And now Grammy wanted to meet them alone. Something was up and Kelly had no idea what.
Grammy nodded. ‘Private.’
Kelly opened her mouth to protest. Her grandmother stared her down. They got on very well, and Kelly had loved staying in ’Sconset with her these last two summers, but every now and then Grammy could be quite imperious. This was one of those moments. Argument was pointless.
‘Take a walk through the lava field. As I remember it, it’s beautiful.’
Ever the dutiful granddaughter, Kelly did as she was told. And it was beautiful, patches of long summer grass shimmering in the golden sunshine. A perfect volcano rose above the lava to the west, crowned by a white topping of snow. Kelly picked her way along a narrow path through a frozen tumult of black lava, between eerie shapes that evoked large hounds, or crows, or trolls’ heads. The chapel was surrounded by a graveyard and a little white gate. Unfortunately, the church itself was locked.
She pressed on further into the lava field, through the ruins of a small village, the inhabitants of which were presumably slumbering in the churchyard behind her. The air was fresh, the sky was blue and the sea shushed against the lava a few feet away from the path. Kelly felt her irritation with her grandmother disperse.
Nancy Fishburn had five grandchildren, of whom Kelly was the youngest and, Kelly thought, the favourite. Kelly had lapped up her grandmother’s stories about medieval Europe and the Vikings, and she had read Nancy’s book about Gudrid the Wanderer when she was fifteen. Inspired by her grandmother, she was now majoring in history, taking every medieval course she could. She had been excited when the TV crew had descended on Nantucket to interview Grammy and also to hear about the Columbus letter and the wampum find in Greenland. She had seen Eygló in Viking Queens on TV, and had chatted to her on Nantucket, where the presenter had been really friendly. So Kelly was offended at being excluded now.
After she had been walking for about three-quarters of an hour, she turned around and headed back. When she returned to the hotel, Nancy was still in the bar, staring out at the beach and the wall of mountains that made up the spine of the Snaefellsnes peninsula.
‘How did it go?’ Kelly asked.
Nancy didn’t answer straight away. She sighed. ‘OK, I guess. I don’t know.’
She didn’t look happy. Kelly reached out and squeezed her grandmother’s hand. ‘Grammy? What’s up?’
‘I think I’ve done something very wrong.’
Kelly felt a jolt of horror. How could her grandmother possibly have done something wrong?
‘What is it?’ Then she remembered Nancy’s reticence about her meeting. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’
Nancy was still staring out at the surf on the beach. Kelly waited.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I think I should tell you.’
‘OK.’ Kelly waited.
‘You know the Columbus letter about the Vikings getting to Nantucket? And the wampum from Nantucket they found in Greenland?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well.’ The old lady swallowed. ‘None of it’s true.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it’s all a hoax. The wampum was planted in Greenland. The Columbus letter is a forgery.’
‘It can’t be! All those experts said it was genuine. How do you know?’
‘Because I know who thought up the hoax.’
‘And who was that?’
Nancy Fishburn looked her granddaughter right in the eye.
‘Me. And your grandfather. And our friend...’
Twenty
Nancy stared at the letter spread out on the wooden table in her garden in ’Sconset.
‘Is it OK out here in the sunshine?’ she asked Emilio.
‘Sure,’ he said, smiling. ‘It will be good for it.’
Nancy frowned; Emilio was usually obsessively careful with his wares. ‘Can I touch it?’
‘Here, use these gloves. We don’t want any fingerprints.’ His smile broadened.
‘It’s amazing,’ said John.
‘Emilio?’ Nancy said, suddenly understanding. The sun. The fingerprints. ‘Is this a fake? Did you do this?’
A twinkle of the eyes was added to the smile.
‘Emilio!’ Nancy exclaimed.
‘It’s pretty good, don’t you think?’ Emilio said. ‘When we were talking about the Vinland Map back home, I thought: “I could do that.” And so I did. I’ve seen enough Columbus stuff in my time, real and fake.’
‘No!’ John said. He bent and peered closely at the writing. ‘It’s excellent. Is the paper genuine?’
‘Yes. It’s the spare blank pages of a quire I came across five years ago and kept in case they came in useful. Fifteenth century, probably from Venice.’
‘And the ink?’
‘Definitely no anatase. The compound that had cast doubt on the Vinland Map, Nancy remembered.
‘Hmm,’ John said. ‘It looks good to me, but I bet it wouldn’t fool the experts.’
‘I bet it would,’ said Emilio.
John shook his head. ‘Something like this, they’d pull out the big guns. International experts, chemical analysis, the works.’
‘No problem,’ said Emilio. ‘You said “I bet”. Do you want to bet?’
‘What? That no one spots it’s a fake?’
Emilio nodded.
‘Wait. Are you going to release this out into the world?’ Nancy asked.
‘How else are we going to know if it will fool the experts?’
‘John?’ Nancy said, appealing to her husband.
John was smiling. ‘A hundred bucks says they’ll rumble you.’
‘Your Walter Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana.’
‘What! You’ve got to be out of your mind. That’s one of the most expensive books in my collection.’
‘I know,’ said Emilio. ‘And if my forgery is revealed as a fake you get that English translation of The Decameron I was telling you about.’
Nancy glanced at her husband. They all three knew that the Raleigh was worth much more than the Decameron translation, but then John was a lot richer than Emilio.
He would never go for it.
But John was fired up. Nancy had seen Emilio seduce John so many times in the past, persuading him to buy treasures for significantly more than they were really worth.
Emilio caught her eye and she felt a thrill of complicity. Emilio knew John would go for it. And he knew she knew he would too.
John sipped from his glass thoughtfully. He turned to his wife. ‘What do you think, honey?’
Nancy knew she should tell him not to do it. In fact, it was a really bad idea on so many levels. But part of her wanted Emilio to get away with the Raleigh. She had been seduced too. And that was OK.
She shrugged.
John grinned. ‘OK, Emilio. You’re on.’
Emilio carefully replaced the forgery in his briefcase, and John refilled the daiquiris.
‘How are you going to reveal this to the world?’ Nancy asked. ‘Are you going to claim you found it?’
‘I can’t do that,’ said Emilio. ‘I don’t want to sell a forgery, or even recommend it. That would ruin my reputation. And it would be illegal. At some point we will want to reveal it’s a fake. So we need to place this somewhere it will be discovered and there will be no connection to us.’
‘How are you going to do that?’
‘I have an idea.’ He explained it to John and Nancy. It was a good one.
More daiquiris.
As they talked, it was clear that John was really taken with the idea of the forgery, even though it would mean he might lose his beloved Discovery of Guiana.