Meadowland Tom Holt

by Meadowland (lit)

'We had a visitor over our place this morning,' he said.

  That made me feel a bit pleased with myself. 'Let me guess,' I said. 'Freydis Eiriksdaughter.'

  Mord looked a bit disappointed. 'You know about it, then,' he said.

  'No, we don't,' Thorketil interrupted. 'Don't pay him any mind, we don't. So what did she want?'

  Mord sat down on a tree-stump. 'It was all a bit strange, really; he said. 'Me and Snorri here were just about to set off for work - we'd been talking to Helgi, being told what to do today Finnbogi was still in bed, he can be a bit slow getting started in the mornings. Anyhow, I happened to look up, and there's your Freydis stood in the doorway Don't know how long she'd been there, and she was looking straight past us like we weren't there, at Finnbogi. I guess he noticed we'd stopped talking, because he propped himself up on his elbow and yawned, and saw her.

  "'Hello, Freydis," he said, all nice and polite. "What're you doing here?"

  'She didn't stir from the doorway, like she was afraid to come in - no, it was more like she was superstitious; you know, like the people who won't walk over burial mounds, or under ladders. "You'd better get up and come outside," she said. "I need to talk to you.

  'All this as though Helgi didn't exist, mind; not to mention Snorri and me. "All right," Finnbogi says; he grabs a coat, stuffs his feet into his boots and stomps out.

  'They go a little way off, to where there's an old fallen tree lying on the ground. Of course, Helgi and Snorri and me, we pretend to take no notice, but we stop talking, and we're earwigging like mad. I'm pretty sure that Freydis didn't realise we were listening. We were out of sight behind the door frame, but we could hear every word, and I could just see them through the crack between the door and the frame.

  'Freydis sits down on the old tree, and after a moment Finnbogi sits down beside her. Neither of them says anything for a bit - it was like when you first go courting, and you and the girl are both too shy to speak. Then Freydis says, all pleasant: "So how are you lot getting on?"

  "'Not bad," Finnbogi replies. "Like you said back in Greenland, this is a good place. I've never seen grass like it, and you certainly weren't exaggerating about the timber. There's definitely money to be made here, and it wouldn't be a bad place to have a permanent settlement, assuming we don't get any more bother from the locals. But we haven't seen anything of them - don't know if you have? - so maybe after the last time they've decided to leave us alone."

  'He waited for Freydis to say something but she didn't. So he went on: "The fact is, the only thing that's been putting me off this project is this problem we seem to have been having with each other. Bugger me if I know what it's all been about, but if we've got it under control at last, don't see why we can't make a go of it after all, along the lines we agreed back in the East. As far as I'm concerned, it was all a lot of unfortunate misunderstandings, and if you haven't got any problems with us, we haven't got any with you. And that's about it, I reckon."'

  Well, Eyvind and I looked at each other, but we didn't say anything, and neither did Thorketil, though you could see he didn't know what to make of it. My guess is, Freydis had been saying a lot more to her own people, from Gardar, than she ever said to the berserkers' men, or to us; and it's a fair bet that she'd been going on to them about what a bunch of thieving, cheating bastards the Icelanders were. So he was puzzled, but pleased as well, just as we were.

  'So then what?' Eyvind asked.

  'Well,' Mord went on, 'Freydis didn't seem to react to what Finnbogi'd just said, one way or the other. She just sort of let it lie for a moment or so. Then she said, "Actually what I wanted to talk to you about was the ships."

  'That must've taken Finnbogi a bit by surprise, because none of us had given the ships much thought since we got here. I don't know,' he added, 'what about your lot?'

  'I don't think anybody's mentioned the ship for a long time,' Thorketil said. 'Why what did she say?'

  Mord frowned, then he said: 'What she wants to do, apparently, is swap: you get our ship and we get yours.

  I couldn't make head nor tail of that. 'What did Finnbogi say?' I asked.

  'He was as taken aback as you are; he replied. 'I mean, for one thing - no disrespect - your ship isn't a patch on ours. It's old and it's small, and besides, we know our ship, how it handles, what its funny little ways are. But that wasn't what got me. Put me straight if I've got this wrong, but wasn't it the plan that your lot was going to stay here, while we shuttle back and forth with the timber?'

  'That's how I understood it,' I said.

  'Me too; Mord said. 'In which case, surely we'll be using both ships; so what does she want ours for? In any case, even if she's dead set on keeping one of them here while we're away surely it makes better sense to use the larger one for carrying cargo. We can get half as much again on ours as we could on that old knoerr of yours.'

  All I could do was shrug my shoulders. 'What did Finnbogi say?' I asked again.

  Mord laughed. 'I think he was so stunned at it all, he didn't know what to make of it. But you should know her by now If she makes a suggestion, it's not generally open to negotiation. If she wants our ship for something, I don't see as we've got much choice in the matter. I mean, if Finnbogi'd said no, you can't have it, do you really think she'd leave it at that? Anyway, Finnbogi said yes, that'll be fine, we'll do that, then. I was standing next to Helgi in the doorway, remember, and he nearly choked, which shows you what he thought about it all. Usually the brothers talk things over ever so carefully before they decide anything; but Freydis had clearly made up her mind, and Helgi wasn't about to rush out there and ask his brother, in front of her, what the hell he thought he was playing at. Anyhow,' Mord said, 'that's the news from over our way Something to think about, if you ask me.'

  That was no lie; and after the Icelanders had gone, the three of us talked all round it, trying to figure out what the scam was, what she was up to, but we couldn't think of anything that'd fit the facts. It was pretty clear that Freydis had something in mind, and that something was the reason she'd decided to make peace with the Icelanders, after treating them like slit ever since we'd got there. But before we could understand what she was planning, we'd have to figure out why she'd taken against Finnbogi's people in the first place, and none of us really knew what was behind that, except that it was something to do with Leif's Booths, and finding them making themselves at home there when we'd arrived. That was the core of it; but that was as far as we could go.

  Truth is, trying to explore Freydis's mind was like Bjarni Herjolfson pointing his ship at the unexplored north-western sea and setting sail.

  We worked for a bit, and then it was time to go back for breakfast; the sun was up and the dew had gone, and all three of us were curious to find out if anything had been happening back at the house. So we hurried back, and we found the whole crew standing about in the yard. The house door was shut, and people were glancing at it from time to time, like they were waiting for some announcement to be made. It was all very odd, and it made the palms of my hands sweat.

  I saw Starkad and Grimolf, two of the berserkers' men, standing by the barn wall, and I headed over to see if they knew anything about what was going on. I knew Starkad couldn't keep anything to himself for very long, and Grimolf wasn't much better; they were nattering away in low voices, so obviously there was something to talk about. When I asked them straight out what was happening, they tried to look blank, like there was nothing unusual; but they couldn't keep that up for very long.

  'It's Freydis Starkad said. 'She's had a row with Thorvard Space.'

  Well, that was nothing special. 'So?' I said.

  Grimolf shook his head. 'I was in the house,' he said, 'around going-to-work time. I'd stayed behind to put new laces in my boots, and I was waiting for Starkad here to get himself moving - we were supposed to be mending fence-rails together. Anyhow, I was just about to go outside when I heard them talking in the inner room; so naturally, I stopped where I was and listened.'
/>   I could believe that. Grimolf had thief's ears, nothing was safe from them. 'Well?' I said.

  'It was comical, really' Grimolf said. 'Thorvard was still in bed, I guess, and Freydis must've been climbing back in with him, because he moaned about her feet being cold and wet; and then he sort of paused, and asked where she'd been, so bright and early Don't suppose he meant anything by it, just ordinary husband-and-wife grumbling; but Freydis took it the wrong way or something. "If you really must know," she said, "I've been over Finnbogi's."

  'That took Thorvard by surprise. "What the hell did you go over there for?" he asked.

  "'To ask if I could buy their ship," she says, like it's the most natural thing in the world. So Thorvard, who's still three parts asleep, remember, asks what she wanted to do that for. "Because I want something bigger and better than that old wreck of my brother's," she says. "Why do you think?"

  "'Fine," Thorvard grunts. "So what did they say?"

  'Then Freydis makes this sort of pig noise. "It wasn't what they said;' she tells him. "More like what they did."

  "'Well?" Thorvard says. "What did they do?"

  'Now Freydis starts yelling at him. "They said no;' she says. "And when I tried to reason with them, they got nasty. Really nasty. Helgi hit me, right across the face; and then he grabbed my arms from behind, and Finnbogi tried to - to touch me." She stopped for a moment. You could've heard a mouse cough. "I managed to slip away; they came after me but I hid in the wood. They had six or seven of their men out searching for me."

  'Another pause, then Thorvard says, very quiet so I could hardly hear, even with my ear right up against the partition:

  "Is that true, Freydis? Did they really-?"

  'She screams at him, is he calling her a liar? He doesn't say anything, and she starts sobbing, and going on at him: he's pathetic, she's twice the man he is, if a bunch of thieves like Finnbogi's men can do that to his own wife and he won't do anything about it; he doesn't say anything, not that I could hear. This wouldn't have happened if she was back home in Greenland, she says, where she's got a brother who'd look after her, instead of a useless gelding of a husband who can't get it up any more; and loads more stuff like that. Still no answer from Thorvard, and now she's screaming at him that unless he does something she'll divorce him right then and there.

  'Then I heard him moving,' Grimolf went on, 'and it struck me that if he was coming out, 'it wouldn't be very smart if he caught me eavesdropping on such an intimate conversation. So I got out of the house pretty quick.'

  'He told me what he'd heard; Starkad interrupted, 'and then we went and told Bersi, because I didn't like the sound of that at all, all that stuff about Thorvard doing something; I thought we'd better get the rest of our lads together, in case there's trouble. You know how things have been between the Gardar boys and us, after all.'

  'So then what?' I asked.

  'So then; Grimolf went on, 'Thorvard comes rushing out of the house, all red in the face and shaking. He grabs hold of the first men he finds, tells them to get everybody together here in the yard, because there's a job needs doing that'll take all of us to do it. Then he goes back in the house and slams the door, and I heard the bar go up. And we've been waiting here ever since.'

  I left them, and went to find Eyvind. Thorketil had gone to talk to his mates, and the Gardar men were all huddled up together round the side of the house. It was one of those times when you can feel trouble's on the way, but you can't quite figure out where it's coming from or what it's all about. There wasn't any reason not to believe what Grimolf had told me, but it didn't make any sense, not after what we'd heard from the Icelanders. I couldn't make it out. Naturally I told Eyvind what I'd heard, and he was as gob-smacked as me; in fact, he was all for slipping away quietly before anything started that we might not want to get caught up in- 'That's right; Eyvind interrupted. 'And I bloody well wish you'd listened to me.'

  Kari scowled at him. 'Yes, right,' he said. 'And then what do you think would've happened to us?'

  Eyvind didn't answer that; Kari shrugged, and went on, 'Credit where it's due, it wasn't because he was scared or anything, I'm not suggesting anything like that.'

  'Thank you so bloody much,' Eyvind grunted. 'But of course I was scared, and so were you. You'd have to have been simple not to be scared in a situation like that. Truth is, we'd both been scared ever since we found ourselves on the ship with Freydis, headed back there. You learn to live with it, like with toothache, but sooner or later there comes a point where you can't blank it out any more. Which was why I told Kari we ought to get out of there, go and hide in the forest or something.' He paused, and they looked at each other. 'Luckily; he went on, 'Kari told me not to be so bloody stupid.'

  Kari shrugged. 'I was thinking the same thing; he said. 'I wanted to run away same as you. But there was a voice in the back of my head telling me that whatever happened, it couldn't be worse than being stuck out in the forest on our own, in Meadowland. I guess I was thinking, if something's going to happen to me, I'd rather it was an axe in the head than dying out there in the woods. I was more afraid of Meadowland than just plain ordinary death, if that makes any sense.

  Neither of them said anything for a long time; then Kari carried on with the story.

  We stood around in the yard for most of that day (Kari went on). To start with, everybody was talking, but after a bit it got very quiet. There didn't seem to be anything worth breaking the silence for. All we could do was wait and see what happened.

  Sometime around nightfall, the door opened, and Thorvard called us in. We sat round on the benches, in our usual places. Freydis wasn't there, and the door of the inner room was shut; Thorvard was up at the top table, and there was a chess set in front of him; the way the pieces were set, it looked like he'd stopped in the middle of a game. Time wore on; we ate dinner and got ready for sleep. Thorvard got up a few times to put wood on the fire, but he didn't say anything to anybody, and nobody had the nerve to go near him.

  I can't imagine that anybody slept much. I lay awake all night, staring up towards a roof I couldn't see in the dark, until gradually light blurred in through the smoke-hole. I was in a sort of daze, I guess: awake, but not thinking anything in particular; my mind skimmed over a whole lot of things, like someone skating on ice. At times, it was almost as if I was remembering things that hadn't happened yet; I could remember Freydis leading us down to the beach, where we stowed provisions on board the Icelanders' ship, then cast off, leaving them behind; or else I was back in the skirmish with the leather-boat people, when Olitar got killed. Other times I thought about being on the ship with Bjarni Herjolfson, catching sight of this place from a long way out - I was back where we'd only just arrived, nobody had set foot on Meadowland yet. My memories were all stirred up together; like when they're making cheese from the fat milk, and they stir in the cream that's risen on the top overnight, breaking up the crust and mixing it in till there's just the smooth, even texture of the milk. All the separate journeys - Bjarni, Leif, Thorvald, Thorfinn Scraps and Freydis - blended together; it was like they'd all happened simultaneously, like I'd only come to this place one time, and each set of events was happening in a different part of the settlement, and I was standing out on the porch, watching each one in turn. I saw a picture once: a painted book, like they make in monasteries. It was supposed to be the different seasons of the year, all jumbled together on the same page. In one corner, they were ploughing; in another, they were scaring birds off the sprouting corn; in another, they' were cutting and binding, and so on, as if time was flat, and if you got up high enough you could see everything happening together. It was that sort of feeling, lying there in the dark; crazy, I know, but it felt really vivid and lifelike, it made much more sense than the idea that I was lying on a bench in Leif's Booths on my fifth visit to the same place. I argued to myself, which is more likely: that I've come to this same godforsaken place five times, or just the once? I felt like it was that night I swam ashore from the ship
, after Bjarni Herjolfson had told us that we weren't to go ashore, but I had to know better; and then I thought I'd hit on the real explanation - that I'd gone ashore that night and stayed there, never swum back to the ship at all; that, all these years later, I was still here, I'd never left and gone to Greenland, gone back to Greenland, Brattahlid and Herjolfsness. After all, how probable was it that a man'd spend his whole life going round and round in circles, like a tethered goat on the end of its chain, with the stake driven in right here, at Leif's Booths? I was trying to make some kind of sense of all the stuff I thought I knew; and in the end I realised there was only one thing I knew for certain - that nobody owned Leif's Booths, because the owner refused to give the place away he'd only ever lend it, and that was why nobody could ever stay here, and nobody could ever really leave.

  So I was thinking all this crazy stuff, and daylight kind of crept up on me while I wasn't looking. The door of Freydis's room opened, and she came out. It was still very early, and she was barefoot, wearing one of her husband's cloaks because it was the first thing that came to hand in the dark.

  'Get up,' she said, to all of us.

  So we got up off the benches, reached for our boots and coats and hoods, and our axes. Men were pinching at their eyes to rub the sleep out, yawning, clearing the fog. I heard the milk-can clink on its hook, and the leg of a table dragging on the floor as it was pulled out. I heard someone coughing, an axe-head bumping on the wooden partition, ashes shifting in the hearth as someone poked life into the fire. The start of every day sounded like that in Leif's Booths, like every day was the same day over and over again; so maybe this day would be just like all the others, where we all wake up, go out to do the early morning chores, and when they're done we come back in for breakfast. I remember, I prayed, to our Heavenly Father, and Thor too, to be on the safe side: please let today be like all the other days, and if that means having to stay here for ever and ever, well, there are worse places to be and worse ways to spend a life. Only, please don't let the circle be broken today; if only we can get this day safely over and done with and out of the way maybe everything'll work out and be just fine.