An Old Captivity (31 page)

Leif said: “Lord, we want to call it Greenland.”

“Is it, then, so green and fertile?”

Leif hesitated. “In summer, Lord, there are meadows in the south-west of the country where cattle may pasture. But most of the country is a field of ice.”

The King frowned. “A bad name for such a place.”

The man said: “Lord, Iceland was called by a true name and people are afraid to go there, because of the ice. My father Erik wants people to come to our country, and so he asks your grace to call it Greenland.”

For a moment the King pondered this; then he burst into a great bellow of laughter, with all his court. It seemed to them to be a very subtle joke. The runners stood bewildered, and more frightened than ever. They had understood a great deal of the conversation, and saw nothing funny in it. They could not understand these people at all. They shrank a little closer together as the laughter roared about them.

They were taken away and lodged in a stable in the town. The bustle and confusion, and the many people thronging round and looking at their clothes, upset them; they were unhappy and refused to eat. On the second day Leif came to look them over.

He spoke slowly to them, using simple words that they could understand. “So,” he said kindly. “You ate nothing yesterday. What is the matter? You have nothing to fear.”

Hekja crouched down and shrank away from the great bulk of the man. Haki plucked up courage. “Lord,” he said in his uncouth dialect, “the people come and laugh at us.”

This big man nodded with understanding; he had had much to do with animals. “This is not a good place for you.
In a month we go by ship to my colony in Greenland. Would you like to go back to the farm until we sail?”

Haki said: “Lord, we were happy on the farm.”

Leif turned away. “You shall go back until I send for you.”

They were taken back to the same farm and resumed their old life, herding the cattle. In a month they were taken to the ship. It was a larger ship than the one in which they had come from Scotland. It was double-ended and open like a huge ship’s lifeboat; it had a beam of fully twenty feet, with massive sweeps for rowing in a calm. It had one great mast carrying a yard and a squaresail that could be trimmed to the wind, and reefed; at the bow the stem rose high above the sheer line of the hull, carved like a dragon’s head. It drew about six feet of water. There were no decks, but amidships there was a pitched roof like a house which formed a shelter for the perishable goods. There was a leather sleeping-bag for everyone on board. The bottom of the ship was covered with flat slabs of stone carried as ballast; towards the stern these were heaped together for a fireplace.

In this ship they sailed from Norway. They touched at several islands, and were at sea for a long time. At last they came to pack ice and pressed through it, rowing the ship and forcing through the ice. Finally they sighted land, rounded a cape and coasted on a little way until they entered a fiord and came to the farmhouse in the cove.

Many people came down to meet them, made them welcome, and helped them to unload the ship. The ship itself was pulled up from the sea on rollers laid beneath the keel and a rough shelter was built over it.

Haki and Hekja were put to work with the cattle as they had in Norway, running with verbal messages from time to time between the settlements. They were always sent together, in case one had an accident remote from any help.

They lived there two years.

   All this formed the background for the pilot’s dream, his memory of what had happened to him. But at the beginning
he thought that he had driven two young heifers from the meadow down to the byre at the farmhouse on the cove, and Tyrker had seen him, and had said that Leif wanted him in the house.

This Tyrker was a German. He had been a slave of Leif’s father, Erik, and had brought up Leif as a boy. He was now an old man and had been freed by Erik a long time before. He worked as a sort of foreman on the farm. He was a very small old man, with a prominent forehead, small features, and restless eyes, but Leif thought the world of him. He was supposed to be very wise.

Haki went into the house, following Tyrker. Inside, a sleeping-bench ran the whole length of the house dividing it in two, raised about two feet from the floor. Leif was sitting on a low stool, on the bench. Tyrker got up and stood behind him; the runner stood upon the floor beneath them, as was fitting. He had long lost his early fear of Leif; it had been succeeded by a dog-like devotion and respect.

Leif said: “Haki. You have heard the story that Bjarni saw a country west from here, where there was timber?”

Haki said: “Yes, Lord.” It had been common talk since Bjarni’s ship had arrived. Sailing from Iceland Bjarni had contrived to miss Greenland altogether and had sailed about for weeks, angry, bewildered, and suspecting sorcery. He had seen land several times but none of it was like Greenland; being a single-minded man he had forbidden his men to land, and had sailed back upon his course to look for Iceland again. He had thus reached his destination, south-west Greenland.

Leif said explosively: “Well, Bjarni saw a new country with woods, with great tall trees. And if you please, he did not go on shore! He might have brought a cargo back with him, and he did not. I think he is a fool.”

Haki could understand his master’s irritation. They were badly hampered by a shortage of timber. The only trees in Greenland were weak, stunted birches. They could build houses with stone walls of almost any height, but for the roof-beams they had to depend upon imported wood.

The runner understood this very well. He ventured: “With big trees we could build a big cow-house.”

Leif nodded. “That is right. We can build proper houses if we get the timber for the roofs. We can build small boats—ships, even. This summer I am going in a ship to find that timber in the lands that Bjarni saw, and bring a cargo of it back.”

Haki said: “Lord, how will you ever find the lands that Bjarni saw? There are no landmarks on the sea.”

Leif smiled. “I have bought Bjarni’s ship,” he said “The ship will show me where the lands are, for it has been there before.”

The runner was amazed at this sagacity. These people thought of everything. Of course, the dragon on the ship would know.

The Norseman said: “I want you to come in the ship with me, with Hekja. If there are new lands to be found I must send reports back to the King, and you can run across the land and tell me what it is like.”

“Lord, we can do that.”

Leif said: “Think well, and talk it over with Hekja. This voyage will be difficult and dangerous; I do not even know where we are going. We may meet with hard times. I will take no one with me upon such a voyage who is not a willing volunteer. No man shall say to me, when hard times come, that I have forced him into it.”

The runner was silent. He did not fully understand this reasoning.

“So, Haki,” said the Norseman, “I say this: You are one with Hekja; I will not take one of you alone. If you two want to stop here when the ship goes, you may do so. But if you wish to come with me, and if you do good work, then when we return here you shall be free people. I will set you free, and I will give you land to farm for yourselves, and beasts to start you off. I will do this for you if you decide to come with me, but you must talk to Hekja first.”

The runner’s eyes gleamed. “Lord, I would have come
with you anyway, but for these gifts I would follow you through hell.”

The big man smiled. Behind him Tyrker stooped and whispered something in his ear. Presently Leif said: “There is another thing. I will have no unattached maid in my ship, for when men are far distant from their wives they will quarrel over her, and fight. Are you and Hekja lovers? Do you sleep with her?”

The runner said: “Lord, she does not think about such things yet. Besides, she sleeps with the women.”

The Norseman threw his head right back and roared with laughter, rocking with merriment upon his stool. Haki stood looking at him, utterly bewildered. He had grown to like and to admire these men, but he could never understand what made them laugh.

Leif calmed himself, and said: “So. Before we sail Hekja must be betrothed to you, and I shall be the witness. If anyone wants to break that betrothal he must fight with me, and I shall slay him, under our law. In that way I can keep my crew in order.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Go along now, and have a talk with Hekja. Come back to-night and tell me whether you want to go with me, or to to stay here as slaves.” He made a gesture of dismissal.

Haki went to find Hekja. She was on the haystack pitching hay down to the ground before she carried it into the cow-house; he called to her and she slipped down from the stack and came towards him, very lovely in his eyes. He told her what Leif had said.

“If we go with him and if we please him with our running, he will make us free, and he will give us our own land to farm, and cows of our own. We should be free people then, like everyone else.” He glanced at her, short-haired in the sunlight, in her single overall. “You would be able to let your hair grow long, and wear fine clothes and ornaments like other free women.”

She said: “All this is very good, Haki.”

He plunged awkwardly into the difficult part. “If we go,
Leif says that you must be betrothed to me, in case other men, far from their wives, come after you and fight with each other.” He hesitated, and then said: “This is for order in the ship. We can break the betrothal when we get back, if you don’t want to marry.”

Her eyes softened, and she said gently: “I don’t want to marry anyone yet, Haki. But we are the same people and we think the same way. I would rather marry you than any of these people.”

She had never become accustomed to the Norsemen as he had done. She had never settled down to her new life.

He knew how she felt. “Perhaps if we please him, Leif will give us land right away on the outskirts where we can live in our own way.”

She said earnestly: “That would be very, very good.”

Preparations for the voyage went ahead quickly. The shed over Bjarni’s ship was pulled down, and the ship was overhauled and recaulked. Then it was launched down to the still water of the cove on rollers. Stones for the ballast were gathered from the hill above the cove. Provisioning did not take long. Leif picked a crew of thirty-one good men from the settlement, great husky fellows chosen principally for their skill in battle. He also arranged that Tyrker should go with them.

It was originally intended that the expedition should be led by Leif’s father, Erik, the grand old man of the settlement who lived in Brattalid. Everybody was in agreement that success must come to any expedition which he led; the least enthusiastic of them all was Erik. In his youth he had been a wild berserker with bright red hair, invincible in battle and a danger to all sober, honest men, particularly if they had attractive wives. He had been outlawed on Iceland and kicked out, and had sailed away to find and to establish his new colony, Greenland. Now he was old and tired, and not at all inclined to face another expedition.

Fortune was kind to him. The day before the expedition was to start he rode over on a horse to see the ship; the horse threw him, and he sprained his ankle. It was good
enough. He said to Leif: “This is an omen. I am not meant to discover any more lands. You go, and lead in my place.” With that he got upon his horse and went back home.

They started one bright, sunny morning. The ship was on the beach with the tide rising; men swarmed about her, putting on the perishable stores. In the crowd Leif saw Haki and Hekja carrying their sleeping-bags on board, and stopped them with a sudden cry.

“You Scots, come over here.”

They dropped their bedding in the bows of the ship and came to him on the sand. There was a pause in the work; the men looked at them with interest.

Leif roared out: “Hear, everyone!” Work stopped completely; the men turned to him. “A betrothal!”

They looked on curiously. Slaves were not normally betrothed at all but bred like cattle, but then it was not usual to take slaves on voyages like this one. Leif was doing them an honour; probably he meant to set them free some day.

Leif said: “Take her hand, Haki. Do you know what to say?”

He took her hand. “No, Lord.”

“Well, say this after me, and shout it out so that everyone can hear you: ‘I name Leif as witness that you, Hekja, betroth yourself to me, Haki, in lawful betrothal, with handshaking, without fraud or tricks.’”

He said the words aloud; Hekja said nothing. There was an interested murmur from the men.

Leif cried: “Now listen to me, all of you. This woman belongs to this man, and I am witness to the lawful betrothal. If anyone thinks differently at any time, he can come and talk to me, and he knows what he will get. Now, get on with your work, all the lot of you.”

There was a laugh, and the men turned to their work again. Presently the ship was rowed out from the cove, the sail was hoisted, and she crept down the fiord to the sea.

They sailed northwards for a day or two along the coast; then they headed out to the west. They had no compass; they steered by the sun and stars when they could see them,
by the colour of the water and the run of the waves, and by the feel of the wind. At midday each day, when it was calm and sunny, Leif and Tyrker made a curious ceremony, which Haki took to be a rite of their religion. They laid the ship carefully at right angles to the sun and measured the length of the shadow of the gunwale on the middle thwart. This thwart had marks carved upon it, made on Bjarni’s previous voyage with runic letters carved against the marks. Sometimes when the shadow of the gunwale fell exactly on a certain mark, Leif seemed very pleased. Only Leif and Tyrker seemed to understand this ceremony; it was a very high and holy matter. The men said that the dragon told them which way to sail when they were doing this.

Presently they came to land. It was a bleak barren country with no trees and no grass, a land of flat rocks leading up to the ice mountains. They anchored off it and launched a small boat that they carried; Leif went on shore with Tyrker and a couple of men. They came back after an hour or two.