Meadowland

by Tom Holt

  We ran with this new wind a whole day and night; and when it got light again, Bjari jumped up and started yelling, ‘Land, land,’ and we were all craning our necks and trying to see round each other, and pretty soon there were quite a few of us joining in the shouting. I was one of the last to see it, because there was a stack of malt barrels blocking my view, but eventually I caught sight of a grey blur, dead ahead, smack in the middle between the sky and the sea.

  ‘Greenland,’ somebody said. But Bjarni was frowning. He had far and away the best eyesight, and he’d gone quiet.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ he said.

  We weren’t happy about that, I can tell you. Someone said, ‘Well, if it’s not Greenland, where the fuck is it? There’s nothing else out this far, and for sure we didn’t turn round on ourselves.’

  ‘That’s not Greenland,’ Bjarni repeated. ‘I was told, look for the Blueshirt glacier; soon as you see it, you know you’re there. There’s no glacier on whatever that is - it’s as flat as a board.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a different bit of Greenland,’ someone else said.

  ‘Then it’s no good to me, is it?’ Bjarni snapped back at him. ‘I want to find my dad, not go exploring.’

  It took us a while, but at last we persuaded him to take the ship in closer so we could see if there was a glacier. But there wasn’t. There were hills, but they were low and rounded off and covered in woods that came right down to the beach. Now we looked at all those trees, and I don’t suppose I was the only one who thought what a good price a full load of long, straight timber’d fetch in Iceland, where they cut down all the trees back in grandad’s time to build their houses, if we could only get it back so far. If we dumped Bjarni’s cargo from Norway and filled up the hold with lumber, we could double our takings, and since we were there on the spot and none of us knew where we were or how to find it again, I thought it’d make good sense to take the opportunity while it was there. But when someone suggested it, Bjarni got quite uptight about it, and told us to come about and keep going till we saw the blue glacier. Until then, he said, we could forget all about going ashore.

  That didn’t go down too well. I remember there was a man called Einar Teeth - called him that because he didn’t have any, and that’s Northern humour for ,you - and he’d been sat quite close to me all the way from Iceland. He hadn’t said hardly a word, only got up from his place when something needed doing or someone needed to get past; just stayed quite still, like a good horse being shod. But when Bjari said that, Einar jumped up and started yelling and creating, about how he’d joined up to trade sheepskins in Norway, not drift around the edge of the world looking for Bjari’s old man, who was dead anyway because there wasn’t any such place as Greenland, so his ship must be at the bottom of the sea right now, and served the old fool right.

  ‘Shut up, Teeth,’ Bjarni said quietly ‘You aren’t helping.’

  But Teeth carried on ranting, and it was a laugh because you could only make out one word in five he said, and one or two of us started sniggering, and that just made him madder still. ‘I’m telling you,’ said Teeth, ‘this whole thing’s a bloody disaster, trying to find a place that nobody’s ever been to before, nobody’s ever heard of, except it’s out west of Snaefellsness and there’s a glacier. What kind of a damn fool does that? It’s only a miracle and the mercy of our Heavenly Father we aren’t drowned already, and since He’s seen fit to bring us to this place, which looks a damn good place to me and a hell of a lot better than home into the bargain; then isn’t it just sinfully ungrateful to say no, we’re not stopping here, we aren’t even going ashore to take on wood and water, because I want to get to Greenland and see my old man? That’s spitting in the face of His mercy, and there’s no end of evil going to come of that. Only I don’t reckon on drowning out there in the fog, which is no way for a grown man to die, so you just give me an axe and a bag of flour, and I’ll swim ashore and let you go to hell your own sweet way

  Bjarni sighed, like Teeth was the dog you never could teach not to slit under the benches; then he jumped off the foredeck, skipped over the hold on the tops of three beer barrels, lighted on the rear deck and punched old Teeth in the gut so hard we could all hear a rib go. Of course, Teeth sat down in a hurry and sort of cuddled there, hugging himself with his mouth open and no sound coming out, and Bjari looked round, all slow and careful, and said, ‘Anyone else?’

  Well, there were one or two of us could’ve-given Bjarni a hard time, particularly all ganged up on him, but somehow nobody seemed to be in the mood. It was like Bjarni had won the argument, and so it’d be pointless just going over the same ground again. Also, we didn’t need to go ashore for anything, except a walk and a stretch; we had fourteen barrels of flour in the hold, and beer, and charcoal, and even if the food and the beer ran out, you don’t die starving or parching on a ship, when the sea’s full of fish and the sky’s full of rain. Bjarni was right on that score. He was thinking, he had a good wind behind him and for the moment he was clear of the fog, but we were right at the end of the sailing season, God only knew what the weather was going to do. Bloody fools we’d look if we loafed around on this island two or three days and then got caught in blizzards or ice. Of course, Bjari could’ve said all that instead of scatting Einar’s ribs in, but it’d have taken longer and the outcome would’ve been the same, so never mind.

  So we set off again, leaving this island with all the trees on the port quarter, and pretty soon we were out in the open again, nothing to see except a blurry line where the sky smudged into the sea. Two days we sailed, with that good wind behind us. Some of us were getting a little edgy, because the nights were cloudy and we couldn’t see squat. But at dawn on the third day, just when I was waking up and shaking the water out of the folds of my cloak, someone up front starts yelling, ‘Land!’ and this time everybody hops up to look, hoping they’ll see that old blue glacier.

  No such thing. We went in close to take a look, just in case we could make out the Blueshirt, but it was as flat as a blanket. Trees, now: you never saw woods like it, crowding right down to the beach like they were looking at us, the way the young bullocks do when you climb the hurdles into the fold. Very pretty it looked too, and such a difference from home, where there’s one little scraggly tree per farm if you’re lucky. I remember old Eyvind saying he was sure there’d be deer in those woods, and maybe bear and pigs too, and if that wasn’t a good beach for fishing, he didn’t know one when he saw it. Now usually you wouldn’t take Eyvind’s word about hunting any more than you’d take mine, but over the last two days a lot of us’d been thinking that maybe old Einar had had a point, even if he’d had his rib busted for him by the captain, and at the very least it’d do no harm to lay up there just for a day or two; give the ship a looking-over for one thing, check the caulking and the ropes. So we all started looking meaningfully at Bjarni. But soon as he’d made sure there wasn’t a big blue glacier anywhere to be seen, he kind of shook himself like a wet dog, and there wasn’t any need for him to say a word: we knew we weren’t going to land.

  And maybe that’d have been a good thing, only our Heavenly Father took a hand, or maybe it was old Thor meaning to play games with us; because before we could up sail the wind died away, the sails hung there empty as an old woman’s tits, and obviously we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry.

  ‘No offence,’ someone said, ‘but we might as well launch the boat.’

  Bjarni looked round to see who’d spoken, then said, ‘No.’

  ‘Just to fetch in some water and some kindling,’ the man said. Don’t ask me who, I couldn’t see from where I was.

  ‘No’ Bjari said again. ‘We don’t need it. Stay put, and soon as the wind gets up, we’re leaving.’

  Well, nobody was in a hurry to get his ribs caved in, so that was that. We all sat there like kids when their parents are fighting, because Bjarni was being plain stubborn and contrary, but we knew we couldn’t change his mind when he was in that kind of mood. But whe
n it got dark, I found I’d got the fidgets.

  Now that’s a terrible ailment for a man on board a ship, when you’re becalmed, no place to go, nothing to do. I tried sitting still, shutting my eyes, trying to think of nothing at all, but it wasn’t any good. It was like when you get the toothache, and try as you might you can’t get it out of your mind. I knew I just had to get up off the deck and go somewhere or do something, or else I was going to burst.

  So I stood up, nice and slow, making sure that nobody was watching me; then I tiptoed best I could past where people were asleep on the deck. Not easy in the dark, and just when I thought I’d made it, I felt something soft under my foot and knew I’d just stood on someone’s hand.

  ‘Here,’ said a very pissed-off voice, and I recognised that it was Eyvind. ‘Mind where you’re going.’

  Now you’ve met Eyvind, you think you know him; but who you actually know is Eyvind in his old age, with the burrs ground down and the edges knocked off; like a helmet you’ve worn for five years, so you’ve had a chance to pad the places where the rivets chafe, and you’ve got the lining just nice. When Eyvind was a young man, he wasn’t quite so comfortable as he is now In fact, he could be a right pain in the bum when he wanted to, like for example when somebody woke him up in the middle of a deep sleep. I could tell you some tales about that; like the time we were staying over winter in some rich farmer’s house in Norway, and the steward’s son had just got married. Like I think I told you, everybody but the farmer bunks down in the main hall; which means you get to hear all kinds of noises once the fire’s died down, if you get my meaning - well, possibly you don’t, you being what you are, but I’m sure they didn’t prune off your imagination when they gave you the snip. Anyhow, let’s say the steward’s son and his new wife were very much in love; and the drill is, the rest of you just lie still and try not to listen. You can hum quietly to yourself, or wrap a fur scarf round your head, but aside from a few words of encouragement at the start of the proceedings, it’s very bad manners to pass comments or anything during the actual performance, as you might say

  Now Eyvind put up with it the first night, and the second and the third, though he moaned like hell during the day about not getting any sleep, and some people having no consideration for others. Of course, I put it down to your basic jealousy, because the steward’s son was having a good time and Eyvind wasn’t, nor likely to for the foreseeable future. Probably I was right about that; anyhow, on the fourth night I could hear him muttering and clicking his tongue - you can tell how loud he was because he was audible over all that racket going on up the other end of the hall - and I was thinking, here we go again, when suddenly he jumps up and starts yelling, all sorts of nasty things, because he’s got a way with words, no question about that.

  Talk about uproar. The steward’s son starts yelling back, the girl’s in floods of tears, great heaving sobs like someone tearing up old rags; then everybody else joins in calling Eyvind names, until the farmer comes busting out in a high old temper. That drags Bjarni into it, because of course we’re his responsibility, and Bjarni’s main concern is that the lot of us aren’t slung out on our ears in the middle of winter, snow drifted up seven foot deep outside and no place to go. So Bjarni stomps over - someone’s lit a lamp by now - and he grabs up somebody’s boot that’s lying there on the floor, and he gives Eyvind the most almighty scat round the head. Eyvind stops moaning very quick and just lies there, and everybody’s gone dead quiet, even the girl; Bjarni puts the boot back where he got it from, heaves a big sigh, nods to the steward’s son and says, ‘Right, carry on.’ Actually, we left that place as soon as there was a break in the weather and headed off to the next farm down the valley, where I’m delighted to say they took us in without too much of a fuss, in return for a dozen sheepskins and three barrels of powdered sulphur. Even so, it was a two days’ trudge through the deep snow to get there, and Eyvind kept the lid on his opinions the rest of that year until well after Yule.

  So that’s Eyvind; and you can guess from what I’ve just told you that when I trod on his hand in the middle of the night, he wasn’t just going to grunt and roll over and go back to sleep. ‘Shut up,’ I hissed at him, but he reached out and grabbed my ankle, and said, ‘Kari, what the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’

  Wonderful. Now everybody on the ship’s awake, cussing at me and yelling, shut up, lie down, there’s people trying to sleep here. I muttered something about going to the side for a shit; but that was my chance of getting off the boat gone for the night. See, I was planning on sneaking nice and quiet to the anchor rope, shinning down, swimming to land, scarfing up an armful of firewood and getting back on board before anybody was awake. Sounds like a stupid idea, and I suppose it was. But remember, I’d been on that bloody ship all the way across from Norway to Iceland, then straight back on without hardly any time ashore, and after that lost at sea, in the fog. I had this painful need to get off that crowded deck and be away from everybody else; and if that meant a midnight swim in the cold water, well, small price to pay

  I lay awake all that night, fretting and brooding. Dawn came, but no wind. Bjarni was just sitting there, chin on hand, staring at the open sea with his back to the land. I guess somebody got up, lit a fire, cooked breakfast, went round with the pan and the plates handing it out. Nobody else stirred, we all just stayed where we were, like cattle in stalls over winter. I tried not to look at the land in the distance, but I just couldn’t help it. At times I could feel it, firm under my feet, and all that space around me. I thought about running, or lying down with my arms and legs spread wide without five men yelling at me. It was like my brain had turned into rotten planking and shipworms were burrowing into it.

  That was a long day

  At last it got dark and people slowly dropped off to sleep. By now, I could tell if the others were asleep or not just by listening to how they breathed; I recognised each one’s own special way of snoring, grunting, whuffling, and I counted. Silly thing was, after all that, I could hardly keep my own eyes open. But there: those that know me will tell you that I’ve got a stubborn streak. I don’t think so, but I do know my own mind. I forced myself to stay awake, and when I was the only one left, I got up, tiptoed ever so carefully round Eyvind and the man next to him, and felt for the side of the ship. Soon as I’d got it, I followed it uphill - the decks slanted a little, see - until I felt the anchor rope under my hand. Then it was overboard and into the horrible icy cold water, and a long hard swim to shore.

  Even while I was swimming, I was calling myself every bad name I could remember. Crazy fool, I thought; what if a good wind suddenly gets up while I’m fooling about on shore? Bjarni wouldn’t stop to count heads, he’d call up sail and away, and then I’d be stuck here on this island for the rest of my life, not that that’d be a terribly long time. Or suppose I lost my way swimming about in the dark, went straight on past the ship, got frozen through or cramped up in the water and sank? Risks? I’d have been safer hunting bear with a leek-stalk for a spear. And what for? Because I wanted the stupid firewood? I’d burn it all up drying myself out, always assuming I’d dare light it and explain where I got it from. The thrill of being the first man to set foot on the undiscovered island? Who’d risk his life for something like that? No, I told myself, it’s your bloody wilfulness, like when you were a kid. Dad said don’t climb up on the roof or you’ll fall off, so I climbed up and I fell off. Bjarni said no going ashore, and here I am, freezing my nuts off in the sea in the dark. I wish just once someone’d forbid me to do something sensible, and then I’d go and do it.

  You can imagine how glad I was when I fetched up on the sand, though of course it was spoiled by knowing how far back again it all was. Still, I’d made it; and the light was coming up, very pale in the east, and I could just make out the trees in the distance, and the faint gleam of the sky reflected in a river snaking lazily away I turned round to look at where I’d come ashore and I couldn’t help but notice what a good convenient h
arbour the bay made; also, after a few yards of sand I was standing on turf, firm and springy. Hadn’t seen it from the ship, of course, because of the angle and the lie of the ground, but there was actually a wide strip of flat grass between the beach and the tree line. As I walked through it I could feel how lush and thick it was, not like the short, coarse, wiry stuff back home. Good pasture, I thought..

  Then I walked along a bit, and next thing I knew I was on my face in the mud. I groped round to see what I’d tripped over, and it felt like a branch. Driftwood, I thought, that’ll do, and I tried to pick it up, but it was heavy; also, it felt odd. I bent my head down so I could see, and I realised it wasn’t just some old bit of tree, it was a proper worked post, all carved up and down with twisted snakes, Norwegian style. That got me going for a moment, and then I figured out what I’d got hold of. It was one of the canopy struts Bjarni had bought as a present for his dad.

  That gave me a really funny turn, you can imagine. Well, no, actually you can’t, because you don’t know what I’m on about. See, there’s an old tradition going right back to when Iceland was settled. The original settlers, when they first came in sight of land, used to get their canopy struts and chuck them over the side. Then, when they’d landed, they’d go up and down the beach till they found where the struts had been washed up, and that was where they built their houses. It sounds like a really stupid way of choosing a new home, till you think that even back then there was bugger-all wood in Iceland, apart from driftwood. It made a lot of sense to build at the point where the currents pitched driftwood ashore - and other useful stuff too: you’d be surprised what you can pick up off a beach.