Meadowland Tom Holt

by Meadowland (lit)

  I remember, we were cruising through a little group of islands, and we had to put in for fresh water. We saw a lake with a river flowing out of it, so we landed; and there it was, the thing that changed everything.

  Strange; but it was so ordinary that we nearly missed it. No big deal at all, you see them all the time at home, so you don't notice them. It was a rick-cover: a bundle of long sticks rigged up on top of a hayrick to support the thatch that keeps out the rain. The only difference was that the thatching was birch-bark rather than reed. When it's time to cart off the hay, you pull out the sticks, bundle them up and put them aside ready for next year, you don't think about them any more. Someone had done just that, only by the looks of it they'd forgotten all about it, because the grass and weeds had grown up through the bundle - it was only when you got up close and saw the woven-grass cords they were tied with that you realised what you were looking at.

  I can't remember who noticed it first; but someone called out, 'Here, look at this.' Nobody panicked or went wild with excitement, but we stopped what we were doing and gathered round, staring at those weed-covered poles like we knew we were looking at something but we couldn't figure out what was such a big deal. It dawned on us gradually Someone had tied those poles together, and it hadn't been us.

  'Here, Eyvind,' Thorvald said, in a perfectly calm voice. 'When you came this way with Bjarni Herjolfson - did you stop here?'

  Eyvind didn't say anything, just shook his head. I was trying to figure out how long the sticks had been there by the length of the overgrowth: three years, I thought, maybe four. I was thinking, so we aren't the first to come here after all. Obviously, someone else had heard about Bjarni's trip and come exploring, and for some reason they'd built a rick here; or maybe the cover was for cords of wood, which'd make more sense, since why would anybody bring hay out here to an island? It didn't occur to me, or to any of us, I think, that whoever left those poles there might not have been a Greenlander or an Icelander or just possibly a Norwegian. We stared at it for a while, then shrugged and went back to filling our water-barrels. It was a mystery, and maybe we felt a bit put out that someone had beaten us to it, but it wasn't like it mattered, after all.

  We spent all summer fooling about like that, but we never found any vines. Instead, we found honey, which was even better.

  Stands to reason, really Where you've got wild flowers and fruit trees and all that, there's got to be bees. The stupid thing was that it took us so long to think of it. But it was only when a man called Sigurd Squint was cutting brush-wood, stuck his hook into a wild bees' nest and got horribly stung all over that we realised what we'd been overlooking all that time.

  'You've lost me,' I said.

  Kari looked at me as though I was simple, and said a word I'd never heard before. It began with M.

  'Say again,' I said.

  He sighed. 'You Greeks,' he said. 'All right. Basically, it's like beer, only you make it out of honey You ferment it, and-'

  'Oh, right,' I said. 'I know what you're talking about. It's mentioned in Homer, but nobody makes it any more.

  Kari grinned. 'Yes, they bloody well do,' he said, 'though back home it's sort of like showing off, because there's so many other things we need the honey for: preserving meat, that sort of thing. You only make (the M-word) if you're filthy rich and have more honey than you can use. But as far as we were concerned, booze wasn't a luxury any more, it was an essential; so we gave up exploring and turned all our attention to bee-hunting.

  It's a bastard thing about bees (Kari said): when you aren't looking for them, the bloody things are everywhere, stinging you. When you want to find them, it's another matter entirely Each one of us reckoned he knew the sort of places where bees like to nest: hollow trees, for instance, or the forks of old oaks. Turned out we hadn't got a clue, because back home we've been keeping bees for as long as anyone can remember. It was like looking for wild cows. But we couldn't wait for a swarm to show up, like you do at home; we needed to find them as quickly as possible. So we spent weeks poking about on the edges of the woods, prodding rotten trees with long sticks, climbing up in the branches like a load of kids. A man called Big Thorbjorn hit on the idea of following bees back to their nest; he'd wander around in the open till he saw one, then he'd follow it, stalking it like a rabbit while it buzzed around drinking from flowers, then running after it when it started flying - he never found a single nest, but he kept at it for days on end, till at last he tripped over a great big stone while he was chasing a bee and bashed his knee so hard that he couldn't walk for a week.

  In the end, though, we found a dozen hives - and didn't we all get stung busting them open. Two of them were empty, no honey at all, but we finished up with enough comb to brew from; and then we waited. Of course, everybody had slightly different ideas about how you brew the stuff, and in particular how long you've got to leave it till it's ready What's more, it turned out that none of us had ever done any actual brewing; we'd maybe watched our mother or our wife or our aunt do it, but we hadn't actually paid close attention, because it wasn't our job. After all the effort and bother we'd gone to in collecting the honey, the last thing we wanted to do was screw it up by tapping it before it'd finished working; but thirty men who haven't had a drink for best part of a year find it hard to be patient. Thorvald organised a guard rota, to make sure nobody got at it while the rest of us were asleep; we kept watch in pairs, since one man on his own might be tempted. It was all very tense, specially the last few days, and I think we were all worried about what'd happen if we tried it and found it'd gone off or something; there'd have been bloodshed, for certain.

  Luckily, it was all right. It was better than all right, actually it went down a treat, hardly touched the sides, and for a couple of days we were all very happy and pleased with ourselves. Then we woke up, and there wasn't any more left, and our heads hurt.

  Things were pretty subdued around Leif's Booths for a while after that. It wasn't just because there wasn't any booze, though of course that didn't help. The whole point of booze is that it helps make you forget how shitty your life is; on the other hand, when the booze runs out, you find yourself remembering all the shitty things the booze helped you forget, and then you get really depressed. In particular, we all found ourselves asking what the hell we thought we were supposed to be doing there. I mean, it was a fine country, with the most wonderful grazing and all that valuable lumber, but that didn't alter the fact that we were living off dried fish and there wasn't anything to drink. Just for the sake of being there, it seemed a high price to pay It didn't help that autumn was closing in, so even if we'd decided to pack it all in and go back to Greenland, we couldn't, not till spring. The only answer was to find more honey - or grapes, or wild grain, or any bloody thing we could squash into a pulp and leave to ferment.

  It was all a bit ridiculous by that stage. I mean, back home, in winter, the one thing you take for granted is loads of salt beef and bacon washed down with gallons of beer. We were busy all that autumn, but we ended up rationing ourselves to one mug of disgusting mixed-fruit rotgut per man per day to wash down our dried cod and smoked salmon. Over winter, stuck indoors all bundled in together, we mostly went quiet. We'd been together so long that there was nothing left to talk about, and if we tried to talk it just flared up into arguments and bad temper, so mostly we just sat. Now you Greeks know a lot more about Religion than we do, but there's one important thing you've got wrong. You say that if a man's evil and wicked and he dies and goes to the bad place, what's waiting for him there is a huge bonfire stoked with sulphur and pitch, for ever and ever, along with a whole load of other wicked people. No disrespect, but that can't be right. For one thing, you don't know spit about the cold. Sitting in Leif's Booths in the middle of winter, even with the thick turf walls and the hearth stoked right up, you were cold right down inside your bones. Give me this pitch-and-sulphur furnace of yours any time. Also, if I've got this right, most people are evil and wicked, so most people ar
e going to end up in the bad place, which means there'll be plenty of different people to talk to; what's more, since what you call evil and wicked is pretty much what we call interesting, I can't help but think the company'll be better there. Sounds to me like the good place hasn't got much going for it, because if the bad place is hot, it figures the good place has got to be the opposite, cold. Add in being stuck there for ever with a small number of boring people, and it seems to me I've been there already and I didn't like it much.

  We got through the winter, but I couldn't tell you how. Mostly I think we went to sleep with our eyes open. When spring came, there weren't any arguments. We were going to get the ship up together as soon as it was warm enough to be outside, and then we were going home.

  Well, we got the ship overhauled and seaworthy in no time flat; you never saw thirty men work so hard. True, we were very low on stores, apart from water, but we didn't care; we'd put lines over the side and lures for seagulls, just so long as we could get under way as soon as the ice broke up. Once we could get out and start working on something, the tension broke up faster than the ice in the bay I was chatting and laughing with men I hadn't said two words to all winter, mostly because we finally had something to talk about. Different if we'd been women, of course, because it's my experience that what women mostly talk about is nothing at all; but men need to talk about something, or else they just sit there staring at the wall.

  Came the day when we cast off, and all of us agreed that whatever happened we weren't coming back to Leif's Booths again, not ever; we'd rather drown or get crunched on the rocks. We headed east, then north-east, following the lines scored on old Bjari's bearing-dial, keeping the coast in sight but making the most of the current.

  All went well until we came to a headland. I remembered it vaguely, but last time and the times before we'd kept much further out, so all I'd seen of it was a sort of grey smudge at the bottom of the sky This time, we took a chance and held closer in, because the current was so good. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Stuff always happens in the middle of the night. We'd actually had the sense to drop anchor, because we weren't happy about being that close in. But a dirty great squall blew up and sprang the anchors, and then we were off. In the pitch dark and the sea throwing us about we couldn't actually be precise about where we were headed, but it didn't feel good at all. We hopped about trying to get the sails up and tack out of it - just as well we failed, because that'd probably have made things a whole lot worse - and then there was the most almighty bang, loudest noise I've ever heard, and we were all thrown up in the air. I came down badly landed awkwardly on the rim of a bucket, of all things. I felt at least one rib go, and then something heavy gave me a bloody . great scat on the side of the head, and I was excused duty, as we say in the Guards.

  When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was how much the daylight hurt. Then I realised I wasn't on the ship any more. I was lying on my back on a rock, looking up at the sky, which was grey and miserable, and I was soaked to the skin. Also my left arm hurt, though not nearly as much as my ribs; and there was Eyvind, with a bit of bloody rag tied round his head, looking down at me all thoughtful.

  'You're alive, then,' he said.

  "Course I'm bloody alive,' I said, swearing because it hurt like buggery to talk. 'What happened?'

  He sighed. 'Actually, could've been a lot worse. The keel's all smashed in, but most of the rest of the damage we can probably patch up, eventually And nobody got killed,' he added as an afterthought. 'In fact, you're probably the worst hurt.'

  That didn't sound good, so I called him a bastard and asked what was wrong with me. 'Two busted ribs, he told me. 'But your arm's probably all right, apart from a bit of bruising.'

  'My head hurts,' I told him.

  'Well, it would, wouldn't it?' Eyvind replied, and walked away, even though I yelled at him to come back. As it happened, I went to sleep for a while after that, and it was dark when I woke up again There was a fire going nearby, and it was just spitting with rain. Someone said, 'Kari's awake', and next thing Thorvald himself had come to see me. Which was nice of him, I guess.

  'We ran aground,' he said, after he'd asked me how I was and I'd lied to him. 'We'll get her afloat again, no worries on that score, but it's going to be a long job. A bloody long job,' he added, in a tone of voice I didn't like one bit. 'Doesn't help that half our stuff's at the bottom of the sea,' he went on. 'We lost the cross-cut saw and the carpenter's chest, and we've got just the one long axe between us.'

  'That's bad,' I said. 'Eyvind said the keel's not too clever.'

  'It's a mess,' Thorvald said sadly 'We're going to have to make a new one from scratch - we can't even salvage the nails.'

  That was when I really wanted to cry. If we had to build and fit a new keel, we'd need more than just timber; we'd need the right tools, and most of all (because you can do a lot with a hand-axe if you've really got to) we'd need nails. If we hadn't got any we'd have to make some; and to make nails, of course, you need a forge and an anvil and bellows and all that, not to mention raw iron.

  'We're going back to Leif's Booths, then,' I said, all quiet.

  Thorvald nodded; I could see the silhouette of his beard wagging up and down against the firelight. 'Might as well,' he said. 'We used up the last of the charcoal before we came on, so we'll need to burn a stack before we can get the forge going. With only one long axe between us, that means everybody pitching in with hand-axes. It's a real bugger when you've got to make every damn thing for yourself.'

  I nodded and pretended that I was feeling sleepy again, because I didn't feel like talking any more. Of course, I hadn't had time to figure it all out in my mind, how long each job'd take before we could move on to the next stage, but I didn't need to know the details. You see, it wasn't just a matter of doing the work. Three-quarters of our time'd be spent just gathering food and fuel. The plain fact was, we were going to be stuck in bloody Meadowland all summer, probably all winter too. It was like the place had got its teeth stuck into us and wasn't going to let us go.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  'What?' I muttered.

  'You fell asleep.'

  I opened my eyes to the sight of Eyvind's long, bony, beard-fringed face hovering over me. 'Rubbish,' I said. 'I was just resting my eyes.

  I could see light soaking through the shadows at the mouth of the tomb. Furthermore, I had a crick in my neck, pins and needles in my left arm and a sharp pain in the small of my back. It was just possible that Eyvind was right.

  'Understandable,' he went on. 'In fact, it's amazing you lasted as long as you did, with that old fool sitting there, spouting his drivel at you. I always said he missed his calling in life. Should've been a surgeon's assistant. Get Kari to talk to a man for an hour, you can cut off both his feet and he'd never notice a thing.'

  'Actually,' I said, 'I was paying close attention. He'd just got to the part where Thorvald Eirikson ran the ship aground.'

  Eyvind grunted. Behind him, I could see the taciturn Harald mixing porridge in an iron pot over the fire. For choice, I like to start the day with freshly baked wheat-bread dipped in wine with cheese grated over the top; porridge, on the other hand, has the great virtue of being better than nothing. 'You mean,' he said, 'the part where I saved that bastard from drowning.'

  I frowned. 'I don't think he mentioned that,' I said.

  Eyvind's face clouded over like the prelude to a thunderstorm. 'You're joking.'

  Yet another thing I probably shouldn't have mentioned. 'Well,' I added, 'he did say he passed out when he hit his head on something during the storm, and the next thing he knew was being on dry land, so presumably he wasn't actually aware who saved him, through being unconscious at the time-'

  'Balls,' said Eyvind succinctly "Course he knew I told him.'

  'Ah,' I said. 'In that case, maybe I misheard him or something. I was nearly asleep, wasn't I?'

  'You said you were resting your eyes, no
t your ears.'

  'Well, anyhow,' I said, as firmly as I could, 'I know now, don't I? Though that rather raises the question: if you've always hated his guts as much as you claim to, why didn't you just let him drown?'

  Eyvind sighed. 'Because that's not how it works, on a ship,' he said. 'Look, it's not anything noble or heroic or any shit like that. It's more that, if you couldn't absolutely rely on knowing that anybody on that ship'd do as much for you, even your worst enemy in the whole world, people simply wouldn't be able to go to sea, there'd be nothing on Earth that'd induce them to set foot on the deck of a ship. All right, he added, as I pulled a not-convinced face, 'let's take an example you can understand. Your orthodox Christians, right, hate the heretics. They hate them so much that they round them up and kill them like sheep in winter. But if the Greeks were attacked by the heathen Saracens, they'd forget their differences for the time being and fight together. Right?'

  'Actually,' I said, 'no, they wouldn't. But I think I see what you mean. The sea is your common enemy, and you'd rather risk your life to save someone you can't stand than give the sea the satisfaction of getting him.'

  Eyvind nodded. 'Something like that,' he said. 'Anyhow, I don't know about you, but I can't see the point of staying inside when it's warm and sunny out. Let's go and sit outside, and I'll tell you what happened next.'

  Took us the best part of a week to walk back to Leif's Booths (Eyvind said), carrying all the gear we hadn't lost in the storm. Can't say we were overjoyed to see the place again, even though it was looking very cheerful and fine with all its spring flowers and stuff. But it didn't take us very long to get over being pissed off at being there again, and after that we just slotted back into the routine: catching fish, cutting wood, burning charcoal. Well, it was just ordinary life, except we were doing it a slightly harder way than if we'd been back at Brattahlid or Herjolfsness. Meanwhile, Thorvald was in the forge, with Fat Osvif working the bellows for him, banging out nails day after day Not that Thorvald was the handiest man with a hammer I ever did see, but that's how we do things. We believe that who you are decides what you can do. Like, in the City there's men who do nothing but weave rugs or make silver jugs, and they do that because they're good at it. You can get away with doing things that way round in a city, where there's thousands of people all living together. On the farms, though, back home, there's three or four dozen of you at most, so we can't afford to have experts, men who only do one thing all year round. Even a big place like Brattahlid, there's only, what, five days' worth of blacksmith work needed in a year; maybe fourteen days of carpentering, about the same amount of time tanning or building. So we say, the more responsible a job is, the more important the man who does it has got to be. Really, it's a case of the farmer saying, I need this done right, I'd better do it myself.