They Came On Viking Ships (16 page)

Hekja let Hikki talk—he had more experience than she did in fitting all that had happened into a short account. Freydis looked thoughtful when he had finished.

‘Fetch Thorvard,’ she said at last to Hikki.

‘Should I go?’ offered Hekja.

‘No,’ said Freydis. ‘Stay.’ She questioned Hekja again about every detail of the Skraeling camp till Thorvard arrived, and then they had to tell their story again.

Thorvard listened in silence too. And then he grinned. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we fight.’

‘No,’ said Freydis flatly.

Thorvard stared at her. ‘If we want this land we have to take it!’

Freydis shook her head. ‘This isn’t like Ireland, or England or the islands, with the best land taken. There is rich land enough here for us and the Skraelings too. Besides, we have no reinforcements here. We have only forty men…’

‘And Finnbogi’s,’ put in Thorvard softly.

‘And Finnbogi’s. But from what the runners say the Skraelings have more men than in the whole of Brattahlid ten times over. There is no way we can take this land by force.’

‘We are not cowards…’ Thorvard began.

‘It has nothing to do with cowardice!’ interrupted Freydis. ‘If I thought we could defeat them I’d say let’s attack their village now, take them by surprise, and burn it to the ground. But where there is one village there will be more.’

‘Then what do we do?’ asked Thorvard unwillingly.

‘We wait here until they find us,’ said Freydis flatly. ‘And we try to look like friends, not enemies.’

It took the Skraelings half a moon to find the Norse camp.

It was early morning when they paddled their skin-covered canoes up the estuary, then along the river. They came slowly, as though they were in no hurry, so Hekja had plenty of time to find Freydis after the lookout called.

Some of the Skraelings put their oars down as the canoes drew closer to the big Viking ship, and waved sticks that made a noise like the sound of barley flails that blew the chaff off the grain.

Freydis shaded her eyes against the glare and stared at them, then turned to Thorvard.

‘What do you think?’ she whispered.

Thorvard stared out at the massed canoes. ‘I think each man needs to fetch his weapons,’ he muttered. ‘There are more than twice our number there.’

Beside him Snorri gazed, fascinated by the newcomers. ‘Maybe the noise is a sign of peace,’ he hazarded. ‘If they were going to attack surely they’d try to be quiet.’

Freydis flashed him a smile. ‘My thinking too, skalder
boy. Go fetch the white shield hanging by the fire,’ she ordered Snorri. ‘Maybe they will recognise it as a sign of peace. And yes,’ she added to Thorvard, ‘tell the men to fetch their weapons too, but two at a time only, so the Skraelings don’t think we are preparing for a battle. The women are to stay in the long house.’

Hekja wondered whether that meant she was to go to the long house too. But Freydis made no sign that she was to leave, so she stayed where she was. Snorri came running with the shield. Freydis held it high, while all the camp gathered behind her. Each man had his shield and sword or battle-axe ready to hand, but on Freydis’ orders held them low, so as to not look too ready for war.

Hikki edged up to Hekja. ‘If they attack, run towards the hills,’ he whispered. ‘We can hide among the trees.’

Hekja stared at him. He shrugged. ‘The free men have their swords and axes. We have nothing but our legs.’

Hekja bit her lip and said nothing, but stared out with the others.

The canoes were almost on them now. The Skraelings leapt out and pulled their canoes up onto the bank, while their leader strode towards Freydis. He was taller than the other Skraelings, almost Viking size, with many strings of big white beads
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about his neck. He stared at the cows as though he had never seen cattle before, then he stepped up to Thorvard, and said something.

The words made no sense to Hekja. Thorvard shook his head too. The Skraeling leader nodded, as though he had expected this. He signalled to his men.

The Skraelings pulled out piles of pelts from the boats and carried them over to their chief, then put them down at Thorvard’s feet.

Thorvard glanced at Freydis. She handed the white shield back to Snorri and picked up one of the pelts and stroked it. She nodded at Thorvard. ‘These are good furs. It seems he wants to trade.’

The chief pointed to Thorvard’s sword and said something sharply.

Freydis stepped forward. ‘No,’ she said, and though the chief must have found the word strange her meaning was obvious. ‘We will not trade fur for weapons.’

The chief spoke again, more angrily. He pointed again at Thorvard’s sword, as Skraelings yelled behind him, stamping their feet on the ground. Hikki began to edge away. ‘Time to run,’ he hissed to Hekja.

‘Not yet,’ said Hekja urgently. ‘Stop! If we run now the Skraelings will think that we are scared.’

Hikki hesitated, as Freydis beckoned Hekja.

‘Fetch some cheeses,’ she ordered. ‘Quickly! And fresh milk as well.’

Hekja ran. She yelled to one of the women staring from the long-house doorway to bring out a bucket of milk, while she grabbed a cheese, a big one nearly ripe, and carried it to Freydis, Thorvard and the chief. Behind her two of the women struggled with great buckets of fresh milk.

Slowly, very slowly, so there should be no misunderstanding, Freydis pulled out the small knife from the chain that dangled from her brooch. She cut a wedge of cheese, sliced off a tiny piece and put it in her mouth, then handed the rest of the wedge to the chief.

The chief sniffed it suspiciously, then bit it.

Then he smiled.

Freydis smiled too. She took a bucket of milk from the women behind her and handed that to the big man too, with a gesture for him to drink.

The chief lifted the bucket. Hekja heard him gulping. When he finally put it down his smile was even wider.

It was easy after that. The Skraelings brought out more bales of pelts from their canoes and Freydis emptied the dairy of milk, cheese and butter to trade for them.

‘There will be no cheese for us,’ whispered Hikki, staring as fascinated as the rest.

‘No matter,’ said Hekja. ‘Vinland has more than enough food.’ She gazed at Freydis. ‘She was wonderful. The Skraeling didn’t even look at her. But she made him see that she was in command. They could have killed us all. But instead they are leaving us with furs—and all for cheese.’

‘Indeed,’ said a voice. It was Snorri the Skald. Somehow he always seemed to be near Hekja now, though whenever she glanced at him he was looking somewhere else.

Hekja turned, as though she hadn’t known that he was there. ‘Worthy of a song?’ she asked softly.

Snorri stared at her for a moment without speaking. Then he said, ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps a woman should sing about another woman’s deeds.’

Hekja said nothing. Then Freydis beckoned her again, to get more cheese.

The Skraelings came often after that. They brought more furs and, as the summer melted into autumn, some of their strange grains as well, one that grew on long stalks and could be cooked when young and tender, or ground to flour when it was older
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and another kind that came from flowers
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that were eaten raw, or made into an oily paste like butter.

They brought gourds too—dried ones carved with strange designs to store grain in, or milk or water, and others that were soft and yellow inside when they were cooked, and tasted sweet, and still others that had white flesh too.
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If there wasn’t enough milk or cheese they traded for strips of bright red cloth, which they tied around their heads. But milk and cheese were prized more than anything else the Norse folk had.

Mostly Snorri the Skald conducted the trading. Unlike the other Norsemen he was learning Skraeling words.
The Skraelings even took him hunting. They showed him how to shoot at giant salmon with their stone-tipped arrows, while in return Snorri showed them how the Greenlanders dug fish traps in the sand, that filled with fish at each low tide as the waves retreated down the beach.

‘Do the Skraelings have music too?’ Hekja asked Snorri one day. She had seen him climbing across the sandhills, trying to balance two big baskets of the clams the Skraelings had shown the newcomers how to dig. It was only polite, she told herself, to run and help him carry them.

Snorri grinned as he passed over the smaller basket. ‘Not like ours. The first time I heard one of their songs I thought the man had stuck an arrow in his foot! But they thought the same of my songs.’

‘They didn’t like them!’

Snorri’s grin grew even wider at her surprise. ‘No! Too different. But when I heard their music again, I don’t know, I still can’t say I enjoy it. But I can see it has a beauty, a complexity, of its own. It is like the Skraelings themselves, Hekja!’

‘How?’ asked Hekja.

Snorri turned to her eagerly. ‘They are different too. As different from us as this land is from Norway, or Iceland, or Greenland. The more I see of them the more fascinating I find them!’ He laughed, and threw his hair back over his shoulders. ‘To think I came here thinking I could make songs about a new land! Now I can sing about a new people too when I go home to Norway.’

So, thought Hekja, he was still planning to leave. They were nearly at the long houses now. Snarf bounded out
to meet them. He had been supervising the young lambs, and making sure they knew that dogs were boss.

‘Hekja,’ began Snorri. ‘If you would like…I mean, I could tell you more about the Skraelings, perhaps…’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Hekja hurriedly. ‘I must see if Freydis has any orders for me. I’ll put these by the fire pit tonight.’ She forced a smile. ‘I think there is roast deer tonight, as well as a salmon and these too, and Helga has made a bread with the first of the new wheat, and a flummery.
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There is so much to eat in Vinland it’s hard to know what to taste first!’ She walked off too fast for him to reply.

This was indeed a land of plenty. Hekja heard the women commenting that the new fields had given more barley and wheat than any in Greenland or Iceland either, or even Norway. The cows and calves were so fat they almost rolled around on the grass and there was plenty of hay, and chickens running everywhere you looked.

The crops of oats and wheat had been brought in, more than twice as much as similar fields would have given back in Greenland. As the weather cooled great flocks of swans, geese, ducks and cranes flew to the estuary, so many that the men boasted they could throw a spear with their eyes shut and still hit two or more. The long houses smelt richly of roasting meats and bread.

The storerooms were full of skins to trade back in Greenland when the ice about its shores cleared enough next summer. There were great lengths of timber too, felled and dressed and left to cure on rocky platforms.

The people in the long houses slept on bearskins now, or even softer furs, and ate from platters of carved gourd. Even Snarf had a carved gourd to lap his water from. Hekja had seen Snorri carve it. But he had never given it to her, just filled it with water and left it where Snarf would find it.

Hekja made sure she avoided him now. Even if friendship between a thrall and a skald was possible, it would only lead to loss next spring.

But life was still good—better, in many ways, than it had ever been. She had responsibility now, and friends, and Snarf. Snarf had filled out even more in the Vinland summer. His chest was broader than a wolf’s now and his legs much longer. None of the Greenland dogs was anywhere near his size.

Several of the women were pregnant, too. Soon we will be a proper village, thought Hekja longingly, with children running between the houses. There were plans for more buildings. This colony would grow, just as Greenland had, but faster and more prosperously, for Greenland was a poor land compared to this.

It was almost, thought Hekja in surprise, coming to seem like home.

The first leaves were changing colour when Freydis ordered a feast.

‘The best of everything,’ she said to Hekja. ‘Three days from now. Tell the men we need meat to roast, deer and bear and swans. We will have wheat bread and barley beer, and the first of the young wine. Vinland wine from Vinland grapes!’

Hekja nodded. Then she said, ‘Why?’

Freydis frowned. ‘Why what?’

‘Why have a feast now?’

Freydis smiled at her. ‘Always questions. Anyone could guess you were never born to be a thrall! Because I say so.’ Her smiled deepened. ‘There is another reason too. But I will announce that at the feast.’

‘I will give the orders,’ promised Hekja. She hesitated, then asked, ‘Should we ask Finnbogi’s people too?’

Freydis frowned. ‘I have given a lot of thought to that. No, I don’t think so. It would be different if the Skraelings were unfriendly, if we needed to join with Finnbogi to fight them off. But Finnbogi will never accept my authority. It’s best to keep our groups apart.’

It will be a fine feast, thought Hekja, the first feast
since the one on the great mountain where she had felt truly part of it.

The fires were lit at first light, and by the time the sun had risen high the coals were ready for the meat. All through the morning the women loaded the big tables with wheat and oat breads, the roasted Skraeling corn and pumpkins, the shellfish, with wheat puddings sweetened with grape juice and rich with eggs. The grease from the roast meat caused the flames to flicker higher and lick against the meat, and the smell of cooking filled the camp.

By afternoon the meat was ready. Hekja helped the other women serve, and kept the drinking horns filled too. The dogs lay underneath the tables and as the men got drunker, fed on the spilled puddings and bread soaked in meat juice, and the bones. This time Freydis didn’t serve with the other women, but sat in the great carved chair and was waited on, like a chief.

When the best of the meat had been eaten Snorri the Skald stood up. Hekja had noticed he had drunk less than the other men, and eaten less too. The men quietened, even those arguing at the tops of their voices. The sun began to sink in a haze of golden. Snorri began to sing.

He sang to Freydis, at the head of the tables. He didn’t even look at Hekja, but somehow she knew that the song was meant for her.

It was a song about a prince who had to defeat the enemies who had stolen his kingdom and his family and the princess he was to marry. He met a white swan, who showed him where the forest kept its treasure, so he could have enough silver to pay an army. The swan flew
above the enemy camp, so the prince knew where his army should wait in ambush. When the prince finally won the battle the swan taught him a song to sing to his princess, to tell her he loved her.

Then the swan flew away and the hero realised it was the swan that he had loved all the time.

And so Snorri sang, his butter-coloured hair gleaming in the moonlight:

‘Across the sea I came wandering,
For glory and heroes and fame,
But I knew not for what I was searching,
For love was only a name.’

Finally the swan heard the prince calling her from across the mountains, and flew back. The lovers were reunited. They were swans in summer, flying across the world. In winter they turned into a prince and princess and lived in the prince’s kingdom.

Hekja’s eyes were bright when the song had finished. She stared at Snorri across the fire, hoping no one could see her in the dark.

Freydis stood, and waved her horn mug in the air to silence the cheering. ‘Thank you, Snorri the Skald,’ she cried, ‘for brightening our feast. Maybe one day you will judge our deeds to be worthy of a song too!’

The men cheered again. Someone called for another song, but Freydis waved him silent.

‘There will be time enough for singing,’ she called. ‘But now I have an announcement.’

The whole crowd was quiet now. Did Freydis plan another expedition, to explore further still, thought
Hekja. She remembered Freydis staring at the sea to the south, on their first day in Vinland.

But Freydis smiled, and said, ‘This land has given us riches beyond our dreams. Soon it will give me something more. For in five months, Thorvard and I will have a child.’

The cheering nearly lifted the roofs off the long houses. The men would have cheered the wind by then, for they had drunk so much and were in a mood for cheering. Thorvard alone didn’t cheer. He stood and grabbed his wife from her high chief’s chair, and swung her round, his face so full of joy it almost seemed to glow. Then he held her high in his arms, and the crowd cheered again.

The men sang a drinking song after that, loud as a battle almost, thought Hekja. She and the women slipped indoors as the men grew drunker, and the fights began.

‘And let’s hope no one has his legs chopped off this time,’ said Helga matter of factly to Hekja. But as she said the words Hekja heard Freydis raise her voice outside, calling a halt to the fights and drinking.

‘For we depend on each other here,’ she cried, ‘our duty is to live, not die, like heroes.’

Freydis ordered the fire banked down for the night after that. She and Thorvard went to bed in their curtained room, and the couples went to their bed closets, and the men climbed to the attic. Hekja could hear them laughing upstairs, and more fighting, but nothing much, in case Freydis should hear.

Snarf was lying by the fire, chewing a deer bone, and Hekja was combing her hair with the brush Freydis had given her, before she plaited it for the night, when the
ladder creaked. Snarf looked up. Someone was coming down from the attic.

‘Arf,’ he barked, but softly. He wagged his tail too. It was Snorri.

‘I wanted a mug of water,’ he said. ‘I’m thirsty after all that ale.’

Hekja nodded. She put the brush down, and began to divide her hair into braids. Snorri dipped a mug into the water barrel, then sat on a bench and watched her in the faint glow of the coals.

‘Did you like the song?’ he asked at last.

‘Yes,’ said Hekja, paying attention to her plaiting, and not to him. ‘But I think it was a pity you didn’t let the swan sing, as well as the hero.’

Snorri smiled at that. ‘True,’ he said. ‘Swans are supposed to be wonderful singers. Is it my fault they rarely let humans hear them?’ He took another sip of water, and then said softly, ‘If you had been the swan, what would you have sung?’

Hekja did look at him then. ‘I think her song would have said “You are a prince, and I am a swan, and two people so different can never be happy together”.’

Snorri looked at her seriously. ‘Maybe they would discover that they were not so different after all.’

Hekja shrugged, trying to seem as if she didn’t care. ‘Perhaps they’d be happy for a while. But then the prince would go back to his kingdom. And the swan would be alone.’

‘You didn’t listen close enough,’ said Snorri gently. ‘In my song the swan and the prince go home together.’

Hekja froze. He couldn’t mean that she might go back to Norway with him? ‘Imagine his parents when their son
brought them home a swan,’ she said tightly. ‘They’d be horrified.’

‘Until they heard her sing,’ said Snorri. ‘I think they would love her then, as he did. But yes, a swan would need courage to marry a prince.’

‘I think,’ said Hekja softly, ‘that they would be happier with their own kind, swan with swan, prince with princess. And when he got back to his castle the prince would know it too.’

‘Is that how you would sing the song?’ demanded Snorri.

Hekja nodded. ‘A lonely prince, far from his own kind, who falls in love with a swan because there’s no one else to fall in love with. But when the prince saw the princesses of home again,’ she shrugged, ‘he’d soon lose all interest in beaks and feathers.’

‘No!’ cried Snorri. ‘That’s cowardice! You’re scared to risk…’

A voice from behind the curtain interrupted him then. ‘Will you be quiet out there!’

It was Thorvard. Snorri flushed, and put down his mug of water. Hekja concentrated on her plaits as the ladder creaked as he went back upstairs.

Snorri spent more time with the Skraelings after that, so that sometimes he was gone for days. When he was back he spoke to Hekja politely, as he did to all the women. He neither avoided her nor sought her out. Nor did he sing again.

The days flowed into each other. Freydis’ belly began to swell, so she had to tie her apron looser, till finally one of the women made her a bigger one.

Pregnant or not, she was still in command. She had promised to bring her men to Vinland, sailing far from land, and she had. She had promised riches, and they were there. She had dismissed Finnbogi, had traded so well with the Skraelings that there were furs beyond imagining waiting to be taken back to Greenland.

Now the trees turned gold and red, brighter than any autumn colours anyone had seen.

‘Even the trees are richer in this land,’ said Hekja, as she stirred the rennet water into the fresh milk to start its journey into cheese.

One of the women smiled at her. ‘Gold leaves don’t buy iron pots,’ she said, but she meant it kindly. The women were all older than she was, and they were free born, but the women liked Hekja. Today they were making soft cheeses that would be ready in a few days, instead of taking months like the hard cheeses. The Skraelings loved the soft cheeses as much as the hard ones.

Women were kept busy in this new land, for making the cheese and the red-dyed cloth were all women’s jobs, not men’s.

Snarf lay on the cool stone floor of the dairy, and panted and watched it all. He had rolled in bear droppings the night before, and was enjoying his rich new smell.

Suddenly someone stood in the dairy’s doorway, blocking out the light. Hekja looked up, and there was Hikki. She had seen little of him lately. Freydis had him running south and north, spying out the land, but she had kept Hekja with her.

‘Can you come?’ Hikki asked Hekja abruptly.

Hekja put down the cheese wrappings. ‘Come where?’ she asked.

‘Somewhere,’ said Hikki mysteriously.

Hekja looked curious. ‘If Freydis looks for me,’ she said to the women, ‘tell her I have gone with Hikki, and will be back soon.’ Snarf hauled himself to his feet as the women looked knowingly at each other.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Hekja again, as soon as they were beyond the fenced fields of the camp. Hikki shook his head. ‘You’ll see,’ was all he said.

Hekja sighed, and looked at the glowing forest instead. ‘It’s hard to believe autumn could be so bright,’ she said. ‘Do you think the birds will stay on the estuary all winter?’

‘Maybe,’ said Hikki. ‘If they don’t fly further south. But they have been here for weeks already. I think this is where they will stay till spring time.’

They were climbing a hill now, down towards the lake. The wild vines hung thickly here, though their fruit had long been eaten by the birds. Down in the gully a stream ran through the bracken, smelling of autumn leaves. Small furry beasts chattered from the branches. Snarf woofed at them, and they chattered again, too high for him to reach.

‘Here we are,’ said Hikki finally.

Hekja laughed and looked around. ‘Where is that? There’s nothing here!’

‘There will be. This will be my land,’ said Hikki solemnly. ‘I will build my house here, on this hill by this stream. My thralls will clear the timber, and plant my wheat and oats.’

‘Your thralls?’

Hikki nodded. ‘We will all have a share of the silver after next summer, when the furs and timber are taken back to Greenland and Iceland. Enough to buy thralls and tools and everything we need. All of us who came here first will be rich, Hekja. All of us.’

‘I see,’ said Hekja slowly. She sat on the leafy ground, her back to one of the great trees, and looked around.

‘Do you think you would be happy here?’ said Hikki quietly. ‘I am a thrall now, but I won’t be one next summer. In time I will be as rich as any man in Vinland. We belong together, Hekja. We understand each other.’

‘Do we?’ asked Hekja softly. ‘I suppose we must. We come from the same land. We are both runners, both have known what it is to be a slave. It’s just…’

‘What?’ asked Hikki quietly.

‘I want to see my home,’ whispered Hekja. ‘My real home. I want to go back to my village.’

‘Why?’ asked Hikki, more gently than she had ever heard him speak. ‘What is left of your village now?’

‘I need to know!’ cried Hekja fiercely. ‘The girls up on the great mountain survived. Maybe others did as well.’

‘Are the girls so dear to you that you will leave all this, to go back to them? To live in a stone hut, and eat barley cake and fish and kale? Think what a life we could have here! Furs for your bed and wheat bread on the table. All the meat that you can eat. Thralls to serve you…’

‘I could never have a thrall!’ cried Hekja.

Hikki shrugged. ‘Some people would rather be a slave than free,’ he said. ‘They like to have someone tell them what to do.’

Hekja was silent, thinking of Gudrun. Then Hikki said, ‘Would you really prefer your village to this?’

Hekja looked around, at the tall trees in their brilliant autumn cloaks, the sea beyond, the golden beach, the waves that stretched from sand to sky. Was her village just an excuse, so she didn’t have to give Hikki an answer?

‘No,’ she admitted finally. ‘You’re right—I wouldn’t want to live there now. I don’t know! Hikki, I promised Freydis I would stay with her for two more years. After that—if you still wish it—ask me then.’

Hikki grinned. ‘I will still wish it! By then I’ll have your house built, the fields cleared. Two years—yes, I can wait that long.’

‘I must go,’ said Hekja abruptly. ‘Freydis will wonder where I am.’

They started down the hill, Hikki laughing and talking of the house that he would build, the storeroom here, the dairy there. It was as though he assumed that Hekja had said yes.

Hekja was silent. But she let Hikki hold her hand as they walked down the hill. And even when she saw Snorri watching, she didn’t pull her hand away.