In The Wreckage: A Tale of Two Brothers

by Simon J. Townley

  “There are no people.”

  “Spitsbergen’s a big island. There are people sure enough. We’ll find ‘em.”

  Jonah moved towards the back of the boat and took the tiller. Conall baited a hook with a remnant of dried meat from the galley floor, let it down into the water, his hand trailing through the sea. “Where did you learn to sail? There are no ships.”

  “There was plenty, when I was a lad. I was born at sea,” Jonah said. “My father owned a merchant ship, diesel engines, no sail. That was the only home we knew and we travelled the world. Then the fuel ran dry and she couldn’t go anywhere. Couldn’t convert her, she wasn’t right for sail, broke my father’s heart. But there were sail ships around, men that learnt the old ways from books, some that never lost them, and about your age I went as crew. A fine ship, nothing like The Arkady, didn’t have her speed or grace. Nor the clean lines. But she managed all right, built for sail, out of wood, if you’ll believe it, and sixty foot long. We sailed to the south, to Portugal, the Mediterranean, North Africa. To the low countries, Scandinavia.”

  “You never came here, to Svalbard?”

  Jonah shook his head. “No reason to, back then, unless you were carrying refugees. And we had no room for them. We sailed as far north as Hammerfest though, with a cargo of iron ore, and took back dried fish and fruit and wheat.”

  “You’d been there before?”

  “Aye, but it was safer then. Not like now. Damn the place. Damn those men, taking us as slaves.” Jonah pointed to the east, to where smoke rose from within a narrow fjord. “See, I told you there was people.”

  They hauled down the sail and rowed into the fjord, passing between pillars of rock covered with lichen and moss. They saw a green swathe of grass leading down a narrow valley, a wooden house built close to the water. Sheep and cows grazed the fields and small, rough barns dotted the landscape.

  “A farmstead,” Jonah said. He pointed to a boat, tied to a jetty by the house, not much bigger than their row-boat. “No way in, but by sea, I’d guess. Best way. Safest. But the welcome may not be as warm as we’d like. They’ll be scared of us, I expect.”

  Anyone in the house or working the surrounding fields would have seen their approach. But no one appeared to greet them. The place was quiet and looked deserted but for the smoke from the chimney.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Jonah said, “but act friendly.”

  They tied the row-boat up to the quay and approached the house. Conall knocked but there was no answer. He knocked again, tried the handle. The door opened. “Should we? It doesn’t seem right. Maybe they’re in the fields.”

  Jonah leant over him, pushed open the door. “Wait here.” He put one foot over the threshold, and a voice from behind them barked commands. Conall took the language to be German or Dutch. He looked around slowly. Something about that voice said the man was armed. There was no fear, only the certainty of action if they didn’t do as he said.

  The man carried a gun with two long, wide barrels held at waist height. A tall man, in his thirties, pale skin but fresh-faced, a tussle of brown hair, clothes made of rough-spun wool. He waved them away from the door.

  “You speak any English, my friend?” Jonah asked.

  “Some.” The man scowled.

  “We’re shipwrecks, looking for help and shelter.” Jonah thrust out a hand for the man to shake. “I’m Jonah Argent, at your service, first mate of The Arkady, a ship that’s had it’s share of troubles of late.”

  “And captain of The Angela.” Conall smirked behind Jonah’s back.

  “I was, that’s true, but she sank and some will say it’s my fault but a storm’s a storm. We swam ashore, lucky to escape with our lives, and we’re seeking help. Information. Food and rest and a warm welcome. A chance to talk.”

  The man lowered his gun by an inch or so, pointed the barrels away from their bellies. He still held it ready, but his finger eased off the trigger.

  “You look like slavers,” the man said.

  “We do not,” Jonah said. “And we never have been, or will be. A man’s freedom is his own. We were on a ship of settlers, heading for Spitsbergen, when we ran into troubles.”

  “Slavers took us,” Conall said. “We escaped.”

  The man frowned, staring at them as if he was trying to work out if they were telling the truth.

  “We could do with knowing where we are,” Jonah said. “Is this Spitsbergen?”

  The man nodded. Conall glanced at Jonah. They had made it. He longed to ask the man if he had ever met a man and woman, name of Hawkins, but knew it was foolish. The island was huge, hundreds of miles long.

  The man called to someone inside. A woman appeared, wearing clothes of dark brown wool, a baby clutched to her chest. She said something to the man. He wiggled his gun at them. “Where did you come from? The south?”

  “Aye, Norway, and before that Shetland, and England. Liverpool we sailed from,” Jonah said. The words kept tumbling from his mouth, as if he expected to win the man over by talking too much.

  “Inside,” the man said. The woman said something, he fired a few words back, Conall saw her scowl but she opened the door and gestured them in.

  The ground-floor was one large room with a fireplace and chimney in the centre. An old man sat in a chair near the fire, as old as anyone Conall had seen. He glared at them for a moment, staring intently, then nodded and gestured for them to sit.

  The farmer brought them dry clothes and his wife scurried off while they changed. They hung their wet clothes by the fire and she came back with bowls and poured them soup from a metal pot that hung over the flames.

  The farmer told them his name was Otto. The old man was known only as Gert, he was ninety now, one of the first to flee north to Spitsbergen and he had built this place with his wife, long dead. Traders had brought the wood and soil for them to start the farm. More traders sold them fertiliser, trading for food and wool. Otto spoke of prosperous towns further north, of villages inland where valleys had come to life with orchards and woods, trees grown for timber.

  But he spoke also of threats and dangers. Conall sensed the lingering suspicion that filled the small house, the woman hovering, listening, resentful at giving away information at no price, worried in case these strangers meant them harm. The old man, Gert, told of the hardships when he first came to the island, how it was barren and bitter cold. But not empty. Already, when the first settlers came, there were two tribes here.

  Handfuls of Sami, the indigenous people of the north had come on their boats from Greenland and Siberia, always moving, never settling. They had brought the reindeer, the cloudberries and lemongrass which now flourished across Svalbard. But the Sami weren’t alone, and they weren’t the first. Another tribe was here too, the wildmen of Spitsbergen.

  “They tried to drive us out,” Gert said in his broken English. “But we wouldn’t go. It’s not their land. They came from the south, same as us. Here first, yes, but the land’s not theirs.”

  Settlers poured in, Otto told them, creating farms and fishing communities, trading posts and ports. They brought animals and some of those escaped and colonised the island, wild herds of goats and sheep, cows and horses, packs of wild dogs, cats that lived off the bird life and the rats that had crept from the ships. But trouble followed the settlers. Disputes over land, arguments over leadership and freedom and control. Who owned what? Who gave orders? And all the time the wildmen, driving them away.

  “Then the slavers came,” Otto said, “stealing men and women, taking children if they were old enough to work.” They raided inland, he said, seizing whole tribes of wildmen and their families. And they were followed by another group. Gert shook his head, his eyes on fire with anger and disappointment at the folly of the world. Men came from Alaska and Russia, intent on making money, on seizing land and resources, looking for timber and coal and oil, for furs and skins, for iron and gold. At first, people thought they were traders, but soon it turned out they worked w
ith the slavers. They set up mines and mills, putting slaves to work so they could extract more from the land.

  “Wildmen have been at war with them, ever since,” Otto said. “We stay out of it. Stay home. Trade with those we know. Hide from the world. It’s mad after all. And savage.”

  Gert hadn’t left his farm in twenty years. His granddaughter, Otto’s wife, was all the family he had left. Otto had moved here from a trading post five miles north. Between them, they knew little of the island, other than looking after sheep, fishing and hunting rabbits and reindeer.

  “Last polar bear I saw, it was fifty years ago,” Gert said. “Gone, all gone. It was cold when I first came, in summer too.”

  Conall put his soup bowl down on the hearth, hoping to be offered more. No offer came. “Does it still snow in winter?”

  “Oh yes, and ice, the sea still freezes, some years, in the depths of winter.”

  “Best we fix the ship and sail before then,” Jonah muttered. “These old bones aren’t used to the cold.”

  Conall asked if they could stay at the farm for a day or two, to recover from their shipwreck and regain their strength. The farmer, his wife and the old man exchanged glances, then each shook their heads, eyes low to the floor, ashamed but defiant. “Today, tonight,” Otto said. “Then I’ll show you to the trading post. Go there. Get the help you need. Not here. Not here.”

  ≈≈≈≈

  Otto sailed his boat ahead of them, navigating the fjords, showing them the way, though they could hardly miss it. Head north, follow the coastline. But he was willing to help, and they were glad to have a guide.

  “Reckons he feels bad about not letting us stay longer,” Jonah said. “But they’re afraid and that’s not a good sign, young Hawkins. There’s more going on here than I’d thought. More people. The captain would have faced a challenge finding himself a place to settle. This land isn’t empty the way he hoped.”

  They’d talked over what Gert had told them. There was trouble on Spitsbergen on all sides and either slavers had taken the crew of The Arkady or wildmen and they couldn’t decide which. Slavers would never leave the ship behind: she was worth a hundred men, a thousand, Jonah said. It must have been wildmen, who feared the sea the way Tugon did.

  Conall wasn’t so sure. How would wildmen get on board? And why? What did they want with the crew?

  They talked it round and found no easy answers. All they could is do is keep moving, go to the trading post and ask for news. But all the time they were at risk. Neither said it but both knew. If The Arkady could be taken, then two of them in a row-boat stood little chance, other than to slip by unseen.

  Otto led them to within sight of the trading post, then waved them off with barely a word.

  “You’d think he’d stop for supplies, news at least, having come this far,” Jonah said.

  Conall dipped his oar into the water in time with Jonah. “He doesn’t want to be seen with us.”

  “Aye, you might be right at that. He’d be responsible, held to account, if we turned out to be unwelcome.”

  The town was a cluster of buildings made of stone and wood including a store and an inn, a meeting hall and a carpenter’s workshop, a blacksmith’s forge and a communal barn. A spiked wooden wall surrounded the village, ten feet high, with a single gateway leading into the steep valley at the end of the fjord.

  As they tied up their row-boat at the quayside, they were already being watched. A group of men waited, loitering, at the top of the steps that led from the quay to the town above. Jonah waved to them, acting friendly and casual, gave a holler of greeting. “Don’t like the look of ‘em,” he muttered.

  “We go up?”

  “We’ve no choice. It’s that or keep rowing, and we don’t know where.”

  A tall, thick-set man stood on the steps above them. He had grey hair but arms that bulged through a cotton shirt. His forehead was marked with soot, his hands big and strong, fingers clenching and unclenching, as if to ease them after hours of work.

  “Welcome, strangers,” the man said, though his voice was cold and hard. “What brings you?”

  “Dire need,” Jonah said, looking up at the man and shielding his eyes with his hand. “Storms and shipwreck, lost crew-mates and a search for old friends. We could use help and hospitality, news and a place to rest, regain strength and take stock.”

  “Keep going, thirty miles north of here there’s a town might suit you,” the man said.

  “Our need’s more pressing,” Jonah said. “I see there’s an inn, maybe it has rooms where weary travellers could rest?”

  “It has rooms for paying guests, and traders who bring goods,” the man said. “Which are you?”

  “Weary travellers, lost at sea, looking for help. As men who use the sea yourselves, you should respect our need.”

  “And why should we trust you?”

  “Because you’ve no call not to. Trust should be freely given ’til there’s cause to doubt it.”

  “A fine thought, for safer times,” the man said. “But come on up, let’s get a better look at you.”

  Conall glanced at Jonah. The first mate’s eyes spoke volumes. He feared a trap, but these men wouldn’t sell them to slavers, not from what Gert and Otto said.

  “We’ve come this far,” Jonah said. “There’s no escape if they mean to take us.” He leant heavily on his cane, as if trying to show he was weak and frail and posed no threat. The concealed sword might take these men by surprise but there was no way Conall and Jonah could fight off ten of them.

  Jonah led the way up the steps. When they reached the top they found themselves surrounded but there was no violence, no chains or ropes or seizing of arms.

  Jonah addressed the big man: “You speak for this town?”

  “I’m the blacksmith,” he said. “Get the same say as the rest, and we’ve talked and we’re agreed. You can’t stay. You can’t leave.”

  “Now what would that mean?” Jonah leant on his cane with one hand, the other arm draped around Conall’s shoulder, drawing him close.

  “We’ve had wildmen here, at the gates,” the blacksmith said. “Asking after two travellers. An older man, they said, a big man with a braided beard. And a youngster with black hair and blue eyes. Seems to me you two fit that picture pretty close.”

  “And why were they asking?” Jonah said.

  There was only one answer to this riddle. Conall shrugged off Jonah’s protective arm. “Are they still here, these wildmen?”

  “They’ll be back,” the blacksmith said. “Don’t know what you’ve done, whether you’re enemies of theirs. But you’ve got ‘em in a frenzy. Never seen ‘em like this. Offering a reward they were, for word on the two of you.”

  Tugon, who else could it be? Who else knew they were here? No one from The Arkady. Only him. “It’s Tugon, he’s alive, he’s looking for us.”

  “Aye, maybe,” Jonah muttered.

  “What’s that you’re saying?” the blacksmith stepped closer. “No whispering now. Take them boys, lead them to the gates. We’ll take these to the wildmen.”

  “No way to treat strangers in need,” Jonah said.

  “These are dangerous times,” the blacksmith said. “Not often we see a wildman, not up close, never mind speak to ‘em. Doing this might buy us years of peace. You pay the price, sure enough, but that’s your look-out. If you’re slavers, it’s no less than you deserve.”

  Conall shook off one of the men who made to grab his arm. “We’re not slavers, we’re friends of a wildman, he was on our boat when we were wrecked.”

  “Well if they’re friends you’ve nothing to fear,” said the blacksmith. “And we’ll be doing you a favour.”

  “You’d better keep our boat safe,” Jonah said.

  “It’ll be here,” the blacksmith said. “If you ever return. Take them.”

  They led Conall and Jonah to the gates. Four of the men, including the blacksmith, stayed with them, escorting them up a steep path out of the fjo
rd towards the hinterland. The land here was farmed, wherever grass or crops would grow, wherever soil would stick and not get washed away in the rains. Goats and sheep scrambled up the sides of the fjord. Cows grazed fields of lush grass and the barns were stocked with straw and hay. For all their fear and their defences, these people were able to farm the land in safety. No one had carried off their livestock or their supplies. Conall called out to the blacksmith who walked ahead of them. “These wildmen can’t be so bad. You seem to be doing all right.”

  “They leave us alone, providing we stay out of their way. It’s the slavers you’ve to watch for.”

  “Tell us about the wildmen, what do you know?”

  “Not much,” the blacksmith said. But the walk took many hours and Conall kept asking, getting drips of information from the men of the trading post. He pieced enough of it together to realise there wasn’t one tribe. There were dozens of them across the island, living as nomads in the summer months, always moving, following deer, or reindeer. They’d settle down in winter, but no one knew where, and maybe even then they lived in scattered groups. But the tribes would never fight each other, that much was clear.

  “They don’t have a government, king or council,” the blacksmith said. “Some say they’re led by a priest or shaman, though no one’s seen him. People say he’s gone missing, and they mourn him.”

  “Who tells you this?”

  “Traders, passing through that deal with the tribes, though I don’t envy them that. Not sure I’d trust those savages enough to strike a deal.”

  “They’re not savages. At least, the man I knew, the one from our boat, I trusted him.”

  “I hope you’re right,” the blacksmith said. “One of those wild folk, I can see he might make a decent friend, but you wouldn’t want one as an enemy.”

  They walked for half a day with no sign of wildmen, but Conall knew they were being watched. He could sense it. As they passed through a narrow steep-sided valley he said as much to Jonah, and the first mate grunted.

  “What are they waiting for?”