B0046ZREEU EBOK (18 page)

The autumn night is bitter cold and bright as day. The moon of Urd, which presages death, has risen full, wrapped in a mist that blurs the stars. The ghosts gather under the rafters. They have been here before: they’ve already known the struggle, the torment of the body, and the strange emptiness of escape. The ghosts drift along the boundaries of the mortal world because the mist lies over the country beyond and they can’t see a way on. So they hover over the farmsteads in the Green Land, waiting.

The ghosts are watching over the lands of Thorstein the Black, because every night new souls are added to their number. The sickness sweeps through the settlement, and each time a person dies its soul is torn from its body and drawn into the throng. Some are helped on their way with tears and blessings, a few have the mark of a cross made over them, and all are sent with the protection of charms and offerings. But in the dark space under the rafters all these things fade into the same mist, which drifts clear for a moment to let the new soul in, then thickens.

In the house of Thorstein the Black a lamp burns and flickers in its pool of oil. Grimhild, the wife of Thorstein the Black lies on her back in her
tumbled bed. There is no sound in the room but her breathing, loud and rasping. Sometimes it stops for seconds at a time, even for a full minute. Each time the watchers think that the terrible insistent noise has ended, but then the great breaths start again, and the ghosts are thwarted. In the other bed, lying in the shadows away from the lamp, lies Thorstein Eiriksson. His wife is curled on the bed beside him. She holds his dry hand in hers lightly, perhaps unwillingly, as if she would rather let him go. His eyes are closed against the dark. His soul is shut away deep inside his body, hidden in a place of its own. The ghosts stir; the lamp flickers as if someone had breathed on it, then flares upward. A shadowy bulk by the bedhead moves. It is Thorstein the Black reaching out to trim the wick. The shadows on the wall dance crazily, then drop into their place again.

The night stands still. A single moment expands into a frozen desert. Outside the stars hang over the glaciers, and the sea is motionless on the ice-locked shore. The ghosts have been here since time began and beyond it. There is no way out.

Grimhild takes her last dreadful breath and stops. A rat scuttles in the dark place under the bed platforms. Gudrid raises herself on her elbow and peers through the dark at the black bulk that is Thorstein the Black. Thorstein the Black stands up. His limbs are numb and heavy, so he moves slowly. A shadow looms above him on the wall. His voice sounds rusty, as if it had been out of use a long time. ‘She’s dead, Gudrid. We’ll need to lay her out.’

‘Do you want me to do that?’ Gudrid’s voice is cool and young, precious as clean water in that house of dirt and death.

‘I’ll get what’s needed.’ Thorstein the Black lights a taper from the lamp, and moves past Gudrid on his way to the door. He leans over her for a moment and presses her shoulder.

Impulsively she touches his hand. A little shadow jumps suddenly on the wall. ‘Don’t be long, dear friend.’ Four hands clasp: two become a single shadow on a stone wall, two feel warm, living flesh, and a moment’s comfort.

Thorstein shuts the door, and half the light goes out of the room. Gudrid sits up, her feet on the floor, and stares into the night. Silence stares back from the dark, and she recoils. Now Grimhild’s breathing has gone she can hear Thorstein. He breathes like a man who dreams
uneasily, in broken rhythms, and stops. He lies curled up as he must have lain unborn. She touches his face, and his skin is dry and burning hot. Now that Thorstein the Black is gone, the lurking shadows fill the room with a dank and alien air. Gudrid smells death, and her skin prickles under her shift.

Thorstein gasps and shudders, and half sits up. ‘Gudrid?’ He speaks thickly, as if he were drunk.

‘Thorstein. I’m here.’

‘Gudrid.’ He falls back against the bolster, his eyes half closed. Presently he speaks; the words come slow and slurred. ‘What is that woman doing?’

Gudrid whips round to where his gaze falls on Grimhild’s bed. The corpse of Grimhild is rising up, supporting itself against the carved pillar that heads the bed. Gudrid stops breathing, and presses herself back against Thorstein’s bed. Her limbs are like clay, and cannot move. Her eyes are fixed to the dead woman’s face.

Grimhild sits up. Her white legs show beneath her shift. She is groping for her shoes with her bare feet. Gudrid tries to scream but her throat is dry and no sound comes. The corpse stands up, huger than it ever was in life. Its shadow looms over Gudrid and Thorstein, and they are plunged into dark. In the blackness Gudrid eyes escape the blank face of the dead and the spell breaks. She screams out loud. The corpse crashes down and lands like a tree across Thorstein where he lies helpless. There is a splintering of wood as a bed plank breaks. Gudrid feels damp cloth against her face, and she hits out hard and screams again.

The light comes back and is gone again, and the voice of Thorstein the Black cries out in terror, and the dead thing is lifted away. The bed shifts and judders along the length of the wall as a weight is flung back on to the platform. Gudrid, her hands pressed to her face, looks out through her fingers. Huge shadows leap and curve. In flickering light a man is fighting with a corpse. He pushes it back, but it struggles up. He hits it a great blow and it staggers. For the third time it tries to rise again, its eyes fixed upon the living man. The man backs up against the wall and stands with his arms outstretched as if his hands were nailed to the wall. The ghost towers up in the middle of the room. When its shadow falls across him, the man is released from the spell and like lightning he grabs an axe from its hook and strikes the dead thing in the breast. It falls like a rock. The
shadows drop; there is silence, except for a man’s sobbing breaths, and the echo of them from the dying man in the bed.

Only the ghosts watch what happens next. Thorstein Eiriksson lies on his back, his eyes closed, his soul wandering again to hidden places where this world cannot reach. Gudrid is curled in a crumpled heap against the bolster, her face buried in its woollen cover, her hands over her ears. She is crying inside, anguished sobs that threaten to break her in two, but no sound comes. If wishing could make her dead, she would never look up again. Under the rafters the ghosts watch dispassionately. From far away they see a man lift up the body of his wife and lay it on the bed. The body has a great wound from an axe in its chest, but no blood comes. The man fetches a wooden board from where he dropped it by the door, and rolls the body on to it. Then he straightens his wife’s limbs and lays her out decently, and ties her in her shroud firmly to the board. He closes her eyes and weighs them down with silver coins, and as he does so he mutters a charm. He covers her face last. He glances into the dark space where Gudrid and Thorstein lie, as if he were looking for help, but nothing stirs. He gets up and props the door open. Using all his strength, he manages to lift the corpse and carry it out into the night.

When the room is empty Gudrid lifts her face. Nothing moves. She sits up and holds her hand in front of her face, and sees it shaking. She looks across at the empty bed where Grimhild lay. Presently she gets up and folds the blanket, and smooths out the covers. When Thorstein the Black comes in she puts more seaweed on the fire and blows it into a flame. She sees him and goes to him, holding out her hands. Thorstein hesitates a minute, then takes her in his arms and holds her to him briefly. ‘She was faithful to me, Gudrid,’ he says presently.

‘I know.’

‘She wouldn’t choose that I should let her ghost walk.’

‘May she lie quiet now.’

‘I’ll see her buried right. I can’t do more.’

‘No man could have done more.’

Thorstein the Black pauses, and then he says, ‘Gudrid, when I went outside just now, and was coming back from the byre with the board for the body, I saw all the dead – all the people who have died here this winter – lined up at the door, between me and the house, watching me. They
stood before me as they were in life, but they wore their shrouds over their clothes, and their hats were made of birch bark.’ Gudrid gives a small gasp, but she says nothing, and he goes on. ‘I think you should know this. I saw among them my wife Grimhild. And I saw also your husband, Thorstein Eiriksson, standing there among the ghosts. Sorrowfully I met his eyes, and then the throng drew aside, and allowed me to pass into the house.’

The night is motionless. Gudrid watches over Thorstein, and the black hulk which is Thorstein the Black waits by the fire. Not a rat stirs. The dying man’s breathing grows raw and jagged. Slowly it takes over the silence. Gudrid touches his hand but does not hold it. The soul of Thorstein Eiriksson is beyond restraint now. It wanders in the unmarked spaces at the edge of the world. He is drawn further as he was drawn in life by the light and the emptiness of the far north. At the edge of the world there are mountains of ice and frozen seas, and a sky so vast that all the souls of the world could never breathe it in. No one has gone so far, not even in his mind. And if one did, all he might hope for, beyond the boundaries of what exists, would be to find nothing.

‘Thorstein, my Thorstein,’ whispers Gudrid. She does not think that he can hear, she hardly sees his face, but she has an idea her words may reach him. ‘You were a good man to me, Thorstein, and now you are free to go.’ The tears are running down her cheeks now, and dripping off her chin into his hair. ‘I thought my fate was bound up with yours, but yours ends here. I don’t know what will happen to me, but I shall miss you, my husband.’

Thorstein’s eyes are closed and he does not stir again. Presently the harsh breathing stops, and he is still. Gudrid puts her hands on his chest, and though his skin is warm she feels no life in him at all. All her restraint leaves her. She flings herself across his body and weeps bitterly, and the noise echoes back and forth in the dark space under the rafters. Thorstein the Black steps over the hearth to her and picks her up in his arms, and carries her across to the bench on the other side of the room. He holds her in his arms and rocks her, and Gudrid turns her face into his greasy tunic, her body racked with weeping.

The body of Thorstein Eiriksson lies stretched out on its back, its eyes closed, as if it were asleep. The chest is bared, where Gudrid has undone
his shirt to lay her hand against his heart. It is a strong, young body, but white and still as wax.

At last Gudrid’s sobs subside, and Thorstein the Black speaks softly to her, doing his best to comfort her. He offers to bring Thorstein’s body back to Brattahlid himself, when the spring comes, so that it can be buried in the Christian way in the right place, because he knows that Christians believe in these things. Gudrid is not listening to the words, but his tone and his touch comfort her. She rouses herself at last, and goes over to the bed to lay out her husband’s body. She stops, and turns to Thorstein the Black at her side, and puts out her hand to him remorsefully. ‘You did this for Grimhild, and I did nothing to help you.’

Thorstein takes her hand. ‘You’ve done all you could. This is a hard fate for both of us, but we do what we can.’

The ghosts watch as the body of Thorstein Eiriksson is prepared for burial. Outside the moon of Urd has sunk, and behind the eastern mountains a faint whiteness gleams over the ice. The night passes, and the cold day breaks.