by Tom Holt
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 conclusion 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. S
orry about-‘
He shrugged. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘forget it.’ Then he smiled again, nodded, and walked away. And that was the first time I met Bits.
So what are you supposed to think about a man like that? I guess you’d say he was weak: some clown charges into you in the yard and covers you in shit, obviously you bash his head in. If you don’t, it’s because you’re afraid, you’ve got no balls. Or maybe he’s sly, he’s after something. But the thing about Bits was, he didn’t seem to care. He looked at you, decided whether he liked you or not, and carried on from there. They called him Bits-and-pieces because nobody could ever figure what to make of him; but I never had that problem. He was the most straightforward man I ever met.
I didn’t actually see much of him after that, not for a while. He was moving around a lot that summer, using Brattahlid as his base while he went round the Eastern Settlement, selling his timber, buying furs and cheese. He’d come back most evenings, of course, but he’d be sit up at the top table with Leif and Freydis - and Gudrid, of course. I tried to find out a bit more about him from his crew, but for some reason they weren’t very forthcoming; as though they didn’t like me asking. Protective, almost. All I got out of them was that he was quite rich, well thought of in Norway, shrewd in business, had a knack for staying out of trouble, liked everything quiet and sensible. Most of his men had been with him for ages, just peacefully trotting back and forth along the same routes each year, carrying the same lines, dealing with the same people. In fact, they told me, they hadn’t got a clue why he’d suddenly decided to branch out into the Greenland trade. But if the skipper reckoned it was worth doing, that was just fine by them. Apart from that, they told me, there wasn’t anything to know
Autumn came on, and then the season for slaughtering the stock, so we were all kept busy, and I’d more or less put Bits and his ship out of my mind; when you’ve got plenty of work to occupy you, you don’t tend to brood so much. Then one day, quite out of the blue, Bits came to find me.
I was outside the long barn, doing one of my least favourite jobs in the whole world. We’d slaughtered the old bull a few days earlier, and Leif wanted his hide for boot soles. It took four of us to get the thing off; then we dunked it in a bucket full of lye to soak the hair off, and stretched it and scraped all the bits of meat and skin off the inside, rinsed it and wrung it out; and the next step, as I’m sure an educated man like you won’t need to be told, is to cure it; and the best thing to cure a hide with, goes without saying, is brains. Now it’s a sign of our Heavenly Father’s blessed providence that a bull’s head holds exactly the right amount of brains for curing his hide, not a scrap more nor less; and what you do is, you scoop up a big handful of brains and you start kneading with your fingers- ‘Would it be all right,’ I said, ‘if we skipped all this?’
Anyhow (Eyvind went on) there I was, bits of white crud oozing out between my fingers, and Bits Thorfinn comes strolling up to me and asks if I could spare him a moment or so.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’
He looked away for a heartbeat or so, like he was utterly fascinated by the sight of a bowl of lukewarm water. ‘I’d like to ask you if you feel like joining my crew,’ he said.
Well, you could have blown me over with a sneeze. All that time I’d been trying to think of some way of broaching the subject, and here he was - him asking me - straight out.
‘Yes,’ I said, because why the hell mess about? ‘I’d like that,’ I added, just in case I wasn’t making myself clear.
‘That’s good,’ he said, with a little smear of a smile, like gravy in your beard after you’ve eaten. ‘But you haven’t asked me where I’m going.’
It hit me like a boot in the nuts, and I didn’t need to ask, I knew He wanted me along because - for some reason I couldn’t possibly begin to fathom - he was planning on going to Meadowland.
‘That’s a good point,’ I said.
The little smile broadened. ‘You’re ahead of me, I can tell. And you’re right. I’m planning on sailing to the Wine Country. Does that change things?’
That puzzled me for a bit. Not long, though; but long enough to make it look like I was in two minds, because he went on: ‘If you don’t want to go, that’s fine, I quite understand. But if you’ll hear me out, I’ll tell you why I believe it’ll be different this time. Well?’
‘I’m listening,’ I said.
He nodded, then leaned his back against the stretching frame. He was always leaning on things, Bits, like an old cat. ‘For a start,’ he said, ‘we’re going there with a definite plan in mind. Seems to me that it all went badly before, with the Eiriksons, because neither of them really knew what they wanted to do. Just going there was as far ahead as they’d thought. That’s not my style. Before I start something, I like to have the whole thing sketched out in my head, like a boat-builder’s plan, and everything’s got to be measured and sorted so it all fits together.’
He looked at me, but I didn’t say anything, so he went on:
‘My idea is to start up a proper settlement there; basically, do what Red Eirik did here. Build a farm, get settled in; then, when we’re properly established and we know where our next meal’s coming from, we share out the land between ourselves and turn it into a real settlement, a community. There’s enough people here in the Eastern Settlement who’re starting to feel a bit cramped, wouldn’t mind moving on; and once we’re up and running, we’ll have people joining us from Iceland, maybe even from the East. Once we ye got eighty families or so, we’ll be big enough to look after ourselves and keep going. I’ve given it a lot of thought since I came here and heard all about it, and I believe we’d have a very good chance of making it work. It’s splendid grazing country by all accounts, plus there’s all that timber, fish, game - even iron ore, which is more than you can say for this place. The key to it, I reckon, is doing the thing properly: enough people, enough livestock, enough provisions to see us through the first winter, including an allowance for stuff lost or spoiled on the trip over. So, what d’you reckon?’
I thought for a while before I answered. ‘For a start,’ I said, ‘you got the name wrong. It’s not Wineland, it’s Meadowland.’
Easy mistake to make, of course, specially for an Easterner, with an accent. See, in our language, it’s almost the same word: vinland. Only, if it means ‘wine’ it’s pronounced yin, but if it’s ‘meadow’ it’s more like veen.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ I went on. ‘So if you’d got an idea in your head of running cargoes of grapes back to Norway and making a fortune, forget it. And if anybody’s been telling you there’s wild vines growing all over the place, that’s bullshit. We came across some, on Leif’s expedition, but we never could find them again, no matter how we tried.’
The way Bits was quiet for a while after I said that, it was plain that he’d been counting on finding grapes under every bush; but he just shrugged and said, ‘Well, no big deal. But there is timber there, isn’t there?’
I nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Bloody great forests, far as the eye can see.
‘Good.’ You could almost see him booting everything to do with grapes out of his mind, then slamming the door. ‘That’s all right, then. But you haven’t answered my question.’
I allowed myself a bit more time; then I said: ‘I’m really grateful to you for asking, but I’ve got to say no. Plain fact is, I’ve had it with that place. Don’t ask me why, I couldn’t tell you. Now I’m not trying to tell you your scheme s a washout. I think it could succeed, I certainly hope so. But I won’t be joining you, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh,’ he said again. ‘That’s a pity.’
Bits looked so sad that I wished there was something I could do. And then it hit me; genius. One stone, two dead birds. ‘Tell you what, though,’ I said. ‘You want to ask Kari. He’s been there on all three trips. He knows the place just as well as me, maybe even better. And I know he’s not settled here, any more than
I am. You take my tip and ask him, he’s a good man.’
Bits frowned, like he was being made to do something he’d rather not. ‘I’ll be straight with you,’ he said. ‘I know Kari’s a friend of yours, but he’s not the sort of man I was looking for. He does his work but no more, if you see what I mean. What I’m after isn’t farmhands, it’s men who’ll go off and build their own farms, once we’ve sunk our roots in, if you follow me. That’s why I’d rather have you than him. But if you’ve made your mind up, I won’t try and nag you into anything. The project won’t work unless the people I take with me all want the same thing: they’ve got to believe that they aren’t working for me, they’re working for themselves. But anyhow,’ he added, ‘that’s beside the point. Thank you for listening to me, anyway.
And he straightened up, turned round and walked away, leaving me standing there with squished-up bull’s brains all over my hands, and a feeling like I’d been kicked in the nuts by a large, strong horse.
If it’d been anywhere else-If he’d wanted to sail up the Greenland coast, or north-east to Permia, where the sea-ice is six feet thick at midsummer, or anywhere in the world, I’d have said yes and thank you without a moment’s thought. But no, it had to be bloody Meadowland; because if it’d been anywhere else, I wouldn’t have been asked or wanted. I was bound to that miserable place, as though my feet were planted there. Simple choice: stay at Brattahlid the rest of my life, carting shit and turning hay and dragging myself up the mountain to the shieling in the freezing cold to move on another man’s flocks; or go back to that warm, lush, hospitable place on the edge of the world, which I never wanted to see again as long as I lived.
