Twenty-Three
Eygló took the first sip of her margarita. Delicious. She looked out over the beach to the Atlantic, stretching eastwards towards Europe and Iceland. No, not Iceland, that was way to the north. France. Or maybe Spain.
‘Cheers!’ said Einar, sipping his own drink. ‘Oh, that’s good. I’d forgotten how delicious these things taste when it’s really hot.’
Actually, it was cooler now, but still hotter in Nantucket than it ever got in Iceland. The sun was setting behind them, and Suzy, Tom and Ajay were scurrying around somewhere taking sunset shots, having deposited Eygló and Einar at the bar on the cliffs to wait for them. They were sitting outside, and the bar was fulclass="underline" beachgoers at the end of a long day overlapping with better dressed tourists beginning their evening. A group of students with the confidence of locals were knocking back the cocktails at the table next to them.
It had been a long day’s filming. They had started out on a ten-metre sailing boat skimming the waves in Nantucket Sound, before moving on to the village of Siasconset to interview the Gudrid scholar and then on to Sesachacha Pond. Eygló was pleased: she thought she had done rather well. Suzy hadn’t used Einar at all; she had got Nancy Fishburn to do his scenes at Sesachacha Pond. But he would have plenty to do when they got to Canada.
‘So who was that “young woman” Nancy Fishburn was talking about before we did the interview?’ Eygló asked. ‘The one who was with you when you came here last year.’
‘Oh, no one. Just a postgrad.’
‘Anyone I know?’
‘No, no. Foreign.’ Einar hesitated. ‘French.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘And why were you so coy about her? You never mentioned her to me before.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ said Einar.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. You know I don’t mess around any more.’
Eygló raised her eyebrows.
‘It’s true! And I didn’t want Rósa to find out. I had told her I was going to Nantucket alone. You’ll keep this to yourself, won’t you?’
‘Maybe,’ said Eygló, grinning. ‘Maybe not. It depends whether you get me another margarita.’
It was just conceivable that Einar was telling the truth about not shagging his postgrad, but frankly Eygló could not be bothered to speculate about Einar’s philandering; she had given up on that years ago. Just as long as she wasn’t expected to participate.
Einar tried to attract the harassed waitress’s attention.
‘Eygló?’
She turned to see one of the group of students standing next to her, a short blonde girl with a friendly smile, who looked more like eighteen than the twenty-one she must have been to be served alcohol. ‘Aren’t you Eygló? The presenter of Viking Queens?’
‘That’s me,’ said Eygló. She was gratified. People in Iceland recognized her all the time, naturally, but she had never before been identified when travelling abroad.
‘I loved that show,’ the girl said. ‘It was so cool what those women did back then. I thought in the Middle Ages women were just treated as, like, men’s property.’
‘They were, mostly,’ said Eygló. ‘But not necessarily in Scandinavia. I’m glad you liked it. And I’m surprised you recognized me.’
‘Well, I knew you were interviewing my grandmother this afternoon. How did that go?’
‘That was your grandmother? She was great. She could have been one of the Viking queens herself.’
The girl laughed. ‘I’ll tell her that. She is great, isn’t she? And so smart. She pretends to be dotty, but she isn’t.’
‘Can I get you guys a drink?’ Einar said.
Eygló was surprised at Einar’s generosity to random students — most unlike him — until she looked more closely at the group. There were two girls and a boy, and one of the girls was tall and dusky with shoulder-length raven hair and sly dark eyes.
They were a friendly bunch; they all had parents or, in the case of the girl who had recognized Eygló, grandparents who lived or summered on the island, and they were working there for the season in bars and stores. Eygló particularly liked Nancy Fishburn’s granddaughter, whose name was Kelly. She was majoring in history at a college in Ohio, and was pleasingly knowledgeable about the Vikings, an enthusiasm she said she had absorbed from her grandmother.
‘So do you really think there were Vikings in Nantucket a thousand years ago?’ Kelly asked Eygló.
‘Sure,’ said Eygló. ‘We have evidence now — pretty strong evidence — that they were here.’
‘The wampum?’ said Kelly. ‘That was found in Greenland.’
‘That’s part of it,’ said Eygló. Kelly was a little drunk at this stage, but Eygló thought she detected a sceptical edge to her question. She wasn’t sure. She knew the English better than the Americans, but she was an Icelander after all; some nuances passed her by. ‘You heard about that?’
‘Yeah. I remember when it was reported in the Globe. The whole family was here then. Grammy was really interested.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘I asked her if she had ever been to the spot where the wampum was discovered, and she told me she had.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. With Pops. Just before he died. They took a vacation to Greenland and went to see Erik the Red’s farm. That’s where they found the shell beads, right?’
‘Yes. It was actually Einar who found them,’ said Eygló.
They both looked at Einar, who was regaling Kelly’s friends with a story about a trip he had taken to Thailand when he was a student, and the island he had discovered. Eygló had heard it many times before. It seemed to be going down well with his audience; it usually did the first time he told it.
‘Grammy gave this weird little smile and said that she knew exactly where the wampum had been found. On the way back to Pittsburgh after the trip, Dad said he was willing to bet Grammy had planted the wampum herself.’
Kelly giggled and Eygló smiled too. It took a second for the implication of what Kelly was saying to sink in. Was she serious? Because if she was...
‘Why did your dad think that?’
‘Hi, everyone!’ It was Suzy.
‘Hey. What are you drinking?’ Einar asked her.
‘I’m driving. And we had better get going. I made a dinner reservation for eight back in town and we’re going to be late.’
‘She’s the boss,’ said Einar to his new friends, grinning. ‘I guess we have to go. It’s been great talking to you.’ This to the girl with the sly eyes, which were now focused very much on Einar.
Eygló wanted an answer to her last question, but in the jostling of their departure she didn’t get one. She exchanged waves and smiles with Kelly as Suzy bustled them off to their rented van, where Tom and Ajay were waiting.
They were staying in Nantucket town a few miles away, and Suzy had booked a table at a restaurant there. It was dark now.
Buoyed by the margaritas, and the attention, Einar was very chatty. Eygló was listening to him with half an ear and less than half her brain. She was thinking about what Kelly had said.
Was she joking? Could the sweet old lady Eygló had interviewed that afternoon really have planted the wampum in Greenland? Was she really that sweet? ‘Shrewd’ might be a better description.
The immediate problem was should Eygló tell the others? And if so, which others? It would be a disaster all round if the wampum had been planted.
Perhaps she should discuss it with Einar before mentioning it to Suzy? But Einar, she knew, would tell her to stay quiet.
Should she wait? Think about what to do? But once she did that, then she would have created a secret, an awkward secret.