The Snow on the Cross (18 page)

“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 going 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.”

Most of the men had already boarded
their ships and taken up their oars.  I watched as the first few ships slipped
off the beach to bob amid the waves.  Eirik was ready to board his own ship,
which was going to be the last one to depart.

“No,” I said, stepping in front of
him.  It was a very foolish thing to do, but I was not thinking clearly while
standing there.  The men who were already on Eirik’s ship began laughing. 
Eirik even smiled a bit at my courage.

“Move aside,” he said, and his voice
again was very low.

“No,” I repeated.  The anger that had
been welling up inside me for the past few months was spilling over, and I
began shaking.  I thought about the countless innocents that had died by the
hands of not only this man, but also his entire race of people.  I thought
about Malyn, the poor girl who would die on Eirik’s impulse, and most of all, I
thought about myself, never going to see Le Mans again, trapped here in
Greenland to face perpetually endless daylight and darkness in alternating
seasons. 

Eirik reached out and grabbed me, and
although I tried to push him away, his grip was too strong, and I almost felt
my bones being crushed beneath his hands.  I felt myself being lifted off the
ground, and as I looked, I saw the ground moving beneath me as I was carried
with the Viking towards his ship.

“Now you will see,” said Eirik in a
faint hiss.  “Now you shall bear witness.”

I was tossed into the bottom of
Eirik’s ship as he leaped aboard.  He nodded to his men, and I felt the boat
moving rapidly off the beach.  We floated there for a moment, gentle and
peaceful, letting the waves bounce us up and down, then the men took up their oars,
and with several giant sweeps, our ship darted out into the ocean.

I sat up in a panic, watching the
shoreline drift further and further away.  I thought about leaping overboard,
but one look at the deathly cold water, and I felt faint.  Eirik was looking at
me and laughing to himself.  Whether I liked it or not, I was to be a part of
the raid on the Isle of Kells, and I felt sick at the very thought.

                                                                           ***

Eirik was not laughing for very long.
 As our ship reached the open sea and began sailing east, I began vomiting. 
Unlike the first time I had sailed with Bjarni, when I had eaten very lightly,
and then had gotten sick into the sea, this time, since I had no reason to
believe I would be getting on a ship, I had eaten a good meal of venison, fish,
bread, and mead.  Now my stomach was boiling, and its contents all spilled
forth there on the bottom of the ship.

Eirik began cursing, and for a
moment, I thought he was going to pitch me overboard to get rid of me.  I
continued heaving, unable to catch my breath as he came to me, hoisted me up
and held me half over the side of the ship, where the rest of my dinner became
a good meal for the fish.  When I was able to breathe again, I hoped he would
set me back down, but he did not.  He continued to hold me, shaking me as if
squeezing the rest of it out of me.  Then he grabbed my legs and ducked my head
under the water.

I would have screamed, but I had no
air.  A huge swallow of frigid seawater burned its way down my throat and into
my lungs and my eyes blazed with pain.  I thrashed, but Eirik held me fast, as
if he was determined to prove something to me.  My head sat down there in the
cold blackness; my eyes clinched shut and my mouth fighting not to scream. 
This was not the way I wanted to die.  Chop off my head, pierce me with a
spear, even roast me on a spit, but death by drowning was not how I wanted to
go.  I felt my lungs collapse as my air supply vanished.  I thought I felt fish
swimming past my head, as if coming to see what they would be feeding on later
after my corpse had been disposed of.  I tasted the heavy salt of the water,
knowing it would probably be my last.  Woe to the poor bishop, I thought as my
brain went dark.  I was going to be a martyr.  Perhaps they would saint me
after I was gone.  The thought gave me no comfort.

Eirik dragged me up, and I gushed a
huge volume of water out of my stomach, spraying it back into the water.  Then
I could breathe, and huge gasps seared my windpipe as my body gulped down the
precious air.  I was thrown back into the bottom of the boat, unfortunately
into the puddle of my own vomit, where I sat, grateful to even be alive.  Some
of the Vikings were still laughing at me, even though I had made a huge mess of
things in the boat.

The further east we sailed, the
lighter the sky became, and it was as if we had sailed out from beneath a huge
shadow.  I looked up and finally saw a normal sky, complete with a sunrise that
looked to rise higher as the day progressed.  Eirik kept staring at me,
probably waiting to see if I was going to be sick again.  I inched away from
where I was sitting and tried to find a better seat, but the benches were
occupied by the Vikings, who kept rowing, letting our ship cut through the water
seamlessly.  I saw the other ships around us on the water, keeping pace.  I
noticed one of them was larger than the others, but it still cut through the
water at the same speed.

I closed my eyes and prayed for
deliverance.  Whether I would be executed on the Isle of Kells was something I
was exceedingly worried about.   As it turned out, the trip to the island took
less time than I or even Eirik thought.  When the wind gusted, the huge sails
would roll down and puff out, sending us skimming over the waves.  It was as if
God was pushing us along with His breeze, and I wondered if it was a sign.

We were still a few miles from the
shore of the island when Eirik ordered the ships to stop.  They were going to
wait until sunrise, then attack.  I strained my eyes at the horizon, hoping to
catch a glimpse of the little green island, but there was only more water.  I
began to wonder how Eirik knew how far we were from the island.  Malyn told me
he was a master sailor, as was his son, and so he kept glancing at the stars,
waiting.  I waited, too.

I couldn’t sleep on the boat with the
others.  I sat miserably near the remains of my dinner from the previous day
and tried not to think about what was going to happen once we landed.  Finally
I would see the reason I was sent to
Greenland
.  I would see firsthand what the Vikings would do when confronted with
resistance.  I felt the dagger still hidden in the folds of my robes.