The argument went on far into the night, and Karlsefni let them all say what they wished. He knew there was only one conclusion to be reached, but he knew too that it mustn’t seem an arbitrary one. In particular, the lesser men who were to be left behind at Leif’s houses must feel that the whole plan had their consent, so that they would willingly play their part. Some thought Snorri should stay at Leif’s houses too, and take charge of things there, but Karlsefni objected, saying that Snorri knew more about shipbuilding than he did, and he wanted him to help find the right timber. What he did not say was that Snorri was his sworn friend, and if Snorri were to die in Vinland, Karlsefni would see that it was in action and not in a hopeless exile. He was only prepared to take that risk for men he didn’t care for. When he tried, Karlsefni could be as wily as Eirik, and there was no trace of anger in him now. I watched him deal with them, apparently ready to consider every point of view that was put before him, and in the end I saw how he got exactly what he wanted.
I was sorry to part from Helga, whose husband’s role at Leif’s houses was now a vital one. The other women stayed behind too, with their men. If anyone thought I should have remained with them, they never dared say so to Karlsefni, and I heard nothing about it. So that’s how it was that I put to sea again on a chilly June morning, with the sun rising over the hill behind us, and a cold half moon sinking into the grey seas ahead.
EIGHTEEN
September 15th
The heart of Vinland is old; the seasons have followed one another here since the world was made, but no time has passed; no one has measured the years that have gone by. No one knows the boundaries of this country; its shores stretch on and on, far into the south of the world, and no one has sailed to the end of them. And no one at all has travelled inland to the heart of the country. There is no way in.
For two months and more Karlsefni’s ship traces the shores of Vinland, and still the strange land leads them further on, offering no conclusions. They follow Straumfjord far to the west of Leif’s houses, and they find hills and rivers and islands, all thickly overgrown with trees, all empty and unnamed. They follow the southern coast of Straumfjord east again, and sail across a landlocked sea where headlands and islands loom unexpectedly out of the haze. When the swell tells them they are back in the open ocean they turn south-west and find another coast, and follow it far into the south until the night is not much shorter than the day. They reach a part of the coast where there are extensive sand dunes, offering some open ground between the forest and the sea. They come to a broad river flowing across the white sand into the sea. When they go ashore for water they find that the river flows out of a tidal lake, a Hop, where a ship could be taken in and moored at high tide. Nowhere could be more suitable for a winter camp, and when the green forest begins to be tinged with red and gold, they retrace their course to Hop.
Their choice is clearly blessed by a kind fate, for at the edge of the forest berries grow in abundance, and among them there are true grapes, blood-kin to the vines that make the wines of Europe. Not only that, but when men follow the river inland, they find caribou trails crossing it, with hoofprints still fresh in the mud, and vanishing into the forest on either side. All that autumn the company feasts at night on fresh meat and raw grapes. They build huge camp fires to keep the mosquitoes away, because there is no shortage of wood here, and the nights stay fine and dry right up until Advent. The cattle graze on the dunes, and although there is no hay they are never short of fodder. After Yule the snow comes, but it does not lie for long, and there is more daylight than has ever been known in winter before. Spring comes early, and while there is still plenty of meat and fish hanging from the rafters of the huts, men are bringing in fresh food again every day. Meanwhile the grape juice ferments in the barrels, and all winter men have been carving new barrels out of Vinland timber, ready for an even larger harvest in the new year.
Now it is summer again, and the sun is higher in the sky than any of the newcomers have ever seen it in their lives before. It beats down on a double curve of white beach divided by grassy dunes. On the side facing the open sea waves curl and break; on the inner side the calm waters of a lagoon lap on wave-ribbed sands. Below the water-line the sand is firm and yellow; above it is white and powdery, scuffed by passing feet. The water in the lagoon is calm and clear as air. From the ship moored off the beach it is possible to look down through green sea, and see the ship’s shadow ripple over sand where small crabs scuttle over it.
The forest reaches to the dunes, and where the sea has licked away the sand trees have fallen, their trunks piled up like driftwood above the tideline, their spiky branches barring the way in. But there is a newly-made path along the river, hacked out this last winter through thorn bushes and creepers, among tree trunks as wide as a house, whose canopy seems to touch the sky. The forest is dim and full of noises. Strange birds call, and there are rustlings high above and in the undergrowth. Fish jump, making spreading ripples in the brown river. If a man turns from the dazzling river the forest is green and opaque, like looking into sea water, and if he turns from the forest to the light, it is like coming up from underwater into blinding air. It is always difficult to see properly, and with the trees there is no way to get the lie of the land. Snakes have been seen swimming in the river. Karlsefni finds one lying coiled in the path, and he kills it with his sword. The body is dry and scaly, spotted like the jewelled hilt of a dagger. Not one of the company has seen a snake before but they all know that these creatures are the enemy of men, and that their bite is deadly. Karlsefni lifts the dead thing with the flat of his sword and throws it into the river.
It is impossible to see far into the forest, and impossible to move about without forcing a path with knives and axes. Early in the morning the birds scream and chatter as if in constant warning, and then as the sun rises higher they grow quiet, until by midday the forest sleeps in a strange damp heat that saps men’s strength and makes them want to sleep even in the middle of the day. Invisible insects chirp in the grass, and voices sound too loud in the silent heat. The rhythmic thud of iron on wood strikes a disturbing echo far inland. But there is work to be done, and so the afternoon sweats itself away, until the evening comes early and sudden, and the night noises begin.
In the dark only the howl of wolves is recognisable. The other calls and shrieks are unknown, and might be made by animals or demons; there is no way to tell. For almost half the time it is as dark as winter, even though it is close to midsummer, and the nights here are hotter than the brightest days at home. It is too hot at night for sleep to come easily, and yet sleep strikes unexpectedly on sunlit afternoons when the light is too precious to waste.
The men never say that they are frightened; still less do they admit to the enchantment that the place casts over them. They are tough and active; they have come so far out of the world because they know how to work hard, endure the cold and danger of the sea, and take what they want without pity. But in this place in summer it is impossible to work hard. The air sucks away their strength, and there is a magic in the heat that entwines itself around their purpose and slowly chokes the life out of it. There are afternoons when nothing seems more desirable than to lie in the sun and sleep. They have discovered already that if a man gives in to that the sun has no pity on him, and he will wake up sick and dizzy, with a hammering in his head and a terrible thirst, his skin burning as if it had been in a fire. Nor is there cold or danger to endure, only the dim mystery of the forest that waits behind their camp, full of sweet scents and strange noises. There is nothing to keep guard against, nothing to fight, nothing, therefore, to fear. There is nothing at all to stop them taking what they want, and yet, when the first tall tree cracks under the axe, and the men stand back while it crashes through the undergrowth with a splitting of wood and rending of creepers, they stand aghast at the noise they have caused, while screaming coloured birds fly up into the sudden light. Slowly the forest settles back to calm, and a spear of sunshine points
down accusingly through the hole in the high canopy.
The camp seems very small, caught between the forest and the sea. They have cleared the scrub from the dunes at the landward end of the spit that divides the lagoon from the sea. It is a hundred yards away from the entrance to the lagoon, through which the tide pours in like a stream into a bucket, and then empties as if the bucket were being tipped out again a few hours later. The sand dunes between the lagoon and the open sea are the only open ground where it is easy to move around. Wild wheat grows among the grasses, just as it does at Leif’s houses. The dunes offer no stone or turf for building, so the summer huts are made of split tree trunks, roofed in by sailcloth stretched over leafed branches. The few cattle forage among strange leaves and grasses and seaweed. Perhaps they miss their sweet northern pastures, or perhaps the people only say they do because they sometimes feel homesick themselves.
We called our camp Hop, because there was a tidal pool where we could moor our ship. The river there had more fish in it than I’ve ever seen anywhere, so we weren’t hungry. As well as trout we caught halibut near the mouth of the lagoon. It was very hot. We built huts for ourselves, and the cattle were set free to graze on the dunes, although we rounded them up at night, because we could hear wolves in the forest. The bull broke his tether shortly after the winter, and disappeared. It was a blow, but not a disaster; we had two calves, and we thought we could keep the cows in milk another year without him serving them again. As soon as we were settled in our camp we started cutting timber. The man in charge of the work was called Gunnar. He’d worked in a shipbuilder’s yard in Norway before joining Karlsefni, and Karlsefni had offered him a large reward to join his crew, so he would have an expert man to make repairs in Greenland if they were needed. When Karlsefni married me, and decided to sail on to Vinland, Gunnar’s role became even more important, for the ships were our lifeline back to the world. Karlsefni, and Leif before him, had been prepared to build boats at Leif’s houses, though neither had thought of building a trading ship there. So Karlsefni had a man to act as stemsmith, and he had the tools.
As soon as we’d moved into our new camp, Gunnar took men into the forest, searching for suitable trees. There was plenty of fallen wood, so with luck they thought they might find some recently fallen trunks that had already seasoned. We weren’t sure what all the trees were. Gunnar said many of them were unlike those in Norway, but he cut branches off different ones, and he and Karlsefni examined the wood. The most important thing was that he did find plenty of oak, which was what we needed. They hewed the keel out of one large trunk, and the stem and stern out of another, and then they had to split more trunks into lengths for the planking. They chose a pine trunk for the mast, thin enough to be used whole. The new ship had to be quite a lot smaller than Karlsefni’s, so that we could ship the wood and take it back to Leif’s houses. After much discussion Gunnar cut the keel to seven metres.
We were able to work outside nearly all winter, and by spring we had a good load of timber piled in lengths to season. We made more barrels too, because there were plenty of grapes in that part of Vinland, and those of us who were not needed to work with the timber were making as much wine as we could. In fact I took over the wine-making, with as many men as could be spared at any particular time to help me. We used to fill the barrels with grapes and crush them with big pestles, and then seal them up with tar and leave them. The important thing is not to let the air get in. But you make wine in your monastery; I don’t need to tell you that.
In the summer it was really hot, almost as hot as it is here. The land felt very foreign. Around Leif’s houses it was different from Greenland, but still the kind of place that we were used to. The heart of Vinland was another world. I said to Karlsefni, when we were alone at night, that I was sure we were no longer in the world of men, and he admitted he had been thinking the same, except that nowhere had we crossed an ocean so large that he could think it was the waters that surround the world. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘Even if this place isn’t part of the world we’ve known about, it doesn’t have to be full of gods or giants or dead men either. It’s only land, like the land we left. Maybe the world is just bigger than we knew. You said yourself that Africa is south of us. I think we’re in the lands that circle the world. We’ve not sailed beyond that.’
‘It’s not heaven or hel,’ I agreed, ‘But Thorfinn, it’s alien. Separate. Alfheim, perhaps. Not part of anything to do with us. Whatever lives in the forest, animals or spirits, we can’t even get in without hacking it down as we go. I wonder if we were ever meant to be here.’
He said I was making troubles where there were none, and he knew land when he saw it, and good timber when he found it, and there was no point asking questions if we couldn’t answer them. He turned over then, and was soon asleep. Early the next morning the skraelings came, and that put an end to our innocence in Vinland.
I was out on the dunes with Karlsefni and Snorri, looking at the great oak trunk we’d hauled out of the forest. I’d left my Snorri sleeping in his basket. He was over a year old now, and very active. He could walk, but he could crawl even faster, and I seemed to spend all my waking hours keeping him out of danger. But he still slept in the afternoon. On this particular day some of the men were down on the beach, and the rest were still up at the huts. It was still early, and the grass was soaked with dew. The sea was calm, the waves lapping gently on the outer shore.
It was the noise that made me look up. A strange rattling noise that I can’t describe, like grouse would sound if there were a whole flock of them, or like stones shaken in a sieve – no, not like either. Too loud, too alien. I jumped round, and looked out to sea.
There were boats. Not like ours. Smaller. Thinner. Later I saw they were made of skins stretched over wooden frames. There were men in them. That’s how I knew they were boats, not animals. The men faced us, not rowing, but they had oars they used backwards, without rowlocks. Only they were not men, but black. One of them stood up in each boat, swinging something over his head like a flail. That was the noise. There were nine boats. I thought of my child, and clutched Karlsefni’s arm in both hands.
‘What’s this?’ said Karlsefni sharply. ‘What does it mean?’
I shook my head, dry-mouthed. He turned to Snorri, putting me away from him. The men below us had stopped work, and stood frozen, staring at the strange boats. ‘Skraelings,’ said Snorri. ‘The wretched folk. Skraelings. Remember Thorvald Eiriksson?’ Then Karlsefni shouted an order, and they ran back to the huts for the weapons no one had used since the voyage began. Karlsefni was going after them when Snorri stopped him. ‘Wait!’
‘No,’ said Karlsefni. ‘Those are men.’
‘I know. But the noise – they may mean to say they come in peace. We’re a long way from the place where Thorvald died.’
Karlsefni hesitated. The boats were just offshore. We could see the men clearly. There were six or seven in each boat. We were outnumbered about two to one. Their hair was long and black. Close up their skin was dark brown. The flails rattled like running footsteps breaking ice. Each man held an oar upright, facing the wrong way. I saw no weapons, but I couldn’t see any women either.
‘Gudrid, go back. Wait in the hut.’
I didn’t argue, but retreated ten paces, and stopped. Karlsefni wasn’t looking at me, and I had no intention of obeying him; it would be far worse not to see. Our men were coming back to the shore, swords and shields in their hands. Only Karlsefni and Snorri were still unarmed. The first skin boat beached in the breaking waves, and the others drew in beside it.
‘Wait!’ Our men obediently stood back, their drawn swords in their hands, and their round shields on their arms. Karlsefni touched Snorri on the shoulder, and the two of them went down the dunes, holding their empty hands palms outwards to show they carried nothing.
The brown men stepped through the waves and stood upright on the shore. One man stayed behind with each boat, keeping them afloat. The empty boats bobbed in
the breaking waves; they seemed to weigh nothing at all. I watched, ready to run back and hide my son at the first sign of a fight. The newcomers were shorter than our men, and dark as devils. They were half naked, dressed in skins, and their skin was brown as if it were burnt. They had no swords, but some of them had sharpened sticks like short spears. I remembered all the stories I’d ever heard of demons, shapeshifters and half men, creatures out of the fires of hel who creep into the fringes of the world and lurk there, waiting to seize upon mortal men and capture their souls. I crossed myself, and watched my husband walk down the beach to within two yards of the foremost man. For a moment Karlsefni, whose body I knew as well as if it were my own, looked quite foreign to me. I saw him for the first time as tall, and fair, although in comparison to most of our people he was neither, and I saw how he was clothed almost all over in undyed woven wool, wearing leather boots and a knife in a leather sheath at his belt. It flashed across my mind that although his face was tanned and lined, under his clothes his skin was as white and smooth as his son’s, and for a moment he appeared to me innocent and vulnerable, facing the embodiment of all our fear.
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