The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [16]
The men greeted this remark with silence.
Osmund went on. “But few folk have seen such a land as Vinland, which lies to the south.”
“Even so,” said Thorleif, “I can see far enough. Small islands, narrow straits, and upthrusting rocks make for bad sailing.”
The men continued silent, sleepy with their meat.
Now Erlend Ketilsson sat up and leaned forward in the firelight. “It seems to me that this Norwegian has come by a great deal of praise in this past year. What a fine man, what a fine ship, what a lot of goods he has brought us.” He fell silent, and some of the Greenlanders set their bowls beside them on the sand. “Mostly, though, folk chatter about what a fine sailor the fellow is, how he might sail through the eye of a Nuremburg needle if he wished. Now this Thorleif sits back and eats up this praise like sourmilk with berries in it.”
There was a long pause, when all of the men, Norwegians and Greenlanders alike, were silent, and the silence was filled with the dark sounds of the great Markland forest, and then Thorleif laughed in his usual way, but loudly, and so suddenly that men started in their places. But he made no reply to Erlend, and shortly men went to their rest.
In the morning, Thorleif said, “If this place called Vinland is so rich, it may be that such poor folk as ourselves will want to trade it for Bergen, where many Germans are getting themselves in, or Gardar, even, though Gardar is said by the Greenlanders to be next door to Paradise. But we cannot make this trade until we see the famous spot, can we?”
“It seems to me,” said Odd of Siglufjord, “that we would do well to finish our work here and return to Gardar. Only yesterday we considered ourselves rich men, for all the furs and timber we have gotten. And these tales of the skraelings do not make me want to encounter them.”
Thorleif looked at Hauk Gunnarsson, but Hauk said nothing, so Thorleif said, “This morning we are poor men again. We are like folk who have gobbled up a lot of rich meat and then hear that a better feast is laid elsewhere.”
Osmund pressed them. “We have seen no signs of skraelings in this district, and though men have died seeking Vinland, what sort of men are we if we don’t take a look? It is said that the waving grass is as high as a man’s waist, and wild grapes are only the best of all the berries to be found there. The cove is full of swimming fish and shellfish of all kinds, and the reindeer herds take days to move past. And all the sorts of timber needed for building a ship grow together in one place.”
Erlend said, “Leif the Lucky found himself the Garden of Eden, and that’s a fact.”
But Odd said, “No priest has ever been to Vinland itself, only to Markland, and so it is not easy to know about the Garden of Eden.”
Now Thorleif looked at Hauk again, and Hauk looked at him, and said, “I would like to see it.”
So they stacked the piles of timber and buried the furs against scavengers and set out, and for the first day, the sailing was easy and swift. On the second day, however, a storm blew up so suddenly that they had no time to put in among the treacherous islets and chains of rocks, and they were caught. The storm lasted well into the night, the ship was thrown against many rocks, and its planking was dented and cracked. The mast came down, and Ketil Erlendsson and a sailor, Lavrans with the black beard, were killed outright. The lookout was thrown into the sea and drowned, and another sailor was thrown by a wave against the side of the ship with such force that his arm was shattered.
After this misadventure, there was no peace within the group. The lookout had been a sharp-sighted and well-liked man, and Lavrans was related to some of the other sailors. They were not pleased with his death. Ketil, the sailors said, had gotten his deserts for instigating this ill-omened trip to Markland, and for having raised such a flirtatious daughter in the first place. Erlend, they said, was a troublemaker, and it was like the Greenlanders