“We were wondering about that, too,” Willow said. “I don’t think it’s a camel, though. The artist wasn’t exactly Rembrandt or anything. Unfortunately the rather poor talent for perspective here is not going to help us at all. It’s probably a horse. They had horses, right, Kenny?”
“Right. Some have claimed the islands were once named for the horses, Hrossey, that is, and there is still a festival of the horse held on South Ronaldsay every summer. So yes, this is most likely a horse.”
“It has a hump,” I said. I was feeling disagreeable and it showed.
“I’m sure that was just a mistake,” Willow replied. “It’s a horse.” She was obviously determined that there was treasure to be found. She hadn’t managed to find the cash of Trevor’s that she so desperately believed in. Now she’d transferred this desire to a treasure map. She saw what she wanted to, but I suffered under no such illusion, and it was very plainly a camel.
My friend Moira says I can be a spoilsport from time to time. A poop is what she calls me. Maybe she’s right. “If these swirls are the coastline, would that have not perhaps changed over the intervening, say, one thousand years. You did say the Vikings came here in the ninth century and stayed for how long?”
“The era of the Viking earls ended in the thirteenth century,” Kenny said. “I suppose it might have changed a bit since.”
Good grief again. I posed my next disagreeable question. “How old would this scroll have to be?” Personally I made it nineteenth century at best, the day before yesterday at worst, and while I was no expert on the Vikings in any shape or form, and I would certainly get something like this tested, I could tell just looking at it that it wasn’t a thousand years old.
“I know what you’re thinking, that this isn’t that old,” Willow said, smart young woman that she is.
“It could be based on something much older though,” Kenny said. “There is something about it.” Could that something be called wishful thinking, do you suppose? “This hill might be a chamber tomb, like Maeshowe or the Tomb of the Eagles, perhaps one as yet uncovered. That would be amazing in and of itself. It would be even more so if it turned out to be a place where Vikings stashed their treasure.”
Tomb of the Eagles, I thought. Was that the name? It didn’t sound quite right to me, but why? But yes, it was called that. I’d been there. It was nice. Anyway, surely Kenny who was not only cute but obviously intelligent knew what the tomb thing was called, even if he wanted to believe this scroll was several centuries old. More to the point, why was this conversation upsetting me, other than the obvious, which is to say, the total futility of it? I could feel my heart pounding a little, my palms sweating, and I felt a little shaky, almost like a panic attack, or maybe as if I’d just gulped four quick espressos in a row. I just couldn’t think of any reason to feel like this at this particular moment.
“I think this is a map, of sorts. See there’s water, and a shoreline, a bay really, with a very distinctive shape. I think we need to find that piece of shoreline. There is a tower, too, a broch. So we’re looking for a distinctive piece of shoreline where there was once a tower, with a hill, or rather an undiscovered tomb nearby. There are some other really interesting symbols here as well, that make me think that it’s old. The disembodied head that speaks, for example, was a very important image in pagan times, as is the castle and the maze.” Kenny gestured to the symbols down the side. The word “maze,” of course, took me back to Percy, bleeding to death: The Wasteland, the maze, the wounded king. Even with that, though, I was not prepared for what was coming.
“Tell her what the runes say, Kenny,” Willow said.
“Yes, don’t keep me in suspense,” I said, trying to keep profound cynicism out of my voice. There was a slight throbbing at my temples that indicated a headache was on its way, due perhaps to the strain of keeping myself from snapping at them.
“It says,” Kenny replied, pointing at the sticklike figures down one side, “ ‘Before he went mad, Bjarni the Wanderer hid the cauldron in the tomb of the orcs’.” At the sound of these words, I dashed into the bathroom and threw up.
Chapter 8
Do 1 detect some skepticism on your part? I could hardly blame you for that. What are the chances, you are asking yourself, that a Viking from Orkney, of good lineage, but neither king nor earl, would be taken to the court of the caliph of Spain? In the highly unlikely event that he was, what language were they speaking? Did the caliph speak Old Norse? Was a translator provided? Did Goisvintha, descended from Goths of northern Spain, provide the necessary interpretation?
hut surely that is always the issue with sagas of this type. How does one separate the wheat from the chaff, the true historical background from the ripping good yarn? How can you extract the nugget of truth in what is otherwise a fable? I’m not just talking about Bjarni’s story here, you understand. The much-revered Orkneyinga Saga, the history of the earls of Orkney, believed to be the only medieval chronicle centered on Orkney, was not the work of someone in or from Orkney, despite what you might think. Rather it was written by an unknown Icelandic poet, probably about 1200, but based on ancient traditions and tales, stories told on the long winter nights, and set out in such a way that they would be recited by rout, and thus passed from generation to generation. Icelandic verse was extremely complex, with many strict rules governing it as to the number of syllables permissible in each line, the use of internal assonance and rhyme and so on. These rules served as an aide-memoir, really, the complexity ensuring that the story, which was passed along orally for possibly hundreds of years would survive intact.
In the same way, Bjarni’s saga was not written down as it happened, indeed not until much, much later. Still, my family believes it to be an eyewitness account by Svein the poet, passed along orally through many, many generations before finally being given literary form. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn’t.
Were there embellishments to it over the centuries? Of course there were. That does not, however, make the tale a lie. Was the story of Bjarni’s sojourn in Spain added by one of my forbearers eager to establish a more important family pedigree? Was it an exaggeration or even a fiction told by Bjarni himself in a boastful way, something one is inclined to assume he was more than capable of or perhaps instead to justify his rather extended absence from home and hearth? Or, unlikely as it might appear, did all this actually happen? Did Bjarni really visit the caliph of Spain? I have spent much of my life trying to decide what it is I believe.
I can tell you that the saga’s description of the Spain of the Umayyad caliphate does not arouse much argument from those who study such things. As the saga says, it was an extraordinary place. In Cordoba, the streets were indeed paved, lit, and patrolled as the story relates. In Bjarni’s day the caliphate was still in power, but it was soon to disintegrate amongst warring factions and then to fall to the Reconquista, the reestablishment of Catholic power, the beginning of which is often said to be the fall of Muslim Toledo in 1085.
I leave it up to you to decide how much or how little to believe. All I ask of you is an open mind. I can see you are tiring, or perhaps it is that you are impatient to find how this story ends. Let me pick up the thread and speed Bjarni on his way.
It is possible that mine was not the reaction Willow and Kenny had been expecting when they told me what the runic inscription said, and it was certainly a waste of a very good meal. “I’m being just so thoughtless,” Willow said. “Here you’ve found another body, and then I spring this treasure map on you. It’s all too emotional, I can tell. Look, we’re going to get you some hot tea, and then see that you get back to your B B. You can have a good rest, and we’ll come pick you up tomorrow morning. Can we use your car, given there are three of us?”