Read Iceland's Bell for Free Online Page A

indicated that he was anything other than completely satisfied in this house. He had now struck up a conversation with the old woman, slow in his speech, humble and unpretentious like a rustic who has contemplated many things in his solitude. There was a softness to his deep voice, more like velvet than eiderdown. It turned out, extraordinarily so, that he, the king’s confidant, the table-companion of counts, and the pride of our people amongst the nations, this far-traveled cosmopolitan who could scarcely be considered an Icelander except according to dreams and fables, knew thoroughly the descent and origins of this paltry old woman and could name all of her relatives in the western part of the country, and he said with a gentle smile that he had more than once held in his hands small books that her father had bound for a certain Reverend Guðmundur who had died over a hundred years ago.
    “It is unfortunate,” he added, looking toward the bishop, “—it is unfortunate that the late Reverend Guðmundur from Holt was in the habit of having ancient manuscripts of famous sagas torn apart, when every single page, or even half-page, or even one tiny shred of these manuscripts was auro carior*—it would not have been too much to trade landed estates for some of them. Afterward he would have the parchment leaves used for covers or involucra* for the prayer books and hymnbooks that he received unbound from the printshop in Hólar, and he would give them to his parishioners in exchange for fish.”
    He turned back to the old woman and said:
    “I thought it might be pleasurable to ask whether my dear old mother might not want to show me to the places where scraps of patched-up skin-breeches or worn-out old shoes are sometimes left and forgotten in corners: under the bed, in the kitchen, out in the storehouse, or up in the storehouse loft; or else in the wall-slats of the outer shed, where sometimes during the winters useless patches are packed into the gaps to keep the snow from drifting in. Or perhaps she might have an old bag or box of rubbish in which I might rummage around a bit, just in the hope of finding something, even if it were nothing but a miserable shred of a book cover from the days of Reverend Guðmundur from Holt.”
    But in this household there was no bag or box of rubbish, neither was there a storehouse loft. The assessor, however, did not look any more likely to leave because of this, and although the bishop was becoming slightly restless and wanted to finish bestowing his blessing, the friend of the king continued to smile sympathetically at the family.
    “There’s nothing—unless you might want to try the bottom of my mother’s bed,” said Jón Hreggviðsson.
    “Oh yes, of course—the things our dear old ladies hoard!” said the assessor, and he took snuff from his pouch and offered some to all, including the idiot and both of the lepers.
    When Jón Hreggviðsson had partaken of some of this excellent tobacco it dawned on him that something must surely have become of the old pieces of skin they’d given up on trying to use to patch his breeches a few years ago.
    Dust and poison gushed up from the old and moldy hay within the woman’s bed as they began their search. Mixed up in the hay was all kinds of garbage, such as bottomless shoe-tatters, shoe-patches, old stocking legs, rotten rags of wadmal, pieces of cord, fibers, fragments of horseshoes, horns, bones, gills, fishtails hard as glass, broken wooden bolts and other scraps of wood, loom-weights, shells both flat and whorled, and starfish. The bedstead was even roomy enough to accommodate several useful and extraordinary things, including girth buckles, sea beans, whipstocks, and age-old coppers.
    Jón Hreggviðsson himself had crept over to help the Professor Antiquitatum* rummage in the old woman’s bed. The two elegant women had gone outside but the two lepers remained behind with the bishop. The old woman stood off to one side. As they