"But my son Biorn is some one, let me tell you," said Heriolf. "He is a traveller who has seen more of the world than any man living, I dare say. And here in Greenland, you must know, a woman is a precious piece of goods. There was a woman brought in here last summer with a sick man who died before he had been a week in bed. Before he was buried there were six men fighting who should be her next. And two of them were killed outright; but none of them got her."
"Would she have none of them?" Thorbeorn asked, though he was not at all interested.
"She had no opportunity," said Heriolf. "For another man came and took her away before they had done fighting."
Thorbeorn held his head stiffly. "But my daughter is greatly descended," he said. "And Eric Red is of my friends."
"All that may be," said Heriolf, "but your daughter is a woman, and Eric Red himself no more than a man. In this country you have to deal with people as God made them. But there is a wise woman in the town, and maybe she will tell us what is written in the book of life."
"My daughter is a Christian," said Thorbeorn, but old Heriolf's mouth twitched.
"I dare swear she will be wanting to know what the book of life says, for all that. Let me tell you that a marriage is not over when the priest has said his say. No, nor yet begun, maybe."
Nobody could have been more easy to quarrel with than Heriolf upon the subject of his son, except Thorbeorn upon that of his daughter; yet there was no quarrel. It may be that Thorbeorn was too happy to stretch his thin legs towards a driftwood fire again, or again, that he recognised the sweet kernel of his host under the cruddled husk. However it was, he let the talk of wise women and the Book of Fate float over his head as the spume of the sea passes over the tangle far below. The spume creams and surges, then disparts; but the sea-tangle sways to the deep currents of the tide undisturbed. All well and good—but there was a Wise Woman.
VIII
Thorberg was the Wise Woman's name. She was the last alive of a family of nine, all women and all wise in the art of reading the days to come. It was supposed that she had come from Iceland, but nobody remembered to have brought her, nor knew of her origin. In these days she lived by herself in a hut of the Settlement at the Ness, and crouched over a peat fire all the winter, singing songs to herself which nobody could understand. In the summer she was often seen about among the pastures below the hills, but always by herself. When she was asked she might go out and show herself at men's houses where there was a feast going on; if she was treated according to her fancy she might foretell the fortune of the householder or of some guest of his, or the upshot of the coming harvest, whether of the sea or of the land. But everything must be exactly as she pleased. There was no telling what she would do or say.