New Found Land Page 4

  “They probably trade with Indians on the mainland.”

  “They must. Bartering whale products, most likely. Whale’s a very useful commodity: you get meat, blubber, whale skin and whale bone. Whale oil, too. That would account for the timber and stuff. I guess you could buy a forest with a single whale. But how would you transport it? Longships don’t have much of a cargo capacity.”

  “Does it matter?”

  There were times when Brad’s passion for facts and origins was more than a little tedious.

  “I’d like to know.”

  “Well, if we stay here you’ll no doubt find out.”

  They crossed the narrow part of the island and threw stones at the sea from one of the southern beaches before heading back towards the village. At the point where they entered it, one of the huts was being rebuilt, with timber cannibalized from a derelict hut nearby. The workers were all female. Simon said: “Do you think we should offer to lend a hand? Might make a good impression.”

  “The question,” Brad said, “is whether it would be a good impression. There may be a tradition about the division of labour—men hunting the whales, women doing the construction work . . . that type of thing. Butting in might not be a good idea.”

  The women, certainly, looked eminently capable; many were brawnier than the Viking men. One or two glanced in their direction, but most were engrossed in their tasks.

  Brad said: “Better not hang around.”

  They started to move on, then stopped. The girl they had seen the previous day appeared from behind the hut which was being dismantled. She had a wooden billet across her shoulders. It was over six feet long and a couple of feet wide: the weight of it bowed her.

  Possibly as a result of catching sight of them, she suffered a temporary loss of balance. She staggered and eased the billet off her shoulders onto the ground. While Simon was still thinking about it, Brad sprinted across and took hold of the billet. She stepped back, smiling, and he stooped to pick it up.

  At least he tried. Contorting himself, he managed to get it off the ground and staggered about in a comic dance for two or three seconds before being forced to set it down. Simon saw the girl start to smile again. So did Brad, and with a tremendous effort he got it onto his shoulder. He even managed a few steps carrying it, but it was unevenly balanced and he had to let it go before it pulled him over.

  Simon took the wood from him; Brad was too busy getting his breath back to protest.

  Simon bent his knees and heaved. He succeeded in lifting it onto his right shoulder. It rested about as lightly as a stone obelisk, and not one of the smaller kind. With carefully measured tread, trying not to wince from the pain, he crossed to the hut and set it down with great relief. Brad and the girl had followed him. The smile she gave him made him feel better, but he was glad the hut had not been ten yards further away. Or two, for that matter.

  It seemed a good opportunity for introductions; he told her his name and Brad’s, and she gave hers. She was Lundiga, daughter of Sigrid. Simon would have been glad to prolong the chat, but an older woman called her to help with heaving a beam into place. When Simon tried to assist, Lundiga shook her head firmly. “It is not proper.”

  As they walked on, Simon said: “Isn’t she terrific?”

  “Great,” Brad said, “if you’re into weightlifters.”

  “The weightlifters I’ve seen weren’t as pretty.”

  Brad said sourly: “Maybe not. Kissing her would still be something like being hugged by a grizzly.”

  “I wouldn’t mind taking the chance. You don’t meet a lot of bears with a face like that—or figure.”

  “I’d watch it if I were you.”

  “That wouldn’t be sour grapes?”

  “No,” Brad said. “Good advice. Lundiga, daughter of Sigrid . . .”

  “Well?”

  “If you’d been paying attention yesterday, you’d know Sigrid is Wulfgar’s wife. Which makes Lundiga the daughter of the chief.”

  “Ah.” Simon thought about it. “On the other hand, where’s the harm in making friends with the boss’s daughter?”

  • • •

  Bos and Curtius quickly adjusted to life on the island. This was not really surprising, since it was basically a life of ease. While the women worked, the Viking men sat around and gossiped; down by the boats when the weather was fine, otherwise in the hall. There was much talk and laughter, singing and long-winded declamations of verse, and a vast amount of drinking either mead or strong ale. They also played a variation of the Roman dice and counter game.

  Talking in the hut which had been allocated them, Curtius said: “For the first time, Bradus, I do not regret that we crossed the ocean. A man can be at peace in such a land as this.”

  Brad said: “We’ve not been here long. Life can’t be all wine and dice.”

  That was the Latin equivalent of beer and skittles.

  Curtius said: “I do not look for life to be all wine and dice. I will be happy to hunt the great sea beasts alongside men like these Vikings. This is a good place, with good people. Your own land in the west may have all the wonders you have spoken of, but you have also said it lies a long journey away. It is reasonable that you two should wish to return to your homeland, but things are different for us. Eh, Bos?”

  Bos yawned mightily. Simon had left the pair of them carousing in the hall the night before, and been awakened by their drunken return in the small hours.

  Bos said: “Yes, this life will do for me.”

  Brad said: “It’s a poor soil and a cold climate for those vines of yours.”

  He nodded towards the shelf where the pouch with the vine roots lay.

  Bos said: “You may be right. And it’s true I would prefer a flask of good Falernian to the brew they serve here. But it is not so long since the best liquor on offer was melted snow. When a man offers you a beast, you do not look too closely at its teeth, especially if there is no other within a year’s trudging.”

  • • •

  Simon’s private objective was seeing more of Lundiga, and this did not prove too difficult. What was difficult, though, in fact seemingly impossible, was to see her on her own. There was no problem when other women were present, or even when there were just the two of them plus Brad, but attempts to put their acquaintance on any more intimate basis were smilingly but resolutely resisted. “It is not proper, Simonus.”

  He reflected gloomily that she took propriety a good deal too seriously, but it was a pleasure to look at her even when she was reproving him. She was certainly not a small girl, but very well proportioned; and the golden hair, blue eyes, and strawberries-and-cream complexion completed a picture that delighted the eye. She matched Simon inch for inch in height, which meant Brad had to look up to her. There was nothing wrong with that, either.

  The Viking women were hard workers. Apart from tidying and cleaning, preparing food, looking after children and animals, and tending things in general, they kept the huts in repair, brought in fuel for the fires, and cleared paths between the huts when it snowed. They even laid fishing lines in the harbour and mended the sails of the longships.

  The men, on the other hand, did absolutely nothing. Simon, embarrassed by the contrast of hard work and bone idleness, asked Lundiga if there was not some way in which he could help. She shook her head decisively. “It is not proper.”

  And yet Simon did not feel the women were dominated; he had an impression, from looks and occasional critical remarks, that their attitude towards their menfolk was more one of mild contempt than submission. A reply by Lundiga to a query from Brad about the number of unoccupied huts in the village tended to confirm this.

  In olden days, she said, the men had been true warriors, and explorers and traders, taking their longships on frequent voyages to the mainland. Whaling, too, had been more keenly pursued, and more successful. Nowadays they were increasingly loath to put to sea, and returned empty-handed as often as not. Brad asked how they had brought timber from
the mainland. They had tied tree trunks together in rafts, she explained, and towed them. But that had been abandoned; for more than a generation no new timber had been brought in, which was why the women had to repair the huts with bits from unused ones. In fact, many huts were empty. Fewer children were being born, so the number of the people dwindled.

  When they were alone, Brad said to Simon: “They’re dying out, that’s for sure.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  “Could be one of several things, or a combination. In our world a Norse colony flourished on Greenland for four centuries, then suddenly went. No one was certain why. Climatic changes maybe. That could be happening here. Or the effects of interbreeding. Or just plain lethargy. They’ve been doing the same things at the same season for a thousand years or more, on a tiny island. They may just be bored with it all.”

  Simon said: “Things may have gone on without changing for a thousand years, but there’s a change now.”

  Brad looked at him. “What would that be?”

  “Our being here.”

  “You think that will make a difference?”

  “It might.”

  Brad said thoughtfully: “You’d think with the women doing all the work they’d be totally subservient, but it’s not like that. The men are served by the women, and boast about their whale hunts, and make the big noises generally. But children are identified through their mother, not their father. Lundiga, daughter of Sigrid—even though Wulfgar’s the chief. And did you hear what she was saying this morning: that where marriage is concerned the women do the choosing?”

  “Yes, I heard.”

  There had been no particular significance in Lundiga’s expression when she was imparting this information, but it had happened not long after Simon had been telling her that in all his worldwide travels he had never met a girl as beautiful as she was.

  “And, as I say,” Brad said, “she’s the chief’s daughter. So who comes next as chief—Simonus, the saviour of the Vikings?”

  Brad dodged the blow aimed at him, and Simon let it go at that. He didn’t really object to the remark.

  • • •

  Whaling was a constant preoccupation with the Vikings, but a preoccupation displayed more in talk than action. There were rambling yarns, drinking around the fire at night, of past expeditions—of chasings and killings and which hero had cast the harpoon which laid the great beast low. From that, drinking more deeply, they would go on to the next trip, which they would make tomorrow or, if something happened to prevent it, the day after. Something always did happen. The sea was too smooth, which meant the whales would hide in the mists, or there was a swell which meant they would be swimming deep, or a blizzard was threatening. Or the Vikings just did not wake up early enough.

  At last, though, on a bright morning with a stiff wintry breeze from the south, they actually got going. Lundiga had told Simon and Brad her mother was worried about stocks, in particular oil, and they thought she might have had a private word with Wulfgar. At any rate all three seaworthy longships were manned by the full complement of men, apart from four manifestly too old and feeble and a fifth who had broken a leg in the course of drunken acrobatics. Lundiga said she could remember when four ships had gone out, and in her grandfather’s day there had been six: several dilapidated hulks were rotting at the quayside.

  The newcomers had been split up, but Simon and Brad found themselves together on Wulfgar’s ship. The oar Simon manned was longer and heavier than he had been used to in school rowing, and he found it hard going. Once clear of the harbour, though, the sail was raised and they could relax. The sail had a depiction of a dragon, too, in faded scarlet paint. They headed northwest, pounding along under a sky that offered rapid alternations of blue and quite thick cloud. The sea was choppy, but the ship’s motion was not too bothersome, and after a time Simon found it exhilarating.

  Scarface, as before, took the tiller, while Wulfgar shouted commands from his look-out platform. His voice was powerful and needed to be for him to make himself heard above the oarsmen’s din. When they weren’t singing, they were engrossed in chatter and the exchange of ribald insults. Your average Viking might lay claim to being a strong man, Simon thought, but you could scarcely call him silent.

  After some hours of uneventful sailing, they ate: bread and meat were passed along the benches, with flasks of water and ale. Simon confined himself to water, but the Vikings were downing great draughts of ale. The flask was emptied and refilled, a process that was repeated more than once. The oarsmen grew even noisier and more garrulous and, in some cases, combative. Two on the opposite side, near Brad’s oar, started a fight which Wulfgar was obliged to come aft to deal with. He grabbed a neck in either hand and slammed their horned helmets together with a resounding crack, bellowing oaths. They meekly subsided.

  It was not long after that he raised the cry of “Balleinus!” indicating a whale in view. The Vikings roared drunken approval, and Wulfgar chanted a time for the oars, breaking off now and then to give a command to the helmsman. All Simon could see was the straining back of the oarsman immediately in front of him, but he found himself caught up in the excitement of the chase.

  He reminded himself that he was opposed to whaling on principle, but the principle didn’t seem to relate to the occasion. And this, after all, was no factory ship hounding a helpless victim, but a cockleshell of a boat far smaller than its quarry. If the whale proved to be a Moby Dick, and turned on them . . . He scared himself with that thought for a moment, but the frenzied atmosphere was irresistibly contagious. The Vikings were yelling like madmen, and he found himself yelling along with them.

  Two had detached themselves from the forward oars and stood on the platform beside Wulfgar, holding harpoons attached to lines. Wulfgar also had a harpoon. Simon could just glimpse him past the shoulder of the oarsman in front, grinning and exultant, his yellow hair streaming out from under his helmet in the wind. He looked like a child at a party.

  The squall swept in suddenly from the starboard quarter, stinging them with darts of cold rain, and the sky darkened. It lasted only a matter of minutes before the sun came out again, but there was another following close. For perhaps a quarter of an hour, rain was intermittent, but then it turned into a steady chilling downpour. The cries of the oarsmen grew less enthusiastic, and the rowing rate eased perceptibly.

  Not long after, Wulfgar called to them: “We have lost him. This expedition is ill-fated. We will set course for home.”

  The air of gloom was as pronounced now as the excitement had been. The two harpooners returned despondently to their seats. Wulfgar, though, was not downcast.

  “Our luck will change,” he cried. “After the winter feast, we shall take whales by the dozen. Odin will provide for his children. At the winter feast, the eagles will spread their wings, and then we shall live prosperously on Odin’s bounty. Now, home!”

  • • •

  That night in the hut, Bos grumbled about the premature ending of the whale hunt. The helmsman in his ship had claimed to have the whale still in view when the chase was called off.

  Curtius said: “The rain dampened their spirits. In my ship they were complaining of it, like children. In the imperial Roman army we marched for many long days through rain far heavier, and slaughtered barbarians at the march’s end.”

  “I was surprised they gave up so easily,” Simon said, “when they’re short of oil and running short of food.”

  “They talk of their winter feast,” Bos said, “when eagles spread their wings. I have seen no eagles here. I said that to them, and they laughed.”

  “They are children,” Curtius insisted. “I like them well enough, but they are children. They laugh for no reason.”

  Brad said: “It is puzzling. Wulfgar seems very confident Odin is going to take care of them, but I don’t see how he expects it to happen.”

  Bos shook his head. “They can expect nothing from pagan gods.”

  Curtius said: “I p
ay my due respects to the gods, as a wise man should, but I would never wait on their aid. The gods, in any case, help those best who help themselves.”

  “It’s not long now to the winter feast,” Simon said. “A couple of weeks. It’s probably just a morale booster: something to keep them going.”

  “Children . . .” said Curtius.

  • • •

  There was an increasing mood of anticipation in the village, something like that which Simon remembered from Christmases when he was little. The women spent a good deal of time preparing for the feast. They were very cheerful, with one exception. That was Lundiga, who seemed preoccupied and withdrawn.

  Brad commented on it. “She’s unhappy about something.”

  “Do you think so?”

  Simon had been hoping the preoccupation might be connected with him. She no longer greeted his compliments with amused smiles, but with worried looks. It might represent progress. He felt there had been a change in her attitude altogether. It would be easier if he could talk to her without having Brad along, but she remained adamant about that.

  Brad said: “I’m sure so.”

  They were on their way to join her. There had been a good fall of snow, and she had said she would take them to a tobogganing slope outside the village.

  She was waiting with the toboggan at her parents’ hut, and walked quietly beside them as Simon carried it out of the village. She really was very quiet this morning, barely responding to his attempts to strike up conversation; yet he did not feel the silence was a hostile one. She was looking very beautiful, her cheeks pinker than ever in the crisp air.