Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness Page A

his heels together German-style, bowed deeply to the damsel, gripped her hand and raised it to his lips, then addressed her in German. Since he would be sitting here, he said, at the invitation of his Lordship the father of his gracious lady, until the time came for them to attend to their business in the morning, his gracious lady was heartily welcome to make his pavilion and everything she might find therein her own, and he would immediately wake his cook and his page to serve her. He himself, he said, the king’s regent at Bessastaðir, was, to be sure, the most humble of all the servants of his lady. She watched him with a smile, and he proclaimed that the night did honor to her eyes and, bowing before her, kissed her hand again.
    “I want to see Drekkingarhylur,”* said the girl as she and her father stepped out to go to the regent’s booth. Her father said that it was too much trouble to go out of their way, but she pleaded urgently and when he asked why, she answered that she’d long been pining to see the place where condemned women were customarily drowned. In the end she got her way. They could hear a hammering sound from somewhere within the ravine and the cliffs lent a musical murmur to the noise. When they reached the pool the girl said:
    “No, look, there’s gold at the bottom. Look at how it shines.”
    “That is the moon,” said her father.
    She said: “Would I be drowned here if I were a condemned woman?”
    “Do not speak vainly of justice, child,” he said.
    “Is God not merciful?” she asked.
    “Yes, good child: in the same way as the moon in Drekkingarhylur,” said the magistrate. “Now let us leave this place.”
    “Show me the gallows, father,” she said.
    “Such things are not for young maidens,” he said. “And I must not be away from my guests for too long.”
    “Oh, papa,” she said whiningly, as she took him by the arm and leaned up against him. “I do so want to see men killed.”
    “Ah, then you have never left your room in Skálholt, my poor child?” he said.
    “Oh, please say that you’ll let me see men killed, papa dear,” whined the girl. “Or maybe you don’t love me?”
    He consented to take her to see the gallows on the condition that she go straight to bed afterward. They walked through Almannagjá in the still of night, stopping at an open space as green as a homefield and encircled by overhanging rock walls. A spar had been placed over a cleft in one wall, with a removable platform beneath. Two nooses of newly spun wool were coiled around the spar.
    “Goodness, these are beautiful cords,” said the girl. “One hears so often that Iceland is in need of cord. Who’s going to be hung?”
    “Ah—two outlaws,” said the magistrate.
    “Did you sentence them?” she asked.
    “They were sentenced in district court. The Alþingi confirmed the sentences.”
    “And what is that log for, lying there on the grass?”
    “Log?” said the magistrate. “That is no log. That is a chopping block, my child.”
    “Who’s going to be beheaded?”
    “Ah—a knave from Skagi.”
    “Not the one who killed the hangman?” asked the girl. “I’ve always thought that’s such a funny story.”
    “What did you learn in Skálholt this winter, child?” asked the magistrate.
    “Amo, amas, amat,” she said. “Amamus, amatis, amant.* And what strokes are these, so regular and so heavy, echoing so strangely in the silence?”
    “Are you still unable to fix your mind on any one thing, child?” he said. “Learned men carry on serious discussions, and the same goes for well-bred women. They’re cutting up brushwood.”
    “Now, what were we talking about?” she said. “Weren’t we talking about murder?”
    “What nonsense is this?” he said. “We were discussing what you learned in Skálholt.”
    “Would you have ordered my execution, papa, if I had killed the hangman?” asked the girl.
    “The magistrate’s daughter is not a killer,” said he.
    “No, but