Hawk Quest

XXI

The wind was blowing half a gale, shredding the wavetops into ribbons. Raul ordered the crew to tie down everything that wasn’t fixed. Hero and Richard were given the job of packing the clay vessels in straw. Garrick and Wayland struggled to secure the timber. The logs had been stacked in a wooden cradle fixed to the beams, but Raul was worried that they would shift in heavy seas and ordered them to be lashed tight.

Down in the hold was a horrible place to be. Hero could hear seams straining and the mast groaning in its socket. Each time a wave whacked the hull, he expected to see the planking give way and the ocean flood in. As Shearwater left the lee of the Orkneys and met the Atlantic rollers, the pitching settled into a longer rhythm of stomach-churning swoops. The mast head no longer jerked and twitched, but swung in wild rotations.

Hero finished his task and climbed on deck. They were racing tight-reefed before the wind, the swell running so high that down in the troughs he could see only the crests directly fore and aft. They looked almost as tall as Shearwater’s mast. He made his way to the helm, flailing for balance and then fetching up against the side at a skittering run. The wind droned so loud in the rigging that he had to shout.

‘I can’t see land. I thought we were meant to use the islands as stepping stones.’

‘Wind’s backing south,’ yelled Raul. ‘I don’t know how far east the Orkneys go. Can’t risk being driven on to a lee shore.’

Shearwater slid into another trough, burying herself to within a foot of the gunwale. Spray flew the length of the ship. Hero clung to a shroud. ‘The waves will swallow us.’

Raul slapped the tiller. ‘No, they won’t. Look how smoothly the old lady rides — like a cow on skates. Ain’t nothing to do except sit it out. Tie yourself to a line just in case.’

Hero huddled next to Richard on the stern thwart. Garrick tied ropes around their waists and made the ends fast through an oar port. The wind yowled in the shrouds. Fear squatted like a dog in Hero’s chest. A wave pitched him onto the deck. He hooked his hands around the back of the thwart, shifting his hold as the ship rose and fell. Each time the deck lifted, his stomach dropped away into his feet; each time it sank, his stomach climbed into his throat. Richard hunched over beside him, strings of yellow bile dangling from his chin. With the coming of night, Hero couldn’t see the waves before they struck and had to anticipate when to brace. His hands seized into claws. A wave catching them broadside staggered the ship and convulsed him with water so cold that he couldn’t breathe. Richard clutched him.

‘We’re going to die!’

‘I don’t care!’

A hand groped at his shoulder. ‘Richard?’ cried Vallon.

‘It’s Hero. Richard’s beside me.’

‘Good lads. How are you bearing up?’

‘Awful.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

With a clap on the back, Vallon was gone. Hero couldn’t imagine how he’d get through the night. Nothing but din and blackness, the screaming wind and swooping waves. Eventually the sheer brutality of the elements battered him into a stunned trance, dulling terror and shutting down his mind.

He raised his stinging eyes for the thousandth time to see the first grey signs of day. Grinning crests leered out of the dark and Richard’s face showed as something more definite than a blur.

Black cloud patches still raced past, but the pall was thinning. The sun rose and shot livid rays through the wrack. Hero worked his neck from side to side, trying to loosen sinews stretched as taut as hawsers. He fumbled at his safety line with fingers as useless as sticks. He stood, fell back again, and then propped himself shivering against the gunwale and looked out across the white-maned rollers. Raul was still at the helm, working the tiller to keep Shearwater at right angles to the swell. Every so often he looked behind him to read the oncoming sea. Hero was about to struggle forward when Raul made another inspection and gaped.

Hero turned. What he saw was so unexpected that at first he thought exhaustion had warped his sense of perception. The horizon loomed above him like a green-black wall, only the wall was moving and his heart stopped as he realised that it was a rogue wave sweeping soundlessly up on them, foam beginning to cream along its crest and slide down its face. The wind dropped to nothing and there was an ear-popping silence. Shearwater was in the lee of the wave, shut off from the storm. Hero flung himself down and gripped the thwart just before the wave struck. It caught Shearwater by the stern and swung her up and up until Hero, staring terror-stricken down the ship’s length, was certain it would pitch stern over stem. For a moment that seemed to last for ever the ship hung weightless on the peak, then the crest surged past and Hero toppled backwards as Shearwater slid into the following trough. Raul was screaming something and Hero grabbed the thwart, aware that another roller was about to hit. It smashed over the stern and boiled across the deck, scraping him off the thwart and tumbling him over the side. His lifeline brought him up with a shock and he took water into his lungs.

He was underwater, rolling through a green chaos of bubbles, unable to tell up from down. He popped to the surface and for a moment saw Wayland and Garrick leaning out to grab his lifeline. Another wave swept him back under and dragged him deep. The sea roared in his ears and then he felt the rope yank tight around his waist and he came flailing into the light. Wayland dragged him to the side and Garrick hauled him gasping and choking on to the deck.

Wayland’s anxious face stared at him. ‘Are you hurt?’

Hero couldn’t speak. His lungs felt like they’d been scoured with sand.

Wayland took him under his armpits and hoisted him into a sitting position. The stern thwart was empty. He saw the frayed end of a safety line trailing on the deck.

‘Richard!’

‘He’s alive,’ said Wayland. ‘The wave tossed him into the hold. Everyone’s safe, but we’ve been swamped. We have to bail out before another wave hits.’

Hero managed to nod through another fit of coughing. Wayland lifted him to his feet. He saw Richard standing dumbfounded in the hold, water sloshing up to his thighs. Garrick was supporting him, fending off barrels of salt that had broken loose and were surging up and down the hold. Shearwater had lost a foot of buoyancy and rode as ponderously as a log. Vallon threw a bucket at Hero.

‘You and Richard stay on deck.’

Hero stared at the flooded hold. Bailing would be as effective as taking a spoon to a lake.

‘We ain’t going to sink,’ Raul shouted. ‘The timber will keep us afloat even if we fill to the gunwales. Now get bailing before we ship another wave.’

Wayland had already thrown himself into the task, scooping water as fast as he could and swinging the bucket up to Syth. Garrick and Vallon joined him. Up on deck Hero laboured away mechanically. The wind was falling and the clouds were breaking.

All morning they toiled and the water level was only a couple of inches lower than when they’d started. There came a time when Hero tried to raise his bucket and couldn’t.

‘That’s enough for now,’ said Vallon.

They ate cold rations in their soaking clothes and then resumed their toil. The wind had slackened to a light southerly, and though the swell still ran high, the danger of swamping was receding. Raul even raised a scrap of sail to give better steerage.

It was late evening before they’d emptied the hold. Hero crawled out weeping from the pain in his hands. The air had fallen still. A fiery reef stretched along the horizon. Slowly the whole sky turned red, staining the sea crimson and flooding the faces of the company. Then the light died and the clouds cooled down through green to black. Venus glowed in the west, Mars twinkled red and green. The Pole Star appeared. They were alone on the ocean.

Hero’s teeth chattered. ‘Where do you think we are?’ he asked Raul.

Raul’s beard was grey with salt. ‘Must have cleared the Shetlands by now. The Faroes should be about two days to the north-west.’

Hero looked at the rollers sweeping past. ‘We might already be too far north. I think we should set a course due west.’

Raul seemed to juggle directions in his hands. ‘You sure about that?’

‘No.’

‘West it is,’ said Raul. He leaned against the tiller and Shearwater turned, trailing a phosphorescent wake.

Hero slept right through the next day in his exhaustion. He woke to a lulling motion, the sail rippling above him. The sun had gone down, its resting place marked by a golden plume of cloud fading to pink. Far out on the still waters, the glossy black flukes of a whale arched out of the sea and slapped down in a soundless fountain of spray.

Hero looked to the helm. ‘Any sign of land?’

Raul shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

The night was so calm and clear that the celestial sphere was mirrored on the sea’s surface. The day following was equally brilliant, yet under an empty blue sky that would have revealed land fifty miles off, they saw nothing but herds of grampuses and a solitary fulmar that Raul said was a wanderer of the deep ocean and no harbinger of land.

Two more days slid by and they knew that they must have missed the Faroes. They sailed on, at first keeping west and then, losing confidence, heading north. Raul organised the company into watches, dividing his time at the helm with Garrick and Wayland. In the late afternoon on the sixth day, Hero was standing watch alone in the bow. Shearwater lay becalmed, the waves flopping round-shouldered against her hull. Everyone else was asleep. Garrick hung over the tiller, steering through a dream. Vallon rested on his back with one hand over his eyes. Raul slumped against the bulwark with his legs straight out and his mouth open. Wayland and Syth lay back to back with the dog couched beside them.

Staring into the immensity of sea and sky, Hero had the sensation of floating in a dimension between time and eternity. The sea looked strange, the horizon having retreated to an immense distance and taken on a dished appearance. What if they’d travelled out of the known world into a realm where the laws of nature no longer applied? Master Cosmas had told him that under the pivot of the Pole Star, beyond the north winds, lay the land of the Hyperboreans, a place sweeter and more blessed than anyone could imagine.

Then he saw land. A high plateau cleft by ice-filled valleys with wind-scoured ridges, vertical headlands stepping away to the east.

‘Land! Land ahead.’

As though released from a spell, the company woke and rubbed their eyes and crowded forward.

‘No doubt about it,’ said Raul.

‘How long to reach it?’ Vallon asked.

‘Hard to say. A day’s sailing with a fresh breeze.’

The company marvelled at their destination, pointing at mountains and ice-caps and fjords. The sun dipped towards the horizon and the sky began to separate into washes of rose and lapis. The island rippled and floated.

Vallon rubbed his eyes. ‘What’s happening?’

‘It’s fading away,’ said Wayland.

Hero gaped in disbelief as his island melted into air.

Richard sighed. ‘It was just a phantom. A fairy island.’

‘But it must be real. You all saw it.’

‘The ocean plays tricks,’ said Raul. ‘It shows you what you want to see.’

Hero was close to tears. ‘Then why can’t I see it now?’

Next day Shearwater drifted aimless under a mist-sheeted sun. Hero was playing a lacklustre game of shatranj with Richard when Raul raised a cry. ‘We’ve got a visitor.’

Everyone raised their eyes towards a small bird perched on the yardarm.

Hero stood. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘Just appeared,’ said Raul. ‘Wayland noticed the dog staring up at it like the fox in the fable.’

The bird had a smoky grey back, a black eye mask and a white rump. ‘I’ve seen birds like that in Sicily,’ Hero said. ‘They must fly north in the summer.’

‘Keep your eyes on it,’ said Vallon. ‘Mark which direction it takes.’

The lonely migrant was in no hurry to depart. It preened, fanned its tail and warbled to itself. Hero was only half watching when it uttered a sharp chacking note and darted off.

‘Watch which way it goes.’

It was just a speck when Hero saw it merge into a wispy grey flock flying low across the sea.

‘Raul, steer the same course.’

‘There ain’t nothing to give me a bearing.’

Hero backed away. ‘Keep pointing along the path the birds took. Don’t let the ship drift.’

He hurried to his pack and took from his chest the mysterious direction finder. With great care he set it down on a thwart. The fish-shaped needle wandered around the horizon before settling in a lolling arc. Hero looked up to find the rest of the company still holding out their hands in the self-conscious attitude of amateur actors. ‘North,’ he cried. ‘The birds flew due north.’

‘Follow them,’ said Vallon.

Raul looked at the compass with scepticism. ‘You trust that thing?’

‘I’ve tested it and it’s as true a guide as the Pole Star.’

But there was no wind that day to put his claim to the proof. Shearwater drifted around the compass needle like a small lost planet. With the coming of dark, they were still no wiser, although the sighting of a clump of seaweed gave them hope that land might be near. Hero crouched over the compass by lamplight until a breeze from the east blew away the cloud and revealed the Pole Star almost exactly where the diviner had predicted.

He waited up all night until a thread of pale yellow appeared on the eastern horizon. The sun rose and he saw to the north a long low bank of cloud.

‘Could be land,’ said Vallon.

‘Pray that it is,’ Raul said. ‘We’re precious low on food.’

They sailed nearer. Gulls appeared, trailing in their wake.

‘Ice,’ Raul said, pointing at a chilly gleam high up in the cloud vapours. ‘David said there’s an ice mountain on Iceland’s southern coast. If we’re where I think we are, we have to sail west. We should come to some islands before the day’s over.’

They skirted the shrouded coast. Wayland climbed to the yard to look for their next landmark, and in the late afternoon he called out that he could see islands ahead. One by one they appeared out of the drizzle — some like squat fortresses, another like a sleeping green whale, one of them an ugly pile of wrinkled slag with smoke wafting from its flanks.

In a fine misting rain, they made for the largest island, sailing under massive cliffs with clouds snagged on the ledges like tufts of cotton. Surf burst in caves and grottoes. They rounded a tall headland domed with grass and found a haven enfolded between tumbling hills. Once inside, the entrance seemed to close behind them. The sea surge faded to a distant echo, almost drowned out by the cries of birds nesting on the cliffs ringing the harbour. Sea parrots whirred in front of the ship and seals hoisted themselves high in the water to watch the intruders. The faint bleating of sheep floated down from the heights. Raul ran up towards the end of the cove and let go the anchor. The company jumped into the shallows and waded on to a beach of silky black sand. Hero staggered up it with his arms open and buried his face in the sweet turf.

In the morning they woke to find their camp ringed by a delegation of crouching savages who eyed the argonauts as if undecided whether to worship them or eat them. Raul initiated negotiations. The isles were called the Westmans after Irish slaves who’d fled here from their Norwegian master two centuries ago. The present inhabitants — fewer than eighty souls — eked out their fishing and fowling by trading with the occasional passing ship and plundering wrecks. In return for a dozen nails and a block of salt, Raul obtained a side of mutton and a string of sea parrots culled at their nests that morning.

The company rested in the haven for two days, sleeping, eating or just staring across the bay. The place had a monastic calm and in months and years to come, when Hero was heavy of heart, memories of that cove would come stealing back to ease his troubled mind. It was not a place where he would choose to live, but he sometimes thought that it was a place where, in the fullness of time, he would be content to die.

They left with detailed sailing directions. Two days brought them to Iceland’s south-west peninsula. From here they tacked north-east along an uninhabited coastline of ash and lava. The sun was bleeding into the sea behind them when Wayland called out that he could see the settlement of Smoking Bay.

Richard grabbed Hero by both shoulders and shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth.

‘We’re here!’

Gliding towards the harbour, Hero kept revising his expectations downwards. He hadn’t expected a city, or even a fair-sized town, but he had anticipated more than a sprinkling of houses — not even a village — backed by a few farmsteads. Only the sight of two knarrs tied alongside a stone jetty convinced him that Reykjavik had any connection with the civilised world.

As they crossed the bar, Richard told him that it was the twenty-first or twenty-second of May. More than thirty days had rolled round since their flight from England.

Iceland and Greenland