Viking Gold (40 page)

They
camped on the beach that night, warmed by a fire of  driftwood that
smelled of seaweed as it burned. The fine weather meant they didn’t need the
tarpaulin from the ship for protection. Almost as soon as they’d arrived,
Sinead had gone looking for food, finding a colony of big pink crabs in one of
the lagoons. She plunged them into boiling water, then, with the help of Koll’s
smithing tongs and a wooden mallet, she prised the juicy white meat from the
shells. It was a fitting delicacy for their first meal in the Promised Land.

“You know,” Koll said,
shoving the last of the crabmeat in his mouth, “this place doesn’t look half
bad – though there’s a distinct lack of precious jewels. Tomorrow I’m going to
take a bow and explore those hills.” He pointed to the high, rolling landscape
behind them that resembled the hulls of an upturned fishing fleet.

Toki sat furthest from the
fire, his face half in shadow. “We should find a headland first, secure our
position,” he said, working a piece of driftwood with his knife. “We don’t know
enough about this place yet.”

“You speak as if we’re
staying,” Olaf said. “The sooner we find this damn treasure and get home, the
better.”

“And leave ourselves
defenceless to Ragnar’s attack?” interjected Magnus.

Redknee cleared his throat.
“Come Magnus, no-one here really believes Olaf betrayed us in the tunnels.” He
turned to Olaf. “I want to find the treasure too, but Toki is right, we must
make ourselves secure.”

After
much debate, it was decided a scouting party would venture into the woods the
next day with a view to finding the best place to set up camp. Olaf huffily
declared that he and Harold would stay to guard
Wavedancer.
Brother
Alfred, fearful of the toll a climb would take on his soft feet, offered to
keep them company.

Only Astrid seemed uncertain
about what she should do. As the fire burned low, she addressed Toki, who was
still carving the piece of wood in his hand. “When you say secure … do you mean
from wild animals?”

“I mean wild people,” Toki
said, and smiled.           
 

Brother Alfred crossed
himself. “If there are heathens on this island, I will find them and tell them
the ways of Christ.”

“But not tomorrow?” Astrid
shot back. “And you have come so far just to tell some grubby peasants about a
carpenter?”

“If you’re so interested in
our Christian stories,” Sinead cut in, “why don’t you read them for yourself?”

Astrid curled her lip in
disgust. “
Reading
is like collecting wood, or scrubbing tables. It’s
work, and work is for slaves.”

Sinead lunged forward and
clamped her hands round Astrid’s throat. Astrid clawed at Sinead’s face, but
the younger girl was strong and able to hold Astrid down, pushing her cheek
into the sand.

“That’s enough!” Redknee
said, grabbing Sinead by the shoulder.

But it was Olaf who gripped
Sinead’s hair with one hand and dragged Astrid free with the other. “There will
be no killing women.” he said. “If we’re staying, we’re going to need them.”
Then he turned and resumed his place beside Harold.

“She really
gets to you.” Redknee joined Sinead at the far end of the beach where she stood
near the water. The night was clear and the new moon cast a blueish glow over
her features.

“I shouldn’t let her,” she
said, smiling.

Silver, who’d followed
Redknee, slunk off to investigate an interesting orange shell.

Redknee sat in the sand. “Do
you think this can work?”

Sinead sat beside him, her
hands folded in her lap. “Can what work?”

“This … this settlement,” he
said, lying back and watching as a wispy cloud passed in front of the moon.

“So it’s decided – we’re
going to stay here?”

“Yes – at least for now.”

“What about Saint Brendan’s
treasure?”

“We need to secure our camp
before we can go looking.”

She lay back beside him, her shoulders
level with his, her eyes trained on the greyish white of the moon. It was a
while before she spoke. “Once we find the treasure, Olaf will want to return
home.”

She was likely right, Redknee
thought. There would be nothing keeping Olaf and the others in the Promised
Land once they had Saint Brendan’s treasure. Nothing keeping him either. Not
really. Only the draw of the land itself: hundreds, maybe thousands, of
untouched acres – all for the taking. But then, there was Sven’s jarldom for
him in the Northlands, if he had the wit to claim it. Sinead was unique in her
desire to truly start afresh. He turned on his side to face her, watched as her
chest rose and fell with each breath. He hadn’t noticed before, but her cheeks
were spattered with the palest freckles.

“Do you still think about
Ireland
?” he
asked eventually.

“Now that we’ve reached the
Promised Land?”

He nodded.

“Before I was sent to work
for the monks I remember a woman with bright green eyes and hair the colour of
autumn leaves, much like my own. She sang to me. I think … if I try very hard …
I can still remember some of the words to her song.”

“Sing it.”

“No.”

“Go on,” he said, raising
himself onto his elbow. “I want to hear it.”

“Don’t tease me.”

“I’m not.”

“All right.” She sat up and
took a couple of deep breaths. “I think the song went something like this:

“Where get ye your dinner,
my handsome young man?

I dined wi’ my true-love;
mother, make my bed soon.

 For I’m weary wi’
hunting, and fain would lie down”

Her
voice soared over the water like a heron in flight, all trace of her usual
harpying gone.

“You have a beautiful voice.”

She stopped. “You’re making
fun of me,” she said, shoving him in the ribs. “It’s a very sad song, about a
young man who dies of a broken heart.”

“You can’t die from love.”

“Can’t you?”

Redknee lowered his eyes. “I
don’t know … I’ve never been in love.”

“What about Astrid? I saw you
kiss in the tunnels.”

He shifted uncomfortably.
“There’s nothing between Astrid and I. She’s married, she thinks only of her
husband.” In truth, he
had
felt nothing when Astrid had kissed him.

“Well then … you can’t talk
about what you don’t know.”

“So,” Redknee said, in an
attempt to change the subject, “this woman, the one who sang to you, was she
your mother?”

“I think so. The sad thing is,
I’m not entirely sure. I was so young when I was sent to work for the monks, no
more than four years old. I can’t even remember.”

“Why were you sent to work
for them?”

She shrugged. “The monks told
me my parents couldn’t feed and clothe me. I suppose it makes sense.”

“Do you ever wonder about
finding her? The singing lady, that is.”

“I do, yes. But how would I?
I don’t have the same luxury of freedom as you. There is no fine dragonship at
my
disposal, no troupe of men to do my bidding.”

Redknee flopped back onto the
sand. “Sometimes I think it’s a curse. I wish my mother had never started me on
this quest. It wasn’t great, having a coward for a father, but at least I knew
who he was. Believed him dead. There was certainty in that. Now I don’t know
what to think.”

“You asked me if I’d ever
wanted to find the woman I remember as my mother. And yes, I have wanted that.
But at the same time, what does it matter? It wouldn’t change who I am. Nor
would it change how my life has turned out. My past is not my future,” she
laughed at this. “Heavens above, I of all people should know that; starting out
as a treasured servant in a rich monastery and ending up here, beyond the ends of
the earth, a slave to pagans.” She leaned over him, eyes serious. “I suppose
I’m saying – does it really matter
who
your father is?”

Redknee reached up and tucked
a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. “Finding my father was my mother’s
dying wish.”

Sinead said nothing, her
expression telling him all he needed to know. Instead, she lay back down beside
him on the sand and stared up at the huge, star-sprinkled sky.

Just then a yelp came from a
few paces off. They turned to see Silver, head down, ears flat, leaning on his
back legs and growling at the strange shell. Redknee called the pup over. Blood
oozed from the soft black pad at the end of his nose.

“He’s been bitten,” Sinead
said, glancing worriedly at the shell.

Redknee checked the wound.
There was a white splinter. “Hold him,” he said as he gripped the splinter
between his thumb and forefinger and gave a sharp tug. Silver yowled as the
splinter came loose and eyed Redknee reproachfully. Redknee held him close for
a moment until the shock left the pup’s system, then he went over to check the
shell. “It’s some sort of sea creature,” he said, easing it away with the toe
of his boot.

When he rejoined Sinead, he
found Silver sprawled across her lap. They lay side by side for a long while,
not speaking, just listening to the rumble of the waves beyond the lagoon.

When the cold started to seep
through his tunic, Redknee got to his feet and offered her his hand. “My lady,”
he said, bowing slightly. “Your world awaits …”

She stood, but instead of
taking his hand, she stood on tiptoe and planted a soft kiss on his lips. When
he leaned in, to deepen the kiss, she pulled away and ran laughing along the
shore towards their camp, trails of spray flying in her wake. He wasn’t even
going to try and catch her. That could wait.

It was then he noticed them.
Across the blank sand, further out than either he or Sinead had yet ventured, a
set of footprints snaking into the distance.

Redknee
kept quiet about the footprints. He didn’t want to admit the existence of
possible challengers. This island was his. He’d been first to land, hadn’t he? First
to cleave the beach with steel. Nothing – and no one – was going to take that
away from him. In any event, when he returned the next day to where he’d seen
the footprints, they were gone, washed away by the tide. A fact he took as a
good omen.

His daring, however, did not
extend to recklessness and he insisted everyone arm themselves on their trip to
the hills. It took the whole morning to climb the ridge behind the beach. On
reaching the top, Redknee had expected to see the far side of the island and
the sea beyond. Instead he saw trees. Wave after wave of burnished gold and
bronze shimmered in the noonday sun, an arboreal ocean of precious metals that
swept the pale autumn sky. A breeze whistled through the leaves, rippling the
surface of the golden sea. Redknee felt the energy as a tingle in his
fingertips. His island was huge: its depths swollen with the fruits of the
earth. He – they all – would be rich indeed.

Sinead’s eyes widened with
excitement, her skin glowed. She took Redknee’s hand and squeezed. “It’s
beautiful.”

Redknee was about to agree,
but Toki spoke first. “You still think we’re the first people to find a place
like this?” he asked.

Redknee shrugged. “We lost
Ragnar ages ago,” he said vaguely. He did not want to be reminded of the
footprints on such a fine day. With any luck, they belonged to some shipwrecked
beggar: no more a claimant to this magnificent island than the eagles swooping
above their heads or the worms that chewed the ground beneath their feet. For
if his uncle had taught him anything, it was that the spoils belonged to the
quick and the strong.  

◊

The
forest stretched as far as the eye could see, so they decided to push on while
there was still a good six hours of daylight. Beneath the canopy, the trunks of
the great broad-leafed trees soared straight and tall, their highest branches
arched in cloistered avenues. The air swam with the nutty perfume of decaying
leaves, lightened only by the occasional sweet note of a bough laden with
sticky dark fruits. The earth was soft and mulchy with its carpet of leaves, so
that their footsteps were silenced as if in reverence to their surroundings.
Where a spear of sunlight pierced the thatch, it seemed to set the very ground
ablaze, as if, in illuminating the dead leaves, it had struck a constellation
of fallen stars. 

“It’s like gold,” said
Sinead, kicking a tuft of leaves into the air.

Silver dived amongst them,
tail wagging. Redknee watched as they fluttered to the ground.
Streets of
gold.
That’s what Saint Brendan had spoken of in the
Codex
. He
couldn’t have meant …
Could he?

Sweat
trickled down Redknee’s neck and pooled at the base of his spine. He’d
dispensed with his woollen tunic long ago and his skin glistened like a
sea-pearl in the mid-day sun. Chopping wood was hard, but rewarding. Because of
their limited manpower, they would only harvest a couple of the smaller trunks
now. But they would be back tomorrow and the day after that.