‘That bezoar would have come in handy now …’
Once my collecting mania became known, it would invariably turn out that some old lady had chanced upon the rotting little brother of Odin’s companions, Hugin and Munin, and taken the trouble to pull off its head and keep it in her pouch ‘for Jónas’ … If a long time had passed since I last acquired a raven’s head, I would be unable to rest from the moment I laid hands on it … I would find some excuse to slip away and almost before the farm buildings were out of sight I would take out my tinderbox, gather a pile of kindling and burn the head … I went about my quest in this way in obedience to my learned master Bombastus’s instructions … Once the head had been reduced to ashes the skull would be brittle and easy to crack open, and if luck was with me there should be a single specimen of bezoar inside, like an expectant chick in its shell … But luck never was with me … And I have lost count of the ravens’ heads I have roasted and crushed in my lifetime … Yes, those were my wages for the cures I used to perform in the kitchens of the Strandir folk, and it was a useful arrangement since Grandfather had made me swear a solemn oath that no raven would die by my hand … Eventually, though, there came a time when my female patients no longer wanted my great fists fumbling under their skirts … I was thirteen years old and examining a slightly peculiar old biddy whose appointed task was to bless the cows at the croft of Hólmskot when they were let out to graze in the morning … She used to do this by calling on Saint Benedicta, and had arrived at such a good understanding with the celestial lady that the cows on that farm never failed in their yield … Nevertheless, she thought it better to let me heal her than to place her trust entirely in the protection of the saints, for although they had been her helpmeets ever since childhood they had lately been abolished by law and banished from Icelandic homes, and now mainly took refuge with useless old folk, like this Hálotta Snæsdóttir, who was fated to awaken the puppy in me … The healing session had proceeded as usual; one woman after another had received a gentle caress and diagnosis of her complaint, accompanied by good advice and hope of improvement, and now it was the turn of Hálotta who sat at the back of the room, contemplating some dried fish that was soaking there … I had no sooner sat down beside her than she trapped my youthful hand in her blotchy old claw and shoved it under her skirts … There were no surprises there, just the usual worn-out woman’s belly, though the old lady was in fairly good nick … She took charge and I sat in my physician’s pose with head inclined and eyes closed, the book hovering before my mind’s eye, but just as she was about to return my healing hand to me, my fingers came into contact with the upper limits of her mons pubis … It was not as if it was the first time I had touched what I had heard the women themselves call half in jest their ‘mouse’, and the contours of the creature were fairly well known to me from diagrams in the books of medicine from Hólar … But this time when my fingertips brushed so unexpectedly against old Hálotta’s garden wall, I stiffened … It was only an instant’s response but enough for her to sense it; we were, after all, both in the same part of the old woman’s anatomy … As if to be certain of my miserable predicament, she made a pretence of pulling our hands down still further but this time I resisted in earnest … Upon which she whipped my hand from under her skirt band and squealed:
‘Ooh! He’s not touching me there again — not unless he marries me!’
With that my youthful innocence was laughed away … The time of the laying on of hands was over … I had to find a new way to ingratiate myself with the old ladies who always had a raven’s head ready to slip into the hand of a budding naturalist …
MOONWORT: Botrychium lunaria. One of the most potent of the herbs used in childbirth: to be laid on the cervix, the secret door or private parts, when a woman is about to deliver, and snatched away the instant the child is born to prevent the intestines or other parts from following. When administered to a patient it prevents lethargy and intensifies pleasure and recreation. Some believe it to have the virtue of opening locks. It is often found growing on old hayfield walls or ruins, but never in wetlands, and grows to half a finger in height. It proved of greatest virtue to me long ago when I was laid low with an intolerable whooping cough. I chewed it as small as I could, mixed with aqua vitae and thyme, no more than a tiny morsel at a time, but even that was enough. After that I did not catch a cough or cold for five years. It is more frequently used than other digestive herbs for internal cures but not for complaints of the flesh or skin. The moonwort bears sometimes twelve, sometimes thirteen leaves on one stalk, depending on the number of moons in the year when the earth is temperate; and seeds on the other, as many as the number of weeks that a mother carries her unborn child. Herbs should be used with caution.
It was the custom at Grandfather Hákon’s house for extracts to be copied from those among the books that found their way there which he judged to be most interesting and of most enduring value … His method was to collect in one place all the lore and verses or tales true or invented touching on a particular subject that were found scattered among the various books he borrowed … This amounted to something of an industry on Grandfather’s part and his scriptorium consisted of a reader, a scribe and an ink-maker, the last-mentioned of whom concocted the ink as well as cutting the feathers for quills … I was appointed special assistant to the ink-maker, ‘Squinting’ Helgi Sveinsson; a work-shy half-cousin of ours who had turned up on my grandparents’ doorstep with a group of wandering beggars … Even in that company he had managed to rub people up the wrong way and the beggars left him behind when it transpired that his family could be half traced to that of the householder … My grandfather used to make all the paupers who boarded with him contribute something towards their keep … Much of this was of limited value as the wretched people had small aptitude for anything, but every little counts in a large household; the cat may seem inclined to do nothing but lick her fur but we would soon be overrun by mice if we hanged her for her vanity … On account of this half-cousin’s feeble nature, the division of labour between us was quite contrary to what might be expected between a full-grown man and a boy … I was the master and he the apprentice, but we took great care not to let it show who ruled the roost when it came to preparing the ink, and no one found out until I was moved up a rung in the scriptorium and seated in one of the scribes’ chairs … There I took a new, more ominous step on the path towards the evil destiny that finally forced me into exile in my own country … Though what kind of exile is it, pray? I am condemned to forsake my homeland, no one may offer me a helping hand, wherever I am seen people are duty bound to arrest me and I may not linger for any space of time in any place without violating my sentence — which would give the villains an excuse to make my penalty even harsher, until ultimately I advance shrieking into the fires of hell …
‘Jónas Pálmason, by some called Jónas “the Learned”, that is I, and may God bid you good day, Captain Sir … I hear that you are sailing for England with a cargo of homespun cloth belonging to the Sheriff of Ögur — er, you wouldn’t happen to have room for a homeless vagabond like me aboard this fine vessel of yours?’
Flat refusal … No one is willing to transport Jónas from these shores … Not even if he composes handsome verses about the rotting hulks that he longs with all his heart would take him away from Iceland … For even so can a poet describe a ship that balances on nothing but a leaking, tarry hulclass="underline"