The Snow on the Cross (24 page)

Once the Vikings had assembled
entirely on the beach, Malyn was placed before the stacks of wood while the
others encircled her.  The body of Eirik was placed on top of the larger stack,
but no fire was applied to it.  Not yet.  That would come later.  I noticed
Thordhild had taken her place of honor near her husband’s pyre, and her head
was down.  One of the men, I assumed he was some sort of priest of Eirik’s
religion, began shouting in a loud voice, which I took for some sort of
blessing or prayer.  The priest then took Malyn’s hand and started walking with
her.  The crowd parted for them and they came to the first tent.

It is here I wish I had more exact
notes of what exactly happened to that poor girl.  But as I have told you
before, I am relying on God to speak the truth through me.  The chief of each
tribe stepped up, one standing before each tent.  There they stood and waited,
looking at Malyn, whose face was frozen.  This was one part of the ritual Malyn
had failed to tell me about.  The priest led her into the first tent and the
first tribal chief went in after her.  The priest emerged, closing the cloth
door behind him.  The crowd stood deathly silent, watching the tent.  I noticed
Thordhild’s head tilted slightly, and a small smirk was on her face.

I took a hesitant step forward.  I
didn’t know what was going on, but then I heard the muffled screams coming from
the first tent, and I realized what was happening, and my very soul burst into
pain.  The crowd stood and listened, and the priest seemed to be praying in
front of the tent.  The muffled screams had turned into barely audible moans,
and my feet froze in the sand.  The product of my indifference and my
selfishness was lying in that first tent.  Soon, all was quiet and the chief
emerged from the tent adjusting his belt as he stepped out.  He nodded to the
priest, who then entered the tent and emerged with Malyn.  He held her tightly
by the hand, and I could see the tear trails that had streaked down her face. 
I noticed a spot of red on her gown.

I wanted to call out to her, but the
priest had already led her into the second tent, where the next chief waited. 
The priest stood and prayed and offered his blessings.  I kept looking over at
Thordhild, whose eyes were riveted on the second tent.  Was she enjoying what
was happening to poor Malyn?  It would appear she did.

The brutal ritual was repeated four
more times.  Each time Malyn was led into the next tent, and each time the
chief from the next tribe would follow her.  By the fourth tent, there were no
sounds coming from the tent, as if Malyn had quite given up her struggle.  By
the sixth tent, when she came out, I saw she was gone.  The carnal ritual of
these six tribal chiefs had ripped the very soul out of her, and the bloodstain
on her gown had spread.

“Malyn,” I called, but one of the
Vikings shoved me, and I fell into silence.  I was disgraced.  Even now, I was
standing by, unable to take action as Malyn was led to her funeral pyre.  She
looked ready to die, especially after what she had just been subjected to, and
I thought about Leif’s ship.  I still think about it to this day.

The torchbearer stepped up, and the
priest murmured something over the flame.

I moved away from my vantage point
and began making my way over to Thordhild.  Maybe she would listen now.  Maybe
since she saw what they had done to Malyn, she would put a stop to the
remainder of the funeral ritual.  I reached her just as the flame was applied
to the bottom of Eirik’s wood.  They had coated the sticks with some sort of
oil, for the fire touched the first stick and a beautiful bloom of light
rippled across the bottom of the wood.

I grabbed Eirik’s wife by the
shoulder and refused to let go.  “Make them stop!” I screamed.  “You have the
power!  Look at the girl!  For the love of God, stop them!”  I was shouting,
screaming, I didn’t know what I was saying.  All I knew was I had to act and
move, and scream at her, berate her for letting this happen.  I was wrenched
away from her, kicking like an infant, screaming and crying at the same time. 
I noticed Malyn heard the commotion I was causing, and as she stood in front of
her own wood, knowing her remaining life’s minutes were ticking away rapidly,
she looked in my direction and saw me, struggling like the old man I was
against the barbarians who held me.  She smiled at me, and I saw the light
flicker in her soul for a brief moment, but then the fire had consumed Eirik’s
body, and I watched the thick clouds rolling up into the air.  I waited, half
expecting to see Eirik’s spirit soar up into the smoke, therefore proving him
right and me wrong, but there was nothing but blackness.

“Malyn!” I shouted.  “Run!  Fight! 
Do not let them burn you!”

“Be quiet, Bishop,” Thordhild
hissed.  “You disrespect the passage of our leader.”

I collapsed, weeping, as the hands
that held me let me go.  I looked up in time to see Malyn being tied down to
the platform sitting atop her wood, and I thought I could hear her crying over
the roar, but it might have been my imagination.

The Snow on the Cross

The funeral fire consumed Eirik’s
body rapidly, and some of the Vikings gathered what was left, mostly scraps of
armor and the melted remains of his sword, and set it adrift, still smoking.  A
new leader would be chosen for these men, and I looked at the six Viking chiefs
who had come to the funeral.  Yes, any one of them would be a suitable
successor to Eirik’s brutality.

Thordhild did not look at me, did not
speak to me for the remainder of my time on
Greenland
.  She stayed at Brattahild, and the endless days began as the sun
settled into its usual position for
Greenland
’s summer.  I, however, was not well.  I spent many an hour on the beach
digging through the pile of charred sticks scooping out ashes where I could
find them.  I found bones, blackened and crumbling, and I placed them carefully
in a wooden bucket I had stolen from Brattahild.  Whether or not these bones
were Malyn’s, I did not know.  It is conceivable that some of them might have been
Eirik’s, for when the fires reached their maximum height, the flames
overlapped, and the two fires became as one.

I became obsessed with retrieving
what I could from Malyn’s fire.  Some would later say I had lost my reason, but
I don’t think I did.  The endless sunlight allowed me to work many more hours
than I normally could have, and my bucket became quite full.

On the third day after the funeral,
the ashes had cooled enough for me to dig deeper.  I began searching more on
Eirik’s side of the fire, since I had already gathered most of what I could
from Malyn’s. 

I found Eirik’s skull and his broken
arm, and I sat there on the beach staring at them both.  The Vikings would be
angry if they saw I was disturbing the fire site, so I was careful to hide what
I was finding there.  I took Eirik’s skull and bones back to my church, noting
that it was the first time Eirik had actually entered the church he had built,
except this time it was not of his own free will.  I set his skull on the
stones next to the fireplace, and I began to pray.

Each day I would go back with my
bucket and collect more of Eirik’s bones.  I didn’t know that his remains were
supposed to stay undisturbed for seven days, and then they would be taken and
either set adrift or buried.  Imagine the Vikings’ surprise when, at the end of
the seventh day, I watched them scrape through the rubble only to find
nothing.  They began to scan the sky, as if expecting to see Eirik’s remains
floating above them.  I almost laughed at their foolishness.  Perhaps they
thought a miracle had happened.  Little did they know, most of Eirik was
sitting in my church receiving blessings and the sacrament each day.

Whether or not I was interfering with
Eirik’s soul getting into the afterlife was not my concern.  I sat each day and
consecrated Eirik’s bones.  If he would not convert in life, then I would
redirect his soul in the afterlife.   At the very least, his soul would be
bouncing back and forth between
Valhalla
and Heaven, and the thought of him eternally in limbo filled me with a
wicked delight.

I took the bones out behind my church
and began digging a grave for them.  How fitting it would be that Eirik’s
mortal remains would find a resting place on holy ground that I had established
in the name of my God.  I was careful to dig a grave deep enough so time would
not erode the dirt from the bones.  At the bottom of the grave, I began to
assemble the bones in the shape of a man.  I placed Eirik’s skull at the top,
following by a rough layout of his bones.  I put the arms where arms were
supposed to go and legs were the legs were supposed to go.  I note that one of
the legs was broken and in two pieces, so I stuck them together as best I
could.

I hopped out of the grave and began
to cover the bones, singing a holy psalm the monks at
Tours
were fond of and had taught me one night on their
passage through
Le Mans
.  When the bones were covered as a
final mark of Eirik’s newly found faith, I planted the cross that Leif had
given me in the ground at the head of the grave.  I began digging a smaller
hole for Malyn’s remains, and I assembled them in human form as well.  When I
had completed my task I took the golden cross the monks at
Bayeux
had given me and used it to mark her
grave.  It was appropriate, but I needn’t worry about anyone discovering my
work.  When the snows came, they covered the graves, and the snow collected on
the arms of the cross, barely visible except to those who had faith.

***

The ships came in late winter,
when the cold nights were bitter and endless.  I barely saw the sails except
for a glint of moonlight on the prow of one of them.  I looked closer and saw
the crest of a king: French ships.

This was the response from
Thordhild’s new inquiry to the King of Norway. 
France
knew its emissary had never come back, and I could have told
them Eirik the Red killed the poor man, but I would never get the chance.  Now,
Norway
was sending its own ships to take
care of the problem of
Greenland
.  The monks from the Isle of Kells,
the ones who survived, had told the story that the raid came from the west,
which meant it could have only come from one place:
Greenland
.

Which meant I had been ineffective in
the past year of my inhabitation of this land.

The new missionary to
Greenland
was going to be none other than Leif
himself.  Leif had been chosen by the king of
Norway
to bring the faith to
Greenland
after the report of Eirik’s death and my utter failure to do anything
remotely productive there.  I heard all the stories upon my return, and the
insinuations left me bristling.

So, instead of my overjoy at being
returned to
Le Mans
, I was greeted with chains. The
ships docked and I greeted the men who disembarked, but they had no kind words
for me.  I had been relieved not only of my position here in
Greenland
, but also in
Le Mans
.  The Pope had excommunicated me
based on several reports he had heard.  While I protested and lamented (I
couldn’t help but think I would never grow a strawberry again) in the end there
was nothing I could do.

I walked back up to the church to
collect my meager belongings before departing from
Greenland
forever.  As I walked around the
church, I noticed the graves.  The snow had collected over the crosses, and it
gave a hint of what was to come.  These were the first Christian graves on
Greenland
, and I was responsible.  I couldn’t
help but smile as my escorts kept me walking.  I glanced up at Brattahild as we
passed, and I thought I saw Thordhild watching through the window and I shook
my head at my own gullibility.  To think I once held that woman in such high
esteem and thought she would help me was utter nonsense on my part. 

I said goodbye to Brattahild, and the
church and whispered a small goodbye to Malyn, and we boarded the ship.  In the
distance I thought I saw small square sails that denoted Viking longships.  As
they grew closer I saw the mark of Leif, Eirik’s son, and I knew he would be
the chosen one, not me.  I was just an insignificant man.  Our ships passed,
and the Vikings waved and shouted greetings toward me.  I caught Leif’s eye and
he nodded.  Leif and two hundred strong followers would convert
Greenland
.  Even if the ones on
Greenland
didn’t convert, at least Leif had
the power to force them.

We sailed off into the night, but I
no longer had any fear of the water or of drowning.  In fact, I was secretly
hoping for a shipwreck so I would not have to face my subsequent arrest.  But,
as luck would have it, we had smooth, calm waters the entire trip back to
France
, and I was never so excited as when
we approached the northern coast, and I saw some trees again.  I had almost
forgotten what they looked like.  The air was cold on the Channel, but it was
not nearly as cold as it had been on
Greenland
.