Meadowland Tom Holt

by Meadowland (lit)

  'Get up, you idle bugger,' Eyvind was saying. 'The wind's up, we're on our way' Then he stopped and looked at me. 'You're all wet,' he said.

  Luckily, I had my answer ready 'Yeah, well,' I said. 'Got up in the night for a pee, lost my balance and fell in the water. Had to climb back in up the anchor rope.

  Eyvind grunted, which told me that he believed me; and then Bjarni was shouting orders; and I jumped to it along with the rest of them. Nobody else said anything about me being all wet. Fairly soon the whole lot of us were drenched through, all of them as wet as me or wetter, so I guess I was no worse off for my adventure.

  It was three days before we saw land again. When eventually it popped its head up out of the water, we could see glaciers plain as anything. The trouble was, there were too many of them. Bjarni was on the lookout for one big blue one, but this place that we'd come to had loads of them, crowning a huge mountain range, and once again Bjarni told us to keep going. We weren't too badly upset by that. It was a fair way from the sea to the foot of the mountains, and a more desolate landscape you never saw, not even the lava coast of southern Iceland. No good to anybody, Ejari called it, and for once we all agreed with him.

  We kept the sail full and followed the coastline for a bit. Turned out that the worthless place was an island, not that that had any bearing on anything. Soon we were sick of the sight of that flat waste of rubble, so we set a course away from it, due east into the open sea. Our luck was in: we picked up a nice brisk wind, which pretty soon thickened up into a regular gale. Shorten the sails, Bjarni said, not that we needed telling; we didn't want the sail in rags and all the ropes busted.

  We hung on for four days, like men breaking a wild pony clinging to the training rein. Nothing we could do except hold on. The wind knew where it wanted to go and the best we could hope for was that it'd take us somewhere, not just drag us out into the middle of open sea and then suddenly die away I'm not sure which was worse, that or the fog. On balance I'd say the fog, but not by much. Cooking was out of the question. Moving about on the ship was just asking to get swept over the side. We were fairly flying along, and I remember Bjarni saying that if we were headed in the right direction, you couldn't ask for a better wind, since each day we went twice as far, maybe three times, as you'd expect to go under normal conditions. Me, I could've put up with taking a bit longer and going a bit more steady Actually, I was in no hurry at all. See, the difference between Bjari and me was that Bjarni really wanted to see his old man and the rest of his family again. Not so in my case. We never got on all that well, my dad and me, and of course he'd gone west with the rest of the Drepstokk household, so I was going home too.

  Not sure what this has got to do with anything, but let me tell you a bit about my old man. Mum died when I was quite small, I don't hardly remember her. I had a sister but she was ten years older than me; she married out of the house when I was five and moved fifteen miles away, so I only saw her once or twice a year, at County Fair and Government Assembly, assuming I got taken with the rest of the family So it was just Dad and me most of the time, and the two of us got along like a fox in a henhouse, each of us taking turns to be the fox, if you get my meaning. If he saw something one way, I'd see it the opposite. Like, he was head stockman; it was an important job and he did it well, all credit to him. He valued those cattle more than old Herjolf himself did. Nobody ever had to tell him what to do, because he'd thought of it already; and he always went the extra mile, made the extra effort, did that little bit more than the boss would've asked of him. Me, I could never see the point. Why wear yourself to the bone for another man's herd, was how I saw it; half the time, old Herjolf wasn't aware of the pains the old man was going to, so he got no extra thanks. Different if it's your own stock, that goes without saying, but grinding yourself thin when nobody's even looking - I couldn't see the point. My attitude was, do what's expected of you and no more. That riled Dad no end. What else were you planning on doing with your time, he'd say; you just sit around in the house or in the barn. He couldn't understand anybody wanting to be idle when there was work he could be doing. He was the kind of man who can't sit still and just be, with his hands folded across his belly

  Truth is (and I can see it now I've lived with myself all these years) I'm not so different from him after all, but back then I sort of took pride in making myself the opposite of the old man, just to spite him. He'd call me shiftless and no good, and I'd make like I thought he was stupid, working so hard and getting nothing in return. I was wrong, of course. Maybe Herjolf didn't notice every single time that Dad put in extra work, but he was no fool, he could see that his cattle were the best in the district and he knew they weren't that way by chance. In return, he treated Dad as a cut above the rest of the hired men, because he knew he could depend on him; didn't treat him as a servant, more like a member of the family That way, Dad was really working for himself as much as for Herjolf, and he had the wit to see it. I was just young, though, and never saw it that way As far as I was concerned, there was this line drawn right across the world, farmers on one side, hired men on the other, and never a day but I knew which side I'd been born on; and whose fault was that? Dad's, of course, for bringing me into the world on the wrong side.

  So anyhow, you can understand why he and I never got on when I was a kid, and why I was so keen to get away from the farm when Bjarni came looking for a crew Fool to myself, because it meant I turned into a sailor when the sailing life doesn't suit me at all. The comedy of it is, deep down I must've learned Dad's lesson without even knowing it, because when we were on a trip I was just like him. Nobody ever had to give me an order, I'd already seen what needed doing and done it. Partly, I guess, that was because I got so bored sitting still that anything was a welcome change, but really I think it was me being like the old man in my chosen path, as you might say No bad thing in some ways, because a man gets a reputation for being a good worker, and then he'll never be out of a place when they're hiring for a voyage. On the other hand, there's this thin line between knowing what to do without needing to be asked, which is good, and thinking you always know what needs to be done better than anybody else, which leads to wilfulness, specially when other folk think otherwise. Like for instance, I thought somebody should go ashore and get firewood when we were sat there becalmed off the sandy beach, so I went and did it, in spite of what I'd been told; and you'll hear about what came of that.

  So there we were, skimming along ahead of the gale and going God only knew where; and on the fifth day the wind drops, the sky clears, and suddenly Bjari's stood up by the prow, leaping about like a salmon and yelling his head off. At first I was sure he must've scat his shin on the rail or dropped the weight on his foot; but then he calls out, 'Land, land,' and we all crane our necks to see, and sure enough, standing up out of the sea is a mountain capped with a glacier as blue as steel. 'Greenland,' Bjarni shouts. 'We made it.'

  I guess you can say we were pleased.

  Well, so we were. We were thrilled to buggery, because it meant we'd be getting off the ship and going ashore after all that time. Even so, I remember thinking if that's Greenland, I can't see the point. Fair enough, there are worse places. It's not that different from the rougher bits of back home; there's an apron of green grass between the mountains and the fjord, enough to keep the stock alive, provided you can get in enough hay in the season. No trees, mind, and precious little between you and the weather, and you knew as soon as you looked at it that winter'd be a long haul each year, but no worse than many places in Iceland. No better, either. Which raised the question: why bother? Why uproot yourself and go all that way for something that's pretty much the same as what you left behind? Only answer I could think of was, Herjolf and Red Eirik and all those people had made up their minds to go, and now here they were and that's all there was to it.

  But I didn't waste much time thinking that kind of stuff, because as soon as we made landfall I was so bloody overjoyed to be off the ship that it passed clean out of
my head. Didn't care where the hell I was, so long as I didn't have to sleep another night in wet clothes with the wind freezing my bollocks off.

  Now here's a remarkable thing, and I've often wondered about it since. We hadn't just found Greenland. When we drew the ship up we could see a farm away yonder, tucked in under the mountain. Bjari dashes off to find out where we are, and who's the first man he meets when he walks in the door but Herjolf, his old man.

  'Dad?' he says.

  'Hello, son,' Herjolf replies. 'What're you doing here?'

  'Come to spend winter, same as usual,' Bjari says, cool as you like. At least, that's what he told us; but Fat Thorhalla who worked in the dairy told us later that she was watching from just inside the door, and the next moment they're both in floods of tears and hugging each other like a pair of wrestlers.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  'So what did he tell you, then?' Eyvind asked.

  It was Kari's turn to go on watch. Eyvind had come back inside the tomb, wringing wet and miserable as a cheap funeral. He'd heard voices, he said; or rather, he'd heard Kari's voice bleating endlessly on and on. He hoped the old fool hadn't bored me to the point where gangrene set in.

  'Hang on,' I objected. 'I thought you and he were old friends.'

  An extraordinary expression came over Eyvind's face. It was as if God, creating Man, hadn't been able to make up His mind whether His ultimate creation should look amused, outraged, disgusted or depressed; so He'd emptied all four jars into the mix and waited to see what'd happen.

  'He told you that?'

  I nodded.

  'Figures.' Eyvind was quiet for a moment, as though he was trying to digest a medium-sized brick. 'Well, it's true that we've known each other ever since we were kids. We've done everything together, been everywhere together, hardly-' (He took a deep breath.) 'Hardly been out of one another's sight these sixty-whatever years. That doesn't mean we're friends,' he added, quiet and savage. 'Any more than the mule is friends with the treadmill, if you see what I mean. Truth is, I've been chained to that bastard my whole life, and every bloody thing that ever went wrong with me is his damn fault.'

  'Oh,' I said.

  He nodded vigorously (That's a Varangian thing that used to bother me a lot until I figured out what it meant. They aren't like us. They don't lower their heads for yes and lift their heads for no like civilised people do; they waggle their heads up and down for yes and side to side for no, and obviously that takes some getting used to. First time I saw one of them do it, I couldn't make it out. I thought he was saying no-yes-no-yes-no, like he was changing his mind several times in the space of a heartbeat. The side-to-side thing was even worse; I assumed he was being buzzed by a wasp.) 'Every damn thing,' Eyvind repeated. 'Like, I only went to sea in the first place to get away from the farm, because I couldn't stick having Kari around all the time. So what happens? Kari joins up too. So, instead of being cooped up with Kari on one of the largest farms in south-west Iceland, I'm cooped up with Kari on a fifty-foot ship. We reach Norway, winter comes round, and I'm cooped up with Kari in some stranger's house for the whole of the snowy season. And so it goes on. Finally, when I can't take any more, I leave the North and come to Micklegarth to join the Guard. Guess what happens.' He sighed down to the nails in his boot-soles. 'Now it looks like I'm stuck with him till the day I die. Which is why,' he added sadly, 'I gave up believing in Christ and our Heavenly Father some time ago. I heard the bishop, see, in the big round church in the City, telling us that when we die we don't just sit in the mound twiddling our thumbs, like the wicked pagans believe. Instead, we're taken to Heaven and we're reunited with all the family and friends we knew when we were alive.' He sat quite still for a moment, staring into the fire. 'In all other respects,' he said, 'Thor and Odin haven't got much going for them. Thor's an idiot and Odin's a bastard, and I wouldn't give you the snot off my sleeve for Frey But at least with them, when you're dead, you're dead.'

  'I see,' I said. 'I hadn't realised it was like that with you two.

  This time Eyvind groaned, quite loudly 'The worst part about it is,' he said, 'neither does he. Kari thinks he and I are best friends in the whole world. Can't think why he thinks that. I've told him, to his face: Kari, I think you're a total arsehole and I hate you more than anybody I ever met. Bloody fool thinks I'm kidding.' He shook his head sadly, then shrugged like a wet dog. 'So,' he said, 'what was he drivelling on about?'

  I pursed my lips. 'He was telling me about how you went to the unknown country with Bjarni Herjolfson,' I said.

  'Was he, now' Eyvind frowned. 'Did he tell you how he snuck ashore, even though Bjarni expressly said we were all to stay on the ship?'

  'He mentioned it,' I replied.

  'Really? No shame, that man. If it'd been me did that, I'd keep damn quiet about it. You see, everything went wrong because of that. Because of him,' he amended viciously 'The settlement failed, all those people died - I can't prove it, of course, nobody ever listens to me, but I know it was his fault.' He'd twisted his fingers together like a woman making a basket; I was afraid he'd never get them apart again. 'I could tell you,' he said. 'You're an outsider, maybe you could see it, if I told you the true story. But you aren't interested.'

  I say some stupid things on the spur of the moment. 'I'm interested,' I said. 'Tell me what happened.'

  Well (Eyvind said), it was like this.

  I suppose he told you how we eventually found old Herjolf in Greenland. Which is true, actually, and wasn't that the damnedest thing ever? We anchor the first place in Greenland we come to, march up to the first house, and there's Herjolf, standing there grinning, saying, Hello, boys, you took your time getting here. Of course, it's easier to credit if you believe in Odin, like I do. That's another thing I never could stomach about our Heavenly Father. Never the slightest hint of a sense of humour. Odin, though, he's a laugh a minute. Drawback is, the laugh's always at your expense. So, that was exactly the sort of thing you'd expect Odin to arrange, just to fuck our heads up completely

  But we got there in the end, which is the main thing. Also, it had no end of an effect on Bjarni Herjolfson. It made him realise he'd had enough of the sea and ships. He'd tried to put a brave face on it, but being lost like that had really scared him. Then when he found Herjolf, and saw what a good life he'd made for himself there at the Greenland settlement, he made his mind up right away It was time he packed in sailing and trading, and settled down on the farm to do something useful and make something of his life.

  Now, it was all very well for him, but what about the rest of us? Bjari was quite sure, you couldn't shake him on it. He had the ship drawn up out of the water and he and his father built a boat shed and laid it up there. The ship wasn't going anywhere; so, it stood to reason, neither were we.

  It so happened that there was an unpleasant bit of news waiting for me when I landed in Greenland. My mother and father and my elder brother and my kid sister were on one of the ships that went with Red Eirik, but they never got to Greenland. Did Kari tell you about the underwater volcano? He mentioned it; typical. My family were on one of the ships that got smashed up in the terrible storms Red Eirik's party ran into. It happened right out in the open sea so their bodies were never found, but one of Herjolf's men told me that he'd seen the ship go down and there was no way anybody on board her could've survived.

  That knocked me about a bit, believe me. I'd always been close to my family, especially my father. Like I told you, I'd only left home to go with Bjari so as to get away from Kari; I'd have been perfectly happy staying on the farm if it hadn't been for him. Now maybe you're beginning to see why I reckon everything bad that's ever happened to me is Kari's fault- 'You say that,' I interrupted. 'But think about it, will you?'

  'Think about it?' Eyvind repeated. 'I've done little else these forty years.

  'All right,' I said, wishing I'd never started on the subject. 'But the way I see it, if you hadn't gone away with Bjarni, you'd have been at home when Herjol
f decided to go away with Red Eirik. So isn't it likely that you'd have been on that ship with the rest of your family? You'd have drowned too.'

  There are times when I wish it had been my tongue my parents had cut out when I was a baby, rather than the other thing. True, you can get up to a lot of mischief with either of them, but perhaps I'd have been less trouble to the world if I'd never been able to talk.

  'I see what you mean,' Eyvind said eventually 'And yes, I suppose you've got a point there. Whether it makes it any better that I owe my life to that bastard isn't something I can give you an opinion on straight away Ask me again in another forty years, when I've had time to think it through.'

  'I'm sorry,' I said.

  He shrugged. 'Not your fault,' he said. 'Anyhow-'

  Anyhow (Eyvind went on), that was what was waiting for me in Greenland, and as you can imagine, it knocked me out of true for a while. We Northerners put on a great big show about life and death, like we really aren't bothered one way or another. We'd have you believe that we don't care whether we die today or tomorrow or in fifty years' time, and that we take the deaths of others in the same easy way We pretend - to you, to ourselves - that a life is like a coat or a shirt; doesn't matter whether it's long or short so long as it's good quality; and quality, of course, means honour, the way other people see you. So, it's better if you die young and respected than old and pitiful, and the longer you live the harder it is to keep your life from getting frayed and tatty, so really you're better off getting killed in the spear-storm, Odin's tempest of axes (that's poetry-language for fighting) rather than ending up weak and blind and having to be helped outside each time you need a shit, and everybody saying behind your back what a bloody nuisance you are since you lost all your teeth. Now like I said just now, I turned my back on the True Faith some time ago and went skulking back to Odin like a stray dog, so what I'm talking about here is Valhalla; that's the place where you go when you die in battle, and just before you get your leg chopped off or your brains crushed, the Choosers come to you - they're these beautiful women that you can only see when it's your turn, and they tell you that Odin has chosen you, and they scoop you up out of your body and carry you up to Odin's wonderful house, where the dead heroes slaughter each other all day and come back to life and drink and feast all night, and so on for ever and ever. But if you die in your bed or drown in the sea or starve in a bad season or a branch drops off a tree on your head, they don't come for you. Then it's not so good, for you or anybody else. They stick you in a hole in the ground and there you stay; unless you're stroppy and a troublemaker, in which case you're liable to get up and start wandering about at night, dancing on rooftops and smashing things up and killing the living. In which case, they'll bury you under a big mound of earth, to stop you getting out; and if that doesn't do the trick and you still get out and make a pain of yourself, they dig you up at noon and burn you and piss on the ashes till they're cold; and that's the end of you for good and all. Even now, when we're all supposed to be good Christians, and our Heavenly Father takes us when we die, they still worry about what happens when someone dies and the farm's snowed in, say, so they can't get the body to consecrated ground. In which case, they bury you in a temporary grave and stick a big wooden stake through your guts to keep you down till the thaw comes and you can be moved.