Then Gunnar said: ‘Forgive me.’
‘There is nothing to forgive.’
He looked back towards where Sigrid had gone. ‘A handsome girl. You shall marry her?’
‘Perhaps.’
He nodded, almost to himself. He reached to his forearm, that place where the men of Iceland keep their wealth in rings of gold and silver and bronze. There are men like Olaf who have arms that glisten like dawn light on the water, with much more kept under lock and key in their homes. Others, like Gunnar, carry all the wealth they have in the world upon their arms. When they take a piece off, you know exactly what has been given, and what is left.
He pulled a silver arm-ring away and offered it to me, pinched between forefinger and thumb.
‘It is too fine a gift,’ I said.
‘No, it is not fine enough. But I can spare no more. Come, take it. Do not dishonour me. You might buy some land with it.’
I eyed the arm-ring and I tried to keep the doubt from my face. But I did not succeed, for Gunnar laughed at me and said, ‘Not much land, I grant you. But something.’
‘I would not need much.’ I looked around at the gathering crowd. The time of the Lawspeaking was drawing close. ‘I never thought I might give up the wanderer’s life. You were right, I suppose. To think that I should marry and settle.’
‘No. I was wrong, wasn’t I? At least in the woman I chose for you. Perhaps I do not have that gift.’
‘You chose well enough for yourself.’
‘Yes. I did.’ And yet there was something strange in his voice as he spoke. Something a little like regret.
I wish we had spoken more then, of women, and the future. It would have made for a good memory. But we had no time left.
An expectant silence was spreading across the plain, even as it grew ever more crowded, as thousands gathered to bear witness. For many it was obligation, as they came to support a cousin or a brother or a friend involved in a dispute. It was rare for a man to come to the Althing without a connection to one case or another, bound as we all were by blood and duty. Those who had the privilege of remaining uninvolved in the shifting feuds still came to watch and listen. For we are a people who love the battle, who live to go to war. And now our wars are over, our raiding days long gone. All we have are the legal duels of endless court cases, and the sudden, secret violence of the feud.
We sat together in silence, and waited for the law to be spoken.
7
There is a rock on the cliffs above the plain. None know its history, why it should contain such a magic as it does for our people. Perhaps some judgement was settled there in the years of the first settlement. Marked with reddish stains, it might have served as a headsman’s block. It is uneven, it would be difficult to make a clean cut upon it. Or perhaps at some stand-off between rival families, with swords drawn and blood about to flow upon the snow, some man leapt upon the stone and shouted out for peace. We do not know the true history of that stone, and it does not matter. Now it is the place where the law is spoken, in incantation, in prayer.
The word is the law, the law that we have all agreed upon. Other lands might inscribe their judgements and laws upon scrolls and tablets, but we do no such thing. Written words are lifeless things and my people have no use for them. Our law lives in word and memory. Our chieftains do not command us, they ask us. Our laws are not chains to bind us nor whips to beat us. We pay no tithes or taxes, raise no armies. There is only the law we agree together, and the honour that binds us to the law.
One must not think such an unwritten law to be a simple thing. Every Althing, the Lawspeaker will stand and speak for an hour, and even then he will have spoken only one third of the laws that we follow. The Lawspeaker speaks thrice, at three Althings, and once he has spoken every one of our laws he is released from his charge and another appointed, as if the law were some curse that could be lifted only by being spoken in its entirety. We sat and watched as the Lawspeaker, Thorkell Thorsteinsson, took his place upon the stone above us and began to speak to us.
That day, of course, he spoke of murder.
Had we done our killing a year before, a year after, we would not have had to listen to such a thing. We would have sat through edicts on theft of cattle, the settling of land disputes, the rights of men on common coastal land, the conditions of divorce. But that year the Lawspeaker spoke of murder.
Not every killing is murder. What law would fully forbid bloodshed? Only the law of the coward. The duellist who cuts down his opponent in the holmgang, the warrior who answers a spoken insult with a retort of cold iron, these men are given scant punishment. They tell of their killing to the next person they see, for they have nothing to be ashamed of. They give their reasons to the court, a blood-price paid in silver to the relatives, and all wait to see if the feud will be buried or live on. But secret murder was another matter. To kill and not declare it was the act of the shameful man. And so Gunnar and I listened to the Lawspeaker speak of the crime we had committed.
I resisted the urge to look at Gunnar for as long as I could, for I feared what I might see there. But when at last I turned to him, I saw that he showed no sign of guilt or shame. Instead he wore the blank, almost bored expression that I had seen him wear as he fought for his life on the battlefield, a more terrible thing for a warrior to behold than a berserker biting his own shield. It was the expression of a man to whom killing required no anger, no great effort of strength or will. The face of a man to whom a killing meant nothing.
At last, the law was finished. A little sigh passed through the crowd, for it matters greatly to us, this law of ours. We are a shipwrecked, leaderless people, and this is a dream that we dream together – a fragile dream that keeps the peace.
After the Lawspeaker had finished, Olaf was the first to stand.
‘I am Olaf Hoskuldsson,’ he said, though there were few there that did not know his name. ‘Some of you know me. Many more of you knew my father.’ A murmuring of condolence from the crowd. ‘There is little to be said. He was a good man and a great chieftain. He left a land at peace. I hope that my sons too may grow up in peace.’ He lifted his head and surveyed the great plain, and an icy stillness fell upon my skin. ‘To that end,’ he said, ‘I ask now. Is there any man in the Salmon River Valley who has a grievance unanswered? Let us settle it now, in the open. With words, not with blood.’
A silence, and then a stirring within the crowd as a great figure came forward. It was Björn Haroldsson. The brother of the man we had killed.
I saw Hakon Haroldsson reach a cautioning hand on to his brother’s shoulder, seeking to draw him back within the crowd, to confer a moment longer. Björn shrugged him off. ‘I would speak.’
‘What troubles you?’
‘I am Björn. Björn Haroldsson. Some of you may know me.’ He paused for too long, and the crowd stirred restlessly. The particular hesitance of a man unaccustomed to feeling intimidated. He was quick tempered, tall enough to tower over any but a giant. No doubt he was used to cowing men to his will. But there, with the eyes of half a nation upon him, I think that he was afraid.
Gunnar leaned across to me. ‘I do not think he will make much of a skald.’
‘I had not thought of taking him as an apprentice.’
Olaf broke the silence. ‘And what have you to say?’
‘My brother Erik was lost in the winter.’
‘I know of this already.’
‘But others may not.’
‘Speak, then.’
‘He left one night at the end of winter. His servant says that she heard him leave in the night. That he often walked at night and would not say why. And that night he did not come back.’