Meadowland

by Tom Holt

  ‘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.

  Now think what it was like for Leif Eirikson, and you can begin to see why he went to Meadowland; also, why he came back and, I’m absolutely positive, did in his old man. Of course, while Red Eirik was alive, his kids were like holly bushes in a birch forest: they could only grow so high before they ran out of light. When Eirik died, though, and the light came flooding back in, a mild, easygoing lad like Thorvald has two choices. He can buckle down and get used to taking the same kind of shit from his big brother that he always took from his dad; or he can go away on a very long journey Just lucky, in the circumstances, that there was somewhere worth going to - all in the family, so to speak.

  So Thorvald goes to Leif and tells him he quite fancies taking the ship to Meadowland, if that’d be all right. Now you’d have thought that Leif would be only too pleased to see the back of him, since it means there’ll only be his other brother Thorstein and his sister Freydis left for him to lock horns with. But Leif’s not like that. The way he sees it, he got up off his bum and went out and found something, something big of his very own, not just one of the old man’s things. True, now he’s the farmer at Brattahlid and his mind’s full of milk yields and grazing for the sheep and whether the hay’ll see out the winter, so he knows in his heart of hearts he probably won’t have any use for a great big green island across the sea, so why not let the kid have it? He won’t say that out loud, though. When Thorvald tells him what he’s got planned, Leif just nods his head a little bit, doesn’t actually say anything; and then Thorvald says, ‘So it’s all right if I take the ship?’ and Leif frowns a bit, because ‘take’ can mean ‘borrow’ or it can mean ‘have’. ‘I guess we could do with some timber for the new barns,’ Leif says, and that’s entirely true, as far as it goes. Thorvald thinks it’s close enough to ‘yes’ to be going on with; Leif knows exactly what he meant by it, but he’s smart enough to know that it’s what you don’t say that carries most weight. ‘And if it’s all right by you,’ Thorvald goes on, can we have the booths you built when you were over there? Makes no sense building new ones when there’s perfectly good walls out there already’

  Now Leif goes all quiet, because this time Thorvald’s said ‘have’, and that’s crossing the line. So he frowns a bit more; Thorvald waits quiet, Leif makes a show of thinking about it. ‘Don’t know about that,’ he says, ‘I’ll have to think about it. You can have the
use of them if that’ll do you.’

  There’s a heartbeat or so when nobody says anything. Thorvald thinks: It’s right out on the edge of the world, Leif’s never going out there again so he won’t know, God knows why I even bothered to ask. Leif thinks: Just so long as he knows they’re only lent. Then Thorvald says thank you, nicely, and buggers off quick before Leif can change his mind.

  Now comes the merry dance. Leif wants to show how rich and generous he is, because that’s what being the farmer of Brattahlid is all about; so when Thorvald asks, can he have ten barrels of flour and five barrels of malt, Eirik says, don’t be stupid, you’ll want twice that at least, and you’ll want bacon and salt fish and smoked lamb and apples, and anything else you can think of, also shirts and blankets and coats, livestock, all the sort of thing that comes from the farm, which means that by this time next year Leif’ll have made up the loss and never even felt it. But when Thorvald starts asking for farm tools and axes and hoes and knives, stuff that’s got to be sent out for if it’s going to get replaced, that’s another matter entirely Take felling-axes, for example.

  Obviously, Thorvald wants a good axe for cutting lumber, and there’s three long axes at Brattahlid. There’s the good Danish axe that Eirik brought from Norway; but that’s been in the family since God knows when, so he’s not having that. There’s the four-pound broad axe with the nick out of the edge; but Leif had to earn that, Eirik made him work all one summer riving logs and putting up fences before he’d give it to him, so obviously that’s not available; which only leaves the fancy axe that some great-uncle brought back from Sweden as a gift from the King - it’s got silver inlay and something written on the poll that you can’t actually read any more, but it was in a fire forty years ago and goes blunt soon as look at it so it’s actually not much use for anything. Besides, Thorstein likes the fancy axe, and Thorvald doesn’t like using the four-pounder, he’s always used the Dane-axe because the helve fits his hands better; and getting a fourth axe made specially for Thorvald’s out of the question, because there’s not enough hardening steel in the smithy to make a good edge, and the pedlar won’t be calling out that way again till April. So in the end, Leif takes a horse and rides over to Ketilsfjord, which is a long way away and a rough old road even in summer, because he knows Ketil’s got two spare axes his dad brought home from a viking trip and never uses; and he trades them for three months’ hay that he can hardly spare. Result: Leif’s pissed right off because of the hay, and because Thorvald doesn’t seem properly grateful. Thorvald’s all resentful because he wanted the axe he’s used to. Brother Thorstein says, if he can have a new axe why can’t I have one too? Sister Freydis is mad as hell because Leif’s gone and wasted all that valuable hay when there’s three perfectly good axes hanging up on the wall already

  And so on, for months on bloody end. And don’t imagine it was just the family at each other’s throats. When things get fraught round the farm, everybody gets sucked in, taking sides, falling out, not speaking, till you reach the point where it’s a miracle blood’s not shed. Which is why when Thorvald came round all quiet and furtive, sounding us out one by one to see who fancied coming with him, I said yes, straight off, without thinking.

  I do a lot of that, not thinking. Oh, I thought about it later, when it was too late. Me, go back to Meadowland, again. Why the hell would I want to do a thing like that?

  First, of course, because I happened to know that Thorvald had already asked Eyvind, and he’d said yes, so really I didn’t have much choice. Second, because I was sick and tired of Brattahlid, especially now everybody was so uptight and snotty over sharing out the things. Third-Third, because I really wanted to go back, and buggered if

  I know why, looking back on it. Going through all that again, the fog and the getting wet and the sitting still on a boat, with the cows roaring their heads off in the hold and waves bashing your face in. But I wasn’t thinking of any of that. I was thinking of that imaginary house of mine, Karisfjord or Karisholt or Karisness. You probably don’t know it, but we have an old kids’ story about the elves’ castle, which you stumble across by accident one time and spend the rest of your life vainly searching for, because it can never be found on purpose. Well, I knew my house, my farm, my country of my very own was out there somewhere, out back of the lake the river flowed down from, or round the second headland down from Leif’s Booths; in my mind’s eye I could picture me standing on top of one of the mountains beyond the forest, and from where I was stood I could just see the green flash of its roof, round the rocks and over the treetops, not terribly far away You lie in the hall at night, squashed up on your bit of bench with someone’s knee in the small of your back, and everybody dreams about their own place, their own valley and lake and mountain and fjord, far as the eye can see. That’s dreams, and they’re all right in their place but you know it’ll never happen. But I’d already been there, for God’s sake, I’d seen all that grass and flat land with no bugger at all living on it; and once a man like me’s got a picture like that snagged in his mind, it won’t go away You can’t snap off the shaft and pull it out with the smithy tongs. It’s there inside you, for keeps.

  Kari sat still and quiet for a while, until I thought he’d fallen asleep. Wishful thinking on my part; because when I stood up and started tiptoeing outside for a pee (which I’d been wanting to do for some time) he lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were very wide open and bright, but I couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking.

  ‘Anyway’ he said; so I had no choice but to go back to where I’d been sitting.

  Anyway (Kari said), we went back to Meadowland.

  I don’t seem to remember much about that crossing. Yes, there was fog, and rain, and it wasn’t a lot of fun. I think we sprang a leak at some point, and had to plug it with all our dry spare clothes stuffed into hide sacks; and there was a hell of a storm that lasted two days and one night, with the ship trying to stand on its tail like a begging dog: stores falling out of the hold and flour barrels bursting, the decks slimy with salt-water porridge, the sail splitting, all that. It was a bad storm, but it shoved us on the way we wanted to go and shaved the best part of a day off the run, so it wasn’t all bad. Leif had given Thorvald the bearing-dial he’d got from Bjarni Herjolfson, so quite a lot of the time we knew more or less where we were. I like it when that happens. But you look like you’ve heard quite enough sea stories for one night, so I’ll skip ahead to where we’d sighted land and followed down the coast a day and a night, and the next morning Eyvind was on watch, and he yelled out that he could see the walls of Leif’s Booths.

  It’s a funny thing. Here in Greece there’s fallen-down old buildings everywhere you look: busted walls and bits of cut stone poking up out of the dirt, chunks of that shiny white stuff, marble, stuck in the sides of farmhouses and pigsties and dry-rubble boundary walls. I have no idea what you Greeks have got up to over the years, but you must’ve been bastards for smashing up buildings. Wars, I suppose. Back home we’re not like that. When we have a war, we kill the people and leave the buildings alone. Still, it wouldn’t do if everybody was alike.

  But in the whole of Meadowland there was just the one lot of buildings in the whole country, and even they didn’t have roofs; so they stuck out, you could see them from a long way off, even though they were small and low Soon as I saw them, I knew we were back, and it was like going home to Greenland had just been a dream. Strange, that, because when we were at Brattahlid after Leif came home I’d lie in the dark at night and try and remember what Meadowland looked like, and I couldn’t picture it for the life of me. All I could see was my imaginary farm, Karistead or Karisvatn or whatever we decided it was called; the real thing just sort of slipped through the meshes, like sprats through a cod net.

  Anyhow: the booths were just where we’d left them, and the only difference was. that the grass had grown up nicely through the stacked turfs, binding them together good and tight, which is what you want, of course. Back home we
reckon it takes three years for a house to grow properly weathertight; then you cut out the original inside timbers, if they’re birch or pine, and replace them with something that’ll last. No point doing that until the walls have grown together because they settle and shift and spring the tenons out of the mortices, and it’d be a waste of good lumber. Before we landed we did the business with the canopy struts. At least, we tried to. We said a little prayer to Our Heavenly Father and chucked them overboard into the water, splosh; but instead of bobbing up and floating they sank like stones and we never saw them again, not for a very long time.

  We landed the stores, and that wasn’t good. We already knew we’d lost a bit of the flour. What we didn’t know was that the damp had got into most of the rest and spoiled it; also the malt, which was a cruel blow and likely to make our lives very sad indeed, unless we could find the place where old Tyrkir’s vines grew. The livestock hadn’t done too badly - it was funny to see them wobbling about after standing still all that time. They went crazy once they started nibbling the grass. You could see they thought it was a damn sight better than bloody Greenland. Even so, the fact remained that we were going to have to live off the country if we planned on stopping there any length of time.

  Not that we had much choice in the matter, with almost no flour. We were stuck there till we could stock up with provisions for the return trip, at the very least, and looked at sensibly that meant spending the winter. And that meant fish.