Meadowland by Tom Holt Read Free Book Online Page A

and keep out the way of, but that’s easier said than done. You squash thirty, forty people on a knoerr and keep them out to sea seven days and nights, you’ll find out who’s easygoing and who’s brittle like an icicle. And that’s a good voyage. When you’re a bit lost and the water ran out two days ago, it gets worse. Half the deck’s taken up with waxed hides hung flatwise between the rails to catch the rain; there’s blokes leaning over you to spear gulls or drag in lines, and when they hook one it comes flying up out of the water and lands in your lap, thrashing and twisting and smacking you in the face with its tail. Two days out and already you hate everybody on the ship. Everything they do bugs you; there’s a man who snores like somebody rasping horn, there’s the bastard who trod on your hand yesterday morning and still hasn’t said he’s sorry, the clown who tried to get the fire going and tipped the brazier over on you, hot embers tumbling down in the folds of your cloak. Captain yells at you to do something, you don’t hear or you think he’s talking to somebody else; so now he thinks you’re idle or stupid, and he tells someone else to do your job, and then he hates you all the rest of the way You get some old-timers, men who’ve spent more of their lives sitting on decks than standing on grass, and they can handle it, placid and quiet as an old bellwether or a thin old cow being milked by a clumsy kid. The rest of us, though, we never really get used to it. Sure, we know somewhere down inside that it’s all just little nuisances and pains in the bum, and the rest of the crew’s not really treating you like shit, it’s just the way things are on a ship. We know it, but still we get all fraught when someone treads on our legs as he gets up to go on watch, or his piss flies backwards in a gust of wind and ends up in our eyes. It’s two thousand little stupid things a day, salt in your eyes all the bloody time and no way you can make any of it stop; that’s sailing. Does that remind you of your boat trip across the bay?

    ‘No,’ I confessed. ‘It’s even worse. Do you people enjoy being miserable, or what?’
    ‘Mostly it’s a question of getting used to it,’ Kari replied solemnly ‘And the way we live on land, all jumbled up together, makes it a bit easier to cope when we’re on a journey Even so, I can’t say as I can think of many folks who’d be able to stand it. Like I said, it’s the keeping still and quiet that gets to you. Then again, anybody who’s lived through a few Norwegian winters, trapped in the house while it’s dark outside for weeks on end, knows a thing or two about that. Let’s face it, though. Why do men go to sea? Simple, there’s only one reason: to make money, to get rich so they can be farmers instead of hired men, or gentlemen instead of farmers. That’s the one thing every man on board ship’s got in common, and you never mention it but it keeps you together, keeps you going, stops you from fighting and killing each other whenever someone does something that really pisses you off. Strength of will is what it is, determination; because in his mind’s eye, every one of you’s got this picture of himself the way he wants to be, or rather the way he knows he should be, if only the world worked how it should. All I ever had to do, when I was on a ship and feeling like I really, really didn’t want to be there, was shut my eyes and imagine being on my own farm, sleeping in the back room rather than on the benches, having all the space I wanted all to myself. I thought, in order to have that, it’s got to be worth putting up with a lifetime of the exact opposite.’ He sighed, then grinned. ‘And now look at me, he said. ‘Didn’t get there, did I?’
    ‘No,’ I had to admit. ‘Well,’ I qualified, ‘I don’t know You ended up in Constantinople, in the imperial palace. I don’t imagine you sleep on a bench when we’re back home.’
    His