Free Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness Page B

west with the bishop, home to her mother to refresh herself after this dreadful spring. They found corpses lying here on the pavements sometimes in the mornings after folk had gotten up for work. She’s not coming back before the middle of the summer, after the bishop has completed his visitation out west.”
    The hand holding the coin sank slowly back down and the visitor looked tremblingly at the parishioner. It had been a long journey, and her tongue had gone dry from reciting Reverend Halldór of Presthólar’s penitential hymns.
    “They’ve probably finished beheading men at the Alþingi by now,” she said finally.
    “Beheading? What men?” asked the churchwoman.
    “Poor men,” said the visitor.
    “How should I know when miscreants are beheaded at the Alþingi?” said the churchwoman. “Who are you, woman? What do you want? And where did you get that coin?”
    “Where might the aristocrat from Copenhagen be now, the one who came with the bishop to Akranes last year?”
    “I suppose you mean Arnas Arnæus, my dear? Where else would he be but with his books at home in Copenhagen? Or maybe you’re one of those women who expects her comforter to arrive on the Bakkaship,* haha!”
    “And where is the slender maiden whom he brought last year into our hovel at Rein?”
    The churchwoman pointed to the windows over the door and lowered her voice, though this particular subject always worked to loosen her tongue. “If you’re asking about Lady Snæfríður, the magistrate’s daughter, my dear woman, you’ll find her sitting here in Skálholt. Some say she’s betrothed, and even more, that she’s going to have to learn how to mingle with countesses. One thing is certain—they’re teaching her Latin, history, astrology, and other arts far beyond the reach of any other woman who’s lived in Iceland. She herself made it clear this spring that she was expecting a little something to arrive on the Bakkaship, and that there was no way she was going to go west with her sister despite her protests. But the Bakkaship arrived over a week ago and no one has heard anything new. On the contrary—those who were prowling around here late on winter evenings are now riding up and down the pavements here in the bright light of day. And the schoolmaster’s hardly ever sent for anymore. Climb high and fall far. That’s the way the world goes, my dear. I was taught that everything’s best in moderation.”
    She led the old woman to the upper floor of the bishop’s residence, to the bower of Snæfríður the magistrate’s daughter, who was sitting there embroidering a girdle, clad in flowery silk. She was extraordinarily slender, with almost no bosom, her golden appearance of the previous autumn having long ago given way to a delicate paleness, though the azure of her eyes was even more vivid than before. Her countenance was joyless, her glance distracted, her lips closed so that her natural smile was denied; indeed, it appeared as if the expressive quality of her mouth had been wiped away by unnatural effort. She looked out from a kind of incredible distance at the grimy, decrepit image of a person who stood in her doorway with an empty pouch and bruised and bloody feet.
    “What does the old woman want?” she asked finally.
    “Does my lady not recognize this old woman?” asked the visitor.
    “Who can tell one old woman in Iceland from another?” asked the damsel. “Who are you?”
    “Do you not recall, my lady, a little hovel beneath a mountain by the sea?”
    “A hundred,” said the damsel. “A thousand. Who can tell them apart?”
    “A renowned and noble maiden stands in a little house one day in the autumn and leans up against the greatest man in the country and the best friend of the king. ‘My friend,’ she says, ‘why have you brought me into this dreadful house?’ That was the house of my son Jón Hreggviðsson.”
    The damsel laid aside her handwork and leaned back in her armchair to rest, her long,