“That was a good story,” he said. “That was the way Ottar does it.”
“I’ll show you the rushes tomorrow,” Barney said. “Let you see the moving pictures of yourself doing all these things. Meanwhile—it’s been a long day. Tex—Dallas—will one of you take the jeep and drive Ottar home?”
The night air was getting cool and the crowd broke up quickly, while the grips put the spots and camera away. Barney watched the tail light of the jeep vanish over the rise, then realized that Gino was next to him, lighting a cigarette. He took one from the pack.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t think,” Gino shrugged. “What do I know? I’m a cameraman…”
“Every cameraman I ever met knows, deep inside, that he is a better director than any bum he ever worked with. What do you think?”
“Well—if you was to ask me, which you have, I would say that this guy is at least better than that slab of corn beef they carried away, and if the test looks like I think it will look—then maybe you have discovered the find of the century. The eleventh century, of course. Talk about method acting!”
Barney flipped the cigarette away into the darkness. “That,” he said, “was just what I was thinking myself.”
10
Barney had to raise his voice to be heard over the drumming roar of the rain on the trailer roof.
“Are you sure he knew what he was signing?” he asked, Staring dubiously at the shaky X and thumbprint on the bottom of the contract.
“Absolutely,” Jens Lyn said. “I read him both the English original and the Old Norse translation and he agreed with everything, then signed in front of witnesses.”
“I hope he never gets hold of a good lawyer. According to this, he—the male lead—is making less than anyone else in the company, including the guy who takes care of the john-on-wheels.”
“There can be no possible complaint, the terms of salary were his suggestion. One bottle of Jack Daniels a day, and a silver mark every month.”
“But that’s hardly enough silver to fill a tooth.”
“We must not forget the relative economic position of the two different worlds,” Jens said in his best classroom manner, admonitory finger raised. “The economy here is essentially one of barter and trade, with very little payment by coin. The silver mark therefore has a much greater value, which is very hard to compare to our price for mass-produced silver. It is perhaps better to look at its buying power. For a silver mark you can buy a slave. For two marks—”
“I get the point, enough already. What is more important, will he stick around to finish the picture?”
Jens shrugged.
“Oh, that’s a very good answer.” Barney rubbed his thumb against the aching spot in his temple and looked out of the window at the leaden skies and the falling curtains of rain. “It’s been raining like that for two days now—doesn’t it ever stop?”
“It is to be expected. You must not forget that, although the weather here in the tenth century is warmer than the twentieth because of the Little Climactic Optimum, we are still in the North Atlantic at approximately fifty-nine degrees north latitude, and the rainfall is—”
“Save the lecture. I have to be sure that Ottar will cooperate for the entire film—or I don’t dare begin shooting. He may sail away in that new ship of his, or do whatever Vikings do. In fact—what does he do here? He’s not exactly my idea of a jolly farmer.”
“He is in exile for the moment. It appears he did not relish conversion to Christianity as King Olaf Tryggvessøn practices it, so after a losing battle he had to flee from Norway.”
“What does he have against becoming a Christian?”
“Olaf would submit him first to the ordeal of the snake. In this the mouthpiece of a lurhorn, the larger brass war horn, is forced well down the throat of the victim, a poisonous snake is put in the bell of the hom, which is then sealed, and the hom is heated until the snake seeks escape down the pagan’s throat.”
“Very attractive. So what happened when he left Norway?”
“He was on his way to Iceland, but his ship was wrecked in a storm and he and a few of his crewmen made it ashore here. All this happened not too long before our arrival the first time.”
“If he was shipwrecked—whose house is that he’s living in?”
“I am sure I do not know. He and his men killed the former owner and took over.”
“What a way to live—but it’s good news as far as we’re concerned. He’s sure to stick around as long as he is well paid and drunk.”
Amory Blestead came in, with a gust of wind and a splatter of ram, then had to lean against the door to close it again.
“Hang your things on the back of the door to drip,” Barney said. “There’s some coffee on the hot plate. How’s the set coming?”
“Just about finished,” Amory said, stirring sugar into his cup. “We knocked out the back wall of the house to get the cameras and lights in, covered it with plywood panels, raised the ceiling four feet. This was a lot easier than I thought. We just jacked up the beams and lifted the whole lot straight up, then the local labor cut sods and shoved them in to build the walls higher. These guys really know how to work.”
“And cheap too,” Barney said. “So far the budget is the only thing that has gone right with this picture.” He flipped through his copy of the script, marking off scenes with a red pencil. “Can we shoot some interiors now?”
“Any time you say.”
“Let’s go then, into the rubber boots. What did you think of the screen test, Amory?”
“Absolutely first class. This Viking is a natural, a real find.”
“Yeah,” Barney said, chewing on the pencil, then flinging it down. “Let’s hope so. He might be able to do a scene or two—but how will he hold up during an entire production? I wanted to shoot some simple stuff on location first, climbing in and out of boats and looking heroically into the sunset, but the weather has killed that. It’s going to have to be interiors—and keep your fingers crossed.”
Rain blew in around the side curtains of the jeep as they churned slowly over the hill along the mud track worn by the traffic from the camp. A cluster of vehicles was parked in the field behind Ottar’s house, dominated by the thudding bulk of the generator trailer. They pulled in as close to the house as they could, then sloshed up the path. In the lee of the building were hunched most of the housecarls, dripping and unhappy, thrown out into the weather to make room for the film production. The plywood door was blocked partially open to admit the thick electric cables and Barney pushed his way in.
“Let’s get some light in here,” he said, shaking out or his sodden coat. “And clear that crowd away from the end of the room. I want to see this shut-bed thing.”
“Watch out for the stain, it’s still a little wet on the antiqued wood,” Amory said, pointing to the double doors set into the wall.
“Not bad,” Barney said.
Jens Lyn snorted. “Not good! I explained that in a simple house such as this one, the occupants would sleep on the sleeping ledge along the wall, that ledge over there, but they might possibly have a shut-bed, a small, doored chamber built into the wall. Small to retain the body heat, that is the purpose of the shut-bed.” He swung open the five-foot-high doors to disclose a small room floored with a foam mattress and nylon sheets. “But this is an abomination! Nothing about it—”
“Take it easy, Doc,” Barney said, looking at the shut-bed through a viewer. “We’re shooting a picture, remember? You’re not going to get a camera and a couple of people inside the kind of coffin you’re thinking about. All right, drop the back.”