tell Malyn was still upset over something, and I wanted her to feel safe as she talked.

  “Bishop, you’ve got to help me.”

  “Of course, child.”

  She shook her head, brushing the hair away from her face where it was sticking to her tears. I saw what she had brought with her. A large silver dagger with an ornately carved handle, probably, if I remember the emblem correctly, taken from the monastery at Abbeville. But Malyn had not come to give me a gift. She pushed the handle of the blade into my hand and closed my fingers around it.

  “Kill me,” she whispered. “Let me die before I have to die with Eirik. Please, Bishop. I can’t do it. I’ve tried. See?” I saw the marks on her arms, now turning into thick scars. “If Eirik dies, I will be burned alive. I’ve seen it before.” She broke down, almost collapsing on the floor, her voice drowned out by her wails.

  Tears of my own welled up at the display. How could I not feel pity for this poor creature? I looked at the knife. Eirik was fond of his weapons, and I noticed the edge on the blade was filed to infinity. It would do a good job if used properly. There would probably even be little pain because the blade was so sharp.

  I set the knife down and knelt beside the girl. As much as she wanted me to, I found I could not. It was a mortal sin, even for the right reasons, I could not take a life.

  “Please, Bishop,” she asked again. “Please.”

  I shook my head. “I will convert Eirik,” I tried to explain to her. “Once he is converted this funeral rite will be no more. You will not have to die with him.”

  “No!” she sobbed. “Eirik will not convert! Don’t you understand that yet? He will not convert for his wife or child, why would he convert for you? He will die in the old ways, and I will die with him. Please, help me.”

  “Taking your own life is premature,” I said, helping her sit up on the bench. Her sobs had subsided quite a bit, and now she was thinking more rationally. “Do you honestly think Thordhild will allow Eirik to do this to you?”

  As I said those last words, I remembered Thordhild’s words about Malyn: She is a wench and a whore . . . No, it was unlikely that Thordhild would stop it, especially if it was the death request of her dying husband. She would see it through, even if it was barbaric.

  “Eirik is in no danger of dying anytime soon,” I told her, although I didn’t know for sure. For all I knew, Eirik could have died the next day falling through a crack in the ice on the lakes to the north. “You will outlive him, and God will protect you.” At the time, I was not aware of my lies, but time had made a liar out of me.

  “Will you protect me, Bishop?” the girl asked. “I would put my faith in you, if I thought it would help.”

  “I have no magic powers,” I confessed. “But I will speak with Eirik, if I can. I can get him to change his mind.”

  Malyn shook her head. “He won’t do it. As the chief of this settlement, he is entitled to his funeral rituals. His request will be fulfilled, and his will be the last. After me, there will be no more.”

  We talked some more for many hours until she finally fell asleep, exhausted by her troubles and her weeping. I covered her with the same fur blanket she had brought me my first days here as she lay on my bench. The swelling on her face had all but vanished, and her arm looked to be healing as well. As she slept, I picked up the dagger, feeling the weight. A lot of silver had gone into the forging of that weapon, and I kept looking from the knife in my hand to the sleeping girl. I could have done it then, sliced her while she slept and let her continue sleeping forever, but I did not. I did not do it for the same reason I did not go back to get her to come to Leif’s celebration, and the end result was the same.

  I put down the dagger and let her sleep. The seasons were changing, and as I stood at my door, I felt the first breeze of winter crispness waft over me.

  ***

  Sometime in the next week, the sun went down.

  I was out that day going for a walk over the hills to escape the stuffiness of my church. I had begun taking a daily walk to refresh my spirit. Sometimes Malyn walked with me, but most of the time Eirik had her doing some menial task or another, and so I walked alone. It was on one of these walks when the eternal sunlight vanished and I was left standing, shocked, in a puddle of thick shadows.

  I do not know which was worse, the sunlight, which I had just blessedly gotten rid of, or the months of night that followed, when the moon would shine off the ice and snow reflected light that was almost as bright as the day. I could not escape, and the moonlight blinded me and tormented me worse than any rays of sunlight could have. I stumbled back to my church, the shining, sparkling ice sending the images of moonlight burning into my brain. If the sunlight had driven me to madness, then it was the continuous moonlight that pushed me over the brink.

  Malyn had left the dagger with me, but whether it was for protection or in case I changed my mind, I was not sure. I would watch the stars during the darkest part of the day, and I tried to remember when it was I had seen stars last. Months, perhaps, but it felt like many years had passed since my arrival here. Sometimes Thordhild would come to my church and request we pray together. She began making this almost a daily habit, and each day I would let her and we would offer our prayers to God. I had not seen Eirik in recent memory, and I began to wonder if he was on another hunting expedition, but when I asked Thordhild about it, she would narrow her eyes and not speak.

  I found out the truth from Malyn. Eirik was at the seashore, readying his ships.

  “Readying them for what?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. “Not a fishing excursion.”

  Leif had not lied to me, and it was Thordhild who had been concealing her husband’s preparations. Apparently, according to Malyn, Thordhild was not able to convince Eirik not to go raid the Isle of Kells. Eirik simply went about making preparations on his own, ignoring Thordhild’s pleas.

  “You could stop him,” Malyn told me. “You could go talk to him.”

  I looked at the dagger I had set by the fireplace. I had been using it as a poker for my fire.

  “I think there is only one way to stop Eirik,” I said. “And it is not through the power of prayer.”

  Malyn followed my gaze to the dagger, and her eyes widened. I saw her look and quickly shook my head. “No, not that. I couldn’t do that.”

  Malyn picked up the dagger and handed it to me. “He is at the beach, near the rocks. He is preparing six longships: fifty men each.”

  I did the math quickly. “You mean he is taking almost every man in the settlement.”

  Malyn nodded. “Will you go?”

  I ended up go
ing down to the beach later that night (or what passed for night during these winter months) with the dagger Malyn had given me tucked within my robes. I certainly hoped I would not have to use it.

  I saw the ships lined along the shore, straight and proper. Eirik was there, barking orders at his men as I saw spears, swords, and armor being thrown into the boats. Shields were lined up carefully along the sides of the ships, both for easy reach of the warriors and the protection of the oarsmen as they rowed. This was the moment of preparation. This was the moment these men had gone through before they sailed into my homeland. This was the act of resolve that pushed these men from mere pirates to barbarians. They were going, not to simply steal gold and silver, but to kill. And there was no way to warn my helpless brothers on Kell.

  I took long strides to the beach; some of the Vikings stopped loading to stare at me. I ignored them, instead walking directly up to Eirik, who seemed a little concerned I was there.

  “I cannot let you go,” I said. “The power of my God forbids it.” Once again, I was hoping to scare Eirik, and my only thought was that I hoped Thordhild was not lying when she told me Eirik was afraid of me, or it would have been an unhappy end for the poor bishop.

  Eirik laughed and pushed me aside, knocking me to the sand. “Where am I going, Bishop, that you do not wish me to go?”

  I got to my feet, looking at the instruments of war stacked within the ships. “You’re not going fishing, I presume? How long will it take you to sail to the Isle of Kells? Three days?”

  “Two, if the winds are favorable,” said Eirik flatly.

  “And what will you do once you reach the Isle?” I asked, stepping closer to the large Viking. “Praise my holy God at the monastery there?”

  Eirik turned to stare at me, and his eyes betrayed him once again. His anger was plainly visible, and I knew he was ready to lash out. “No, Bishop,” he said in a very low voice. “We are going to take what we find there and bring it back here. We will coat our blades with the blood of whoever stands against us either here or there. Now, step aside, for we are ready to depart.”