B0046ZREEU EBOK (13 page)

One day before Michaelmas, our shepherd came in to say a big trading ship had come up the fjord and was moored off Brattahlid. The next day, as we half expected, a messenger came over to us, to bid us to a feast for Leif Eiriksson’s homecoming.

Remember I’d never seen Leif Eiriksson before. My father had told me by this time that he and Eirik had talked openly of a marriage, and my imagination was already stirred. I had grown friendly with Thorvald and Thorstein, but Leif had what they did not, a ship of his own and adventure to his credit, and a hold on the imaginations of men. Thorstein had visited us frequently since he’d been back in the south, and Thorvald less often, but I was always elusive with them, playing them off against one another, and being busy in the dairy while they talked to my father. I had been waiting too long for Leif. Without knowing it I had created for myself a dream of something that did not exist, that I now know can never be. In the end I grew to like Leif, and I’m sure I never let him know how his false image had stirred my fantasies. But it might have been better for us all if I’d been encouraged to accept a man as he was, and not put off the reality for an idea that no flesh and blood man could ever be.

So Thorbjorn and I dressed in our best clothes, and crossed the fjord the next day in the teeth of a wind that already smelt of winter. I remember that feast at Brattahlid very well, but oddly enough I have no recollection of my first sight of Leif. I remember him there, certainly, sitting at the top of the table beside his father, a powerful
man with a look of his brothers, but more arrogant and fairer than either of them. I see him in my mind’s eye so clearly, but not as a stranger. The moment when Leif was a stranger to me is buried for ever. In that first moment of memory, I seem to have known him always.

It was a lavish feast. We didn’t eat mutton or beef, but only wild meat: caribou, duck, ptarmigan and seal meat. When we sat down our cups were empty. Then Leif sent a thrall of his, Tyrker, round the table, telling him to pour the drink for all. It seemed a large task for one old man, and I saw Eirik frown. But Leif held up his hand to check his father’s protest. ‘Let Tyrker do as I say.’

Puzzled, I watched across the table while Tyrker filled Eirik’s cup. Then he filled the cup that Thorvald and Thorstein shared, and I saw that the drink was not buttermilk, but red. And then Eirik grinned and said, ‘So you brought back good German wine from Norway, in spite of all your travels. You did well!’

‘No,’ said Leif, in a quiet voice I was to know well, for he could make a whole hall full of men hush, just to hear him speak. ‘No, that’s not wine from Europe.’

‘No?’ Eirik stared at him. Of course Eirik knew, which we as yet did not, where Leif had been that summer, and I saw a realisation that I didn’t understand dawn in his face. ‘Are you saying … are you telling me that this is wine from the new country?’

‘Taste it!’ said Leif. ‘Taste it all of you! Haven’t we done well to bring you wine from a country you have hardly dreamed of? Take it, and drink it! I bring you wine from beyond the end of the world!’

That was Leif for you. Give him his moment, and he’d make ten times more of it. Some thought him a charlatan, and I’ve been embarrassed by him often, because I like him, but when he chose we were like butter in his hands. He’s dead now; he died in his bed of ripe old age, the only brother who lived long or succeeded in all that he undertook. It’s hard to believe he’s no longer in this world. That’s what happens when you get old; the people you know die off, one by one, and it seems impossible that you can be so alone. I never felt close enough to Leif to love him. I never knew him as I knew the men I married, and yet, when I think of those times now, it’s almost
hardest of all to believe that Leif has gone. He seemed to carry the future in his hands, all the new possibilities. All gone now. I wish you could have seen him then, just back from that first voyage, at the height of his powers and still young, at his father’s feast at Brattahlid.

Four things, then, that changed our lives when Leif came home:

One, he’d done as his mother asked and brought a Christian priest back with him. I’ll never know if he did it for her or not. Leif was always pragmatic, and I’m sure it took him no time at all to find out how the land lay at King Olaf’s court. The way to the king’s heart and favour was through baptism, and I’m sure Leif didn’t hesitate for a moment. I don’t think his father ever quite forgave him, and the irony is that one thing Leif inherited from Eirik was his unregenerate pagan soul. You look shocked, but it’s the truth, Agnar. Leif and Eirik are dead now, and if we are ever to know the end of everyone’s story, once they have crossed that boundary, we’ll find out one day if I’m right or not. But I’d take odds we don’t find Leif Eiriksson singing psalms in heaven. Nor will he be with hel, because, though he was devious and often hurtful, he was generous hearted. He belonged with the old world, even though he defied Eirik so often. Leif didn’t storm and shout like Eirik. His anger was white not red, and twice as terrible. The pity of it was he was a son for Eirik to rejoice in, but although Eirik loved his exploits, he couldn’t love the man himself. He could never see his own likeness in him, though to the rest of us it was mockingly plain.

So the priest came, and there was division in the Green Land ever after.

The second thing. Leif told us his story the night of his feast at Brattahlid, and we learned why he had been so long. He left Norway early in July, a year earlier, and he set out to do what Bjarni had done, only quite deliberately. He had his ship refitted and provisioned, and when he left Bergen he sailed first to the Hebrides, where he had business that I shall describe to you in a minute, and then due west. Fate favoured him, as it always did with Leif. Even the westerly winds gave way before him. For three weeks they sailed across the open ocean, with no sign of land. Can you think of any other man who could lead a crew so far out of the world, with no certainty at the end
of it? But Leif’s luck held. He stayed so far south that the stars were visible at night, and they could see the sun nearly every day, the weather stayed so clear.

In three weeks they found Bjarni’s country. This is how Leif described it:

‘We made our first landfall,’ Leif said, ‘at that country which Bjarni reached last. It was a grim country. Glaciers covered the mountains, and the exposed coast was bare rock. We anchored and went ashore, but there was nothing growing, not so much as a blade of grass. But at least we landed, which is more than Bjarni did. But there was nothing to stay for in Helluland, as I named it, because most of it was bare rock, and so we put to sea again, and followed the coast south.

‘As we sailed south the country changed. The ice-capped mountains disappeared and low-lying green lands replaced them. After a couple of days we came to the longest white beach I’d ever seen. We followed it for miles, and at last we landed, where a promontory like the keel of a ship made a landmark. We went up the beach, and found a low-lying country of forests and swamps. The timber wasn’t big, like the trees in the Norwegian forests, but there was plenty of it, as far as the eye could see. Because of the trees I called the place Markland, and we went back to the ships, and sailed on south.

‘Then the coast began to bear away westward, but as it did so we sighted a further shore to the south-east, as if we were entering some great fjord. I decided then, as we had a north-easterly wind, to make for the further shore. There was a high island in the middle of the fjord, which we climbed, and saw the whole coast that we’d left to the north, and another long land to the south of us. We sailed on, and landed on a beach that shelved so gently that the ship ran aground way offshore. We waded to land, and found ourselves in a green country, with natural pastures and meadows and the forest behind. The grass was as lush as our own hayfields, and covered with dew. Our hands were wet with dew, and when we tasted it, it was sweet as milk.

‘We spent some time exploring the country round about, and found salmon in a river nearby, and signs of deer in the forest. It
seemed to me that we could winter there very well, if we spent the rest of the season hunting and fishing for our winter food. So we hauled up the ship, and built ourselves shelters above the beach. After that we were busy getting in food, and building houses that would shelter us in winter conditions. I divided the crew into two, so one lot were always out hunting, and the others building, until the houses were finished.

‘I sent the thrall Tyrker with the other party, though they complained that he was useless for hunting. When they came back without him the second day, I was furious with them, and with myself. He’s not as young as the rest of us, and maybe shouldn’t have been on the voyage at all, but he’s been a faithful servant to me since I was a child, and I didn’t want to lose him.’

Everyone’s eyes turned to the thrall who stood behind Leif where he sat at the table, ready to fill his cup with wine again. The man looked down humbly, but Leif turned and shook him by the shoulder, and told him to look up and accept his due.

‘Tell them what you found, Tyrker.’

The German smiled back at him, and began to speak with more assurance than I’d expected. Although he’d lived in a Norse household all his adult life, he’d never lost his heavy accent, and it was hard to follow him. ‘I was born in wine country,’ he began. ‘In the south Rhineland. My father kept a vineyard. Wine was like milk to me, until I came to these god-forsaken lands.’

My father raised his brows to me across the table. But I only glanced at him, and watched Leif closely. It pleased me that the man had such an easy relationship with his favourite slave. ‘And then to be taken to the ends of the earth, and have to seek food like a wolf, in a pathless country!’ The man shrugged. ‘I didn’t get far at that. These young men who go hunting, they run and force their way through forests and thickets and scramble up and down cliff faces. It’s not for me! I dropped behind, and began to look about me. And I saw what not one of them had stopped to notice. Berries. I never saw berries like those that grow in Leif’s new country. All kinds of berries. I tasted cautiously, and spat them out, in case they were poisonous. And then I found grapes.’ He looked round at us, savouring his moment. ‘Yes,
grapes. Not the same as our Rhineland grapes, I grant you that, but the fruits looked the same, big blue berries clustered thick on bushes. The leaves and the stems were different, but the taste seemed so familiar, even though it’s thirty years now since I saw fresh grapes. So I filled my hood with berries and brought it back to Leif. Even then these thick Norsemen didn’t understand.’ He gave his master another gap-toothed grin. ‘I had to explain what it meant. But as soon as Leif understood he acted. We had barrels of corn and salt aboard the ship. We tipped them into pits, and I showed the men how to gather the grapes and press them, and then we caulked the barrels as best we could and let the juice ferment. Wine should be more than a year old, and I didn’t have everything I needed. We could have done with iron bands, most of all. The next crop of Vinland wine will be better, sirs, I promise you.’

‘Vinland!’ That was the first time Thorstein had spoken. ‘Is that what you call it?’

‘Yes,’ said Leif. ‘That’s my new country, a promise pledged with wine. This land here is green, with good pastures, but my land has all the fruits of the earth lying there for the taking!’

Eirik scowled. ‘And what was the winter like?’

‘Better than here,’ said Leif lightly, and, perhaps realising that he had gone too far, he stood up and took the wine jar from his slave, and served his father with his own hands. ‘You will lead us, won’t you, sir, on our next voyage?’

‘Not I,’ said Eirik, though the angry flush died out of his cheeks. ‘It’s not my fate to discover more than this country in which we are now all settled. But you’ll go on, boy, you’ll go on with it.’

Leif, always tactful when it was just too late, glanced then from his father to his brothers. Thorstein was red and scowling, and Thorvald sipped his wine and gazed at the far wall. ‘Oh yes,’ Leif said confidently. ‘Indeed we shall. All three of us, we’ll go on.’

And that brings me to the third thing.

I hadn’t realised at first that not all the strangers in the hall were Leif’s men.

After Leif had told his story, they toasted a man called Thorir, whom I had taken for one of Leif’s own men, and talked of his lucky
escape. I asked Thorstein, who had come round to sit with me and my father, what it meant.

‘Didn’t you realise?’ he said. ‘No, no, those aren’t our people at the end of the table there. My brother Leif picked them up on the southern skerries. They had sailed too close inshore and grounded on a reef. Thorir’s a merchant from Norway. He’s been here before, and knew the way, but they ran into storms, and were blown into the lee of the islands. Thorir had no choice but to wreck the ship in the best place he could see. But it’s all Leif’s luck. Our men brought away as much of the cargo as they could, and of course by right of salvage it’s all my brother’s. He’s given half of it back to Thorir as a gift. So he makes his profit, and comes off with a reputation for generosity at the same time. Typical.’

‘Does Thorir think him generous?’

‘What can Thorir afford to think? My brother saved his life, and instead of losing all he had, he loses half of it.’

Leif’s luck. We heard of nothing that autumn but Leif’s luck. But I learned to know that luck, Agnar. I learned exactly what it meant. No one ever believed that Leif meant any harm, but all the luck he brought was backhanded. Not to himself, no, no, Leif Eiriksson was born under a favourable star, and that was that. He sailed through life, but anyone who followed him had to struggle in the wake of his passage, and I can tell you it was a rough journey. Thorstein was right; Leif was generous in his way, but what was more important was his great reputation for generosity. That’s how he made his profit, and men still loved him while he did it. It was the same when he lent the houses in Vinland to Karlsefni. Generous, of course, but a backhanded gift for us.