Free Meadowland by Tom Holt Page A

lived with myself all these years) I’m not so different from him after all, but back then I sort of took pride in making myself the opposite of the old man, just to spite him. He’d call me shiftless and no good, and I’d make like I thought he was stupid, working so hard and getting nothing in return. I was wrong, of course. Maybe Herjolf didn’t notice every single time that Dad put in extra work, but he was no fool, he could see that his cattle were the best in the district and he knew they weren’t that way by chance. In return, he treated Dad as a cut above the rest of the hired men, because he knew he could depend on him; didn’t treat him as a servant, more like a member of the family That way, Dad was really working for himself as much as for Herjolf, and he had the wit to see it. I was just young, though, and never saw it that way As far as I was concerned, there was this line drawn right across the world, farmers on one side, hired men on the other, and never a day but I knew which side I’d been born on; and whose fault was that? Dad’s, of course, for bringing me into the world on the wrong side.
    So anyhow, you can understand why he and I never got on when I was a kid, and why I was so keen to get away from the farm when Bjarni came looking for a crew Fool to myself, because it meant I turned into a sailor when the sailing life doesn’t suit me at all. The comedy of it is, deep down I must’ve learned Dad’s lesson without even knowing it, because when we were on a trip I was just like him. Nobody ever had to give me an order, I’d already seen what needed doing and done it. Partly, I guess, that was because I got so bored sitting still that anything was a welcome change, but really I think it was me being like the old man in my chosen path, as you might say No bad thing in some ways, because a man gets a reputation for being a good worker, and then he’ll never be out of a place when they’re hiring for a voyage. On the other hand, there’s this thin line between knowing what to do without needing to be asked, which is good, and thinking you always know what needs to be done better than anybody else, which leads to wilfulness, specially when other folk think otherwise. Like for instance, I thought somebody should go ashore and get firewood when we were sat there becalmed off the sandy beach, so I went and did it, in spite of what I’d been told; and you’ll hear about what came of that.
    So there we were, skimming along ahead of the gale and going God only knew where; and on the fifth day the wind drops, the sky clears, and suddenly Bjari’s stood up by the prow, leaping about like a salmon and yelling his head off. At first I was sure he must’ve scat his shin on the rail or dropped the weight on his foot; but then he calls out, ‘Land, land,’ and we all crane our necks to see, and sure enough, standing up out of the sea is a mountain capped with a glacier as blue as steel. ‘Greenland,’ Bjarni shouts. ‘We made it.’
    I guess you can say we were pleased.
    Well, so we were. We were thrilled to buggery, because it meant we’d be getting off the ship and going ashore after all that time. Even so, I remember thinking if that’s Greenland, I can’t see the point. Fair enough, there are worse places. It’s not that different from the rougher bits of back home; there’s an apron of green grass between the mountains and the fjord, enough to keep the stock alive, provided you can get in enough hay in the season. No trees, mind, and precious little between you and the weather, and you knew as soon as you looked at it that winter’d be a long haul each year, but no worse than many places in Iceland. No better, either. Which raised the question: why bother? Why uproot yourself and go all that way for something that’s pretty much the same as what you left behind? Only answer I could think of was, Herjolf and Red Eirik and all those people had made up their minds to go, and now here they