‘That it was, lass. These new finds are Viking, right enough. There’re armbands, rings, brooches, clips, along with silver ingots that they used for money and a purse o’ actual coins, gold ones. The museum folk are right excited.’
‘They would be.’
His car rattled down the hill past the golf course, over the mile-wide neck of land between the North Sea and the Atlantic, and around the curve. Now the west was spread before us: the grey roofs of Scalloway, dominated by the ruins of Earl Patrick’s castle, a red stone Scottish example of the fairy tale château where Maman had sung. Behind it, the sky glimmered blue on the water. The hills were still winter fawn, but the road verges showed the first blue-green haze of new grass, and as we came down into the town and along the main street the gardens were bordered with white and purple crocuses.
‘I put your cat to the boat, and left your engine running,’ Magnie said, forgetting Vikings for matters of more immediate importance. He’d been looking after Cat over the weekend.
‘How did he get on with your Tigger and Siam?’
‘There was a war on. I had to keep him in the shed, poor beast, shut in, I was that faerd he would escape and try to walk back to Scalloway. But he’s waiting for you on board now, safe and sound.’
The car drew up in front of the marina, handily situated right beside the North Atlantic Fisheries College, where I’d been studying since August. As I got out, I spotted a grey shadow crouched against the gatepost, and called him. ‘Cat! I’m home.’
He detached himself from the dimness and trotted towards me, tail held high. I crouched down to make a fuss of him. He was nine months old now, my Cat, and had grown from a scrawny kitten to a beauty: grey fur faintly striped with palest grey; neat white paws; and a great plume of a tail with a pale underside. I opened the gate and motioned Magnie before me. ‘Come and get a cup of tea, and tell me all the gossip.’
‘Lass, you’re only been away a weekend, there’s no much happened in that time.’
‘There’s this treasure.’ I opened the washboards of my Khalida, paused in the cockpit to enjoy a long breath of salted air, then descended the three steps that fronted the engine. Home.
She was a small yacht for these days, my Khalida, only eight metres from bow to stern, but she was a tough little sea boat, and I’d taken her from the Med to Norway, then across to Shetland. Next week, with weather, I’d be sailing her to Kristiansand. I lit the lantern, and the wooden bulkheads and fiddles sprang to life, brown veined with gold warming the white fibreglass of her roof. Her cabin was just over two metres across, with a central aisle. To port were the chart table, two-ring cooker and sink; opposite, the long couch was cushioned in seamanlike navy and bisected by a little prop-legged table that was put away at sea. The hanging locker and heads – a pump-action toilet – were past the first wooden bulkhead, and behind the second was the pointed forepeak, with its vee-berth and anchor chain running up to the hawser pipe on the foredeck.
I put the kettle on and reached for the biscuit tin. ‘Come on, then, tell me all about it.’
Magnie settled back into the corner. ‘Well, it was Keith Sandison as found the first cache. You’ll likely no’ ken him, he’s a piece older as you, but younger as me. He’s a far-oot cousin on me mother’s side.’ He paused to consider. ‘He was starting at the fishing when I left on my third voyage to South Georgia. He’ll be just about sixty.’
I set his tea in front of him, a good mahogany colour, the way his late mother had made it, then sat down myself on the warm engine-box cover. Cat jumped into my lap, made a circle, and settled down, purring.
‘Thanks to you.’ He took a swig, helped himself to a ginger nut, broke it into three pieces using his elbow, and continued. ‘So, Keith has a croft just above Underhoull – that’s one o’ the Viking sites. Someone gave him this metal detector gadget for his Christmas, and he looked round the house and found nothing, then when the weather bettered, he took it a sweep over his parks, and when he came to this particular spot it went crazy. So he got his spade, and began to dig, and not a foot below the grass he found this pot. Well, he kent he shouldna disturb archaeological items, but he was that eager to find out what he’d got that he went on and dug it up, there and then, and wrapped it in a bit o’ sacking and carried it home and dumped it on the kitchen table.’
Magnie’s weathered face broke into one of his rare grins. ‘His wife, Maggie, she had a good deal to say about that. And when he’d shut up her sharging, and cleaned a bit o’ the earth off, he opened the pot up, and there was the treasure, all wrapped in cloth. Gold rings, like I said, and silver, and armbands, and a most beautiful worked cross, and brooches.’ He glanced around, as if someone might be listening, and lowered his voice. ‘His wife keepit the bonniest for herself, but dinna tell the archaeologists that. And this leather purse o’ coins, silver and gold.’
‘Amazing.’
‘So he took photos o’ it all, then he phoned the archaeologist, Val Turner, and she came to have a look. They were just dealing wi’ it quietly, no publicity. But Maggie mentioned it to her neighbour, and it got known round Unst, then this two young boys decided they’d have a go, so they got out a metal detector, and walked the fields around Belmont, and they found a cache too, not as big, but still wi’ a good mix o’ armbands and brooches and coins. They went straight to the Shetland Times, and they mentioned Keith’s find. After that, the archaeologists took it away. He was awful turned about that, but any fool coulda telt him they would.’ He took another gulp of tea. ‘And no doubt that museum in Edinburgh will find this is o’ “national importance” an’ aa, and keep it down there, instead of showing it here, where it was found. Keith’s fairly rampaging about it.’
‘He’ll get compensation, though, won’t he?’
‘He doesna want money. He’s a fisherman, and doing fine. He wanted his treasure kept in Shetland. And then, o’ course, the papers began talking about a new Gotland – you ken, there’s been I dinna ken how many treasure caches found there.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, there’s all hell on up in Unst. They’re only just discovered all the Viking sites as it was, you mind all the digs twartree summers ago.’
I shook my head. ‘I was in Norway.’
‘Right enough. Well, back five years ago they had this Viking Unst project, with a big survey of the whole island to see how many sites they could identify.’
‘A good few of them are probably under a present-day crofthouse.’
Magnie nodded. His own crofthouse had been built and re-built on Viking foundations using stones from a Pictish broch. ‘They found a good number o’ possible Viking house sites. Then they picked several different ones to dig. Belmont, and one near the old Lund kirk, Underhoull, and one out on the east, Hamar.’
I recognised that name. ‘Beside the Keen o’ Hamar, where there’s the lunar landscape. We did a trip there from school.’
‘Ancient seabed. Yea. I doubt that was the earliest house. I volunteered for Underhoull, because me mother’s folk came from there. We dug aa summer, and the next one too, then once they’d had time to think and write up aa their papers, they had this conference, wi’ the folk in charge o’ the digging presenting their results. I went to the whole weekend o’ it, and lass, it was most awful interesting. It seems the Vikings came to Unst first, as early as 730, and they could tell aa sorts o’ things about them from the finds – what they’d brought wi’ them, and where they’d come from.’
‘So,’ I said, getting back to the present day, and remembering Adrien’s golf bag, ‘are all three sites just swarming wi’ folk wi’ metal detectors now?’
‘Metal detectors, spades. Nails give readings, you ken, as well as gold. The sites are scheduled, and they’ve been searched anyway, but these treasure-seekers’re likely doing some awful damage to the archaeology the folk hadn’t had time to dig up. So we’re decided, a few o’ us, to go and patrol a bit, try and dissuade folk from launching in.’ He gave me a sideways look from his pebble-gree
n eyes. ‘Are you going up to your mother’s doo in Unst?’
I nodded. ‘The tides are lousy, so I’m heading for Hamnavoe up by Eshaness on Wednesday afternoon, then on to Unst on Thursday. They’re performing at Belmont House on Friday, you know, the restored Georgian house. Do you know if I can moor up at the ferry pier, just opposite?’
‘Only if you don’t mind getting out of the way from six thirty in the morning till ten thirty at night. There’s no’ room for a yacht and the ferry.’
I made a face. ‘Anchoring in the bay?’
Magnie gave a decisive shake of the head. ‘Foul and exposed. I’ll tell you where there’s a better anchorage, Lunda Wick, a bonny sandy bay, with good shelter.’
I reached for my Clyde Cruising Club Guide to Shetland. The chart showed a double-beached bay, open to the west, with a clear entrance. ‘Looks good.’ It was four miles from Belmont House, less over the hills – walking distance.
‘Maybe if you were anchored up there, you could keep an eye on that site, in case of treasure-seekers. Not a patrol, just a watching brief from the cockpit. You’re well used wi’ night watches.’
‘I could easy do that,’ I agreed, ‘and phone you if I spotted anyone suspicious.’
‘Yea, lass, do you that. I’m going to bide with an old whaling pal, at Belmont, so we’d only be five minutes away, if there was trouble.’ He shook his head. ‘Though if what I’m hearing is right, then the sites have better protection than wis. Word is the ghost o’ a Viking’s been seen walking the hills.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ I said sceptically.
‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ Magnie quoted. ‘You’re no’ going to say you don’t believe in ghosts, lass.’
I remembered the night I’d been on watch and seen a ghost ship lit by the moon, her sails tattered by a long, hard voyage. ‘No, I’m no’ going to say that. It just sounds a bit convenient, that’s all, to say nothing of the way that every household in Unst must have a handy Viking costume from the Up Helly Aa.’ I considered him. ‘So who says they’ve seen it?’
‘Keith, for one. He says that when he began digging, he felt this cold wind round his neck –’
‘Not surprising, in March.’
‘Wheesht, lass. Then he lookit up and saw this silhouette on the hill, a figure wi’ a horned helmet.’
‘Then it’s definitely not a ghost. The real Vikings didn’t have horns. We learned that in school. Not even the Berserkers. She showed us pictures of the Lewis chessmen.’
Magnie shook his head, sighing. ‘Teachers this days, they take the romance out o’ everything.’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘sure I’ll help. But I’ve got these exams to get through first.’
‘You’ll walk it.’ Magnie rose, washed out his cup, and headed for the hatch, then paused. ‘What time were you thinking to leave Hamnavoe? I’ll maybe hitch a lift wi’ you. An extra pair of hands never hurts.’
‘That’d be good,’ I said. ‘Say nine o’clock? And thanks for looking after Cat.’
‘No bother.’ He raised a hand and headed off into the soft night.
My academic record wasn’t good. I’d done well at the Brae school, with my pal Inga and I vying with each other to see who could do best in various tests, but Dad had gone to the Gulf in my Standard Grade year, when I was fifteen, and I’d been sent to France, to Maman, and thrown straight into working for my bac littéraire. As I’d run away to sea as soon as I was sixteen, I didn’t get it.
I’d done exams since, working my way through the RYA series in evening class and Med sailing schools: Day Skipper; Yachtmaster; Ocean. On top of that, there’d been this year’s series of short courses: GMDSS, Diesel Engine, Navigation, Radar and ARPA, medical care, advanced fire-fighting, and proficiency in survival craft and fast rescue boats. Most of these had ended in exams too, and I now had a sheaf of impressive-looking certificates. All that meant I wasn’t panicking, exactly – I just had a cold snake writhing in the pit of my stomach.
I had two written papers to do, both tomorrow. My RYA qualifications, and the time I’d spent at sea since, meant that the navigation part of the Deck Officer of the Watch (Unlimited) syllabus was a doddle. I’d been planning and steering a course on vessels for the last fourteen years, and I could work out tidal curves and secondary ports in my sleep. Exam 2, Stability and Operations, was another matter. I understood bridge watchkeeping procedures and behaviour in the proximity of ice. I was pretty good on safety aboard ship. Pollution prevention was mostly common sense and being able to quote the rules. Then we moved into physics: mass; volume; waterline length; calculating loading weights for a particular freeboard; and statical, longitudinal and transverse stability. I was glad I’d inherited Dad’s head for maths and 3D calculations.
I’d also had to pass the medical and prove my time at sea: thirty-six months of qualifying service; at least six months in the last twelve on bridge duties; and testimonials as to my character, behaviour, conduct and ability aboard ship. I’d spent ages on the Internet, looking up every ship I’d ever spent several months on, and sending an e-mail to the master in the hope that he’d remember me, and take the trouble to look up the ship’s papers. A good few hadn’t answered, but there were enough replies to give me a file of e-mails logging months and voyages.
The written exams were followed by an oral, on Wednesday morning. That worried me most. I could do everything the questions asked me to, but throughout the course I’d been picked up for not giving a long enough explanation of why.
On that thought, I sighed at my spread-out papers, and looked at my watch. Eleven o’clock. It wasn’t too early to phone Maman.
She answered on the second ring. ‘Hi, Cassandre! How’s your revision going?’
‘Good, I think. How’s your tour?’
‘We have a rehearsal this afternoon, just a walk-through and warm-up, in the venue. Broughton House, Kircudbright. It’s an eighteenth-century building which belonged to a young artist, a boy from Glasgow, and we’re to sing in the gallery. It looks a nice space, although the pictures show a glass roof, so I hope it doesn’t rain during the concert.’
‘How about the travelling?’
‘Vincent hired a minibus for the mainland part of the tour, so we’re travelling in comfort, although the driver is completely unintelligible to everyone else. It’s a good thing I’m used to the Shetland accent.’
‘A Shetland driver?’
‘No, no, he’s Scots, with a strong accent, but nothing like as strong as your friend Magnie’s, for example. His driving is rather terrifying, but he’s cheerful, and obliging with the cases.’
I grinned. ‘And has Kamilla succeeded in upstaging you yet?’
‘Of course not. I’m too old a hand to play that game. But Bryony is envious, and a little short with her, and Adrien is a former lover, it seems, and he’s keen to resume their affair and she is not, so Per and I are easing them apart.’ Per, I remembered, was the musical director. ‘So, your exam is when?’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘Written tomorrow and oral on Wednesday.’
‘Then I’ll phone to wish you good luck in the morning.’
Chapter Three
Wednesday, 25th March.
Tuesday’s exams seemed to have gone fine; the passage planning was easy, and none of the arithmetic came out as strange fractions. My oral slot on Wednesday was a quarter to ten, and it was as bad as I’d feared. I came into the room, looked at the two experienced seamen behind the table, and my tongue froze. After two painful minutes the elder of the two nodded, and leaned across the desk.
‘Now, Ms Lynch, I want you to imagine that I’m a new deck cadet on your ship. I just got on board yesterday, and I’m very nervous, particularly of people like you who were obviously born knowing your way round a ship. Don’t look at me any more. Imagine the face of this youngster. Blond, blue eyes, trying to grow a moustache.’
I took a deep breath and imagined young Drew from my Brae sailing classes, five years olde
r, and still keen as mustard. The examiner gave me a moment, then passed across a cargo manifesto. His voice went into a nervous stutter. ‘I’m supposed to be loading the cargo, but I don’t know what to put where.’
I held onto Drew’s face and looked at the list. ‘Okay, well, you’ve got heavy mechanical items here, they need to go lowest, amidships.’ My cheeks were burning; I gripped the smooth material of my jeans under the table. ‘These are perishables – you can’t put them anywhere they might get wet ...’ I went through it, item by item, and when I’d finished, the other examiner wrote a lengthy note on my paper, and the elder one nodded. Suddenly I was in clear waters, with the wind on the beam, sailing free. We did three more exercises, and then I was free to go.
‘You’ll get your results in May,’ the elder examiner said, shaking my hand, ‘but you don’t need to worry. I’d welcome you aboard my ship any day.’
‘I’ve got a ship,’ I said. I was grinning with relief. ‘Third mate, navigation, aboard the Norwegian square rigger Sørlandet. I join her in a couple of weeks.’
The other examiner laughed. ‘Three whole sentences, unforced. You had us worried at first, Ms Lynch. It’s heartbreaking to get an obviously competent candidate who can’t make with the words.’ He shook my hand too. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. They could hear I meant it. I walked out of the classroom as if I was up in the rigging, with the sky below my feet. I’d passed! Cat was waiting by the tideline for me. I picked him up and hugged him, then set him down as he wriggled, and hauled my phone out of my pocket. I texted “I passed” to Dad and Maman, and called Gavin.
He answered on the second ring, as if he’d had his phone in his hand, ready. ‘How did it go?’
‘I passed. I passed.’
‘Well done. Are you back aboard Khalida?’
‘Nearly.’ I unlocked the marina gate and walked along the pontoon, Cat trotting in front of me, with his plumed tail raised high to show the smoke-grey underside. ‘I’ll be casting off as soon as I’ve got my sailing gear on.’
Ghosts of the Vikings Page 3