The Snow on the Cross (23 page)

Unfortunately, they applied the same
school of thought to Malyn.

I had tried speaking with some of the
other Vikings about possibly converting to my faith.  I assembled small groups
of them and preached to them, sermonizing and telling them all about how the
true faith came to our land, and what our reward would be in the afterlife. 
They had been following Eirik too long, and they were too isolated out here on
Greenland
.  They did not understand the
conversions that had gone on without them in their native country, and they did
not see themselves as being left behind in matters of faith.  The more I
preached to them, the more they turned away from me until the only audience I
had left was the one I had always had: Malyn and Thordhild.

But no one could say I didn’t try,
even Robert II the Pious.  Even though I told Robert the Pious specifically I
was not the right person for this task, I tried anyway.  Day after day I would
stare at the sea and think about returning to
France
.  How much had changed since I had been gone?  Was Robert II
the Pious even still in power?  Most importantly, did anyone remember I was
here, or had they assumed I died long ago?

It was on the twelfth day of our
sunlight, the last day before the start of the summer season, when Malyn came
to me with the news.  Night had just settled in, and I was sitting outside
watching the stars for the last time.  Malyn was in tears, and she sat down
beside me and looked up at the stars with me.

“Soon,” she said.  “I will be up
there with those stars as my spirit rises as I am burned.” She choked a little
at the thought.  “My time is over here.”

“What do you mean,” I asked, knowing
the inevitable was about to be revealed to me.

“Eirik is dying,” she whispered in a
voice so low I could barely hear her.  “He has asked for absolution and the
blessing of his soul before his passage.  It is the final step before he
passes.”

“The fever?” I asked.  “Or the
infection?”

Malyn looked at me with watery eyes. 
“The infection has caused the fever, and they are both ravaging him.  He can
barely speak, and when he does, he is clearly out of his mind.”

I had run out of time.  Eirik would
be dead by morning, and a few days after that he would be destroyed and his
spirits would mingle with the smoke of his funeral pyre.  But at the same time.
. .

I looked at the poor girl.  Was it
too late for her as well?  Was Eirik’s fever so great he was past the point of
rational thought?  Could I attempt to speak with him and reason with him once
more?  I stood up, but Malyn held me back.

“The preparations are being made,”
she said.  “There is nothing you can do.”

“I have failed you,” I said, and my
voice was quivering.  “And I hope you will forgive me.”

We sat there in silence, gazing at
the beauty of God’s heavens on what was possibly Malyn’s last night connected
to this world.  I think she had come to accept what her fate was going to be,
but the thought still haunted me.

***

I was convinced a rational man would
not burn an innocent girl alive in order to accompany him into the afterlife. 
Whatever nonsense their faith taught them, above all, I was sure burning Malyn
would not help Eirik in the afterlife.  One does not need a servant while one
is in Hell.  Apparently, from what I gathered from Malyn, the funeral ritual
itself was quite simple.  Eirik’s body would be burned quickly and then set out
to sea on a small raft.  Malyn, however, would not be put out to sea.  Her body
would remain on shore so her spirit would rise with the same speed as Eirik’s,
and together, their spirits would merge in the smoke.

Unfortunately, Malyn was going to be
slaughtered for a false religion, therefore, no matter how much Eirik professed
his faith to me, in my opinion it was murder, and as I left my church to go to
Brattahild for the last time, I looked back to see Malyn, who had fallen asleep
near my fire, sleeping as if she would live forever.   Now that the moment was
here, I should, God’s truth, have put her on the ship with Leif.  But now Leif
was gone and my time was running out.

Dawn, the last dawn of many months,
was beginning to crack open the sky, as I jogged up the hill to Eirik’s house. 
From the view on the hilltop, I imagined I could see the beach, and the
gatherings going on there.  Soon, I would be a witness to the events that would
take place there, but not yet.  First, I had to try reasoning with Eirik before
he was gone.

I didn’t knock when I arrived.  
Thordhild seemed annoyed at my entrance, but I ignored her.  I saw Eirik stretched
out near the fire, his eyes closed.  He was still breathing, but it was faint,
and I watched as each breath he inhaled threatened not to come out again. 

Eirik had been dressed in his armor,
bloodstains and all, and his hair and beard had been carefully washed and
braided.  I noticed his leg was tilted to a painful angle, and his arm lay
stretched out beside him like a wing, but other than those things, he simply
seemed to be sleeping.

“Bishop,” Thordhild’s voice held
anger.  “What do you need?”  I could tell she had been weeping.  Surely, she
wasn’t blaming me for Eirik’s state?  I did the best I could setting his arm
and leg.  I could count on no hands how many Vikings helped me.

“Can he speak?” I asked.  “I need to
talk to him.”

Thordhild shook her head no.  “He is
slipping away.  Do not try to awaken him.  He will not respond to you.”

“Then I will speak to you and try to
reason with you,” I said.  “When Eirik dies you will have some authority as his
widow, right?”  Thordhild nodded.  “Then you have the power to help me.”

“What is it you need?”

I took a deep breath.  “The girl,
Malyn.  Must she die when your husband does?”

The look Thordhild gave me told me
everything without her speaking a single word.  Yes, Malyn would have to die,
and she supposed she was doing me a favor by removing temptation from my sight,
as if I was about to forsake my most holy God and partake in carnal lusts with
the girl.

“You will thank me when your soul is
left pure,” she seemed to say.

No matter what Thordhild thought of
me as a man of God, she saw me as a man first and foremost, but if I had wanted
the girl, I would have already had her, so it angered me that Thordhild assumed
I was weak-minded and a slave to the flesh. 

“It is Eirik’s wish,” was all
Thordhild said.  “It will be honored.”

“It is murder,” I said, trying to
rationalize it to her.  If she was a woman of the same faith as me, then surely
she would have seen that.  “Our God forbids it.  Do not sacrifice this innocent
girl for the sake of your husband’s pagan ways.  You have the power to change
it.”

Thordhild shook her head, and her
eyes seemed distant.  I knew her carrying out Eirik’s last wish wasn’t the
reason for her wanting Malyn to die.  She had been gone many weeks to
Norway
, and she knew the services Eirik
expected of Malyn extended beyond the simple tasks of cooking and keeping the
house.  It wasn’t for Eirik that Malyn was going to die, I realized.  It was
Thordhild’s revenge upon the girl.  After all, wasn’t it Thordhild who had
called Malyn a whore? 

“I will stop you,” I said.  “I will
not stand by and let Malyn die.”

“Go ahead, Bishop,” Thordhild said in
a small voice as she turned away from me to stare out the door to the beaches
beyond the hills.  “Save her, but then save yourself.   God sent you here for a
purpose, and you have done nothing the entire time you’ve been here but sit and
talk and complain.”  She turned back to me and her eyes were sharp.  “Your time
here is finished.  When I requested you, I thought I was requesting a man of
God.  You are a disappointment to me and our faith, Bishop.  Eirik lies here
damned because of your indifference.  Now Malyn will die as well, also because
of your indifference.  You had a job to do, and you failed.”

Her words stung, and I wandered
outside in a daze.  My father once had a saying and he spoke it to me often:
Speak the truth and shame the devil.  I heard the wail behind me, and I knew at
that moment, Eirik the Red had passed from this life into the next.

***

I went back to my church knowing I
would have to reveal the news to Malyn.  When I returned, Malyn was gone.  I
took a scrap of parchment, pricked my finger until it welled with blood, and
wrote these words:  In the Year of our Lord 1002 A.D. Eirik the Red died after
a long illness.  I wrote the date as 1002 even though I had lost track of time
while I was here, and I had no way of actually knowing what year or day of the
week it was.  Malyn told me it was 1002, much to my surprise.  At the time I
was so bewildered by the lack of daylight and darkness I had not even realized
how much time had passed since my arrival here.  What I thought was one year,
was actually two.

I sat and stared at the swinging
wooden cross Eirik had put up so long before I arrived.  I had failed Malyn,
and I had failed my king, and I had failed God.  Thordhild’s words kept echoing
through my head.  A disappointment, indeed.

Word traveled quite rapidly through
the Viking village about Eirik’s death.  Within hours, many men were lined up
at Brattahild waiting to see the body.  Some of the larger men were also there,
waiting with the carrier to take the body down to the beach for the last sacred
rites.  I knew it would be the last funeral done in this fashion, for after
Eirik’s departure, the pagan ways would be gone with him.

I didn’t know where Malyn was, but I
thought if I were in her position, I would have started running before the men
could catch me and drag me down to the beach with my former master.  Hours
might have passed, I am not sure.  Malyn did not come back to my church to say
goodbye, and to my shock, I looked out and saw her up at Brattahild.  She was
angelic as she stood there near the stone walls, her white funeral gown just a
shade darker than the snows around her.  I wanted to run up there and take her,
to hide her away in my church, but she looked sad and ready, much like I
imagined Christ looked moments before they led him up to
Calvary
.

I was speechless, and I was powerless
to act.  The entire event sprawled out before me like a bizarre dream, and I
could do nothing and say nothing.  I could barely move.

I saw the first Vikings emerge from
Brattahild with their cargo, an impossibly large man, lying cold and still upon
that stretcher, his bright red hair and beard shining in the morning’s sun. 
His armor gleamed brightly, twinkling along with his prized sword lying across
his chest.  The sword, I noticed, had been cleaned of all bloodstains and was
polished to an endless sheen.  His helmet was perched at the top of the sword
hilt.   He looked, not like the fallen warrior in battle, but like a sleeping
giant.

Thordhild trailed after the
procession, head bowed.  The line of warriors wound in single file up and over
the hills looking snakelike as they crawled toward the beach ever so slowly. 
Malyn was toward the front of the line, head looking straight ahead, and I saw
no fear, but my mind was cloudy, and I ran toward the beach, knowing I would
beat them all there.  I could hear the low chanting of the Vikings singing
praises to Odin on behalf of their leader, and the sound burned into my mind. 
Already I could smell the smoke from the torches the Vikings carried, and I
could see the faint trails of smoke from the procession.  I was determined not
to be a disappointment.

I reached the beach and stopped
short.  The two stacks of wood were there, as tall as two men stacked atop one
another.  They had not been set ablaze yet.  The small boat was ready to take
Eirik, flaming, out to sea.  It was decorated with white flowers as it bobbed
slightly against the rocks.  But, much to my horror, I realized this was what
my indifference had led to.  A line of tents was set up there, six in all. 
There were other men there, too.  They were Viking warriors who had traveled
many days here to attend the funeral of Eirik the Red and pay honor to him. 
They were there, waiting, silent and somber, and I stood there on the beach as
well.  For all any of them knew, I was simply another Viking awaiting the
arrival of my fallen leader.  I spat in the sand as my heart began to dance in
my chest.

The tents were there to represent a
different tribe of men who had settled here on
Greenland
.  They didn’t settle with Eirik at Brattahild.  Instead,
they struck out for their own lands far to the west and east.  At last, I
discovered what had happened to the men on the fourteen ships that had sailed
to
Greenland
with Eirik from
Iceland
.  They were all here, and the
leaders of these men stood, occasionally nodding at one another.  Some heads
were silently bent in prayer, and I knew mine should have been one of them, but
I hesitated, then I saw the first figure come over the hills and down the path
that led to the beach.  The first man I saw was one of the torchbearers, whose
fire was flickering brightly.  Behind him, I saw Malyn.

She didn’t look at me, didn’t
acknowledge whether or not she saw me.  Perhaps she assumed I had stayed behind
in my church.  It didn’t matter now, anyway.  She was approaching her death,
and now that I could see more of her face, I saw the fear there, traced in tiny
lines.  The tears that she had held back the entire walk from Brattahild to
here now spilled over and darkened her gown.  Behind her, the bearers of the
corpse, and as I stared at that motionless body, I felt nothing but shame. 
Here was the product of my indifference.  Should I have taken pleasure in the
fact that the man was dead?  I would watch him burn on the funeral pyre in a
matter of minutes, and it had been the day I longed for, but it was a sinful
thought, for I knew this man’s soul was gone to whatever Valhalla he had
imagined for it, not to Heaven.