The Goose Girl and Other Stories (39 page)

Now Dirk was a little man, rather miserable to look at, with a very small narrow face and big rolling eyes. Leif said to him, ‘Why are you so late, and how did you get left behind by the rest of the men?'

Dirk laughed, and mopped his face with his hands, for he was sweating. His eyes were rolling this way and that, and he was talking
very quickly in High Dutch. But no one understood him. Leif said again, ‘Why are you so late, and where have you been?'

Dirk rolled his eyes, and made faces, and spoke more quickly than before, but still in Dutch. Then he stopped short, and rubbed his face, for he could not think of the proper words. But at last he spoke in the Northern tongue.

‘Vines,' he shouted. ‘I went a little farther and I found vines and grapes, I tell you!'

He tore open the front of his shirt and pulled out little bunches of grapes. He had filled his shirt with them, and many had been crushed, so his belly was stained red with their juice.

‘Now we can make wine,' he said, ‘as we used to in the Rhineland. O Leif, my son, this is a fine place you have brought us to!'

TWO. THE SETTLERS

Early in the next year Leif made ready for sea and sailed out of Wineland, as they now called it, to go home. Off the south-west coast of Greenland he rescued, from a ship that had gone ashore on a reef there, a man called Thore and Gudrid his wife. Thore died soon after they came to Greenland, but Gudrid stayed with Eric the Red at Brentlithe. Eric had three sons, the eldest of whom was Leif, and a daughter called Freydis.

Thorwald, his second son, made a voyage to Wineland. He went farther north than Leif had been, and was killed by Eskimos, whom the Norsemen called Scraelings. Then Thorstan, Eric's third son, set out. He had married Gudrid, Thore's widow, and took her with him.

But they did not get far, for they were wrecked on the west shore of Greenland and spent the winter there. There was sickness in that settlement, and Thorstan died of it. But Gudrid went back to Brentlithe.

The next summer a man called Thorfinn Carlsemne came out from Iceland. He was a trader, wealthy both in money and stock, and Eric asked him and his partner Snorre to spend the winter with him. He entertained them so lavishly that before Yule came there was a shortage of food in the house. But Thorfinn gave Eric all that he wanted of malt and meal, from the store he had brought in his ship, and the Yule feast was made with great splendour.

Now Thorfinn was much taken with Gudrid, for she was the handsomest of women, and she knew how to behave well with strangers. But when Thorfinn asked her to marry him she said that Eric must decide that. So Thorfinn took his suit to him,
and Eric heard it favourably and said, ‘It seems likely she will only be following her fate if she marries you.'—For prophecies had been made about Gudrid, that she would not marry another Greenlander, that she would be wealthy and travel far.—So the match was made and the Yule feast was lengthened and became a bridal feast.

There was always a lot of talk going on about Wineland, and now it came to be thought that Thorfinn was the proper man to take command of a voyage there, since Leif was married and settled down, and his wife was unwilling for him to leave home. But Thorfinn was wealthy, he had a good ship and a good crew, and he seemed the man to lead an expedition. Many pressed him to make the voyage, and Gudrid was always urgent that he should go and take her with him. So when spring came he and his partner Snorre fitted out their ship, a second ship was made ready, and then Freydis, Eric's daughter, said that she and her husband were also going.

Freydis was a big woman, as tall as her brother Leif, and forbidding to look at. She had a violent temper, and little control of it, and she was ruthless when she could not get what she wanted. Her husband's name was Thorward. She had married him for his money, for he was base-born though rich, and a man of no account except for his wealth.

The three ships left Brentlithe together, Thorfinn and Gudrid in one, Freydis and her husband in another, and the third belonged to two brothers called Helge and Finbow. There were about thirty men in each ship, and five other women besides Freydis and Gudrid. They took cattle with them, and goods of every kind to make a new colony. Two days out from Greenland they ran into fog, and Thorfinn's ship was separated from the others. He held his course, and the landfall he made was an island in a broad firth, where the seabirds laid so thickly that a man could not walk without treading on their eggs. Thorfinn sailed far up the firth and unloaded his cargo and settled down for the winter. But this place was well to the north of Leif's settlement.

The other ships came to the house that Leif had built, and Freydis and her crew were the first ashore. When Finbow and Helge followed they found she had taken all her goods into the house, and left no room for them, though they had all agreed to share alike and have equal rights and profit in what they found. But now Freydis said that she had the greatest right to the house, since it had belonged to Leif her brother, and the others could build one of their own. So they had no sooner landed than there was ill-feeling between them.

Thorfinn and Gudrid and their crew had a hard winter. They had
cut no hay for the cattle they brought, and both hunting and fishing failed them. They killed a whale that came ashore in the firth, and cut it up and boiled the pieces, but they were all sickened by it. Then the weather changed, and they got fair winds for fishing, in time to save them from hunger. Gudrid bore a child there, and he was the first of the Greenland people to be born in Wineland.

In spring they loaded the ship again and sailed southwards, and came to the other settlement. Freydis was living in the house that Leif had built. She said, ‘Now there will be trouble when so many people come to live in the same place.'

Thorfinn and Gudrid thought they would share Leif's house with her, but Freydis said, ‘There is no room for all of us, and Thorward will show you a good place to build a house of your own.'

Her husband grinned and scratched his head, but said nothing. Gudrid said, ‘It was our agreement, before we came here, that we would share everything alike.'

Freydis said hardily, ‘It takes two to make an agreement, but one can break it.'

‘It is foolish to offend those for whom good luck is foretold,' said Gudrid. She never forgot that wealth and a high position had been promised her, and it was thought she spoke of this prophecy too often. Her voice, when she talked about it, was always calm and her manner a little proud.

Freydis grew angry. ‘Better bad luck of my own than a share in your good luck,' she said, ‘and better bad luck than a bad neighbour.'

Then she went indoors, and Thorward took Thorfinn and Gudrid to show them where they might build their house. But till it was built they had to sleep in their hammocks.

There was no fault to be found with the country they had come to. Self-sown wheat grew in the hollow land, and on the hill-slopes there were vines. Every brook was full of fishes, and when they dug trenches down to the sea, the flood-tide filled them with sea-fish. There were deer in the woods, and abundant pasture for their cattle. But there was little friendship or good-will among the settlers, for Gudrid thought that she and Thorfinn should hold the first place in people's esteem, but Freydis mocked her and made mischief with everything she said. There was also much jealousy of those men who had brought their wives with them, and the married men were none too easy in their minds about what was going on.

Early one morning some of Thorfinn's crew saw nine hide-boats with men in them. They took a white shield as a token of peace and rowed towards them. The men in the hide-boats were small and
ill-favoured, their hair grew long and ugly, they had big eyes and broad flat cheeks. These were the Scraelings. They were very astonished to see Thorfinn's people, but they waited till the Norsemen came near. Then they turned and rowed away down the firth.

No more Scraelings were seen till that winter was over. Then one morning a great fleet of hide-boats came up the firth, so many that the whole breadth of it was covered, and the Scraelings came ashore with bundles of pelts, and fine grey furs, and wanted to sell them. So the Norsemen set up a market, and what the Scraelings chiefly wanted to buy was red cloth and weapons. But Thorfinn would not let them have either swords or spears, and when the red cloth was nearly done he cut it into finger-breadths, and the Scraelings gave as many skins for a finger-breadth as they had for a large piece of it.

While the market was still going on, one of the Scraelings picked up an axe and ran away with it. But some of Helge's men saw him and followed, and killed him. Then the Scraelings all drew together, and howled at the Norsemen, and shook their weapons, which were jointed sticks like flails. But before there was any fighting Thorfinn's bull came out of a thicket, and pawed the ground, and bellowed loudly. Then the Scraelings took fright, and ran to their boats, and rowed away.

But three weeks later they came back, a whole multitude of them, and the Norsemen met them some way down the firth. The Scraelings had war-slings, and hailed stones on the Norsemen, who fell back before them till they came to their settlement, and there was hard fighting there. The Scraelings had an engine that threw stones as big as a sheep's stomach, and the Norsemen were getting the worst of the battle.

Then Freydis came out and taunted them. ‘This is a pretty sight,' she shouted, ‘to see fine fellows like you running away from a pack of dirty little runts! I'd do better myself if I had weapons!'

Freydis was pregnant, very near to her time, and slow on her feet. Some of the Scraelings made at her, and she could not get away from them. There was a dead man before her, Thorbrand Snorreson, with a slate-stone stuck fast in his forehead. Freydis bent and took up his sword, and made ready to defend herself. The Scraelings ran at her, and Freydis took her breasts out of her shift and slapped them with the sword and shouted. She was a big woman made bigger by her pregnancy. The Scraelings stopped short. Freydis slapped her sword on her huge breasts and roared again. Then the Scraelings took fright, the whole multitude of them, and ran without stopping to their boats and fled down the firth.

Thorfinn and the other men came up to Freydis and praised her
greatly for her courage and gallant behaviour. But Gudrid said, and many heard her, that the Scraelings had previously been frightened of Thorfinn's bull. ‘It is clear,' she said, ‘that they are not used to cattle of any kind.'

THREE. WOMEN'S COUNSEL

The prophecy that was made of Gudrid's wealth came about in this way. When she and her second husband, Thorstan Ericsson, were wrecked in West Greenland, they went to live with a man called Thorstan the Black, and it was in his house that Thorstan Ericsson died. Thorstan the Black's wife had also died of the sickness that was there. Her body lay in the same room with Thorstan when he was dying, and it seemed to him as though she were trying to creep out from under the bedclothes and come on to his bed. He struck at her with an axe, and cried out to Thorstan the Black to come and take her body away.

Then Thorstan Ericsson died, and after he was dead he sat up and called for Gudrid to come to him. She went, though not willingly, and Thorstan said that he greatly wished to foretell her fate, so that she might bear his death more easily. She would marry an Icelander, he said, and settle down in Iceland. But first she would go south over sea, and she and her husband would live long together and prosper greatly. Their children would be a noble family, of good report, flourishing in all ways, but Gudrid would outlive her husband. And in her last days, said Thorstan, she would build a church, and take a nun's consecration, and die in holiness.

Now it seemed to Gudrid that if this prophecy were to come true, she and Thorfinn had better not stay too long in Wineland, for it was too dangerous. So she began to urge Thorfinn to gather his goods together, and sail for home.

Thorfinn was not willing to go so soon, and he prevailed on the others to join with him in sending out parties to explore some other parts of the land, to see if they might find a place that no Scraelings came to. Then they made coastwise voyages, both north and south, but wherever they went they saw hide-boats in the firths, or found other traces of the Scraelings. Then they came back and said the Scraelings had set spies on them, and would follow them no matter where they settled.

Gudrid talked more and more about going home, and Thorfinn began to listen to her. He was a good trader, a clever man, but not warlike in his ways, and he also had grown somewhat frightened.

But Freydis had no fear, and thought more of making mischief than of any danger. She had been told what Gudrid said of her after she had driven off the Scraelings in the battle at the market-place, and she was eager to score off her in some way. When she heard that Gudrid wanted to leave Wineland, she thought of a plan to stop her.

She woke early one morning, when winter was nearly over, and got out of bed and put on some clothes. She took her husband's cloak, and went out of doors. A heavy dew had fallen, and Freydis was barefooted. She went to the house that Finbow and Helge had built, and found the door ajar, for a man had gone out a little while before. She stood in the doorway, and Finbow, who slept farthest up the hall, woke and asked her what she wanted.

‘I want you to get up and come out,' she said, ‘for there is something that you and I should talk about.'

Finbow came out, and they went to a tree that grew against the hall, and sat on a bench beneath it.

‘This is a good land,' said Freydis.

‘It is fruitful, and I like it well enough,' said Finbow. ‘But I don't like the ill-feeling that has grown among us here.'

‘Gudrid is making that worse by her talk of going home, and so splitting our company.'

‘That is true,' said Finbow, ‘for if we were all friendly together, and made common cause, we would have nothing to fear from the Scraelings. But Thorfinn is a trader, and no fighter, while Gudrid has only one thought, and that is to get away from here.'