‘I am sorry to hear of your brother,’ Gunnar said.
‘What do you know of it?’ asked Hakon.
‘Only what all men know.’
Björn spoke. ‘They seem to know nothing at all,’ he said.
‘Perhaps it was an outlaw that killed him.’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘It seems the most likely thing.’
‘It is not our place to guess, Gunnar,’ I said. I looked to Hakon. ‘If I hear anything more than rumour, I will tell it to you.’
‘I thank you, Kjaran.’ He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘It is good to talk with you once more. It would be even better to hear you sing again. My wife still speaks of your last visit; you must come to us soon. Gunnar cannot keep you to himself for two winters now, can he? Perhaps you will winter with my family this year?’
‘Perhaps I will. I would like that.’
‘You are always welcome in my home.’ He slapped the flank of the whale and its flesh rippled at his touch. ‘A rich prize. What will you do with it?’
Gunnar said nothing. The brothers looked to one another. Then Björn spoke, a blunt demand: ‘What portion of the whale will you give us?’
‘Björn,’ Snorri said, a warning in his voice. He turned back to us and smiled. ‘But I am sure that so honourable a man as Gunnar will not begrudge us some share of the prize. We did sight it first, after all.’
Still Gunnar did not speak – his face blank, his eyes unseeing, like a seer in a trance. I saw the brothers grow restless, shifting halfway into fighters’ stances, their hands twitching towards their weapons.
‘Gunnar,’ I said, hoping that my voice might shake him from his silence. And at last he did speak – the worst words he could have said.
‘Take it all.’
Björn recoiled as if struck.
‘You insult us,’ said Björn. ‘I will not be in your debt. You think us beggars?’
‘You won it fairly,’ Hakon said. ‘I will not take your prize from you. Come, gift us a tenth, a third if you feel so generous. There is no need for this.’
But Gunnar stood there, staring at the ground and shaking his head, mouthing no over and over again, and he would say no more.
‘Give our share to the gods,’ I said. ‘That is what Gunnar means.’
‘I did not think you both such pious men,’ Hakon said.
‘This bounty is a gift from Ægir,’ I replied. ‘We need his favour more than we need the meat. Take what you will from it and burn the rest for the god.’ And with that I put my hand on Gunnar’s back and led him away as if he were an exhausted child. As we walked down the beach I heard Björn muttering something, and I quickened my step to outpace the words. If we heard the insult, we would have to fight them.
‘I did not think the shame would be so much. How do you lie so easily?’
We were far from the beach when he spoke to me. Far from the beach and far from home, sitting beside the shore of the river, trying to find the words that would make sense of it all.
I washed my face in the water, feeling the sharpness of the cold against my eyes.
‘Because I have to,’ I said. ‘There is no breaking from it now. We must fight for this lie as if it were our king. It keeps us safe.’
‘I will not fight for a king. Or for a lie. I fight for my family. I fight for you.’
‘Then lie for us.’
‘I cannot.’
I said nothing more and I let the silence come.
It should not be so difficult a thing, to keep a secret in a country like ours. It is a lonely life where one’s family is one’s world, where months can pass before a man spoke to one who was not his wife or child. The farmsteads as scattered as the stars in the sky, distinct and separate. An Icelander with a secret has no priest pleading for his soul or king threatening his body, and yet still he feels the longing to confess.
As we walked back towards the farm, Gunnar moved slowly, weighted with his secret. I thought on the coming summer, when I would leave him and his family behind, to move on and find a new home for the winter. Once I had told myself that I lived as a wanderer because I had to, that a slave’s son had no hope of becoming a landed man. Then for many years I had thought of it as a blessing, to wander the land free and unshackled. And now I wondered if it was the coward’s longing: to stay moving, one step ahead of the feuds that come as inevitably as the winter ice.
‘Home,’ Gunnar said, as we came in sight of the farm once again, a quiet relief in his voice. To return to the dark, like a beast returning to its caves and tunnels. I suppose it is an easier thing to be a murderer in the darkness than to try and stand as one in the light of day.
Gunnar patted the figurehead that hung above his door, the carved dragon’s head that had once been part of his ship, and I touched it too, for I was in need of a little luck. We must both have felt some premonition to have acted so, for when we went inside, we could see an unfamiliar shadow in the darkness. I saw the two small shapes of Gunnar’s children, the flat-nosed profile of Dalla, and one other whom I did not recognise at first. Yet it took only a moment to know who it was, for as the months had passed I had seen that silhouette many times in my memories, and in my dreams.
It was Vigdis, the wife of the ghost.
4
‘Welcome to my home,’ Gunnar said, after a moment’s silence.
‘It is the first day of spring,’ Vigdis said. ‘A good day to visit neighbours.’
‘That it is,’ my friend replied. He sat down and passed me bread. I took my place beside him; I did not take my eyes from Vigdis.
‘It is good to have the company of a woman again,’ Dalla said. ‘Too many men in this house.’ At this her daughter protested and pawed at her. Dalla laughed. ‘And you of course, my love.’
Unappeased, her daughter tottered across the room to Vigdis, sat between the guest’s knees and pouted at her mother. Vigdis’s hands circled Freydis’s neck, wandered back and fell to braiding the child’s hair.
‘Your home is well, I hope?’ Dalla said.
‘As well as can be expected. Olaf Hoskuldsson shall send me servants soon, to help me tend the house.’
Gunnar’s mouth tightened at the name of our chieftain.
‘A generous man,’ Dalla said. ‘It must be lonely, out on the farm with no company.’
‘It is not always so lonely,’ Vigdis replied, and she looked towards Gunnar.
He met her gaze and made no reply. A silence came, like that particular quiet before a duel. Dalla watched them both – the guest and her husband – and I saw the guessing begin in her mind. Who? What? When? I was glad she did not look at me. I do not know if I could have met her gaze.
The children began to fuss. They always feel discord most keenly, like those birds who will swarm in the sky hours before an earthquake, shaken from their roosts by tremors too soft for us to feel. I took Kari on my lap, gripped his hands and tried to get him to wrestle with me. He was a strong boy, and he loved to fight. But not this time. No matter what I did to urge him, he would only twist his head away and look towards his mother.
Gunnar dipped his cup into the barrel of water once more.