West of the Moon (33 page)

Ralf poured himself a cup of ale, and pushed the jug towards Gunnar and Harald. “I didn't want it killed,” he said at last, politely enough. “The trolls may be a nuisance, but they're our neighbours, Gunnar. We've got to live here with them. We've all got to get along.”

“Get along with trolls?” Gunnar showed a set of brownish teeth through his bristly beard. “Root 'em up, smoke 'em out. That's what I'd do.”

Peer thought of the labyrinthine passages underneath Troll Fell.
Smoke 'em out? We'd have hundreds of trolls down on us like angry bees. But what's the use of talking? He's not going to listen.

Gunnar sat down suddenly. His chest heaved. “Anyway,” he got out between harsh breaths, “what about my offer? Be a man. Come with us.”

Ralf and Gudrun looked at each other. He reached across and squeezed her hand. “No, I can't,” he said firmly. “But ask in the village. Maybe there's someone there who wants to go.”

Gunnar gave him a black look. “Then I've wasted my time. Arne swore you'd come, that's all. I warn you, if the wind's right, we'll be leaving tomorrow. I won't lose a good wind. After tomorrow, it'll be too late to change your mind.”

Ralf shrugged. Peer beat his fist on his knee in silent satisfaction.
Good for Ralf! We don't want anything to do with them, any of them!

Hilde stood up. “Ma, Pa…”

Peer saw her resolute face and his heart stopped. He knew what was coming.

“Astrid wants me to come to Vinland with her. And I'd like to go!”

In the shocked silence that followed, a half-burned log shifted in the fire like a sleepy dragon. Its bright underbelly flaked, shedding golden scales, which dimmed and died.

Gudrun found her voice. “Hilde, you can't go to Vinland. It's ridiculous.”

“It's not,” said Hilde. “Astrid is going, so why shouldn't I?”

“But Astrid is married,” exclaimed Gudrun.

“And I'd be with her. What's wrong with that?”

Gudrun spun round. “Ralf – say something!”

“Hold on, hold on.” Ralf tried to sound soothing. “Hilde, your ma doesn't like this idea, and I can't say I blame her…”

Peer stopped listening. He knew Hilde would get her own way. She would go to Vinland. There'd be no news. He'd never know if she got there safely, or when she was coming back. When Ralf had sailed away, years ago, they hadn't known if he was alive or dead until the day he came home.

He looked up and saw Harald watching him.

“Gudrun, I know you're worried.” Astrid's cool voice cut across the hubbub. “But please, please let Hilde come.” Her eyes opened, wide and pleading. “We've made friends already. I swear we'll be just like sisters.” She laid one hand on Gunnar's shoulder. “Gunnar wouldn't take me if it wasn't safe.”

Gunnar grasped her hand. “Of course it will be safe,” he declared.

“See!” Hilde turned to Gudrun. “If it's safe for Astrid, it's safe for me.”

Gudrun was red and flustered. “Your father and I will be the judges of that!”

Hilde flared up. “It's so unfair! You expect me to stay at home, don't you, and – and
drudge
all my life. Now I've got this chance – Vinland,
Vinland
– and you won't let me go…”

Gudrun dropped back on to the bench and put her hands over her eyes. “You know,” Ralf said to Gudrun, as quietly as if no one was listening. “Hilde's like me. She wants to see the world a bit. She's nearly grown up. This is the chance of a lifetime for her, Gudrun. I think we should let her go.”

“But it's so dangerous!” Gudrun looked up in tears. “All that sea – and when they get to Vinland, those Skraeling creatures, creeping about in the woods…”

“It's dangerous here, too,” said Hilde more calmly. “Trolls under the fell, and Granny Greenteeth down in the millpond, and lubbers in the woods. I daresay I'll survive a few Skraelings.”

“She'll be safe enough,” Ralf said to Gudrun. “Gunnar's a sound skipper and the sort of man who – well, who looks after his friends. And when they get to Vinland, there's Thorolf: I'd trust him anywhere. And now I come to think of it, Thorolf 's little son must be in Vinland with him. Ottar, he's called. He's about the same age as Sigurd. Isn't that right, Gunnar? Is Ottar there?”

“Of course,” said Harald, before Gunnar could answer. “Remember Ottar, father, the day we left? Climbing on to the roof of the house and waving to us?”

Gunnar grinned and nodded.

“His little boy is there?” asked Gudrun doubtfully. Hilde flung her arms around her mother and gave her a squeeze. “Oh, please Ma, let me go. Please?”

Gudrun faltered. It was hard for her to resist this sudden embrace.

Peer took a breath. He ought to tell Gudrun and Ralf everything he knew about Harald. They would never let Hilde sail away with someone who had forced a quarrel on him, and threatened him with a sword. And yet… Hilde wanted to go so very badly, and he loved her for it – for being herself, adventurous and brave. How could he wreck her chances?

“Oh, Hilde.” Gudrun's voice trembled. “How can we let you go when we don't know these people? Of course, they seem splendid, and I can see that Astrid ought to have another woman with her, but —” She stopped and tried again. “If your father had been going, he could have looked after you, but as it is —”

“Ma, you know Arne,” pleaded Hilde.

“Arne isn't one of the family,” said Gudrun desperately.

Peer's heart pounded. He looked across the table and met Harald's bright, amused, contemptuous stare. He saw himself through those eyes –
Someone who builds boats, but never sails in them. Someone who won't take chances. Someone who might dream about crossing the sea, but would never do it. Someone who'd stay behind while Hilde sails away.

“I'll go with her,” he said.

Hilde swung round with wide, incredulous eyes. “You, Peer?”

Ralf gave him a long, steady stare. “You really mean this, Peer?” he asked gravely. “You'll take care of Hilde? You'll look after her?”

“Yes.” It was like swearing an oath: the most serious thing he'd ever done. He didn't know how he'd manage, but he'd do it, or die trying. “I will. Don't worry, Ralf. Gudrun, I promise I'll bring her home again.”

There was a moment's silence. Then Ralf gave Peer a tiny nod, and looked at Gudrun. With an enormous sniff, Gudrun nodded too.

“Thank you! Oh,
thank you
!” Hilde nearly danced on the spot. Then she threw herself at Peer and hugged him. “Oh, Peer, I never thought you might want to come too. But you do, and it's perfect – absolutely perfect!”

She let him go. No one else seemed very happy. Arne was scowling. Harald lifted an ironic eyebrow. Gunnar frowned. “Who
is
this?” He jabbed his thumb at Peer, as though he'd quite forgotten meeting him on the jetty. “What use will he be to me? Why should I take him on my ship?”

And Hilde said cheerfully, pulling him forward with her arm around him: “Oh, this is Peer. He's terribly useful. He can do anything with wood. His father was a boat builder. He's helped Bjørn make a new faering. And he's my brother. He's my foster brother!”

P
EER OPENED HIS
eyes and saw a dark roof space pierced with sunbeams. Straw prickled under him. Behind a plank partition to his left, something large was champing and stirring.

Slowly he remembered. He and the twins were sleeping in the cowshed to leave more room for the guests. With a sinking heart, he remembered more. Had he really promised to go away for an unknown period of time, on a strange ship, to a strange land? Spring was on the way. He'd been looking forward to the lambs being born, the barley coming up, rowing out with Bjørn and Sigurd to gather seagulls' eggs from the islands. Now, all that would go on without him.

He sat up. On mounded straw between him and the door, the twins slept, cocooned in blankets. From a warm nest in the straw beside him, Loki got up, stretching and yawning.

Peer stared at his dog. Was it fair to take him on a ship, for weeks at sea? Loki lifted a paw and scraped at Peer's arm, probably hoping for breakfast.

“Loki, old fellow,” Peer murmured. “What shall we do? Do you want to come with me?” Loki's tail hit the ground, once, twice.

“Good boy!” Peer was fooling himself, and he knew it: Loki always wagged his tail when Peer spoke to him. But he didn't care. He couldn't leave Loki behind, so at least that was decided. He lay back in the straw and wished he could go back to sleep – that today need never start – that he didn't have to remember what Hilde had said last night.
Peer's my brother.

A brother! A safe, dependable brother, to be relied on and ignored. Didn't she know how he felt about her?

Perhaps not: he'd been so careful to keep things friendly all year. Perhaps she thought he'd got over it. He wished he'd kissed her again, even if she'd been angry. He wished he'd tried.

Oh, what was the use?
Peer's my brother!
It was hopeless.

“Psst,” came a piercing whisper. “Peer! Are you really going to Vinland?”

He raised his hot face from the crackling straw and saw Sigrid sitting up, arms wrapped neatly round her knees.

“Looks like it,” he said gloomily.

“You don't have to go, if you don't want to.”

“But Hilde wants to, and I've promised to go with her.”

“Oh, Hilde,” said Sigrid crossly. “Why do you always do what she wants?”

“I don't.” He thought about it. “Do I?”

“Yes, you do.” Sigrid sat up straighter and wagged her finger at him: Peer almost smiled, but she was quite serious. “You've got to be tougher, Peer. Sometimes, Hilde ought to do what
you
want.”

Peer stared at her until Sigrid wriggled and said, “What?”

“You're a very clever girl, Siggy,” he said. “And you are absolutely right!”

She beamed. Peer threw back his blankets. “Time to get up!” And he pulled open the creaking cowshed door and stuck his head out.

A wind with ice in its teeth blew down from the mountains. A seagull tilted overhead, dark against the blue and white sky, then bright against the hillside as it went sweeping off down the valley. Peer watched it go.
A fair wind for sailing west. So we really are leaving. Today
.

But Sigrid's simple words had acted like magic. He set his jaw.
I've messed about long enough, trying to be whatever Hilde wants. From now on, I'll act the way I feel!

He stepped out, alive and determined, and trod on something shrivelled and whip-like lying by the corner of the cowshed. Loki sniffed it and backed off, sneezing. It was the troll's tail. Peer picked it up by the tip. It was heavier and bonier than he'd expected: he threw it on the dung heap with a shudder. A rusty smear stained the bare earth where the tail had lain. He scuffed dirt over it so that Sigrid would not see, and went into the house.

Gudrun and Hilde were sorting clothes. Peer put away his faint hope that Hilde might have changed her mind. Astrid sat like a queen in Ralf 's big chair with little Elli on her knee. She was letting the baby play with a bunch of keys that dangled from her belt, jigging her up and down and humming some strange little song that rose and fell. Ralf, Gunnar and Harald were nowhere to be seen.

“Eat something quickly, Peer. Gunnar wants to catch the morning tide.” Gudrun's voice was brittle.

“The men have gone to the ship, to load up more food and fresh water. We're to follow as soon as we can,” Hilde added. Peer could tell she was bursting with excitement.

Gudrun bundled up a big armful of cloaks, shifts and dresses. “You'd better just take everything. Peer, you can have some of Ralf 's winter things. You've grown so much this year—” She broke off, folding her lips tight.

“Where's Eirik?” asked Peer.

“Pa took him along to see the ship,” said Hilde. “It would have been tricky to manage him and Elli and the baggage too. And of course Ma wants to come down to the ship as well, because —” She stopped.

But for once Peer wasn't interested in sparing Hilde's feelings. He completed the sentence for her: “Because she wants to be with you as long as she can.”

There was a moment when no one spoke, and in the interval they heard Astrid singing to Elli, clapping the baby's hands together at the end of each line:

“Two little children on a summer's night,

Went to the well in the pale moonlight.

The lonely moon-man, spotted and old

Scooped them up in his arms so cold.

They live in the moon now, high in the air.

When you are old and grey, darling,

They'll still be there.”

“I'll take her, shall I?” Peer almost snatched Elli away from Astrid.

“What a strange rhyme,” said Gudrun. Astrid looked up: “It's one my mother used to sing. What a lovely baby Elli is. Why has she got webbed fingers?”

“She's Bjørn's daughter,” Peer snapped, as though that explained it. His friend's tragic marriage with a seal woman was none of Astrid's business. Gudrun must have thought so too, for she said, clearing her throat, “Now, I wonder where the Nis is. I haven't seen it this morning.”

Peer made a startled, warning gesture towards Astrid. But Hilde shook her head. “It's all right, Astrid knows.”

“Knows about the Nis?” Peer looked at Astrid in suspicious astonishment.

“I saw it,” Astrid said. “I knew it wasn't a troll. And don't worry, I haven't told Harald.” She gave him a sweet smile. “You're a good liar, aren't you, Peer? You fooled Gunnar and Harald, anyway. But not me. I asked Hilde, and she told me it was a Nis. I even put its food down last night, Gudrun showed me how, after everyone went to bed. It likes groute, doesn't it? Barley porridge, with a dab of butter? And then it does the housework.”

“Or not,” said Gudrun. “As the case may be.” She put her hands on her hips. “Well, if Gunnar wants you on that boat before noon, we'd better move.”

There seemed mountains of stuff to load on to the pony. “We'll never need it all, surely?” Hilde laughed.

“I'm sure you will,” said her mother grimly.

“What's this?” Peer picked up a tightly rolled sausage of woollen fabric.

“That's a sleeping sack,” said Gudrun. “Big enough for two. It's for you, Peer – we've only the one, and Astrid says she'll share hers with Hilde. Ralf used it last, when he went a-Viking.”

“Thank you, Gudrun,” Peer said with gratitude. He hadn't thought about sleeping arrangements. What else had he missed?

“My tools – I'll need them.” He dashed back into the empty house and looked around, caught by the strangeness of it all. Would he ever come back?

“Nis,” he called quietly, and then, using the little creature's secret name, “Nithing? Are you there?” Nothing rustled or scampered. No inquisitive nose came poking out over the roofbeams.

“Nis?”

Perhaps it was curled up somewhere, fast asleep after the shocks and excitement of last night. “I'm going,” he called, raising his voice. “Goodbye, Nis… I'm going away. Look after the family.” Again he waited, but only silence followed. “Till we meet again,” he ended forlornly.

He picked up his heavy wooden toolbox, and went out, closing the door. The pony lowered its head and snorted indignantly as this last load was strapped on.

“On guard!” said Gudrun to grey-muzzled old Alf, who settled down in front of the doorstep, ears pricked. Hilde carried Elli. Astrid was wrapped in her blue cloak again, shoulder braced against the weight of her bulging goatskin bag. Peer held out his hand. “Give that to me, Astrid. I'll carry it for you.”

“No!” Astrid clutched the strap. “I'll carry it myself. It's quite light.”

It looked heavy to Peer, but he didn't care enough to insist. “Everyone ready? Off we go.”

Through the wood and downhill to the old wooden bridge: each twist of the path so familiar, Peer could have walked it with his eyes shut. Past the ruined mill, where a whiff of charcoal still hung in the damp air, and back into the trees. On down the long slope, till they came to the handful of shaggy little houses that made up Trollsvik. They swished through the prickly grass of the sand dunes and on to the crunching shingle.

The fjord was blue-grey: beyond the shelter of the little harbour, it was rough with white caps. Short, stiff waves followed one another in to land. And there was the ship,
Water Snake
, bare mast towering over the little jetty, forestay and backstay making a great inverted V. It was a shock to see her, somehow – so real, so —

“So big!” Gudrun gasped.

Astrid stopped, her cloak flapping in the wind. Her face was sombre, and she braced her shoulders. “Here we go again!”

Most of the village was there on the shore, trying to sell things to Gunnar, and getting in the way of cursing sailors manhandling barrels of fresh water and provisions.

There was Harald, his long hair clubbed back in a ponytail, heaving crates around with the crew. Peer's eyebrows rose in grudging respect: he'd thought Harald too much the ‘young lord' to bother with real work. He noticed with relief that neither Harald nor Gunnar were wearing swords this morning. That would even things out a bit. Of course, those long steel swords would rust so easily: they'd be packed away in greased wool for the voyage.

Ralf and Arne came to unload the pony. Ralf seized Hilde. “Are you sure about this?” And before Peer could hear her reply, somebody grabbed him, too.

It was Bjørn, a tight frown on his face. “Have you gone crazy?” he demanded. “How can you think of sailing with Harald?”

Peer's gaze slid past Bjørn's shoulder. “I'll be all right, Pa,” Hilde was saying in an earnest voice. “I really, truly want to go.”

“Ah,” Bjørn said. “This is Hilde's idea, is it? I might have known.”

“Not entirely,” said Peer, blushing.

“I thought we were going to work together. I thought you wanted to build boats, like your father.”

“I do.” Peer touched the silver ring he always wore, which had belonged to his father. He added earnestly, “I
do
want to work with you, Bjørn. When I come back —”

“When you come back!” Bjørn exploded. “
If
you come back! Peer, this is no fishing trip. Whatever they say, Gunnar and his men are Vikings, and that ship is like a spark from a bonfire that goes floating off, setting trouble alight wherever it lands.” He added, “I'm not usually so poetical. But you see what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Peer. “But your brother's going, isn't he? This is a trading voyage, not a Viking raid. Gunnar has his wife with him. He's not going to fight anyone, he's going to Vinland to cut down trees for timber. Besides —”

He broke off.
Who am I trying to convince?
Yet he still felt the unexpected longing that had squeezed his heart yesterday evening, as he looked westwards from the stern of
Water Snake
. “Bjørn,” he said awkwardly. “The very last ship my father worked on, the
Long Serpent
, she's in Vinland now. Think of it, she sailed all that way! I'd like to follow after her, just once. I'd like to find Thorolf and say, ‘Remember me? I'm the son of the man who built your ship.'”

Bjørn began to speak, then shook his head. They looked at each other while the gulls screamed, and the men shouted on the jetty, and the wind whipped their clothes.

“One thing you should know,” Bjørn said at last. “Gunnar's own men have been gossiping that he and Harald killed a man in Westfold and had to run for it. No wonder they're on their way back to Vinland.”

“That's no secret,” said Peer. “He told us about it. That's when he lost his hand. It was self-defence. The other man started it.”

“You mean, the same way you ‘started' that fight with Harald yesterday?”

“You may be right,” said Peer after a pause. “But I won't back out now.”

Bjørn sighed. “Arne won't change his mind, either. He's always been crazy, but I thought you had sense. Well, stick together.” He caught Peer's expression. “You can trust Arne. You know him. But keep out of Harald's beautiful hair.” He clapped Peer on the back. “Come back rich! And now we'd better go and help, before Gunnar decides you're nothing but a useless passenger.”

“Don't touch the sail,” Astrid said to Hilde. “That red colour comes off all over your clothes.”

Hilde looked around, wondering where she could sit. The ship was full of scrambling seamen.

“Keep out of their way.” Astrid perched on a barrel, forward of the mast, and began to tie her hair up in a headscarf. “It'll be better when we're sailing.”

“Mind out, Miss.” One of the men pushed past Hilde. “Here, you, son,” – this was to Peer – “give me a hand with these oars.”

Hilde craned her neck to see if Ma and Pa were still watching. Of course, they were. She gave a desperate little wave.
This is awful. If only we could just get going.