At last, Gunnar spoke. He had been hard at thought in the near darkness, yet still he said: ‘I do not understand.’
‘Your friend does,’ she said, looking at me. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said, as I stretched out my hands over the embers of the fire. ‘Who would hold land that the dead walked upon? Who would have a ghost for a neighbour?’
‘You are clever,’ she said. ‘That was what we thought.’
‘A trick. A trick to win land from other men.’ I took another sip of ale. ‘Was he your lover before Hrapp died?’
‘Erik?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, he was not.’
‘But afterwards, Erik came to you.’
‘Yes. I was lonely. He was kind to me.’
‘And was it your plan?’
She shook her head. ‘It was Erik. I was afraid to refuse him.’
‘I do not believe it,’ Gunnar said. ‘It was a womanly trick. Erik would not think of it.’
‘Believe what you want,’ she said.
Gunnar stood and raised his hand as if to strike her again. She did not start or flinch, merely stared back, unafraid, ready to take the blow. There was still dried blood on her lips and chin from where he had struck her before. Knowing the kind of man Hrapp had been, perhaps she knew what it was to be beaten and feared it no longer.
‘Gunnar,’ I said, a note of warning in my voice.
There was a hiss as Gunnar spat into the fire. ‘Enough of this. What need is there to speak? We have witnesses to the killing and can say that it was a fair fight. We will go to his family tomorrow, pay the blood-price and end this matter.’
I said: ‘Why should you pay for killing a dishonourable man?’
‘He has brothers, uncles, friends. I will pay them. Pay them well. That will be an end to it.’
‘No.’ The word cut through the darkness, but it was not I who spoke it. Vigdis waited until we both turned to her, before she bowed her head and spoke again. ‘Think of the shame of it.’
‘Why should we care for your shame?’ Gunnar said.
‘Not mine. Erik’s,’ she replied, and that was the thought that gave us pause.
Our lives are short on the cold earth and we all long to leave something behind. A little gold for our sons and daughters – but more than that, an honourable memory: to be spoken of as a good man. And here was Erik, playing at being a dead man, a coward’s trick to cheat his neighbours of their land.
‘What would you have us do, then?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
I saw Gunnar shudder. He whom none could call coward, and I saw the touch of fear on him. For a man may kill, and so long as he speaks of it openly, so long as he pays the blood-price to the family, it will do him no dishonour. Yet to kill and to conceal the killing – our laws knew no greater crime than that.
I thought on that, it is true. And I thought of how little Gunnar had to call his own, the price he would have to pay for the man he had killed. He had laboured for many years to have something he might leave for his sons. A little land, a decent herd, a few ounces of gold, a good sword. No king’s treasure, but something a father might be proud of. Now it would be taken from him.
I thought of how rarely a feud had been settled with silver, for all that the laws decreed. How the dead man’s brothers would come for us, if we allowed the killing to be known.
Gunnar looked on me then. In his eyes, I saw him asking me to decide.
We did not dare risk the light of a torch, for fear of who might see it. And so we dug through the snow and broke open the icy ground in darkness, a miserable act of labour that took the rest of the night. It is always harder work to bury a man than it is to kill him.
When we had covered the unmarked grave, Vigdis came to us with a skin of water. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and kissed our hands, our murderers’ hands.
‘You shall speak of this to no man?’ she said, and we swore that we would not. She clasped our hands in turn, as though we were merchants concluding our trade. When she took Gunnar’s hand, I saw him pull her close, whisper a question to her. But I did not hear the words, nor did I hear her answer.
We walked in silence for a time, and I thought of the man we had killed. I had sung in his little farm two autumns before, but had not sought to winter with him. He was a quick man with a jest, kind as well, but it was a wifeless and childless home he had and so he was always touched with sadness. I remembered one night, when we had drunk too much too quickly, I heard him weeping when he thought I was sleeping. He was lonely, I think, and I have always feared the lonely.
‘No good will come of this,’ Gunnar said.
‘Perhaps,’ I answered. And though we tried to speak again many times in that long walk back, we found no more to say than this.
-
Wait. Something is not right.
The fire grows low and we must not let it die. It is dark outside and I know you must be weary. We should let the fire burn to embers, we should lie down and sleep. But we shall not. There is much more I have to tell you this night. I will not give this story to you a piece at a time, like a starving old woman eking out the supplies from her petty pantry. We shall feast tonight on this story. I shall tell it all to you.
So – throw the good brush upon the fire. No, no, not that from that pile, use the best wood we have, there is no need to save it. Why? I shall tell you that, soon enough. But not now.
That is better. I see you clearly now. A good thing, to see that face of yours in this light. A sadness, too, of course. For once I spoke and sang in the longhouses of great chieftains, a hundred souls in a silent room, listening to my words alone. I never sang to a king’s court, not as those truly great poets do, but I did have some honour granted to my voice. Now it is you alone that I sing for.
The fire burns brighter. And now I will tell you another story. Let me tell you of how our people first came to this island.
Ah, yes – roll your eyes if you will. You shall tell me that you have heard this story many times before. This is true. But you will listen once more. For this is a story that cannot be told too many times. No other story matters, if this one is forgotten.
There was an empty land before them, a tyrant at their heels – that was the way the first men came to this island. That is the way all new countries are settled.
When they gathered on the shores of the old country, what they could not load on to the long ships they burned. They would leave nothing for the king who drove them from Norway, the man they called Harald Fairhair. They kissed the soil and the sand, and wept for the homes they would never see again. They cast away, that great fleet of exiles, out across the dark sea to a place known to them only by rumour and myth.
Not all lived to see the new land. Storms and drift ice tore ships open, sending many to feed the fell spirits that hunt in the black water. Others wandered lost in the storms, washing ashore in hostile countries where they received a welcome of iron, a home in shallow earth. But the survivors pressed on, sailing past the coast of Scotland, past the islands of Orkney and Faroe. At last, they reached their new home. Your family, and mine.
It was a great island in the midst of the cold sea, a place of green shores with an icy heart. An unpeopled country, its name hard and unforgiving, but that was what drew the settlers. It was their protection, to live in a land that no others wanted. A place that seemed uninhabitable. But with a little skill, and fortune from the gods, they knew there was a living to be made here. Not much of one, it was true. They would never be rich or powerful men – just a nation of farmers scratching at near-barren soil, fighting to keep their herds alive through the long dark. They told themselves they did not want wealth or power. Perhaps some of them even believed it.