The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2)

by Maslakovic, Neve

  “Oh. Er…thanks. What about Sa—…the runestone? You’re not still expecting me to take you into the past, are you?”

  “Certainly I am. You’ll figure out a way to do it.” He added, “How was Sabina’s first week at school? Can’t be easy getting used to a new place.”

  The question sounded genuine. He wasn’t heartless, just an opportunist. No, that wasn’t right either. A better description was that he was self-centered, cheerfully and optimistically so, like many a freshman newly arrived at St. Sunniva University. To Quinn, the world existed for him…and him alone. It just hadn’t realized it yet.

  “Sabina’s first week went okay, as far as school can,” I answered as I tried to figure out whether I had any leverage on him. I came up empty. “She was surprised to find that we’ve outlawed corporal punishment, and that boys and girls go to school in equal numbers.”

  “Modern society got some things right, didn’t it?” His good mood was evident even through the phone. I didn’t like it.

  “Listen,” he continued. “I gotta run, sorry. I’m meeting someone at Ingrid’s.”

  I wondered if the someone was the female grad student he had been chatting up in the courtyard outside my office. I almost said, Enjoy the lingonberry pancakes, which was his favorite dish there. Mine too, as it happened.

  “You have my number, Jules,” he went on. “Let me know when you set things up. I’ll check in after the weekend. If you haven’t gotten things sorted, I’ll start making calls to news stations.”

  He hung up.

  I left the phone on the kitchen counter and turned to go, only to see that Nate had come back inside, noiselessly sliding the screen door open and shut behind him. I wondered how much he’d overheard.

  He headed for the sink to drop off the empty food platter.

  I cleared my throat. “Quinn is back.”

  “Is he?” Nate said without turning around as he rinsed the plate.

  I realized he might have misunderstood me. “No…not in that way. He—we—have some paperwork to take care of, that’s all. It’s nothing important.”

  Nate gave me a frank look over one shoulder. “Good, then.”

  He held the screen door open for me as I carried the buns and condiments out onto the deck. Abigail and Sabina had gone back to playing Frisbee with Wanda the spaniel. Kamal and Helen were keeping an eye on Nate’s salmon burgers cooking on the grill. Celer was curled up in the shade, asleep.

  Sliding the screen door closed behind me, I wondered how much longer my Pompeii family would be safe.

  5

  After the others had left, Abigail and Sabina helped me clear up and then retired to their side of the house. I turned on the dishwasher, then sat down with a cup of coffee to check my cell phone for further communiqués from Quinn—there weren’t any—and to see if I could think of any solutions that didn’t involve running Quinn over a moonless autumn night. I could hear the muffled sound of Abigail and Sabina’s laughter through the walls now and then. I suspected that Jacob Jacobson’s tweets were being read and discussed next door. We had decided not to expose Sabina to TV just yet, but the Internet was unavoidable, especially since she had needed to use the computer for the online English as a Second Language crash course she had been taking over the summer. She was the only person in the world whose mother tongue was Latin. The thought made me sad for a moment. Like I said, her knowledge of first-century Latin and the customs of the time would have made her an invaluable research subject to historians and linguists, starting with Helen; but Helen herself had drawn a sharp line in the sand. Sabina was not to be treated as a research subject. If scholars wanted to thicken their classical Latin dictionaries, they could apply for a STEWie run like everyone else. Sabina was just a kid who had lost her family. I gritted my teeth at Quinn’s meddling.

  Another peal of laughter drifted through the walls.

  Jacob was a harmless crush on Sabina’s part—if anything, it made me feel better about her chances of acclimatizing to twenty-first-century life. After a leap of more than two thousand years, there were inevitably a few bumps, like frequent visits to the dentist, which thirteen years of decay, deposits, and no brushing had necessitated. Sabina didn’t enjoy that aspect of modern life one bit. A different sort of surprise to her was the fact that we weren’t going to marry her off. Back in Pompeii, Sabina’s grandmother and father had arranged for her an early marriage (by our standards) to a young pottery shop apprentice. Of course, they were all long gone now—whether in the Vesuvius eruption or later, of natural causes. We had never found out and probably never would.

  I got up from the kitchen table and did a loop around my small living room, mentally dividing the furniture into items that had already been in the house when Quinn and I had moved in, after my parents had left for Florida (where they were in charge of a retirement community), and items that Quinn and I had picked out together. In this second group were the big-screen TV and the ladder shelf with books and DVDs on it. Also the wall color behind the shelf, a muted orange we’d argued over because he had wanted a more manly steel blue, which I’d felt would give the house the feel of a hospital. It was one of our many arguments—other times we’d grappled about my long work hours, whose turn it was to do the dishes, Quinn’s desire to move to one coast or the other, and many more domestic grievances.

  Sounds of some kind of noisy activity drifted through from next door. I knew what it was. Abigail and Sabina had decided that Celer was overdue for a bath (a new element in his life) and that tonight would be the night. Celer fought baths with the only avenue available to him; that is to say, he made himself as heavy as he could and refused to budge from behind the door to the bathroom. It took two people to get him into the tub, and one to hold him down while the other washed. The bathroom floor and walls took a beating with each dreaded bath. I heard the water turn on and sounds of encouragement. I would have gone over to help, but two people and one dog was the limit for the small bathroom of the mother-and-law-suite.

  So the divorce papers were on the way, or would be the next day. I tried to gauge how I felt about that, not to mention Quinn’s date at Ingrid’s Restaurant, and decided I felt perfectly fine about both things, aside from the fact that he was using the divorce papers and Sabina in a carrot-and-stick approach to get what he wanted. I wondered who he was having dinner with. Someone we had both known socially, or a new acquaintance, like the grad student he had been talking up in the courtyard of the Hypatia House? Whoever it was, it was none of my business.

  I took out my laptop and flicked it to life. Perhaps needing to symbolically say goodbye to my married life, I changed the passwords to my social media accounts, which Quinn knew, wondering why I hadn’t done it sooner. It didn’t take long, as most of my time at the computer was spent on work, not personal matters. I was about to head off to bed when I remembered that somewhere on my computer was a photo of Quinn’s grandfather, the one with the Kensington Runestone. I hadn’t looked at it in years.

  Some digging around through old files produced one that was simply saved as Farfar’s Photo, as if it had been the only one ever taken of the man, which was highly unlikely. I had never met Quinn’s grandfather—Magnus had died when Quinn was still a toddler, no doubt a charming and trouble-making three-year-old. I searched the mustachioed face for similarities to Quinn, but found it difficult because of how expressionless Magnus’s face was—his grandson had never not had a grin in photos, even our wedding ones.

  Like Quinn had told me, and I had in turn told Dr. Holm, Magnus had tried his hand at various things in search of that elusive fortune before marrying and fathering a child late in life, at age fifty. He never did amass a fortune, but he established a comfortable life with Ellen Olsen, who was now also gone. They had owned a magic shop in Rochester, which Quinn remembered fondly as stocking everything from whoopee cushions to gear for more serious magicians. It didn’t bode well fo
r Magnus Olsen’s veracity that he had become a connoisseur of the art of illusion and trickery.

  Which suited me just fine. I moved the mouse to delete the photo, but something prevented me from clicking. Instead, I washed up and headed to bed.

  It did make for a good tale, admittedly. A party of explorers from the unknown land of wild grapes, Vinland. I imagined the Norsemen as rugged, self-sufficient types, with mud on their boots and suntanned, wind-bitten features, driven to face the dangers of exploring what was (to them) a new land. What had sent them on their journey? Economic hardship, a Europe in the grips of the Black Death…or the desire to chisel their names into history, a personality trait that Magnus and Quinn shared, although Quinn was hardly the danger-seeking type? Whatever it was, something had gone badly wrong. Those who had lived to tell the tale had done so with stone and chisel. Six hundred years would pass before an immigrant farmer would find their memorial clasped in the root of a tree.

  Or not. I fluffed up my pillow and turned toward the window, where the just risen half-moon was peeking out from under the bedroom shades. I realized that I wanted the stone to be a hoax because Quinn believed in it. But it wasn’t only that. The bottom line was that if the stone was real—well, it would be that much harder to send Quinn on his way.

  6

  Saturday morning I got up with the realization that for Sabina’s sake I could not just sit back and wait for Quinn to lose interest in time travel and leave town. There was a simple way out of this, and that was to find proof in the present that the runestone was a fake. Because here was the thing: When Quinn called back on Monday, I wanted to be better armed. If the Vikings-in-Minnesota story was a myth, then there had to be proof of that in the present. And I wanted to be able to shove that proof under his nose.

  And if the runestone was real…well, there should be proof of that, too.

  I had two days to find it. Something that no one had managed to do in more than a hundred years.

  I figured the best way to start would be by following one of one of time travel’s unwritten rules, Do your library research first. Wikipedia only got you so far.

  After eating a quick breakfast and showering, I grabbed a light jacket and my shoulder bag and left the house, careful to close the front door quietly so as not to wake Abigail and Sabina. I decided to walk to campus—it was just a twenty-minute stroll to the Coffey Library, on the opposite side of the lake from my office. I hadn’t been to the library much since graduating with my business degree. And here I was about to ascend its steps for the second time in as many days.

  It was a weekend, but like all student spaces on campus, the library hummed with activity, albeit of the quiet kind. Headphoned students sat holed up in corners, studying. The librarian at the front desk, Scott, greeted me cheerfully and asked if I needed any help. I shook my head and asked how the funding drive for the new library wing was progressing. The expansion, still in the planning stage, was meant to house our steadily increasing store of ancient texts, most of them painstakingly obtained on STEWie runs with the aid of handheld scanners and currently stuffed into the glass cabinet in the basement. The tug of war between the campus museum and the Coffey Library on the matter—the museum had the space, but the library offered hands-on accessibility to visitors—had been resolved by Chancellor Jane Evans, who made the simple suggestion that the manuscripts should be made available in both places. Scott explained that the fundraiser was progressing as they usually did—slowly—and pointed me to the library computers.

  I ran into Dr. Payne by the computers. He nodded at me and asked what I was doing there, as if the library was reserved for academics only.

  I explained.

  “You’re wasting your time, Julia. I hope Dr. Holm hasn’t been encouraging this.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Even if we went back in time to watch the farmer stumble upon the stone, what would it prove? That he probably planted it there himself.”

  “I’m just killing a free Saturday morning,” I said mildly.

  “You should have better things to do.”

  That was probably true.

  “Since I’m here already,” I said with a shrug, “I might as well grab a book or two on the subject. If you’ll excuse me—”

  He went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “The runes on the stone are completely…ah, shall we say, unexpected. And the inscription is long, ridiculously so. The bottom line is that no artifacts or historical accounts lend credence to the story of medieval Norse reaching what is now the state of Minnesota.”

  “Then my visit here will be short.”

  “Feel free to consult me if you need an opinion on any of the materials. Some of the so-called authors on the runestone issue are hacks.” He swiped a hand over his comb-over and let out a sharp laugh, as though what he had said was hilarious. “Some? Most!”

  With that, he turned on his heel and burrowed deeper into the library. I sat down at a computer terminal to do a quick search and soon was headed into the stacks armed with several call numbers.

  The books concerning the runestone seemed to be spread evenly between two shelves, one devoted to general-interest history books, and one whose subject matter, according to the shelf label, was Impostors, Forgeries & Fraud. A cursory glance at the covers revealed a wide range of opinions. One called the stone “the most important artifact in US history,” while another dubbed it a “transparent hoax.” I picked up a couple of the most objective-seeming books from each shelf, carried them to a free table by the window, and settled in for a morning of reading. As everyone connected to the STEWie program knew very well, much of History was made up of threads set in motion by a single person, and Olof Ohman had been one such person, whether the stone was real or not.

  There were only a few pictures of the major players because the stone had been found at the turn of the century. The first showed the young Ohman family not long after they had settled on the farm. After emigrating from Sweden, Olof had purchased a forty-acre parcel in 1890 for $300, later expanding his farm with additional parcels. The farm was described as being three miles to the northeast of Kensington’s rail station on the Soo Line, which was the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie railway. Olof had a heavy beard, and all of the Ohmans were looking unsmilingly at the camera. Then there was a jump of a few decades to a photo that was eerily similar to the one of Quinn’s grandfather next to the stone. A middle-aged Olof Ohman was standing stiffly in a suit by the stone at some sort of ceremony, flanked by a pair of soldiers in full garb, his hand resting lightly on the stone as it stood up propped on wooden boxes. Again, he looked dead serious, as Magnus had in his photo, not at all like a man with a bent for practical jokes. There was one last photo, of Olof and Karin Ohman in their old age standing side by side on their land, a year before the good farmer would pass away, both white-haired, bespectacled, and seemingly shrunken by life. It was no wonder—they had raised nine children.

  I came across a sworn affidavit that Olof had given to the county register or someone of similar official standing regarding his unusual find. It began with his swearing in and continued,

  I am fifty-four years of age, and was born in Helsingeland, Sweden, from where I emigrated to America in the year 1881, and settled upon my farm in Section Fourteen, Township of Solem, in 1891. In the month of August, 1898, while accompanied by my son, Edward, I was engaged in grubbing upon a timbered elevation, surrounded by marshes…Upon moving an asp, measuring about 10 inches in diameter at its base, I discovered a flat stone inscribed with characters, to me unintelligible. The stone laid just beneath the surface…with one corner almost protruding. The two largest roots of the tree clasped the stone in such a manner that the stone must have been there at least as long as the tree…

  I turned the page and found a letter written in the farmer’s own hand in his native Swedish, dated December 9, 1909. The four pages of tightly scribbled text included a small sketch, whic
h showed the stone-harboring tree—the tree’s thick roots had grown horizontally over the width of the stone, making a right angle before continuing deeper into the ground.

  Below the letter a translation had been supplied:

  I saw that the stone was thin, Olaf Ohman, who was fifty-five at the time, had written. I simply put the grubbing hoe under it and turned the under side up…My boy Edward was about 10 years old. He was the first to see that there was something inscribed on the stone. The boys believed that they had found an Indian almanac…

  I read some more and found out a few additional details, such as the name of the other son, Olof Jr., then age eleven. Magnus Olsen wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the book, but perhaps no one had remembered—or thought to mention—the presence of a neighborhood kid. There was a Sam Olson, a neighbor, but presumably there were quite a few families with the last name of Olsen or Olson on the plat maps and town records of the time. I wondered in passing how historians kept track of all the similar names. Magnus Olsen, Olof Ohman, Olof Jr. A lot of them seemed to begin with O.

  The detail about the roots having a square kink to them, aside from seeming like a math joke, struck me as authentic. But perhaps that was the hallmark of the true hoaxer, and he had supplied the detail to hide his sleight of hand, like a magician would. I wondered how Olof’s wife, Karin, had felt about the runestone, but there were no quotes from her.

  I pounced on the farmer’s words from the letter in Swedish: The boys believed that they had found an Indian almanac. I myself also saw that there was something written. But to read it was a mystery to me. How could someone born in Sweden, who had spent the first twenty-five years of his life there, not have recognized runic writing?

  Unfortunately for my theory of the farmer’s guilt, he wasn’t the only one. After being dug up, the stone was moved to the local bank, where the public viewed it, with its strange symbols and ancient look. An enterprising townsperson, thinking the inscription was, of all things, Greek, sent a copy to a Minneapolis newspaper. The editors forwarded it to University of Minnesota, where the Greek scholars recognized that the text was, well, Greek to them and got it to the right place, a university expert in Scandinavian languages, who gave the stone a thumbs down. After hearing the news, Olof Ohman promptly stored the stone in his grain shed.