Cold Earth, page 3
‘You,’ I said.
She stepped across the stones as if they were a zebra crossing. I followed quickly so she couldn’t see my alarms and hesitations, making the last leap by concentrating on the skyline where the rocks rose from the slopes of scree. It wasn’t cold water I feared, but humiliation.
‘So this is the big farm,’ Yianni said. The walls were waist-high and several feet thick. ‘We’re standing in the hall. Those are the ante-rooms.’ He pointed to more heaps of stone.
‘Is that the lintel?’ asked the tall guy.
‘Yeah,’ said Yianni. He pointed. ‘There’s the mantel. It was some fireplace.’
There was a long, flat rock, as big as the standing stones we used to walk round in the Dales when my grandparents were alive.
‘How did they lift that?’ I asked.
‘We think they had rollers,’ said Yianni. ‘There are bigger stones than that in the church. The trench, of course, brings water.’
‘They had a good view,’ said Catriona, standing by the lintel-stone. ‘Odd, though, to face the door into the prevailing wind. Or do you think this has been moved?’
‘Don’t think so,’ said Yianni. ‘Maybe it was worth the wind to be able to see what was coming.’
‘There’s a cross on the lintel,’ said the smaller guy.
‘I know,’ said Yianni. ‘And it’s old. But of course it could have been carved in situ at any time.’
I stood next to Catriona. The view of the hill and the river curving down to the stony beach was exactly what I’d been imagining at my desk at home, and I caught myself thinking the site was wasted as a ruin and wanting to do it up and move in. The opposite of archaeology.
‘I told you in the briefing papers that this is the site Norman MacDonald identified with the farm owned by Bjorn Bardarson in Bjornsaga. Late thirteenth century. The saga says his brother burnt down the byre. This byre was burnt and doesn’t seem to have been rebuilt, and once we get the dating done we should know when the farm was abandoned. We’ve got farm V49 fifteen kilometres south, and I spoke to Adam Morris about his work there before I left. He’s sure it was still occupied in the late fourteenth, so if this was abandoned earlier we probably can tie it into the saga. But we’ll see.’
He started talking about the lab analyses of V49 and Adam Morris’s unpublished work. It was still warm, but there were grey clouds gathering in the northwest and the sea looked duller than it had. Bjornsaga is the one with Ingibjorg and Kristin. They were twin sisters, and their father was tangentially involved in a long-running feud of the sort that defines most of the sagas. One day Kristin was found dead and ‘unpleasantly damaged’ on the beach. No one knew who’d killed her, or trusted their guesswork enough to attempt vengeance, which was the usual way of stopping the dead coming back. They buried her quickly and thoroughly because everyone expected someone killed like that to make trouble. She did. Every night she came creeping into Ingibjorg’s bed in a state of advancing decomposition, muttering allegations, until Ingibjorg ‘spoke no more sense but uttered strange prophecies until she died.’ After that one or other of them often sat on the roof of the house and woke people by shouting, but that bothers me less. It’s the idea of someone who loves you turning into a revenant who comes to decompose in your bed and drive you mad that’s particularly disturbing. Would you rather be haunted by your rotting beloved or lose her entirely? I think I’d be good at haunting.
‘Any questions?’ Yianni was saying. ‘Yes, Ruth?’
Ruth, still talking to stones and thin air.
‘Is there any material evidence of late external contact from V49?’
Late external contact, I think, means interaction with the outside world in the final decades of the settlement.
‘Nothing conclusive that Morris was prepared to tell me,’ said Yianni. ‘But he wouldn’t let me see all of his data.’
‘Crazy,’ said the smaller guy. ‘You could hardly publish his data while you’re in Greenland.’
‘Well, it’s his prerogative,’ said Yianni. ‘Come on, there’s more up the hill. And of course the church.’
I hadn’t noticed the building up the hill before. It was partly sheltered by a little knoll and much more complete than the farmhouse, the walls still shoulder-high and the stone doorframe still standing.
‘Barn,’ said Yianni. ‘With ante-rooms.’
He pointed to rubble lying in straight lines across one side.
‘In use later than the house or just better protected?’ asked Catriona.
‘Bit of both, maybe,’ he said.
It’s nice, the barn. You could try a garden, at least some flowers on the sheltered side, though it would have to be something that didn’t need much sun. Cathedral ceiling, solid-fuel stoves. No gas or electricity, of course, but this is a place where a domestic turbine really would earn its keep. There was an article in the interiors section of that last Observer, which I left on a circular bench under a palm tree in Copenhagen airport, about barn conversions. A derelict barn costs more than a house now in some parts of the Home Counties. I have no idea about Greenlandic property prices but I bet if we sold the flat … I caught Yianni’s eye and blushed as if I’d been caught thinking about sex. The others were writing things in their notebooks.
‘So we’ll make a start after lunch,’ he said. ‘There’s something I want to say right at the beginning: we’ve got less than six weeks here, and if we get persistent rain we may be held up, so let’s make the most of our time, OK? You know how fast the season changes here and summer’s half gone with marking exams before we even start. We are going to be starting early and finishing late and I’m not planning days off.’
‘Sure,’ said Catriona. ‘It’s not as if we’ll miss out on the vibrant nightlife of rural West Greenland.’
‘Fine by me,’ said Ruth.
I thought about my books.
‘My grant requires me to do some writing,’ I said. ‘It’s not just data, I can’t write it all up when I get home.’
‘You’ll have time to write, Nina. It’s light nearly all night anyway at the moment.’
I didn’t see why I should have to work in the middle of the night but I thought I’d do better to talk to Yianni on my own later.
Lunch was water biscuits and cream cheese rendered no less nasty by alleged smoked salmon flavouring, followed by powdery red apples.
‘This is all the fresh fruit,’ said Yianni. ‘When these are gone, it’s dried fruit and vitamin supplements.’
‘Then why on earth did you bring tasteless American apples when the English season is just beginning?’ I asked. ‘You were flying stuff in anyway, you could have added some decent fruit. There are heritage varieties in all the farmers’ markets at the moment.’
‘They’re just apples, Nina. And there are some lemons.’
‘To ward off scurvy,’ suggested Catriona.
‘And a ration of rum?’ asked the fake American, who turned out to be called Ben.
‘Bad luck,’ said Yianni. ‘But there are onions. Otherwise it’s all dried or vacuum packed.’
‘Bet the Greenlanders did better than that,’ I said. ‘Didn’t they have mussels? And cloudberries?’
I am not sure exactly what a cloudberry is but it sounds much nicer than dried figs.
‘They were farming and fishing,’ said Ruth, spreading pink paste on a cracker. ‘We’re digging.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Yianni as he stood up. ‘Catriona, could you tidy up here? Let’s get going.’
And then we spent all afternoon digging. Apparently the interesting bit comes later, and in places where there are roads archaeologists sometimes use a mechanical digger for the first stage. But the sun shone, and moths fluttered out of the heather, and the turf smelt like clean laundry. There were flowers like overgrown buttercups, and the sheep, which stared at us with alarming malevolence at close range, kept a polite distance and provided a bucolic soundtrack. As manual labour goes, it was the kind of thing rich people pay to do on holiday and, with the odd pause for water and polite exchanges, we kept doing it until late afternoon, when I began to realise that digging requires muscles undeveloped by reading, typing and the occasional yoga class. I tried a prayer stretch on the grass.
‘Stiff?’ asked Catriona.
‘I will be. Aren’t you?’
‘I’ve been changing hands. But yes.’
She put down her spade and stretched her arms over her head.
‘Taking a break?’ asked Ben, standing up and circling his shoulders.
‘It’s past tea time,’ I said.
‘You know Yianni better than we do.’ Catriona turned her head from side to side. ‘But he didn’t strike me as a great proponent of the tea-break.’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Especially not here. He probably thinks it’s a waste of paraffin.’
‘Don’t tell me you put paraffin in tea,’ said Ben. He looked up like your parents’ dog waiting for a biscuit.
‘Not in Scotland,’ said Catriona. She sat cross-legged and I watched a moth crawl up her trouser leg. The grey clouds were swelling out at sea but our shadows were still sharp on the turf. Ben paused.
‘Hey, that’s an Arctic Blue. I’ve never seen one before.’
‘A what?’ I looked at the sea, as if an Arctic Blue might be some kind of iceberg.
‘Butterfly. Look.’
It was ‘blue’ in the sense that those grey cats are blue, as if people have to justify their taxonomic impulses by making things sound more surprising than they are.
‘You know your butterflies, then?’ asked Catriona, watching as it danced away.
He shrugged. ‘A bit. I like to get out onto the hills. It’s Louise, really, my girlfriend, who’s into moths and butterflies.’
‘An entomologist?’ I asked.
He was scanning for more Arctic Blues. ‘Geography teacher.’
I suppose a PE teacher would be worse. I looked at Catriona but she was watching the sea.
‘Sheffield or Madison?’ I asked.
‘Sheffield.’
‘How’s that work?’
He looked as if I’d asked what kind of contraception they favour.
‘Fine. Why?’
Catriona stretched. ‘I suppose we should do some more work.’
Jim came over and sat beside her. ‘I’m still stiff from those horses,’ he said. ‘Though it was a great way to arrive. I haven’t ridden for years.’
‘You used to ride regularly?’ asked Catriona.
He circled his head. ‘When my grandpa was alive. They had a farm.’
‘Did the Greenlanders have horses?’ I asked. Icelanders do in the sagas, but I couldn’t see why they’d be useful in a place where small boats are the main means of transport.
‘Some of them,’ said Ruth, from behind me. She came and stood over us. ‘Rich farms would have had a pony or two. Icelandic ponies.’
I craned round and found myself looking up her nose. I shuffled forwards. ‘Are you working on Greenland?’
‘Not really. First contacts in North America. I’ve got a chapter on the Vinland sites.’
‘But you fancied Greenland?’ I asked.
‘It seemed a good chance. To get away.’
I wanted to ask her what she was getting away from.
‘Was your supervisor OK with that?’ asked Catriona.
Ruth still didn’t sit down. It was hard to see her face.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He’s very flexible.’
That got us onto the Supervisor Conversation. You’ll be pleased to hear that the British are still much more colourful than the Americans, who seem to have a ‘meetings schedule’ set by the department as well as all those classes, and of course don’t have the same drinking culture. I started telling the Verity Buchan story, and had just got to the bit where she was lying on a sofa in her knickers pretending the teddy bear was talking about Piers Plowman when Yianni came over. He can’t have heard it before – do you think? Anyway, he waited until it was over but then said there was time for more digging and he was hoping we’d have all the turf up by bedtime. Which made it sound as if he was thinking of working days in terms of tasks rather than time, and also as if he was prepared to make the best of the light nights. We went back to work.
I thought I’d sleep well, after that. I moved my tent off the cannibal-monster-infested tombstone and onto some well-sprung turf next to Catriona. Everyone went to bed soon after dinner (noodles and bottled sauce – it’s not scurvy but rickets we need to worry about here). I’ve brought I Capture the Castle in case of need and I read a bit of that and settled down. I slept fast enough, but had bad dreams.
The old woman is riding up the valley bareback on a horse too big for her. I run easily alongside, breathing smoothly, as if there’s no weight of blood and bone. As we come over the hill I can see another farm, and everyone is still there. Two men are doing something with fishing nets in a boat pulled up on the beach, and a man is digging the infield. There’s a woman sitting on the stone bench by the door, nursing a bundle in a woven shawl that murmurs at the breast. Everyone looks up as the horse picks its way down the stony hill, but the men keep working. The woman stands up and moves awkwardly towards us, the baby held in one arm and still sucking. She knows what the old woman is going to tell her. She has seen the smoke rising from the next valley, and the men told her how they hid in the little boat behind an island and watched as the fishermen’s ship scudded away. They have not told her about the cries of the women, or about what they found at the other farm. Not about the little boy, or the puppy skewered at his feet.
Something woke me, a sound. I sat up, waiting for the drumming in my ears to slow so I could hear the night. Dreams are nothing new, but I don’t like it when I wake up and I’m still there. It was light, but dim, and I was afraid to open the tent and look at the cold sun. The sheep and birds were quiet, and after a few minutes I thought I could hear ragged breathing and sniffing, like someone quietly crying. It was very near.
‘Who’s there?’ I called.
The noise stopped, but no one answered. I lay down, scared to sleep again, and thought of you.
The baby is crawling on the worn grass at my feet and a little boy is sitting nearby, keeping an eye on the baby but also carving a small piece of wood. I follow the baby’s mother down to the river, which gleams through the grey fields in the fading light. I stand behind her as she lifts the heavy wet wool from the pool where it has been soaking, and the water runs down her arms and splashes her brown dress. My foot slips on a stone and she turns with a gasp, the wool clasped in her arms. She faces me, looks around, and shivers. She turns to the sea as if looking for storm clouds, or worse. The sun reaches the bank of dark cloud over the sea to the west and the air is suddenly colder. I am still, still and cold, and I want only to come back home.
And then yesterday we got up, ate dried fruit, dug all morning, ate crispbread and that extraordinary Norwegian cheese that tastes like a mixture of rust and condensed milk with the last of the apples, dug all afternoon, ate pasta with Textured Vegetable Protein (the texture only makes things worse) and tomato purée out of a tube followed by chocolate, and went to bed. I began to suspect that the practice of archaeology is less interesting than I’d hoped. All that came to light were worms, which are why I don’t like gardening, and Yianni spent the whole day generating paperwork. In the night I heard crying again.
There are ships on the horizon. The woman and the baby stay in the house, and she pours water onto the fire. It runs across the floor, black with ash, and marks the edges of her dress like blood. Without the fire it is dark inside. The baby cries and the mother picks it up, but her eyes are fixed on the door as she offers it her finger to suck. It slurps furiously and cries again. The boy is huddled in the sleeping place. I open the door and slip out.
It is bright, out here. One man is down on the beach, throwing seaweed over the little boat that has been dragged across the pebbles to rest behind a rock. The boat may not be visible from the sea but the furrows in the stones are obvious. The other two are gathering the sheep into the barn, keeping low to the ground. The racks of drying fish stand like beacons on the shoulder of the hill. Inside the house is a stupid place to hide, and I make for the big rocks which dot the turf above the barn.
The zip on my tent ripped open and I sat up and screamed. The shape pushing its way in raised its head. Yianni.
‘Nina, hush! It’s me, it’s all right.’
‘What in hell’s name are you doing here? Jesus Christ, it’s the middle of the night.’
‘Nina, you were calling out. You’ve been muttering for hours. It woke me.’
‘I wasn’t,’ I said. ‘Yianni, it wasn’t me. I hear things in the night too. I don’t like it here.’
He reached out and patted my shoulder.
‘It’s bad dreams, Nina. Go back to sleep. It’s all OK. Look, just sheep and sky out there.’
He held the flap open. It was not dark but the sky looked dead. The sea was black and quiet, and there were no birds.
‘It’s weird,’ I said. ‘What time is it?’
‘Just gone one. The sun will be back in a few minutes. You can still get a good sleep before morning.’
I woke to voices and the purring of the Primus. The tent was hot and I could smell apple crumble, although I knew it was only stewed fruit. You won’t be making crumbles, will you? And I bet you’ve gone back to having cereal for breakfast, soggy in skimmed milk. I sometimes suspect you are interested in food only to please me, that you might be equally happy with someone who uses custard powder and generates less washing up, not to mention storms over curdled eggs. I put my jeans and jumper back on and crawled out. Jim and Yianni were sitting on the stones near the tents, the Primus resting between Yianni’s feet like a family pet.
