The Curse of the Viking Grave (13 page)

 

CHAPTER
14

Koonar's Grave

O
N THAT SPRING DAY THE UNENDING
sweep of rolling plain held a quality of desolation which even the hard white sunlight could not dispel. The land seemed unutterably empty, devoid even of the memory of living things. No birds sang. No caribou moved across the monochromatic wilderness of rocky ridges, sodden tundra, and melting drifts. The mosses and lichens underfoot were not yet quickening. They remained dun-colored in their winter lifelessness.

This was the Barrenlands at its most somber hour, freed from the winter sleep but not yet stirring into the short summer frenzy of new life. It was a gray-faced corpse.

Angeline, Awasin and Jamie all felt the oppressive sense of lifelessness and involuntarily moved closer to one another. The Eskimos and Peetyuk were not immune to it either. Ohoto muttered something almost under his breath, and Kakut nodded his heavy head.

“They say they stay here. Wait for us,” Peetyuk told his friends. “Not go Koonar grave. I not feel happy go there either; but if you go, I go.”

Jamie shook himself and tried to speak briskly.

“Let's not start acting like a bunch of kids in a haunted house. There's nothing to be scared of. Awasin and I spent a night alongside the Stone House and I crawled right into it. I know it seems pretty spooky, but there's no such thing as ghosts anyway. Come on, lets go.”

Awasin and Peetyuk glanced at each other and Awasin answered for both of them.

“Perhaps there are no spirits in your own country, Jamie. Perhaps white men have eyes that do not see what we see. White men know many things but they do not know
all
things.” He shrugged and turned to pick up his carrying bag. Slinging it over his shoulder, he turned back to Jamie. “Even the blind hare feels the presence of the great white owl,” he concluded, and strode off toward the distant loom of the Stone House.

The other three fell in behind him and Jamie had nothing to say. Not for the first time, he was dismayed by the reactions of his companions. “Some day I'll learn to keep my big mouth shut,” he muttered ruefully as he trotted to catch up to Awasin.

They crossed the broad swampy valley, sometimes wading knee deep in the icy thaw water, and then began to climb the rock-strewn slope of the ridge where the tomb stood. The Stone House took on stature as they came closer, so that it seemed to dominate the land. This was an illusion, for the structure was not more than fifteen feet square and ten feet high. Yet the illusion had reality to it, for in a land which was otherwise devoid of any indication that men had ever passed this way, this single creation of
human hands became the focal point in a sea of emptiness.

As they climbed over the sharp-edged, frost-shattered boulders below it, the visitors felt an oppressive sense of dislocation. Again they seemed to have stepped out of the realm of familiar things into an alien and infinitely older world.

Awasin stopped when he was ten feet from the tomb. Paying no attention to the others, he rummaged in his carrying bag and took out a plug of tobacco. He laid it down on a flat rock.

Peetyuk stepped up beside the Indian. Taking a skin-wrapped package of dried deer meat from his own bag, he laid it down beside the tobacco.

Jamie watched this performance with a puzzled frown on his face but held his peace. His restraint was rewarded. Awasin had been sharply observing his white companion, and when Jamie made no flippant comment and showed no sign of impatience, he explained, a little shyly, a little awkwardly.

“We think it is a good thing to make gifts to those who have gone, Jamie. We have much, for we are alive. They have nothing, for they are dead. When you and I were here last year I forgot what is due the dead. But I told myself that if I came back I would not forget again.” His voice became almost pleading. “Perhaps you think we are foolish, but do not laugh about it. I ask you not to laugh.”

Jamie shook his head. “I never felt less like laughing,” he replied solemnly. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a highly valued pocketknife which he had won as a school
prize in Toronto years ago. He glanced at Awasin in some embarrassment. “Can I? Is it all right if I give something too?”

Peetyuk caught Jamie by the left arm, and squeezed hard. “That
good
you do that, Jamie.”

There was a warmth in his voice which Jamie had seldom heard since their fight at Kasmere Lake. He stepped forward and laid the knife on the rock. Angeline followed him and placed a packet of tea beside the other gifts.

There was a new buoyancy in Awasin's voice, as though he were relieved of some deep inner tension. “I am sorry for what I said about your people, back at camp. There was a shadow coming between you and us, and it was partly my fault. There is so much anger in our hearts against white people that sometimes we turn upon our friends. You
are
our friend; Angeline's, mine and Peetyuk's. We were wrong to turn our faces from you.”

“I never turned mine,” Angeline interjected tartly. “Speak for yourself, brother. You forgot that I
like
porcupines.”

“And that means
I'm
a porcupine?” Jamie asked. “Okay, Angeline, you're right. I am. And since everyone seems to be being sorry around here, I might as well tell you
I'm
sorry for the way I acted too. Now let's get on with what we came to do.”

 

Massive and forbidding, Koonar's tomb had been built with great care and labor in the form of what appeared to be a solid cube of rocks whose interstices had been close-packed with muskeg sods. These sods had taken root and
spread, giving the whole structure a mossy overlay. However, the appearance of a solid cube was an illusion, as Jamie had discovered the previous year. He had found a small, half collapsed tunnel leading under the north wall into an inner crypt, and had crawled inside. Now he led the way to the tunnel entrance. He stopped abruptly as he saw a white, domed object lying on the moss nearby. Peetyuk saw it at the same time and gasped.

“Don't get jumpy, Peetyuk,” Jamie said hastily. “It's only a skull. It was inside the cache and I pulled it out without knowing what it was when I crawled in there last summer. We'll put it back where it belongs.”

Peetyuk was not reassured. He backed quickly away from the tomb and Awasin, who had seen the skull the previous year and had been badly frightened at the time, stepped back with him.

“I not go in!” Peetyuk said shakily. “I sorry, Jamie. I not go in!”

“There's no need,” Jamie replied. “I'll do it. Awasin, help me roll away the stones.”

Reluctantly Awasin came forward and the two boys removed the stones with which they had blocked the narrow entrance after their previous visit.

The tunnel was no more than a crevice in the rocks, floored with thick moss and illuminated only by faint gleams of light filtering through the interstices in the boulders. Jamie bent down to peer into the opening and he could just distinguish the outlines of the things he had briefly removed and then hurriedly thrust back into the tunnel before he and Awasin departed overland to the
westward. His own heart was beating faster than usual, and he felt a strong revulsion at once again having to enter that wet, dark hole.

He took a deep breath before working his head and shoulders into the entrance. His hands touched chill metal and he wiggled quickly out again, dragging the object with him.

Peetyuk and Angeline gazed in amazement at an immense weapon, nearly four feet long and heavily encrusted with rust and dirt.

“Koonar's knife!” Peetyuk muttered in a shaken voice.

“It's a sword, Peetyuk,” Jamie explained. “A two-handed sword. Only a giant of a man could have handled a thing like this. I can hardly heft it at all. Here, Awasin, lay it down easy on the moss. There's an awful lot of rust. Probably not too much solid iron left in it.”

Having taken the first plunge, Jamie turned back to the entrance with less reluctance. He brought out a rusted iron helmet next, and after that a dagger whose blade had been reduced by rust to a flaking filament of metal.

“That's all I took out last year,” Jamie explained to Peetyuk and Angeline. “Now I have to crawl right inside and see what's left. I'm going to light matches so I can look around.”

“You will only find bones, Jamie,” Angeline said timidly. “Perhaps you should not go inside. Perhaps we should be satisfied with what we have.”

Jamie shook his head stubbornly.

“No,” he said. “I have to see what's there. And I have to put the skull back where I found it.”

Awasin joined Jamie at the entrance and squatted down uneasily as Jamie began wriggling into the tunnel. Peetyuk and Angeline stood a few paces away. Peetyuk's eyes kept shifting from the entrance to the white skull that seemed to stare blankly at the sky out of empty sockets.

Jamie had disappeared from view. There was a scratching sound as he lit a match, then his muffled voice could be heard.

“I'm inside, Awasin. It's like a cave. About three feet high. You'll have to pass the skull in to me.”

Overcoming his revulsion, Awasin forced himself to pick up the skull. He carried it very gingerly to the entrance and thrust it into the darkness where Jamie took it from him.

For an unbearably long time there was no further sound from the tomb. Then Jamie's muted voice was heard again. It sounded strained.

“I'm passing out some more stuff. You'll have to stick your head in, Awasin. Be careful. It's something like a box, but it's as heavy as a rock.”

Steeling himself, Awasin knelt down and thrust his head and arms into the musty-smelling hole. His hands came into contact with a cold, slimy surface and he shrank back involuntarily. Then a match flared and he saw Jamie's face, white and streaked with sweat and altogether fearful-looking. Awasin almost scrambled out of the entrance.

“Get hold of it,” Jamie said impatiently. “It's only a box. It won't bite.”

As the match flame died Awasin looked down and saw that the object was a greenish square thing with a lip all round the top. He forced himself to grasp it and squirmed back out of the hole. Jamie was right behind him.

Jamie got to his feet and stood for a minute breathing deeply.

“That's enough of
that!
” he said when he had got his breath. “Let's have a look at the box.”

On closer examination the “box” turned out to be a sort of casket carved out of soapstone, about ten inches square and eight inches deep. At one time it must have had a wooden cover, but this had rotted away, leaving only fragments of wood clinging to the thick rim. The box appeared to be filled with black mold, but when Jamie cautiously lifted some of this material with a stick he encountered hard objects underneath.

The boys and Angeline crowded close around the stone box, their uneasiness forgotten. Gingerly Jamie lifted one of the objects out and cleaned the decayed vegetation off it with his fingers. It was revealed as an open circlet, like a bracelet with a piece missing. It was of some very heavy metal and was dull greenish in color. Jamie scratched the surface with his thumbnail.

“I think this might be gold!” he said in hushed tones.

Fired by the treasure fever, Peetyuk grabbed a stick and began poking in the debris. But Jamie caught his arm and stopped him.

“Hold on, Pete. We'd better not muck around with this stuff any more. Might smash up something in there that's gone rotten. We'd better leave the box just like it is until some expert can go to work on it.”

“It not box,” Peetyuk replied. “That only old kind Eskimo cook-pot, made of stone.”

“Whatever it is, it seems to be full of Koonar's things,” Angeline interjected. “I think Jamie is right. We should wrap it up in moss and put it in one of the carrying bags.”

Jamie waved his hand at the sword and dagger lying on the turf nearby.