Well, we had mixed feelings about that. Yes, it was bloody fantastic to draw the ship up on shore and walk away from it; but you couldn't help feeling a bit stupid, all those weeks getting soaked to the skin and floundering about in the fog, and we ended up a couple of days' sail from where we started out from. We were going to get laughed at, we knew, soon as we showed up back in Eiriksfjord with nothing to show for our adventure; so when the farmer at Lysufjord, which was where we were, offered to put us up for a day or two before we went home, we were happy to accept.
Now I can see where a foreigner like you might get confused by Northern names, because there's so few of them. The farmer at Lysufjord was called Thorstein; but I can tell you won't be able to tell him apart from Thorstein Eirikson, unless I help you out a little. That first evening, when we'd had a good feed and a few drinks, he told us people called him Black Thorstein, so I'll do the same.
God only knows why Black Thorstein offered to put us up in the first place, because he was a miserable bugger, not sociable. He was well off, at least by Greenland standards, and he didn't begrudge us his food and beer; but he wasn't interested in hearing about our adventures, outside of a very short summary - 'We were headed somewhere but there was a storm and we got lost' - and he wasn't too keen on talking himself, either. In fact, the only one of us he seemed to have any time for was Gudrid, and he was all over her like a hand-me-down shirt. That didn't go down terribly well with his wife, a big woman by the name of Grimhild. When I say big, by the way, I don't just mean fat, or even tall. She was bloody massive: arms and legs like a troll, great big hands and feet. She wasn't all that fat, actually, just large all over. Black Thorstein was a big man, but stood next to Grimhild he looked like her kid brother. Me, I wouldn't have wanted to get on her wrong side by sniffing round the skirts of another woman, in her house, sitting at her table; but Black Thorstein acted like she wasn't there. That was Gudrid for you, though. I've seen better-looking women, and women who flirt with anything on two legs. She wasn't like that. She was quiet, mostly, except when she flew off the handle. I think what got you going was the way she had of sitting looking at you and listening, like you were the most fascinating man she'd ever come across. She had big round eyes, sort of a cloudy brown colour; and when you were talking to her, you felt like it was terribly important that she thought well of you. At least, that was how men reacted. She didn't talk to women much, and other women tended to skirt round her with their ears back, if you see what I mean. Big Grimhild didn't like her at all, you could see that the moment they set eyes on each other. Understandable, I guess. I mean, Grimhild was just the sort of woman you'd want to marry if you were fixing to move out to the Western Settlement, because she could cut turf and pitch hay all day long, carry a sick calf over her shoulder down from the shieling to the farm, and that counts for a whole lot more than glamour when you're living right out on the edge of the world. Gudrid - well, she could card and spin and cure bacon, but I never knew her stir out of doors unless she had to, particularly if it was cold.
So it wasn't a comfortable atmosphere at Lysufjord, and the best I could say for it was that we weren't going to be stopping there long; at least, that was the idea. Didn't quite work out that way, unfortunately
The day we'd set for leaving, a hell of a storm came up out of nowhere. Thorstein Eirikson said, it's just a bit of a squall, we'll be fine; but it was obvious he just wanted to get his wife away from Black Thorstein. We wouldn't have gone a mile in that weather. So we stayed another night, and the weather got worse instead of better, and then we looked out one morning and the sea was full of floating ice, and we knew we were stuck there for the winter.
It's hard to say who was least happy about that, Thorstein Eirikson or Big Grimhild. The only one who didn't seem to mind was our host. Of course you're welcome to stay, he said; but he said it to Gudrid, without even looking at anybody else. I could hear Thorstein Eirikson growling down the other end of the table, and Grimhild got up and snatched away the dinner plates so hard that she scattered bones and bits of gristle. Black Thorstein's farmhands were looking down their noses; our lot were sat there cowering, because we knew there was going to be trouble sooner or later. We outnumbered the locals five to one, so if it came to a straight fight we'd probably be all right, but none of us wanted it to come to that if it could be helped.
Well, it all ended badly, but not the way we thought it would. After we'd been there about a month, Grimhild woke up one morning and announced that she was staying in bed. We all assumed it was a temper tantrum, but one of the farm women came out mid-afternoon and said the mistress was sweating buckets and couldn't lie still. That was bad news. The last thing you want in a house shut in for the winter is someone going down with something nasty, because if it spreads, chances are you'll all get it. Sure enough, next morning one of the farmhands was taken bad the same way, and later on that day one of our lot. Thorstein Eirikson was next; he woke up next day and told us he was burning up, so we went out and broke up some ice, and packed it all over him till just his eyes and nose were showing. That stopped it getting any worse, but he lay there moaning and swearing and calling out that he was being murdered. That wasn't the brightest thing to say under the circumstances, but by then he was off his head most of the time. The farm people got a bit uptight about it, but Black Thorstein didn't seem to care. He was more worried about Grimhild, credit where it's due; he spent all his time sitting next to her bed, holding her enormous hand, except when he went out with his axe to bust up more ice. Gudrid seemed to have pulled herself together a bit as well. She stayed close to her husband all day, but she was wasting her time because he didn't recognise her, even though he kept yelling for her and asking us all if we knew where she was.
Six more of our men went down. Curiously, the last to fall ill was the first to die; he just seemed to shrivel up, like a ball of wool on the fire. There was no chance of burying him while the ground was frozen solid, so we put him outside and covered him with three foot of snow, so he'd keep fresh till the thaw came. Next to go was one of the farm women, then three of our men, and the rest of us figured that it wouldn't be long till it was our turn. Talk about a miserable time: stuck in the main hall all day, nothing to do except listen to the rantings of the sick and the dying, unless it was your turn to go out in the freezing cold and break up ice. In the end, Eyvind and a man called Thormod Eyes and me decided we'd move out to the cattle sheds and take our chances there. True, it was bloody cold, but no worse than in the house, because they weren't keeping up much of a fire in there so as not to melt the ice-beds. We poked a hole in the roof and lit up a brazier, fed and watered and mucked out the cows for something to do, and worried ourselves silly imagining that we were starting to show the first symptoms of the fever.
Which was why we weren't there when Thorstein Eirikson died. He hung on a long time, Black Thorstein told us, longer than any of the others in our crew, though one of the farmhands outlasted him by a day. By an odd coincidence, Grimhild died at almost the same time - we could hear her ranting and cursing towards the end, even out there in the cattleshed. Anyhow, when there was just Black Thorstein and Gudrid left, they came out and told us what'd happened. Both of them seemed well out of it, like they were way past caring. Black Thorstein asked if we'd mind helping him with the burials once the thaw came, since it'd be a big job for a man on his own. We said that'd be fine, no problem. Then he said, did we think he could come with us back to Eiriksfjord, since he didn't really fancy staying on at Lysufjord, given what'd happened there. Well, we weren't in any position to speak for Leif Eirikson, but the plain fact was that the three of us on our own couldn't handle the ship, but with a fourth pair of hands we'd probably make it; so we said, sure, why not? After that, nobody said anything much, until the spring came.
You know, when I think back on my life, I'm struck by how much of it I've spent sitting still and quiet and miserable; either frozen or soaked to the skin, in fog, or cooped up over winter in some pl
ace I really didn't want to be. I dare say it's mostly my own fault, for drifting through my life instead of making up my mind to do something useful and sensible with it, like other people seem to. Maybe that's why I've fetched up here, where most of the year it's so hot you can scarcely breathe, and you don't seem to get the long summer days and long winter nights, and when you first come here from the North you think it's all so much better, until you've been here a while and you find out it's just different. But there you go. For a while, I sort of persuaded myself that places matter; that who you are depends a lot on where you are, and if only you can find the right place to be, that'll solve all your problems and everything'll be fine. But the plain fact is, places make hardly any difference at all. Any place you go to changes soon as you get there, and most of us are like snails, we carry one place around with us on our backs wherever we go.
Well: when the thaw came, after we'd buried the dead, we fixed up the ship as best we could and sailed back to the Eastern Settlement. It only took us a night and two days, would you believe; all that time we'd been so close, but we might as well have been back in Meadowland for all the good it did us.
I think I can honestly say that Leif was pleased to see us; mostly, I think, because we'd brought back Gudrid, and the ship. Probably on balance he was sad about Thorstein, and losing sixteen of his men like that definitely came as a blow But it's like my old mother used to say: you can't blame a man for looking on the bright side. At a stroke, he'd cleared out both his brothers from under his feet, and surely Gudrid would have to marry him now
She didn't, of course. Nor did she marry Black Thorstein, who'd come to Brattahlid with pretty much the same idea in mind. He at any rate took it quite well. He borrowed a horse, rode back to the Western Settlement and sold up the farm, live and dead stock, the lot; then he came back to Eiriksfjord, bought a place as close to Brattahlid as he could find, and carried on with his life. I heard at some point that he married again, though I don't know if it's true, or any details. Any rate, he went back to being a miserable bastard, and kept himself to himself.
Leif did one thing that surprised me. Not long after we got back, he took the ship up to Lysufjord, got permission from the new owner to dig up the bodies of all the people who'd died over the winter, fetched them back to Eirikstjord and had them buried there near the little church that Eirik had built for his wife. That's stuck in my mind because it wasn't the sort of thing he tended to do, but I guess he had his reasons. But he never raised the subject of bringing Thorvald's body back from Meadowland - which, you'll remember, was the big idea behind Thorstein's trip. Nothing more was ever said about that. In fact, I believe the whole Meadowland business would've been quietly forgotten about, if Leif'd had his way. But it wasn't, of course; because later that summer, that bastard Bits arrived from Norway, and fell in love with Gudrid, and everything started all over again.
CHAPTER
NINE
A little later, Eyvind came over and sat by me. He had a big axe in one hand and a whetstone in the other.
The sun was high, so he was wearing a broad-brimmed hat to keep the bright light out of his eyes.
'It's all right,' he said, as he noticed me looking doubtfully at the axe. 'I was planning to wander up to those trees up there on the skyline, cut out some dry wood for the fire. Kari and young Harald have been a bit free with the charcoal, and I think it may get cold tonight.' He grinned. 'Listen to that,' he said, 'you can tell I've been in these parts too long. Back home, Greek cold'd have everybody sweating.'
'You two start every other sentence with back home,' I said, maybe a little irritably. 'I take it you don't really like it here.'
He laughed. 'Are you kidding?' he said. 'Soft beds, all the food you can stuff down your face; no work, unless you count prancing around with a spear in your hand trying to look fierce. And we - Kari and me - we hardly even have to do that any more. No, we live on the charity of the regiment, on account of our long and distinguished service.' He snorted. 'And that's all bullshit,' he added, 'though don't go telling young Harald I said so. He thinks we're heroic veterans: we drove the Bulgars out of the north and held back the Saracen hordes in Sicily. Me, I've never even seen a Saracen, not a live one, at any rate. We were the reserves, see. Got off a ship, marched up some mountains, hung around for a few days in camp, marched down the mountain, came home. I guess the mere rumour that we'd come was enough to make the Saracens give up and run away. Or something: He drew the stone along the axe blade a few times, and the coarse, grating hum set my teeth on edge. 'Kari finally left you in peace, then.'
I nodded. 'He was telling me about how Thorstein Eirikson died of the fever,' I said. 'But then he mentioned someone called Bits, and suddenly he didn't want to talk any more. He got up and went off over there. Last time I saw him, he was telling Harald what was wrong with the way he makes porridge:
Eyvind frowned, as though puzzled. 'Bits,' he repeated. 'That's odd. The only man he could've meant was Bits Thorfinn, and I can't see why that'd make him go all moody'
Resignation makes me curl my toes. 'Who's Bits Thorfinn?' I said.
Bits (Eyvind said) is actually short for Bits-and-pieces-that-make-up-a-man - assuming that Kari was talking about who I'm assuming he meant, and that'd have been the right point in the story. In our language, it's not nearly such a mouthful: karlsefni. It's just a pain saying it in full in Greek. So we'll call him Bits.
First time I met Bits was in the yard at Brattahlid, maybe a month after we got back from the Western Settlement. I'd been mucking out the milking ewes, and I was staggering across the yard under a huge forkload of sheep-shitty bracken. Couldn't see very well where I was going, and suddenly I crashed into something hard. Needless to say I let go of the pitchfork, and for a split second it was raining bedding and sheep dung. Then I heard someone apologising.
'Sorry,' said the voice. 'My fault.'
Well, he was a liar, whoever he was, but I didn't mind that. Most people, women and kids included, would've punched first and then yelled at me for not minding where I was going. Anyhow, I wiped the crap out of my eyes, and I saw this man standing in front of me, all covered in the stuff.
He was a short bloke; that was the first thing you noticed about him. Unfair, really, because he had broad shoulders, arms like legs, strong chin, piercing eyes; if he'd only been nine inches further off the ground you'd have called him distinguished-looking, or if you happened to be female, probably handsome. But when a man only comes up to your chin, that's the first and abiding impression you get of him. A short bloke.
'That's all right,' I said. 'Should've been looking where I was going.'
'Never mind.' He smeared a handful of shit off his face. 'Tell me where the stream is, and we'll call it quits.'
'I'll show you,' I said.
Well, I took him to the stream and we washed ourselves off, as best we could. Then he stuck out his hand and said, 'My name's Thorfinn Thordsson. Pleased to meet you.
'Likewise,' I mumbled. I could tell from his accent he was an Easterner: Norwegian. 'You're off that ship,' I said. 'The one that put in last night.'
'That's right, he said, smiling nicely. 'Actually, that's my ship. We're trading timber for furs and smoked cheese. Leif Eirikson kindly agreed to put us up over winter.'
Just my rotten luck, I thought; because as soon as I'd heard that a Norwegian ship had put in, I'd made a decision. When it sailed back to Norway in the spring, I was going to be on it. Not that I was yearning for the seafaring life after a whole month on warm, dry land; I just wanted to get away - from Brattahlid, from Leif Eirikson, and from my boyhood pal Kari.
I can't really explain what the matter was; but ever since we'd got back from Thorstein's disastrous trip, I hadn't been able to settle. Not all that surprising, I suppose: being one of three survivors out of a crew of twenty, and burying the ones who hadn't made it in a mass grave scooped out of the gravel, tends to set you thinking about a whole range of things. Anyhow, I'd come to the conclusio
n that I was through with pissing my life away into the mud. Didn't matter where I went, so long as I got away from these people; because as long as I was with them, I wasn't ever going to make anything of myself, I'd just be someone who sat in a corner, wet through, scared and bored. Fair enough, taking passage with a trading ship wasn't a very good way of changing all that, but I wasn't planning on staying with the ship once it'd reached the East. What I figured on doing was stuffing a big bag full of furs, selling them in Norway for what I could get, and having a go at trading. I didn't know spit about it; in fact, I probably wouldn't ever have considered it, only I'd had the good luck to find a dead bear up on the high pastures. You only see them once in a blue moon, but Greenland bears have white coats, and they're worth a fortune in the East. I had that skin off and into a bucket full of beaten .eggs so fast you wouldn't credit it. My plan -sounds daft, but what did I know about anything? - my plan was to go to Norway, or maybe Sweden, walk up to the King, and give him my white bearskin. According to all the stories, His Majesty would then give me twice the skin's value in gold, invite me to stay at court and probably let me join his personal guard, just to show how wonderfully generous he was. So, you can tell, I'd thought it all through really carefully And, just when I needed one, here was a Norwegian ship; and what'd I just done? I'd nearly flattened its captain in the yard, and covered him in sheep slit.
Anyway; there I was, wet from the stream and all my dreams shattered around me, shaking this small bloke by the hand. I told him my name, explained I wasn't anybody, just a hired hand, but he didn't seem to mind that. Usually you can see a very slight change in someone 's face when you tell them you're just the help, but the short bloke just carried on smiling, like it didn't matter.
'Well,' I said, once he'd let go of my hand, 'I'd better go and rake up the yard before I get yelled at. Sorry about-'
Meadowland Tom Holt Page 20
