On the Cold Coasts

flying up from beneath the horse’s hooves. They followed behind her, Michael pale with fear. She steered her horse away from the path into a thicket of tall, narrow birch trees. The servant was surprised and angry, and he demanded to know what she was thinking. She hushed him angrily. Did he not see that they needed to hide? Had he not seen that morning how Thorkell had hurt them and locked them in the storeroom? Fortunately the man clammed up, for a moment later, just as they were out of sight, they heard the clattering of hooves and the riders came into view.
    Ragna watched them ride past, one after another, so close that she could smell the foulness of their breath and sweat. All the men had to do was glance to one side and they would see them beyond the leafless trees. But they looked neither right nor left, just sat hunched over on their horses: yesterday’s victors were today’s defeated. Thorkell brought up the rear, riding a short distance behind the others. The cold wind tore at his black cloak so that it blew up and flapped back from his shoulders in a straight line, like a raven’s wings. He sat upright in the saddle and looked straight ahead, yet it was almost as though he sensed them there, for when he approached, he slowed his horse and peered in among the trees. For one brief moment, his eyes met Ragna’s and held them. Then he passed and did not look back.

    “Did Father Thorkell try to force you…into intercourse?”
    Ragna shook her head.
    “Well, he must have—they found you all bruised and bleeding after he had been with you, and you and the boy nearly naked, standing in the storeroom in this cruel frost! He hurt you, you’ve said as much, and it’s obvious to all.”
    “It was an accident,” she said in a flat voice without looking up, and she inadvertently raised her hand to the bandage on her chest. “It’s only a scratch. The fault is mine as much as his.”
    “She hardly seems like herself,” a worried Craxton whispered to his scribe. “Could he have given her some sort of concoction he brewed?”
    “To be sure,” Jon Egilsson concurred softly. “Thorkell Gudbjartsson has long had a reputation for dabbling in the dark arts—more than other men. Some have even taken to calling him Thorkell Galdur of the Dark Arts.”
    “What was the man’s purpose in taking you from this place with force?” The bishop was becoming irritated. “I am also told that he took a trunk and some packages belonging to you, without your consent.”
    “I was the one who took them,” said Ragna abruptly.
    Craxton looked at her in surprise. “Why?”
    She hesitated. “From Enni,” she said after a moment. “I took them with me from there.”
    The bishop leaned back in his chair and drummed the tips of his fingers lightly together, looking at her with an ambiguous expression. Did he suspect the truth? Well, they could think what they wanted. It didn’t matter now.
    “Write in the indictment, Jon, that Thorkell locked Ragna and her son inside a storeroom in a bitter frost, that he tried to force my cousin’s hand and cut her with a knife so that she bled,” said the bishop resolutely. “And also that he stole items belonging to her.” The scribe hesitated a moment, then dipped a white swan’s feather into his inkwell. He gave Ragna a questioning look, waiting for her protestations. But she said nothing, just stared at her hands in her lap, and they took her silence for agreement. Quickly Jon wet the tip of the pen with his tongue and began to write.

    The ship skips on the raging waves, and the tackle and spar crackle as the icy autumn winds fill the sails. All around is the vast ocean. It has been a long time since we have seen other ships.
    At first I was hopelessly seasick and could keep no nourishment down. I felt so ill in both my body and mind that had it not been for Michael’s constant attention, I might not have been able to resist the temptation to throw myself overboard and disappear forever into the all-enclosing darkness. Such was my desire to flee the life that God would have me live. Such was my cowardice.
    In a few days’ time, we shall see the shores of Greenland, says Klaengur the Red. The land of my father and his people. Somewhere from the deep, the mother of the sea summons the Skraelings to comb her tangled hair and rewards them with an abundant catch.
    I look at the blue horizon, where sea and sky merge into one, and think about all that has transpired. To my