by Tom Holt
‘That was a good day’s work,’ I remember Leif saying, after we’d brought the boat back for the last time.
‘For us, anyhow,’ Thorir replied. At least he sounded like he appreciated what this was going to mean to us. But Leif only laughed and said that there was plenty more where that’d come from in Meadowland, where we’d been all winter. Naturally, Thorir replied with, ‘Meadowland? Where’s that?’ So Leif told him, and you could practically see the idea putting out roots in Thorir’s mind. From his point of view, it must’ve been hard to resist. He’d just lost his own cargo, in all likelihood his ship as well. To a merchant, that was a crippling blow, his entire livelihood gone. And now here was his heroic rescuer telling him about an amazing opportunity to make up those losses in the lumber trade. I could’ve strangled Leif with my bare hands.
So why’d he do it? I’ll give you three guesses.
That’s right. The woman I mentioned earlier had come across in the first boatload of survivors from the ship. Her name was Gudrid, and she was Thorir’s wife; and the moment Leif set eyes on her, I knew there was going to be big trouble at some point in the proceedings.
It didn’t help, of course, that she was the first woman any of us had seen since we’d left Greenland the previous autumn. But Gudrid would’ve caused problems under any circumstances. Not on purpose, mind, she wasn’t that sort at all. On the contrary. I guess you could say she was the sort that brings out the best in any man, and on balance that’s the most dangerous kind of all.
Have I got to explain to you - try and explain, anyway -about women? After all, you can’t be expected to know, seeing as how you’re-Well, if you say so. I guess even you must’ve at least met some, from time to time. But - I don’t know how to put this without sounding offensive, so I’ll say sorry in advance and just crack on, right?
The thing is - well, it stands to reason you can’t ever have felt about women the way ordinary men do; the most you can do is try and get some idea from what they tell you, same as you’re trying to picture Meadowland in your mind, based on what Kari and me have said about it. But you’ve never been there. Same, obviously, with how men feel about women. Right?
But of course, it’s in a man’s nature that he’ll never tell you, or anybody, the actual truth about that particular subject. No, he’ll tell you what he wants you to believe, because he reckons that it’s one of the main ways of keeping score, of figuring out who’s better and who’s worse than everyone else. Stupid bloody way to carry on, of course, and I’m not kidding you when I tell you there’ve been times in my life when I’d gladly have traded places with one of your lot, and to hell with all the fun-and-games side of things. Be that as it may: if you believe what men tell you about the way they deal with women, then there’s got to be a bit of your brain missing, as well as the other thing.
So you’re just going to have to take this on trust. Men just can’t help liking certain women, even when they know it’s a really bad idea - like he’s already married, or she is, or she’s a farmer’s daughter and he’s just a field hand, or her dad killed his uncle in a feud, or whatever. And when they feel the tug - like a hook in a fish’s lip, it hurts like fuck but you’ve got to go with it - it’s not a blind bit of use people telling you how bloody stupid you’re being. You already know that, thanks very much. But you still carry on, because the hook draws you. Maybe you know she can’t stand the sight of you, it still makes no odds. The best you can hope for is, you make sure you try your hardest not to let it lead you into doing something stupid or dangerous.
Like I just told you: if you think you understand the subject just from listening to what I’ve been saying, you’re clearly so stupid it’s a toss-up whether we cook you a dinner come suppertime, or just water you. Don’t try and understand. You’ll only get confused.
So yes, Leif was taken with Gudrid. Smitten. A really bad case. And he’d just saved her life, and he was the captain of the ship, and he was just back from a wonderful adventure (it was a wonderful adventure the way he told it, and she hadn’t been there so how would she know otherwise?) and her husband was a waste of good cargo space, it was his fault they’d missed Greenland and ploughed into that reef, he was short and fat and his beard looked like weeds growing up through barley stubble. I wouldn’t say she was anything really special to look at. Her face was a bit flat and so was her chest, and she had big hands, like a man’s; but she had great big eyes for gazing with, and a way of staying perfectly still when someone was talking to her, like she was almost too enthralled to breathe. Bad news.
Thorir, her husband, wasn’t blind, he could see what was going on. But he was on Leif’s ship, and if it hadn’t been for us he’d have drowned, and we’d dumped a fortune in building lumber just to rescue them, so what could he do? What anybody would’ve done in that situation: he pretended he hadn’t noticed, and hoped we’d make landfall sooner rather than later.
Which we did. Nice helpful wind whisked us down the Greenland coast, round the point and straight up Eiriksfjord to Brattahlid. First thing we saw was half a dozen skinny ponies grazing between the rocks, on the narrow shelf of grass at the foot of the white mountain. Goes to show how quickly you get used to things: after winter in Meadowland, it amazed me that anybody could scratch a living in such a miserable place.
The Brattahlid people saw our sail before we beached, and a bunch of them came down to see us come in. Truth is, I was a bit disappointed by the reception. In my mind, we were mighty heroes of navigation who’d come back from the ends of the Earth, and quite likely from the dead. Far as they were concerned, we might just as well have been a Norway trader come to sell them malt and buttons: they were pleased to see us, but that was about all.
Even the pleased-to-see-us wore off a bit when they found out that we’d ditched a holdful of building lumber in favour of fifteen destitute Norwegians who were going to need board and lodging until someone showed up who’d be prepared to take them home. Certainly that side of it wasn’t lost on Red Eirik, who came limping down as we were drawing the ship up to the sheds. His first words to his son, after he’d stopped and given Thorir and his gang a good long glare, were, ‘Who the hell are these?’ Well, I guess he was entitled, since it’d be up to him to put them up, or at the very least pay the neighbours to billet them. For what it’s worth, I think he was genuinely pleased to see Leif home again and safe, but he wasn’t at all impressed when he heard about all that good timber stuck out on the reef.
Kari and I stayed just the one night at Brattahlid; the atmosphere was a bit too fraught for my liking, and Kari was itching to get back to Herjolfsness and tell everybody there how wonderful the place he’d discovered had turned out to be. We took on a couple of Thorir’s men as guests (Eirik insisted), and Leif saw to it that we got the loan of four ponies. We left early in the morning, before the house woke up. After all those months together, it seemed odd to be riding away without Leif or anybody to see us off. You’d have thought we’d come over for the day to return a borrowed plough.
Nothing worth mentioning had changed at Herjolfsness, which was a pity as far as I was concerned. Bjarni Herjolfson was pleased to see us, mostly because he couldn’t wait to hear about the new countries he’d seen but never set foot on. He’d changed his tune, you can guess. Quite likely he was jealous, because Leif Eirikson was going to get all the glory when he’d been the one to find those places, albeit entirely by accident. What the hell: we answered all his questions and told him a few of the better stories, some of which were actually true, in parts.
Didn’t take long for us to get back into the rhythm of Herjolfsness; and pretty soon Kari and me just had the memory, like when an arrowhead’s too dangerously placed to be pulled out, so you have to leave it in the wound, and the skin grows back over it. The general attitude wasn’t so much hail-the-conquering-hero as: Well, now you’re back you might as well get on with some useful work. Thinking of Leif and Gudrid, I had a few goes at telling our adventures to one or two of the gi
rls, but I might just as well have held my breath. The sad fact is that I told them the truth, straight as an arrow, but most of them didn’t believe me. But there -I always do better with women when I tell them lies.
Life drifted on. Within a month of us getting back, our holiday wasn’t a big deal any more; in fact, the two Norwegians were in greater demand than we were, come storytelling time at night; they could drivel on about the towns back home and the merchants and the splendid houses and everything, while all we had to tell about was fog and Slabland and why we hadn’t brought anything useful back home with us. Winter came on, none of the ships that called wanted to take the Norwegians home so they got settled in, and Kari and I went back to our regular jobs. Then, just as the long nights came round and we were getting ready for the heavy snow, we got word that there was bad sickness at Brattahlid, mostly among Thorir’s men. Next thing we heard from the world outside was that Thorir had died of it, but (oddly enough) it hadn’t spread to Eirik’s people or the farms outside the immediate area, apart from those that had taken in any of the Norwegians. Coincidence.
Since he got back, people had taken to referring to Leif Eirikson as ‘Lucky’ Leif, since he’d just so happened to turn up when Thorir’s ship had been on the verge of sinking. Now I think he deserved the name, though not just because of that. It was luck that found the way for him, luck that got us home; and it was luck he’d rescued Gudrid, and then that her husband was so obliging as to drop dead and leave her free for Leif to marry.
So he asked her. And there, I guess, was where Leif’s luck ran out. Because she refused him.
CHAPTER
SIX
‘So then what?’ I asked.
Eyvind stood up. ‘I’m tired out,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you Greeks, but we need our sleep, and it’s past midnight already Remind me, and I’ll tell you the rest of the story in the morning.’ He picked up a blanket, wrapped himself in it, sat himself down with his back to the tomb wall, and almost immediately began to snore. Harald, the younger man who didn’t talk much, got up, made a soft grunting noise, and went out. A moment later, Kari came back in. He looked at the fire, heaped rather too much charcoal on it from the bucket, and sat down opposite me.
‘He snores,’ Kari said, rather superfluously ‘I’ve known the bugger all my life, slept in the same hall with him for most of it, and the bugger snores. And you know what? When he’s snoring, I can’t sleep. Anybody else’s snoring I can sleep through, it puts me straight out, like a lullaby But his particular snoring - I don’t know, it’s the whatsitsname, the pitch or something. I could recognise his snore out of a thousand others, and it doesn’t matter how tired I am, I can’t sleep with it going on. So I lie down and I really, really hope I’ll drop off before he does; but you know what it’s like when you’re trying to get to sleep - there’s no surer way of staying awake.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I’ll say this for him. He’s trained me to get by on no more than a catnap, and I’ve had loads and loads of opportunities for just lying there on my back in the dark, thinking. Probably I’ve done more thinking than anybody else in the history of the world.’
‘That’s pretty impressive,’ I said cautiously ‘We Greeks have produced more great philosophers than any other race on earth, so I’d always assumed that we were the ones to beat when it came to deep thought, but maybe I was wrong. So, what do you think about?’
Kari considered his reply ‘Mostly,’ he said, ‘how Eyvind’s snoring really pisses me off. But after I’ve been thinking about that for half the night I get so mad I want to jump up and stick my axe between his eyebrows, so I’ve practised thinking about other stuff, to take my mind off it.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘What other stuff?’
He shrugged. ‘Stuff,’ he said. ‘Like, here’s a thing I noticed. Back home, in the winter, it stays dark for months on end. Down here, some days are longer than others - depending on the time of year - but there’s always a day and a night, one after the other. And in Meadowland, in winter, on the shortest day, it was light by breakfast-time, and it didn’t get dark till mid-afternoon. I’ve thought a lot about that,’ said Kari.
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘And what conclusions have you reached?’
‘Search me,’ Kari replied. ‘I guess it’s just one of those things, really And here’s another one. In your Greek sea, down around Sicily and those places, you don’t have proper tides, like we’ve got at home. Oh, you get a bit of a swell on the beach when there’s a squall, but mostly the sea just sits there like an old, lazy dog in the rushes. I’ve spent whole nights puzzling over that, but I can’t make head nor tail of it.’
‘Me neither,’ I admitted. ‘Though I heard once that a Greek philosopher living in France round about the time the Huns came reckoned that it was something to do with the phases of the moon.’
Kari looked at me. ‘Balls,’ he said. ‘Same moon down here as we got at home, so that can’t be right. No offence, but you Greeks’ll say the first thing that comes into your heads; anything rather than just bide quiet and admit that there’s stuff you simply don’t know’
‘There’s an element of truth in that,’ I conceded. ‘Anyhow, if it’s all right with you, I think I’ll just get my head down for a bit.’
He ignored me. ‘So,’ he said, ‘where did the old fool get up to? Had he got as far as where Leif Eirikson murdered his father?’
For some reason, I wasn’t quite so sleepy ‘He did that?’
Kari nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I mean, nobody could ever prove it or anything; and even if they could’ve, nobody could’ve done a blind thing about it, what with Leif being Eirik’s closest kin and heir. Back home, see, when someone gets himself killed in a fight or whatever, it’s the duty of the nearest relative to take revenge or claim compensation. And since Leif was Eirik’s eldest son, only he could do it and nobody else. I’m all for our ways most of the time, but I must say I think that’s a bit of a loophole in the system, because what it amounts to is that you can murder your next of kin and there’s not a lot anybody can do about it. Mind you, it’s a pretty useless loophole, because as a general rule sons don’t particularly want to kill their fathers, or the other way around.’
I was interested in spite of myself. ‘Is that right, though?’ I said. ‘Only the closest relative can take action over a murder?’
He nodded. ‘Well, strictly speaking that’s not true: you can hand over the right to somebody else - like, suppose you’re a substantial farmer and I’m a nobody, and your worst enemy kills my son. I can’t do anything much about it, but you can, so I give you my right of taking revenge, or sell it to you more like, and then you can get your enemy and I get my revenge and a bag of silver-scrap, and everybody’s happy But it’s up to me - you can’t steal my right from me when I’m asleep or anything like that.’
I thought about that for a moment, then made a decision not to think about it any more. ‘But you said Leif murdered Red Eirik,’ I said. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Oh yes.’ He grinned. ‘Now what everybody in Greenland’ll tell you is that Eirik died of the sickness that did for Thorir the Norwegian. But don’t you think it’s odd, the two main people who die of this sickness are the husband of the woman Leif’s besotted with, and Leif’s old man? And what’s more, the sickness only started after Leif invited a witch from the old country to stop over a few nights. Think on, as the saying goes.’
‘But it still doesn’t make any sense,’ I objected. ‘Why would Leif want his own father dead?’
‘Ah,’ said Kari, ‘I was coming to that. You see, I’m absolutely sure that what Leif wanted was to be the boss, in charge. Now that wasn’t going to happen in Greenland while Eirik was still alive, and everybody reckoned he was strong as an ox and likely to live to be eighty. So Leif set his heart on starting up a settlement of his own someplace, just like Eirik did at Brattahlid. But Leif goes to Meadowland minded to found his colony there, but for some reason or other he doesn’t take to it there
; and then on the way home he meets Gudrid, and that makes him all the more determined to get out from under Eirik’s shadow So he - let’s say he forcibly inherits Eirik’s household. Now he’s got what he wanted, he loses interest in Meadowland completely Instead, he settles down at Brattahlid and he’s perfectly happy Or else he would’ve been, if he’d married Gudrid. Only, that didn’t happen, though of course there was no way in the world he could’ve seen that one coming.’
‘What one?’ I asked.
‘Gudrid falling head over heels for Leif’s kid brother Thorstein. Which proves another point,’ Kari went on. ‘Like, we’ve all got this picture in our minds of our nearest and dearest; but often as not, that picture’s out of date, or just plain wrong. My guess is, in his mind’s eye Leif had this picture of Thorstein the way he was when he was still a kid. But Thorstein’s all grown up now, big and tall and strong and good-looking, with all the girls sighing after him. When Leif looks at him, he doesn’t notice how he’s changed, he still thinks of Thorstein as a snot-nosed little boy sailing his toy ship in a puddle. So Thorstein cuts in and gets the lovely Gudrid, and Leif’s been too slow to do anything about it.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘Served him right,’ Kari went on, ‘for not paying attention. Still, he’d got Brattahlid, so I’m guessing he made a decision to make the best of it and not worry unduly about not getting the girl. And at least it wasn’t a total dead loss, he went on, ‘because as soon as he was able, he took the ship back to the reef where he’d found Thorir’s ship - Eyvind told you about that, did he? - and picks up all that lumber he’d ditched there in order to mount his big noble rescue.
