Vinland the Good

by Henry Treece

  12. The Plague

  The next day the rescued Norwegians began to fall to the ground wherever they were - sitting at table, walking by the fjord, or helping to pen the sheep. A few days later a thrall came running to Thorstein and said, ‘Master, the Norse captain Thorir has died with his head in his wife’s lap and she is crying out for you. Will you go to her?’

  Thorstein said, ‘How can I refuse? I helped to bring them here. I cannot turn my back on them now.’

  Leif heard this and said to the thrall, ‘Gather all the men who will go with you and drag the dead Norwegians to the icehouse, away from the steading. Prop them against the outside wall until we have time to bury them decently. I will go to my mother and father and tell them to keep well away from it all.’ When he told them, Thjodhild straightway put on her black gown and cloak and said, ‘I shall go to my church to pray for us all. Do not try to disturb me at my prayers for anything. I shall not come out.’

  Freydis hurriedly packed a bag of food and warm clothing. ‘I shall not stay to suffer a death I did not ask for,’ she said. ‘I shall go on to the clear fjord water in a skill with my husband Thorvard of Gardar. If you were wise, Eirik, you would come with us and save your life.’

  Red Eirik glowered at her and said, ‘I have never run away from danger in my life, and I shall not start now. Go where you like, Freydis, but I shall stay in my place here where I belong.’

  Thorvard of Gardar showed his teeth and said, ‘Then you will not stay long, father-in-law. You would do better to follow the wise counsel of Freydis. She is a woman of great wisdom. I always follow her advice.’

  Red Eirik stared at him bleakly and said, ‘Do not lecture me, rat-face. Go and catch yourself a little mouse for dinner.’

  Leif said, ‘He will never forgive you for that, father. Those hasty words could bring sorrow to someone.’

  Eirik shrugged his shoulders. ‘He can suit himself,’ he said. ‘I have the feeling in me that I shall not long need his forgiveness, or anyone’s.’

  Then he began to cough and sneeze and sway in his chair. Leif went to him, but Eirik tried to push him away and said, ‘It is a strange thing, but I always thought that when it came it would come with an axe-edge or a sword-point or a blow upon the head with a club. When my horse reared and saved me from the sea by giving me broken bones, I did not realize that old Red Beard meant me to stay here and wait for plague to take me. Aye, lad, it is strange. Very strange. Don’t let them put me in the churchyard, though. Let my old friend Thorhall have the dealing with me. He knows how.’

  Then Red Eirik gave a deep groan and fell backwards into the straw, without a wound upon him save the red blotches of the plague.

  Leif said to his brother Thorvald, ‘Vinland the Good has brought us little luck. A tow-boat full of timber and furs and vines is poor exchange for a good father.’

  Thorvald answered, ‘And it is likely to bring us even less luck before this plague has gone away. Now I fear for my brother, Thorstein, who is with the woman Gudrid in the byre.’

  Leif went quickly to the byre to fetch his brother away, but there he found that Thorstein had made up his mind to nurse the woman until she died. He had laid a soft bed of hay for her and was bathing her face and arms with cool spring water to keep down her fever. When Leif came in, Thorstein said, ‘This woman has been crying out in her plague-dreams, brother. She is afraid that now her husband Thorir is dead, she will travel alone for ever through the darkness. It is pitiful to hear her.’

  Leif said, ‘I cannot change her bad dreams, brother. I am a Christian, not a spell weaver. And now that our father Eirik has died, God rest his fierce soul, I shall have all the weight of this settlement to bear, without meddling in what does not concern me.’

  Thorstein said, ‘I grieve for our father, but now that you are the chieftain at Brattahlid you must listen to all who come to you pleading. As you are a Christian and so is she, I beg you to marry us, here in this byre, so that Gudrid shall die with a quiet spirit.’

  So, with Thorvald as a witness, Leif married the two in the byre, sprinkling the stream-water on both of them. After this, Gudrid fell into a deep sleep, with her hands crossed and a gentle smile upon her lips.

  Then Leif and Thorvald went about the settlement, trying to bring what comfort they could to the frightened folk, helping to carry bodies away from the houses, and even to dig holes for them in Thjodhild’s graveyard. These were shallow graves because the ground was so hard,

  Many times Leif called through the door of the church to his mother, but she would not come out. When he told her that Eirik had died, she only said, ‘God rest his soul. He was a heathen man, but he shall be buried in my churchyard all the same. That much I will do for him. He was my husband.’ Thorhall was there when she said this. He bit at his beard with black fury and shouted, ‘Eirik did not ask for Christ while he lived and you shall not put this on him now that he cannot defend himself. He shall have a proper burning, down on the fjord. He shall go in the ship that brought him here. That is his right as a Viking.’

  Now Leif put on his sternest face and said, ‘I am the chieftain and the law-speaker, now that Eirik has gone. And I say that he shall lie in the graveyard as my mother wishes. I will listen to anything you advise about sailing a ship or tracking a bear - but you shall not tell me what to do with my own father. Nay, do not frown and chew your beard at me, Thorhall, I can swing an axe as well as you can. What is more, I tell you this, that if it comes to axe-swinging, when I have finished with you I shall put you in the churchyard too. So think on that.’ Thorhall gave a loud bellow and clapping his hands over his ears ran away into the hills. No man saw him for three days.

  And at the end of that time Thorstein was dead too; but by some strange luck Gudrid was now as fresh and comely as she had ever been. All the plague-spots had gone from her.

  She came to Leif who was mourning alone and said, ‘Brother-in-law, I did not wish that good Thorstein should die in saving me. Will you ever forgive me?’

  Leif gazed at her darkly for a while, his bearded chin on his hand as he sat in his father’s chair. At last he said, ‘In this light, and standing as you do with your face towards the sunset, you remind me most strongly of a woman I met some years ago on an island of the Hebrides, when I was sailing to Norway. Her name was Thorgunna.’

  Gudrid looked at him in a puzzled way.

  Leif watched her all the time, like a cat watching a mouse, then he said, ‘Now there is one question I must ask you. Will you answer it truthfully?’

  Gudrid bowed her head and said, ‘I swear that I will answer whatever you ask, chieftain.’

  Then Leif said, ‘Are you a witch?’

  Gudrid smiled sadly at this and shook her hay-golden head. ‘I am a Christian, Leif,’ she said. ‘We were all Christians on the ship. We prayed on that lonely reef for deliverance, and you came. Now, seeing what we have brought on you and your family I wish that God had not answered our prayer. But perhaps He had a purpose in bringing us here. I do not know.’

  Leif glanced at her starkly and said, ‘Would you plunge both hands into a pot of boiling water and still say that you were not a witch? Would you take the test now?’

  Gudrid looked down at her pretty white hands. Then she put them behind her back and said, ‘Yes, Leif, I will do that if you command it. Perhaps I owe Thorstein some suffering since he died for me. Let the kitchen-thralls bring in the boiling water.’

  Then Leif rose and went to her and put his arm about her shoulders and said, ‘I believe you, sister. Now I know that you are a true Christian. Have no fear of any more suffering. You are under my protection since you married my dead brother. I shall take you into my household and Thjodhild shall be as a mother to you, too. One day, when all this mourning is over, I will find a good husband for you. So, Christ willing, in the end, good may come of this bad.’

  At last the plague passed and the settlement went about its living again. Eirik was buried in the graveyard; but one morning
Leif walked there to find that an oak stake had been driven down into the soil where his heart would lie. He found Thorhall and said, ‘Why did you drive a stake through my father’s heart, heathen?’

  Thorhall looked away from him and said, ‘Did you see me do it? If you did not, then do not accuse me. But I will tell you that it is done to stop the dead from coming out of the ground again and frightening the living.’

  Leif said, ‘Eirik will never come out of the ground again. He has gone for ever, and you must get used to that.’

  One evening Gudrid came to Leif in the hall and said, ‘Brother, I fell asleep beside Thorstein’s grave in the churchyard this afternoon and he came to me in a dream. He was smiling and dressed in his blue feast-robe with the white fox fur at the collar. His hair was combed and his beard curled as though for a great occasion. He was the most proper man I had seen.’

  Leif bowed his head and smiled. ‘There will be another proper man in your life, Gudrid,’ he said, ‘if you will have patience. Did my brother speak to you in this dream?’

  She nodded and said, ‘He gave me stern advice, Leif, speaking with authority as though from a place where all the future was foretold. First, he told me that I would have a great destiny, provided I never married another Greenlander. And second, he told me that if this settlement was to prosper all heathen wickedness must be put down. He then commanded me to set my mind on gaining money for the Church, so that good priests should come out from Norway to this cold land.’

  Leif said, ‘And did you give him your promise, sister?’ Gudrid answered, ‘I did, Leif. I promised on my honour, and on my hope of Heaven.’

  Then Leif said, ‘Come, we will go to old Thjodhild and tell her this. She has little enough in her life now to be merry about. This could add years to her life.’

  And so they went to where Thjodhild was praying in her black gown; and when they had told her of the dream, she wept for a while, then took Gudrid by the hands and said, smiling, ‘When you brought the plague here and stole my husband and my son from me, I wished you were dead on that lonely reef in the empty sea. But now I know that Christ was speaking

  through you and that our suffering was always meant to be. I have lost my kith and kin, but I have gained such a daughter as shall bring glory to the Church in Greenland. Together, my dear, we shall keep the Whitechrist alive in this wilderness. We shall slave off the black dream of disaster.’

  Leif saw the two women smiling into one another’s eyes and, feeling like a child again in their presence, he bowed his head and went from the room.

  Out on the green pasture he met his only brother Thorvald, who was sitting on a stone and drawing with a twig in the hard soil. He said to Thorvald, ‘What are you doing, brother? You have made the shape of my longship, Wolf-snout.’

  Thorvald looked up at him, the pale sunlight glinting on his short golden beard and into his clear blue eyes. He said, ‘Aye, brother, that I have. Wolf-snout has been where I have never been. I have not seen the empty green sea and the lonely reefs. I have not set foot in Vinland the Good and seen the fat salmon in the clear blue lake there.’

  Leif at down beside him and said, ‘There is much to be done in Greenland, brother. We have not conquered this cold stony place yet. ‘

  The Thorvald got up from the stone and said, ‘That is your duty now, chieftain. But mine is to see what Bjarni and you and Thorhall have seen.’

  Leif said, ‘Brother, I have only you left now. I cannot come with you, to guide you. Is it wise to leave our mother with only one son? ‘

  Thorvald said stiff-lipped, ‘She has Christ, chieftain. I have only a few years before my youth has gone. It is a man’s duty to see the world God put him into. I shall go to Vinland in the spring. I would say the same to Red Eirik if he were here to listen to me.’

  Leif said, ‘Then who am I to deny you? My father was one of the few real men left in the world.’

  13. Thorvald’s Voyage

  In the spring, with a wind running free towards the west, Leif went down to the fjordside to see his brother off. Thorvald had taken on a crew of thirty, many of whom had sailed with Leif and who scoffed at any danger on such a voyage. Thorhall went with the youngest of Eirik’s sons and stood over him like a dark troll, snarling at all who came near him, even at Leif. Tyrkir the German did not go, but he had spent the winter months in carving the keel of the ship so that it should be more beautiful than any other to have sailed to the world’s edge.

  Thjodhild did not go down to see Thorvald off; she said that she could do more good on her knees, praying for him in the church at Brattahlid. Gudrid kneeled beside her in a dark gown, the memory of that lonely reef too much in her mind to let her wave farewell to others who might run upon it.

  Leif said to Thorhall, grim-faced like his father, ‘Take him there, and bring him back. That’s all I ask. You may have the use of the huts I built by the lakeside, but never forget that they are mine. I am the chieftain in Vinland, just as I am in Greenland. Is that understood?’

  Thorhall looked round, then bent and whispered to Leif, ‘Can you remember when I dangled you on my knee? Or when I taught you to walk and put my hand out to keep you from knocking your head on the table-top?’

  Leif said, ‘What are you trying to tell me, baresark?’

  Thorhall said, ‘When you are older, you will know without being told. But in the meantime, you sit quietly here and take care of the women and their church. We men will tell you what happened when we get back.’

  Leif was very angry at this, but he was a chieftain now and had to hide his feelings, so he waved to the ship and wished it luck.

  Yet it did not seem to need Leif’s luck. Wolf-snout was once more at anchor by the lakeside in Vinland long before summer was drawing to its close. Thorvald laughed like a young boy as he waded in the blue waters and learned from Thorhall how to catch salmon in his hands. They were such sleepy fish, having lived under the sunshine with no enemies for so long.

  Thorvald said, ‘Leif reckons himself to be very lucky, old Thorhall, and I grant you he is the chieftain in Greenland now that our father has gone into the ground. I swear to obey him in all things, when in Greenland; but, here, I feel that a true Northman has the right to look round and find himself a place of his own. I would like my own settlement.’

  Thorhall smiled and said, ‘Who is arguing with you, boy?’

  So they look the ship’s boat and two rowers, and went off down the coast, away from the pleasant blue lake, and all the way found while sand beaches, backed by thick and lush green woodlands.

  Thorvald said, ‘This is indeed Paradise. How could any man not be happy here? Why, old Thorhall, if men lived here they would never need to shed blood, or even protect themselves, because God has given enough for all to live on. I am amazed that the world has gone on so long without this land being found. The ways of God are indeed very strange. To think that we, of all the men since Adam, are the first to see this richness!’

  Then, dead ahead, they sighted an island, pointed in shape, with trees growing up to the summit, and white beaches all round it.

  Thorvald said pointing, ‘That is my place, old man. I am not ambitious like my brother Leif. I will settle for this little island. Here I will build the first house it has known and will fetch out a good wife from Greenland or Iceland, or even Norway. And here I shall live the gentle life I have always wanted. I shall not want to be a king or even a lord. I shall be content with being myself here. I know in my bones that I was meant to come out here and stay for ever.’

  Thorhall did not answer him, but gave the rowers orders to put in at the first shallow landing they could find.

  And so they did. And when they had beached the boat, they walked on the fine white sand dunes. And when they had gone over the first ridge, they stopped in silence, for there, nestling under the dark green woods, they saw a stockade of pointed sticks, as high as two men, and lashed together as stoutly as any stockade they had ever seen.

  Thorva
ld said at last, ‘I saw no other ships here. How could men be here?’ He spoke in a low, shocked voice.

  Thorhall answered, ‘Perhaps they have always been here and have not needed to come, as we have done, in ships. I am now so old that I am ready to believe anything.’

  Thorvald said, ‘Well, I have not come so far that I will tolerate any other man living here, unless he kneels to me as his overlord.’

  Thorhall smiled queerly and said, ‘Then let us go up and receive their homage. But, I beg you, keep your axe handy. You never know.’

  They went, the four of them, cautiously to the stockade, but no arrows flew at them. So more boldly they rattled on the fence and called for those inside to come out and talk. But no one came out.

  And at last they sent one of the oarsmen over the top to see what was there. He came back and said that there was a house, of a strange sort like nothing he had seen before, but no men and no trace of men, no cooking-pots or the white ashes of dead

  fires.

  By this time the sun was setting and throwing its red glow across the woodland and waters. Thorvald felt a cold shiver run down his back. He turned to Thorhall and said softly, ‘I was mistaken, old one. This is not the place where I would choose to live alone with my family. Let us go back to Leif’s huts by the lake while there is still light to see by.’

  All the way back they sat silent in that little boat, wondering who had set up the stockade. And that winter was as mild as the earlier one had been. The Greenlanders caught fish and gathered furs and timber, and once more built themselves a tow-boat to

  take back all these things. Those who had not seen the little island with its deserted stockade were happy enough. The four who had already wished they were back in Greenland, cold and rocky though it was there.

  At last when the next spring came and the winds were right, they set off northwards along the coasts, but after a week they were caught unawares by an inshore gust south of Markland and brushed against a hidden reef. Wolf-snout groaned as though she was alive and Thorhall shouted out, ‘The keel has broken. We must put ashore and make a new one or we shall perish.’