Four days later, Jackwas crouched near the stern of Seaquest II, muffling his ears against the churning of the ship’s wake as he took a call from Maurice Hiebermeyer in Istanbul. After a few moments struggling to hear he got up and walked back to where Costas was standing beside Maria and Jeremy, who were sitting on a bench behind the ship’s helipad.
“I read you.” Jack pressed the receiver against his ear. “Set it all out and I’ll see you in the Golden Horn tomorrow evening. And thanks for taking over the excavation, Maurice. Great work. I owe you one. Out.”
Jack snapped shut the radio receiver and weaved his way around the lines that had been laid on the deck to secure the Lynx helicopter after its arrival. Seaquest II was heading back to the Arctic to resume the scientific project at Ilulissat icefjord, and several of the scientists who had disembarked during their diversion to the Caribbean were being flown back on board. The ship was now less than a hundred nautical miles east of Newfoundland, and the final helicopter shuttle was due in later that afternoon. Apart from a deep swell, the sea was settled and the sky was clear, but as they ploughed their way north there was a chill in the air that seemed more pronounced after their days in the fetid jungle of the Yucatan. Maria and Jeremy were both wearing IMU anoraks and were huddled behind the bulwark out of the wind.
“That was Maurice Hiebermeyer,” Jack said. “It’s great news. They’ve finally got artefacts dumped after the siege of Constantinople in 1204.”
“Crusader gold?” Costas said hopefully.
Jack grinned. “A colossal gilt bronze statue of the emperor Vespasian, with a dedicatory inscription showing it had originally been set up in the Forum of Peace in Rome after the Jewish triumph. It’s not exactly what we had in mind, but then archaeology’s like that.”
“It’s what I wanted to hear.” Costas sighed contentedly. “My sub-bottom borer has come up trumps. Anyway, as I recall there was quite a list of items looted from the Jewish Temple other than the menorah. We’ll find them. Just have faith in IMU technology.”
“That might have to go on the back burner for a while,” Jack said. “Maurice had been itching to tell me about a find from the Egyptian desert since we came back from Atlantis, and I finally relented. It’s incredible.”
“Not another papyrus,” Costas said. “The last one got us into enough trouble.”
“This one’s Roman,” Jack said. “Just a scrap, but it holds a fantastic clue.”
“Another treasure hunt?”
“Ever heard of Alexander the Great?”
Costas saw the familiar gleam in Jack’s eye. “Okay. My kind of archaeology. You can count me in. Just no icebergs.”
“Deal.” Jack grinned and turned to Maria and Jeremy, but his expression changed as he saw Maria’s downcast face. “I’ve been meaning to ask, Maria,” he said gently. “Your Ukrainian heritage. I know the Jewish population were Ashkenazi, but any hint of anything farther back? I mean, I’m just trying to understand your passion for the Vikings.”
Maria lightened up and gave Jack a sad smile. “After I put my mother to rest last year, I spent a few days in Kiev, went to the Cathedral of Santa Sofia and studied the famous wall-paintings. The kings and queens who ruled Kiev in the Viking age, traders and warriors who came down the rivers in longships from the north. Blond, bearded, impossibly tall, the very image of Harald Hardrada and his court.”
“Varangians,” Jack murmured. “The Rus.”
“Before my mother died, she told me something of her family for the first time. A story of intermarriage far back in our past, of family legend that had us descended from Rus nobility.”
“Thought so.” Jack smiled.
“Looks like I’m the only one here who doesn’t have a drop of Viking blood,” Costas said.
“Don’t count on it. Halfdan’s inscription of Hagia Sofia isn’t the only evidence of Vikings in that neck of the woods. There’s another runic inscription on an ancient sculpture in Athens. It looks like Harald and his boys had some fun in Greece too. They got pretty well everywhere.”
Costas was looking at a map he had sketched of their adventure. “In the western hemisphere, anyway.”
Jack was serious again. “I also just spoke to the IMU security chief in the UK,” he said, addressing all three of them. “As a precaution, just before she was taken by Loki, Maria emailed the penultimate draft of the dossier she was helping O’Connor prepare to the IMU security chief. As we speak Interpol are instigating a number of high-profile arrests. Apparently the felag were heavily involved in international crime, money laundering, drugs and arms, the antiquities black market. One of them was even implicated in an audacious robbery at the Roman site of Herculaneum in the Bay of Naples, right under the noses of the Italian authorities. It looks like our friend Reksnys wasn’t the only one using the power of the felag to line his own pockets.”
“Seems a long way from the heroic ideals of Harald Hardrada,” Costas murmured.
“The modern felag had nothing to do with that.” Jeremy’s voice had an edge to it. “They were a criminal organisation, pure and simple. They had about as much historical legitimacy as the Nazis.”
“Apparently the dossier you and O’Connor compiled was crucial, the missing link that allowed Interpol to tie all these characters together,” Jack said to Maria. “And now that they’re implicated in murder, I don’t think we’ll be hearing from the felag for a good while.”
“What about that shadowy character in the Vatican?” Costas said.
Jack nodded, and a flicker of concern passed over his face. “That’s the one exception, I’m afraid. Reksnys nearly gave it away when he was boasting about his informers back in the chamber, but he stopped himself. O’Connor suspected who it was but wanted to be certain before telling us. His murder cut that short. That was Loki’s one small victory. But whoever it is, you can be assured he’ll be covering his tracks right now, keeping a squeaky-clean profile until the investigation dies down. Meanwhile we might uncover more in O’Connor’s records, some clue to who it is.”
“I’m going back to Iona to finish the job.” Maria’s eyes had clouded, and she forced a smile through her tears. “At least Father O’Connor kept his honour to the end. You remember what he said about the Vikings? Your fate is predetermined, so what matters is your conduct in life, your uncompromising behaviour. So you can enter Valhalla and stand alongside the gods at the final battle of Ragnarok knowing you have kept your honour and that of your brethren intact.”
“He was one Hardrada would have been pleased to have had alongside him,” Jeremy said.
“Such a waste.” Maria looked down again, her voice hoarse with emotion. “All that knowledge, all that humanity.”
“Scholarship is about continuity,” Jack said gently, putting his hand on her shoulder. “About passing on wisdom to the next generation, knowing it can provide the basis for new discoveries, revelations you can hardly guess at.” He glanced at Jeremy. “I think Father O’Connor did that.”
“Speaking of which.” Jeremy looked at Jack with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, and patted a package resting on his knees. “I had this flown in via Goose Bay in Labrador on the last helicopter shuttle. I wanted to see the real thing with my own eyes before telling you.”
Jack smiled warmly. “I thought we hadn’t heard the last from you.”
“You remember that afternoon with the old Inuit, when we talked about the disappearance of the Greenland Norse in the fourteenth century? That haunting final account, about how the Scraelings had taken the entire western settlement?”
“Go on.”
“The Hereford library has really come up trumps. Big time.” Jeremy clutched the package, his face flushed with excitement. “It’s what Norse scholars have dreamt of for years, a discovery as fabulous as any of Harald’s lost treasure. Found dumped with all the rest of the old stuff in that abandoned staircase.”
“Let’s hear it,” Jack said.
Jeremy stripped the bubble wrap from the package and revealed the hoary leather binding of an old book. “It’s phenomenal.” He turned to Maria. “The lost saga of the western Greenland settlement, Vestribyg?a Saga. Written down in the fourteenth century.”
Maria drew in her breath with sudden excitement and peered over Jeremy’s shoulder as he carefully opened the medieval codex to the final page.
“Does it give any details of what happened?” Costas asked.
“It certainly does.” Maria had been scanning the lines while Jeremy was talking. “By now you should be pretty familiar with this.” She pointed at two words in the centre of the page, and Costas peered down. “Haraldi konungi, our true king,” Maria said. “Harald Sigurdsson.”
Costas whistled. “Harald Hardrada! The Norse Greenlanders remembered, almost three centuries after he left!”
“And check out the symbol after his name.”
“Don’t tell me. The menorah.” Costas grinned as they all peered at the symbol like a rune among the Latin letters of the text. “We seem to have come full circle. Constantinople, Iona, the icefjord and Vinland, the Yucatan and now back to the musty old cathedral library that started it all.”
“This closes one loop, but then leads off somewhere fantastic,” Jeremy said. “Wait till you hear what the text says.”
Maria translated slowly as she traced her finger along the lines. “Anno Domini 1332. The leaders of the Vestribyg? determined to follow their true king Harald Sigurdsson to the Nor?rseta, and across the sea to the west.” She looked up. “They were fleeing Church oppression, like the Crusader tax imposed on them in the twelfth century. The Norse Greenlanders were pagans at heart. To them Harald Hardrada was their true king, not some distant pontiff in Rome.”
“So where did they go?” Costas asked.
Maria continued, her finger farther down the page. “North to the great icefjord where Halfdan the Fearless set forth in his ship to Valhalla.”
“Good God,” Jack murmured. “It actually mentions Halfdan and the longship.” He glanced over at Costas. “The iceberg wasn’t just a dream after all.”
“Nightmare, more like.”
“They numbered one hundred and twenty people, men, women and children, and after packing their ships with provisions they set off northwest, never to be seen again. They were led by Erling Sighvatsson, Bjarni Thordarson and Endridi Oddsson.”
“I know those names,” Maria said excitedly. “They’re on the Kingigtorssuaq runestone, found on an island north of the icefjord. The only other runestone found in Greenland until the longship discovery.”
“Sometimes the pieces really do all fall together!” Jack murmured, shaking his head in wonder.
“So you’re saying Bjarni and these characters led the refugees from Greenland towards the Northwest Passage?” Costas said.
“That’s what the saga implies.”
“Any chance they made it?”
“No reason why not,” Jack said. “They were the hardiest seafarers ever. Look at where Harald and his depleted crew got to after Stamford Bridge. They almost circumnavigated the western hemisphere. If the passages through from Baffin Bay to the Beaufort Sea had been free of ice in the summer of 1333, then the Greenlanders could have made it.”
“Vikings in the Pacific in the fourteenth century,” Jeremy mused. “So much for ancient Chinese voyages of discovery. The Vikings would have to take the cake.”
“I think you might want to get some of your anthropology colleagues out there to run a few DNA tests,” Costas murmured.
“It’s a fantastic thought,” Jack said. “All along we’ve been seeking Harald himself, his treasure. But maybe his greatest legacy was the survival of these people, the people in all the Norse world who were closest to his ways. His brief passage through their land may have been the beacon of light that saved them from a miserable end all those years later.”
“If that was his legacy, I can’t help thinking it would have satisfied him as much as any of his great victories,” Maria said, looking at Jack. “A way of ensuring that the best of his people lived heroic lives with honour to the end.”
Jeremy closed the book and slipped it into its protective wrapping, and then he and Maria stood up between Jack and Costas. For a moment all four of them stared out over the stern to the east, where the rays of the afternoon sun were playing far out across the swell of the Atlantic. To Jack the distant horizon of the Old World seemed to beckon him back, heavy with the radiance of history, yet the shores of the New World and the seas beyond now had an allure he would never have dreamt possible only a few days before. His mind flashed back to the Golden Horn in Constantinople, and a surge of excitement coursed through him as he thought of all they had done.
Costas was holding the jade pendant they had found with the skeleton under the cairn, and was peering at the two silver coins mounted in the eyes. After a moment he looked up at Jack, his expression slightly bemused. “So this is all we get of Harald Hardrada’s treasure?”
“One Viking coin, one Roman.” Jack’s face creased in a smile. “I think that’s pretty good, don’t you? By themselves no more than dislocated fragments of history, but together they tell a fantastic story, something I never would have believed possible before all this. We found Harald’s treasure all right. Those coins are worth all the gold in the world.”
“One final question,” Costas said. “The Byzantine princess, Harald’s other treasure from Constantinople. Maria’s namesake. Do you think she really was with him to the end? I fancy her surviving, becoming a fearsome queen of the Toltecs. That would certainly add some spice to history.”
“As if we needed spice after all this,” Jeremy said.
“You thought you saw a woman on the wall-painting, a Viking,” Costas said to Jeremy, who suddenly nodded as he remembered.
“For me, it’s the legend of the Valkyries,” Maria said. “Female riders from the spirit world who chose the slain in battle for Valhalla and then served them in the great feasting hall. I think Maria stayed with Harald to the end, a warrior princess, his thole-companion. She would have accompanied him to the afterlife. It was the Viking way. I think she’s up there now, feasting alongside him with the rest of his noble fellowship, the true felag.”
“Maria, Queen of the Valkyries,” Costas said, deadpan. “From what I’ve seen, it suits you.”
Jack grinned. “Time we sent someone else to join them.”
The ship had been slowing down and was now motionless in the water, the last tendrils of its wake sloughing off in the swell to the south. The captain came clattering down the gangway from the bridge and joined them on the deck. “We’re in position, Jack,” he said. “Any time.”
Jack nodded, looked appraisingly out to sea and then turned to a blanket-wrapped shape on the deck behind him. He carefully unrolled it and a dazzling object came into view. It was the mighty Varangian war axe they had taken from the longship, Halfdan’s prized weapon that had saved Jack and Costas from certain death in the ice. It was the first time Jack had held the axe since they had been winched away from their ordeal, and he felt a tingle down his spine as he clasped the oak haft and raised the gilded steel of the bit until it was level with his head. He slowly turned it from side to side, revealing the pendant shape of Thor’s hammer, Mjollnir, with the wolf’s head in the apex, and above it the double-headed eagle of Rome and Constantinople, all picked out in gold. On the other side he brought his hand against the runic symbols of Halfdan himself, marks made a thousand years ago when Halfdan had served his beloved leader in the glory days of the Varangian Guard, in the greatest city the world had ever seen.
The others moved wordlessly towards Jack and clasped their hands around the shaft. “Battle-luck,” Costas said.
“Battle-luck,” Jack repeated quietly.
Jack’s mind flashed back to the Golden Horn, to the extraordinary adventure that had brought them here. He thought again of Father O’Connor, of all he had done to keep the dark side of history at bay, of the terrible price he had paid.
A sea mist had begun to swirl around them, cutting off the ship and the grey swell from the outside world, as if they had been caught in a time warp. Just over the horizon to the west lay Vinland, the farthest outpost of the Vikings. For a fleeting moment Jack thought he saw the ghostly stern of a longship slipping into the mist, its curving stern carved in the snarling form they had seen in the ice. It was as if they were poised at the place where reality became myth, where the Viking world ended and the spirit world began, a journey into darkness and terror more awful than Harald and his men could ever have imagined.
Jack weighed the axe in his hands, then raised the cold steel and brushed it against his lips. Somewhere near here the last remnant of the iceberg would release Halfdan and his longship into the flow, the same stream that had taken his beloved king to the final showdown at the end of time. Halfdan would need to be girded well, fitted to stand proud alongside the companions of the battles he had fought when the Varangians had no equal in the world of men.
Jack paced forward and with one graceful movement lowered the axe-head behind him and swung the haft high in the air, releasing it at the last moment as the weight pulled him forward. The axe arched high over the stern and began to tumble, catching a sunbeam through the mist and disappearing in a dazzling tumult of light. It was like a wayward bolt of lighting, a swirling flash of energy from the Age of Heroes. Then it sliced into the sea and was gone, leaving only the barest of ripples, soon lost in the swell. Jack felt strangely light-headed, as if a weight had been lifted from his soul, and he leaned against the stern railing and gazed at the grey surface of the sea as the others came up alongside. He found himself mouthing the hallowed words of Old Norse, words that had lost their sinister overtones and spoke of a history more extraordinary than he could ever have imagined.
“Hann til ragnaroks.”