Meadowland

by Tom Holt

  I took a moment to choose my words. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘why Harald Sigurdion cooks our food.’

  Kari laughed. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘why do we make him do the cooking, when he hates doing it and he’s so useless at it?’

  I nodded. ‘I’m just curious,’ I added.

  ‘Good for him,’ Kari said. ‘You see, he’s had a hard life, young Harald. When he was just a kid, his brother, King Olaf the Saint, went to war with the Danes and the Swedes and got himself killed. Harald got away, just about; he made his way to Russia - he’s an off-relation of King Jaroslav, I think on his mother’s side. But they didn’t really want him hanging around there, so he came South and joined the Guards, because we’ll take anybody so long as they’re big and vicious. Of course, being a prince of the blood and half-brother to a genuine martyred saint, he reckons cooking porridge is beneath his dignity; so, naturally, we make him do it. Character-forming, see.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That sort of makes sense, I suppose.

  ‘He’s absolute crap at it, mind,’ Kari said with a sigh. ‘Which shows that he’s not as thick as he looks. It’s a basic rule in the Guards. If there’s something you really don’t want to do, volunteer to do it and do it very, very badly; you won’t be asked again, and sooner or later you’ll find something you are good at, and everyone’s happy But that approach doesn’t work with old hands like Eyvind and me. The worse he cooks, the more we make him do it. It’s tough being a mentor, but he’ll thank us when he comes into his own and gets his throne back.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why will he thank you for humiliating him?’

  Kari clicked his tongue. ‘It’s an honour thing,’ he said. ‘You’re probably too civilised and effete to understand. Basically, though, it’s the same idea as when a boy starts off helping his dad and his uncles with the coppicing, and they send him back to the house to fetch the left-handed billhook.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, frowning slightly ‘This teaches him obedience and stamina, presumably’

  Kari looked at me. ‘There’s no such thing as a left-handed billhook,’ he explained. ‘The point is, your elders make a fool out of you when you’re young, so you can make a fool out of the next generation when you’ve grown old and wise. It’s all part of becoming a man, or something:

  I grinned at him. ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ I said.

  Kari nodded slightly to acknowledge a point scored. ‘Well, quite,’ he said. ‘But presumably you’ve got some similar kind of initiation thing in the clerking trade, haven’t you?’

  ‘No, actually,’ I lied. ‘When a young man starts work in the chancellery or the records office, the older clerks go out of their way to teach him the best practice, and help him out with anything he may have difficulties with. That way, he fits in straight away and there’s no disruption to the work of the office.’

  Kari shrugged. ‘It’s like I always say,’ he replied. ‘You Greeks are bloody clever, but you haven’t got a clue.’

  I was getting just a little tired of these Northerners’ attitude towards my people and my City. ‘For a start,’ I said, you can stop calling us Greeks, when we’re the great and indivisible Roman Empire, and we’ve been in business for just on a thousand years - longer, if you don’t make a distinction between the Empire and the Republic, which was founded seventeen hundred and eighty years ago- ‘You can’t be Romans,’ Kari interrupted. ‘Rome’s in Italy

  And it’s hundreds of years since Rome was part of the empire. And you don’t talk Latin, you talk Greek, and none of you are Italians. In fact, most of you aren’t even Greeks any more, you’re bits and pieces of all sorts of things, all bundled up together and cross-bred, foreigners in your own City. Which is silly, if you ask me.’

  I tried to look all dignified and aloof, but I’ve never had the knack. ‘Being Roman is more a state of mind than a simple accident of birth,’ I said. ‘It’s something you aspire to. We tend to judge a man by where he’s arrived at, not where he came from.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Kari said, with a grin. ‘My lot, we reckon a man’s no better and no worse than what his neighbours think of him. It’s a pretty hit-and-miss way of putting a value on someone, but it’s the same with all your various systems of weights and measures: doesn’t matter what the standard is so long as everybody’s agreed on using it.’

  I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was losing an argument here, though I wasn’t quite sure what the argument was about, or which side I was on. ‘At any rate,’ I said, ‘we’re a nation, not just a bunch of unruly individuals. We work together, under the direction of the Emperor and our superiors, which is how we manage to get things done. You people-‘ I shrugged dismissively ‘Look, even this story you two’ve been telling me proves my point exactly You people can’t do anything, you can’t take an opportunity when it presents itself.’

  ‘Right,’ Kari said, nodding. ‘Like we couldn’t settle Iceland, or Greenland.’

  I laughed. ‘My point exactly When we Romans came to Britain, we settled it and held it for four hundred years; we built roads and towns and bridges, we brought the natives into the Empire, taught them to speak Latin, made them into Romans, like us. And then-‘

  ‘And then,’ Kari said, ‘a bunch of Swedes and Danes came along and took it away from you, and last time I heard, they’re still there. Mind you,’ he added, ‘I’d never have known about that if I hadn’t come here, because in the North nobody’s ever heard of your lot being in England. They think all the big stone walls and houses were built by the giants, before Thor wiped them all out. See what I mean? Apart from a few fallen-down old buildings, which’ll be grown over with grass some day and forgotten, it’s like you people were never there at all. You stayed for a while, did a bit of building work and left. You remember it, but they don’t.’

  ‘Right.’ I smiled. Never argue with a Greek. ‘Just like you and Meadowland.’

  ‘Ah.’ Kari shook his head. ‘That was different.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Kari replied. ‘You haven’t heard the whole story yet.’

  Thorstein Eirikson (Kari said) was the youngest son. He was the one who married Gudrid, the girl that Leif rescued from the wrecked ship. He’d been old Eirik’s favourite, which probably explains why Leif and he never got on. The way Leif saw it, Thorstein got the best of everything without ever having to earn it; Leif had to prove he was worthy of taking over Brattahlid before Eirik’d give him any responsibility in running the place, which meant Leif had to work twice as hard as anybody else just to be treated equally with the others. Thorstein, on the other hand, could laze around the house half the day and not get yelled at for being bone idle; and when he did do a day’s work, he got praised for it, instead of it just being taken for granted.

  Thorstein saw it a bit differently He reckoned that there wasn’t any point in him working himself to the bone when he wasn’t ever going to inherit, with two elder brothers in the way True, Eirik tried to make it up to him by favouring him over the other two - I think the old man saw more of himself in Thorstein than in the youngster’s brothers, and there was some truth in that - but that just pissed Thorstein off all the more, because he knew that he was just as good as the other two, he could’ve earned fair and square what Eirik gave him for doing nothing, if only he’d been given the chance, but of course he never was. Unfairness cuts both ways, see: it’s even more humiliating to be unfairly favoured than unfairly put upon, if you’re someone with a bit of spirit, like Thorstein was.

  While they were all kids, of course, there was Thorvald in the middle to keep the peace; and Thorvald was the quiet, easygoing one, had to be or else there’d have been bloodshed. But when Thorvald didn’t come back from Meadowland and there was just Leif and Thorstein left, things started to get a bit fraught. Of course, it didn’t help that Leif had got the farm and Thorstein had got the girl. Far worse, they had their sister Freydis unmarr
ied and still at home, and she had the knack of making things just that little bit worse that makes all the difference.

  It all caught fire one night at dinner. Leif had been out all day with us, turning the hay We’d cut it during a dry spell in a wet summer, and before we could get it stacked and covered, the rain started again, so it was lying out in the wet, spoiling. Couldn’t be helped, but Leif seemed to think it was somehow his fault, for not reading the weather better. Thorstein hadn’t said a word, but he didn’t really need to; Leif just assumed that Thorstein was looking down his nose at him, thinking he wouldn’t have screwed up like that if he’d been the farmer at Brattahlid instead of Leif. Probably Thorstein was thinking that way; but he’d stayed home all clay while Leif was out in the meadows. Actually, he’d been working hard, shoring up the wall of the long barn where it’d been weakened by the damp; if he hadn’t noticed there was something wrong and spent all day fixing it, we’d have had the barn collapse and then we’d have been really screwed. But Thorstein didn’t think to tell Leif what he’d done, he expected Leif to notice it himself and thank him. Leif, meanwhile, reckoned Thorstein had stayed home because he was lazy, and because he’d washed his hands of the haymaking because Leif had cut too early

  So you had Leif and Thorstein sitting up on the top table not saying a word all evening; and Freydis yapping away in a loud voice about how bad it’d be if the hay spoiled, because nobody else had any to spare, and what a pity it’d be if they had to slaughter all the young stock for want of fodder. Then Gudrid tried to make things nice between the brothers, but that didn’t go right at all: she started telling Leif how hard Thorstein had been working on the barn wall, and Leif took that as a personal criticism, because he hadn’t noticed it as well as cutting the hay too early, and Thorstein got angry with Gudrid for telling Leif about the wall, and Leif got angry with Thorstein for shouting at Gudrid; and before long, the rest of us were sitting there looking down at our feet and hoping it wasn’t going to come to fighting, because whose side were we meant to be on? It was like that a lot of the time at Brattahlid, mind you, but not usually as out in the open.

  Then Thorstein started up a completely new line of attack, and it caught Leif by surprise. It was a bloody shame, Thorstein said, that Leif should’ve left their poor brother’s body to rot in Meadowland, in unconsecrated ground, putting his eternal soul at risk, when anyone with a shred of decent feeling would’ve gone out there and brought him home. Particularly, Thorstein went on, since Leif knew the place so well, even had houses over there to stay in. Somehow he made it sound like Leif refusing to give Thorvald the houses - you remember, he only lent him Leif’s Booths, he wouldn’t give him them - had been the real reason why everything had gone wrong at the end and Thorvald had died. Of course, that was complete bullshit; but Thorstein hadn’t said it out straight, he’d only implied it, so Leif couldn’t very well defend himself, all he could do was let the accusation lie. Anyway, the long and short of it was that Thorstein worked himself up into a real state, while Leif just sat there getting icier and icier, and the end of it was Thorstein declaring that if nobody else was prepared to bring Thorvald home, he’d have to do it. Leif looked at him hard and silent for quite a long time, and then said, fine, you do that; and then he got up and went to bed.

  Well, in most places I’ve been, you’d have expected that next morning the brothers’d have made it up, blamed it all on the booze, and that would’ve been that. No chance. First thing, when Leif came out of the back room into the hail, Thorstein was waiting for him. All polite and formal, he asked him if he could borrow the ship and some of the men for his trip to Meadowland. Leif never batted an eye; help yourself, he said, when were you planning on leaving? Thorstein said, as soon as possible, and I don’t think they spoke to each other again until the ship was ready to launch.

  Now I’m only too glad to admit that I’m not the brightest man who ever lived; but as soon as I heard that, I made a pretty sensible decision. Nothing on Earth, I decided, was going to get me on that ship again; not money or duty or threats, nothing. They could tie me up in a sack while I was asleep and carry me on board, but I’d jump over the side before we were clear of Eiriksfjord. You don’t need me to tell you why, not if you’ve been listening to a word I’ve said. As far as I was concerned, my seafaring career was over, and as for Meadowland, I never wanted to see it ever again. Even when Eyvind suddenly made up his mind he was going (and you could’ve knocked me down with a cobweb when I heard), I never wavered, not one little bit. And if Thorstein tried to pressure me into going, I’d climb up on the roof, jump off and bust my leg. You never came across such a determined man in all your life.

  So, two days before the ship’s due to sail, Thorstein comes up to me in the barn, where I’m carrying hay down to the sheds. ‘You haven’t come to see me yet about joining my crew,’ he says.

  ‘That’s right,’ I tell him. ‘Look, no offence, but I’m not going. Nothing personal, but I’ve had enough of that ship, and Meadowland too. I wish you all the best, of course, but my mind’s made up.’

  Thorstein rubbed his eye, like he’d got a bit of dust in it.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ he said. ‘You know the ship and the run inside out. You’d be an asset.’

  ‘Very kind of you,’ I said firmly, ‘but I’ve made up my mind.’

  ‘I see.’ He looked away, but stayed where he was. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘If you come with us this time, I’ll give you a farm of your own.

  You know how it is when you get that sinking, oh-shit feeling in your stomach, when you know something really bad’s about to happen; like, the tree you’re cutting down starts creaking before you expected it to, and there’s no time to look round, your only chance is to run for it and hope you can sprint the length of the tree before it comes down and flattens you.

  ‘When you say a farm of my own,’ I said quietly, ‘what exactly do you-?’

  ‘I mean,’ Thorstein said, ‘I’ll give you a house, over in the Western Settlement, and three hundred acres of good grazing; I’ll throw in six cows, a dozen sheep and a bull-calf, and enough flour and hay to see you over winter. In case you’re wondering, it’s part of my share of what I inherited from Thorvald. I couldn’t think of a better use to put it to than helping fetch him home.’

  My head was starting to hurt. ‘Is there any water with it?’ I asked him

  He nodded. ‘River runs all the way down the southern boundary,’ he said. ‘And if I remember right, there’s a well in the yard and another in your north top field. Water won’t be a problem at all.’

  I gave him a long, hard look. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I said, ‘but that’s a hell of a price to pay just so I’ll tag along. I mean, it’s not like there’s anything I can actually do, apart from coiling and uncoiling rope.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he said. ‘And remember, we re only going there to pick up my brother’s body, nothing more. With a bit of luck, we could be there and back in one season, before the ice starts to form; so no having to spend another winter at Leif’s Booths. It won’t be a big party, I’m taking twenty instead of thirty-five, so it won’t be all hellish cramped on the ship.’

  I looked at him again. ‘My own farm,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘You could call it Karisvatn, after the lake.’

  ‘There’s a lake?’

  ‘Didn’t I mention the lake?’ Bastard knew he’d got me then. ‘Oh yes, whopping great big lake, and in the season it’s completely covered with ducks and geese. All you’d need to do is sit in your porch and throw a stone, and there’s dinner.’

  I suppose some bugger must’ve told him, about me wanting my very own lake. And the Western Settlement wasn’t so bad, a bit chilly in winter maybe but good land, not so crowded as the eastern region.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but no. I made my decision, and I’m sticking to it.’

  He sighed. ‘That’s a great shame,’ he said. ‘Eyvind’ll
be disappointed, too. See, I’m giving him the land on the other side of the lake, so you’d have been neighbours.’

  You can only stand so much. The one thing that’d been bothering me was the thought of leaving my oldest and best mate behind at Brattahlid when I moved out west. But if Eyvind was going to be right next to me, the other side of my lake-

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  Well, it’s different, isn’t it, doing things for other people rather than yourself. As I lay in bed that night, listening to everybody else snoring, I found myself thinking, I don’t really need the whole lake; maybe Eyvind and I can sort of share it between us; he can have the side nearest his place, and I’ll have the other half - assuming, of course, that the ducks and the geese don’t all hang around on his side.

  Thorstein smiled, thanked me and pushed off, leaving me with the hay and my own long thoughts. I was still thinking those thoughts when it came time to get our few personal bits and pieces on board, then cast off and go. They were still just as long, but now at least I didn’t have the option of doing as they told me.

  Leif had come down to see Thorstein off, like I told you, they didn’t exchange a word all the time Thorstein had been doing up the ship. Now he stood on the beach looking all solemn, and he’d brought along a going-away present for his brother, all parcelled up in a bundle of old wool offcuts. ‘I’d like you to have this,’ he said. ‘It used to belong to Dad.’

  Thorstein frowned and pulled off the bits of rags. It was a sword; not just any sword, either, but the one that hung off the wall right next to where Leif sat in the hall. You’ve got to admire how he went about it; because a sword’s a real aristocratic gift, like kings give to their favourite earls. Also, Leif had absolutely no use for it, so his wonderful gesture hadn’t actually cost him anything. But the real idea behind it was to play on Thorstein’s nerves just a little bit. Give a man a sword, you’re telling him he’s probably going to get mixed up in fighting sooner or later; and the one thing that’d been preying on Thorstein’s mind about the trip was the fear of running into the leather-boat people while he was over there. Like I said, Leif had a flair for that sort of thing.