Tim Leach - Smile of the Wolf

I knew not what I should do. I only thought to wait a little longer, for some visitor to come to that longhouse. They would know where to take you. They would take you from me and then they would take my life. And in time, that man did come.

I woke in the night, my arms about you. For though you were brave in the day, you were afraid at night and you would not sleep outside of my embrace. I woke and I saw a man watching me from the doorway.

I thought him a ghost at first. It was only once the sleep had truly left me that I recognised him, a man I had not seen for many years. Olaf Hoskuldsson, the man they called The Peacock.

‘Kjaran,’ he said. He wore none of his finery, had none of his thingmen at his back. He looked not like the chieftain he was, but a simple traveller – an outlaw, even.

I held a finger to my lips. I looked down at you, but you did not wake. I broke away from you carefully, wrapping you tight in the blankets.

Olaf and I sat together by the embers of the fire and we spoke in whispers.

‘They speak in the valley of a ghost in this place. A fire lit, but no man seen coming or going, except by night. I came to see if it were true.’

‘It is true enough,’ I said.

‘We buried the dead many days ago. Björn and his kin.’ He looked around the longhouse. ‘Vigdis is gone?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

He nodded. ‘So only you and the boy remain.’

‘That is so.’

‘There is much I could have done to prevent this. I should have had them outlawed for the burning. I wish…’ Olaf’s voice trailed away.

‘This is not your burden to bear. It is mine.’

‘Perhaps. But I think that the gods will remember this. And there will come a time when I shall pay for what I did not do.’

‘Another vision of yours?’

He tried to smile – I saw the firelight upon his teeth for a moment. But what I said to him next stole that smile from him.

‘You must take in the boy,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘I cannot take in Sumardil. There will be too much talk. You shall not survive, if it is known that you live.’

‘I care not.’

‘I do.’ He hesitated. ‘Why do you not return to Ragnar? And Sigrid?’

‘They cannot protect me. And it is better that they think me gone,’ I said.

He put a hand to my shoulder and he looked on me in silence for a long time. I remembered how I had looked upon Sigrid, when I had fixed her in my mind for the very last time. And then he was gone.

Gifts came, in the days that followed. Grain, salted fish, brought to us in the arms of a tongueless slave – a man of Olaf’s household, who could not speak of what he saw. Perhaps it would not matter if he had, for there would be few who would believe him.

That was how we lived, that first year. And all the years afterwards, until you were old enough to work the fields yourself.

I struck a bargain with you, in those first days. That I would raise you and protect you, as best I could. That you might think of me as a father if you wished, but that I expected no love or kindness from you, though I offered both freely to you. But as a boy, you looked me in the eye and you accepted that bargain.

You remember that, don’t you?

It is a hard life I have given you, but you have lived it well. You have grown into a man and I have grown old.

There is safety in solitude and so I have taught you to wander as a ghost on the haunted lands that are your birthright. The other men of the valley shun you and call you mad: the mad son of a ghost, wandering restlessly. And in that madness is your safety. You have grown up almost wordless, wild blue eyes like a wolf.

The Wolf, I call you, for there is no other beast that could live as you have lived. And so I think you must be half a wolf at least. Not as fast or as strong as other hunting beasts, nor as crafty. But you endure. You would die for your pack. You are like me, are you not?

You have never asked about your past. Does the wolf question its ancestry? Does it inherit revenge, as we do? It does not, and neither have you. I raised you to be free of the feuds. In this place, in our own way, we have been living as the first settlers thought we might. We live alone on the land, free from kings, free from the feud, sharing the love of a father and his son. Waiting for the rest of the Icelanders to join us. For the people to learn how to live as we have.

At night I tell you stories. Endless stories and songs, of heroes and gods and monsters. But I have never told you this story before, and you have never asked.

You wonder why I tell this story to you now. It is because there is something that I need from you. It is because there is something that you must do.

Go now and look outside the door. My old eyes may be playing tricks on me. But I think I see the sun creeping there: fingers of light crawling beneath the door, beckoning to us. Go, and see if I am right.

The sun has risen? Good, good. Let the fire die, then. No need to waste wood now. We shall finish just in time.

I have told you many stories, have I not? And you are kind, for you listen in patience and thank me for the telling. But perhaps you have bested me in this, as you seem to in all things. For the story that you have told me – that I think I cannot match. I would not believe it, from any other than you.

It is ten centuries now since the miracle of Christ, a miracle of death. Now, in our island, you tell me of another miracle.

For the word of the White Christ has been spreading. Men like Thorvaldur have come to preach the Word, and many of those who sail abroad – great men who seek favour in the courts of distant kings – return baptised, wearing crosses around their necks. All across the old lands, in Norway and Sweden, they kneel before the White Christ. It has only been here that men have clung to the old faith, cowards lurking beside a dying fire. We have become a people divided by the gods. And on this island, for the first time, you have brought me whispers of war.

Thorvaldur longed for such a war, between one god and another. But that is not our way. With men preparing for war, with distant kings contemplating an invasion of our island, you tell me that our people gathered at the Althing and decided what must be done.

A gathering in a field, a raising of the hands, arguments spoken and heard. You tell me that the Lawspeaker retreated to his tent, covered his face with his cloak and thought to himself for a full day and a night. At last the Lawspeaker made his decision. Thus are the old gods forsaken and the true God followed. In other lands the God has been brought at the point of a sword, the whim of a tyrant, with bribery in gold and threats to the soul. But not here. Not in our country. I have never been so proud of our people as I am now.

And yet I know we must leave.

You know that I love our God. I have taught you His stories, taught you His words. Yet I know He will destroy this place. This fragile land where there are no kings. This one God will teach us to love a single ruler. We will long for a man to kneel to, not just a God. We will have a king soon. We will be a country like any other. The dream of a free land will be gone, and I will not stay and watch it happen.

Where shall we go, you ask? Far from this place. But not to the old lands. We go to the new.

You have heard of Greenland. That joke of a name, to attract foolish settlers to an unlivable country. That is not the place for you. It will be destroyed in plague or famine, or it will become another land beneath a king. We must go farther than that, to a place untouched.

There is another land out to the west, beyond that sea we thought boundless. I have heard the stories that the sailors have brought back: storm-tossed, the sparks of Thor raining down around them, they have seen a new land to the west. Vinland, they call it. A land with forests that stretch on for days. A place where the sun is still high in winter. A country with land enough for every man.