Meadowland

by Tom Holt

  ‘Your house?’ Bjarni says; and things could’ve got a bit fraught there, except the farmer took another look at him and saw the foreign clothes and probably remembered what he’d been told by the neighbours.

  ‘Hold on,’ he says. ‘Are you Herjolf’s boy Bjarni?’

  ‘I know perfectly well who lam,’ Bjarni says; but by now the farmer’s got a hold on what’s happening and he explains. He says his name and tells Bjarni his dad’s sold up and moved away

  Takes Bjarni a while to get his head round that. Then he asks: ‘Where’d he go?’

  ‘Greenland,’ the farmer says.

  ‘Oh,’ says Bjarni. ‘Where in fuck’s name is that?’

  Luckily the farmer knows the answer, because he’d asked Herjolf the same question, being curious. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you sail up north to Snaefellsness. You know where that is?’

  ‘Heard of it,’ Bjarni says.

  ‘From Snaefellsness,’ says the farmer, ‘you keep on going west until you see the Blueshirt glacier, and there you are.

  ‘Right,’ Bjarni says. ‘And how many days would that be?’

  Farmer shrugs. ‘No idea,’ he says. ‘But what your dad told me Red Eirik told him, it’s all pretty straightforward and simple. Due west from Snaefellsness until you see the Blueshirt, you can’t miss it

  Bjarni thinks about things for a while, then he nods his head. ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Sorry to have bothered you.’

  ‘No bother at all,’ says the farmer.

  So Bjari sets off back down the hill, and we’re all on the beach unloading the stuff off the ship, the barrels of flour and malt and the cords of timber and other stuff besides.

  ‘You can skip all that,’ Bjarni calls out, ‘and get it all loaded up again. We’re not stopping.’

  We all look at each other. We’re thinking Bjarni’s had a fight with his dad about something, because we’d all seen him in that sort of a mood before, so we know better than to answer back or ask questions if we know what’s good for us. We figure, if Bjarni and Herjolf have fallen out, Bjarni’ll head off down the coast in a huff and put in for the winter with a friend. Fine by us. So we do as we’re told, and it’s only once the anchor’s up and we’re running out sail that somebody asks, ‘Where to, boss?’

  And Bjarni says, ‘Greenland.’

  Bear in mind, we’ve been away two years, we missed Red Fink coming back from his first trip and spreading the good word about the earthly paradise and the cattle staying out nine months of the year. None of us had ever heard of the place. So Eyvind asks, ‘Where’s Greenland, boss?’ And Bjarni scowls at him and says, ‘Shut up and raise the sail.’

  That was Bjarni for you. Every other winter he spent at home with his dad; and if his dad’s seen fit to sell up and set out into the northern sea for some place that quite possibly doesn’t even exist, why should that change anything? None of us were going to argue with him, not when he was in that frame of mind; besides, we hadn’t got a clue where we were headed, but we all assumed Bjarni knew - otherwise, he wouldn’t be crazy enough to try and get there.

  You think you know people.

  Well, we sailed up the coast to Snaefellsness, and that was all right. We were all figuring Greenland must be one of the islands west of the Breidafjord; maybe Bjarni thought so too. We thought we’d maybe put in at Borg, and once we were there Bjari would cool down a bit after his spat with the old man, we’d spend a few days drinking at Borg with the Egilsons and go home. But we go on clear past Borg and on into the Straumfjord, and as soon as we see the Snaefells volcano, Bjarni sings out, ‘West,’ and we head out into the open sea.

  Not a good moment, that. You hear all kinds of tales, of course, but nobody you’d believe if he told you your own name had ever said anything about there being any land out west of Snaefellsness. As far as we knew, we were going to sail out into open sea until we came to the edge, or got eaten by the Great Sea-Serpent, or God knows what. Gives you some idea what sort of a temper Bjari had when something got him all riled up, because We all reckoned we were probably going to die, but nobody said a word about turning back.

  Now, I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with ships- ‘Very little,’ I said. ‘Very little and still far too much, if you follow me.’

  Kari grinned. ‘Tell you a secret,’ he said, in Greek. ‘Eyvind doesn’t know this, or the lad, so don’t go telling either of them; but the first time I ever went out to sea, I was as sick as a dog eating grass. It was my uncle Kotkel who took me out, just a little fishing boat, him, me and his three lads, and I guess I was about twelve at the time. To start off with I felt right as rain; I sat next to Uncle up by the rudder, wind in my hair and all that, and I thought, nothing to it, don’t know why everybody makes such a fuss. Then the boat started wriggling about, and next thing I knew I was flat on my stomach across the rail, puking like a volcano, and I didn’t stop till we got back home, two days later. Where all that puke came from I couldn’t tell you, because there never was what you’d call a glut of spare food round the house when I was a kid. But every time I thought I’d fetched up the last few little scraps, the boat would start rocking or heaving, and suddenly I’d find just a little bit more, right down deep inside me, like I was chucking up from the roots of my toes. The only good part about it was, I was too busy barfing my guts up to be scared shitless by the high winds and the heavy seas, and I’m pretty sure I’d have been put off seafaring for life if the seasickness hadn’t taken my mind off how scary it was.’

  Just thinking about it was bringing a nasty sour, sharp taste into my mouth. ‘Not like that with me,’ I said. ‘It didn’t matter how sick I was feeling, the thought of how vicious the sea was and how fragile the boat seemed kept coming back at me like a friendly stray dog and wouldn’t go away And that was just a ferry across the Bosphorus.’

  Well (Kari said), I’m pretty bad, but not as bad as that. You couldn’t be, where I grew up. Fish don’t just walk onto the beach, and you can get a lot more in a boat than you can in a cart. But some people take to it and others don’t, and I’ve always been one of the others. Pretty funny, really, when you think I’ve been a sailor more often than a farmer, or a soldier.

  The thing about being on a ship is-Now I’m talking here about proper sailing, not just taking a boat out to the skerries to bring back the grazing stock; real sailing is where the sun comes up and there’s nothing but horrible grey sea everywhere you look. That’s when you’ve got to know how to sit still and suffer quietly You see, it’s cramped on a ship. Now I can’t talk about warships, they’re different. It’s the oars rather than the sails that make them go along, some of the time anyway, so at least you’ve got your oar-bench. It’s not much, just a few feet of board with splinters sticking up your bum, but it’s yours. If you were raised on a farm, like we all are, that’s what you’re used to anyhow On a farm, like I think I told you, everybody except the farmer and his wife dosses down in the big hall, on the benches round the wall. You’ve got your little bit of board, not very much but between lights-out and dawn it’s yours and you make sure it stays that way Anybody tries to wriggle you out of a thumb’s breadth of your bit of space, you see to it they get an elbow in the mouth, or a knee where it really hurts. Same on a warship, I guess. On a normal ship, it doesn’t work like that. Your standard deep-sea knoerr’s got a quarterdeck fore and aft, and in the middle’s the hold, stuffed full of barrels and sacks and buckets, probably livestock as well jammed in tight so they can’t get spooked and move about. If you’re lucky it might be fifty, sixty feet long, and because of the hold you can’t get from one end to the other without clambering about over stuff, probably stepping on the back of the cattle, so you tend to stay up your end, days on end, sat on your arse or squatting on your heels, trying not to get flung about as the ship pitches; soon as you start off you’re soaked through, and you stay that way right up till landfall. No point changing your clothes, because the next wave or squall of rain and you’ll be drenched again. Yo
u make an effort to get a fire going in a little brazier, but what’s the point: you’re flicking sparks off your flint onto damp moss, damp kindling, damp charcoal and wood. Food tastes of nothing but water; wet bread and cheese if the captain’s got the journey time right, and if he’s a day or three out or you’re blown off course, it’s fish and seagull, half-raw and dripping wet. Either there’s a panic on and everybody’s standing on each other’s heads grabbing for ropes, ducking under the boom, trying not to get a foot caught up in the lines - bloody stupid way to die, that - or else, what mostly happens, there’s absolutely nothing to do and absolutely no space to do it in, so you sit still and quiet. Try and talk? You can’t pass the time chatting and telling tales when you’ve got to yell like a Valkyrie to make yourself heard over the wind and the water and the creaking ropes and timbers. Anyway, like I said before, when you’re on a ship it’s best to keep your mouth shut. Can’t play chess or tables, any second the board’s liable to go slithering across the deck and over the side. You need a piss; you put it off as long as you possibly can, because it means getting up off your bit of deck, which you’ve been keeping dry the way cows cover a patch of grass when rain’s coming, and you fight your way to the side, and the wind changes and everybody behind you on the deck is yelling curses at you. And then there’s always a puker, at least one in every crew, so that’s something else you try and keep out the way of, but that’s easier said than done. You squash thirty, forty people on a knoerr and keep them out to sea seven days and nights, you’ll find out who’s easygoing and who’s brittle like an icicle. And that’s a good voyage. When you’re a bit lost and the water ran out two days ago, it gets worse. Half the deck’s taken up with waxed hides hung flatwise between the rails to catch the rain; there’s blokes leaning over you to spear gulls or drag in lines, and when they hook one it comes flying up out of the water and lands in your lap, thrashing and twisting and smacking you in the face with its tail. Two days out and already you hate everybody on the ship. Everything they do bugs you; there’s a man who snores like somebody rasping horn, there’s the bastard who trod on your hand yesterday morning and still hasn’t said he’s sorry, the clown who tried to get the fire going and tipped the brazier over on you, hot embers tumbling down in the folds of your cloak. Captain yells at you to do something, you don’t hear or you think he’s talking to somebody else; so now he thinks you’re idle or stupid, and he tells someone else to do your job, and then he hates you all the rest of the way You get some old-timers, men who’ve spent more of their lives sitting on decks than standing on grass, and they can handle it, placid and quiet as an old bellwether or a thin old cow being milked by a clumsy kid. The rest of us, though, we never really get used to it. Sure, we know somewhere down inside that it’s all just little nuisances and pains in the bum, and the rest of the crew’s not really treating you like shit, it’s just the way things are on a ship. We know it, but still we get all fraught when someone treads on our legs as he gets up to go on watch, or his piss flies backwards in a gust of wind and ends up in our eyes. It’s two thousand little stupid things a day, salt in your eyes all the bloody time and no way you can make any of it stop; that’s sailing. Does that remind you of your boat trip across the bay?

  ‘No,’ I confessed. ‘It’s even worse. Do you people enjoy being miserable, or what?’

  ‘Mostly it’s a question of getting used to it,’ Kari replied solemnly ‘And the way we live on land, all jumbled up together, makes it a bit easier to cope when we’re on a journey Even so, I can’t say as I can think of many folks who’d be able to stand it. Like I said, it’s the keeping still and quiet that gets to you. Then again, anybody who’s lived through a few Norwegian winters, trapped in the house while it’s dark outside for weeks on end, knows a thing or two about that. Let’s face it, though. Why do men go to sea? Simple, there’s only one reason: to make money, to get rich so they can be farmers instead of hired men, or gentlemen instead of farmers. That’s the one thing every man on board ship’s got in common, and you never mention it but it keeps you together, keeps you going, stops you from fighting and killing each other whenever someone does something that really pisses you off. Strength of will is what it is, determination; because in his mind’s eye, every one of you’s got this picture of himself the way he wants to be, or rather the way he knows he should be, if only the world worked how it should. All I ever had to do, when I was on a ship and feeling like I really, really didn’t want to be there, was shut my eyes and imagine being on my own farm, sleeping in the back room rather than on the benches, having all the space I wanted all to myself. I thought, in order to have that, it’s got to be worth putting up with a lifetime of the exact opposite.’ He sighed, then grinned. ‘And now look at me, he said. ‘Didn’t get there, did I?’

  ‘No,’ I had to admit. ‘Well,’ I qualified, ‘I don’t know You ended up in Constantinople, in the imperial palace. I don’t imagine you sleep on a bench when we’re back home.’

  His grin widened. “Course I do,’ he said. ‘Oh, we’ve got a nice big barracks-hall, bigger than any building in the whole of Iceland; stone walls, would you believe it, and a tiled roof, instead of timber and turf. But we all choose to doss down in the drill hall, piled up like fish landed in a net, because it reminds us of home. Anyway-‘

  Anyway (Kari went on) we sailed three days, out of sight of land, hoping we were going the right way Then things started to go wrong. The westerly wind dropped, it started blowing hard northerly, and then the fog set in and we knew we were screwed.

  High winds scare you, because you’re worried the mast or the yards’ll snap. Storms frighten the shit out of you, because all it takes is the one vicious bastard of a wave to swamp you, smash you or tip you over. But fog: I’m not saying it’s the worst thing that can happen to you, but it’s the nastiest, if you see what I’m getting at. You can’t see the sun or the stars, so you don’t know where you are. If it’s a real bugger of a fog, you can hardly tell day from night, so you lose track of time. When the fog closes in, nobody feels like talking; I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a rabbit when you’re almost on top of it, bloody thing knows it daren’t run so it crouches flat to the ground, ears back, eyes wide open, hoping you won’t notice it but knowing you probably have already: that’s how I feel in a thick fog, I just want to crouch low, keep still and hardly even breathe. I give up, in fog. That’s all there is to it.

  You’re looking at me strangely, like I’ve just confessed that I’m scared of the dark. Well, of course, a Greek like you doesn’t know about fog, any more than you know about cold. You get low cloud on the mountains, a bit of mist sometimes, but it’s no big deal. Where I come from, you get fog where you can’t see the man sat next to you, even though you can feel his shoulder pressed up against you. It’s lonely in fog, enough to break your heart, and you know there’s nothing you can do, absolutely nothing. Not if you were King Hrolf Kraki, or Sigurd the Dragon-Killer; being big and strong and good with a sword won’t help you, or being clever, or brave. I remember seeing an uncle of mine, huge man the size of a bear, but he was really ill, dying. He lay on his bed with his eyes wide open, sweating like dew on summer grass - I think he was trying to say something but his lips just moved a bit and no sound came out. I thought, this is stupid, a big strong man with shoulders like rocks, nobody on the farm could wrestle him or beat him in a weightlifting match, but here’s something I can’t see or hear or smell or touch and it’s killing him, bit by bit while I’m watching. Helplessness, that’s what I’m trying to make you understand. In a fog you’re helpless. I feel like I’m a tree standing in the forest and I’m gradually rotting away from inside. When I’m fogbound on a ship, I can’t put it out of my mind. It’s like the worries that settle on you in the small hours, just before first light: the more you try and flush them out of your head, the worse they get, you more you dwell on them. If I really want to make myself feel bad, I imagine that death is a fog, and it’s never going to clear, ever.


  How long were we there? Were we moving or stood still? Truth is, I can’t tell you. Later, Bjarni said he reckoned we were being carried along on a stiff northerly wind. Could be right, but I’d like to hear how he knew My impression was, we just sat there and cowered, but maybe my memory isn’t what it was. I remember someone, not next to me but close, muttering prayers, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I thought about joining in, but I’ve never been what you might call a religious person. I thought, if Thor’s still God, and Odin and all that lot, then from what I know of them they couldn’t care less, and even if they could, what could they do to help a few poor buggers lost in the fog? But if what they were saying when we left Iceland summer before last is true, and Christ has driven out Thor and killed him and Christ’s father’s now God, then I’d really be better off staying quiet here where He can’t see me, because they reckon He takes a dim view of sinners, and by all accounts I’m one. So, praying didn’t seem like a clever thing to do, so I didn’t.

  Just when I was sure I was going off my head, I fell asleep. When I woke up, everything was different, thank God. It was broad daylight, we were running before a sharp north wind, and my first thought was, well, I was all wrong about prayer after all, obviously it worked a charm for whoever it was doing it. So I sang out, ‘Who was that praying just now?’

  Nobody answered; I said it again.

  ‘I was praying, if it’s any of your business,’ said Thorgils Ulfsson, the forecastle man. ‘But that was two days ago.’

  ‘Must’ve been you I heard, then. Anyway, who were you praying to?’

  ‘Christ,’ he replied. ‘Want to make something of it?’

  I didn’t say anything, because people can be funny about religion and stuff. But from that day to this, I’ve been a really strong Christian, because of getting out of that fog; and if Thor was to come in here right now and offer me a drink with his own hands, I wouldn’t even talk to him. I’d like to say it was the turning point of my life and it’s been the making of me, but I’ll be straight with you, I can’t say it’s made a whole lot of difference. Loads of other times I’ve prayed and bugger all’s happened, or things have gone the opposite way to how I asked, so clearly what counts is who’s doing the praying, and He can’t be bothered listening to a sinner like me. Also, though I didn’t find this out till much later when it happened to come up in conversation, Thorgils had said a prayer to Thor before he called on our Heavenly Father, so maybe that was what I’d heard after all; or maybe it was Thor who answered, but he took a while getting round to it. Anyhow, that’s enough about that.