And now it happened that they came to the door of the large steading, and still they had seen no one in the byres, no one in the storehouses, no one in the dairy, no one gathering snow to be melted for drinking water. Asta put her shoulder against the door and it swung open, and she stepped inside with Margret just behind her. The room was warm and humid, but dark, for no lamps had been lit. Margret and Asta stood still and peered about. In the master bedcloset, a figure rustled among the furs, and then a thin, high voice said, “Who is it? Who has come?” And Margret said, in a low voice, to Asta, “This stench I remember from many years ago. This is the stench of the vomiting ill, and, no doubt, partly the stench of death.” Then she spoke up and said, “It is Margret Asgeirsdottir and Asta Thorbergsdottir. We have a great fear of what we have discovered here.”
“You would have done better,” said the thin voice of Gudrunn Jonsdottir, “to have stayed where you were, even starving, than to have come here,” and her voice faded away as she fell back into the bedcloset. Now Asta put Bryndis in her foxskins down on the bench, and Sigurd huddled beside her, and Asta covered them with whatever furs she could find, so that they would get their warmth back, and then she and Margret went about the bedclosets and took note of the inhabitants, and these were dead: Osmund, his daughter, two servingwomen, and a servingman; Gudrunn seemed well enough, while her son, Ozur, appeared to be sleeping. A servingwoman and three servingmen were weak, but recovering, for it is the case with the vomiting ill that its course is straight. If a man goes to the bottom of it and does not find death, he will come up again with time.
And now it was with some dread that Margret and Asta began to minister to the living and see to the dead. Asta carried Osmund and the others out and buried them in a snowbank for the time being. Margret went to the storehouses and brought out dried reindeer meat and sourmilk. The first of these she seethed in broth, and with this she cooked some pieces of mutton, and she also found some salt to add to it, for Brattahlid was a rich farm, and sometimes in the summer when a fire was built for other purposes, such as butchering or washing clothes, the servingmaids made salt from the water of the fjord. In addition to these things, she found much dried dulse and dried angelica, and these, too, she added to the broth, so that it was thick and smooth and nourishing, and on this food, first the broth, then the bits of meat, then the sourmilk, the folk of the steading began to revive. Sira Isleif, they said, had gone off with one servingman to Ragnleif’s steading, upon hearing that Ragnleif was ill. This was some six or seven days before.
After feeding the folk, Margret and Asta went about and washed them with heated water, for all of them were covered with vomit and other dirt. Then they washed the floors and benches and beat out the furs in all the bedclosets and brought snow into the steading for clear, clean water. And these tasks took all of the rest of the day and part of the night, so that the two women were much fatigued when they at last went to the bedcloset they were accustomed to sharing. They lay with Sigurd on the inside, beside Asta, and Bryndis in her foxskins between them. Now Margret said to Asta, “Have you heard the tale of Sigurd Njalsson, when he was in the Northsetur and discovered the ship of Arnbjorn the Norwegian in the time of Bishop Arnald?” But Asta had not heard this tale. Margret said, “Here is what Sigurd said, ‘There is nothing more certain than that the foul air of a closed room where men have died of sickness is utterly destructive.’ ” And Asta said, “If he is right, then we will find it out soon enough.” And the two women went to sleep.
The next days passed in this way, with much cooking and some cleaning, and some feeding of the beasts, for Brattahlid had a large byre full of cows. Six horses ran about in a walled-in field, and the sheep were fed in a protected fold, for Brattahlid had plenty of fodder, as Gardar did. And each day one visitor or more would come from one of the surrounding farms to bring the news and ask for provisions, and at every farm one or two were dead, though not so many as at Brattahlid. From each of these messengers Margret asked news of Sira Isleif or his servingman, but no one knew of events at Ragnleif’s steading. To all of these folk she handed out sealmeat and blubber with a generous hand, until Gudrunn was well enough to sit up and give these things away herself. Gudrunn was much cast down by the death of her daughter, who had been a very pretty and appealing child, less so by the death of Osmund, for this she said she had expected all autumn. She clung to Ozur, who clung to her, and Margret saw that they would not be easily roused to take charge of the steading.
And now, by the Brattahlid calendar, which Sira Isleif himself had made, the time for Yule came on, although by Margret’s calendar it was still some eight days off, and Gudrunn asked Margret and Asta to slaughter and roast two sheep for the feast, as was always done at Brattahlid, and indeed on most of the wealthier farms, for Yule. And it was as they were getting ready to do this, building the fire, that Asta began to vomit, and so she was taken with the vomiting ill, and shortly after her the child Bryndis, and within three days they were dead. And now one of the servingmen was pretty fully recovered, and he carried Asta out of the steading and buried her with Bryndis in her arms in the snowbank beside the others. Margret was not subject to the sickness at any time, and Sigurd became only a little ill, but managed to hold onto his food, and this, Margret told Gudrunn, was the way folk recovered, by keeping their food inside them to fortify them. As there still had been no news from Ragnleif’s steading, a servingman who had a daughter living there went off to see how things stood with those folk.
One day Gudrunn was sitting up in her bed and sipping some broth, and she said to Margret, “How is it that you go about your business with such strength when you have just lately looked upon the death of Asta Thorbergsdottir? But folk say that this is not the first death you have looked upon.”
Margret did not reply.
“Folk say you looked upon the death of your lover with indifference though his blood spurted over your dress.” But she spoke in a neutral voice, as if merely curious.
Margret said, “Everyone has many chances to practice with death. If you have not, then you are indeed rare among the Greenlanders.”
“It is practice, then, that makes you cold?”
Margret turned back the sleeve of her gown and exposed her arm. The flesh was thin and wiry, the skin white and dry. Margret lifted her arm toward Gudrunn. “Many deaths have worn me down, and soon I will be as bony and hard as Death himself. Then I will be cold indeed.” She took the basin that had contained the broth and turned away.
On this same day, the servingman returned from Ragnleif’s steading, and this was his news, that Ragnleif had not been ill, after all, only somewhat injured from a fall on the ice, but some five or six days after the coming of Sira Isleif, many at the steading had fallen sick all at once, with only Sira Isleif, who remained healthy, and one old servingman to take care of them. The short tale was this, that Ragnleif’s wife, Finna, and his youngest child, Steinthor, as well as a servingmaid and her child and two serving boys who were brothers, all of these had died, but all the others were recovering. And this, too, had happened, that in the midst of the sickness some unknown men had broken into Ragnleif’s storehouse and taken all of the mutton and dried reindeer meat and a moiety of the sourmilk, so that provisions were low at the other farmstead. And at this news, Gudrunn grew angry at Margret and berated her for handing out foodstuffs to all and sundry with such a generous hand, for now they would suffer the curse of seeing strangers fat and satisfied while near kin went hungry.
On the day after this, a messenger arrived from Gardar, carrying news for Osmund Thordarson from Sira Jon, but he was not much surprised to discover the fate of Osmund, he said, for such an outcome had been speculated about at Gardar. It was said that a farmer who had a place at Dyrnes would take over two abandoned farms not far from Solar Fell and become lawspeaker. And the other gossip was that the vomiting ill had struck hard at Hvalsey Fjord, where some twenty were dead, and in the southern part of Vatna Hverfi, and around Herjolfsnes. Six
had died at Gardar and thirty survived. And Gudrunn counted up the dead they had heard of in Brattahlid and Isafjord, and this came to about twenty-five. Gudrunn said, “There will be others in the lonelier steadings that we will hear of after Easter.” But indeed, this was little the case, and the greatest death occurred at the largest farms, in the most thickly populated districts. After the messenger had spoken to Gudrunn, Margret took him aside and asked about Gunnar and Birgitta, who lived at Lavrans Stead in Hvalsey Fjord, but the boy had not heard their names among the names of the dead. “What then,” she said, “of this name, Olaf Finnbogason?” and the boy said this was not the name of one of the dead. Of Vatna Hverfi, he rattled on. He told her that Sira Nikolaus, of Undir Hofdi church, had been taken, as well as his “wife.” And folk estimated that he was a hundred years old. At least this was true, that when they carried him out, he was as shriveled as a child.
Not the least curse of this general sickness was that it took place so early in the winter, and folk and beasts had to endure many weeks of snow and storming before the coming of spring. Many who were weakened died, and beasts on many farms went hungry for too long too early in the season for them to survive, and so this was a bad winter, with deaths and bouts of hunger stretching past Easter. At Hvalsey Fjord, Orm Guttormsson was among the dead, and Astrid Gunnarsdottir and Maria Gunnarsdottir, one in the morning of the mass of St. Stephen and the other in that evening, and after their corpuses had been wrapped and set into a snowbank, Birgitta came to Gunnar and told him of the sight she had seen these many months before, of all of the children vanishing before her eyes as they were gathering seaweed beside the water. And she said, “It may be that I am being punished for my pride, for I was much taken with Gunnhild’s beauty, and Astrid’s lightheartedness and Maria’s fondness for me, so that now I am afraid to look upon the others, and I seek ways to humble my pride in them and avert this punishment.”
Gunnar asked if she had spoken to anyone of this sight, especially to Sira Pall Hallvardsson, and Birgitta said that she had not, that she had feared to talk of it. And Gunnar said, “Surely the priest can give you a penance, or some prayers to say.”
“But,” said Birgitta, “when I saw this disappearance I had Johanna within me, and it happened that she jumped with glee that I should see it, and therefore it seems that she carries ill luck with her, and spreads it like a contagion, though not suffering from it herself.”
“And it gives you little love for her, that is plain to see.”
“It seems to me that she will live and they will die, just as she, of all of them, has not become ill in this sickness, and she goes about to all the bedclosets and looks in upon them with a curious and unwearying eye.”
But Gunnar would not admit that this sickness was any different than any other spell of the vomiting ill had been, where many live and some die and no man can say ahead of time which way it will go for him. Even so, Birgitta would not be freed of her notion that Johanna was an uncanny child, and she avoided her when she could.
Now it happened that the spring came on, and Sira Jon sent out messengers to every district with the news that he would hold an Easter mass and a feast at Gardar, to celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord and the resurrection of all the souls of the dead into heavenly life, for, the messenger declared, Sira Jon often spoke to the folk at Gardar, and declared that God had much in store for those who suffered among the wastes of the earth, and toiled there for His glory.
There was a woman at Gardar named Olof, who was the daughter of Anna Jonsdottir, who had been in charge of the housekeeping at the steading, and Olof, although she was but twenty winters old or so when Anna herself died in the first year of Bjorn Einarsson’s coming, had taken over her mother’s position and now had the care of Sira Jon and Sira Audun, and the cleaning of the bishop’s chamber, which she carried out with great pains every three days or so, under Sira Jon’s orders, in anticipation of the new bishop. Sira Jon himself had moved into a tiny, dark chamber, much unlike his former room, and all of the furniture in this room consisted of some furs and lengths of wadmal and a small lamp, and this place was only large enough for him to stand up and lie down in, and he seemed to Olof to like it very much, for he spent a great deal of time there.
Sira Jon often fell into a state which the folk at Gardar referred to as “out of sorts,” and when he was in this condition he was especially alert to every sound and every trick of the light, and he looked at his servants as if searching through them. In these times, only Olof could approach him, and also in these times, he would go to his tiny chamber and come out again somewhat relieved. He would be especially impatient with his steward, a man about his age, whose name was Petur, and rage at him no matter what the news was; whether two cows had calved handsomely or whether seventeen lambs and goats had died, Jon took both sorts of news with equal anger. And so it came about that the servants at Gardar watched their master with even more vigilance than is usual among servants, and the great topic of conversation every morning and every evening was how Sira Jon seemed to be. Sira Audun often arranged his trips to other districts suddenly, when the general opinion was that Sira Jon was out of sorts. Folk considered that the two priests were not friends, although not yet enemies.
During the sickness it was the case that most people at Gardar fell ill, but some did not. Sira Jon did not, and Sira Audun did, although he recovered, and Petur the steward did not, and Olof did, and when this happened, Sira Jon went one day to where Petur was standing among the sheep, and he berated Petur. “Indeed,” he said, “you are beset with devils and abandoned by the Lord, and therefore it is you, Petur, who should die and take up your abode in Hell.” And then he declared, “It has come to me in a dream that the beasts of the field and the fjord are going to rise up and conquer, and you will be trampled by horses, then gored by cows, then trod upon by scores of sheep, and crushed in the embrace of a walrus, then carried to the depths of the sea by a whale, but even after all of these things are done, there will still be a stone of evil in you, and so you will be carried off to the icy wastes and left there.” And Petur, although a strong man, was somewhat frightened by this speech, and began to walk away from his master, which enraged Sira Jon even further, so that his voice, which had been low, and directed to Petur alone, now rose, and all nearby could hear it, and another man, an old servingman, led the priest away. Someone went to find Sira Audun, and though the door to his chamber was closed, he did not answer a knock, and could not be found. When Olof got up from her sickbed, Sira Jon improved, and he gave Petur some sheepskins. It was this miracle, the recovery of Olof, that prompted Sira Jon to celebrate Easter with a feast.
Sira Jon was much delighted with the coming occasion, and seemed hardly out of sorts at all. He especially enjoyed going among the storage chests and taking out the handsome silks and wallhangings, and adorning the altar and the walls of the cathedral with them. For his own wear he took out two separate suits of vestments, one white, shot with gold thread, for the early mass, and one gold with scarlet borders for the later mass. These articles had been carefully kept, and so were in good condition except for one or two small rents where the cloth had worn away. After the vestments, he went among all the altar furniture that had ever been gathered, and found the very best pieces, without dents or missing bits, and he cleaned these himself, with fine, pure sand brought in some years before especially for the purpose. After that he went to the kitchen house and among the storehouses, and he looked upon all of the stored food and ancient vessels of wine, and he brought out vats of honey, and wine from the time of Bishop Arni.
As the time grew closer, it seemed that he even wanted to look in upon the rooms where the guests would be staying, and watch the servingwomen beat out the reindeer skins and sweep down the floors. But as Good Friday drew on, Sira Jon seemed to Olof to grow more and more out of sorts, so that the servingfolk were afraid of his coming, and Petur the steward would not go into his presence. Now Olof went to Sira Audun’s chamber an
d beat upon the door so that he could not ignore her, and after some while of this beating and calling, he opened the door and let her in. And Olof told Sira Audun what she wished to do to assure good masses and a pleasant feast, but she said that she could not do this thing by herself, for Sira Jon was her master and she was a servant and a woman to boot. Sira Audun was greatly reluctant, and Olof sat with him for almost an entire morning, and would not leave his room, although he ordered her to. This was on the morning of Good Friday. At last, because of duties that Sira Audun needed to perform, he agreed with Olof, and she went away.
That night, Olof carried an especially rich dinner to Sira Jon in his room, with many kinds of food and in greater quantity than he could eat, and then she went out, closing the door, as usual. Sira Audun then barred the door so that the other priest could not open it, and Sira Jon stayed in there, sometimes crying out and sometimes silent, until dawn on Easter morning. When they let him out, he was not out of sorts at all. So it was that all the folk who came to Gardar for the feast were much pleased with Sira Jon, and remarked at how calm he seemed, and even Sira Pall Hallvardsson was happy with the other priest’s demeanor.
It happened that many folk carried with them the best gifts that they could afford, and placed them on the altar in front of the finger bone of St. Olaf as a thank-offering for bringing them through the winter. Thorkel Gellison gave a stool, carved from olive wood from Jerusalem, that his great-grandfather had carried from Ireland, where it had come from the crusades, and this stool had many fantastic beasts carved upon it in the Eastern manner. Thorkel was pleased to have survived the winter with his wife.
Snaebjorn Bjarnarson of Herjolfsnes and his two sons who had not died made the gift of a French ivory folding altar, which men of their family had always carried with them on sea journeys, and which had afforded them great good luck. These men gave thanks for the survival of their children, eleven in all, though Siggtryg and two of the wives had died.