The Snow on the Cross

by Brian Fitts

  I thought about the raid the entire trip back to Greenland, and even to this day I still think about it. I had never forgotten those shrieks, or smelled the scent of wood smoke without thinking back to those burning buildings.

  ***

  When I went back to my church in Greenland, I was surprised to find Thordhild kneeling there before the wooden cross, praying. I didn’t mean to interrupt her, but she saw me and motioned me to come inside.

  My face was stained with blood and smoke, and the scent was trapped deep within my clothes. Thordhild wrinkled her nose at my appearance, and she told me she would have Malyn fetch me some water so I might wash the grime off. I told her I appreciated her gesture.

  “What happened?” she asked in a small voice. I told her.

  “Eirik was a man possessed,” I said, trying to keep the rage from my voice. “He and his men slaughtered them all, all except the ones who escaped.”

  Thordhild wiped some tears away, and she looked at me in all seriousness. “I tried to stop him, Bishop. I prayed to God to stop him, but He didn’t. I prayed to God to do something, and He did. He sent you with Eirik. God put you in that boat and took you to the Isle of Kells.”

  I shook my head. Did having faith suddenly mean you lost your mind in the process? “Thordhild,” I said, as calmly and as rationally as I could. “God did not send me to the Isle of Kells. Your husband abducted me and made me watch the slaughter as one of his cruel jokes.”

  But Thordhild refused to believe the rational explanation I tried to give her. “It was a sign,” she said.

  I sighed. The trip from the Isle of Kells had left me weak and hungry, for Eirik refused to let me eat on the entire voyage home. “I think I need some sleep now,” I told her. “You may ask Malyn if she will bring me some food, and I can speak with you some more in the morning.”

  Thordhild nodded and left, touching me on the shoulder as she passed. I tried to sleep, but my dreams were filled with smoke and my mind was full of many unanswered questions. Thordhild believed I was making progress with Eirik, but all I saw was his fury directed more towards me each passing day.

  ***

  Malyn came to me after I had finally drifted off into a black haze that could have passed as sleep. I heard her enter, and I opened my eyes. She was smiling, and she knelt down, touching my face.

  “I am glad you returned, Bishop,” she said.

  I sat up, my head a bit dizzy. “I have come to the conclusion that I am blessed,” I said as I took the food she had brought. “I am blessed to have you here to help me, and I am blessed that even though the weather grows colder, I have a fire to huddle beside, and I am blessed that my head is still attached to my shoulders.”

  Malyn smiled again. “What did you say to Eirik on your voyage?”

  I stopped eating long enough to think. “What are you talking about specifically?”

  “When he came in his was shaking and pale. Thordhild put him to bed and gave him some hot broth, but it looked as if he was scared about something.”

  “The ecstasy of the battle has left him,” I said, eating some more as I spoke. “I suppose he is drained.”

  “No,” Malyn placed her hand on my knee. “You said something to him that frightened him. What was it?” I realized that was the reason Malyn was so happy this evening. She was taking pleasure in the fact that Eirik was suffering.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I said many things to him. I told him Olaf was going to kill him, perhaps?”

  Malyn shook her head. “He is not afraid of Olaf. He has said so many times. You said something else. Did you talk about your god to him?”

  “Hmm,” I chewed on a piece of fish, trying to remember. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  The truth was, Eirik did not go to bed because he was frightened. He was growing sick, and he coughed endlessly. I could even hear him at night hacking and spitting. He had inhaled too much smoke on the Isle of Kells, and it had destroyed his lungs. Now, truly, Eirik thought it was retribution by God against him, and I encouraged him to think that, but I had some knowledge of medicine, and I had seen what the smoke had done to the peasants of France as the Vikings burned their villages. They too, coughed until they could no longer breathe. The same thing was happening to Eirik, and I began to worry he would die.

  I went up to Brattahild to visit the sick Viking, but he turned me away. Apparently he was blaming me for his troubles, and I stood outside of his door, listening to him cough until his face turned purple. I began to worry about Malyn, and she, too, was growing frightened with each passing day.

  “He will live, right?” she asked me one night in a timid voice. We were gathered by my fire one impossibly cold night, for the darkness of winter had hit with a blinding fierceness. Thick drifts of snow swept around my church, and I never ventured outdoors for the cold. I spend all of my time freezing and worrying about how I would stay warm. Wood was scarce, and the Vikings were burning dried cattle dung for fuel. It smelled unpleasant, but it burned quite well.

  “He should live,” I said, but the truth was, I didn’t know. How could I know? Only God knew, and even if the man did live, he would never be quite the same again. Smoke and flame had seared his lungs, and I began to fear that I was the cause. If I was the cause, then I had effectively condemned poor Malyn to die as well. These thoughts always worried me. If Eirik had died on the Isle of Kells, his body would have remained there, for it was Viking custom for the fallen to be burned on the battlefield so their spirit could rise in all haste to the Halls of Valhalla. A silly superstition, but one that would have saved Malyn. Now, with Eirik back in Greenland hovering between life and death, who knew? If he died here, Malyn would die as well.

  “He should live,” I repeated, as if saying that would make it nearer to the truth. I knew Malyn had faith in me, and again I thought about how I should have taken her to Leif that night.

  “Eirik told me we will have bad storms this year,” Malyn remarked. “He says the tide is down too low and the wind is coming from the north.”

  “Eirik is quite the wise man,” I murmured. “What does Thordhild think about him?”

  Malyn shrugged. “She said she thinks he will die. Soon. But that is not what you say, is it? He will live, and I will live until you convert him, or persuade him not to take me with him.”

  Poor, poor, Malyn. The monks at Toulouse should have composed a hymn just for her. She was in denial. She was holding out hope that Eirik was going to convert. The room had grown noticeably colder, and I began thinking about the fire the North Men had lit upon my arrival. How good would that fire have felt right then?

  ***

  The sun did not emerge the next morning. Instead, the moonlight made the heavy piles of snow glare, and it nearly blinded me as I opened my door to trudge out into the deep, deep snow. It was over my boots, almost to my knees, and my breath steamed in front of me. I had never felt air so bitterly cold as I did that day. The cold drew icicles over my bones and made me quiver. But I saw the smoke rolling out of Brattahild, so at least Malyn was warm today. I took my cross, the one Leif had given me, and hung it over the door to my church on a small dimple of stone that stuck out a fraction further than the rest. I shut my door and looked at it from the outside. It was a nice touch, and it made the church seem holier for some reason. My other cross, the golden one, I gripped in my hand as I tramped through the snow toward Brattahild. It was time to be a good Christian and visit the sick, I had decided.

  When I reached the door, I was panting for air, and I waited a moment to collect myself before pounding on it. Thordhild greeted me, and she seemed truly glad that I had come. I stepped inside and shook the snow off of me like a dog coming in out of the rain. I stood beside the large fireplace and began to drip. Malyn was there, and she brought me a cup of mead, for which I was grateful.

  I could hear Eirik coughing in the other room. I looked at Thordhild, and she shook her head at me. Eirik had been bedridden for a week now, and he was losing his
strength. He did little but sleep and cough. The coughing always exhausted him to the point of sleeping until he was awakened by another bout of strong coughing. It was a cycle, and it was impossible not to feel a little sympathy for the man.

  “May I speak with him?” I asked Thordhild.

  “He doesn’t want to see you,” she told me. “But I think he’s just being stubborn. I think a visit from you might be good for him.”

  When I saw the man there in his bed, I knew immediately that Malyn was going to die.

  Eirik turned his head as I entered the room, and I saw how his eyes had recessed into his head, like they were sinking. He did not look so grand lying down. Now he looked like any other man.

  If I tried to keep him alive, then Malyn would live a bit longer. If I turned away from him, he would die, I was sure of it. I had seen the Vikings gathering wood for the fire, as if they knew what was coming. I pulled up a stool and sat beside his bed, a gesture I had done many times for the suffering of Le Mans.

  “What do you want, Bishop?” Eirik rasped, his usually booming voice dry and thin. “To gloat? To tell me this is what your god has done to me?”

  Poor, confused man. I shook my head. How could I make him understand? “Convert for me, Eirik.” I whispered to him. “Convert to the true faith, and perhaps God will spare you.”

  Eirik closed his eyes. “Never.”

  The stupidity of the man! I had to try reasoning with him. I knew Malyn was waiting in the other room. I pulled out the golden cross and held it over the large Viking. “Look here, Eirik,” I said. “This is the icon of your salvation. These are the emblems you have raped from the monasteries for your own greed. But,” I paused for a moment, waiting for Eirik to open his eyes. “But what if I told you my God has possessed me with healing skills? I could ease your pain, and you could get out of bed, perhaps?”

  Eirik opened his eyes, first glaring at me and then at the cross I was swinging over him. I wanted to scream at him, to put him out of his worthless misery, to take Malyn home with me to Le Mans where she would be safe. I did not care about this man’s soul. I was doing it for Malyn, and God will have to forgive me for that.

  “Think about it, Eirik,” I said. “Why are you so afraid? Do you regret what you have done, now that it could mean your death? You saw the eyes of the monks at Kell. Did you not think they were cursing you? Condemning you? Calling down the might of God to stop you?”

  I watched with slight satisfaction as Eirik’s face whitened. I knew he was thinking the very words I had uttered, and now that I had expressed them, the message was sinking in. “What about the others? The monks at Lindisfarne? Tours? Abbeville? The years of slaughter you have wrought upon the innocent is coming back to greet you. But there is a chance for you, yet.” I waved the cross over him again. “God can forgive you, even after all of the crimes you have committed. Think about that.”

  Fear had always been a most effective tool for conversion, and I watched as Eirik gasped for air, fighting for his next breath only to explode in a burst of coughing. “You call for me when you are ready,” I said in a low voice. “Otherwise sit here and die.”

  I left Eirik trembling for air, and he was coughing so much I did not know if he heard my last words to him. I left anyway, shutting the door behind me and muffling his hacks.

  Malyn was looking at me with hopeful eyes, and I noticed she was absently rubbing the long scar on her arm, almost as if trying to wipe it away.

  The coughing sounds ceased. I shared another cup of mead with Thordhild before I decided to venture out into the snow again. I couldn’t leave my fire for very long for fear it would burn out, and I didn’t cherish the thought of going out into Eirik’s cattle pasture to dig up more fuel.

  “He may convert,” I told Thordhild later after she had sent Malyn out. “But only if he is truly afraid is his going to die.”

  Thordhild sighed. She looked tired of being her husband’s caretaker. It was a sign that worried me.

  “Do you have enough fuel for your fire, Bishop?” Thordhild asked. “You may help yourself to our stock, if you find yourself running out.”

  “Thank you, madam.”

  Thordhild leaned toward me and said in a slight voice, “I don’t think Eirik will live to see the spring.”

  She was almost right.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Fall

  I spent most of that dark winter wrapped in prayer in my church. Thordhild would come when the weather permitted and we prayed together. Whether or not Thordhild converted out of fear for her own safety no longer mattered. Her faith was at least as strong as my own, and she was devout in her beliefs. Each day she came, bringing me bowls of food or pitchers of mead to shake the chill off, she gave me reports on Eirik’s health.

  His cough was not as persistent as it was, and he seemed to be gaining some strength. It was a mixture of good and bad news. As much as I despised Eirik the Red, he could not die and take the girl with him.

  “Has he mentioned me?” I asked Thordhild.

  “Some. He told me he is impressed that you’re surviving the winter.”

  I would not have survived the winter if Thordhild and Malyn had not been taking care of me and seeing to my needs. To them I was endlessly thankful, but my thankfulness seemed balanced only by my selfishness. I simply did not want Malyn to die, and I kept feeling that same plaguing emotion I felt when I saw her and Leif looking at one another. I would not call it love, or even lust. Perhaps I had been too sheltered by my church, but I hated Eirik for choosing when the girl would die.

  I had never hated anyone my entire life until I arrived in Greenland. Being a Bishop of Le Mans, I was filled with the helpfulness and kindness that go with that position. I rarely ventured away from my church, but I had many visitors, and I greeted each one of them with love and respect, even the peasants who came to confession. Although I felt I could not help them with their troubles, I never hated any of them, nor blamed them for interrupting my daily routines. It was a part of the life one has when one is devoted solely to the church. Even when I heard the first tales of the Viking attacks, how could I have hated them? I was curious about them and distraught at what they did to my people, but they were an enemy with no face, and so I could not hate them. I could pray for them, bless them, give them absolution for their sins, but I could not hate them.

  But Eirik the Red I hated. And at the risk of incurring the wrath of my own God, I longed for the day that would see him in hell. But he could not die. It was foolish of me to think he would live forever, after all, the man rode carelessly into many numbers of battles. Any stray arrow or spear could have found him and struck him down. Now he was sick, and that was a different story. The Vikings assumed he was dying, as did Thordhild. I refused to think about his imminent death, and what it would mean to Malyn.

  Would my selfishness have been the cause of Malyn’s death? It was a question I asked myself many times over. I could have put her on the ship with Leif, but I did not. I began to think the constant darkness of the winter was playing shadows over my very soul, and it was a decision that haunted me every day until now.

  I had seen death many times. I watched the first wave of peasants coming to my cathedral after the first Viking attacks, dying there on my floor, their arms raised, asking for absolution. Bjarni’s head, rolling across the ice plain at my feet, my brothers ripped apart during the battle on the Isle of Kells, these deaths, while they saddened me, did not fill me with the kind of despair that was agonizing me about Malyn. I could not love her; it was a sin for me. Yes, I could love her as a child of God, but not in a physical sense. Not ever. My vows were sacred, although I had known certain friars in my country who were known to take liberties with the ladies in their flocks, they were hypocrites, and they did not heed the vows made to the Lord.

  I would look out of my window and see the girl there on Brattahild, wrapped tightly against the snow, gathering sticks or dung, or even feeding the livestock, and I wondered som
etimes if I should resign my position as a bishop and apply for the title of a friar.

  ***

  Later, when the snowfall ceased for more than two days in a row, Malyn came bounding down to my church, her face glowing from the cold air. I ushered her in and sat her near the fire.

  “Eirik’s cough is gone,” she reported. “He was up today, walking around his home. Already, the color has returned to his face, and he seems to be recovering fully.” She looked at my face, which I assume looked either distressed or unhappy. “This is good news, right?”

  I nodded. “Of course it is,” I said. “Very good news, indeed.”

  I thought about what Eirik would say to me now that he had recovered on his own, without any help from God. Would he kill me now that I had not proven I had the sway of his life or death in my power?

  It was as I had feared. Eirik came to my door, pounding on it, shouting for me a few days later. I slowly opened the door, wishing I had my dagger handy, for I had glanced out the window and saw the Viking, axe in hand, as he came to me. It would have marked the first time Eirik himself had come to my church, even though he was the man who had built it.

  “Eirik, greetings,” I remarked as I opened the door, hesitating whether or not to open it the entire way.

  But a hand reached in, hooked onto the front of my robe, and I felt myself being dragged out into the snow. The snow immediately saturated my clothes, and I began shaking as the wetness froze against my skin. I got to my feet as quickly as I could to prevent any more wetness from seeping in, but the damage had already been done, and it would take me days to warm up again.

  Eirik took the cross from over my church door and held it up for me. “I told you,” he rumbled. “Your God apparently has decided to let me live after all.” He hurled the cross away from him. It sailed end over end and plopped in a deep drift vanishing from sight. I tried to mark where it had landed for later retrieval, but Eirik had me and was shaking me profusely.