Meadowland Tom Holt

by Meadowland (lit)

  Which we did. Nice helpful wind whisked us down the Greenland coast, round the point and straight up Eiriksfjord to Brattahlid. First thing we saw was half a dozen skinny ponies grazing between the rocks, on the narrow shelf of grass at the foot of the white mountain. Goes to show how quickly you get used to things: after winter in Meadowland, it amazed me that anybody could scratch a living in such a miserable place.

  The Brattahlid people saw our sail before we beached, and a bunch of them came down to see us come in. Truth is, I was a bit disappointed by the reception. In my mind, we were mighty heroes of navigation who'd come back from the ends of the Earth, and quite likely from the dead. Far as they were concerned, we might just as well have been a Norway trader come to sell them malt and buttons: they were pleased to see us, but that was about all.

  Even the pleased-to-see-us wore off a bit when they found out that we'd ditched a holdful of building lumber in favour of fifteen destitute Norwegians who were going to need board and lodging until someone showed up who'd be prepared to take them home. Certainly that side of it wasn't lost on Red Eirik, who came limping down as we were drawing the ship up to the sheds. His first words to his son, after he'd stopped and given Thorir and his gang a good long glare, were, 'Who the hell are these?' Well, I guess he was entitled, since it'd be up to him to put them up, or at the very least pay the neighbours to billet them. For what it's worth, I think he was genuinely pleased to see Leif home again and safe, but he wasn't at all impressed when he heard about all that good timber stuck out on the reef.

  Kari and I stayed just the one night at Brattahlid; the atmosphere was a bit too fraught for my liking, and Kari was itching to get back to Herjolfsness and tell everybody there how wonderful the place he'd discovered had turned out to be. We took on a couple of Thorir's men as guests (Eirik insisted), and Leif saw to it that we got the loan of four ponies. We left early in the morning, before the house woke up. After all those months together, it seemed odd to be riding away without Leif or anybody to see us off. You'd have thought we'd come over for the day to return a borrowed plough.

  Nothing worth mentioning had changed at Herjolfsness, which was a pity as far as I was concerned. Bjarni Herjolfson was pleased to see us, mostly because he couldn't wait to hear about the new countries he'd seen but never set foot on. He'd changed his tune, you can guess. Quite likely he was jealous, because Leif Eirikson was going to get all the glory when he'd been the one to find those places, albeit entirely by accident. What the hell: we answered all his questions and told him a few of the better stories, some of which were actually true, in parts.

  Didn't take long for us to get back into the rhythm of Herjolfsness; and pretty soon Kari and me just had the memory, like when an arrowhead's too dangerously placed to be pulled out, so you have to leave it in the wound, and the skin grows back over it. The general attitude wasn't so much hail-the-conquering-hero as: Well, now you're back you might as well get on with some useful work. Thinking of Leif and Gudrid, I had a few goes at telling our adventures to one or two of the girls, but I might just as well have held my breath. The sad fact is that I told them the truth, straight as an arrow, but most of them didn't believe me. But there -I always do better with women when I tell them lies.

  Life drifted on. Within a month of us getting back, our holiday wasn't a big deal any more; in fact, the two Norwegians were in greater demand than we were, come storytelling time at night; they could drivel on about the towns back home and the merchants and the splendid houses and everything, while all we had to tell about was fog and Slabland and why we hadn't brought anything useful back home with us. Winter came on, none of the ships that called wanted to take the Norwegians home so they got settled in, and Kari and I went back to our regular jobs. Then, just as the long nights came round and we were getting ready for the heavy snow, we got word that there was bad sickness at Brattahlid, mostly among Thorir's men. Next thing we heard from the world outside was that Thorir had died of it, but (oddly enough) it hadn't spread to Eirik's people or the farms outside the immediate area, apart from those that had taken in any of the Norwegians. Coincidence.

  Since he got back, people had taken to referring to Leif Eirikson as 'Lucky' Leif, since he'd just so happened to turn up when Thorir's ship had been on the verge of sinking. Now I think he deserved the name, though not just because of that. It was luck that found the way for him, luck that got us home; and it was luck he'd rescued Gudrid, and then that her husband was so obliging as to drop dead and leave her free for Leif to marry.

  So he asked her. And there, I guess, was where Leif's luck ran out. Because she refused him.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  'So then what?' I asked.

  Eyvind stood up. 'I'm tired out,' he said. 'I don't know about you Greeks, but we need our sleep, and it's past midnight already Remind me, and I'll tell you the rest of the story in the morning.' He picked up a blanket, wrapped himself in it, sat himself down with his back to the tomb wall, and almost immediately began to snore. Harald, the younger man who didn't talk much, got up, made a soft grunting noise, and went out. A moment later, Kari came back in. He looked at the fire, heaped rather too much charcoal on it from the bucket, and sat down opposite me.

  'He snores,' Kari said, rather superfluously 'I've known the bugger all my life, slept in the same hall with him for most of it, and the bugger snores. And you know what? When he's snoring, I can't sleep. Anybody else's snoring I can sleep through, it puts me straight out, like a lullaby But his particular snoring - I don't know, it's the whatsitsname, the pitch or something. I could recognise his snore out of a thousand others, and it doesn't matter how tired I am, I can't sleep with it going on. So I lie down and I really, really hope I'll drop off before he does; but you know what it's like when you're trying to get to sleep - there's no surer way of staying awake.' He sighed. 'Well, I'll say this for him. He's trained me to get by on no more than a catnap, and I've had loads and loads of opportunities for just lying there on my back in the dark, thinking. Probably I've done more thinking than anybody else in the history of the world.'

  'That's pretty impressive,' I said cautiously 'We Greeks have produced more great philosophers than any other race on earth, so I'd always assumed that we were the ones to beat when it came to deep thought, but maybe I was wrong. So, what do you think about?'

  Kari considered his reply 'Mostly,' he said, 'how Eyvind's snoring really pisses me off. But after I've been thinking about that for half the night I get so mad I want to jump up and stick my axe between his eyebrows, so I've practised thinking about other stuff, to take my mind off it.'

  'Ah,' I said. 'What other stuff?'

  He shrugged. 'Stuff,' he said. 'Like, here's a thing I noticed. Back home, in the winter, it stays dark for months on end. Down here, some days are longer than others - depending on the time of year - but there's always a day and a night, one after the other. And in Meadowland, in winter, on the shortest day, it was light by breakfast-time, and it didn't get dark till mid-afternoon. I've thought a lot about that,' said Kari.

  'Interesting,' I said. 'And what conclusions have you reached?'

  'Search me,' Kari replied. 'I guess it's just one of those things, really And here's another one. In your Greek sea, down around Sicily and those places, you don't have proper tides, like we've got at home. Oh, you get a bit of a swell on the beach when there's a squall, but mostly the sea just sits there like an old, lazy dog in the rushes. I've spent whole nights puzzling over that, but I can't make head nor tail of it.'

  'Me neither,' I admitted. 'Though I heard once that a Greek philosopher living in France round about the time the Huns came reckoned that it was something to do with the phases of the moon.'

  Kari looked at me. 'Balls,' he said. 'Same moon down here as we got at home, so that can't be right. No offence, but you Greeks'll say the first thing that comes into your heads; anything rather than just bide quiet and admit that there's stuff you simply don't know'

  'There's
an element of truth in that,' I conceded. 'Anyhow, if it's all right with you, I think I'll just get my head down for a bit.'

  He ignored me. 'So,' he said, 'where did the old fool get up to? Had he got as far as where Leif Eirikson murdered his father?'

  For some reason, I wasn't quite so sleepy 'He did that?'

  Kari nodded. 'Oh yes,' he said. 'I mean, nobody could ever prove it or anything; and even if they could've, nobody could've done a blind thing about it, what with Leif being Eirik's closest kin and heir. Back home, see, when someone gets himself killed in a fight or whatever, it's the duty of the nearest relative to take revenge or claim compensation. And since Leif was Eirik's eldest son, only he could do it and nobody else. I'm all for our ways most of the time, but I must say I think that's a bit of a loophole in the system, because what it amounts to is that you can murder your next of kin and there's not a lot anybody can do about it. Mind you, it's a pretty useless loophole, because as a general rule sons don't particularly want to kill their fathers, or the other way around.'

  I was interested in spite of myself. 'Is that right, though?' I said. 'Only the closest relative can take action over a murder?'

  He nodded. 'Well, strictly speaking that's not true: you can hand over the right to somebody else - like, suppose you're a substantial farmer and I'm a nobody, and your worst enemy kills my son. I can't do anything much about it, but you can, so I give you my right of taking revenge, or sell it to you more like, and then you can get your enemy and I get my revenge and a bag of silver-scrap, and everybody's happy But it's up to me - you can't steal my right from me when I'm asleep or anything like that.'

  I thought about that for a moment, then made a decision not to think about it any more. 'But you said Leif murdered Red Eirik,' I said. 'You're sure about that?'

  'Oh yes.' He grinned. 'Now what everybody in Greenland'll tell you is that Eirik died of the sickness that did for Thorir the Norwegian. But don't you think it's odd, the two main people who die of this sickness are the husband of the woman Leif's besotted with, and Leif's old man? And what's more, the sickness only started after Leif invited a witch from the old country to stop over a few nights. Think on, as the saying goes.'

  'But it still doesn't make any sense,' I objected. 'Why would Leif want his own father dead?'

  'Ah,' said Kari, 'I was coming to that. You see, I'm absolutely sure that what Leif wanted was to be the boss, in charge. Now that wasn't going to happen in Greenland while Eirik was still alive, and everybody reckoned he was strong as an ox and likely to live to be eighty. So Leif set his heart on starting up a settlement of his own someplace, just like Eirik did at Brattahlid. But Leif goes to Meadowland minded to found his colony there, but for some reason or other he doesn't take to it there; and then on the way home he meets Gudrid, and that makes him all the more determined to get out from under Eirik's shadow So he - let's say he forcibly inherits Eirik's household. Now he's got what he wanted, he loses interest in Meadowland completely Instead, he settles down at Brattahlid and he's perfectly happy Or else he would've been, if he'd married Gudrid. Only, that didn't happen, though of course there was no way in the world he could've seen that one coming.'

  'What one?' I asked.

  'Gudrid falling head over heels for Leif's kid brother Thorstein. Which proves another point,' Kari went on. 'Like, we've all got this picture in our minds of our nearest and dearest; but often as not, that picture's out of date, or just plain wrong. My guess is, in his mind's eye Leif had this picture of Thorstein the way he was when he was still a kid. But Thorstein's all grown up now, big and tall and strong and good-looking, with all the girls sighing after him. When Leif looks at him, he doesn't notice how he's changed, he still thinks of Thorstein as a snot-nosed little boy sailing his toy ship in a puddle. So Thorstein cuts in and gets the lovely Gudrid, and Leif's been too slow to do anything about it.'

  'I see,' I said.

  'Served him right,' Kari went on, 'for not paying attention. Still, he'd got Brattahlid, so I'm guessing he made a decision to make the best of it and not worry unduly about not getting the girl. And at least it wasn't a total dead loss, he went on, 'because as soon as he was able, he took the ship back to the reef where he'd found Thorir's ship - Eyvind told you about that, did he? - and picks up all that lumber he'd ditched there in order to mount his big noble rescue.

  'Ah' I said. 'So you got your share of the proceeds in the end, then.'

  Kari made a strange noise. 'Did we hell as like. No, when Leif came back home to Brattahlid with the timber, he announced that it'd become salvage, on account of it being abandoned at sea, and he was keeping all of it for himself Which he wouldn't have done,' Kari admitted, 'if it'd just been straightforward greed. But he wanted that timber so he could build a new barn at Brattahlid now that he'd inherited the place. We didn't argue, of course, because it'd have been pointless, Leif wasn't going to give way on something he really wanted. So we never got our money But Leif sort of made it up to us, or to me and Eyvind at any rate. He said we didn't have to go back to Herjolfsness if we didn't want to, we could stay on as hired hands at Brattahlid. Which we did, of course, because Brattahlid was a bigger place, and we wanted a change. And then, when Thorvald made up his mind to go to Meadowland-'

  I frowned. 'Who's Thorvald?' I asked.

  Thorvald (said Kari) was Leif's brother; not to be confused with Thorstein, the other brother who married Gudrid. Thorvald was the odd one out in that family: he was the easygoing, no-worries, good-natured type, the one who everybody liked and got on with. How he managed to get that way and stay like it with Red Eirik for his dad I couldn't tell you, but he did it. I think the strain got to him sometimes, though.

  But when Eirik died and Leif took over as the farmer at Brattahlid, my guess is that something gave way, and Thorvald decided that he didn't want to live with the family any more. Mind, I never spent a lot of time over there while Eirik was alive, so this is just me making it up as I go along; but I think the difference between Eirik and his children was that the old man had nothing much left to prove.

  It's all different down here in the South. All of you have so many things. You walk through the streets of the City any day of the year, and there's shops and stalls smothered and crammed with stuff: clothes and pots and shoes and little ivory pen-and-inkwell sets and mirrors and jewellery and carpets and furniture and tapestries for your walls and lamp-stands and cushions and gentlemen's personal business seals and firedogs and books and table silver and little pictures of the Blessed Virgin all covered in gold leaf and candlesticks and boxes for keeping things in and padlocks and dog collars and God alone knows what else. You have a city full of people who do nothing but make things and sell things to all the other people who make and sell things, and somewhere at the end of a very long chain there's a bunch of farmers you all buy your food and your wool from. I guess it all seems perfectly natural to you, but I've been here a long time now and I still don't get it. Seems to me that you do everything sideways-and-backwards, like the picture in a mirror. Oh, it's all amazingly rich and wonderful, and a poor bugger like me from the North can hardly keep his bowels closed for the sheer glory of it all, first time he sees it.

  It's different back home. Where I come from, even a rich man can shut his eyes and picture in his mind every single thing he owns. You ask him, and he'll describe them all for you, in detail, every last scratch and crack and rust spot and busted handle mended with rawhide, and it won't take him too long, either. Oh, we like our things, no doubt about that. We show them off, and when guests come to stay we take them down from the rafters and pass them round the hall so that everybody can see them; and we've got some nice things, too - gold and silver, walrus ivory and carved wood, embroidered clothes and old pattern-welded swords that've been in the family since Odin was still God. The difference is, though, the way I see it, that where I come from the things only matter because of the people they belong to. Like, there's a street in the City where you can buy old second-hand tools;
and very good tools they are too, from all over the place, and dirt cheap for what they are; but they're just things, and all you've got to do in order to own them is pay money Back home, if someone picks up an axe or a stirrup on the road in the middle of the mountains, chances are he'll be able to tell you whose it is and who made it just by looking at it. No kidding. What's more, it's a safe bet that the man it belongs to inherited it from his father, who got it from his father, and so on back as far as anyone can remember; and he'll have had to wait until the old man was dead and in his grave before he got his hands on it, because we really hate being parted from our stuff. It's supposed to have been done away with now we're all Christians, but a lot of us, when we die, we want all our very favourite things buried in the ground with us. The idea used to be that we'd take them with us to the next life, but that's all rubbish. Truth is, they're our things and we're buggered if anybody else is going to have them once we're gone. The point being, things matter to us because there are so few of them; and when I look at your city streets jam-packed with strangers, I guess the same goes for you people, too. There's precious few of us, surrounded by a hell of a lot of landscape, which I think is what makes us stand out. What I'm trying to say is, we have so little compared with you, but that means that everything matters; and what matters most of all is people, the sort of men and women we are. What people think about us, what we think about ourselves, that's the only thing we care about. Who we are is all we've got.

  In which case, Red Eirik was richer than any of you - he was richer than King Michael of All the Greeks. He'd been a big man in Norway, got so big he had to leave so he went to Iceland until it got too small to hold him, so the only course left open to him was start up a brand new country of his very own. He may only have owned three shirts when he died, but everybody in the North knew his name, and we think that makes you very rich indeed.