Meadowland Tom Holt

by Meadowland (lit)

  Gudrid scowled at whoever'd just spoken, typical woman's what-will-our-guests-think-of-us scowl; no need, of course, since the leather-boaters didn't have a clue what'd just been said. Meanwhile, their boss did the pointing and eyebrow-waggling thing again, and it was pretty clear that that was exactly what he meant: his bundle of furs in exchange for the cheese and butter that they'd just gobbled.

  First off, Gudrid stared at him like he was mental; then she nodded very fast. I don't think the leather-boaters nod like we do, because their boss didn't seem to have a clue what she meant by it. He backed off a bit, so she smiled, knelt down and pulled the furs toward her. He waggled his eyebrows a bit more, and his mate scooped up his bundle and came and stood next to him. The woman with the fresh supplies put her dish down on the deck, and they scrambled to help themselves. After that, it was pretty plain sailing: six dishes of butter and cheese for six bundles of fur. When they'd done scoffing the sixth helping, they stood there waving their hands in a friendly sort of way for a bit, then turned round and walked off. We opened up our circle to let them pass and away they went - giving the bull a wide berth, understandably but otherwise all nice and happy and friendly We watched them till they were out of sight.

  'What the hell,' someone said, 'was all that about?'

  Actually now I come to think of it, that was me.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  'Your friend Kari,' I said, maliciously, 'was just telling me about your first run-in with the locals.'

  Eyvind put down the water jug he'd just filled and looked sideways at me. 'Was he, now,' he said.

  I nodded. 'He'd just got to the bit where they'd eaten the cheese, then left,' I said. 'Then Kari got a bad pain in his stomach and went off somewhere. Is he all right?'

  'Him? Oh yes, fine. It gets him sometimes. Had it for years. I keep telling him, it's because he bolts his food. What did he tell you about Bits and the leather-boat people?'

  A rose or a fruit tree is always improved by judicious pruning. There are many occasions on which the same can be said of the truth. 'He told me,' I said, 'that all they wanted in return for their bundles of furs was a few platefuls of butter and cheese. Is that right?'

  Eyvind laughed, and poured water into two cups. 'Bits had it all figured out, right from the start, soon as he set eyes on them,' he said, handing me a cup. 'See, the leather-boat people don't go much on growing stuff, apart from a bit of that funny sort of corn they have out there; and they don't keep any tame animals to speak of. Mostly they live off the big deer in the forests; and the thing about wild meat is, it's all lean. No fat. That's all right in a hot place like this, but where it's cold most of the year, you need a healthy dose of fat in your diet to keep you going. So, far as they were concerned, butter was the most amazingly wonderful stuff they'd ever eaten.' He sighed, as though recalling a good memory. 'So,' he went on, soon as Bits realised they were there to trade, he sent in to the house for butter and cheese, which we'd got plenty of, and in return we got, what, a hundred silver marks' worth of furs. Just what we needed for the cold season. Like I told you before, they don't come much shrewder than old Bits.'

  I decided to be a little bit of bramble snagging on his sleeve. 'You say Thorfinn deduced all that the moment he saw those people?' I said. 'How come?'

  'Ah,' said Eyvind. 'He explained it to me later. He said, none of the other expeditions'd come across these people, not till Thorvald got killed, and we'd been there ourselves a whole summer and winter and spring and not seen anything of them; so, he reckoned, they couldn't be farmers, living all the time in the same place, or we'd have seen their fields and houses. No, he figured they must be wanderers, following the deer as they move around in the big woods. He'd already guessed that before we got to Meadowland, actually; but when he saw them, he noticed that they didn't have what we'd call cloth, that's like wool or linen or cotton. All their clothes and shoes and everything were buckskin and hide and fur. It wasn't the first time he'd been among people like that, see; there's a whole load of them right up north, in Finnmark and Permia, wandering around after the big herds of reindeer they have there. Very much the same sort of people, Bits said, except bigger and taller. And he knew the Permians go nuts over butter and cheese, so it stood to reason that this lot'd be just the same.

  'I see,' I said. 'You're right, he was shrewd.'

  'Got to be, if you want to get on as a trader,' Eyvind replied. 'It's a basic skill of the job, being able to size people up at first sight.'

  'A useful talent,' I agreed. 'So,' I went on, 'you were on good terms with the locals after that:

  A frown flitted across Eyvind's face. 'For a while,' he said.

  But Bits wasn't absolutely happy with the way things'd gone (Eyvind went on). He didn't like the way those people had been able to walk right in on us like that, without us noticing. Fine so long as they were friendly; but what about if they turned nasty for any reason? Like, maybe the ones who came to trade were from a different clan or whatever from the ones who killed Thorvald? Bloody good point, that; they'd most likely still be sore over Thorvald killing the people he had found sleeping under the boats. What if they came creeping up on us out of the wood? And besides, even if that was all forgotten about, a smart man like Bits knew all too well how quickly things can go wrong when you're among strangers, and you don't even know the language. You can give mortal offence without even knowing you've done it.

  So the day after the traders came to visit he sent us off into the woods to cut a big load of twelve-foot stakes, and we built a good strong palisade right round the house and the buildings. First we dug a ditch, four feet down, and threw the spoil up behind us so that it made a nice, solid bank about three foot high; and we drove the stakes into that, each one down four feet, to leave two-thirds of its length above ground. Once we'd got all the stakes in, close enough so a rat couldn't squeeze between them, we sharpened the tops of the posts to make them awkward to climb over; and we put in a proper gate and everything. Everyone felt a damn sight safer after we'd done that, I can tell you.

  Not long after we'd finished that job, Gudrid had her baby. We were all outside, just putting the last few touches to the palisade, and suddenly we could hear this kid squalling. Bits dropped the sledgehammer he was holding and dashed in through the gate. Then the penny dropped for the rest of us, and we all dashed in after him. Turned out it was a boy; the first Northerner to be born in Meadowland. They called him Snorri, and you can bet your life he got spoiled rotten by all of us. Sort of a symbol to the rest of us, I suppose you could say; like it meant we weren't just passing through, we were there to stay

  'Talking of which,' I interrupted. 'I've been wondering. There were four other women along on this expedition besides Gudrid, right?'

  Eyvind frowned. 'Yes,' he said. 'But they aren't important.'

  I smiled at him. 'You'll excuse me saying this,' I said, 'because for obvious reasons I can't claim any real understanding of this subject; but there were, what, sixty men and five women, and one of those five was the boss's wife. How could the other four not be important? I'd have thought you'd have been fighting to the death over them.'

  Eyvind's frown deepened. Northerners can be a bit scary when they're tense, even an old codger like Eyvind, and if he'd told me to drop the subject, I'd have done so. But he said: 'It wasn't like that. They weren't-' He hesitated. 'Let's say, they weren't things of beauty.'

  'Even so,' I said. 'Sixty men, out there for the best part of a year- He looked away 'And let's just say' he went on, 'they weren't there exactly out of choice. Not theirs, anyway'

  'You're embarrassed about something,' I said.

  He was getting annoyed. 'Well, maybe it wasn't the best decision Bits ever made. But he needed to make up the numbers, and there's men's work and there's women's work, and none of the Eastern Settlement women were particularly keen to go. So he had to do the best he could.'

  I could feel that I was onto something; not, perhaps, something I'd actually
want to know, but I've got this confounded itch of curiosity. 'Well?' I said.

  'It wasn't his fault, really,' Eyvind snapped. 'Mostly he was just doing someone a favour. Like I said, he needed women for the expedition, and they were all he could get. And then, just before we were due to leave, he got word from one of the other farms that a viking'd just put in, and he'd been to Ireland and he'd got slaves for sale. Females.'

  'Ah,' I said.

  'Well.' Eyvind pulled a strange sort of face. 'The story the viking told him was, they'd been raiding on the west coast of Ireland - used to be a good place years ago, but it'd become too much like hard work. Anyhow, the viking attacked this abbey out in the middle of nowhere, soft target; and those Irish abbeys always used to have loads of gold and silver plate, stuff like that. Not this one, though; the viking said he'd seen richer cowsheds. But he'd gone all that way, spent a small fortune fitting out the ship and all, he had to do something. So he grabbed a bunch of the nuns, for ransom. Seemed like a good idea, he said. But it turned out that this abbey'd fallen on hard times. Some sort of religious thing; it wasn't, you know, in the mainstream. Point is, they'd fallen out with the local church bosses years ago, which meant that they weren't getting any money, and nobody'd joined up for a very long time, so all that was left was a bunch of old crones; and when the viking sent a message to the bishop demanding a ransom, the bugger practically laughed in his face.'

  'I see,' I said. 'Not very good, then.'

  'Not really For two pins, the viking would've turned them loose and told them to get lost, but that'd have been really bad for business - set a precedent, if you follow me. So he was stuck with them: six leathery old nuns that nobody wanted. All he could think of was, take them to Greenland because not many slave traders bother going up that far, someone might give him something for them. Two of them died on the way which really didn't help. By the time he got there he was willing to give them away to anybody who'd take them. Which was a shame, really, because they were tough old things, hard workers so long as you let them do their praying and stuff. And Bits knew Gudrid'd be pleased, because she was really into religion, like women so often are.

  'And was she?' I asked. 'Pleased, I mean.'

  He shrugged. 'Once she'd got used to them, I think,' he said. 'Of course, they only spoke Irish and a bit of Latin; and Gudrid only spoke Norse and a tiny bit of Latin that she'd learned off priests, so it was a bit fraught for a while until they figured out how to talk in sign language. But anyhow, that's the answer to your question. Having them along really wasn't a problem in the way that you meant.'

  'I see,' I said. 'Thank you for explaining.'

  Anyway (Eyvind continued), life went on nice and pleasant over the summer. Nothing much happened after Gudrid had the baby and we didn't see anything more of the leather-boat people. Not till autumn was beginning to set in.

  I can remember where I was, the second time they showed up, because of what happened just before.

  There was this man called Ohtar; he'd been the captain of our ship on the way over, and a pretty good job he'd made of it. He'd been with Bits for years and years, practically his right-hand man. After we'd been in Meadowland for a bit, though, he turned a bit strange. Moody; sometimes, instead of getting on with what he was supposed to be doing, he'd sit up against the wall of the house and stare out at the sea; or else he'd go off into the woods for a whole day and only come back when it was getting dark. I think Bits tried to find out what was bugging him, but either he didn't answer or he said he'd got the guts-ache or something. Eventually Bits decided that the best thing to do would be to leave him to work out whatever it was for himself.

  Anyhow, I always got on reasonably well with Ohtar, though for some reason I'd always given him a wide berth when he was in one of his funny moods. You get a feeling about people sometimes, as though there's a thick thorn hedge all round them that you can't actually see, but you know it's there all right whenever you blunder into it.

  Well, this time I'm telling you about, Ohtar was sitting on a barrel in the doorway of the long house; not doing anything, just sitting with his hands on his knees, looking up at the forest. Just inside the door, the baby was yelling its head off; but Ohtar didn't seem to notice. I'd have carried on by and left him to get on with it, but I'd just been sent back from the home meadow - we were turning the second cut of hay - to fetch Bits's hat, which was hanging up on its usual hook in the back room, so I had to go past Ohtar to get into the house. Maybe he heard me, or I brushed against him on the way through; he jumped up and grabbed my shoulder so hard that I felt something give way under his fingers.

  'Watch it,' I said. 'That hurt.'

  He looked down at me - he was a tall bastard - and for a moment it was as though he was having a problem remembering who I was, or what business someone like me could possibly have around a well-ordered household.

  'Sorry,' he said quietly 'I thought you were someone else. That friend of yours.'

  I hate it when people say that. For some reason that I've never been able to get my head around, people quite often get Kari and me mixed up. Which is bloody ridiculous; all right, we look a bit alike, and maybe we sound a bit similar, which is only to be expected when you think we were brought up together, we've been everywhere together, done the same things, shared the same experiences. But anybody with enough brains to fill a walnut shell can tell he's nothing like me.

  'Thorfinn sent me back to get his hat,' I said.

  Either that didn't register with Ohtar or he wasn't interested. 'Your friend,' he said, 'is a menace.

  I nodded. 'Tell me about it,' I said.

  'It's all his fault,' Ohtar went on. 'Everything that's happened here, and everything that's going to happen, too. That's why I'm waiting here, see.'

  I agreed with a lot of what he was saying, but even so there was something about him that was worrying me. 'Is that right?' I said.

  'Yes,' Olitar said. 'I'm going to kill him.'

  That wasn't what I was expecting to hear. 'What's he done to you?' I asked. 'Been borrowing your boots without asking?'

  'He's bad news,' Ohtar replied, looking at me thoughtfully 'He was the one that found this place, wasn't he? Bjarni Herjolfson told you all to stay on board the ship, but he sneaked off and swam ashore.'

  'That's right,' I said. 'Just the sort of stupid thing he does.

  Like, suppose he'd got lost or swept down the coast in the current. We could've been stuck there a whole day looking for him.'

  'Wilful,' said Ohtar. 'That's going to be the death of me, wilfulness. Oh, it's not such a bad thing, knowing what you want and making sure you get it. But thanks to him, I won't be going home with the rest of you. I'm upset about that.'

  He was still gripping my shoulder like a foresters vice. 'What makes you say that?' I asked.

  'Oh, I saw my fetch today,' he said. 'No mistaking it.' He made it sound like a tiresome thing, an unpopular relative announcing he's come to stay the winter. 'I was stacking cordwood behind the house and a shadow fell over me. I looked up to see who it was, and there was your friend Kari. He looked at me for a moment, and I knew it wasn't really him.'

  There's not a lot you can say to someone who's in that sort of mood. 'You sure about that?' I said. 'I mean, people are always thinking they've just seen the fetch, and then nothing happens to them and they realise it was just their imagination. Then, one time in five hundred, they think they've seen the fetch and next day they're dead, and everybody says, "You see?"'

  'Excuse me,' I interrupted. 'What's a-?'

  'When you're about to die,' Eyvind said patiently as though he was teaching the alphabet to a backward child, you see the fetch. It's a sign, to let you know'

  'Oh,' I said. 'What does it look like?'

  He shrugged. 'Could be almost anything,' he said. 'Or anybody Quite often it's someone who looks just like you, as though you'd looked in a pool of water. Or it could be someone who's already died, or a friend you haven't seen for years and who was miles
away at the time you thought you saw him. Sometimes it's a person you met once, years and years ago, and suddenly bump into again, for no reason. Or just a stranger; or someone you see every day Point is, when you see the fetch, you know.'

  'That's silly' I pointed out. 'If it can be anyone at all-'

  'Mphm.' Eyvind moved his head slightly 'That's what I used to think.'

  Ohtar looked at me (Eyvind said), and he frowned a bit, and then he said, 'So anyway, that's why I'm waiting here for your friend Kari. I suppose you're going to go and warn him now

  I shrugged. 'But hang on,' I said. 'If it really wasn't him you saw but the fetch pretending to be him, what's the good of killing Kari? Won't solve anything.'

  'It was all his fault,' Ohtar said. 'Least I can do is take him with me.'

  It wasn't the moment for it, but I laughed. 'I know the feeling,' I said. 'Strikes me I've been taking him with me all my bloody life, like those little round hairy seeds that snag on your sleeve as you go by Has it occurred to you that if you're about to die soon and you kill him first, maybe you'll be stuck with him in the next world for ever and ever?'

  Olitar sighed. 'I can't help that,' he said, 'I don't make the rules. You know, it's a funny thing. When you're a little kid, your dad tells you about Valhalla; and when you're older, the priest tells you about Hell, and the strange part is, both of them sound pretty much alike, except that your dad says that's where you'll go if you're good, and the priest says that's where you'll be headed if you're bad. You know what I've figured out? It's only just occurred to me, but it makes good sense. Both of them, they're actually one and the same place; but if you're a viking you want to go there, and if you're the quiet, peaceful sort you'd hate it there, and Heaven's the place for you, sitting still and quiet indoors on the right hand of God for ever and ever, like it's a winter that never ends. And of course, a viking'd hate that.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'The fact is,' he said, 'where you are depends on who you are, and that's all there is to it. Like us being here,' he added. 'Once you look at it in that light, of course, it all starts to make sense.