“Forgive me,” she said.
“You’re forgiven,” he replied.
TEN
20 November
Base Hancock One
Greenland Ice Cap
When Lexy and Macaulay touched bottom, the other four were standing in the concave tunnel that had been hollowed out with steam hoses at the foot of the shaft. Their flashlight beams were all pointed in the same direction. Jensen was gaping at something, openmouthed.
She turned to look. In the glare of the powerful flashlights, it appeared that the ancient Viking ship was sailing straight toward her out of an icy fog. It was the living embodiment of something she had seen only in eleventh-century drawings.
Stepping closer, she marveled at the intricacy of the carvings along the tip of the bowsprit, which was coiled into the head of a sea snake. Familiar with its design, she was sure that the stern of the ship, still encased in the ice, was tapered into a similar carving.
“As the almighty bard once put it,” said Sir Dorian in his imposing voice, “‘I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, and make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres.’”
Lexy was examining the engravings on the carved sea chest that was tucked inside the bow section, when Hancock spoke for the first time.
“There will be ample opportunity to explore the secrets of the ship. Right now, we have a more important discovery to show you. Go ahead, Steve.”
Approaching a section of the ice beneath the keel of the ship, Macaulay began chipping away at it in a circular pattern with a hatchet. Within minutes, he had opened a hole large enough for them to get through.
Lexy crawled into the mouth of the cave on her hands and knees. Inside, she waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. To her left was the ice-covered surface of a smooth basalt rock wall. Twenty feet in, the cave began to widen and grew progressively higher.
All of them except Macaulay were able to stand up straight. After another ten feet, Hancock stopped and dipped his flashlight beam to the rock floor at the edge of the wall.
“It’s not possible,” said Sir Dorian.
It was the perfectly preserved body of a man. He was lying on his back with his arms crossed at his chest in the ceremonial pose of the dead. Beyond him lay another man, his boots a few inches from the first man’s head. He had been posed in the same manner. She saw that the line of bodies continued all along the edge of the wall.
“How many are there?” asked Falconer, bringing up the rear.
“Ten,” said Macaulay.
Sir Dorian reached the ninth body in the line.
“Look at this man,” he said.
The Viking’s mane of thick blond hair was nearly three feet long, and carefully arranged under his two massive arms. His head was resting on a rolled-up sheepskin sleeping bag. Lexy could see that his ice-covered skin had been fair. The open eyes were a startling blue.
“Note the dolichocephalic skull,” said Jensen almost reverently. “Pure Nordic. In his time, a young Teutonic god.”
The man’s outer cloak was trimmed in red and gold braid.
“And one of the leaders,” said Lexy.
“Are we allowed to examine their clothing?” asked Falconer. “It will give us clues to who they were and when they arrived here. We can’t do that without touching them.”
“Go ahead,” said Hancock.
Falconer knelt by the second man in line. His head and upper shoulders were covered by a hooded leather helmet that protected his ears and cheeks. A thin leather belt was cinched around the waist of his outer cloak. Hanging from it on one side were a long knife and a leather pouch. Falconer struggled to open the pouch and pulled out a fire starter.
“Not much good, I guess, after you’ve run out of fuel,” he said.
The Norseman’s outer cloak was frozen stiff. It covered his torso from the shoulders to the knees. The dense woolen material was trimmed off at his right shoulder blade.
“The weapon arm was always left free for sword work,” said Falconer.
Uncinching the man’s belt, Falconer pulled apart the frozen cloak. Beneath it, he was wearing a linen tunic with a button and loop at the neck opening, and two pockets at the waist. Under it, he wore loose-fitting leather trousers with straps under the heels. Cloth wrappings protected his legs from his knees down to his leather boots.
Falconer dug his fingers into the man’s waist pockets and came up empty.
“There’s one more body farther into the cave,” said Hancock.
The tenth Norseman was lying on his side near the back wall. He was clutching a chisel in his left hand. A double-headed hammer lay next to him on the cave floor.
“This one was a stonecutter,” said Sir Dorian, kneeling next to him. “Look at the condition of his hands.”
In the beam of her flashlight, Lexy saw a stone tablet leaning against the inner basalt wall, which was covered with ice. About three feet square, the face of the stone tablet was covered with faint markings, most of them also encrusted in ice.
“And this must be his saga of their expedition,” she said.
There were twelve horizontal lines of markings, each incorporating dozens of symbols. The top seven lines ran straight from left to right. The three at the bottom began to curve lower, reflecting the stonecutter’s weakening strength. The last one went almost straight downward.
“Maybe your stonecutter was drunk,” said Falconer.
“He was dying,” said Lexy. “His hands could barely hold the hammer and chisel.”
“And he was working in total darkness,” said Sir Dorian, picking up the closest firepot. Like the others on the cave floor, it was lying on its side.
Macaulay remembered the last words in Ted Morgan’s diary after his group of fliers ran out of fuel and became entombed in the same ice a thousand years after these men. Both Morgan and this stonecutter had left their final thoughts for rescuers who never came.
“Can you decipher any of it?” asked Hancock as Lexy knelt in front of the markings.
More than an inch of ice coated most of the face, making it impossible to read any of the markings behind it, although a few areas at the edges were clear and legible.
“It is written in the old futhork,” she said, “which presumably makes it pre–twelfth century.”
The first symbols on the top line were clear. To a layman, they would have looked like incomprehensible stick figures, but she translated them easily. Reading them made her shiver with excitement.
The numbers were 1016.
Training her flashlight beam at the other exposed markings along the edges, she translated another word at the beginning of the fifth line. The stonecutter had written Vinland. At the end of the following line, she read the word Leifr. The final set of symbols on one of the last erratic lines translated to the hallowed place. The rest of the saga was cloaked behind the ice.
“How much can you translate?” asked Falconer, his vision obscured by the others.
She was about to respond, when a drop of water splashed the top of her hood. It was quickly followed by two more. Jensen shined his flashlight up at the cave’s ceiling. It was starting to drizzle ice melt.
“If we don’t leave now, these men will begin to decompose,” he said, his Norwegian accent more pronounced, “and that would be a great loss to science.”
Hancock led them back out of the cave. In the tunnel near the foot of the shaft, he told Steve Macaulay to reseal the entrance with a large block of ice that had already been cut for the purpose.
When they reached the surface, Hancock turned to George Cabot and said, “Cut all the juice to the elevator cage and to the power winch down below. And make sure it stays off.”
“Check, Boss.”
ELEVEN
21 November
&nb
sp; Base Hancock One
Greenland Ice Cap
They emerged from the elevator rig into the violent grasp of another storm.
“Temperature’s dropping again,” shouted Macaulay to Hancock above the blast of arctic wind that forced them to bend over almost double as they crossed the small snow-packed compound.
Inside the operations tent, two members of the communications team were slumped asleep in front of the bank of radio and telecommunications equipment. Another was watching a download of The Shawshank Redemption on his laptop while he waited for messages.
Lexy went straight to the stainless steel coffeemaker. Macaulay joined her there.
“You deciphered some of it, didn’t you?” he said. “I can see the excitement in your face.”
“Is it that obvious?” she asked.
The others joined them for coffee. Hancock laced his mug with a big dollop of Armagnac. Sir Dorian poured only the brandy into his own. Above them, the roof of the tent shuddered and swayed from the power of the wind.
“So, what have we learned so far?” asked Hancock as they all moved closer to the tent’s space heaters.
Sir Dorian spoke first. It was clear to Lexy that the trip to the cave had severely sapped his strength. She could see the pain behind his eyes as he took a long swig of brandy.
“I’m confident that carbon dating will confirm that the men in that cave have lain there since the early eleventh century,” he said.
“Were you able to read any of the markings?” Hancock asked Lexy.
“The first rune symbols in the saga recorded a date,” she responded. “The year 1016.”
Her statement was met with stunned silence.
“I was also able to translate two other small sections at the edges of the text. They included the words, Leifr, Vinland, and the hallowed place.”
A look of astonishment registered on Jensen’s face.
“If that’s true . . . ,” he began, and then stopped.
“If what’s true?” asked Hancock.
“Perhaps a little history is in order,” said Sir Dorian, looking at Hancock. “In the year of our Lord 982, the Viking Erik the Red, who was looked upon by many as a deity and who had been banished from Iceland over a blood feud, came to this desolate place and called it Greenland. The year 982 is the first indisputable date of European arrival in American history.”
“You mean the far north,” said Hancock.
“Call it what you will,” said Sir Dorian. “It’s no farther from here to the American mainland than the Bahamas archipelago was when Columbus arrived there on his way to America five hundred years later.”
“But Columbus got to our mainland first,” asserted Hancock.
“Perhaps,” said Jensen.
“After Erik the Red explored these waters,” resumed Sir Dorian, “he built a settlement on the southwest coast of Greenland near Cape Farewell. Then he went back to Iceland and organized a fleet of ships to bring hundreds more settlers to his new paradise.”
“But that was thirty years before our stonecutter made those markings down there,” said Hancock.
“Correct,” said Sir Dorian. “My point is that those first settlers, and the thousands who followed, quickly discovered there was no timber to build homes for their families or shelters for their livestock. The winters were fearsome, as you will discover if we stay here much longer. They yearned to explore farther south to warmer climes.”
As if to confirm his argument, one of the tent poles buttressing the roof suddenly snapped off with a loud crack. In now-obvious pain, Sir Dorian winced as he tried to settle comfortably in his chair. Another swallow of Armagnac temporarily restored his spirits.
“Which brings us to Leif the Lucky, Leif Eriksson, the son of Erik the Red,” he continued. “Dr. Vaughan told us that she found the letters L-E-I-F-R among the rune markings in the cave. Leifr is the old Norse spelling of the anglicized Leif.”
“Maybe there was more than one Leif,” said Hancock. “The name had to be pretty common in Norway and Iceland.”
“No,” said Sir Dorian. “In conjunction with the date of 1016 and the few other words Dr. Vaughan translated, we’re dealing with a Norse deity here, possibly his last expedition.”
“What do we really know about him?” asked Macaulay. “The truth—not the legend.”
“He was born in 980,” said Sir Dorian. “At just nineteen, he sailed across the North Atlantic from Greenland to Norway, almost two thousand miles, in a small open boat. No one had ever done it. He was the finest navigator of his age.”
“How did they navigate a thousand years ago?”
“The early Norse explorers had no way to plot longitude,” said Sir Dorian, “but they learned how to determine latitude by using primitive sun shadow boards that had a pin in the center surrounded by concentric circles. It was crude but effective. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found one in the ship down there.”
“It doesn’t sound very exact,” said Hancock.
“It was exact enough for them to make it all the way to the Volga River in Russia and the Nile in Egypt,” said Falconer.
“Eriksson was twenty-three years old when he led a sailing expedition south of Greenland and discovered a place that he called Vinland,” said Sir Dorian. “According to the Flateyjarbock . . .”
“The what?” asked Hancock.
“The Flateyjarbock or Flatey book,” said Sir Dorian, “is a medieval manuscript in which the most significant Norse events are recorded, like the discoveries of new lands. It includes descriptions of Vinland.”
“So where is it?” asked Hancock.
“No one knows for sure,” said Lexy. “In the sagas, it was described as a place where salmon teemed in the rivers and there were many species of wild game. Grapes grew there in great abundance. The Norsemen were fond of wine.”
Sir Dorian’s eyes momentarily flashed.
“The natural grapevine was quite rare in Nova Scotia and even as far south as Maine and New Hampshire,” he added. “However, it did grow in abundance along the shoreline of Massachusetts.”
“You’re saying you believe that Vinland was Massachusetts?” asked Hancock.
“There is no proof of it,” said Sir Dorian, “or you Americans would be celebrating Leif Eriksson Day every year. What we do have is a good idea of Eriksson’s sailing course, which is described twice in the sagas. It records that he was traveling southwest for two days from Markland, or Nova Scotia as we now know it, before he sighted land. He could easily have traveled three hundred miles in those two days and nights. At that point, he recorded sailing westward between a large island and a cape to reach the place where he spent the winter. Only two places fit that description—the Cape Cod Peninsula and Nantucket.”
“Hell, he might have run into a storm over those two days. It could have been a hundred miles,” said Hancock, unconvinced, as two members of the expedition team made temporary repairs to the roof of the tent.
“One more point,” said Sir Dorian. “Eriksson and his men spent a winter in Vinland. They cut down trees to build houses, and stacked a large number of cut logs to bring back to Greenland, where there were no trees. But when spring came, Eriksson left without them. We can only assume that he expected to return.”
“Then why didn’t he?” asked Hancock.
“When he returned to Greenland, his father, Erik the Red, had died,” said Jensen. “Fever broke out in the settlements. Leif became their leader. In any event, there is no record of him ever going back.”
“That’s all you’ve got?” asked Hancock, obviously disappointed.
“Unfortunately, there is no hard evidence,” concluded Lexy.
“Unless it’s five hundred feet below us,” said Rob Falconer.
In the ensuing silence, another brutal gust of wind split open the northern end of the tent wall an
d knocked over the metal stand holding the coffeemaker. One of the team members grabbed a canvas tarp and headed out into the darkness.
“Do we know when Eriksson died?” asked Macaulay.
“We know that he was still alive in 1015,” said Jensen, the expert in Norse genealogy. “There is no mention of his death in the sagas.”
“What do you think the stonecutter meant when he wrote about the hallowed place?” asked Hancock. “Could it be Valhalla . . . the home of the Norse gods?”
“I think the saga will tell us that he is in the hallowed place,” said Lexy.
“Who is there?” asked Hancock.
“Leif Eriksson,” she said.
“On what basis do you assume that?” he asked.
She hadn’t really thought about it up to that moment. It had simply occurred to her. Perhaps it was something she had absorbed down there without even noticing it. There was no reasonable basis for the conclusion.
“Call it instinct,” she said.
“We will hopefully find the answer to that and many other questions when we have translated the rest of the stonecutter’s markings,” said Sir Dorian.
“All right,” said Hancock. “We’re going to have to move fast. Tonight, we’ll bring the Norsemen up in body bags and put them in cold storage to prevent further decomposition until we arrange for a transport with freezer units. After that, we’ll collect their tools, weapons, and other personal belongings, cataloguing everything we find before crating it all to ship back to Texas. While that’s being done, Dr. Vaughan will go down to the cave and begin translating the rest of the rune markings on the stone. We need to bring that up with special care. Another team can clear the ice away from the Viking ship. We obviously can’t raise it right now, but it may have valuable items in the hold.”
“Mr. Hancock,” Sir Dorian interrupted, his voice rising, “I must protest. . . .”
“I’ll also need recommendations on the laboratories that are best equipped to do scientific and medical research on a fully preserved thousand-year-old man,” went on Hancock. “The Texas Aggies will kiss my ass to get one of those guys.”
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