Meadowland (31 page)

Anyhow They were standing there, still as trees, and we didn’t know it was because they were frightened. Now a stranger walking towards you and then standing still and staring in your direction’s always an unsettling thing, and really all you can do is stare back until something happens. So that’s what we did.

What struck me wasn’t how different they were from us, but how alike. I’d say they were a bit shorter than us, though maybe I’m thinking more about the other ones we came across later on. They had straight black hair pulled tight into a knot at the back of the neck. Like us, they were wearing coats that came down a hand’s span below the knee; like ours, theirs had the fur on the inside, except round the neck. Under their coats they had buckskin shirts, and trousers down to the ankle, with tanned-hide boots on their feet. I couldn’t see any weapons, except that one of them had a bow in his hand and a quiver on his back; but you’d expect that, of course. Four of them had some sort of leather packs or satchels on their backs, and one of the other two was carrying a kind of basket made out of strips of birch bark.

So really it goes to prove the old saying about who you are depending on where you are. Back in Iceland or the Eastern Settlement, if you looked up from your work and saw six men looking like that headed towards you, maybe you’d be curious, if they were strangers, but no way would you be scared; just as you wouldn’t be frightened at the sight of a penned bull. What the hell: first time I came to the City, there was this funny-looking brass statue on a short pillar, in a small park near the river. I strolled up to look at it, and bugger me if there wasn’t a horrible shrill whistling noise, and then the statue began spinning slowly round and round, and moving its arms up and down. Scared? When I finally stopped running, I realised I’d wet myself. But nobody else in the park even took any notice of it. They were too busy gawping at the crazy foreigner.

Which is what we were both doing, the leather-boaters and us, as though there was a mirror with an invisible frame set up in the middle between us. I don’t know, maybe I’ve thought it all right out of proportion over the years. Maybe it was no big deal. I can’t say

So we stood there, and for a short while nothing much happened. Then, right out of the blue, that useless bloody bull started snorting and bellowing, scratching at the ground with its front hooves, carrying on the way they do when they’ve been overfed and kept penned too long. That was too much for the leather-boat people; they turned round and ran like hell, their bundles bouncing against their backs.

Well, soon as we saw they were frightened, we all brightened up no end. Couple of our men started laughing; the leather-boat people must’ve heard them, because they stopped running and looked round, just in case they were being ambushed or followed. But the bull carried on bellowing, and now it was running up the pen towards them, so again they turned and bolted, stopped and looked back at us, like a herd of bullocks when you clap your hands and yell.

‘Don’t think we need worry too much about them,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Pretty timid bunch, they strike me as.

That cheered up most of us - not me, because a few minutes ago we’d been just as timid, or more so - and a couple of the men started jeering and calling out names and whatever. But I was thinking: they’ve come here to see us, and they’ve brought bundles and a basket. If they were planning on attacking us, how were they going to go about it -smother us to death? Seemed to me it wasn’t too smart to go acting all aggressive till we knew what was in those bundles.

Or maybe I thought that a bit later on, with hindsight. It’s been so long now that I can’t be absolutely sure.

‘I know,’ someone called out. ‘Let’s turn the bull loose. That ought to be a bit of fun.’

Most of us turned to look at Thorfinn; but either he hadn’t heard or his mind was somewhere else. Anyhow, he didn’t say anything, and next thing, a couple of the blokes -Illugi was one of them, I think, and Thorkel Snot - dashed off, vaulted the pen rails, nipped across and threw open the pen gate.

Off goes the bull. Now by and large, he wasn’t a bad-natured old boy; not naturally vicious, like some are. But he was frisky, and now and then he liked to run. I think it was just his way of letting off steam; and if you stood still till he was right up close and then suddenly spread your arms out wide and shouted, he’d stop dead still like he’d just run into a tree, look at you for a bit and then wander off and graze. But you had to know that, of course; and the leather-boat people didn’t. Far as they were concerned, we had a tame monster and we’d just set it on them. They didn’t hang about, just took to their heels. Good runners, all of them, very impressive turn of speed and they could keep it up over distance.

Well, even I was laughing now, because there’s something about the sight of other people being chased by a bull that’d make a corpse grin. We carried on laughing for a bit; but then the bull, who was enjoying himself no end, started to gain on them, and instead of just running straight, they veered off, heading straight for the houses.

That wasn’t quite so funny ‘The bastards,’ someone said; and Thorfinn started shouting out names; you, you and you, get to the houses and bar the doors quick. He needn’t have bothered, we were way ahead of him. The leather-boat people were making such good time, they almost beat us to it, at that; but about half of us got indoors and put up the bars, while the rest of us, including me, scuffled into the yard to keep them out of the barns and buildings.

Luckily, the bull had had enough by then. He stopped running, gave us all a dirty look, and ambled off for a feed. But the leather-boat people were in the yard, with a crowd of us all round them; they were shouting at us - not fierce or angry shouting, more a case of trying to make us understand them by sheer force of noise - and we were yelling back. They couldn’t understand us any more than we could understand them, but I should think they got the general idea that we weren’t friendly and they’d done something, wrong.

Well, for quite some time Thorfinn just stood there, catching his breath. Eventually though, he held up his hands and yelled, ‘Quiet!’ - which did the trick. We stopped shouting, and so did they Then it was all dead quiet for a bit; they stared at us and we stared at them and nobody moved a muscle. You know how it is when you go to a farm where you’re not known, and the dogs come bounding out right up at you, barking their heads off. You stop dead still, and when you aren’t moving it’s like they can’t quite see you; they’re puzzled and wary, and they growl a bit with their ears back, as if to say where did he vanish to? And then the farmer or someone comes out and calls them off, and they wander away wagging their tails, and everything’s fine. I think on this occasion we were the dogs and they were the stranger, though the edges were a bit blurred, if you see what I mean.

We could have gone on standing there for a very long time, I think; but then one of the leather-boat people, stocky sort of middle-aged bloke, took a couple of steps forward, very slow and careful, knelt down and started untying his bundle. When he unrolled it, we could see what was inside: all sorts of different kinds of fur, squirrel and marten and fox and rabbit and wolf. Poor bastards had only come to trade with us, and we’d treated them like a bunch of vikings.

I think most of us had the good grace to feel really really stupid. I know I did; and so, fair play to him, did Thorfinn. At any rate, he looked round and waved towards the houses to unbar the doors. Meanwhile the other five leather-boat people had rolled out their bundles, all more of the same, so obviously they were prepared to give it another go. Pretty good of them, I think, in the circumstances.

Mind you, we didn’t actually want to buy furs; we’d got plenty of our own, after half a year’s hunting and trapping. But that didn’t really matter. We obviously needed to make it up to them for being so nasty. Question was, what did we have that they might want in exchange? It wasn’t like we had anything much, certainly nothing to spare - if we hadn’t needed it, we wouldn’t have brought it with us.

I suppose that was what was going through Thorfinn’s mind, as he stood there with a sort of dozy grin on his face, his idea of a warm smile of welcome. That was about as far as he went, where diplomacy was concerned; and if that’s how he went about trading back in the East, God only knows how he managed to stay in business.

Then we had a stroke of luck; mostly, I think, because Gudrid and the other women remembered their manners, which was a sight more than could be said about the rest of us. Out they came, with jugs of milk and a big dish of bread, butter and cheese. Trust women to know what to do, when the men’re doing their best to screw everything up.

Anyhow, Gudrid marched up to the leather-boat people -she was about six months pregnant at the time - smiled nicely and sort of waved the milk and the food at them.

They hesitated for a moment or so; then the man who’d been the first to unroll his bundle took a step forward. He was looking at the food on the tray like he had no idea what it was. I think he may have taken a deep breath, summoning up courage or whatever; then he grabbed a pat of butter and took a big mouthful.

You never saw such a look on a man’s face. It was like he’d wandered into Heaven in the middle of dinner. He chewed, then stopped, then chewed a bit more; then he chewed very fast, and bit off another big faceful; then he swung round and held out the rest of the pat to his mates, jabbering away at them with his mouth full. They all tried some, and a heartbeat or so later it was like we all didn’t exist, and all that stuff with the bull hadn’t happened. They swooped down on the dish like a flock of rooks; one of them tried a hunk of the cheese, and that went down pretty good as well. Gudrid was a bit taken aback, like you’d expect, but she coped well; she looked round at the woman behind her and told her to get some more butter and cheese, quick. By then, the leather-boat people’s leader or whatever he was had started drinking the milk, straight from the jug because nobody’d thought to pour any into a cup for him; and we all just stood and watched, and a bloody good show they were putting on, at that.

After they’d cleared the dish of everything except the bread - they didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in it - the boss put his hands on the shoulders of two of his mates, as if to say Steady on; then they talked together for a bit, very fast and earnest. By then, fresh supplies of butter and cheese had shown up; but instead of pouncing on it, they hesitated, like they were thinking, or doing sums in their heads. Then the boss looked Gudrid in the eye, to get her attention; he pointed at the empty dish with one hand, and his bundle of furs with the other; then he sort of waggled his eyebrows, as if to say, Well, what about it?

‘Fuck me,’ someone just behind me said. ‘He wants to pay for his dinner.’

Gudrid scowled at whoever’d just spoken, typical woman’s what-will-our-guests-think-of-us scowl; no need, of course, since the leather-boaters didn’t have a clue what’d just been said. Meanwhile, their boss did the pointing and eyebrow-waggling thing again, and it was pretty clear that that was exactly what he meant: his bundle of furs in exchange for the cheese and butter that they’d just gobbled.

First off, Gudrid stared at him like he was mental; then she nodded very fast. I don’t think the leather-boaters nod like we do, because their boss didn’t seem to have a clue what she meant by it. He backed off a bit, so she smiled, knelt down and pulled the furs toward her. He waggled his eyebrows a bit more, and his mate scooped up his bundle and came and stood next to him. The woman with the fresh supplies put her dish down on the deck, and they scrambled to help themselves. After that, it was pretty plain sailing: six dishes of butter and cheese for six bundles of fur. When they’d done scoffing the sixth helping, they stood there waving their hands in a friendly sort of way for a bit, then turned round and walked off. We opened up our circle to let them pass and away they went - giving the bull a wide berth, understandably but otherwise all nice and happy and friendly We watched them till they were out of sight.

‘What the hell,’ someone said, ‘was all that about?’

Actually now I come to think of it, that was me.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

‘Your friend Kari,’ I said, maliciously, ‘was just telling me about your first run-in with the locals.’

Eyvind put down the water jug he’d just filled and looked sideways at me. ‘Was he, now,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘He’d just got to the bit where they’d eaten the cheese, then left,’ I said. ‘Then Kari got a bad pain in his stomach and went off somewhere. Is he all right?’

‘Him? Oh yes, fine. It gets him sometimes. Had it for years. I keep telling him, it’s because he bolts his food. What did he tell you about Bits and the leather-boat people?’

A rose or a fruit tree is always improved by judicious pruning. There are many occasions on which the same can be said of the truth. ‘He told me,’ I said, ‘that all they wanted in return for their bundles of furs was a few platefuls of butter and cheese. Is that right?’

Eyvind laughed, and poured water into two cups. ‘Bits had it all figured out, right from the start, soon as he set eyes on them,’ he said, handing me a cup. ‘See, the leather-boat people don’t go much on growing stuff, apart from a bit of that funny sort of corn they have out there; and they don’t keep any tame animals to speak of. Mostly they live off the big deer in the forests; and the thing about wild meat is, it’s all lean. No fat. That’s all right in a hot place like this, but where it’s cold most of the year, you need a healthy dose of fat in your diet to keep you going. So, far as they were concerned, butter was the most amazingly wonderful stuff they’d ever eaten.’ He sighed, as though recalling a good memory. ‘So,’ he went on, soon as Bits realised they were there to trade, he sent in to the house for butter and cheese, which we’d got plenty of, and in return we got, what, a hundred silver marks’ worth of furs. Just what we needed for the cold season. Like I told you before, they don’t come much shrewder than old Bits.’