David Gibbins - The Crusader's gold

Jeremy leaned forward for a closer look. “My palaeopathology’s a little rusty, but I’d say we’ve got a male, maybe late middle age.”

“Scraeling?” Costas said.

Jeremy shook his head. “The physiognomy’s European. And this guy’s tall, well over six feet. He could be one of the early English or French explorers, but I’d say these bones are older than that, really old. I’d say we’ve got ourselves a Norseman.”

Jack closed his eyes and swayed slightly. This could be it. He prayed that his luck would hold.

“Those are some pretty impressive scars on the bones,” Costas said.

“I’ve seen that before in Viking warrior burials in England,” Jeremy said. “Battle injuries caused by axes and swords. Not the kind you’d get from an encounter with Scraelings, who had no edged metal weapons. This guy was pretty severely hacked about. There are some odd scars that may be later injuries, particularly those ring marks around his wrists, as if he’d been shackled. But all the battle wounds I can see look well healed, a long time before he died.”

Jack looked pensively at the skeleton. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Remember there were other Norse out here,” Jeremy cautioned. “But it’s possible, just possible, that we’ve got another of Harald’s men, another one to add to Halfdan. The thing that baffles me is the age of the injuries. If he died on their voyage down from the icefjord, the slash marks from wounds at Stamford Bridge the autumn before would still be fresh on the bones. These ones had healed up years before, even decades.”

“And this isn’t a burial,” Jack said. “This guy crawled in here and holed himself in with those rocks. That’s why his bones haven’t been scavenged.”

“This might help.” Costas’ muffled voice came from under the rock, where he had squeezed his upper body into the space in front of the skeleton and was gingerly feeling in the darkness under the rib cage. He carefully prised out two objects and held the larger one out. Jack took it without thinking, his mind still on the puzzling enigma of the skeleton.

“Well, what is it?”

Costas re-emerged to see the other two staring agape at the object in Jack’s hand. It was a flat pendant, about the size of a small saucer, and was carved in a lustrous green stone, unmistakably jade. The curvilinear, undulating surface seemed abstract in design, but as they stared at it they could make out eyes, a beak, stylized wings.

“Holy shit,” Jeremy whispered. “It’s the Maya eagle god.”

Costas crawled out and brushed himself off. “Maya,” he said phlegmatically. “Mexico, the Yucatan. Temples in the jungle, human sacrifice. Am I right?”

“Impossible.” Jack carefully brushed a film of dirt from two silver discs that formed the eagle’s eyes. He stared at them, shook his head and passed the pendant to Jeremy. “It’s impossible. Tell me I’m not seeing things.”

“They’re coins,” Jeremy said quietly. “Okay. Let’s be clinical about this. The one on the left’s a Viking coin from England, a quatrefoil penny of King Cnut. Look, you can read CNVT REX ANGLO, with the crowned bust.” He flipped the pendant over. “You can see the reverse on the other side. ARNCETEL OEO, minted by a man called Arncetel at York. Cnut ruled from 1016 to 1035, but his coins were valued for their purity and are found in hoards across Scandinavia to at least the 1066 period.”

“And the other one?” Costas said.

“That’s Roman. Over to you, Jack.”

Jeremy passed back the pendant and Jack peered closely at the right-hand coin. “It’s a silver denarius of the emperor Vespasian,” he said. “IMP CAESAR VESPASIANVS AVG. A particularly fine portrait head of Vespasian, warts and all, with a laurel crown.”

“You’ve just lost me again,” said Costas. “Did you say Vespasian? The Roman emperor?”

“Old Roman bullion coins, gold and silver, sometimes found their way into Viking hoards,” Jeremy said. “Looted from old treasuries, brought back as curiosities by the Varangians from the Mediterranean.”

Jack raised his eyebrows, then turned the pendant over. He brushed the reverse of the coin gently with his finger and then stifled a gasp. “Good God. It’s a Judaea Capta coin. One of the coins issued by Vespasian after the Roman conquest of Judaea, in AD 70 or 71.” He angled the pendant towards the light and they could clearly see the seated figure of a woman in front of a Roman legionary standard, and below it the single stark word IVDAEA.

“Isn’t this what we’re after?” Costas said. “I mean, the lost treasure of the Temple in Jerusalem?”

“I may be wildly wrong,” Jack said fervently, “but I think we’ve got two coins from the treasure of Harald Hardrada. How they got into this pendant is a total mystery. Something extraordinary happened, something that brought this man back here years later, to a place he had first come to on Harald’s ship. And yes, this is what we’re after. It’s fantastic. This coin may have been minted from silver vessels looted from the Temple along with the menorah. Who knows, it may even have been touched by the emperor Vespasian himself. It could be pure coincidence that Harald had this coin in his hoard, but I doubt it. Harald knew his history, had been to Jerusalem. In his own mind and those of his followers, anything associated with the menorah and the Temple treasure may have added lustre to his name. I really feel we’re standing in Harald’s footsteps now. This is our best find yet, maybe the closest we’ll ever come to the menorah itself.”

“Maybe not quite the best find,” Costas said with a twinkle. “Take a look at this.” He reached into the shadows under the rock and picked up the second object he had found with the skeleton. “I think it’s another runestone.”

Jeremy excitedly took the flake of rock and peered closely at it. One side had been crudely smoothed and was covered with faint lines. “Similar to the runestone found by the Nazis on the longship,” he murmured. “Same basic futhark and time period, but different hand. The runes have really just been scratched on the surface, maybe the last act of this guy as he squatted under the rock.”

“Maybe that’s what he came back here to do, to leave a record,” Costas said. “Maybe he was keeping true to Harald’s promise to the Greenlanders.”

“Anything legible?” Jack asked.

“It’s easier for me to transliterate the runes into Old Norse, using the standard alphabet.” Jeremy whipped out a notebook, and they watched as he quickly penned a neat line of symbols across the page, occasionally backtracking to make emendations: ?ar var or?fi ok strandir langar ok sandar. Rak?a skip?eirra um haf innan. Sandar hvitir vi?a?ar sem?ier foru ok os?bratt.

“I can’t read the first line completely, but it has the word d?gr, runs, and the rune for the number twenty. I think it means they sailed for twenty runs, along a coast with long beaches and sands. Then their ship, the skip, was driven all about on the inner ocean, um haf innan. Then they came to a flat land, covered with forest, with extensive white sands wherever they went and shelving gently to the sea. The last two lines are also unclear, but the first of them seems to say a land of fire and light.”

“It’s just like you said, Jack,” Costas exclaimed. “Twenty runs, twenty days, takes them along the eastern seaboard. It’s a coast with long stretches of beaches and sands, especially when you get to Florida. Then the inner ocean. That sounds exactly like the Caribbean.”

“Driven all about.” Jack spoke with mounting excitement. “July, August, that’s the beginning of the hurricane season. They could have been blown right across the sea, lost all sense of where they were.”