B0046ZREEU EBOK (15 page)

It’s so hot today, Agnar, I can’t even sit out in the shade of the cloister. At least it’s a bit cooler in here. It reminds me of Vinland. It was hot there in the summer too, and the insects were terrible. I can remember throwing myself into the sea – into sea water, can you believe it? – to get away from the heat and the insects. They were even worse than Roman mosquitoes. It hurts to open my eyes, out there; the walls glare at me as I go by. I walk a little way in the evening, but even then as I pass each building it throws out the day’s heat at me. Under the trees it’s cooler, only the soil is so white and dry. How does anything grow in it? I complain too much, you’re thinking. And I must admit the food makes up for it. Peaches and apricots – have you tasted them, Agnar? You have? So life in the monastery isn’t so austere? Far from it? Really? Tell me what you have to eat.

And wine too? What kinds of wine do they give you?

Yes, we have Tuscan wines in the guest house here. Are they the best? I’m told the vineyards here in Rome aren’t very good. Of course, the first wine I ever drank was from Vinland, where the grapes are different. I don’t think it’s given me a discriminating palate. These
things are so much more important here than they seem to be in Iceland. Would you miss such luxuries, if you went back? You’d miss the sun more? I suppose one might. Today I’ve been sitting here imagining cool water, white rivers and the clean northern air, and a sky rinsed with rain, not this parched pale blue. But when I’m home again I’ll remember that there were days when I was much too hot, and I’ll try to recall what that can possibly have been like. I’ll tell you one thing about this climate. It stops my bones aching. I suppose they do get the rheumatics here. The old people seem to shrivel up like raisins, but I don’t see as many cripples. Do you think that’s true?

Yes, and the young ones are so beautiful. It must be difficult for you, Agnar, seeing these lovely brown-eyed girls in the street, and not being able to go to bed with any of them. Or do you?

True, it’s none of my business. But I watched one yesterday evening, going home with a pot of water. She showed more flesh than a Norse girl would ever dare to do, but she looked young and brown and healthy, and with the pot on her shoulder she moved like a queen. It made me wish for a moment that my own youth had been sunnier. I’m not given to self-pity, but since I came here there have been moments when I’ve thought that my own girlhood was hard.

My dear, I don’t want you to be sorry for me! God forbid! I’ve always been able to look after myself. And then I had Karlsefni. I don’t know if I can make you understand what that meant. Can I make you see him in your mind? I don’t know. He was all Norse, as much an Icelander as ever a man was, but he had a look one sees here in Rome. Was it his smile? He could be subtle, and not everyone
trusted him. He had a way of looking at me that made my skin prickle with desire. Thorvald and Thorstein were lustful and predatory, but Karlsefni was different. He liked women. I don’t mean sex, I mean women. Do you understand what I’m saying?

I think you would have liked Karlsefni best of all of them. And Karlsefni would have enjoyed Rome. He would have appreciated what you told me about the wine. I think he might even have liked the heat. He was never lazy, but when there was nothing to do he was happy to do nothing. In the afternoons in Vinland we used to sleep sometimes, just as everyone does here. Leif would never have let his men sleep in the daytime, but Karlsefni did, and he always achieved everything he set out to do.

I wish I could just skip ahead and tell you about those days, but the other part must come first. It’s a hard story, Agnar. Maybe it’s just as well that blade of sun strikes in at the door there. Maybe it’s a good thing I can smell dust and cypress, and hear the flies buzzing against the ceiling. It’s a comfort to me to hear soft Italian voices across the cloister yard. Soon we’ll smell cooking, when they start to make dinner. Olive oil and onions, that’s how it always begins. I’m glad of all these things around me, Agnar, because the place we must now go back to is very terrible to me.

I was married to Thorstein at Lammas, the summer that Thorvald went away. He came to live with my father and me at Stokkanes. You may wonder that we didn’t stay at Brattahlid, but there was always a large household there, whereas my father had no child but me, and, if I’d left him, there would have been no woman to look after the house and farm. In fact I’d run the place from the day that we moved there. I don’t just mean the women’s work; I mean the whole management of the farm. The thralls came to me for orders as soon as it was clear that I knew what I was doing. I wouldn’t have been happy if Thorstein and I had gone to live at Brattahlid. Over there, Thjodhild was in charge of the women’s work, and I’d have had to deal with Freydis
too. In fact at Brattahlid there were too many strong-minded people altogether. Thorbjorn had grown easygoing with age, and I knew how to manage him. Also, I loved the place.

Stokkanes suited Thorstein too. Married to me, he assumed he’d inherit it one day, and so he took an interest in the farm. I think he was glad to be away from his family too. Being the youngest can mean waiting all your life for what may never come, at least, that’s how it seemed to be in Eirik’s family. Thorstein still dreamed of a long voyage, but meanwhile he was content, I think, to live with us in the winter, and to go hunting up north every summer.

The northern hunt was the key to Thorstein’s soul, and it was out of my reach, far from women or the domestic world. I once asked him what it was about the north that drew him, and he thought for a long time, and then he said, ‘It’s the space.’ That was strange, coming from a man who never talked about anything but the hunt, and whose idea of a winter night’s entertainment was to swap stories with other men about the incredible hunts that had happened during all the years in Greenland.

He wanted a wife because he wanted an heir and a place of his own. I didn’t bring him either, but he was happy in his own way, I think, during the three years we lived at Stokannes. Afterwards it seemed to me that I never really knew him, and even now, it’s a struggle to tell you what he was like. We were young, and hot-blooded, and attractive to one another. For a while I was satisfied, and my restless body no longer kept me awake at night. Nothing happened between us that sex could not solve; and it was only later that I understood that there’s no security in lust. At the time it seemed that to be in his arms was to be in a safe place, even though in my mind I knew that I was in a whole other world from him, and hundreds of years older than he was. But he was brave and active, and very strong. He used to win all the wrestling matches at Brattahlid. I think he would have beaten Leif, even, because Leif would not fight with him, and I can’t think of any other reason why he shouldn’t.

I felt closest to him when we worked together on the farm. That was mostly in spring, before he went away, when the flocks were lambing, and the cows had their calves. We were good midwives,
between us. I loved him more then, I think, than when we were in bed. In bed he could have been anybody; but when we were in the fields together, in daylight, I could see that it was Thorstein, and I can remember his frowning look, whenever he was busy with some job. He wasn’t a talker, but he was practical, and handled the animals well. I’ve always liked that quality in a man. I can remember when he saved one of our best milking cows by sheer strength. The calf was lying sideways inside her, and he reached in and turned the calf and pulled it out by the forelegs. I’ve done that myself. It takes some strength, if the cow can’t help you. But Thorstein was tough, though he still looked young for his age. His hair never darkened but stayed fair as a child’s, and he still had round cheeks like a boy’s. I’m told he was one of the best hunters in Greenland, and that means the best in the world.

I never told him about the ghosts that haunted my past. I never talked to him about the things I learned from Halldis. Thorstein, like all hunters, had a respect for unseen things. I never doubted his courage; his companions told me enough of what he’d done, but I grew to know his private fears. I knew, as no one else could know, that he had bad dreams. They were usually about his brother Thorvald. Thorstein loved Thorvald as he did not love Leif. Thorstein knew, I’m sure, that his brother was doomed. Perhaps he knew when they parted they wouldn’t meet again. He didn’t say so aloud, of course, because he would never have done anything that might help an evil fate to overtake his brother. Only at night he would turn over and over in his sleep, and call his brother’s name. I used to hear an echo in his voice, as if something in the bedwall heard and mocked him, or as if his voice came from somewhere far away. He sounded then like a drowning man, and I was afraid. But in the morning Thorstein never seemed to remember anything about his nightmares, and I never reminded him. Only sometimes when we went to bed at night he clung to me with a strength that was not all passion, and made love to me violently, as if by doing that he could stave off the lonely night and what it held.

So when Thorvald’s ship came home at the end of the third summer with the news of his death, it did not surprise us at
Stokkanes. The cloud was down, so we hadn’t seen the ship return, and it was not until Leif came over to fetch Thorstein that we heard what had happened. This is the gist of the story that Leif told:

Thorvald followed Leif’s sailing directions, and came to Leif’s houses in Vinland without much difficulty. It sounds so easy to say that – it was only when I made the voyage myself I knew what these simple phrases really mean. They didn’t have time for much hunting before winter set in, but they were lucky with the fishing, and so they lived mostly on dried fish that winter. As soon as the ice melted in spring they launched the ship again and sailed west. I realised afterwards they must have sailed a long way into Straumfjord, as Karlsefni did later, and certainly the description I heard from Leif tallies with what we found: a warm, wooded land with long sandy beaches suitable for boats. There was no sign of any people, but far down Straumfjord they found a rough building, a sort of drying shed, as far as I could make out. If we had known what that signified! But we were innocent then; the new lands stretched out invitingly before us.

Thorvald wintered at Leif’s houses again, and the next summer he sailed east. The east coast was rough and exposed, and a cold current brought icebergs down from the north, making sailing hazardous in the thick fogs along that shore. But then the land became more welcoming, with long fjords stretching inland between wooded slopes. It was hot summer by then, and I know, I’ve seen, what Thorvald found so attractive about the place. Apparently he’d said to his crew, ‘This is the place. This is where I’m going to build my settlement.’

And so fate met him. It was not woven into the destiny of our people to inhabit that land, you see. An angel with a flaming sword stands at the gate of that country, and though a few of us have passed the threshold, the moment we say aloud that we intend to dwell in the place, the sword descends. To keep us out, they have peopled that world with demons, half-men, creatures out of Jotunheim. And yet even as we sailed away, after the slaughter and the bloodshed, we looked back on those green shores and saw it as it seemed at first, a paradise. But we’re shut out.

And that’s how it was with Thorvald. When they sailed on that evening they found three skin boats drawn up on the shore. Thorvald ordered his men to hide among the trees and wait. Just as it was getting dark nine savages came out of the forest. They strolled over to the boats, carrying strange baskets on their backs. They must have noticed something amiss, because they stopped suddenly and seemed to sniff the air, and look about. Thorvald gave the signal, and the men in ambush leapt out of the forest. The savages were taken by surprise, and it took no time at all to slaughter eight of them. One was too quick. He fled to his boat, which was so light he had it launched and was away before he could be caught. The stuff in the baskets was honey, and our men brought it home to Greenland. Leif gave us some. I remember the taste now; it was like eating the sun.

As soon as it was light Thorvald climbed up the headland at the mouth of the fjord, and saw what he had failed to make out before: a couple of small clearings along the coast, and little humps which might be huts, or boats. There were no cattle. I don’t think Thorvald realised that his plans were hopeless. Once blood is shed the fates smell it, and they come faster than lightning. Back in the camp the men fell asleep in the heat of the day, for they hadn’t slept that night, and the lookouts fell asleep too. The heat of the forest in the afternoon can have enchantment in it, as I know. Leif wanted to find the men who slept at their post and take revenge on them for the death of his brother, but I persuaded him not to, even though I didn’t yet know Vinland. I’m glad to say he listened to me; after all, he knew something about the effect of spells himself.

Thorvald and his men were wakened by a voice that cried out ‘Wake up, Thorvald! Wake up, and flee! Flee for your lives to your ship, and get out as fast as you can!’

They stumbled to their feet, still half asleep, and grabbed their weapons. The skin boats were making for them down the fjord, like a swarm of flies that smells carrion. Thorvald and his men reached the boat. There was no wind. They manned the oars and slowly began to move. The skin boats were blocking the fjord mouth. Thorvald told off men to defend the gunwales with their shields, and the others to keep rowing as hard as they could. The savages came alongside and
shot them with arrows, but made no attempt to board the ship. So our men couldn’t fight, but could only press on towards the open sea under the storm of arrows. Once they were clear of the fjord the savages turned back.

Thorvald asked if any man were wounded. None were badly hurt, but then Thorvald himself fell to his knees. ‘I’m shot in the armpit,’ he said. ‘No, don’t touch me. There’s nothing to be done. You can pull it out when I’m dead, but listen to me now.’