Crusader Gold

by David Gibbins

  “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 Yucatán. 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:

  Þar var ørœfi ok strandir langar ok sandar. Rak Þá skip Þeirra um haf innan.

  Sandar hvitir viδa Þar sem Þier fóru ok ósæbratt.

  “I can’t read the first line completely, but it has the word dœgr, 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.”

  “Then the flat land, covered with forest,” Jeremy said. “When I was a kid we sailed across to the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. That’s exactly what you see.

  It’s incredibly flat, a limestone plateau only a few metres above sea level, covered with dense scrub and jungle and surrounded by brilliant white beaches.”

  “And hot as hell in summer,” Costas said. “A land of fire and light.”

  “This is not just a wild guess. It’s all beginning to add up.” Jack lifted the jade pendant, then eyed Jeremy intensely. “And what about that final line?”

  Jeremy let out a low exhalation and gazed back at Jack, his face flushed with excitement. “I can make out three words. The first one is the standard Norse word for the underworld, the watery abyss at the edge of the world, Ginnungagap. The second is Ragnarøk. The third I’ve never come across before in Old Norse. It’s a proper name, a place-name. Ukilabnal, or something close to that. It looks like Harald and his men reached their day of reckoning at this place, their final showdown at the edge of the underworld.”

  “It didn’t work out for our friend.” Costas jerked his thumb at the skeleton. “I bet he wished he’d gone to Valhalla along with his buddies.”

  “Does the name mean anything to you?” Jack asked.

  “Oh yes.” Jeremy’s voice was hoarse, and he could hardly get the words out.

  “Anthropology 101. Luckily my undergraduate adviser forced me to keep my options open. Introduction to Mesoamerican Civilisation.”

  “Go on.”

  “In the eleventh century, Uukil-abnal was the name of Chichén Itzá, the greatest ceremonial centre of the Maya, smack in the centre of the Yucatán jungle.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Costas let out a sigh of satisfaction. “At last.” He stood up, arched his legs stiffly where they had been pinned down and looked with distaste at the drizzle that was enveloping him. “You guys with Viking blood may have some kind of yearning for all this misery, but it just leaves me cold.” He turned to Ben and Andy, who had been loitering nearby, and grinned broadly at them. “Pack your bags, boys. We’re going to Mexico.”

  16

  THE FIRST INKLING MARIA HAD THAT SOMETHING was wrong came just before midnight. She was hunched over a laptop computer in a monk’s cell three doors down from Father O’Connor’s study in the medieval cloister on the
isle of Iona. They had decided to stay up late and get the job done, two long days after she had waved Jack and the others off in the helicopter. She had been glancing at the photograph pinned on the wall in front of her, the extraordinary image of the jade pendant with the two coins that Jack had emailed her from L’Anse aux Meadows the day before. She was itching to be back, to be alongside Jack again.

  For the third and final time she was working through the document that she and O’Connor had prepared on the félag, straining her eyes to keep focussed on the screen. In a few minutes she would be able to copy the file to O’Connor and join him for a final proofread, and then they would email it off to his contact at Interpol in Austria. She was tired, as drained as she had ever been, but she was beginning to feel a glimmer of relief. They were not out of danger yet, but at least she had persuaded O’Connor to leave the monastery the next morning and accompany her back to the safety of Seaquest II.

  The first sign of trouble was a dull thumping in the corridor. No obvious cause for alarm, but Maria was edgy with exhaustion and nerves. She turned towards the door, slightly ajar, and the dark corridor beyond. It had gone quiet again.

  She had grown accustomed to the stillness of the monastery, but something was different. She felt a sudden chill, a presentiment of fear.

  Then without warning the door swung open. A gloved hand reached in and snatched its edge, stopping it from crashing into the wall. Then a dark figure advanced on her with lightning speed, head held low. Maria had no time to react. One hand slapped her head aside and savagely twisted her ear, another clamped her mouth. The table was hurled against the wall and a foot crushed her laptop. She was dragged violently backwards, through the door and into the corridor. The hand was wet against her mouth, sticky and warm. Her ear was twisted again and she was blinded by pain, her eyes watering, unable to breathe. Suddenly she was released and slammed face forward against the wall, her arms pinned behind her. Tape was slapped over her mouth and her wrists.

  Her assailant held her body tight to his and yanked her hair back. She could feel the coarseness of his skin against hers, the metallic smell of his breath.

  For a horrifying moment there was no movement. Maria began to shake uncontrollably. Her breath returned in short, searing gasps through her nose.

  She felt claustrophobic, about to suffocate. Her assailant snorted, pushed her sideways until she nearly fell, then jolted her through an open door and held her tight again from behind. She felt his breath against her ear, the nauseating smell.

  “Get a hold of that.” The words were snarled into her ear, the accent indefinable. Maria blinked hard to clear her eyes. She was in O’Connor’s study.

  Through the blur she saw the candle on his mantelpiece, the copy of the Mappa Mundi on the wall behind. The flame was flickering on the ink of the Red Sea and seemed to be throwing a red aura over the rest of the map. Maria felt light-headed, close to blacking out. She blinked again, desperately trying to clear the red tunnel around her vision. She saw the candle on his desk, the one she had lit for him an hour before. She looked down.

  There was someone on the floor. She felt her knees give way, and her assailant pulled her upright, squeezing her until she retched.

  She looked down again.

  Father O’Connor.

  Her heart lurched in horror. The candle cast a shadow over the floor, and at first all she saw was a dark form. Then she began to make out his head. His mouth was duct-taped, his eyes wide open. She struggled to make a noise, to speak to him, but her assailant stifled her nose. Surely O’Connor must see her, must realize she was trying to communicate. He remained still, his eyes staring. He was lying on his stomach, his head under his desk, his arms and legs splayed.

  He was wearing his brown monk’s cassock.

  Then she realised. The colour on the map. The sticky wetness on her face. The metallic taste.

  It was blood.

  She looked at O’Connor again. Something was horribly amiss. The darkness on his back was not his cassock at all. Then she knew, with sickening certainty.

  The blood-eagle.

  She looked frantically from side to side, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. There was blood everywhere. Soaking the remains of his cassock, seeping out in a pool under his body, splashed and spattered over his desk and books, flecked in livid trails over the ceiling.

  She forced herself to look again. She could see the gaping hole, the shape. From shoulder to shoulder, and down the back. The wings and the tail. On either side she saw things too awful to register. Lumps of bloody flesh. Rows of severed bone, a rib cage. Bulbous piles of organs, like offal on a butcher’s bench.

  Maria screamed, but no sound came out.

  Her assailant jerked his hand under her chin and pressed his cheek hard against hers. She could just make out his face, could see the leering smile, the murderous, washed-out eyes, the smears of drying blood. He began to rub his cheek against hers, his stubble rasping her skin like sandpaper, pressing her again and again with the smoothness of a scar that ran from his eye socket to his jawbone, all the while panting heavily, grinning obscenely at the carnage on the floor. She could feel his arousal, smell the adrenaline. Her mind began to shut down, seeking oblivion in the face of horror.

  “That was for my grandfather,” the voice whispered. “O’Connor was conscious when I cut out his lungs. He knew what was happening. The blood feud is finished. Now it is time for me to claim my prize.”

  He kicked her legs from under her and dragged her back towards the door. The last thing she felt was the throbbing pain in her cheek, her own blood mingling with O’Connor’s. Then there was blackness.

  Jack skillfully manoeuvred the Zodiac towards shore, allowing the boat to slide down under its own weight into each trough and then gunning the engine until it stood at the crest of the next wave. Above them the sky was flecked with high, fast-moving clouds heading south, and they were buffeted by a strong onshore wind which had been gathering strength all morning, raising a rapid swell. The air had the same pellucid quality they had seen in the Arctic, but even the wind could not disguise the burning intensity of the sun as it bore down on them, the glare blinding to their unaccustomed eyes. Behind them the breakers over the reef-girt shallows underlined the sleek form of Seaquest II, which was maintaining position over deep water a mile offshore.

  For Jack it was exhilarating to feel the spray of the sea again, after five days cooped up during the long voyage south from Newfoundland along the eastern seaboard of the United States and into the Caribbean. It was the same wherever he was, in the Arctic, on the Golden Horn, by the shore of Iona or Great Sacred Isle, an uplifting in his soul he felt every time he tasted the sea. He stood up, his left hand holding the throttle and his right hand holding the painter line from the bow, and motioned for the other two to slide forward and get ready. Just before entering the surf he killed the outboard and swung it up on its pinions. Costas and Jeremy leapt into the water on either side, holding the Zodiac against the surge and return of the breakers until it was pushed into an eddy beside a sandbar. They swung it round until the bow pointed into the waves and waited while Jack threw out the anchor. Once they saw he had things under control, they waded ashore, their black IMU wetsuits dripping with the warm seawater and their hair matted with spray.

  They were on a low, narrow beach backed by a continuous line of thorny jungle, the twisted trunks and strewn fragments of dead coral and driftwood testament to the severe hurricane damage of the year before.

  “Xerophytic scrub,” Jeremy panted. “Welcome to the Yucatán. Not really rain forest up here at all, but jungle in the true sense of the word.”

  “Wasteland, you mean.” Costas ventured a few feet into the tangled undergrowth, then backed out quickly, irritably brushing a spider’s web and midges from his face. “Give me the Caribbean over Greenland any day, but how a civilisation could have developed here is beyond me.”

  “The key to the whole Maya thing was fresh water.” Jeremy l
ed Costas along the beach until they came to the source of the sandbar, a channel of extraordinarily clear water about three metres wide that cut through the jungle and flowed into the sea. “The place is riddled with it. Some of these rivers come underground through amazing cave systems that originate far inland. I should be able to show you later on today.”

  “You’ve spent time here?”

  “Student field trips. Sweating in the jungle, measuring overgrown ruins, getting eaten alive.”

  “You should learn to dive,” Costas said drily.

  “That’s what Jack’s been telling me. He says you’re an advanced technical diving instructor, one of the best. Maybe when this is all over.”

  “A pleasure. Just don’t get any ideas about diving inside icebergs.”

  “I’ll leave the thrill-seeking to you guys.” Jeremy grinned. “I’d be in it purely for the archaeology.”

  “What was that place again, the Maya name on the runestone with my friend under the cairn?” Costas wiped away the sweat that was beginning to trickle down his face.

  “Uukil-Abnal,” Jeremy replied. “The name in the eleventh century for Chichén Itzá, the most famous archaeological site in the Yucatán. A fantastic overgrown city sticking out of the jungle. Pyramids and all that. I think that’s our next stop.”

  Jack came up after having anchored the Zodiac in the surf, and they began stripping their wetsuits to their waists.

  “Nice beach,” Costas commented. “But a little desolate.”

  “Cortés came here in 1519,” Jack replied. “But the conquistadors took one look and bypassed this place completely. They didn’t conquer the interior of the Yucatán until years later.”

  “I can see why.” Costas struggled out of the top of his wetsuit, then flinched as a gust of wind blasted sand against him. “So you think Harald Hardrada was here?”