Sworn Brother (20 page)

We followed a narrow path used by the funeral parties until it brought us out onto a small, grassy area around the grave barrow itself. Grettir looked away to our left out over the black sheen of the sea, its surface pricked with the reflection of the stars. ‘Fine place for a burial,’ he said. “When I die, I hope I’ll finish up in a spot like this, where the helmsmen of passing ships can point out my last resting place.’ Given Grettir’s reputation as a youthful homicide, I wondered what his epitaph might be.

‘Come on, Thorgils,’ he said and began to clamber up the grassy side of the barrow mound. I followed him until we were both standing on the top of the whale-backed hillock. Grettir produced a heavy metal bar from under his cloak.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, though the answer was obvious.

‘I’m going to break in and take the grave goods,’ he answered jauntily. ‘Here, give me a hand.’ And he began digging a hole down through the turf which covered the tomb. Grave-robbing was a new experience for me, yet when I saw the furious energy with which Grettir hacked and stabbed at the soil with his iron bar, I decided it would be wiser to humour him. I was frightened of what he might do if I tried to restrain him. Taking it in turns to excavate, we burrowed down to the outer roof of the tomb. When the point of the iron bar struck the roof timbers of the vault, Gettir gave a grunt of satisfaction, and with a few powerful blows punched a hole large enough for him to climb down into the tomb.

‘Stand guard here for me, will you?’ he asked. ‘In case I get stuck down there and need help to climb out.’ He was unwinding a rope from around his waist, and I realised that plundering the tomb had been his intention from the moment he had suggested that he and I climb to the headland.

A moment later Grettir was lowering himself down into the black hole and I could hear his voice as he vanished into the gloom. For a moment I thought he was speaking to me, and tried to make out what he was saying. But then I realised that he was talking to himself. He was making a noise to keep up his courage, to compensate for his terror of the dark. His words, echoing up from the entrance hole into the tomb, made no sense. Then came a sudden loud crash, followed immediately by a loud yell of bravado. There was another crash, and another, and I guessed he was nailing about in the dark, floundering and tripping over one obstacle after another, falling over the grave goods in the dark, driven by his determination to carry out the robbery, yet gripped by a sense of panic.

The racket finally ended and then I heard Grettir’s voice call up to me, ‘Hang onto the rope! I’m ready to climb up.’

I braced on the rope and soon Grettir’s head and shoulders appeared through the hole in the roof of the tomb, and he hauled himself out onto the grass. Then he turned round and began to pull on the rope, until its end appeared attached to a bundle. He had used his tunic as a sack to hold the various items he had collected. He laid them out on the grass to inspect. There were several bronze dishes, some buckles and strap ends from horse harness, a silver cup, and two silver arm rings. The finest item was a short sword which the dead man would have carried if the Valkyries selected him for a warrior’s afterlife in Valholl. Grettir slid the weapon out of its sheath and in a glimmer of moonlight I could see the intricate patterns a master swordsmith had worked into the metal of the blade.

‘That’s a noble weapon,’ I commented.

‘Yes, I had to fight the haugbui for it,’ Grettir replied. ‘He was reluctant to give it up.’

‘The mound dweller?’ I asked.

‘He was waiting for me, seated in the dead man’s chair,’ Grettir said. ‘I was groping around in the darkness, gathering the grave goods, when I put my hand on his leg and he jumped to his feet and attacked me. I had to fight him in the dark, as he tried to embrace me in his death grip. But finally I managed to cut off his head and kill him. I laid him out face down, with his head between his buttocks. That way he will never live again.’

I wondered if Grettir was telling the truth. Had there really been a haugbui? Everyone knows stories about the spirits of the dead who live in the darkness of tombs, ready to protect the treasures there. Sometimes they take substantial form as draugr, the walking dead who emerge and walk the earth, and frighten men, just as the ghost of Kar the Old had scared away the local farmers. Cutting off a haugbui’s head and placing it on the buttocks is the only way to lay the creature finally to rest. Or was Grettir spinning me a tale to account for the noise and clatter of his robbery, his senseless loud talk and the shouts of bravado? Was he ashamed to admit that Grettir the Strong was terrified of the dark, and that all that had happened was that he had blundered into the skeleton of Kar the Old seated on his funeral chair? For the sake of Grettir’s self-esteem I did not question his tale of the barrow wight, but I knew for sure that he was more fearful of the dark than a six-year-old child.

Grettir’s self-confidence and bravado were still evident the next morning when the camp awoke and he made no attempt to hide his new acquisitions. I was surprised that he even took his loot with us when we went to visit Thorfinn’s farm to buy ship’s stores. When Grettir brazenly laid out the grave goods on the farmhouse table, Thorfinn recognised them at once.

‘Where did you find these?’ he asked.

‘In the tomb on the hill,’ Grettir replied. ‘The ghost of Kar the Old is not that fearsome after all. You’d better keep hold of them.’

Thorfinn must have known Grettir’s reputation because he avoided any confrontation. ‘Well, it’s true that buried treasure is no use to anyone,’ he said amiably. ‘You have my thanks for restoring these heirlooms to us. Can I offer you some reward for your courage?’

Grettir shrugged dismissively. ‘No. I have no need for such things, only for an increase to my honour, though I will keep the sword as a reminder of this day,’ he said. He then rudely turned on his heel and walked out of the farmhouse, taking the fine short sword and leaving the rest of the grave goods on the table.

I mulled over that answer as I walked back to the ship, trying to understand what drove Grettir. If he had plundered the barrow in order to gain the admiration of the others for his courage, why did he behave so churlishly afterwards? Why was he always so rude and quarrelsome?

I fell into step with him. Typically, he was walking by himself, well away from the rest of our group.

‘That man whose death got you outlawed from Iceland, why did you kill him?’ I asked. ‘Killing someone over something as trifling as a bag of food doesn’t seem to be a way of gaining honour or renown.’

‘It was a mistake,’ Grettir replied. ‘At the age of sixteen I didn’t realise my own strength. I was travelling across the moors with some of my father’s neighbours when I discovered that the satchel of dried food I had tied to my saddle was missing. I turned back to the place where we had stopped to rest our horses, and found someone else already searching in the grass. He said that he too had left his food bag behind. A moment later he gave a cry and held up a bag, saying that he had found what he was looking for. I went over to check and it seemed to me that the bag was mine. When I tried to take it from him, he snatched out his axe without warning and aimed a blow at me. I grabbed the axe handle, turned the blade around and struck back at him. But he lost his grip and the axe suddenly came free, so I struck him square on the skull. He died instantly.’

‘Didn’t you try to explain this to the others when they found out what had happened?’ I asked.

‘It would have done no good — there were no witnesses. Anyhow the man was dead and I was the killer,’ said Grettir. ‘It goes against my nature to heed the opinions of others. I don’t seek either their approval or their disdain. What matters will be the reputation I leave behind me for later generations.’

He spoke so openly and with such conviction that I felt he was acknowledging a bond between us, a comradeship which had started when we pillaged the barrow together. My intuition was to prove correct, but I failed to discern that Grettir was also casting the shadow of his own downfall.

The sailors thought Grettir had been a rash fool to interfere with the spirits of the dead. All day they kept muttering among themselves that his stupidity would bring down misfortune on us. One or two Christians among them made the sign of the cross to keep off the evil eye. Their disquiet was confirmed when we got back to where we had moored the ship. In our absence a gust of wind had shifted the vessel on her anchorage and brought her broadside to the rocky beach. The anchor had lost its grip and she had been driven ashore. By the time we got back, the boat was lying canted over, stoved in, sea water swilling in her bilge. The damage to her planking was so severe that her captain decided we had no choice but to abandon the vessel and march overland to Nidaros, carrying the most valuable of our trade goods. There was nothing to do but wade out in the shallows and salvage what we could. I noticed that the sailors took care to keep as far away from Grettir as possible. They blamed him for the calamity and expected that further disaster would follow. I was the only person to walk beside him.

Our progress was dishearteningly slow. By sea it would have taken two days to reach the Norwegian capital, but the land path twisted and turned as it followed the coast, skirting the bays and fiords. The extra distance added two weeks to our journey. Whenever we came to the mouth of a fiord, we tried to reduce the detour by bargaining with a local farmer to ferry us across, paying him with trade goods or, I supposed, some of Brithmaer’s false coin. Even so, we had to wait for the farmer to fetch his small boat, then wait again as he rowed us across the water two or three passengers at a time.

Finally came an evening when we found ourselves on the beach at the entrance to a fiord, facing across open water to a farmhouse we could see on the opposite bank. We were chilled to the bone, tired and miserable. We tried to attract the farmer’s attention so he would come across to fetch us, but it was late in the day and there was no reaction from the far shore, though we could see smoke rising from the smoke hole in the farmhouse roof. The spot where we were standing was utterly bleak, a bare beach of pebbles backed by a steep cliff. There were a few sticks of damp driftwood, enough to make a small fire if we could get one started, but our tinder was soaked. We slid our packs off our backs and slumped down on the shingle, resigned to spending a cold and hungry night.

It was at that moment that Grettir suddenly announced he would swim across the fiord to reach the farm on the other side. Everyone looked at him as if he was insane. The distance was too great for any but the strongest swimmer, and it was nearly dark already. But, typically, Grettir paid no attention. The farm would have a stock of dry firewood, he said. He would bring back some of it and a lighted brand so we could warm ourselves and cook a meal. As we watched in disbelief, he began to strip off his clothes until he was wearing nothing but his undershirt and a pair of loose woollen trousers, and a moment later he was wading into the water. I watched his head dwindle in the distance as he struck out for the far shore, and I recalled his words that he lived for honour and fame. I wondered if he might not drown in this new act of bravado.

It was well past midnight and a thick fog had settled over the fiord, when we heard the sound of splashes and Grettir reappeared out of the darkness. He was reeling with exhaustion but, to our astonishment, held in his arms a small wooden tub. ‘Enough sticks to make a fire and there are some burning embers in the bottom,’ he said, then sat down abruptly, unable to stand any longer. I noticed a fresh bruise on his forehead and that one hand was bleeding from a deep cut. Also he was shaking and I got the impression that it was not just from cold.

As the sailors busied themselves with making a campfire, I led Grettir to one side. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, wrapping my warm sea cloak around him. ‘What happened?’

He gave me an anguished look. ‘It was like that business with the food bag all over again.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When I reached the other side of the fiord there was just enough light for me to see my way to what we thought was a farmhouse. It turned out that it wasn’t a farm, but one of those shelters built along the coast as refuges for sailors trapped by bad weather. I could hear sounds of singing and laughter inside, so I went up and pushed at the door. The lock was flimsy and broke easily. I stumbled in on about a dozen men, sailors by the look of them. Everyone was roaring drunk, lolling about and scarcely able to stand. There was a blazing fire in the middle of the room. I thought it was useless to ask the drunkards for help. They were too far gone to have understood what I wanted. Instead I went straight up to the fire and took the wooden tub of dry kindling that was next to it. Then I pulled a burning brand out of the hearth. That was when one of the drunks attacked me. He yelled out that I was some sort of troll or water demon appearing out of the night. He lumbered across the room and took a swipe at me. I knocked him down easily enough and the next moment all his companions were bellowing and lurching to their feet and trying to get at me. They picked up logs from the fire and tried to rush me. They must have been heaping straw on the fire, for there were a lot of sparks and embers flying about. I pulled a burning log out of the fire and kept swinging it at them as I backed away to the door. Then I made a dash for it, ran for the water, threw myself in and began swimming to get back here.’ He shivered again and pulled the sea cloak tighter around him.