Meadowland Tom Holt

by Meadowland (lit)

  Thorfinn was happy as a lamb because the wheat he'd sown was starting to come through. Gudrid and the other women grumbled now and again, because they were so busy making cheese and churning butter that they were way behind on darning and mending. We had a man working practically full time in the little smithy, bashing out nails by the bucketful, and we all took it in turns to sit by the charcoal heap as it burned through - nice job, that, particularly if you've got a big jug of beer handy Thorfinn spoilt things a bit because he was so full of bright ideas, things he wanted done; you couldn't settle into a pattern, because one day he'd want a dozen men to drop what they were doing to go off into the woods to cut ash coppice for arrow-shafts; next day he'd tell you, Leave that and see if you can find any decent withy-beds for making baskets, and the day after that it'd be clay for pots, or putting up a row of frames for stretching hides on. So we had a dozen clever projects started at any given time, then put aside and not finished because he was off on some other new craze. But it was all right, he'd say there'll be plenty of time to finish off later; and in the meantime, he wanted six men to cut turf, or dredge gravel.

  Spring just sort of melted away, and then it was summer, the busy time of year. That wasn't too bad, either: long, warm days, the first cut of hay, folding the stock on the home meadows. It still wasn't home, but we were beginning to feel that the place quite liked us, and that's important even if it does sound dumb. Thorfinn started talking about when the best time would be for a bit of surveying, because at the rate we were going on maybe this time next year we'd be well enough established to think about splitting up, going out and staking our claims, deciding where we'd build our farms. The key to all that, he said, was the hay If we could get a good enough cut, we could feed the stock over winter without having to slaughter. That way, there'd be the makings of a herd big enough to supply each of us with, say, a house-cow and two heifers, in a year or so. Either that, he went on, or fill two of the ships with timber, send them back to the Eastern Settlement and load up with livestock on the return trip; only there, of course, the problem'd be timing, being sure that the ships could get there and back before the start of the cold weather - and if we had half our manpower sailing the ships, would that leave enough of us for the second cut of hay which was what we'd be relying on to feed the stock?

  That's the way Thorfinn thought about things, like a puppy chasing its tail: full of energy, round and round in circles. The more he thought about things, the more complicated they got, until you started to wonder how in hell you'd ever managed to do difficult stuff like breathing or walking without falling over. Instead of telling him to shut up gabbling and get on with it, though, everybody listened carefully and nodded and said, Yes, that's true, good point, until everything outside of routine'd pretty much ground to a halt. Well, it was a change of pace after the spring, when we'd started jobs first and thought about them after, but I can't say it was an improvement.

  It was a warm morning in the middle of all this, and either we were thinking long thoughts about haymaking timetables or not thinking of anything at all. I can remember quite clearly all I had on my mind that morning was a pulled muscle in my back and what we were having for dinner. It all began so quietly, I can't actually tell you what happened to start with. The first thing I noticed was the bull, roaring its head off in the long pen.

  Even that didn't register with me to begin with, because that bull was a noisy bastard at the best of times. Thorfinn'd been letting the stupid creature gorge itself on the new grass since the start of spring, so it had colic pretty much all of the time, and when its guts ached it made sure we all knew about it. Well, when a noise goes on all the time you quickly stop hearing it; only that morning, the sound of its roaring suddenly changed, just a little bit.

  I was on charcoal duty that day; I was down by the lumber stacks with a saw, cutting cordwood into short logs to go in the middle of the heap. With the saw snicking away I didn't notice the change in the bull's hollering until someone drew my attention to it; he'd stopped work and straightened up, listening.

  'What's the matter?' I asked him.

  He made a be-quiet gesture at me. 'There,' he said. 'Hear it?'

  'Hear what?' I said.

  'The bull,' he replied; and then, yes, I heard it. 'What's got into him?' he went on.

  Just then I looked round, and I could see about a dozen other blokes laying off what they were doing to listen, so I wasn't imagining things. 'Let's go and have a look,' I said to the other man - can't recall to save my life who it was, sorry. He nodded, so both of us downed tools and strolled over towards the pen.

  About fifty yards away, we stopped dead. There were about half a dozen strangers on the other side of the pen, close in by the rails, standing absolutely still.

  Sounds bloody silly of course; but we didn't immediately figure out who they were, because we all thought of them as the leather-boat people, and these ones didn't happen to have their boat with them. They didn't look all that different from us, see; they had buckskins on, and quite a few of our people had made themselves buckskin shirts or trousers, so as to save the wool for best. At that distance, you could see they all had black hair, but we were just too far away to notice that their skins were a bit browner than ours and they didn't have beards.

  But eventually the little bells rang in our heads, and we realised: it was them, the same lot that'd chased Thorvald Eirikson's men and killed Thorvald himself. That was when we started panicking.

  Well, we panicked a bit; but then someone pointed out that there were only six of them, and they weren't actually attacking. What they were doing, of course, was standing dead still and most likely pissing down their legs in terror. Pity we didn't know it at the time, of course; but the reason why they were scared stiff was that none of them had ever even seen a cow before, let alone a great big noisy bull.

  Sometimes I think about that moment, when I've got nothing better to do with my mind. We were scared of them, they were scared of the bull; but a bull's just a farm animal, and they were just men, so where did the fear come from? Simple: never seen one before. It's natural, it's sensible to be scared of things you don't know about or understand. That's what we learn when we're kids, the first time we reach out and grab at the pretty red and yellow fluttery thing and find out the hard way that it's fire. And then I get to thinking; Meadowland didn't scare me particularly the first time I saw it, or even the second, or the third. It was only when I got to know it - maybe I'm kidding myself if I say I ever understood it, but I guess that's my privilege, as an explorer - that it started to throw shadows in my mind. Now, you're a Greek, you know about a lot of clever stuff shouldn't that have been the other way around? Or should the leather-boat people have gone prancing up to the bull assuming it'd be friendly, and only got the jitters once it'd gored a few of them?

  Anyhow They were standing there, still as trees, and we didn't know it was because they were frightened. Now a stranger walking towards you and then standing still and staring in your direction's always an unsettling thing, and really all you can do is stare back until something happens. So that's what we did.

  What struck me wasn't how different they were from us, but how alike. I'd say they were a bit shorter than us, though maybe I'm thinking more about the other ones we came across later on. They had straight black hair pulled tight into a knot at the back of the neck. Like us, they were wearing coats that came down a hand's span below the knee; like ours, theirs had the fur on the inside, except round the neck. Under their coats they had buckskin shirts, and trousers down to the ankle, with tanned-hide boots on their feet. I couldn't see any weapons, except that one of them had a bow in his hand and a quiver on his back; but you'd expect that, of course. Four of them had some sort of leather packs or satchels on their backs, and one of the other two was carrying a kind of basket made out of strips of birch bark.

  So really it goes to prove the old saying about who you are depending on where you are. Back in Iceland or the Eastern Se
ttlement, if you looked up from your work and saw six men looking like that headed towards you, maybe you'd be curious, if they were strangers, but no way would you be scared; just as you wouldn't be frightened at the sight of a penned bull. What the hell: first time I came to the City, there was this funny-looking brass statue on a short pillar, in a small park near the river. I strolled up to look at it, and bugger me if there wasn't a horrible shrill whistling noise, and then the statue began spinning slowly round and round, and moving its arms up and down. Scared? When I finally stopped running, I realised I'd wet myself. But nobody else in the park even took any notice of it. They were too busy gawping at the crazy foreigner.

  Which is what we were both doing, the leather-boaters and us, as though there was a mirror with an invisible frame set up in the middle between us. I don't know, maybe I've thought it all right out of proportion over the years. Maybe it was no big deal. I can't say

  So we stood there, and for a short while nothing much happened. Then, right out of the blue, that useless bloody bull started snorting and bellowing, scratching at the ground with its front hooves, carrying on the way they do when they've been overfed and kept penned too long. That was too much for the leather-boat people; they turned round and ran like hell, their bundles bouncing against their backs.

  Well, soon as we saw they were frightened, we all brightened up no end. Couple of our men started laughing; the leather-boat people must've heard them, because they stopped running and looked round, just in case they were being ambushed or followed. But the bull carried on bellowing, and now it was running up the pen towards them, so again they turned and bolted, stopped and looked back at us, like a herd of bullocks when you clap your hands and yell.

  'Don't think we need worry too much about them,' said Thorfinn. 'Pretty timid bunch, they strike me as.

  That cheered up most of us - not me, because a few minutes ago we'd been just as timid, or more so - and a couple of the men started jeering and calling out names and what- ever. But I was thinking: they've come here to see us, and they've brought bundles and a basket. If they were planning on attacking us, how were they going to go about it -smother us to death? Seemed to me it wasn't too smart to go acting all aggressive till we knew what was in those bundles.

  Or maybe I thought that a bit later on, with hindsight. It's been so long now that I can't be absolutely sure.

  'I know,' someone called out. 'Let's turn the bull loose. That ought to be a bit of fun.'

  Most of us turned to look at Thorfinn; but either he hadn't heard or his mind was somewhere else. Anyhow, he didn't say anything, and next thing, a couple of the blokes -Illugi was one of them, I think, and Thorkel Snot - dashed off, vaulted the pen rails, nipped across and threw open the pen gate.

  Off goes the bull. Now by and large, he wasn't a bad-natured old boy; not naturally vicious, like some are. But he was frisky, and now and then he liked to run. I think it was just his way of letting off steam; and if you stood still till he was right up close and then suddenly spread your arms out wide and shouted, he'd stop dead still like he'd just run into a tree, look at you for a bit and then wander off and graze. But you had to know that, of course; and the leather-boat people didn't. Far as they were concerned, we had a tame monster and we'd just set it on them. They didn't hang about, just took to their heels. Good runners, all of them, very impressive turn of speed and they could keep it up over distance.

  Well, even I was laughing now, because there's something about the sight of other people being chased by a bull that'd make a corpse grin. We carried on laughing for a bit; but then the bull, who was enjoying himself no end, started to gain on them, and instead of just running straight, they veered off, heading straight for the houses.

  That wasn't quite so funny 'The bastards,' someone said; and Thorfinn started shouting out names; you, you and you, get to the houses and bar the doors quick. He needn't have bothered, we were way ahead of him. The leather-boat people were making such good time, they almost beat us to it, at that; but about half of us got indoors and put up the bars, while the rest of us, including me, scuffled into the yard to keep them out of the barns and buildings.

  Luckily, the bull had had enough by then. He stopped running, gave us all a dirty look, and ambled off for a feed. But the leather-boat people were in the yard, with a crowd of us all round them; they were shouting at us - not fierce or angry shouting, more a case of trying to make us understand them by sheer force of noise - and we were yelling back. They couldn't understand us any more than we could understand them, but I should think they got the general idea that we weren't friendly and they'd done something, wrong.

  Well, for quite some time Thorfinn just stood there, catching his breath. Eventually though, he held up his hands and yelled, 'Quiet!' - which did the trick. We stopped shouting, and so did they Then it was all dead quiet for a bit; they stared at us and we stared at them and nobody moved a muscle. You know how it is when you go to a farm where you're not known, and the dogs come bounding out right up at you, barking their heads off. You stop dead still, and when you aren't moving it's like they can't quite see you; they're puzzled and wary, and they growl a bit with their ears back, as if to say where did he vanish to? And then the farmer or someone comes out and calls them off, and they wander away wagging their tails, and everything's fine. I think on this occasion we were the dogs and they were the stranger, though the edges were a bit blurred, if you see what I mean.

  We could have gone on standing there for a very long time, I think; but then one of the leather-boat people, stocky sort of middle-aged bloke, took a couple of steps forward, very slow and careful, knelt down and started untying his bundle. When he unrolled it, we could see what was inside: all sorts of different kinds of fur, squirrel and marten and fox and rabbit and wolf. Poor bastards had only come to trade with us, and we'd treated them like a bunch of vikings.

  I think most of us had the good grace to feel really really stupid. I know I did; and so, fair play to him, did Thorfinn. At any rate, he looked round and waved towards the houses to unbar the doors. Meanwhile the other five leather-boat people had rolled out their bundles, all more of the same, so obviously they were prepared to give it another go. Pretty good of them, I think, in the circumstances.

  Mind you, we didn't actually want to buy furs; we'd got plenty of our own, after half a year's hunting and trapping. But that didn't really matter. We obviously needed to make it up to them for being so nasty. Question was, what did we have that they might want in exchange? It wasn't like we had anything much, certainly nothing to spare - if we hadn't needed it, we wouldn't have brought it with us.

  I suppose that was what was going through Thorfinn's mind, as he stood there with a sort of dozy grin on his face, his idea of a warm smile of welcome. That was about as far as he went, where diplomacy was concerned; and if that's how he went about trading back in the East, God only knows how he managed to stay in business.

  Then we had a stroke of luck; mostly, I think, because Gudrid and the other women remembered their manners, which was a sight more than could be said about the rest of us. Out they came, with jugs of milk and a big dish of bread, butter and cheese. Trust women to know what to do, when the men're doing their best to screw everything up.

  Anyhow, Gudrid marched up to the leather-boat people -she was about six months pregnant at the time - smiled nicely and sort of waved the milk and the food at them.

  They hesitated for a moment or so; then the man who'd been the first to unroll his bundle took a step forward. He was looking at the food on the tray like he had no idea what it was. I think he may have taken a deep breath, summoning up courage or whatever; then he grabbed a pat of butter and took a big mouthful.

  You never saw such a look on a man's face. It was like he'd wandered into Heaven in the middle of dinner. He chewed, then stopped, then chewed a bit more; then he chewed very fast, and bit off another big faceful; then he swung round and held out the rest of the pat to his mates, jabbering away at them with
his mouth full. They all tried some, and a heartbeat or so later it was like we all didn't exist, and all that stuff with the bull hadn't happened. They swooped down on the dish like a flock of rooks; one of them tried a hunk of the cheese, and that went down pretty good as well. Gudrid was a bit taken aback, like you'd expect, but she coped well; she looked round at the woman behind her and told her to get some more butter and cheese, quick. By then, the leather-boat people's leader or whatever he was had started drinking the milk, straight from the jug because nobody'd thought to pour any into a cup for him; and we all just stood and watched, and a bloody good show they were putting on, at that.

  After they'd cleared the dish of everything except the bread - they didn't seem the slightest bit interested in it - the boss put his hands on the shoulders of two of his mates, as if to say Steady on; then they talked together for a bit, very fast and earnest. By then, fresh supplies of butter and cheese had shown up; but instead of pouncing on it, they hesitated, like they were thinking, or doing sums in their heads. Then the boss looked Gudrid in the eye, to get her attention; he pointed at the empty dish with one hand, and his bundle of furs with the other; then he sort of waggled his eyebrows, as if to say, Well, what about it?

  'Fuck me,' someone just behind me said. 'He wants to pay for his dinner.'