A Bone to Pick

by Gina McMurchy-Barber

  Dedicated to Children of Integrity Montessori School

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Author's Note

  Selected Reading

  Acknowledgements

  There are many people who helped me bring this book to life. I am grateful to my editor, Michael Carroll, for his respectful editing of my manuscript and for being the first to see the potential of Peggy Henderson and her archaeology adventures. I also want to thank Victoria Bartlett who — as so often in the past — asked good questions and gave useful feedback. And, finally, I want to thank three fabulous authors — Lois Peterson, Mary Ellen Reid, and Cristy Watson — for their attention to detail, lively discussions, and great cookies.

  There are no ordinary moments. There is always something going on. Be present, it is the only moment that matters.

  — Old Norse Saying

  Prologue

  Sigrid learned at a very young age to be decisive in the face of danger. That is why the second her eyes fall on the great white bear she drops the driftwood and snatches the infant boy into her arms. She backs slowly toward the settlement, never taking her eyes off the giant lumbering in her direction, its nose in the air following her scent. Sigrid knows to turn and run is futile. But the determination of the hungry old bear forces her to review her plan.

  As Sigrid quickly scans the barren, rolling landscape, she sees a large boulder a short distance away. It is her only option and, however slim, her only line of defence. When she reaches it, she pushes the little fellow under the slight overhang.

  “Freeze, Snorri,” she whispers. The child instinctively huddles against the cold rock as though it were his mother.

  Sigrid slowly pulls out the long silver pin holding her cloak together and throws the garment to the ground. For an instant the pin’s shiny shaft catches the light. She grips it by the intricately carved handle, and it is now a dagger in her hand. For a brief moment she thinks of her uncle’s sword, the one he takes wherever he goes. What she would give to have such a weapon now! Or even her tiny fish knife would be better.

  There is no time for wishful thinking. The bear is so close that Sigrid can hear its deep, heaving breaths. It must be painfully hungry, for it takes no caution and must think her an easy kill. For a brief moment she looks to the sky and pleads with the gods to give her courage to battle with this son of Aesben. Then she kisses the tiny hammer-shaped amulet hanging around her neck. It is the only thing she owns that belonged to her mother. “Thor’s Mjolnir — it will protect you my dear daughter in times of danger,” said Mother the day she gave it to her.

  Sigrid has only one objective and only one chance — to drive the cloak pin deep into the animal’s neck. In the very moment that the bear is nearly upon them, Sigrid clambers to the top of the boulder and springs onto the creature’s back, letting out her fiercest Viking battle cry. In that instant she is a fearless warrior, like those in the great Norse sagas — those epic tales of gods, of their wars, of heroism, of brutality. Each story prepared her for this moment, for this life-or-death battle.

  In one swift movement she raises the pin above her head and brings it down with all her might, driving it into the bear’s throat. The animal lets out a frightening bellow as its blood gushes out upon its white fur. The bear rises to its hindquarters, throwing Sigrid to the ground while her pin is still lodged in the beast’s throat. In a frenzy the animal whirls around. There, on the ground, is its attacker, no longer able to rise and defend herself.

  The bear lifts its mighty paw and, with claws protruding like blades, sweeps up the girl’s body and hurls her into the air. As she lands hard a second time, she hears her own bones crack in too many places and wails in agony.

  Just as the bear is about to bring down yet another pulverizing blow onto Sigrid’s small body, a hail of arrows whiz through the air and pierce, one after another, the creature’s massive white body, now nearly covered with its own blood. The animal roars in anguish and staggers a short distance until it falls onto its side in a heap, groaning. Before the bear heaves its final breath, Sigrid slips into unconsciousness.

  When she wakes, she no longer feels any pain. In fact, she no longer feels any part of her body at all. Has she died? she wonders. Then she hears in the distance the faint voices of the Norsemen fast approaching. It must have been their stream of arrows that finished the bear off. But then why did the arrows hail from the cover of the forest opposite the settlement? That is not her people’s way. Could it have been the skraelings again?

  Remembering her tiny charge, Sigrid calls out weakly to the boy. “Snorri, all is well. Come out.” The little fellow crawls to her side, his small mouth puckered in fear and his cheeks stained with tears. Were she able she would comfort him in her arms, but all she can do is set her eyes intensely upon him and hold his gaze.

  “Everything is all right, now. You’re safe and Papa Thorfinn is coming.”

  The toddler sniffles and rests his tiny head on her shoulder, sucking his thumb for comfort.

  Sigrid tries not to think about why her limbs do not obey her command to rise from the ground. But try as she might she cannot deny that her breathing is growing shallower with each breath.

  “Should I die today will my people remember me for this deed, Snorri? Is giving my life for yours the act of a fearless Viking?” Her heart burns within, for nothing greater could she want than to be remembered as a true warrior.

  Sigrid’s eyes are closing, and she knows her inner light is fading. Before it is too late she sends up a prayer to Odin, the god her father worshipped.

  “Oh, great Allfather, send your Valkyries to my side. Let them take me to live in Valhalla where I may sit at your feet in glory. Let not my death in battle with one of Aesben’s sons be in vain.” Sigrid heaves her last breath, hoping she will awake in the presence of the gods.

  Chapter One

  I let out an exaggerated sigh. “You know, Aunt Margaret, this brush is way too good to be used for painting the house.” I ran the soft bristles over my hand and admired its perfectly formed wooden handle, while at the same time appreciating it for its greater potential.

  “Too good to be used to paint? That’s a pretty lame excuse for getting out of painting the house with me today. C’mon, Peggy, surely you can do better than that.” Aunt Margaret pried off the lid and started stirring the turquoise paint she’d bought that morning.

  “I admit it’s not something I feel like doing. But I’m serious. This brush would be perfect for excavating —”

  “Ha! I should have guessed — excavating indeed.” Aunt Margaret snorted out a laugh — a trait of the women in my family.

  “Yes, excavating,” I defended, feeling annoyed.

  “I thought an archaeologist needed trowels and shovels for excavating.”

  “They do, but once they find something really old, they have to have a tool that can gently remove the sand or dirt from the bones or artifacts that won’t damage them. Imagine you found a perfectly preserved skeleton that was thousands of years old — would you want to be the one that came along and ruined it? That’s why an archaeologist needs a brush like this.”

  Aunt Margaret snatched it from my hand. “Well, today this isn’t an archaeologist’s tool, but rather a paintbrush that’s going to be used to give new life to our old house. And you, young lady, will have the privilege of using it.” She plunged the brush into the can of paint and slapped i
t on the side of the house, leaving a long streak of glistening turquoise. “There, you see. It’s going to be beautiful. Now get to it.”

  I heaved another sigh and took the now-damaged brush from my aunt. Helping her to paint the house was an idea she and Mom had cooked up as a way for me to earn my own spending money over the summer. I’d tried my best to argue that I didn’t really need much spending money. After all, when you lived three blocks from the beach, all you needed was a bathing suit, a towel, and a couple of friends.

  “And where will you get the money to rent a skiff at the marina when you feel like sailing?” Mom had argued. “And money for scuba diving with Vince Torino and TB? And how do you plan to pay for all those archaeology books you want to buy online?”

  “Okay, I get it,” I’d grumbled. My mom was a single parent, and I’d been taught young that money didn’t grow on trees. I guess we were lucky — if you could call it lucky — that my mom’s bossy sister and Uncle Stuart had invited us to live with them until Mom could afford to pay for a place of our own.

  At first, coming to live with my aunt and uncle at Crescent Beach had been rough. But then the greatest thing in my life had happened. One summer day Uncle Stuart and I were digging a hole in the backyard for our new koi pond when we accidentally unearthed the remains of a three-thousand-year-old Coast Salish carver. That was when we first learned that Crescent Beach was actually a Coast Salish summer fishing village dating back five thousand years.

  When it became clear that what at first seemed to be a large round stone was actually a human skull, everyone was in shock — well, mostly Aunt Margaret. The only thing we could think of was to call the police, who knew exactly what to do with our mystery man. They called in a provincial archaeologist, Dr. Edwina McKay. She was an expert in bones — an osteologist.

  That summer Dr. McKay — or Eddy as I came to call her — taught me a lot about excavating, and how to interpret the information that ancient bones told us about a person’s life and death. Besides learning a lot about the First Nations people who once lived in Crescent Beach, I also discovered I had a passion and talent for archaeology. You could say from that time on I was hooked on it.

  And speaking of really old things, Eddy was one of my best friends. She got me. And thanks to her I’d been on three important excavations. My most recent was at the tip of Vancouver Island looking for a sunken fur trade ship. That was the reason why I’d gotten into scuba diving. Now, when I wasn’t on some archaeo­logical dig, I was reading and dreaming about artifacts and bones and … well, pretty much anything to do with archaeology.

  So, for obvious reasons, being drafted into painting my aunt’s house felt like a prison sentence. That first day had been nothing short of agonizing — and not just because we’d spoiled a perfectly good archaeological tool. As the hot sun beat down on me, I watched jealously as tourists arrived in carloads. I knew they were all heading to Blackie’s Spit where they’d park and then land themselves a spot on the beach for the day.

  Then that afternoon the ice-cream man showed up and almost drove me crazy. He went by our house three times — the sound of his tinny music playing the same two bars of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” over and over was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Each time he passed our house he slowed down as if trying to wear me down. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and ran after him, waving my money like a six-year-old.

  By suppertime I was so tired I could hardly sit up, and holding my fork was painful. While I chewed my spaghetti and meatballs, all I could think about was how dreadful my life was going to be for the next two weeks.

  “Peggy, you’ve worked very hard today. I’m proud of you, sweetie,” Mom gushed. “Why don’t you call TB and see if he’ll go for a swim with you?”

  “Mom,” I slurred, “I’m so tired I can barely hold my eyelids open, let alone get on my bike, ride to the beach, and then swim.”

  “Oh, c’mon. It will be refreshing,” urged Aunt Margaret. Debating with my aunt was usually a favourite pastime of mine, but I didn’t even have the energy for that until she dropped a bomb on me. “By the way, I saw your friend the archaeologist at the grocery store today. She tells me she’s off to work in Newfoundland — said something about Vikings.”

  I sat upright and nearly gagged on my meatballs. “Newfoundland — no way! Well, did Eddy say anything about me?” Funny. A moment before I was too tired to even argue with Aunt Margaret. Now I felt as if I were going to jump off my seat like a jack-in-the-box. “When’s she going?” I muttered more to myself than to anyone else. “Maybe I can go, too.”

  Aunt Margaret snorted. “You’re joking, right? Of course, you can’t go —” she started saying.

  “Mom, can I be excused? I have to make a call.” Not waiting for her answer, I dashed out of the room. A few moments later I was punching in numbers on the phone. “Hey, Eddy, it’s me.”

  I heard her chuckle on the other end of the line. “I was wondering how long it was going to take before I heard from you.” I could feel her smile coming through the phone line. “But, Peggy, before you get your hopes up, you should know that this isn’t my show. I’ve been asked to teach archaeology field school for Memorial University. One of their professors cancelled at the last minute, and it looks as if I was the only one who could fill in on such short notice.”

  “But Aunt Margaret said something about Vikings. I didn’t know you were an expert on Vikings,” I said, feeling my newfound energy starting to drain away.

  “I’m not an expert on Vikings, but I do know about archaeology and excavating. I guess they were desperate and I was available.”

  “So what exactly will you be teaching?”

  “These students have done a lot of classroom learning, but they’ve yet to go out into the field and put their theoretical knowledge into practice. They still need to learn the methods of excavating a site — surveying, mapping, setting datum points, using tools properly …”

  “In other words, things I already know how to do.”

  Eddy chuckled again. “Believe it or not, Peggy, you still have much to learn.”

  “Maybe so, but I bet I know more than the students you’ll be teaching at field school.”

  “Well, you could be right.”

  “So I still don’t get what the Vikings have to do with field school.”

  “Right, well this year Memorial’s field school is at a place at the northern tip of Newfoundland called L’Anse aux Meadows. A while back a couple of archaeologists discovered some Viking artifacts there. After eight years of excavating, they proved it’s an authentic Norse site — in fact, it’s the only one in North America,” explained Eddy. I remembered learning a bit about the Vikings in school. Like how they came to the East Coast of Canada a thousand years ago. “It turned out to be so important that the place is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

  “Is that the organization that protects special places and things?” I asked Eddy.

  “That’s right, although they do a lot more than that.” There was a moment of silence over the line. “So, anyway, L’Anse aux Meadows is where this year’s field school is going to take place. And I’m really excited because I haven’t been there in nearly twenty years.”

  Hmm. I needed a few moments to think this through. I was practically Eddy’s sidekick — like Robin was to Batman or Tonto to the Lone Ranger. If Eddy was going to Newfoundland to teach a bunch of greenhorns how to excavate, there had to be something I could do to help.

  “I know what’s going through your head, Peggy. Believe me, if there was something I could do, I would. But these students are serious about having a career in archaeo-­logy and have paid a lot of money to attend this special summer course. I don’t think they’d be happy about having a thirteen-year-old girl — as experienced and knowledgeable as she may be — teach them about excavating.”

  “Okay, then, sign me up. I’ll go as a student.”

  “If, and I am saying if you could sign up as a student, ju
st where would you get the $2,500 for tuition and living expenses, plus $1,000 for airfare?”

  My jaw fell, and I sighed. “Oh, right.” Even with all the money I had in my savings and the money I would get paid to paint the house, I’d have nowhere near enough.

  “I’m sorry. If something changes, you’ll be the first to know,” said Eddy.

  By the time I hung up, the overwhelming tiredness I’d felt at dinner had returned.

  That night, as I lay in bed disappointed and sleepy, Mom popped into my room to say good night.

  “It would have been wonderful if you could have gone, Peggy,” Mom said. “But if going to Newfoundland to excavate a Viking site isn’t in the cards, then something equally wonderful is right around the corner. You’ll see.”

  “Mom, I appreciate that you want to cheer me up, but I seriously doubt there’d be anything as cool as going with Eddy to see where the Vikings lived.” I pulled the blanket over my head.

  As unlikely as it was, I went to sleep that night hoping Eddy would find a way to take me. After all, miracles did happen, right?

  “Here’s a thought — how about I go out and get started on painting while you stay here and make the chili for dinner?” Aunt Margaret suggested cheerfully after Mom left for work the next morning.

  Now it was my turn to snort out a laugh. “Right, me make dinner? You know I have a hard time boiling water without burning it.”

  “Oh, come on, Peggy. Anyone can cook. You’ve done it before. You just have to follow the recipe.” I watched her load measuring cups, cans of tomatoes and beans, spices, and a bunch of other stuff onto the counter. “Here’s the recipe — just follow it exactly and you can’t fail.” She handed me the piece of paper, which read: BEST CHILI CON CARNE ON EARTH.

  I decided being left to make chili was probably better than standing in the heat slopping paint on the house and on myself. I skimmed through the recipe — it said something about browning meat and onions first. Now to me that just didn’t make sense. Why cook the meat and onions first when they were just going to have to go into another pot to cook again? Instead, I took a shortcut and threw all the ingredients into one big pot and turned up the stove good and high so it would cook faster. Why have chili for dinner when we could have it for lunch? Doing things my way saved not only time, but also meant one less frying pan to wash up. Satisfied that maybe I was better at cooking than I gave myself credit for, I strolled outside.