On the Cold Coasts

end, was not terribly severe: over the next year she was to recite the Lord’s Prayer, genuflecting three times morning and night, thus securing mercy from the Lord above. That being decreed, she was at last permitted to get to her feet and take a seat on a chair next to her mother and sister, and the service could continue.
    The deacon intoned the sermon and the gospel, and the members of the congregation took their eyes off the girl, for even though God’s Word was read in church Latin and was incomprehensible to the unlettered, it was shown the proper respect, and the churchgoers gazed at the floor while it was being read. The sneaking glances resumed when the sermon began, and His Grace the bishop focused on the wisdom of King Solomon: “ For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell ….”
    Ragna turned her gaze from all of them and directed it at the side altar in the northern transept, where a dark-complexioned and blue-eyed Mary sat on a glittering throne with her young son swathed in her arms. Through her mind rushed a strange and almost blasphemous thought: the Queen of Heaven herself had been a fourteen-year-old unmarried girl when she gave birth to her firstborn child, who was not conceived with her betrothed. A comforting smile appeared and then just as suddenly vanished from the icon’s face, and Ragna Gautadottir knew in her heart, whatever were the thoughts of the parish folk, that she was not condemned by the Mother of God.

THE GOODWILL OF CHIEFTAINS
    A few years after the night of the many shipwrecks, the English set up a small trading post near the mouth of the Kolbeinsa River, not far from the place where the Trinity of Bristol had been stranded. Buildings were raised out of turf and stone in the local manner, and hovels and storehouses were built for keeping stockfish. The people of Skagafjord kept quiet about the proceedings; many of them had commercial ties to the English, providing them with water and provisions from spring until fall, in return for generous compensation in goods.
    For a time there was no bishop at the Holar bishopric following the death of the Danish Jon Tofason, which led to much conflict and debate over a substitute and successor. Thorsteinn of Akrar, lawman of North and West Iceland, took it upon himself to protect the interests of Holar in dealings with foreign traders, collecting the king’s tariffs from the English. Men visited him from far and wide to haggle over stockfish and land and goodness knew what else.
    As it happened, Thorsteinn operated his own ship, albeit in secret. Henry V, king of England, and his brother-in-law Eric of Pomerania, king of Denmark and Norway, had sealed an agreement that forbade anyone other than Eric’s subjects to trade with the Icelanders. Ambitious businessmen and seafarers in England paid little heed to the embargo, especially since Eric had no way of enforcing it. He had his work cut out back home, fighting against the increasingly greedy merchants of the Hanseatic League and their pirate ships, and others that harried the seas like never before. Yet the king would surely not turn a blind eye were it to be heard at court that the lawman of Iceland himself was operating a vessel to England, and the office would be at risk. Thorsteinn’s ship, Christopher of Hull, was therefore registered to an English vessel operator and had an English crew, with the sole exception of the captain. His name was Klaengur, a red-bearded Viking who had sailed Thorsteinn’s ship for years on his voyages to Greenland and Norway, a cheerful man who had the ocean waves surging through his blood.
    Michael, son of Ragna, followed Klaengur’s every step each time he visited Akrar, curious and inquisitive, doing his utmost to win his favor. He had decided that he would take over as captain of the Christopher as soon as he was old enough, and he nagged until he had persuaded the English lads to show him the right moves when it came to working the fishing lines and trawls. Occasionally the crew would stay at Akrar, and the boy would not leave them in peace, even though a few of the sailors would frequently clip his ear or flick their finger at him when they felt he was getting in their way. Yet most of them were kindly, and the first mate even showed him a treasure that he claimed to be