lights were bright in the sky again this year. It is right to come here now.’
Jorund said nothing, but his stomach lurched when the boat’s keel scraped on the beach and it was time to disembark. All around, his people were scrambling overboard, calling to each other in unbridled delight as they recognized familiar landmarks. Wordlessly, Jorund and Ivar walked towards the village, leaving the others to unload the supplies. When they drew close to the church, Jorund stopped.
‘I cannot go any further,’ he whispered. ‘We left the dead unburied…’
‘But Qasapi did not,’ said Ivar. ‘He sent word to say that he and his people had covered them decently with stones. We shall bury them in the cemetery later, and that will mark an end to the business. This is a good place, and our people will prosper here.’
‘I wish you were staying,’ said Jorund unhappily. ‘We will all miss you. Are you sure you want to go to Iceland and become a monk? I have heard they keep you inside all day, reading and praying.’
Ivar smiled. ‘It is all arranged, Father, and I must follow my promise to God.’
‘And all because of that sky-stone,’ said Jorund bitterly. ‘I wish Leif had never found it.’
‘It is a great gift, if used properly,’ countered Ivar. ‘You were sceptical at first, but even you acknowledged its power when it saved Mother after she almost died giving birth to Olaf. And it has brought us luck.’
‘Some very good luck, and some very bad,’ agreed Jorund. ‘But I am glad you are taking it away. It led to fights when the people of the Western Settlement learned about it, and it is unpredictable — it does not always do what one wants.’
‘Such as failing to save Leif,’ said Ivar sadly. ‘And Aron’s little son, when he fell in the fire. I suppose it wants to be seen as a boon, not a given. But regardless, the monks will know how to use it wisely, and I do not think we should keep it any longer.’
Jorund smiled, pleased his son had grown so wise. Would Leif have shown the same qualities? And would his third son, Olaf, who was being groomed as village leader now Ivar was making good his promise to take the cowl? He supposed only time would tell.
The following day, while the rest of the villagers mended fences and enclosures, Jorund and Ivar removed the stones Qasapi had laid over the bodies of the thirteen men and one boy who had died so long ago, and began the process of taking them to the cemetery.
Despite the Skraelings’ care, animals had been at the bodies, and rain and snow had done their share of scattering, too. It was impossible to tell which bones belonged to whom, so they buried them in a common grave to the south of the church, placing the skulls in a long line against one side.
‘We may have put Brand next to Leif,’ said Jorund anxiously, staring down at what they had done. ‘A killer next to his victim.’
‘It does not matter,’ said Ivar comfortingly. ‘And they were all friends once. Let us put the earth over them and make an end of this dismal business.’
A week later Ivar packed the sky-stone in a bag with some warm clothes and prepared to head south with the traders. He bade a tearful farewell to the parents and brother he would never see again, and watched Brattahli? and its little church until they disappeared from sight. Then he turned his eyes to the seas he would have to cross before he reached his final destination.
In the following days, with his thoughts far away, Ivar did not notice the man from the Western Settlement who watched him intently. Called Saemund, he was not much older than Ivar, and had not dissimilar Norse features. Like everyone from the Western Settlement, he knew all about the sky-stone. He had also heard Ivar telling his father that he intended to give it to a monastery, and he thought it a pity that monks in Iceland should benefit from something that belonged in Greenland. Before they had even sailed, Saemund had decided to kill Ivar and tip his body into the sea; accidents were not uncommon on ships, and it would be assumed that Ivar had been washed overboard.
And the sky-stone? Saemund would grab it before he threw Ivar’s corpse into the sea, and then he would keep it safe. When he returned to the Western Settlement the following year, he would take it with him. Of course, he might use it to accrue himself a little wealth in the meantime — such a prize could make a man very rich.
Late one day, with no one else near the stern, Saemund began to edge towards Ivar, but as he pulled out his knife the ship gave a peculiar lurch. He glanced upwards and saw dark clouds scudding towards them. Surely, they had not been there earlier? It had been clear and calm all day, and the captain had been muttering about an unusually placid crossing. Keeping a wary eye on the sky, Saemund eased forward again.
The squall hit the little ship with tremendous force, dousing those on deck with a vicious shower of rain and spray. Saemund blinked water from his eyes. Were the gods providing a diversion for him, so he could take the stone from Ivar without being seen — knowing he would bring the treasure back to Greenland? Or were they warning him to leave well alone?
Saemund took a firmer hold on his knife. There was only one way to find out.
Historical note
In the 1960s archaeological investigations in western Greenland uncovered the foundations of a tiny church. It has been dated to about AD 1000 and is thought to have been built by Thjodhild, wife of Erik the Red; Erik founded the settlement of Brattahli? in the 980s. An unusual mass grave was discovered just to the south of it, containing thirteen adult males and a nine-year-old child. All had been buried at the same time, and, although the skeletons appear to have been deposited fairly randomly, the heads were carefully arranged in a line down the eastern side of the pit. Many show signs of violence, such as hacking injuries to the head and arms.
Several explanations have been offered for why so many men should have died at the same time. Vikings were a seafaring people, and so it has been suggested they were victims of a shipwreck on Greenland’s treacherous coast. Alternatively, they may have been the losers in a skirmish, either with a rival clan or with indigenous people. But no one knows, and the fate of these people remains a mystery.
A number of iron meteorites are recorded as having been discovered in Greenland. They were highly prized by the Greenlanders, who fashioned knives, harpoon heads and engraving tools from them. Three large ones landed east of Cape York about a thousand years ago, and, although their whereabouts was a closely guarded secret, rumours of an ‘iron mountain’ reached the British explorer John Ross in 1818. The American explorer Robert E. Peary found the meteorites in 1894, and the next year took two of them back to the United States. In 1896 Peary led an expedition to remove the largest of the meteorites, which was known as ‘Ahnighito’ and weighed between ninety and a hundred tons. Peary had it excavated but could not transport it all the way to his ship, so he returned in 1897, when he was able to take it with him back to New York. It is now displayed in the American Museum of Natural History.
Act One
Estrighoiel (now Chepstow), summer 1101
The weathered recluse was frightened. Ever since he had used the sky-stone to save Cadowan’s wife, people had been trying to find him, demanding cures. And demanding answers, too. They wanted to know how he had been able to wrest a woman from the jaws of death. Was it by God’s grace or the devil’s? All that most of them knew was that Nest claimed he had put a curiously shaped stone in her hand and urged it to heal her — and it had. Was it true? Where was this stone? Surely, if it had truly helped her, it should be in a shrine, not in the care of a grizzled, cantankerous hermit in a cave in the woods?
Ivar knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that someone was going to try to take it from him. Nest and Cadowan were good people, which was why he had helped Nest when he had come across her, twisted and broken, after her fall down the cliff. She had promised to keep silent about what had happened, but there had been witnesses — those who had chased her and driven her over the precipice in the first place — and they had accused her of being in league with Satan. To save her, her husband had told the truth, and then Nest had followed suit. Ivar did not blame them; he would probably have done the same.
But it meant that now, after years of solitude, Ivar’s sanctuary was under siege. People flocked to him with their questions, pleas and demands, and he knew he could not stay in his refuge much longer. Nest and Cadowan had tried to buy the stone from him, and when he had refused to part with it they had urged him to take it to the monastery in Estrighoiel, where Prior Odo had offered to keep it safe and use it wisely.
