David Gibbins - The Crusader's gold

“And he had his treasure,” Jack said.

“Chests of it,” O’Connor said. “They certainly weren’t going to the New World in search of gold. They already had so much they didn’t need any extra ballast. Silver coins, tens of thousands of them, Arab dirhams, English pennies of Cnut and Aethelred, coins from Harald’s empire and beyond. Gold and silver neck-torques, arm-rings, precious heirlooms of his ancestors. And all of Harald’s booty from his days with the Varangians in the Mediterranean, some of it melted down, some still intact. Priceless religious reliquaries and ancient jewellery. And to cap it all, the greatest treasure of Harald’s reign, the treasure which had been ennobled by his exploit in escaping Constantinople, which had come to mean far more than its weight in gold.”

“The menorah,” Jack murmured.

“If Vinland is the site of L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, then it’s pretty well due west from here, over more than two thousand miles of open ocean,” Maria said. “So what’s our longship doing way up in Baffin Bay at Ilulissat?”

“It’s in the sagas,” Jack replied. “Leif Eiriksson found Vinland by sailing first up the west coast of Greenland, then across to Helluland and Markland. These places correspond to Baffin Island and Labrador, and the staging point in Greenland must have been Disko Bay, at the narrowest point of the Davis Strait. Harald was following the best available navigational advice.”

“That’s what Kunzl must have worked out in the 1930s,” O’Connor said.

“So they overwintered at Ilulissat?” Maria asked.

“They were probably forced to stay by the pack-ice clogging up the sea,” Jack replied. “It would have been autumn when they arrived. The light gets poor, and ships get iced up by spray. Macleod said the slush ice begins to form in October, and when it hardens it can cut timbers like a saw. Overwintering would have been tough, but these were tough men used to hardship. They probably had some of the local Greenlander Vikings with them from the southern settlements, as guides and hunters. I wouldn’t be surprised if they camped in the same bay beside the icefjord where we saw Kangia, among the ancient tent circles.”

“It would have been especially tough on the wounded,” Maria said.

“Many must have perished on the voyage, and in the camp,” O’Connor replied. “By the time Halfdan died my guess is the number was so depleted they were easily able to spare one of the ships for the burial, the Wolf, the ship you saw in the ice. There weren’t enough hands left to man two ships.”

“So how did word get back?” Maria asked. “Two centuries later Richard of Holdingham knew they had reached Vinland, was confident enough to sketch it on his map. The archaeology indicates that the settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows was pretty short-lived, abandoned well before 1066, so it’s not as if there were regular supply trips that could pass on reports.”

“Jack was right about the Greenlanders,” O’Connor replied. “They were sympathetic to Harald, a fellow Norwegian, especially when they saw he had no intention of subjugating them and staying there. He swore them to secrecy, and the silver he gave them kept their trade with the Old World prosperous for generations to come. We know this because the felag sent out an expedition in search of Harald several generations later. Eirik Gnupsson, Bishop of Greenland and one of the felag, convinced his flock that he was a loyal follower of Harald, and learned what I have just recounted. He was told that Harald promised to leave a way-marker in Vinland if he and his companions decided to sail farther south. Richard must have been told this in the greatest secrecy, but nothing more. Eirik Gnupsson sailed for Vinland but was never heard of again. There was never another expedition, and the location of Vinland was lost to history. Even to the Greenlanders it became a kind of Avalon, a mythical promised land, ruled by the once and future king.”

“That reminds me,” Maria said. “The story of King Arthur. What about his queen, Guinevere? The menorah wasn’t the only thing Harald stole from Constantinople.”

“Ah. I was wondering when you were going to ask that.” O’Connor tapped out his pipe on the sand and smiled at her, their eyes meeting. “Legend has it that Harald was tended by a woman, her hair cropped short, dressed in the tunic and trousers of a man. History tells us that years earlier Harald had released the princess and returned her to Constantinople after he escaped. But we know your namesake was never kidnapped at all, that she was a willing participant. It was Maria who released Harald and his Varangian guardsmen from prison the night before their escape. She stuck with him through thick and thin, through his marriage of convenience to the Kievan princess Elizabeth, through all he needed to do on his road to kingship. She tamed him, became the true guiding light of his life. And in his ultimate bid for power, to conquer England in 1066, she accompanied him, to a kingdom where she would at last have been able to assume her birthright as a princess. Harald planned to install her as his consort, to crown her Queen of England.”

“Harald was fifty-one in 1066; she was maybe ten years younger,” Maria said. “Were there any other women in the two longships, when they set off to Vinland?”

“Maria was the only one.”

“Not the best advance planning for a new colony.”

“The Viking mentality.” Jack smiled. “Steal what you need when you get there. And remember, they were probably half crazed with exhaustion and pain, unable to think straight. Most of them probably thought they were going to Valhalla.”

The orb of the sun began to sink into the sea in the west, casting an orange glow over the eroded folds of bedrock that protruded from the slopes on either side of the bay. They looked silently out to sea, absorbing the muted radiance of the evening. “They say the holy isle is bathed in the bright light of angels,” O’Connor said. “It’s a light you see in places like this, where heaven and earth seem to meet, and in places where the crust of human endeavour has been peeled away to the bare rock beneath. The heart of the Forum in Rome, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.”

“Both places where the menorah has been,” Maria said.

“I’ve thought that,” O’Connor murmured.

Jack leaned forward, his eyes suddenly ablaze as he stared at the horizon. “The menorah was here, with Harald, at this very spot,” he said. “Ever since I saw Halfdan in the ice I’ve known we were on the trail, almost as if something were willing us on. All we need now is some clue, something more concrete about where they went after leaving the icefjord.”

O’Connor looked at Jack penetratingly, lighting his pipe again. “Halfdan gave you battle-luck, remember? He passed on the flame. Somehow I think there’s more ahead for you.”

They were beginning to get up when Jeremy came bounding along the sand, and they could see the burly figure of Costas straggling some distance behind. Jeremy came to a halt in front of them, flushed and excited, his ebullience back in full force.

“Well, what is it?” Jack said amiably. “Something else you’ve been concealing?”

“Not exactly.” Jeremy was struggling to regain his breath. “The Mappa Mundi. While you were in the berg. I knew it.”

“Slow down,” Jack said. “Take your time.”

Jeremy sank to his knees and extracted a rolled sheet from his carrying case, then took a few deep breaths and began to regain his composure. “Sorry. But this has got to be the most exciting thing yet.”

“Well?”

“Those hours I spent in my cabin. Avoiding you all,” Jeremy said apologetically. “Well, I was poring over a digital version of the map we found in Hereford, Richard’s exemplar, twelve hundred dpi resolution. Something was nagging me, something I thought I saw when Maria and I first unrolled the map in the cathedral chamber.”