It was easier by then to avoid being involved in feuds. Karlsefni managed it, anyway. Apart from one outlaw, whose name I can’t tell you, to whom he secretly gave food and shelter when he was hiding on the island called Drangey at the mouth of our bay, Karlsefni avoided taking sides. We went to the Thing every year – at least, Karlsefni always went, and once the boys were big enough I went with him – and Karlsefni gained a reputation for being impartial. Cold- hearted, some said. But men often appealed to him to arbitrate in quarrels, and in fact a substantial part of our income came from fees he earned that way. We needed the money. Our house was always open; Karlsefni was always mindful of his prestige, and I liked to give good feasts and gifts to our guests, though I was far more provident than my father. Karlsefni and I were both good managers, and our farm became one of the best in Iceland. Glaum is a wide flat valley between two lines of hills, with the river winding through it, and so we had plenty of room to expand. Over the years we bought up several small holdings along the length of the valley, until now it’s all ours.
He liked beautiful things, especially metalwork: there was a smith he knew in Norway from whom he’d order goods nearly every year – jewelled cups, platters, brooches, amulets, that sort of thing. If he hadn’t been a chieftain he might have been a smith himself, though God knows trying to get ore out of that bog iron in Vinland was enough to put anyone off for life. He liked to give me jewels and dyed cloth, and it pleased him when I did him credit. Any longings I’d had for fine things as a child were amply fulfilled, and yet human nature is perverse. Sometimes I’d think of Halldis, in her undyed tunic, driving the cattle in from our muddy fields, or harvesting yarrow or thyme from the fields and hanging it up in bunches over the hearth at Arnarstapi, and I’d feel trapped, as if I’d been dressed up as someone else who wasn’t me. I’d want to get out and run into the empty hills. Sometimes during those years I thought too of Thorstein, and our farm at Stokkanes, and the days we’d spent clearing the scrub, or driving ponies loaded with dung and seaweed, and spreading muck across next year’s hayfields. I’d think about the times we waited up at night, just the two of us, for a cow about to calf, or winter evenings when we went out to the byre in a blizzard to fill the hayracks, or days when we forced our way through drifts digging sheep out of last night’s snow. Sometimes I could hardly remember what Thorstein looked like, and then I would dream of him again and see his face, never older, of course, but unlined as it had been when I saw him last, freckled like a boy’s, his hair still fair and thick, falling over his forehead.
Don’t get me wrong; Karlsefni and I were farmers too, like everyone else, and neither of us was afraid of a hard day’s work. But we had more thralls at Glaum than anyone had in the Green Land, or than my father had ever owned at Laugarbrekka, and quite a lot of our land was worked by tenants. It was never just us. I told you once that Eirik’s family lived their lives at Brattahlid with the world looking on, because they were at the centre of things and never alone. It was like that for us at Glaum. Karlsefni never understood why I sometimes felt withdrawn from it all. We talked about Vinland occasionally, but as far as he was concerned that was the past, and therefore over. The thread that tied our early lives to Glaum was spun out of gold, in his view. He liked to be rich, and he made sure that he was. He liked to play an influential part in men’s affairs, and he made sure that he did. In some ways he was much simpler in his wants than me. There were times when I wasn’t happy, and when that happened he always knew. He never understood, and he hated fuss. I never let him see me cry after we got back to Glaum, except when I lost a child, which happened twice after Thorbjorn was born. He was always as kind then as he was able to be, because he knew that these things affect women unduly. I didn’t inflict my vague discontents upon him, and as the years passed I didn’t bother about them so much myself any more. Don’t get me wrong, Agnar, I’m not complaining. It’s just that being ill these last weeks, I’ve had a lot of time to think about these things.
When I thought I would die here I admitted to myself for the first time how much I wanted to make this pilgrimage. This is my last adventure, you see, my last journey into the unknown. It was the first time I’d put to sea for nearly thirty years. I used to hate and fear the sea, but it’s the only road out of Iceland, and I’d been shut into my little world for too long. I always wanted to travel again, but Karlsefni was content. He’d seen all that he needed to of Europe before I ever met him, and he had no reason to go back. He had sons who were making their own way in the world. Snorri and Thorbjorn each went to the court in Norway, and Thorbjorn has gone far beyond. It’s young men who go out into the world, not their mothers; that’s how Karlsefni would have seen it. I loved him, Agnar. We were very happy together.
I told you when you and I met that after this winter I’d go home to Glaum, and so I will. I won’t go back to our house though. Snorri has a wife and grown children, and they don’t need me there any more. No, I’ll make a place for myself as much like this nunnery here as I can. I shall have my little cell, just as I do here, and the nuns will create their own little world, just as they do here, and it will be a haven and a sanctuary for those who need it, just as it is here. I’m not going to die in Rome. There is something more for me to do in Iceland, quite apart from my family.
Are you still writing all this down? It’s not the story I’m supposed to be telling you. I don’t know, I just can’t be bothered any more to get to the point. But you need me to, I realise that, and for your sake I’ll make more effort tomorrow. Come a little earlier, before the sun gets to my brain. Otherwise I won’t be any use to you; I just won’t be able to convince myself that this work of ours matters any more.
SEVENTEEN
September 13th
Vinland. Leif promised us a land that flowed with wine, but I had to come here, to the heart of the old world, to find that, and, what’s more, to acquire a taste for it. Vinland. Snorri’s son died there. Thorbrand. A young man in his teens. He died in a scuffle that should never have taken place. I hope to God neither of my children will die before I do. Snorri was as hard a man as any of them, and when the skraelings were gone he raised the body of his son and carried it into his hut without a word. But I saw his face, and I knew him well enough to read what was not written there. Vinland. My own Snorri was born there, and I looked after him alone. There were times when I longed for a family; that’s what a baby, and its mother, need most of all. When we went back to the world we came from he was three years old, very active and talking fluently. In Vinland he still fell asleep at my breast, and when his father came to bed he used to lift the baby out of the place that was his, and lay him in his basket and tuck the blanket round him. I’m the only person who ever saw Karlsefni do anything as tenderly as that.
Vinland. Do you know how important a ship is, Agnar? You don’t, because you’ve not been in Vinland. Norway is the place where ships are made. Of course you know that. A ship in Vinland is as little as a needle, and without it there is no following the thin thread back again across the world. When spring came the first year in Vinland, my baby was five months old, and you could see he was taking a firmer hold on life, as babies do when they start to eat solid food, and so I was beginning to dare to realise just how much I loved him. We were very short of food. When the ice melted Karlsefni went straight back to Bjarney to collect eider ducks and eggs. Before he came back … But wait. I must tell you about the quarrel first.
It was the first day that the sun had a bit of warmth in it. The land was still snow-dappled, with patches of flattened yellow grass. It was the light that drew me out. I took a sheepskin and sat on the bench on the south side of the house, blinking like a bear just woken from its winter sleep. It was so light I felt almost drunk with it, unfocussed, and not able to see very far. The yard was quiet, but I could hear voices from the beach, where the men had gone to haul the ships down from their winter shelter. Otherwise there was only the rushing of the unfrozen stream, swollen with meltwater
, flowing at my feet. I was glad to be alone, and rejoicing in forgotten warmth. I was feeding my baby, and I could feel the heat of the sun on my breast. I pulled back my shawl so I could get more of it, and I leaned back and shut my eyes. I could see the red blood in my eyelids against the sun, and I could feel my baby suckling, and everything else seemed dreamlike and far away. The sound of water wove itself into my thoughts, dissolving them into incoherence, like the moment when you realise you are falling into sleep.
The fates look down at Leif’s houses, and they find the people they have been waiting for all winter. As the fates spin, a triangle is woven, a tight thread binding the three who unsuspectingly move into their appointed places. Gudrid is there first, leaning back on the bench in the sunny spot at the south side of the house. Her eyes are shut, and her face is turned up to the sun. She is suckling her baby, and her tunic is unfastened and pulled away from her breasts, and underneath it her dress is undone to her waist. She pushes her shawl off her shoulders so she can feel the warmth of the sun on her skin. After the long winter it feels like a benediction. She spreads herself out to the sun, stretching out her legs and her free arm like a starfish, and she smiles as the heat touches her body, which has been cramped in the dark for a whole winter.
Thorhall the Hunter arrives next. He has come down from the cairns on the hill. He has been up there for some time, and he has been watching the men on the beach slowly hauling Karlsefni’s ship down to the tideline. Every man is needed for the job, and Thorhall is the only one who has not been there. He has had matters of his own to consider. He reaches the smithy, and follows the line of the stream round to the house doors. But he stops suddenly on the bank, just to the south of Karlsefni’s house, arrested by the unexpected sight of Karlsefni’s wife. Gudrid is alone, apart from her infant, lying in the sun’s embrace as if she were in the arms of her lover, as unaware and vulnerable as he is ever likely to find her. Thorhall stands rigid, his gaze fixed upon her, like a wolf that has sighted its prey, and only waits for the rest of the pack in order to be ready for the kill.
Thorfinn Karlsefni has seen his ship safely moored, and is on his way to the storehouse because he needs a coil of rope that he remembers putting there when the ship was laid up last autumn. His mind is entirely on rigging, when he reaches the top of the little hill by the smithy, and sees Thorhall the Hunter below him, poised as if he were about to strike. Puzzled and wary, Karlsefni looks the same way as Thorhall, and sees his wife, lying as he has only seen her do when he has made love to her at length, without letting her touch him back. It is not a thing he has often done, because the very notion of it was new to her when she married him, and she seldom lets it happen. It has been among his rarest and most private pleasures, being all the more piquant for having being entirely unshared and unguessed at by any other man.
There came the sick thud of a blow and a shriek. I jumped up and the baby screamed. I couldn’t see; there were two men fighting just across the stream, but my eyes were all sunspotted. Then I heard Karlsefni: ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’ Footsteps came from the yard and stampeded past me. The baby wailed furiously, then gradually I could see. Karlsefni was locked against Thorhall, with both hands round his throat. I saw Thorhall raise a knife to strike over Karlsefni’s shoulder, and I think I screamed a warning. Karlsefni twisted away just in time and seized Thorhall’s knife arm by the wrist. I watched the knife move in an arc as Thorhall forced his own arm down and Karlsefni strained against it. Karlsefni still had his other hand round Thorhall’s throat, but you can’t strangle a man one-handed, and Thorhall was trying to shake him off, but Karlsefni held on, like a dog at a bull. Then Thorhall wrenched his knife hand round, and at the same moment Snorri came past me and leapt the stream, and grabbed Thorhall from behind, and the knife slid away into the water.
It took half a dozen men to force them apart. Thorhall shrugged and gave in, but Karlsefni still struggled to be at him, like a mad dog, until he realised that it was his own men he was fighting, and then he stopped, panting, and brushed the sweat out of his eyes. The baby was still screaming, and I was too shocked to move, and then before I could speak, Snorri was saying, ‘What is this? What is it?’, and Thorhall turned and looked at me, and I thought of the spell I had made, and the dream, and the blessing I had failed to ask, and I remembered that my tunic was undone and I pulled my shawl around me and fled into the house.
It was pitch dark inside, and I stumbled across the hall to the entrance of our room and felt my way to the bed, where I sat shaking, and holding the baby to me, rocking him and trying to comfort him. I didn’t know what had happened, but I recognised that look of Thorhall’s. It suggested … what? Complicity, something shared between us that should not be shared. I remembered how he’d met me coming off the hill. I remembered what Helga had told me about the men saying if there were to be women, they should be for all, and not men’s wives. I didn’t know what I’d done but I knew I was guilty. I hated the man and had not been able to stop myself dreaming about him. He haunted me, and I was afraid of him.
Karlsefni was angry with me; I knew that from the way he didn’t talk to me about what had happened, or tell me how it had been resolved. That night Thorhall was gone, with a few others, and it was Helga who told me they’d gone inland after caribou. Karlsefni sailed for Bjarney the next day. He had to; we were desperately in need of food. I was upset because he hardly spoke to me before he went, and frightened because he was away. Both feelings were quite new to me, and I resented them. I was scared Thorhall would get back first. Indeed he did, but I never saw him, and nor did Snorri. We all expected something to happen, but it never crossed our minds that Thorhall would do what he did.
Agnar, he took my father’s ship.
You don’t react. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand what that meant? She was moored in the bay. The weather was calm. We kept no watch at night. Why should we, in that empty land? He came back at night, and he took the ship, and nine men went with him. Thorhall was never heard of again.
A rumour reached us at Glaumbaer years later that they’d been swept off course by the next westerly gale, and blown across the sea to Ireland, where those who’d survived were captured and sold into slavery. It was never confirmed. I don’t even know where it came from, or who brought it. As far as I’m concerned, there’s been no trace of Thorhall since the day he sneaked out of Vinland, taking my father’s ship with God knows what plan in his mind. I think he might have picked up a cargo of some sort in Vinland, and made for Europe. He wouldn’t have dared to go back to the Green Land, surely, after doing that, and even in Iceland his crime might have caught up with him.
* * * * *
What do you mean, what had he done? Have you still not understood? Oh you’d have understood all right, if you’d been standing on the shore that morning, looking out to where the ship should have been. Karlsefni came back three days later, far too late to pursue Thorhall, even if we’d known which way he’d gone. He still had his own ship, which could carry up to thirty people, and a cargo. There were forty-five of us, Agnar, and our animals. To carry that number on one ship, we’d have to be sure of a flat calm all the way. A flat calm, in those seas! Now do you understand?
Karlsefni didn’t even seem to be angry. It was Snorri this time who blustered with impotent rage. Karlsefni had a temper, as you know, but his anger was never impotent. If Thorhall had been there I think Karlsefni would have killed him, but with the bird flown, his mind turned at once to repairing the damage to the cage. We all crowded into our hall that night to decide what should be done. While the men who’d stayed behind cursed Thorhall and explained at length that his flitting was none of their fault, Karlsefni stared into the fire, saying nothing at all, and his attention seemed to be far away. When he stood up everyone fell silent.
‘It’s done now,’ he said. ‘We can all say where we should have been, and what we should have done. But if we’d thought about it, what choice had he? He knew I’d have killed
him if I could. In fact I would have done before next winter, given the chance, because I couldn’t see any other way for us to go on living here. He’s solved that problem for us. Now we have to solve our own.
‘We can’t all go home without another ship. Then we must build one.’ He waited for the mutter of protest to die down, and went on. ‘It’s no use saying it’ll be difficult. Of course it will. This isn’t a Norwegian shipyard, I know that. But do we have any choice? We don’t, and you know it. Very well. You know what our plans were for the summer. We were going to take two ships south, and get a cargo out of Vinland, and sail home next spring. We can’t do that now. But I’ll sail south as I planned to do. Thorvald’s men said there were tall trees growing in the heart of Vinland, tall enough to carve out the keel of a ship. Don’t tell me what the problems are. I know. We can’t wait for the wood to season for long enough. Maybe we’ll find old wood already fallen. I don’t know. We’re not shipbuilders, but some of us have seen ships built. We’re short of iron; we’ll have to get more. It’s June now. I can sail at once. I shall sail into Vinland, and find the trees that we need. We have to cut them down and split them. We also have to find food, because we’ve no supplies to take with us. We won’t be back this summer. We’ll make a winter camp in Vinland. The rest of you must stay here at Leif’s houses and fish and hunt for yourselves. We’ll leave you the two small boats. You must get the smithy working and make as much iron as you can. We’ll come home as soon as we can the next summer, and in the winter we’ll build our ship.’
As soon as he stopped speaking everyone started shouting at once. Some said it was impossible, some said it was the only thing to do. People said two more winters in Vinland would be intolerable. Some said why not sail straight back to Greenland, and send another ship next year to fetch those left at Leif’s houses. Others argued that no one in their right mind would agree to be left behind. I knew that Karlsefni wouldn’t go without getting what he came for, and I waited to see how he’d handle them. I was right; he argued with them patiently, and of course they had no real alternatives to offer. No one wanted to be left at Leif’s houses, wherever the ship went. Suppose, they said, as was all too likely, Karlsefni never came back? They’d be condemned to exile in Vinland as long as life lasted, or, as Karlsefni pointed out to them, until Leif came back again, as he might well do one day. Snorri added that his brother Thorleif still had a ship in Greenland, and would probably set out for Vinland himself if Snorri and Thorbrand didn’t come back in a year or two.
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