Meadowland (44 page)
When we got back to the houses, we found the Icelanders had got there before us; they were fetching all their stuff outside, and Helgi had got two horses in the shafts of a cart and was leading it round into the yard. I was surprised to see two horses and a cart; they must’ve taken up a lot of the cargo space on his ship, but I guess he reckoned he’d need them for logging. Maybe because of that they didn’t seem to have brought much gear - a few chests and presses of clothes, not much flour and bacon, a load of axes and saws but not much else in the way of tools. It’d be rough on them, having to build a new house for themselves without the right equipment, and if I’d been them I’d have kicked up a fuss. I’m glad they didn’t, mind.
They were obviously in a hurry to get away as fast as they could; but Freydis was in among them, getting under their feet, looking at every damn thing before she’d let them load it up, in case it belonged to the house rather than them. She didn’t find anything like that, though she argued the toss about a three-legged stool and a pair of bellows, till Finnbogi dragged up three or four witnesses to swear they’d seen them aboard the ship on the way over. I don’t think Freydis believed them; she called them all liars and said the things had been left there by her brother - though how she could’ve known when she’d never set foot there before she didn’t explain, and nobody asked. After they’d gone, though, she pounced on Kari and me and asked us over and over again, wasn’t that Leif’s stool and the bellows Thorvald had brought from Brattahlid? We said no the first five times, and maybe the last two. She wasn’t pleased with us, but she let us go in the end.
Meanwhile, they were fetching in our stuff. Truth is, I hadn’t seen much of it, because it’d all been covered up with hides on the way over - we’d begged her to let us strip the hides off and use them to catch rainwater, but she’d flat-out refused, she wouldn’t let us risk the stuff underneath getting spoiled by sea water. We’d all assumed it must be flour and malt and smoked meat. When the hides came off, though, we saw what her precious cargo really was: furniture, and tapestries, and the famous bench-boards that had belonged to Red Eirik, the ones he lent to someone and got into a blood feud over. Bersi the berserkers’ man got into a right state about that, because it meant there wasn’t much room left for useful stores. ‘What the hell do we need all this shit for?’ he said. ‘You planning to eat this stuff over winter? Because there’ll be fuck-all else Freydis acted like she hadn’t heard him, so he came up closer and repeated what he’d said, right in her ear. ‘And we could’ve died of thirst; he went on, ‘because you wouldn’t let us take the hides to catch water, and it was just to keep the salt off all this junk.’
Like I just said, Freydis was carrying on like he wasn’t there; and then quite suddenly, she spun round, grabbed a farrier’s hammer off a pile of tools, and cracked Bersi on the side of the head with it. I won’t forget the noise it made in a hurry: a thick, chunky sound, like slamming an axe-poll against a stump. His legs seemed to melt under him and he flopped down in a heap, like a wet coat you shrug off when you come in from the rain. Then she put the hammer back where she’d got it from and carried on unpacking cups and plates from a barrel.
Nobody gave her any trouble after that, not about the furniture or the hides. But we were none of us happy about the situation. Because the journey had taken longer than we’d planned, and we’d lost stuff over the side in the storms, we didn’t have more than a month’s food in hand. No cows or sheep or other animals on our ship; somehow, when we saw there weren’t any, we’d got it into our minds that the Icelanders were bringing them, but they’d brought horses instead and besides, we weren’t on speaking terms with them. So: no milk, cheese, butter. Four hens and a cock-bird between thirty-five of us. Another nasty shock, specially for Kari and me who understood the implications: just two small barrels of malt, enough for two weeks’ beer at the very outside. But we had very nice tapestries: one old one of warriors arriving in Valhalla, and a very pretty thing with women in blue dresses picking flowers, which Freydis told Starkad was French.
After we’d been there three days, and nothing much had got done apart from unloading the ship and repairing the palisade - top priority, Freydis said, though I got the impression it wasn’t the leather-boat people she wanted to keep out, it was the Icelanders - we had a bit of a meeting. Freydis had gone off on her own, to see what Helgi and Finnbogi were up to. They were building a house on the other side of the lake, and Freydis went at least twice a day to the edge of the wood, where she could look down at them without them seeing her. When she went off on the third morning, Bersi and Starkad came round and called us all into the long barn. We sat on the floor or leaned up against the wall, while those two and another of the berserkers’ men, Grimolf, stood up at the far end, looking nervous.
‘Right,’ Starkad said, when everybody had settled down, ‘we’d better keep this short. Looks to me like we’ve got a problem.’
He wasn’t getting any arguments about that.
‘Question is,’ he went on, ‘what’re we going to do about it? The way I see it,’ he went on, ignoring a few suggestions from the rest of us, ‘we’ve got two choices. We can either carry on like we are, and probably starve to death or get caught out by the locals and killed, or else we can have a change in who calls the shots round here, and sort out something sensible among ourselves.’
There was a bit of muttering, and I noticed it was mostly coming from the Gardar men. There were about twenty of them, people Freydis had brought with her from her farm. One of them - we’d clean forgotten about him up till then, which gives you an idea of what he was like - was Freydis’s husband, Thorvard Space.
Now don’t get me wrong about Thorvard. He was a funny man; in fact, he was two men. When Freydis was around, he was so pale and thin you practically couldn’t see him, and if you could he was just this shapeless drip of a man, like a skin without any bones or meat inside. But when she wasn’t there, you noticed he was actually a big bloke, tall and broad across the shoulders, great big hands like rake-heads. Anyhow, when Starkad said all that about getting rid of Freydis, up bobs Thorvard Space, and his face is as red as a sunset.
‘Just this once,’ he said, very slow and gentle. ‘Just this once, I’ll forget I heard you say that, Starkad; and I’ll assume you were just talking for yourself, and not the rest of you arsewipe vikings. But if I hear another word against my wife in this place, I’ll kill the man who says it, and you’ve got my word on that.’ Then he sat down; and I looked out the corner of my eye at the Gardar bunch, and they were all sitting there grim and stern-looking, giving the berserkers’ men the long, cold stare. Just goes to show, you should never speak first and then think after.
Well, that was the end of the meeting; and Starkad and Bersi and Grimolf had a bit of trouble getting out of the barn, because wherever they tried to go there were Gardar men standing in the way, like they were just waiting to be shoved aside. Very ugly indeed, the whole feel of it; and I can’t remember ever feeling more scared. Cold sort of feeling, right to the bone. See, Kari and me didn’t really belong to either side, the berserkers’ men or the Gardar mob; figures, really, since we’d been dragged along kicking and screaming, so to speak. But it meant we were nobody’s friends, so if it did blow up into a right old mess, we’d be fair game for either party
If I’d ever kidded myself it’d blow over and we’d all settle down, it wasn’t for long. Things just got worse. I’m guessing someone told Freydis about what Starkad had said; she got all uptight and quiet, which was worse than when she was roaring around the place yelling. Then there was Starkad, who wasn’t going to forgive her for bashing in his mate’s head with the hammer, and the rest of his lot, who were furious with Thorvard for calling them vikings. Everywhere you went, you saw men walking quickly across the yard or outside with their axes in their belts, not talking to men from the other faction. At night, in the house, with precious little to eat and nothing to drink, it was bloody awful. Not much better during the day, because there wasn’t anything to do. Freydis wouldn’t send us out to hunt or gather food, even though we were nearly at the end of the flour and stores; she didn’t want the berserkers’ men going off somewhere plotting against her, and she wanted her own people close, for protection against Starkad and his lot and also against the Icelanders, who she was convinced were going to sneak across when she wasn’t looking and rob her, or worse. She was still going out twice a day to watch them, and often she’d take one or two of her men with her; when they came back they all had that grim look, so I guess it was starting to rub off on them. Once or twice I heard Thorvard whispering with some of the Gardar blokes, something about waiting till they were ready or biding their time till the enemy were off their guard; then, as soon as they saw me, they’d go quiet and stare at me, which I really didn’t like at all. Obviously they were planning something, but there was no way of knowing who they were figuring on dealing with, Starkad’s people or the Icelanders.
Came the day when the food ran out. When Freydis heard there was nothing left, she got into a right old state, though I can’t see how it could’ve come as a surprise to her. First she had two of her men drag Bersi in from the yard; they held him up against the wall, and she accused him of stealing the flour for the vikings (which was what she called the berserkers’ men, to their faces as well as behind their backs). First Bersi just said no, he’d done no such thing; but it was plain she didn’t believe him, or didn’t want to believe him, and he was getting very scared, you could see that.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he repeated; and then I guess he had a flash of inspiration, because he added: ‘It must’ve been them. Finnbogi’s lot, the Icelanders. They must’ve snuck in here while our backs were turned and stolen that flour.’
I happened to be looking at Freydis when he said that, and I swear that her face sort of lit up, like a lamp glowing bright when you blow on the wick. She didn’t say anything, but you could see that, as far as she was concerned, that had to be the right explanation.
Well, Bersi could see from the look on her face that he was part-way off the hook, but not free and clear; you could almost hear the grindstones in his mind slowly turning. ‘Stands to reason,’ he said, in a very wobbly sort of voice. ‘They filled their ship up with that cart and the logging gear, and those horses. Probably fed all their grain to the horses, so no wonder they’ve run out.’
I guess Bersi realised that wasn’t a clever thing to say at roughly the same time the rest of us did. Freydis gave him a look that would’ve flayed the skin off most people, and then said: ‘It’s my fault, I’m too trusting. Leif should’ve told me they were no good, but I expect he wanted me to fail. Probably suit him if I never came back. I know for a fact that he had more than his fair share of Father’s things when he died, but it was no use trying to say anything.’ She scowled; she had a way of scowling like she was rinsing all the anger off her face, and then she’d smile. ‘Well, we’ll see about that, when the time’s right. Meanwhile,’ she went on, all brisk and businesslike, ‘we need food, before winter sets in. No point doing their work for them. Right, I want foraging parties, first thing in the morning. You-‘ For a horrible moment I thought she meant me, but she was looking over my shoulder at a Gardar man called Styr Otter. ‘Fishing. Take the ship’s boat, I want cod for drying and salmon for the smokehouse. Bersi, you can make yourself useful for a change; take two of your men and pan for salt, we’ll need plenty. I want you’ - now she was looking at Thorvard Space - ‘to lead a hunting party in the woods, there’s deer everywhere, you can see their slots all over the place. And you two’ - this time it really was our turn - ‘Leif was always talking about the wild corn that grows here. You’ll know where to find it. I want enough for flour for the winter, and brewing.’
No point telling her you couldn’t brew with the stuff, we’d tried, God knows. Kari nodded brightly, I think he’d have agreed to anything just to get out of her way ‘And while you’re at it,’ she added, ‘you can bring in, say fifteen bushels of grapes. Take four men, we need to move quickly’
There was a lot more of that sort of thing before she was done; and in each case it was, Take five men and Choose half a dozen men to go with you; Kari told me later that he’d added it all up, and she’d given orders for at least a hundred men, even allowing for double shifts. But we were all right; since we knew there weren’t any vines, we wouldn’t need four men to help us find them.
Gathering wild corn was just fine by us, because it got us well away from the house for most of the day It was hard work, mind; stooping down all the time, lugging heavy sacks, two hours’ walk at least in the morning before you even started picking, and all as far back again at night. I’ve worked as hard in my time, but never harder; and nothing nice to look forward to, like you’ve got at home, a good meal and a drink, friendly company in the hall and a good feeling about your life. I guess I kept myself going by telling myself, this can’t go on, sooner or later it’ll get sorted out and we’ll all be going home, back to Herjolfsness where I belong. Funny actually that it took all that time away, all those journeys to the very edge of the world, to make me understand that the place I ought to be was pretty much the place I started out from.
We were out one time, mid-morning, and we’d been working since first light. It was getting harder and harder to find any stuff worth picking, but we’d been lucky and come across a patch big enough to fill our sacks. We carried on till noon, then we sat under the trees for a breather while the sun was high. You’d laugh if I said it was hot; a Greek’d freeze to death. But picking that wild corn was enough to work you up into a muck sweat even on a cold day which was part of the pain of it; you’d be frozen going out, sweating while you were there, chilled to the bone going home. But anyway.
We were sitting under the trees, not talking or anything; I may even have closed my eyes for a moment or so. But then I felt someone’s shadow on my face. Now, obviously my first thought was the leather-boat people; so I sat up before I even opened my eyes, and tried to tug my axe out of my belt, only it was stuck. But then I heard a voice saying, ‘Steady on; and I knew it wasn’t them, so I looked up.