Meadowland Tom Holt

by Meadowland (lit)

  Now think what it was like for Leif Eirikson, and you can begin to see why he went to Meadowland; also, why he came back and, I'm absolutely positive, did in his old man. Of course, while Red Eirik was alive, his kids were like holly bushes in a birch forest: they could only grow so high before they ran out of light. When Eirik died, though, and the light came flooding back in, a mild, easygoing lad like Thorvald has two choices. He can buckle down and get used to taking the same kind of shit from his big brother that he always took from his dad; or he can go away on a very long journey Just lucky, in the circumstances, that there was somewhere worth going to - all in the family, so to speak.

  So Thorvald goes to Leif and tells him he quite fancies taking the ship to Meadowland, if that'd be all right. Now you'd have thought that Leif would be only too pleased to see the back of him, since it means there'll only be his other brother Thorstein and his sister Freydis left for him to lock horns with. But Leif's not like that. The way he sees it, he got up off his bum and went out and found something, something big of his very own, not just one of the old man's things. True, now he's the farmer at Brattahlid and his mind's full of milk yields and grazing for the sheep and whether the hay'll see out the winter, so he knows in his heart of hearts he probably won't have any use for a great big green island across the sea, so why not let the kid have it? He won't say that out loud, though. When Thorvald tells him what he's got planned, Leif just nods his head a little bit, doesn't actually say anything; and then Thorvald says, 'So it's all right if I take the ship?' and Leif frowns a bit, because 'take' can mean 'borrow' or it can mean 'have'. 'I guess we could do with some timber for the new barns,' Leif says, and that's entirely true, as far as it goes. Thorvald thinks it's close enough to 'yes' to be going on with; Leif knows exactly what he meant by it, but he's smart enough to know that it's what you don't say that carries most weight. 'And if it's all right by you,' Thorvald goes on, can we have the booths you built when you were over there? Makes no sense building new ones when there's perfectly good walls out there already'

  Now Leif goes all quiet, because this time Thorvald's said 'have', and that's crossing the line. So he frowns a bit more; Thorvald waits quiet, Leif makes a show of thinking about it. 'Don't know about that,' he says, 'I'll have to think about it. You can have the use of them if that'll do you.'

  There's a heartbeat or so when nobody says anything. Thorvald thinks: It's right out on the edge of the world, Leif's never going out there again so he won't know, God knows why I even bothered to ask. Leif thinks: Just so long as he knows they're only lent. Then Thorvald says thank you, nicely, and buggers off quick before Leif can change his mind.

  Now comes the merry dance. Leif wants to show how rich and generous he is, because that's what being the farmer of Brattahlid is all about; so when Thorvald asks, can he have ten barrels of flour and five barrels of malt, Eirik says, don't be stupid, you'll want twice that at least, and you'll want bacon and salt fish and smoked lamb and apples, and anything else you can think of, also shirts and blankets and coats, livestock, all the sort of thing that comes from the farm, which means that by this time next year Leif'll have made up the loss and never even felt it. But when Thorvald starts asking for farm tools and axes and hoes and knives, stuff that's got to be sent out for if it's going to get replaced, that's another matter entirely Take felling-axes, for example.

  Obviously, Thorvald wants a good axe for cutting lumber, and there's three long axes at Brattahlid. There's the good Danish axe that Eirik brought from Norway; but that's been in the family since God knows when, so he's not having that. There's the four-pound broad axe with the nick out of the edge; but Leif had to earn that, Eirik made him work all one summer riving logs and putting up fences before he'd give it to him, so obviously that's not available; which only leaves the fancy axe that some great-uncle brought back from Sweden as a gift from the King - it's got silver inlay and something written on the poll that you can't actually read any more, but it was in a fire forty years ago and goes blunt soon as look at it so it's actually not much use for anything. Besides, Thorstein likes the fancy axe, and Thorvald doesn't like using the four-pounder, he's always used the Dane-axe because the helve fits his hands better; and getting a fourth axe made specially for Thorvald's out of the question, because there's not enough hardening steel in the smithy to make a good edge, and the pedlar won't be calling out that way again till April. So in the end, Leif takes a horse and rides over to Ketilsfjord, which is a long way away and a rough old road even in summer, because he knows Ketil's got two spare axes his dad brought home from a viking trip and never uses; and he trades them for three months' hay that he can hardly spare. Result: Leif's pissed right off because of the hay, and because Thorvald doesn't seem properly grateful. Thorvald's all resentful because he wanted the axe he's used to. Brother Thorstein says, if he can have a new axe why can't I have one too? Sister Freydis is mad as hell because Leif's gone and wasted all that valuable hay when there's three perfectly good axes hanging up on the wall already

  And so on, for months on bloody end. And don't imagine it was just the family at each other's throats. When things get fraught round the farm, everybody gets sucked in, taking sides, falling out, not speaking, till you reach the point where it's a miracle blood's not shed. Which is why when Thorvald came round all quiet and furtive, sounding us out one by one to see who fancied coming with him, I said yes, straight off, without thinking.

  I do a lot of that, not thinking. Oh, I thought about it later, when it was too late. Me, go back to Meadowland, again. Why the hell would I want to do a thing like that?

  First, of course, because I happened to know that Thorvald had already asked Eyvind, and he'd said yes, so really I didn't have much choice. Second, because I was sick and tired of Brattahlid, especially now everybody was so uptight and snotty over sharing out the things. Third- Third, because I really wanted to go back, and buggered if

  I know why, looking back on it. Going through all that again, the fog and the getting wet and the sitting still on a boat, with the cows roaring their heads off in the hold and waves bashing your face in. But I wasn't thinking of any of that. I was thinking of that imaginary house of mine, Karisfjord or Karisholt or Karisness. You probably don't know it, but we have an old kids' story about the elves' castle, which you stumble across by accident one time and spend the rest of your life vainly searching for, because it can never be found on purpose. Well, I knew my house, my farm, my country of my very own was out there somewhere, out back of the lake the river flowed down from, or round the second headland down from Leif's Booths; in my mind's eye I could picture me standing on top of one of the mountains beyond the forest, and from where I was stood I could just see the green flash of its roof, round the rocks and over the treetops, not terribly far away You lie in the hall at night, squashed up on your bit of bench with someone's knee in the small of your back, and everybody dreams about their own place, their own valley and lake and mountain and fjord, far as the eye can see. That's dreams, and they're all right in their place but you know it'll never happen. But I'd already been there, for God's sake, I'd seen all that grass and flat land with no bugger at all living on it; and once a man like me's got a picture like that snagged in his mind, it won't go away You can't snap off the shaft and pull it out with the smithy tongs. It's there inside you, for keeps.

  Kari sat still and quiet for a while, until I thought he'd fallen asleep. Wishful thinking on my part; because when I stood up and started tiptoeing outside for a pee (which I'd been wanting to do for some time) he lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were very wide open and bright, but I couldn't begin to guess what he was thinking.

  'Anyway' he said; so I had no choice but to go back to where I'd been sitting.

  Anyway (Kari said), we went back to Meadowland.

  I don't seem to remember much about that crossing. Yes, there was fog, and rain, and it wasn't a lot of fun. I think we sprang a leak at some point, and had to plug it with all our dry
spare clothes stuffed into hide sacks; and there was a hell of a storm that lasted two days and one night, with the ship trying to stand on its tail like a begging dog: stores falling out of the hold and flour barrels bursting, the decks slimy with salt-water porridge, the sail splitting, all that. It was a bad storm, but it shoved us on the way we wanted to go and shaved the best part of a day off the run, so it wasn't all bad. Leif had given Thorvald the bearing-dial he'd got from Bjarni Herjolfson, so quite a lot of the time we knew more or less where we were. I like it when that happens. But you look like you've heard quite enough sea stories for one night, so I'll skip ahead to where we'd sighted land and followed down the coast a day and a night, and the next morning Eyvind was on watch, and he yelled out that he could see the walls of Leif's Booths.

  It's a funny thing. Here in Greece there's fallen-down old buildings everywhere you look: busted walls and bits of cut stone poking up out of the dirt, chunks of that shiny white stuff, marble, stuck in the sides of farmhouses and pigsties and dry-rubble boundary walls. I have no idea what you Greeks have got up to over the years, but you must've been bastards for smashing up buildings. Wars, I suppose. Back home we're not like that. When we have a war, we kill the people and leave the buildings alone. Still, it wouldn't do if everybody was alike.

  But in the whole of Meadowland there was just the one lot of buildings in the whole country, and even they didn't have roofs; so they stuck out, you could see them from a long way off, even though they were small and low Soon as I saw them, I knew we were back, and it was like going home to Greenland had just been a dream. Strange, that, because when we were at Brattahlid after Leif came home I'd lie in the dark at night and try and remember what Meadowland looked like, and I couldn't picture it for the life of me. All I could see was my imaginary farm, Karistead or Karisvatn or whatever we decided it was called; the real thing just sort of slipped through the meshes, like sprats through a cod net.

  Anyhow: the booths were just where we'd left them, and the only difference was. that the grass had grown up nicely through the stacked turfs, binding them together good and tight, which is what you want, of course. Back home we reckon it takes three years for a house to grow properly weathertight; then you cut out the original inside timbers, if they're birch or pine, and replace them with something that'll last. No point doing that until the walls have grown together because they settle and shift and spring the tenons out of the mortices, and it'd be a waste of good lumber. Before we landed we did the business with the canopy struts. At least, we tried to. We said a little prayer to Our Heavenly Father and chucked them overboard into the water, splosh; but instead of bobbing up and floating they sank like stones and we never saw them again, not for a very long time.

  We landed the stores, and that wasn't good. We already knew we'd lost a bit of the flour. What we didn't know was that the damp had got into most of the rest and spoiled it; also the malt, which was a cruel blow and likely to make our lives very sad indeed, unless we could find the place where old Tyrkir's vines grew. The livestock hadn't done too badly - it was funny to see them wobbling about after standing still all that time. They went crazy once they started nibbling the grass. You could see they thought it was a damn sight better than bloody Greenland. Even so, the fact remained that we were going to have to live off the country if we planned on stopping there any length of time.

  Not that we had much choice in the matter, with almost no flour. We were stuck there till we could stock up with provisions for the return trip, at the very least, and looked at sensibly that meant spending the winter. And that meant fish.

  Shows how picky I've got living here, all my meals brought out to me on a plate instead of having to work for a living; I've gone off fish. Not a problem back in the Guards barracks in the City, we get given white wheat-bread and cheese and sausage and eggs and big jugs of that red wine with the tree-sap in, you've only got to eat fish once a week, and that's only because it says so in the Bible. That winter, in Meadowland, we ate fish. Fish followed by fish, with fish for a change when you got bored. Salmon, mostly There were so many salmon you could stand on the riverbank and spear them with a pointed stick. Not that there's anything wrong with salmon. Two of you can have a good feed off one fish, and the skin and scales boil down into the best glue you can possibly make. But I tell you what; even now, all these years later, I can shut my eyes and the taste of bloody salmon comes straight back to me, and it makes me want to go outside and throw up.

  Now and then we'd get so sick of it we'd haul down the ship and go out a way and catch something else - cod mostly, and flatfish; but most of the cod we stuck out in the wind on racks to dry, provisions for the trip home. We smoked some too, and salmon as well, of course, and from time to time someone'd go off into the woods and shoot a deer, or we'd get lucky and a load of seals would turn up. And there was the wild corn too, though there wasn't nearly as much of that as there had been the previous times, and nuts and berries and stuff like that. It'd have been all right if we'd had the time to spend all day finding things to eat; but we didn't.

  I said that Thorvald was the easygoing type. Well, he changed. Being in charge, I suppose, or maybe it was the situation we were in, I don't know It was a slow thing, not a sudden change; but he was always coming up with ideas, finding things for us all to do. First it was putting roofs on the booths. Just dragging the sails over the tops wasn't good enough for him, we had to go up into the woods and cut beams for rafters, make a proper job. Then we were on turf-cutting for days on end, and that's a job I've never liked, it buggers up your elbows and knees like nothing else. I remember thinking, if Leif could see what Thorvald was up to, putting proper roofs on the booths, he'd be mad as hell about it, since the whole idea was that he'd only lent them to Thorvald, and here he was setting up like he planned on staying there for good.

  After we'd done that, next thing was building a proper boat shed for the ship. Well, you can see the sense in that. If anything happened to the ship, we were completely screwed. But I've seen earls' houses in Norway that were less well built than that bloody shed. Just cutting mortices and slotting the timbers together wasn't good enough, oh no. We had to go scrabbling about in the bog for iron nuggets, so Thorvald could cook them up in the smithy forge and draw them down into nails, nails by the bucketful, just to build a boat shed. Then, with winter really starting to come on and big fat chunks of ice starting to form in the bay, he had us outside riving great hundred-foot trees up into posts and rails to build a huge stock-pen. Comical it looked, with our four cows, three goats and half a dozen sheep standing in the middle of all that open space. As if that wasn't enough, he made us cut about a ton of withies and wind them into hurdles, God only knew what for. I never did find out what he had in mind; when we'd finished making them we stacked them neatly round the back of the houses, and there they stayed until the damp got in them and they fell to bits. All in all, we were glad when winter set in and it was too cold to be outside, even though there was only fish to eat and nothing whatsoever to drink, only water.

  Spring came, and we all came bounding out of the houses like calves turned out of the stalls. Thorvald had gone very quiet indeed over winter, just sitting there in the corner hardly saying a word, and we all had a nasty feeling he'd spent the time thinking up more bloody silly things for us to do. We weren't far wrong. What needed doing, he told us all one morning, was a proper survey of the island, so we'd know where we were. We'd launch the ship and sail right round the island, keeping an eye out for the best places for farms. We'd start off heading west, because nobody had been that way before; for all we knew, Leif's Booths was the crummiest spot in the whole of Meadowland, and just round the corner we'd find meadows where the grass dripped with butter, streams where the salmon crawled along on each others' backs, and God only knew what else. Maybe, he added when he saw our faces go all sad, we'd even find the place where the vines grew, or a big rap of the wild corn, which (he felt sure) would probably make decent malt if only we could fi
gure out how.

  That last bit got our attention, after a winter spent drinking water. It's surprising how well thirty men cooped up in a small space with no women and no booze can cope; I guess it's the unspoken fact that if one of them blows his top and starts getting stroppy, chances are that the other twenty-nine will follow suit, and the only possible outcome after that would be a short but bloody fight, with not enough survivors to get the ship home again. But those thirty men will be hard to motivate, unless you can offer them something they actually want. After the long, fraught winter, nobody gave a damn about exploring a strange new country or looking for greener pastures and crisp, cold rivers teeming with salmon. What twenty-nine of us really wanted to do, of course, was go home; it was because we wanted it so badly, I guess, that nobody actually dared say so. That would've been the hole in the planks that lets the sea in. Now that the thaw had come we needed to do something other than scrape along catching fish and burning charcoal, and it had to be something that'd break the tension. An epic quest for Tyrkir's vines was exactly what we needed.

  So we loaded the ship with dried and smoked fish, and set off westwards. It was a good season for exploring, a warm, pleasant spring and early summer, with helpful winds, and we cruised along the coast at a nice easy pace. We didn't find any vines, but we saw great forests sweeping down to white sandy beaches, and it was easy to get lost in daydreams about bringing great cargoes of priceless lumber back to Iceland, without giving much thought to precisely how we'd get them there. All that raw material, just waiting to be cut, logged and planked; just looking at it did something to your brains. I remember spending several days hatching out a cock-eyed scheme of building a great raft of floating logs and towing it home all the way to Brattahlid. Completely impossible, needless to say; but I wasn't the only one who let his mind wander, so to speak. It was like those kids' stories about the hero who gets carried off to the land of the giants, where he sees gold rings the size of cartwheels and cups and plates as big as houses; all that wealth, and not a hope in hell of getting it home. If you stopped to think about it clearheaded, it'd have broken your heart.