Meadowland

by Tom Holt

  I think I could get to like the idea of a smart little venture like this one.

  Helgi and Finnbogi went all quiet again, thinking about it. ‘We’ve only got the one ship, of course,’ Helgi said. ‘Don’t suppose we could get enough lumber on one ship to make it worthwhile - not if we’re going to have a permanent base as well as the ship’s crew

  ‘Oh, that’s no problem,’ Freydis said quickly ‘Leif’ll lend me his ship, won’t you? I mean, he’s not going anywhere, he’s a farmer now, and that ship’s been there and back so often that it knows the way’

  Finnbogi frowned. ‘I thought you sold the ship to Thorfinn?’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, he did. And when he came home, he bought it back off him, God only knows why I mean, what on earth is he going to want it for? Waste of good money But there it is, so it might as well be used.’

  Leif kept his mouth grimly shut; so Gudrid said: ‘And there’s the houses too, of course. If you use them, it’ll save you all the time and effort of building. Isn’t that right, Leif?’

  Third told me that Leif went very still for a moment or so, like he didn’t trust himself to move. Then, very slowly he said, ‘You’re welcome to borrow them.’

  Freydis laughed. ‘You always say that,’ she said. ‘But face it, you aren’t ever going to use them again, they’re no good to you. Or are you going to charge me rent, your own sister?’

  ‘I said,’ Leif repeated, ‘you can borrow them. That’s as far as I’ll go. Same with the ship.’

  Freydis shrugged. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t make any odds, in practice. Anyhow, I think we’re nearly there. We’ve got ships, we’ve got a base ready-made, we know the way, and getting a crew won’t be a problem around here, it never is.

  Finnbogi shook his head. ‘Our crew won’t all want to go, I can guarantee that. Some of them have been with us a long time, they’ll say they’re getting too old to go dashing off having adventures.’

  ‘Well.’ Freydis shrugged. ‘You’ll be able to find some people here in Greenland. Or what about the Old Country? Bet you there’s any number of men - hired hands and the like - who’d jump at the chance of a bit of land, house of their own. Iceland’s getting very small these days. And you’re headed back that way aren’t you? And there’s loads of time for you to recruit and be back here well before the end of the season:

  Third looked at the Icelanders, expecting that they’d be all reserved and doubtful. But not a bit of it, they were beginning to warm to the idea. ‘It’s true, Helgi said, ‘there’s plenty of manpower in the Eastfjords. We wouldn’t have to pay them anything, just give them their shares in the proceeds, along with the rest. And if there’s houses there already built, all we’d have to find up front would be the cost of stores and gear:

  ‘And a settlement,’ Freydis interrupted, ‘once it gets going, they’ll need their flour and their malt, same as anybody else, and livestock too, of course. Which means the ships won’t be coming back empty, and we get to turn a profit both ends:

  Third said it was like when you light a lamp in a dark room; suddenly he understood what Freydis had in mind. She’d be in charge of the permanent settlement. It wouldn’t be a partnership, not really; once she was there, she’d turn into her father, the way Leif and all her brothers had wanted to do, and failed. (And that was why Leif was squirming in his seat and swelling up like a bullfrog; he’d tried to become Red Eirik and failed, and now he was there in Brattahlid, running the farm Red Eirik had built, his father’s hand-me-down, when what he’d always wanted was to start completely fresh, like the old man had done.) That was why Freydis was putting into the brothers’ minds the idea that they could make more money if the settlement and the ships were run separately, and the settlers had to buy their flour and malt and stuff from the brothers. The surprising thing, Third told me, was that as far as he could tell he was the only one there who’d tumbled to what she was up to.

  ‘We’ll have to think about it,’ Finnbogi said. ‘There’s a lot of details-‘

  ‘Of course,’ Freydis said. ‘I wouldn’t want you to agree unless you’d both thought it through very carefully I wouldn’t want to go into business with anybody who’d make a decision like this on the spur of the moment.’

  If you ask me, though, she knew she’d won. Finnbogi and Helgi were detail-solvers by nature: give them a list of small, practical problems to sort out, and already they were involved, in their minds, committed. Like, the best way to get someone to help you with a real bugger of a difficult job is usually to ask their advice; they think about it and say well, you could do it like this; and then you say yes, but I’m a lousy carpenter (or smith, or mason, or whatever); and then your friend says, that’s all right, you leave that side of it to me - and you’ve caught him. That, I reckon, was how Freydis snared the brothers; it was just the sort of thing she was good at. Everybody thought of her as a loud woman, which was probably why they never expected her to be sly and weren’t on their guard.

  Next thing I heard, back at Herjolfsness, was that the brothers had gone back to the Old Country; and so I put them out of my mind. It was only later, when I happened to meet Third on the road and he told me about what had happened that evening, that I began to feel a prickle down the back of my neck, warning me of danger. Wasn’t hard to persuade myself I wasn’t at risk; so what if Freydis and these Westford men did go into partnership and set off for Meadowland again? Nothing would ever make me join them, and since I wasn’t even at Brattahlid any more, I was well out of the danger area. In fact, I told myself, it’d be no bad thing if Freydis left Greenland. I’d always thought of her as the sort of woman who starts blood-feuds, which are something I can do without, thanks all the same. They were all very well in Iceland - kept the population down, no bad thing in a small country - but we couldn’t spare the manpower here in Greenland for that kind of indulgence.

  I guess my wife must’ve been thinking along the same lines, because not long after the news came that Finnbogi and Helgi were back at Brattahlid, she made a point of asking me if I was thinking of going to Meadowland again.

  ‘Not bloody likely’ I said.

  ‘You sure?’ She looked at me. ‘You told me you didn’t want to go the last time. Or the time before that.’

  ‘Different then,’ I replied. ‘For a start, I didn’t have you. I was at Brattahlid, where I never really wanted to be. Now I’m here, and probably as near settled as I’m ever going to get. Besides, even if I was twenty years younger I wouldn’t go there again.’

  She studied me for a bit, then nodded firmly ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because I’ll tell you this now, if you were going, I wouldn’t be coming with you. And while I think of it, there’s a baby on the way’

  While I think of it… ‘You sure?’ I said, soon as I’d caught my breath.

  ‘Positive, she replied. ‘You don’t look pleased.’

  ‘Balls,’ I said. ‘I’m bloody overjoyed.’ Meant it, too; though why it came out as a growl, I can’t say. Mind you, when we talked, Bergthora and me, it was usually more shouting than talking. She was a strong-willed woman, in her way So maybe it was just force of habit.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s good. I’d like for our kid to grow up knowing his father. Most of the girls reckon it’s something of a mixed blessing, but I think it’s more of a help than a hindrance.’

  I can’t remember what else we said, and anyhow it’s none of your business. But that bit of news just made me all the more determined that I wasn’t going to go back. I’d rather die first.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I said. ‘But I’m not sure I understand. Yes, I can see why you didn’t like the place much. Bad experiences, and so on. But to say you’d rather be dead than go back there; it’s a bit strong, isn’t it?’

  Eyvind scratched his head. ‘My feelings were strong,’ he said. ‘I had a very bad feeling about the place. It’s like an old story we tell up North, about the man who goes to visit the trolls. You know it?’

  I
shook my head. ‘What’s a troll?’ I asked.

  ‘This young man,’ Eyvind said, ‘goes to spy on the trolls, who live behind a great door in the side of the mountain. All his life he’s heard about how rich they are, great piles of gold and silver, swords and armour, more than all the earls in Norway put together. So he creeps up among the rocks to where he can spy on the door and watch the trolls go in and out; and one day a party of trolls go in and they don’t shut the door properly behind them. The young man grabs his chance; he dashes over to the door and drags it open. Takes all his strength, but he makes a gap just big enough to squeeze through. And as soon as he’s through to the other side, the door slams shut and he can’t open it again.

  ‘So off he goes to find the trolls. He’s so scared he pisses himself, because everybody knows troll’s kill you soon as look at you, if the fancy takes them. But he’s got no option, he needs a troll to open the door. So on he goes; and he hasn’t gone far when he meets two people. But they don’t look like trolls. They’re tall and handsome and noble, a man and a woman, and they smile at him and say welcome to Troll Hall. It takes him a while, and then he figures it out. Trolls are only ugly and savage on the outside, on the other side of the door. Inside the door, they’re beautiful and kind and gentle, and they take him to see the king, and the king invites him to dinner - which is wonderful, all the food he can eat, all served off gold plates in a hall that makes the King of Norway’s house look like a woodshed. In fact, he gets on famously with the trolls; they really like him, though he can’t see why, and they want him to stay as long as he likes, and the long and short of it is, a week later he finds himself marrying the king’s daughter and being made an earl.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ I said. ‘Is this a true story?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Eyvind said. ‘Wouldn’t be much point passing it on down the generations if it’s just a load of lies. Anyhow, he’s really pleased he came, because the troll princess is beautiful and he loves her like crazy, and he’s rich and powerful and all the trolls treat him like he’s really important. And then one day, the trolls are roasting lamb for dinner, and he thinks, lamb’s nice, but what it really needs to bring out the flavour is a bit of rosemary. But there isn’t any in Troll Hall, they’ve never even heard of it; so he says, that’s fine, I know where I can get some, I won’t be long; and he hurries to the gate in the mountainside, and to his amazement he can pull it open with one hand, just like the trolls do; and he goes back out into the sunlight, and the door slams shut behind him and vanishes.

  ‘Of course he panics, he wants to go back, because his life there is so good. But he can’t find any trace of the door. He scrabbles about among the rocks, digs up the turf with his nails, no trace of any door. What’s more, he’s knackered, so tired that he can hardly stand up, and deadly thirsty too.

  ‘Close by there’s a spring, so he goes to have a drink; and in the water he sees his reflection, and guess what? In just over a week he’s gone from being a young man to a shrivelled old bag of bones, eighty if he’s a day He’s really scared at this and desperate to get back to Troll Hall; he sees a farmhouse in the distance, which he can’t remember having seen before, so he staggers off to see if he can borrow a mattock and a spade to dig for the gate with.

  ‘The farmer lends him the tools; and just on the spur of the moment, he asks the farmer how long he’s been living there. Forty years, the farmer says. Our bloke thinks about that; then he asks who’s the king of Norway these days; and the farmer says, we don’t have a king right now, Earl Hakim threw him out and he’s in charge. Our man’s never heard of Earl Hakim; he says, are you sure? King Haledon’s been thrown out? The farmer looks at him all sideways and says, you mean Black Haledon? That’s right, the man says; and the farmer tells him, Black Haledon died well over a hundred years ago.

  Eyvind stopped. I waited to see if there was any more, then I said: ‘That’s a nice story. But I don’t see the connection. I mean,’ I went on, as he pulled a face, ‘the man in the story liked being in Troll Hall, though you still haven’t explained what a troll is; and he wanted to go back. So Troll Hall can’t be Meadowland.’

  ‘The man in the story was an idiot,’ Eyvind said. ‘And it was all his fault. He should never have gone anywhere near the trolls to begin with.’

  I frowned. ‘That’s not right,’ I said. ‘He was doing really well, once he was there. His only mistake was leaving, to get the rosemary. If he hadn’t done that-‘

  ‘I know’ Suddenly Eyvind grinned. ‘And the way some people tell the story, it wasn’t a door in the mountain but a ship; and the captain told him plainly don’t go ashore; and his friend said the same: don’t go ashore, stay here. But he didn’t listen and swam ashore in the middle of the night; and while he was looking for the rosemary, the ship sailed away and left him stranded; and he’s been there ever since.’

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Whatever he tells you,’ Kari interrupted, his hand on my shoulder, ‘don’t believe a word of it. So, what’s he been telling you?’

  Eyvind looked past me, at Kari. ‘You’re on watch,’ he said.

  ‘Harald’s turn,’ Kari replied cheerfully sitting down next to me and ripping a huge bite out of an apple. I was amazed his remaining teeth could handle that much force without snapping.

  ‘Where’d you get that?’ Eyvind demanded.

  ‘Off the blacksmith,’ Kari said with his mouth full. ‘He had plenty, he won’t miss this one.’ Eyvind sucked in a deep breath, like a disapproving viper. ‘Or this one either,’ Kari added, flicking another apple at him with an unexpected twirl of the wrist. Eyvind had to use both hands to catch it before it hit him in the eye.

  ‘Thanks,’ Eyvind grunted; but he took the apple.

  ‘Welcome.’ Kari crunched. ‘Not that they’re up to much, compared to what we used to have back home. Too small and dry, sort of a dusty taste.’

  Eyvind nodded. ‘Same with the pears,’ he said. ‘But you can’t fault them on grapes.’

  Kari looked up and grinned. ‘Grapes aren’t everything.’

  ‘That’s no lie,’ Eyvind said, with feeling. ‘Remember that crazy German, Tyrkir? We never did find any more vines.

  ‘We didn’t really look,’ Kari answered. ‘Not after that autumn, with Thorvald, when there wasn’t any booze.’

  ‘Well, of course not,’ Eyvind grumbled. ‘No point looking for what isn’t there.’

  It was a bit like watching a fencing match, an exhibition bout between two former champions, now old and retired. As they bickered, they deliberately left an opening for the counter-attack, and from time to time they rested, under the guise of momentary agreement. I tried to imagine what it’d be like, this kind of measured, bloodless sparring, day after day for more than fifty years. Was it the itch you never can quite reach with your fingernails, or did there come a time when there was nothing else left? ‘Eyvind was telling me,’ I broke in, ‘about how Freydis the daughter of Red Eirik tried to persuade the Iceland merchants, Helgi and-‘ I frowned. ‘Helgi and what?’

  ‘Finnbogi,’ Eyvind muttered.

  ‘That’s right. Anyway how she tried to talk them into a partnership, to go back to Meadowland and start a logging operation.’

  Kari clucked, like an annoyed chicken. ‘That woman,’ he said. ‘You know, I reckon she was the worst of the lot. Has he got to the bit where-?’

  ‘No,’ Eyvind said sharply ‘Don’t say anything, you’ll ruin the story.’

  Kari smiled. ‘I’ll leave that job to you, then,’ he said. ‘Don’t mind if I just sit here and finish my apple?’

  Eyvind sighed. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  When they announced their plan (Eyvind said), nobody was all that surprised. Word had got around, so we were all prepared for it.

  The brothers came back from Iceland with a full crew, thirty men - about ten of their original crew and twenty Icelanders, half a dozen of them fetching their wives along with them. When Freydis saw the six w
omen she was livid; the Brattahlid people were sure she was going to call the whole thing off, but she calmed down quite quickly and let the matter drop without saying a word. A term of their deal, we learned, was that Freydis would take thirty men on her ship, and the brothers would have the same number on theirs. Finnbogi said that since he and his brother had allowed some of their crew to bring their wives, it’d only be fair to let Freydis’s crew do the same, so that it’d be the same for both parties. Freydis went along with that, and there the matter rested. Finnbogi said he was sorry for breaking the agreement, though he couldn’t help mentioning that the agreement said thirty men each, and didn’t mention women at all, so there hadn’t actually been a breach. Then he thanked her for being so reasonable.

  Freydis had been going to announce who was in her group as soon as the brothers got back to Greenland; but she put it off, saying she’d wait till everything was settled. I think the main reason was that she couldn’t find enough men willing to go. All of us who’d been there before said no, we weren’t going, no matter what we were offered - money land, anything. That put a lot of people off joining, as you’d expect. There’s always some, though, who won’t listen; and you can bet that they’ll be the ones that no sensible captain’d choose. Time went on; the brothers and their thirty-six Icelanders were sitting around at Brattahlid, waiting for Freydis, and she was getting desperate. She’d managed to scrape together twenty men out of the two Greenland settlements, but that was all.

  The day she came to Herjolfsness, Kari and I were in the barn. I was up in the hayloft, Kari was down below- ‘It was the other way around,’ Kari interrupted. ‘I was in the loft, pitching hay down to you. That’s how come she spoke to you first.’

  Eyvind frowned. ‘You know what, he’s right. I’d been up top in the morning, but at midday we changed places.’