“Keep the boat between you and Papa,” Ulf said softly. He had the bench just in front of Bjarni.
On
Swan’s
lee side, the other men were lowering the long roll of the net down over the rail. Hoskuld was leading the ship’s boat back toward the stern. Bjarni stood up, his knees bent to help him keep his balance, and when the wave brought the boat up to the ship’s rail, he stepped across into it. Hoskuld came after him.
“Row her,” Hoskuld said. He went into the stern. With one hand he directed Bjarni here and there over the waves, until he could reach the tail end of the rolled net.
They stretched the net out and opened it up so that
Swan
could drag it through the water. As they worked, Hoskuld said, “What did Eirik Arnarson say to you?”
Bjarni leaned back against the oars. The boat swooped sideways down a wave. “What I told you, about the wood. But we have not settled the price.”
“Didn’t you talk to him about going to Vinland ? Hold, damn you!”
Hoskuld leaned over the stern to tend the net. Bjarni dropped his oars into the sea to hold the boat steady. He wiped his streaming face on his sleeve.
“He offered me that, yes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I did not have your permission.”
Hoskuld straightened. The rope of the float was coiled at his feet. It paid out after the net so fast it hopped on the stern rail. Hoskuld sat down sideways on the thwart.
“He made light of that—didn’t he? The Christians—they have no sense of obligations.”
“I am not obliged to row you all the way back to the ship,” Bjarni said.
“No hurry.” His father dropped the white float over the side. “Would you go to Vinland if I allowed it?”
“Give me your permission to leave, and I will decide what to do.” Bjarni jabbed with his chin at the ship. “We are drifting off fast.” A green wave rose between the boat and
Swan
, and the ship disappeared.
“I’ll do what I can to help you,” Hoskuld said. “But not to go to Vinland and fell trees.”
Bjarni butted his oars together. The waves lifted them up again and the boat swooped down the crest of the water. The two men eyed each other. Finally Bjarni said, “You were unwilling, before.”
“I have given it some thought.” Hoskuld put his feet on the right side of the thwart and ran his oars out. “Row.”
They rowed the boat back upwind to
Swan
. Nothing more was said between them. Hoskuld went back to Swans stern to take the tiller. Bjarni made the small boat fast in the bow of the ship and went aft to his bench.
The other men had rigged the lines to the net. They sat down to their oars, and Hoskuld called their orders. Bjarni wiped his hands on his thighs and took hold of his oar. Ulf sat just in front of him. When the net began to weigh Ulf would come back and share Bjarni’s oar.
Hoskuld cried, “Pull!”
The eighteen oars swooped down to meet the sea. Bjarni put his back into the stroke. At first the oar resisted, the water clung to the ship, but slowly
Swan
glided forward. She lightened; her rigging began to whine.
Something moved at the fringe of Bjarni’s vision. He looked in time to see one of the net-lines loop around the haft of the axe, set there in case the line fouled.
“Hoskuld!” Bjarni cried. The tightening line jerked the axe up over the rail of the ship, and Bjarni dove after it.
The cold sea met him. The axe was falling away through the darkening green water. With a stroke of his arms he cut through the water and caught hold of the axe.
He bobbed up to the surface again.
Swan
was gone; all he could see was the water piling up before him in a white-capped wave. A line sliced the side of the wave. He swam awkwardly after it, with the axe weighting him down.
The wave fell away under him.
Swan
was just beyond. Bjarni pulled himself along the net-line back to the ship. All the men on that side reached down their arms to him. Hoskuld left the tiller and fell on Ulf.
Ulf yelped. Hoskuld struck him full on the face with his open hand.
“What are you hitting him for?” Bjarni shouted. “It was Jon and Andres who set the lines.” He swung the axe up and handed it to a man above him in the ship.
Hoskuld straightened, letting Ulf go. He cast a broad look around the ship. “Grampus,” he said. “Get back into the ship.” Stepping from bench to bench, he went forward, where his younger sons were standing up in their places.
Bjarni put his hands on the rail of the ship and vaulted out of the water. The icy wind flattened his shirt against his body. Ulf lifted off the top of the bench and took out a bearskin. Bjarni wrapped himself in it. A hundred yards away a fin sheared the water. When the grampus turned, the sun shone on its white side under the water.
Jon was arguing with Hoskuld; a crack of a blow stopped him. Bjarni sat down on the bench. He watched the grampus circle past the ship again.
The deck shivered under his feet; Hoskuld was coming back. His knuckles were bleeding. He stood before Bjarni and said, “You call me
father
.”
“Nothing could make me admit it,” Bjarni said.
Hoskuld’s chest swelled, and his small mean eyes glittered like spear-points. He said, “Did you save the axe?”
Bjarni showed him the axe. His father said, “Be glad,” and went past him to the steerboard.
On the bench in front of Bjarni’s, Ulf sat nursing a split lip. There was blood all over his chin. Bjarni clapped him on the shoulder.
“Stiffen up.”
“I hate to fish,” Ulf said. He turned to his oar. Behind them, Hoskuld lifted his voice.
“Pull!”
WHEN THEY HAD TAKEN as many fish as the ship could hold, they sailed back to the bay of Hrafnfell. There the women of the farms split the fish and hung them up on frames to dry in the sun. The men cleaned the ship and spread out the nets and mended them.
Hoskuld called for his jug and the chessboard. He sat down on the grass where a boulder blocked the wind and told Bjarni to play chess with him.
Bjarni sat on his heels on the opposite side of the board. They passed the jug back and forth as they played. Hoskuld took three drinks to Bjarni’s two. Bjarni won the game, but Hoskuld stayed jovial.
“Here.” He put the jug over on Bjarni’s side of the board. “Get drunk. Maybe then I’ll beat you. Have you thought over what I told you?”
“What—that I can go anywhere but Vinland?”
“I have an old friend who lives in the Hebrides. Sigurd Gormsson is his name. He needs men. It’s rougher work than felling timber for Eirik Arnarson.”
“Fighting?”
“Well, what comes up.”
Bjarni fingered a black pawn. On the beach the wind stirred the racks of drying fish like silver leaves. A boy was running up the slope toward the chessplayers. Bjarni looked down at the chesspiece in his hand. The boy reached them, out of breath: Kristjan, Hoskuld’s stepson, Hiyke’s son.
“Shall we anchor the ship out in the bay now? We are done with her.”
“Haul her up onto the beach,” Hoskuld said. He pushed his finger into Kristjan’s face. “Tell them if her hull sees a rock I’ll mend their beards into the nets.”
Kristjan ran off. His black hair tossed on his shoulders. Among the women on the beach, among the racks of fish, his mother might be watching him.
“The Hebrides,” Bjarni said. “That’s away over the sea. How am I to get there?”
Hoskuld smiled at him. “I will take you there. In
Swan
.” He put out both hands for the jug.
The Hebrides Islands were far to the south, a long, complicated sail. Bjarni said, “How would you know how to get to the Hebrides?” Yet he knew of old rumors about Hoskuld, a murder, an exile spent aviking.
His father said, “I’m not surprised you hesitate. I myself was somewhat younger than you when I sailed, but times were different then.” He pulled on the jug and smacked his lips, wiping his beard with his fingers, smiling at Bjarni. “Maybe you should stay here, and start calling me father.”
“I will go,” Bjarni said.
Hoskuld handed the jug to him. Bjarni thought, He is glad to be rid of me. While he raised the jug to drink, he looked down the slope toward the women, hanging up the fish in the sun.
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON Bjarni climbed over the hill path that led to the ocean and came to the hot springs. He stripped off his clothes and walked into the pool. At first the waist-deep water was icy cold. He stepped into a sulphurous eddy and a ribbon of heat curled around his legs. He sank down to his neck in the water.
The north wind was blowing hard. Rain was coming. From the spring he could look down through a notch between two slopes of the hill and see the ocean in the distance. Catching the axe in the sea had been lucky. Thor was with him. Whatever Hoskuld intended with his sudden friendship, in the end it would all happen according to fate anyway. He was glad that he had named Thor first at the Sacrifice on Midsummer’s Day. The hot water soaked the ache out of his muscles. He sank down entirely under the water and swept his hair back with his hands.
When he put his head up to the air again, a pebble rattled down the trail behind him. A footstep crunched. He turned and saw Hiyke coming down the steep path toward him.
She came up to the edge of the spring. “This is a foolish, mad thing Hoskuld is planning. You are a grown man. Can’t you leave home by yourself?”
“He wants to go.”
“Would you change your mind if I told you that he is plotting some wickedness?”
He frowned at her.
“Some wickedness?”
“He said you would never come back again.”
She was standing at the foot of the path, her grey shawl over her head and shoulders and the ends crossed over her breast. A silver cross hung around her neck on a chain. Her skin was fine and pale as parchment, her face shaped hollow over the frail bones. He thought over what she had told him.
“He is a vile man,” he said. “Why do you stay with him?”
That angered her. She started back up the path, her skirts in her hands. Over her shoulder, she flung words at him.
“Vile enough to father you, you shiftless lout. Get to the Hebrides in your own way.”
She went foot above foot up the path. He watched her from the sour water until she disappeared over the hill.
HOSKULD WENT over the mountains to another part of Iceland. Bjarni and Ulf fitted the ship Swan out for the voyage. Throughout two long days of rain Bjarni laid out all the cordage and sails; he worked so hard he did not stop to eat or drink.
“Why are you in such a hurry?” Ulf said. “We can’t leave until Father comes back.”
They were stowing away the sails in the bow. The deck awnings were rigged over the beached ship; rain drummed on the canvas. Bjarni shut the sail locker.
“What if we did?” he said to Ulf.
His brother’s breath hissed between his teeth. “Go without him. Is that what you mean?”
“You and I are good sailors. We can take Hoskuld’s maps and sun-wheel.” Crouched down under the awning, Bjarni walked on bent legs back to the waist of the ship, where the awning opened. Ulf followed him. They jumped down to the gravel. The wind swept the long raindrops at them.
Ulf gripped Bjarni’s arm. His face glowed red with excitement. “You mean to take Father’s ship?”
“What do you think?”
“Let’s do it. Oh, let’s do it.”
They went up the slope toward the farm buildings. The grass was littered with thunderstones thrown out of the volcanoes. The wind keened on them. Bjarni kept his face down out of the rain. He wondered if there was anywhere else in the world like Hrafnfell. Ahead of Ulf he went in the door to the hall and down the three steps.
The hall was much longer than it was wide. An open hearth ran down the middle of it. Only the logs at the far end were burning, where the table was and the High Seat. Bjarni and Ulf went down the room toward it.
The High Seat was covered with a bearskin. Hiyke was Christian; she kept the black fur draped over the whole of the double chair, to hide the carvings on it. Jon and Andres were sitting at one side of the table, playing chess. No one else was in the hall. Bjarni put his hands on the table and leaned on his arms, his eyes on his younger half brothers.
“I am sailing tomorrow in
Swan
for the Hebrides. Are you coming with me?”
At once the two young men stood up in their places. Andres said, “Without Papa? What do you mean?” and Jon said at the same time, “Papa would flog us when we came back.”
The door slammed at the other end of the hall. Bjarni glanced over his shoulder. Down the dark hall Kristjan was coming toward them, Hiyke’s half-grown son.
Bjarni turned to his half brothers again. “I don’t mean to come back. Hoskuld’s friend in the Hebrides will welcome me much better if I bring a ship and its crew with me, even a little ship like
Swan
.”
“That’s stealing,” Andres said. “It’s Papa’s ship.”
Long-faced, and with his hands in his sleeves, Kristjan joined them. He was slight and dark, a changeling among the tall fair Hoskuldssons. He said, “You are stealing Hoskuld’s ship?”