Cape Wrath (3 page)

“Let's just drop it,” Linda said, flustered. “Enough people here know about it, without us embarrassing them all to death again.”

This time Alan bit his tongue. She was right. Another scene in public would not help in any way. He stood back, hands in his pockets, and watched helplessly as his former girlfriend went straight over to Barry's tent. The big guy had just come out of it, and now put an arm around her shoulder as Professor Mercy called them all to attention.

Not for the first time, Alan wondered how he'd managed to lose a babe like Linda; more to the point, how he'd ever managed to lose her to someone like Barry Wood. The big lunk might have been the best number-eight in the college rugby union club, but he was a crude, hard-edged sort. His blonde hair and good looks belied the aggressive, loutish persona beneath. Alan couldn't work out whether Linda had fallen in with such a shallow jerk simply because she was on the rebound, or through some deep insecurity on her part. Was she, for example, one of those desperate young women who need always to be adored come fair weather or foul? Or was she simply trying to get at
him
, openly punishing his infidelity by parading round with one of those he regarded as a lesser mortal.

Then again, Alan wondered – with his usual lack of self-confidence – what made
him
so special? He wasn't a bad looking kid for 26, he supposed – dark haired, dark eyed, reasonable physique through years of self-imposed PT – but he'd never exactly been a lady-killer. Pairing up with Linda had been the highlight of his love-life thus far … but it wasn't as though he'd
deserved
it. He certainly hadn't been able to offer her any more than many of the other guys at college. Perhaps he should write the whole experience off as a hard lesson?; for a brief time, he'd got lucky – very lucky – and now that luck had run out.

And all because of a stupid one-night stand.

He shook his head ruefully. It wasn't as if he even specialised in one-night stands; he had lost his virginity at 18, but even before Linda had come along, his assignations had been few and far between. If only he'd been …

“We're not boring you, are we, Alan?” said Professor Mercy.

Alan looked up, startled.

Everyone was watching him. They'd formed a group at the far end of the camp about ten yards away, and were now seated on the ground. The Professor, standing in their midst, had evidently been about to let forth when she'd suddenly noticed him off in a world of his own.

He hurried to join them, mumbling an apology and something about having been up since the crack. The Professor, as was her way, nodded patiently, waited for him to find a place and arrange himself comfortably there, then continued: “Now … I think we all know what we're doing. I'm sure four months of intricate planning won't have slipped any of us by. But let's just refresh …”

And she did.

In the quick, concise but oh-so compelling fashion that she, as Redditch University's leading medieval historian and archaeologist, had made her speciality. In vivid fashion, she recounted the known facts about the object of their mission; Ivar Ragnarsson, also called ‘Ivar the Boneless', an earl of the much-feared Danish clan Lothbrok, and probably the most famous Viking of his or any other age.

“As well as satisfying the traditional Viking image of looter, slaver, pirate, mass-killer on a terrifying scale, Ivar was also a military genius, without doubt the most successful Norse warlord of the ninth century,” the Professor reminded them. “After his father's execution in the adder-pit at York, he launched a five year vengeance raid on Britain, in that time devastating vast areas of England, Ireland and the Scottish Isles. His ferocity terrorised even his own followers. Of course, he was reputed to be
berserkir
– a warrior possessed by the wolf-spirit, whose madness carried him past all pain and reason in the heat of battle, and whose victims were deemed direct offerings to the all-powerful entities that were the Norse gods.”

As always, Alan found it difficult not to be awed by his project-leader and personal tutor. Her combination of brains, knowledge and beauty was almost mystical. It seemed utterly appropriate that her expertise should centre on the so-called ‘Dark Ages', that half-forgotten era between the fall of Rome and the rise of medieval Europe, when fact interwove with myth, and ‘civilisation' meant the power of petty lords dependent entirely on the spears of their hearth-men and the wiles of their ‘wizards'.

“But in what way was he ‘Boneless'?” David Thorson asked. “Not very flattering, is it?”

“They reckon it was because he was really agile,” said Barry. “You know, could jump over spears and shield-walls and such.”

Alan snorted: “You got that out of a movie.”

Barry shrugged his big shoulders, as if it didn't matter to him that much, which when he was close to Linda, nothing really did.

“No-one knows for sure,” Nug cut in. “Just one of the many mysteries that surround Ivar.”

“Perhaps it meant he wasn't fully human?” Craig mused. “Like he was a spirit creature, or something. You know, had an astral self.”

“Well he
was
supposed to be a sorcerer as well as a war-chief,” Alan conceded.

“Course … you've heard one outrageous theory,” Linda chirped up mischievously. “That he was gay.”

Instantly, there were snorts of derision.

“A theory formulated in the Sixties no doubt,” said Barry, as always stung by references to anything non-hetero.

“No,” she argued. “The story is that he was called ‘Boneless' by his brothers, when he was young, because he couldn't get it up for the girls. The nickname just stuck.”

“So how come he ended up having sons?” Alan wondered.

“Well that doesn't mean anything,” she retorted. “Look at Barrymore. He's got kids.”

There were more sniggers, more expressions of disbelief.

“No, but it's unlikely,” Clive put in. “Being gay was frowned on but accepted by most pre-medieval civilisations, but the Nordics weren't one of them. It's true that their society was based on male-bonding, but to them, any man who couldn't satisfy a woman was the scum of the earth – a failure, a total weakling.” He turned to Linda. “If your theory's true, it's impossible to see how Ivar could have risen to the prominence he did.”

There were more mutters about this, more arguments, until the Professor cleared her throat noisily. “As fascinating a subject as Ivar's sexuality might be, do you folks mind if we just concentrate on what's important for the moment? And on what we're doing here.”

The group fell quiet again, and Professor Mercy resumed her lecture. She recalled how Ivar had died in Ireland some time in 873, but that no-one knew where or how. She then went on to the ancient Irish chronicles, recently uncovered and translated by a colleague of her's at Cork University. Excitingly, those chronicles had described how “a tyrant called Inguar” had been laid to rest on “the island known as Crae”. This almost certainly meant Craeghatir; more to the point “Inguar” was a common Gaelic pronunciation of the Danish name “Ivar”. A resulting, rather tentative investigation had gone ahead and had quickly uncovered a previously unknown barrow located close to the single stone megalith for which the island was renowned, but horrendous winter weather had brought the mission to a premature end. Now, with summer finally here, and the permission of the Highlands Heritage Board secured in writing, a fuller expedition was being mounted. It was in Professor Mercy and her team's remit to carry out the first phase, excavating the barrow and its surrounding area.

“I think it's fascinating,” she concluded, “and a great, great honour, that we …
nobodies
, let's be honest … could be among the very first people in 11 centuries to set eyes upon Ivar the Boneless. Remember how mysteriously his life ended. A figure of fury, a colossus of carnage, who cast as black a shadow in the west as Attila had done in the east, simply dropped from history. We know a little bit about it, of course. After nearly a decade of depredations, he turned away from the British mainland for monetary purposes. Knowing that his chief ally, Olaf the White, was by then bound for Norway to press his own dynastic interests, Ivar had intended to make himself sole controller of the Irish Sea trade-routes, and already with a vast haul of slaves and booty to divide as spoils among those who would welcome him in the Emerald Isle, it seemed he couldn't fail. But despite that, he did. The Danes were defeated in Ireland, and Ivar promptly vanished from the records. Literally vanished.

“Only to reappear now … and here.”

There was a momentary silence.

Here
, they each of them thought.
Craeghatir
… a rugged, desolate isle just off the storm-ravaged point of Cape Wrath. A lost place; a forgotten place. In the words of Joseph Sizergh: “A savage, awful isle, all stones and shells and the bones of ancient beasts; to maroon a man here would be worse than to keel-haul him.”

How appropriate that a man like Ivar had found this as his final resting place.

As the summer dusk slowly fell, the trees ranked densely to either side of them seemed to close in, to squeeze the green shadows in their dim, dusty depths. Somewhere close by, an osprey made its shrill, piping call. It was a cold, menacing sound, and it lingered long in the otherwise silent forest.

 

The barrow was a ten-minute walk up through the woods, located on a truncated spur overlooking the crashing waves on the island's northern coast.

It was perilously close to the cliff-edge, and exposed to the elements on all sides. As with many tumuli, it was little more than a rounded, grassy hummock, about 10 or 12 yards in length, but two things gave it away at once: the low tunnel dug several feet into its western end, and only partially sheltered by a small canvas awning, much of which flapped in tatters from its flexible aluminium frame, courtesy of the Cork University team's unsuccessful expedition in the January of that year; and the sentinel form of the megalith, a vertical granite obelisk standing 10 paces to the west. This was about nine feet tall, and covered in mosses and lichen, though it had clearly been squared off at the top, indicating that, by origin, it had been hacked from its own bedrock, probably for the very purpose of being put here. Additional evidence of this was the vague inscription on its surface. Further examination revealed Icelandic-style runes, though even after tearing away much of the vegetation and getting in close with her eye-glass, Professor Mercy was not immediately able to decipher anything.

“I think there's a reference here to Halfdan,” she said, pointing out one particular passage. “He was one of Ivar's brothers, of course. But I can't be sure what else it says.”

Alan and Craig glanced at each other curiously; to come across a piece of Viking writing that Professor Mercy was unable to translate, was a new experience indeed.

A moment later, they were surveying the barrow itself.

“I wonder how deep the Cork lot actually got,” said Linda, raising her voice to be heard over the wind.

Craig crouched down. “Let's check it out.”

A moment later, he had ventured forward under the awnings, and had thrust his head and shoulders into the dark mouth of the passageway. A second passed, there was some grunting, then he began to wriggle his gangling body forwards, until only his legs were visible.

“It's not bad,” came his muffled voice. He squirmed his way back out, and stood beating soil from his clothes. “They got a fair way – about three or four feet, which, if it
is
hollow, must be fairly close to the central cavity. There's a heavy stone up, blocking any further access. Probably a portal.”

Professor Mercy considered this, then nodded. “Good, very good,” she said, unslinging her pack.

Barry sneered. “Imagine doing all that work then sodding off, just because of the weather.”

Clive shook his head. “It can get pretty wild round here.” He licked a finger and held it up in the stiff wind. “This is nothing, believe me.”

“Let's not waste the valuable sunshine, then,” the Professor said, kneeling on the grass and laying out her tools. Though it was now late evening, she was clearly eager to get started.

They debated briefly, finally deciding that while there was still a couple of hours of daylight left, it wouldn't do any harm at least to try to enlarge the space around the portal-stone. As the previous party had already set timber struts up inside the tunnel, most of which appeared to be solid, this seemed a reasonable proposition. Among the Professor's various tools, she had a small hand-axe and a pick. Only one person could get into the access passage at a time, so Craig took these, along with a torch, and went in first. While he was doing this, the others busied themselves finding a flat area on which they could erect the field-lab. This would basically be an open-sided tent under which they could store their equipment, paperwork and any decent finds, though for the moment they'd left most of that gear down at the base-camp.