B0046ZREEU EBOK (5 page)

‘Once a man believes in his own death he’s doomed,’ observed Halldis. ‘Arnkel should let him go away.’

‘They hear the ghost at night,’ went on Thurid. ‘It sits astride the roof and drums on the turf with its heels until the whole house shakes. His widow can’t stand it. She lies in her bed with the covers over her ears, and won’t budge until it’s broad daylight. He’ll ride her to death, Thorgeir said. Her husband’s black ghost will drive all the reason out of her.’

That night I lay beside Halldis on the sleeping platform, and whispered in her ear. ‘Do the dead walk everywhere? Do we have ghosts at home?’

It was a while before she answered me. A turf fell away from the banked-up fire, and I could see the embers through the hole it made, glaring at me like a red eye.

‘Wherever the living are,’ whispered my foster mother, ‘the dead will be there too. No one wants to be cast back into the darkness beyond the world. We grow too attached to our selves to accept that. So the dead stay among us for as long as they can. Where they’re loved and respected, perhaps they can settle for a while. Where they’ve been hated, if they have the spirit for it they’ll keep the fight going for as long as possible. Already in Iceland the dead outnumber us, for we’re the third generation. They do their best to stay until we banish them.’

‘How can we do that?’

‘By forgetting. But that’s how fate tricks us all. You can’t forget on purpose, however hard you try. In fact it’s the opposite. Forgetting only happens when you’re looking the other way. To forget is the only way to lay a ghost for ever, but when you most need to do that you can’t use it. There are other spells, but none is so effective. They
last for a while, sometimes for long enough, until no one’s left alive who remembers any more.’

‘Is my mother a ghost now?’

‘Your mother was a good woman who did her best for you.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘It’s the only answer I can give you.’

I thought that over, and shivered. I didn’t fully understand, but I was sure that I did not want to live among ghosts. ‘Halldis?’

She started. ‘I thought you were asleep. Settle down, can’t you?’

‘If a person went to a land that was empty, where no people had ever been before, there wouldn’t be any ghosts there, would there?’

‘Only the ones you’d be bound to take with you. And now, for goodness sake, child, go to sleep.’

Orm and Halldis had no children of their own. Yet I learned from Halldis charms that will make a woman conceive, and prevent miscarriage and bring a baby safely into the world. I don’t know if she had ever tried to use them on herself. I could have asked – I wasn’t afraid of her – but I never thought of it, until my own son was born, and by then it was too late to ask Halldis anything. I’ve often wished I could have had her advice later; sometimes even after we had come back to Glaum I would ask myself what Halldis would have done in such and such a case. I’ve used her remedies all my life, though now I’m cautious about the spells. She made them innocently; we knew nothing about the new religion then. But I’ve since been given the knowledge of good and evil, and I’ve learned to take care.

We went to Frodriver again one summer when they had a big fair by the river. Thorgeir the packman and lots of other traders were there, displaying more fine wares than I had ever seen in my life. There were games as well, and feasting out of doors. Thurid was dressed in red with real gold brooches, and an amber necklace. She didn’t even notice me. She was talking to our neighbour Bjorn, who at that time had only just arrived back from Norway.

I found my old friend Kjartan, but he wasn’t a baby any more, and he didn’t want to play with me. He was fair and chubby, half the
height of a man, with a little axe thrust into his belt. He strode about, watching the men.

There was a fight. It was nothing important, only I’d never actually seen a man killed before. Someone split a man’s head open with an axe. It looked as easy as cracking a hazelnut, only the inside was not firm and white but wet and red. They hid the corpse in a clump of willows. I didn’t want to look, but something drew me. A few men were loitering nearby, talking quietly. Then Kjartan dashed past me and dipped his axe in the dead man’s blood. He was gone almost before I realised what I had seen. His eyes were shining as he slipped away, his little axe gleaming with real blood. That was the last I saw of Kjartan until years later I went to the Thing with Karlsefni and met him there. He grew into a strong, sensible man, very like Bjorn, and the farm at Frodriver flourished in his hands. They had a lot of trouble with witchcraft there after we’d gone to the Green Land, but Kjartan put an end to all that. He visited us once or twice at Glaumbaer. Karlsefni liked him.

Although my father was often at Arnarstapi, he never had much to say to me. Often Bjorn of Breidavik would be there too, and he was always urging my father to support him in some action against the Thorsnes men. When it was just my father and Orm they talked about the farm more than feuds. Perhaps there was nothing to say about me. I was well, Halldis was teaching me the things I should know. But I used to long for my father to notice me, and be silently angry when he didn’t. I had no idea what he wanted me to be or do, but I would have done anything to get a moment of his attention. Even now, it makes me angry to think of that.

I realise now I must have satisfied him. You probably can’t see it now, and indeed you ought not to, but as a young girl I was good looking. I knew it too, Halldis made sure of that. It didn’t mean anything to me, because my father never looked at me.

Other men did. By the time I was fifteen several men had approached my father to find out what his plans were for my marriage. Of course, a large estate came with me, so it might have seemed like a good bargain, but the rumour was already going around that my father was short of money. His heart had never been in his
farm; since Eirik went away west something in my father had gone too. He’d never wanted to settle down, but on the other hand he was never fully involved with the Breidafjord feuds either. He made up for it by entertaining lavishly, and at his feasts he would make gifts to his guests that everyone would talk about for months afterwards. It’s a way to achieve fame, I suppose, but not a provident one to take if you’re not well-off. Thorbjorn thought he was rich. After all, my grandfather had been a slave, although no one ever mentioned that any more.

Thorbjorn was twice the man his father had been, in terms of wealth, but he wasn’t interested in his land, and he made a poor husbandman. That’s my opinion now. As a child growing up at Arnarstapi I had Orm’s good management as an example right before my eyes. Orm and Halldis were like the man in the story who built his house upon a rock. My father’s house was built upon sand, and the sands were running out fast by the time I went back to him.

A house built on a rock. You say the rock is faith, and I say, yes, that’s true, but faith in God begins with faith in one’s self. Go on, write that down. I can see you hesitate, and now you’ve made a big blot, holding a full quill hovering over your vellum like that. I’m not speaking blasphemy. Isn’t God within us all? I repeat, Orm and Halldis built their house upon a rock, and the rock was in place ready when the news of the new religion first reached us. Faith in oneself, good management, a generosity built not upon show but upon substance. That’s what I learned from them.

I was fourteen when Thangbrand the missionary landed at Arnarstapi, and was going up to my father’s house, but he stopped at our house first. That was a miracle in itself: if he had gone straight to Laugarbrekka we might have heard no more about it. Thangbrand had already travelled over most of Iceland, and made many converts, some by the sword and some by magic. He didn’t need to use either with us. Halldis was already interested. Talk of the new religion had been going around for some time. Halldis and Thurid had discussed it at Frodriver, when we stayed there. Thurid was suspicious then, but my foster mother was interested in the idea.

‘This is a land of ghosts, but the gods have other things to do than
worry about that,’ Halldis said. ‘It’s all very well for a man at sea to pray to Thor, but here on land we’re overrun by demons, and more and more people are being driven off their land by the dead who refuse to lie quiet. This new power may be just the thing we need.’

‘It’s only politics,’ argued Thurid. ‘Bjorn told me what’s happening in Norway now. The king isn’t interested in ghosts. He wants our land.’

‘But perhaps this god offers a better fate than the old ones. Perhaps he gives us more choice about our own lives.’

‘Halldis!’ I had never seen Thurid roused before. I crept a little closer to the hearth. ‘I don’t know how you dare to talk about choices. How do you know what is listening to us, in the dark?’ I shrank back, although I knew she did not mean me. ‘Who are you to play around with unseen things?’

‘I’d still like to know more about this Christ of Thangbrand’s. I’m afraid for Gudrid too. She knows and sees too much already, and I don’t know how to protect her.’

I supposed Halldis had no idea I was listening. I shrank further behind the hangings, but she must have heard me move. ‘Is that you, Gudrid?’ she called. ‘Come in by the fire, and show us what you bought at the fair.’

I’d been given a silver piece, and I’d bought a knife that I could hang round my neck on a string. Halldis admired it, but Thurid said, ‘You take after your foster mother too much. You’re a lovely girl. You should buy yourself pretty things. Didn’t you look at the necklaces in Thorgeir’s pack?’

I didn’t answer. I watched Halldis test my knife with her thumb, and nod approvingly. ‘A good choice,’ she said, and I was satisfied.

When Thangbrand came to Arnarstapi, Halldis took from him the thing she needed, and found a god that suited her. She would have had us all baptised then and there, but Orm was more cautious. He took Thangbrand to my father first. Thorbjorn had no opinions about gods, but he’d been to the Thing that summer and knew which way the wind was blowing in Iceland. Christianity was becoming politic. Thangbrand had been sent by the King of Norway himself, and was a powerful man to have for an ally.

So, each of us having a reason of our own, we all made our way down to the sandy beach at Arnarstapi, one afternoon around midsummer.

And there I was baptised into the faith. It was a long way from here. But you must have been baptised in Iceland too. Do you want to forget that now? What did you feel, when the Cardinal sent for you, because only you could transcribe the story of an old woman from Iceland, who had gone beyond the boundaries of this world? You know, don’t you, that that’s why they want to have my story written down? You’re not at all like the young men I used to know. They wanted to be famous for their skill in arms, their friendships and their generosity. But I think you’re equally ambitious. I expect you’d rather be in Rome now than anywhere else in Christendom. I don’t think you like women very much, either. Am I right? Perhaps the monastic life is just right for you. I wouldn’t have wanted it myself when I was young. It’s different now, of course. I’ve nothing left to feel passionate about.

It’s wrong of me to torment you. You don’t answer back, only your ears have gone very red, and you bend over the manuscript as if you
were shortsighted, which you’re not, and you scratch away with that quill as if your salvation depended on it. Take no notice of my teasing. I’m an old woman, in her dotage, you may think. But I have been young and beautiful, and there were men once who could not take their eyes off me.

But now I’m worn out. I’d said we’d stop in the afternoons, and look, the sun’s gone from the courtyard, and soon it’ll be dark. The dark comes so suddenly here, it always takes me by surprise. I’m hungry, and so must you be. We’ve worked far too long, and we mustn’t make a habit of it. Stop writing, for goodness sake boy, I’m not saying anything to the purpose, and your hand must be terribly stiff. Stop, I said!

When I was fifteen I made a spell of my own. I never told anyone. I knew it was a dangerous thing to do, but I honestly believed then that I could make my own life the way I wanted it to be. I had a notion, even though I saw no evidence for it in the lives of those around me, that my fate was in my own hands. Arrogant, you think? Perhaps I was only looking for a way to survive. Certainly I didn’t like the idea of men weighing up my attractions, and the attractions of my father’s dwindling estate, and wondering whether to bargain with him for me. I wanted something else to happen. Spells concerning oneself tend to rebound. I’d never do anything like that now.

I chose my place carefully. For a moment I thought of the giants’ caves behind Stapafel but I rejected that spot with a shudder. I wanted to invoke a benign power, and I was scared of the demons in that wild country. Instead I chose the holy well at Laugarbrekka. It’s sacred to Freyja, and I’d always known it; it’s just a few yards from my father’s house. Women used to come there if they wanted a child. I nearly rejected the place because it’s so close to home, and I wanted something more exciting, more my own, but luckily I wasn’t arrogant enough to put myself above the other women. If I had been, I think my fate would have been far worse than it was.