Pip Vaughan-Hughes - Relics

That night in the Captain's cabin each diner wore the same look of tense excitement I had seen on the crew's faces all day. The talk was quieter, the banter a little more restrained than usual. Nizam was there, and Horst and the ship's carpenter, Guthlaf, a pale Dane who generally kept to himself. Tonight, however, he was almost garrulous, deep in a conversation with Nizam about the northern seas. I chatted idly to Horst, who had been teaching me the complexities of knot-tying.

Just as my stomach began to gurgle audibly, the door was flung open, and Jacques entered. I had become inured to skerpikjot, the dried, smoked mutton of the Faroes that the rest of the crew loathed, indeed almost looked forward to its appearance even though we had been lucky at fishing and had often enjoyed fat cod and herring since leaving Iceland. Wordlessly he set down a great trencher piled with a brown, dried meat. 'Aha,' said Horst at my side. The rest of the party eyed the dish in silence. Finally, Gilles cleared his throat.

'My friends, the time has come again to give thanks for that special blessing of northern seas, the bounty that comes from above and stints not.' Amen.' The word rippled around the table.

To our youngest, newest brother goes the serving of honour,' continued Gilles in the same sepulchral tones. The Captain speared a portion of meat and flicked it onto my wooden plate.

'Eat, and join us in the brotherhood of the Whale Road,' he murmured.

I prodded the stuff, and glanced up. All eyes were upon me. I sawed off a corner and cautiously slipped it into my mouth. To my surprise, it was not at all bad, something like very well-aged and smoked venison. It was a little oily, and left a hint, after it had gone down, of the bottom of the herring barrel, but in all it seemed to me to be manna indeed. I said so.

Gales of laughter. Horst slapped my back so hard I thought for a moment he had dislocated my shoulder. Welcome, brother,' he hooted. Welcome, welcome,' carolled the rest. I blushed and took another, bigger bite. Even tastier this time. What is this?' I asked through a full mouth.

'Puffin. Smoked, cured puffin, prepared by those witches in Iceland,' said Horst. 'Do you truly like it?' I nodded. 'Churning bowels of Christ! Truly? Captain – do you hear it? The English are hard folk, to be sure.' 'Why do you make such a to-do about this food?' I asked.

'Lad, this is your first – your second, Mary's tears! – but the rest of us must have eaten a hundred score each of the damned painted imps. By the end of this voyage our feet will all be turning orange, mark me well.'

Then the Captain slapped the table to get our attention. 'Brothers, friends,' he said, 'late tomorrow or the next day, we will be sighting Greenland. The folk in Hofn gave me news that I find worrying, however. It seems the western settlement at Godthab is all but abandoned, and on the east coast Eric's Brattahild is no more. The chill is creeping over the land, and the Skraelings come with it. It was but four years since we were there last, and in so short a time the lives of those poor wretches have come quite undone.'

'How could things be worse there, Captain?' asked Horst. 'It was no paradise, to say the least, that we found on our last visit.'

'That is what I dread to find out,' replied de Montalhac. 'But we will be at Gardar in a short time, and you may have your answer then.' After that the subject seemed to be closed, although the rest of the meal passed under something of a cloud.

We sighted land mid-morning two days later. It was a grim-looking country, and I wondered why anyone had chosen it as a home to begin with. Dark mountains streaked with snow fell to a rocky coast. Here and there a clutch of pallid green fields clung to flatter areas of land, and smoke rose from tiny stone houses that were very few and far between. By evening we had rounded a sombre headland and were approaching the little port of Gardar. It was almost dark by the time we bumped against what passed for a wharf, and though the Captain, Gilles and Rassoul went ashore to seek the harbourmaster, the rest of the crew stayed aboard.

I gazed across at the meagre little town and marvelled once again at the tenacity of folk who lived in these northern lands. The Faroes were a land of milk and honey compared to this place; even barren Iceland seemed almost comfortable. It was cold, of course, a bitter cold that spoke of desolation and death. The wind that plucked at the rigging came, I was certain, from some awful wilderness where only spirits of ice and snow dwelt. Dim lights flickered in the long, low houses, but other than the lap of the sea and the rustling wind there was silence. No one was about, not even a dog. This, I thought, is truly the edge of the world.

The next morning it was raining when I awoke. Water came down in thick ropes that struck so hard that a thin mist hovered at ankle height above the deck. The bilges gurgled. In Hofn I had acquired, on Snorri's advice, a sailcloth cape that had been soaked in seal blubber to make it waterproof. I stared glumly out from under the hood, upon which raindrops exploded like fat on a hot pan, at the water cascading from the roofs of Gardar's houses. The streets were empty, and now that every window was shadowed it seemed as if the town was deserted. Then I saw a swaddled figure dash from one building to another. There was life here after all.

Fortunately the rain stopped around midday, and we went ashore to see what, if anything, Greenland had to offer. The answer to that was, it soon emerged, precious little. Over half of the crew had been here before on the Cormaran’s last northern voyage, and they shook their heads and clucked their tongues at the changes the intervening four years had wrought. I gathered from Horst that Gardar had come down in the world, which to me seemed hardly possible. It was a clutch of Viking longhouses whose gable ends, crossed and jutting above the roof line, were carved in the likeness of dragon heads. Looming over all was a colossal stone barn, which turned out to be the cathedral, and a high but clumsy bell tower. Instinctively, I threw the hood of my cape over my head and drew it tight – even though I knew that this was a far country, indeed the farthest country in the whole world, I had a sudden dread of being in the company of churchmen. Only when a skinny deacon passed us and gave a haunted, distant smile did I concede that I was just another stranger to these folk. I wondered who the bishop was, and what he had done to earn such a demesne.

Some of the men remembered a whorehouse, but could not find it. There were a couple of taverns, and we repaired to the first we came to. It was dark and reeked of smoke and wet straw, but the beer was drinkable. The tavern-keeper was a burly, red-bearded fellow who recognised Snorri and a few others and made us tolerably welcome. His wife, a skinny haint with blond hair and a red nose, watched us with suspicion in her smoke-reddened eyes as she ladled out some manner of lamb soup into wooden bowls. In their turn, the crewmen regarded her with ill-concealed lust while her husband glowered. I thought of a circle of dogs each chasing the tail of the beast in front, and supped my beer, feeling left out and not particularly sorry for that. After sucking down a good few mugs I tottered outside for a piss.

The cold, damp breeze felt better than the stale fug of the tavern, and I chose not to rejoin my friends for the moment. Instead, I wandered back in the direction of the cathedral, the first house of God I had seen since leaving the graveyard in Dartmouth. There was a broad patch of grass before it, and from a distance I had thought that sheep grazed there, but as I drew closer I saw that what I had taken for sheep were bones, great white skulls from which tusks as long as my legs jutted, their empty eye sockets regarding my trespass balefully. Guarding the door were still stranger wonders, and I would have most likely fainted in amazement had not one of the crew already told me of the narwhal, the strange fish of the deep ocean from whose forehead sprouts a twisted unicorn's horn. A small forest of these things were clustered on either side of the path, and even though I knew what they were they left me with a sense of the unearthly which, in those surroundings, was not pleasant. I hesitated at the towering door of time-bleached wood. The last time I had been inside a cathedral… Perhaps it was partly to exorcise the image of Deacon Jean's eyes as they bulged with pain and terror, and the memory of scalding blood streaming over my skin, that I turned the big iron handle and stepped inside.