Meadowland Tom Holt

by Meadowland (lit)

  But as luck would have it, food wasn't a problem. Getting enough to eat didn't even take up more than half our time, which is more than you can say of life in the old country. That said, you can get really tired of salmon and venison, and wild goose now and then as a treat. We stretched out the flour we'd brought with us as long as we could, likewise the malting barley We tried cutting it half and half with flour we ground from the wild corn, but that was a waste of both resources. When the flour ran out we made porridge from the wild stuff - boil a handful with an equal amount of water and any bits of meat or herbs you can find to mask the godawful cloying mushy taste, and when the water's soaked into the grain, you gobble it down with a spoon. Then we had nuts and berries, which would've been fine if we'd been squirrels, and a thin sliver of cheese, just enough to remind us of how much we missed the stuff. There were seals when we arrived, but we ate the ones who were stupid enough to hang around, and the rest buggered off. We rowed out to the islands hoping to find gulls' eggs, but that was a waste of time. Oh, we all got enough to eat, no question about it; and as winter dragged on we smoked and salted more than enough to see us through the journey home. No shortages; but it was either horrible or boring, and by midwinter we'd have traded a week's rations for one meal of salt cod or smoked lamb.

  Same with everything else. Our clothes had pretty well rotted off our backs after all that huddling in the wet on the way over. No wool, no linen; instead, we tanned the deer hides into buckskin, and that's a job I wouldn't wish on an enemy In case you don't know, it means hours and hours of scraping with a dull knife or a flint, and then you scoop the deer's brains out of its skull with a stick, beat them up in water to make a thickish goo, and squidge them into the hide with your fingers. Cures the hide a treat, and five hides make you a shirt and a pair of trousers - except they soak up the water when it rains, and turn as stiff as bark when they dry out. At least we weren't cold, with all that timber, and Tyrkir the mad German was as happy as a lamb with all the charcoal we made for him, so he could smelt the ore out of the bog-iron to make nails for building. At least, he was happy till the malt ran out and there was no more beer. Then he got very sad, and you'd find him sat behind his anvil, all droopy and weeping and not getting any work done. Finally, when the warm spring weather started, he went a bit strange in the head and vanished for two whole weeks. We thought we'd seen the last of him, and we thought that was a pity but something we could learn to live with, given time; but no, he came back, wet and smelly and covered in mud and bits of leaf and stick, dragging a huge sack. He'd been a long way he said, walking south, always south, because he knew he'd find what he was looking for, he could smell it, a very faint scent but no mistaking it- When we asked what he was yammering on about, he yanked open the sack - three flour-sacks ripped up and sewn together again as one - and bugger me if it wasn't full of grapes.

  'They grow wild,' he said. 'Many vines, hanging from the tree, just like in my home. Make the good wine, better than beer.'

  Well, that cheered us up, no question. I'd had wine in Norway, as a special treat; can't say I liked it much, too sour for my taste, but give me a choice between wine and no beer and I don't have to lie awake all night before I make my mind up. Same with the rest of us; so we asked him, Tyrkir, are there more where these came from, do you think you could find the place again? And Tyrkir nodded madly; of course, he could find it blindfold, just following his nose, he'd lead us there and we'd fill all the empty sacks and barrels and fill the ship and the boat and make a fortune selling grapes in Greenland. So the very next day off we sent him off again with ten men and a whole lot of sacks; and two weeks later they brought the sacks back, and one very sad-looking German, but no grapes.

  'Never mind,' Leif said, 'they'll still be there next year, when we come back, and we've got time to look properly and find them again.' We all nodded, and Tyrkir went on being sad. Meanwhile, we decided against making wine with the grapes he'd brought back the first time, since we'd be leaving soon, once the sea warmed up and thawed the ice. Instead, we loaded them onto the ship. They went bad almost overnight, halfway into the journey, and we had to pitch them overboard because of the smell.

  Not that that mattered too much; we had a decent enough cargo without them. I can't remember offhand how much building-lumber was fetching in Greenland in those days, but it was some ridiculous price. Obviously you couldn't get very much in the way of planked timber on board a sixty-foot knoerr, but it wouldn't take all that much to turn a handsome profit, enough to mean that our winter in Meadowland had been well worth the effort and the misery. We slaughtered what was left of the livestock and had a bloody good feed, we left behind everything we didn't absolutely need for the journey, and we filled the hold with planked wood, till the ship was riding dangerously low in the water. It was all right after all, we decided, in spite of Leif and his indecision and the little voices in his head. We were going home, and when we got there we were going to have a cargo to sell. Credit where it's due, Leif had said when we set off that it'd be equal shares for all, and he never once tried to go back on that. I'm sure he meant it, too, except- Well, I'll come to that directly.

  Came the day, and we had a good wind to see us on our way By then we were so bright and breezy and full of it that most of us were saying yes, of course we'd be back next year; it hadn't been so bad really, and next time we'd bring more flour and a lot more malting barley, and another ship just to carry the livestock; we'd do this and we'd do that, and now we knew a bit about the place there really wasn't any good reason we couldn't make a go of the business. We were going to build proper houses, and some of us'd stay there all year round, felling and logging and planking up, while the rest of us ferried to and fro to Greenland and Iceland (because the price back in the old country was higher still, and it wasn't that far from Brattahlid to Snaefellsness, was it?) and pretty soon we'd all be farmers and earls and God knows what, and everything had turned out for the best, just as we'd always known it would. Things couldn't have been better, in fact. Leif had made up his mind to do the return trip in one straight dash - he didn't tell us that was what he had in mind, of course, because we'd have tied him to the anchor and thrown him in the sea - and as soon as we set sail, we picked up a brisk north-easterly wind that sent us skimming along like an arrow The sea was beautifully behaved, so it didn't matter a damn that we were ridiculously over-laden. The ice had already broken up, there was almost no fog. We hardly got wet, even. Before we knew it, there on the skyline were the blue caps of the Greenland glaciers. We were home and safe.

  Which was when Leif changed course and started taking us close into the wind.

  'What's the bloody fool doing?' Kari shouted to me, and buggered if I knew We were all muttering, and a man called Thorgrim Otter jumped up on the aft deck and tried to grab the rudder. Leif kicked him back down into the hold, then yelled to us that it was all right, he knew what he was about. We weren't so sure about that - little voices in his head and all that - and we started asking him what the hell he thought he was playing at.

  'Look for yourselves,' he said.

  Well, none of us had thought to do that, so we looked. At first there wasn't anything to see, but then Thorvald Salmon, who had good eyes, called out that there was something there but he couldn't tell what it was.

  'It's a ship on a reef,' Leif said. 'My guess is they're stuck. Anyhow, we're going in closer to have a look.'

  We couldn't argue with that, so we shut up and let him get on with it; and sure enough, it was a middling-sized knoerr, which some fool had run aground on a sunken reef. We could see the people aboard, jumping up and down and waving at us. We'd shown up just in time, because the reef had made a real mess of their hull. A few hours later and they'd all have drowned.

  Leif could steer a ship, no question. Getting in close to the reef without trashing our own ship wasn't a simple matter, particularly since we had all that valuable timber on board. But he held in tight to the wind until we were sure that we were
going to run aground ourselves, then at exactly the right moment he swung her broadside on, dropped sail and called for the anchor and the boat. Neatest thing you ever saw

  'Hello, he called out, leaning over the rail. 'Who the hell are you?'

  Someone shouted something back, but we were too far away to hear it. But we were close enough to see that there were fifteen people on the deck of the knoerr; fourteen men, and a woman.

  'Screw it,' Leif said, after a moment's thought. 'We'll take the boat and pick them up, and if they're raiders you can share my beer ration in Valhalla.'

  Guess who pulled boat duty. It hadn't actually occurred to me before Leif raised the possibility that these people were vikings- 'Excuse me?' I said.

  'Vikings,' Eyvind repeated. 'Pirates to you. The word actually means, "evil bastards who drop anchor just outside the entrance to a fjord and pounce on cargo ships as they come out". It can also mean "evil bastards who loot farms and settlements on the coast or a mile or so inland". Or it can mean a landowner's son and a bunch of hired hands and neighbours turning an honest penny when there's nothing much needing doing on the farm, depending on how you look at it, and which ship you're on

  'I see,' I said. 'What's a fjord?'

  Probably the thought hadn't occurred to me (Eyvind went on) because the castaways were on a knoerr, and vikings prefer to use warships; also, they don't tend to take women along with them. But there's no hard and fast rules, so I guess Leif was right to be concerned. I took my axe with me on the boat just in case, and I wasn't the only one. Kari was in the boat with me, and Tyrkir the mad German, and Leif himself and three others. When we were in hailing range, Leif prodded Tyrkir in the ribs with his elbow; Tyrkir stood up and called out, 'Who are you?'

  A short, frail-looking man leaned out and yelled back that his name was Thorir: he and his crew were from Norway Leif looked at me and Kari, but we just shrugged:

  Norway's a big country and just because we'd been there a few times, we didn't know everybody who lived there. Leif shrugged too and stood up.

  'My name is Leif Eirikson,' he said.

  The short man looked interested. 'Are you the son of Red Eirik from Brattahlid?' he said. Leif nodded, and the short bloke laughed. 'That's a good one,' he said. 'We were on our way to see you.

  That sounded odd, since they were closer to the Western Settlement; if they'd come from Norway, they'd have sailed right past Brattahlid to get there. But maybe they got carried past by a storm or something.

  'Splendid,' Leif said. 'In that case, we'll give you a lift.'

  Just as well, I thought, that the rest of our lot hadn't heard that. Think about it. We were still several days from home; if Leif was thinking about taking these people on board, there wouldn't be room. Not unless we dumped the cargo...

  Thorir must've had the same thought, looking at how low our ship was riding in the water; he'd have guessed we had a full load on board. 'You sure?' he said.

  'Of course,' Leif called back. 'We'll ferry you across four at a time in the boat. Bring your stuff along, we'll have plenty of space.'

  Fuck, I thought, there goes all that valuable building timber, and my winter's earnings. But Leif was right, of course, we couldn't just leave the poor buggers there to drown. I was surprised to see how little fuss the rest of the crew made when we got back to the ship and told them what we were going to do. Still, it was a blow, no doubt about it.

  Thorir reckoned so too once we'd fetched him across to the ship and he'd taken a look at our cargo. 'It must've taken you for ever to put together that lot,' he said. 'Look, maybe some of us could go in the boat and you could tow us in; and the rest could perch up top of your cargo hold. It'd only be for a few hours. Got to be better than jettisoning all that lumber.'

  Credit where it's due, Leif wasn't even tempted. He had the wit to realise it wasn't about room so much as weight. If we took on ten men lying on top of the cargo, we'd be down so low in the water that the first little wave would swamp us. 'I've got a better idea,' he said. 'We'll offload our cargo here, on this reef. Then, when we come back to salvage your ship, we can pick it up and bring it on.'

  Thorir agreed to that, not that he really had any say in the matter, and we spent the rest of the day hauling planked wood into the boat and sending it across to the reef, bringing back men from the stranded ship. We made the last three trips in the dark, which was no fun at all, but Leif was positive that if we didn't Thorir's ship wouldn't still be there in the morning. At least I got to stay on board our ship, hauling on a block and tackle, rather than going on the reef to unload. All the same, I couldn't have felt more miserable if I'd tried. It was fine for Leif to shoot his mouth off about coming back for the cargo. But the reason we were doing this was because the wrecked ship could wash off at any moment, and naturally the same went for our beautiful lovingly planked timber. Heartbreaking was the only word for it.

  'That was a good day's work,' I remember Leif saying, after we'd brought the boat back for the last time.

  'For us, anyhow,' Thorir replied. At least he sounded like he appreciated what this was going to mean to us. But Leif only laughed and said that there was plenty more where that'd come from in Meadowland, where we'd been all winter. Naturally, Thorir replied with, 'Meadowland? Where's that?' So Leif told him, and you could practically see the idea putting out roots in Thorir's mind. From his point of view, it must've been hard to resist. He'd just lost his own cargo, in all likelihood his ship as well. To a merchant, that was a crippling blow, his entire livelihood gone. And now here was his heroic rescuer telling him about an amazing opportunity to make up those losses in the lumber trade. I could've strangled Leif with my bare hands.

  So why'd he do it? I'll give you three guesses.

  That's right. The woman I mentioned earlier had come across in the first boatload of survivors from the ship. Her name was Gudrid, and she was Thorir's wife; and the moment Leif set eyes on her, I knew there was going to be big trouble at some point in the proceedings.

  It didn't help, of course, that she was the first woman any of us had seen since we'd left Greenland the previous autumn. But Gudrid would've caused problems under any circumstances. Not on purpose, mind, she wasn't that sort at all. On the contrary. I guess you could say she was the sort that brings out the best in any man, and on balance that's the most dangerous kind of all.

  Have I got to explain to you - try and explain, anyway -about women? After all, you can't be expected to know, seeing as how you're- Well, if you say so. I guess even you must've at least met some, from time to time. But - I don't know how to put this without sounding offensive, so I'll say sorry in advance and just crack on, right?

  The thing is - well, it stands to reason you can't ever have felt about women the way ordinary men do; the most you can do is try and get some idea from what they tell you, same as you're trying to picture Meadowland in your mind, based on what Kari and me have said about it. But you've never been there. Same, obviously, with how men feel about women. Right?

  But of course, it's in a man's nature that he'll never tell you, or anybody, the actual truth about that particular subject. No, he'll tell you what he wants you to believe, because he reckons that it's one of the main ways of keeping score, of figuring out who's better and who's worse than everyone else. Stupid bloody way to carry on, of course, and I'm not kidding you when I tell you there've been times in my life when I'd gladly have traded places with one of your lot, and to hell with all the fun-and-games side of things. Be that as it may: if you believe what men tell you about the way they deal with women, then there's got to be a bit of your brain missing, as well as the other thing.

  So you're just going to have to take this on trust. Men just can't help liking certain women, even when they know it's a really bad idea - like he's already married, or she is, or she's a farmer's daughter and he's just a field hand, or her dad killed his uncle in a feud, or whatever. And when they feel the tug - like a hook in a fish's lip, it hurts like fuck but you've got to go
with it - it's not a blind bit of use people telling you how bloody stupid you're being. You already know that, thanks very much. But you still carry on, because the hook draws you. Maybe you know she can't stand the sight of you, it still makes no odds. The best you can hope for is, you make sure you try your hardest not to let it lead you into doing something stupid or dangerous.

  Like I just told you: if you think you understand the subject just from listening to what I've been saying, you're clearly so stupid it's a toss-up whether we cook you a dinner come suppertime, or just water you. Don't try and understand. You'll only get confused.

  So yes, Leif was taken with Gudrid. Smitten. A really bad case. And he'd just saved her life, and he was the captain of the ship, and he was just back from a wonderful adventure (it was a wonderful adventure the way he told it, and she hadn't been there so how would she know otherwise?) and her husband was a waste of good cargo space, it was his fault they'd missed Greenland and ploughed into that reef, he was short and fat and his beard looked like weeds growing up through barley stubble. I wouldn't say she was anything really special to look at. Her face was a bit flat and so was her chest, and she had big hands, like a man's; but she had great big eyes for gazing with, and a way of staying perfectly still when someone was talking to her, like she was almost too enthralled to breathe. Bad news.

  Thorir, her husband, wasn't blind, he could see what was going on. But he was on Leif's ship, and if it hadn't been for us he'd have drowned, and we'd dumped a fortune in building lumber just to rescue them, so what could he do? What anybody would've done in that situation: he pretended he hadn't noticed, and hoped we'd make landfall sooner rather than later.