The Orkney Scroll (16 page)

“But where is it?”

“Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland.”

“Scotland! This isn’t about the Neolithic, is it? It’s about Mackintosh writing cabinets. Get over it, Lara! Everybody makes a mistake from time to time.”

“I’m trying. I know it wasn’t the first mistake I’ve ever made, nor will it be the last. I’m not naive. I know forgers are getting to be awfully good at their trade, and unfortunately science and technology is helping them. But usually my mistakes do not involve murders for which my client is charged.”

“This isn’t about you, Lara. It’s about a conman by the name of Trevor Wylie who gambled big and lost. And it’s about someone else with a terrible temper, a wife-beater after all, who consorted with violent criminals. Maybe some of it wore off on him.”

“You consort with violent criminals. It hasn’t worn off on you as far as I can tell.”

“Maybe that’s because of you, you and Jennifer. Maybe Blair drove away the person who kept him grounded when he scared away his wife. And by the way, promise me if it ever does start to rub off on me, you’ll smother me in my sleep.”

“Count on it,” I said, and we both laughed.

“Come home,” he said. “I miss you.”

“I think I will,” I replied.

That night I dreamed about a windswept hill and a derelict castle in which lived an old, frail, ill man who sat in his wheelchair near a window, watched over by the ghost of a woman. He sat looking at a cracked and dry fountain that I was trying to reach, but I kept getting lost in the trees which sprang up along the paths created in the geometric garden. Across the burned countryside there was a desolate shore where human skeletons with guns and binoculars sat watching the sea. As I awoke a thought sprang unbidden: the Wasteland, the maze, the wounded king. I’d have to tell Percy about that place next time I saw him. It was difficult to believe salvation lurked in such a pathetic spot, but I suppose one never knew.

I couldn’t get a seat on the plane for Glasgow the next day, so I decided to give my mission just one more try. I was on my way back across the Churchill Barriers to widen my search out from St. Margaret’s Hope when a motorcycle overtook and passed me on one of the causeways. I don’t know motorcycles, so couldn’t swear it was the same one I’d seen in Stromness. However, there were two people on it, the passenger a woman with long dark hair blowing out from under her helmet, and the rider wore what looked to be the same skintight red and blue leather gear. I stayed with them across two more causeways, and the islands in between, and then as they swept past the turnoff for St. Margaret’s Hope. They were going faster than I was actually comfortable driving on these roads, but I tried to keep up with them with some success until I got trapped behind a farm vehicle. With so little traffic, this would have to happen right then! I saw them turn off the road to the left some distance ahead of me, at least I thought I did, and when I came to a road that I thought was more or less in the right place, I turned, too.

I followed a country road signed for something called The Tomb of the Eagles, slowing to look down side roads for any trace of the motorcycle. There was none. When I reached this Tomb of the Eagles, it turned out to be another five-thousand-year-old Neolithic tomb, this one managed by the farmer on whose property it had been found. There was a parking lot with a couple of cars, and a rather jolly exhibit center where family members explained what there was to be seen, but there was no Willow. I listened to the presentation anyway, hearing all about the tomb and how it was named for the eagle bones and talons that had been found in it along with the bones of more than three hundred people, and then walked with three fellow tourists some distance across fields to actually see it. The tomb was another grassy mound, but much smaller than Maeshowe, perched high above the sea. I could see how these tombs were still being found, as Percy had told me, given that they looked like an ordinary part of the natural landscape, a grassy knoll, a pile of earth long since covered over. They would be easy to overlook.

A motorbike with two riders shouldn’t have been easy to either overlook or lose, but I could see no sign of them, and even lay on my back on a dolly and pulled myself into the tomb with the rope provided to make sure they weren’t in there. They weren’t. The others did not recall seeing a motorcycle on their way in. Discouraged, although I’d enjoyed the place, I made my way back to St. Margaret’s Hope and continued my still unsuccessful search for the craftsman who made the reproductions at the Alexanders. Everybody knew the Alexanders’ place, but not much about them. It seemed they kept to themselves.

I had decided it was time to let this ridiculous notion of mine go, a feeling I thought might be quite liberating if I could manage it, and head back to Stromness to pack up my bags so I’d be ready to head home. It was then that once again a motorcycle with two riders roared past me. By the time I had reached my car, it had disappeared down the road that led to Hoxa and the Alexanders’ home. I took the road right to the end, but Willow, if indeed it had been Willow, was long gone. Still, the sun was going down and the sky looked absolutely wonderful, the pink just starting, shot through with brilliant azure and clouds with a touch of purple. I decided to park where I had before and hike up the road to the cliffs above the sea.

I was just standing there breathing in the fresh air, and trying to imprint this view on my memory, when I heard something, I wasn’t sure what, a groan, perhaps. It seemed to be coming from the concrete bunker just a few yards away.

“Hello?” I said. For a moment there was nothing, just the wind, but then I heard it again. It might have been an animal, injured perhaps. I decided I couldn’t just walk away, so I went down the steps leading into the bunker and stepped in. It was damp and cold and rather musty, and it took me a minute or two to adjust to the light. When I did, I saw Percy framed against the opening out to the sea. He was lying on one of the slabs and wasn’t moving. I hurried toward him, stumbling on something, his bicycle, as I went. There was blood everywhere, all of it gushing from a wound in his side. “Percy!” I said. “Can you hear me?” His eyelids fluttered slightly, then opened, but I wasn’t sure he could really see anything. “It’s Lara. I’m going for help.”

“Lara,” he gasped.

I cursed when I realized my cell phone was dead, not that I would know whom to call. “Hold on, Percy,” I said. “I’ll be back very soon.”

As I turned to go he grabbed my arm with astonishing strength and pulled me down toward him. He tried to speak but I could hear nothing and I tried to pull away. “Let me go, Percy. You can tell me later. I’m going to find a doctor.” He was going to bleed
to
death very soon if I didn’t get help very fast.

“Before he went mad,” Percy said in a kind of gasp, holding my arm in a vicelike grip.

“What did you say?”

“Before he went mad,” Percy repeated, but then his eyes shut. I tried to pull away again, but as I did so more blood, and maybe some of his insides, poured out of the wound. In vain I tried to pry his fingers off my arm.

“Bjarni the Wanderer,” he gasped. There was this kind of gurgling sound in his chest.

“Bjarni the Wanderer? Is that what you said?”

“Hid the chalice…”

“The what?”

“In the tomb of the orcs,” he said, and then Percy died. Or rather, Magnus Budge did.

Chapter 7

Our hardy band of travelers, now reduced to four, and pursued relentlessly by Goisvintha’s father Theodoric, fled south, the path of least resistance, I suppose, but one that led straight into the territory of the caliph of Muslim Spain. Desperate for provisions, Bjarni and Oddi attacked a merchant’s retinue in the dead of night. Taken by surprise, some fled, and some were killed by the three Vikings. One, obviously the leader, fought Bjarni for some time and would not yield. Finally Bjarni gained the upper hand, and the man fell to the ground, Bjarni raised his axe, intending to deliver the final blow. The man said nothing. He did not beg for mercy. He did not cry out in fear.

Bjarni lowered his weapon. “You are a worthy opponent,” he said to the man. “I will not take your life, and I would appreciate it if you would extend me the same courtesy. I will take only what we need from this wagon of yours, and be on my way.” With that he turned his back on the man, a gesture that some would say was foolhardy, but in a short time Bjarni, Oddi, Goisvintha, and Svein the Wiry disappeared into the darkness, unfortunately straight into a military encampment. Soon after that they were on a forced march toward Cordoba.

It would be fair to say that Bjarni, Oddi, and Svein, and even possibly Goisvintha would have been amazed by what they saw as they made their way across the countryside. By the early days of the eleventh century, Spain was surely the most sophisticated place in Europe. Aqueducts crisscrossed the country, the remarkable irrigation systems ensuring orchards and grain fields aplenty. The towns would have been simply extraordinary. Cordoba, the seat of the caliph, was certainly a most impressive place. There were fabulous mosques, gardens, fountains, hospitals, great libraries, magnificent palaces, public baths. Houses were well-kept and flowers, trees, and shrubs bloomed everywhere, most of which Bjarni would never have seen before. And wonder of wonders, the streets were not only paved, but lit and patrolled. Remember, the streets of Paris were not paved until the thirteenth century, those of London, the fourteenth. To Vikings accustomed to the stone houses of Orkney, and the muddy, dangerous roads of the territories they knew so well, Cordoba must surely have been astonishing.

Bjarni and the others were brought before someone he knew must be important, and he thought they all would die. Now Vikings were well known in Spain. They were a nuisance most of the time, and a great deal of trouble some of the time, and indeed were called
madjus
or “heathen wizards.” Vikings had sacked Lisbon, Cadiz, and even Seville in the ninth century, until eventually repulsed by the highly organized army and navy. Muslim Spain had never really been good hunting for the Vikings, but they would still have been considered a threat. There would be none feeling too kindly toward Bjarni and his friends.

But then a voice was heard from the back of the room. There was much consternation in the group at the words. “This captive may not be a man of the book,” the voice said, by which he meant a Muslim, a Christian or a Jew, “but he is a man of honor. He spared my life, and I would ask that his life and that of his companions be spared in turn. ” Bjarni must have looked in surprise at the man he had almost killed, now resplendent in silk.

So Bjarni and his tiny retinue were set free. But Bjarni would have to carry on alone.

Who would kill a poor sod, a harmless dreamer like Percy Bicycle Clips? Or Magnus Budge, or whoever he was? He’d always be Percy to me, an unusual little man pedaling furiously toward what he hoped would be salvation. And not just kill him, but stab him over and over again, then leave him to bleed to death, his eyes to cloud over, his breath to come in gasps, as the last of his life oozed from him, alone on a cold concrete slab.

Trevor Wylie I could almost understand. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he deserved it or anything, but he did, I suppose, make a credible murder victim if one might be permitted to put it that way. But not Percy Bicycle Clips.

I was very glad I hadn’t mentioned a name when I pounded on the door of the nearest house I could find to get help for Percy, help that even then I knew was too late. That meant that when I was interviewed by the Northern Constabulary both in their squad car and later that evening in Kirkwall, I had not had to explain the name Arthur Percival when in fact all of the corpse’s identification proclaimed him to be Magnus Budge. No doubt they would have found that a little odd. Even I found it so. As it was, I was just a tourist who had happened upon a grisly sight while hiking around the World War Two bunkers on Hoxa Head. Everyone was terribly apologetic that such a dreadful thing had happened to a visitor. They kept telling me that violent crime was very rare.