Crusader Gold (9 page)

“There’s one thing I don’t understand.” Costas had suddenly jolted awake, as if there had been no hiatus in the conversation they had been having an hour before. “Harald Hardrada was killed in England, in 1066. Right? Then how come the map inscription suggests he died somewhere out here?”

Jack gave Costas a bemused look and they both peered at Jeremy, who was ruffling a sheaf of papers and seemed completely preoccupied by his work.

“Jeremy?” Maria said.

“Huh?”

“The Battle of Ragnarøk in the map inscription. How does that fit in with Harald’s death at Stamford Bridge?”

“Oh, the wording was probably just figurative,” Jeremy said dismissively. “All Viking warriors slain in battle went to Valhalla, where they served Odin and awaited the final showdown against evil at Ragnarøk. Valhalla was perceived as being in the west, beyond the rim of the world. The inscription doesn’t necessarily imply that Harald and his men met their fate there.”

“And the treasure of Michelgard?”

“Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”

“Jeremy, do you have my copy of Sturluson?” There was an edge of irritation in Maria’s voice as Jeremy held out a book without looking at her, his attention concentrated on his computer. She took the book and held the cover towards Costas. It showed an image of a knight on horseback clad in chain mail, wearing a close-fitting open helmet with a nose-guard and carrying a large kite-shaped shield.

“Looks like a Crusader,” Costas said.

“Not far off,” Maria replied. “This is from a tapestry in Norway dating from the twelfth century, a hundred years or so after Harald died. But in the absence of any kind of portrait of him, it gives a pretty good idea of what Harald and his men would have looked like. The Varangian bodyguard in Constantinople were Vikings by birth and upbringing, and carried the dreaded war axe of the Norse.

The axe was the stuff of legends, man-high, single-bitted, terrifying in battle.

The Varangians cashed in on the reputation of their forebears, Vikings who had raped and pillaged their way around western Europe, and had even sailed into the Mediterranean to terrorise Italy and France. But the Varangians were also pretty cosmopolitan characters who had spent their adult lives in Constantinople, the most sophisticated city in the medieval world, serving the Byzantine emperors. Their armour and finery wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Crusades, and they would have spoken Greek as well as Norse. Harald Hardrada even campaigned in the Holy Land.”

“In the Holy Land?” Costas sounded incredulous. “But I thought the Crusades didn’t begin until the end of the eleventh century. That’s a generation after Harald died!”

“You could call Harald Hardrada the first Crusader,” Maria said, her eyes shining with enthusiasm. “He was born a pagan, and certainly wasn’t seeking redemption for his sins, but he did serve the interests of the Christian Church in the Holy Land. You have to understand, Costas. The Crusades as we know them were only part of the story, told from a western perspective. The Byzantine Church and its warriors had been trying to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Arabs for centuries. In the year 1036 the Byzantine emperor Michael concluded a treaty with the Arab caliph of Egypt to allow the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the shrine raised over the site of Christ’s grave in Jerusalem. A year later Harald Hardrada led the Varangian Guard to escort the Byzantine craftsmen to Jerusalem. The scene could have been straight from the Crusades, tall, blond horsemen weighed down with armour sweeping across the desert, except Harald was actually successful in pacifying the Holy Land. All of the towns and castles of Palestine surrendered to him without a fight, and he cleared the roads of robbers and brigands. He gave treasure to the shrine of the Holy Sepulcher, presumably on the instructions of the Byzantime emperor. He even bathed in the river Jordan, like any good pilgrim.”

“You can shore up the case even further.” Jeremy had abandoned his work and was now fully focussed on Maria. “After Jerusalem, Harald Hardrada campaigned for three years on behalf of the Byzantine emperor in the central Mediterranean, in Sicily and Italy. At the time, Sicily was an Islamic emirate, captured by the Arabs in the great jihad which saw Muslim armies take the Holy Land and sweep as far west as Spain. Harald was leading an army under the banner of the Cross against the infidel, to reclaim lands for the Church. The Byzantines called their enemy Saracens, the same opponents the Crusaders would face a few generations later. Harald’s war was one of Christian against Muslim, the first major flaring of the conflict that ignited the Crusades and is still with us today.

Hardrada was the most feared leader of all the Christian forces, even more so than Richard the Lionheart or Baldwin of Flanders in the Crusades. To the Arabs Hardrada was Ra’d Shamaal, the Thunderbolt of the North.”

“This was some guy,” Costas murmured. “And you say he was from Norway originally?”

Maria waved the book she had taken from Jeremy. “This is our main source, King Harald’s Saga, written by the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson in the early thirteenth century. It’s part of the Heimskringla, a history of the kings of Norway. It gives us our only description of what Harald looked like: immensely tall, fair-haired, with a fair beard and long moustaches, a classic Viking. It shows that he was born Harald Sigurdsson in the year 1015. Later he acquired the name Hardrada, literally ‘Hard Ruler,’ Harald the Ruthless. His indoctrination into the ways of war came early, at the age of fifteen, when he fought alongside his half-brother, King Olaf the Saint, at the Battle of Stiklestad against a rival Norwegian army. Olaf was killed and Harald fled east into exile, first to Sweden and then to Novgorod and Kiev to serve as a mercenary of King Yaroslav of Rus.”

“How did he get to Constantinople, then?” Costas asked, looking at a map.

“Well, the pickings were richer there. At the age of eighteen, Harald arrived in Constantinople to join the Varangian Guard. He quickly rose to be atrologus, chief of the Guard, and for nine years plundered his way across the Mediterranean in the name of the Byzantine emperor. In 1042 he fled Constantinople, laden with booty, and reclaimed the throne of Norway. Twenty-four years later, years in which he ravaged Denmark and ruled Norway with an iron fist, his ambition drove him to the fateful encounter with King Harold of England at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. It was a career drenched in blood from beginning to end, but along the way Harald secured his birthright and became one of the wealthiest and most feared rulers in the medieval world.”

“It’s plausible that he should have visited Vinland,” Jack murmured. “Iceland and Greenland were predominantly Norse settlements, discovered by Norwegian Vikings, and a king like Harald Hardrada would have wanted to exert his influence. Also there’s the kudos factor. A voyage to Vinland would have been a daring feat, further shoring up his reputation as a fearless warrior and adventurer.”

“He wouldn’t have been the only man to try,” Maria said. “The Icelandic annals mention a bishop of Greenland who set off for Vinland. He vanished forever, disappeared from history.”

“It doesn’t add up.” Jack sounded troubled. “If Harald made the voyage to Vinland then he did survive, returning to Norway in time for 1066. He would have had everything to gain from proclaiming his success, asserting his claim over the western Viking settlements and extolling his courage. It’s the stuff of sagas, yet I’m assuming there’s nothing about it in the Heimskringla, is there? All we’ve got is a secret reference on a map in Hereford Cathedral. It doesn’t make sense.”

“His treasure, the stuff he looted with the Varangians,” Costas said. “What do we know about that?”

“It’s a fantastic story.” Maria flicked through the book to find a page and then held it open. “Listen to this:

“His hoard of wealth was so immense that no one in northern Europe had ever seen the like of it in one man’s possession before. During his stay in Constantinople, Harald had three times taken part in a palace-plunder: it is the custom there that every time an emperor dies, the Varangians are allowed palace-plunder—they are entitled to ransack all the palaces where the emperor’s treasures are kept and to take freely whatever each can lay his hands on.”

“I guess that’s the price you pay to keep the loyalty of mercenaries,” Costas said.

“It means the Varangians not only had as much as they could carry from the palaces each time an emperor died, but also must have known the locations of treasures that remained out of bounds. After all, their main job in Constantinople was to guard the Imperial Treasury. But Snorri’s account of palace-plunder is undoubtedly exaggerated, something that would appeal to his Viking audience.

The greatest treasures must of course have remained under lock and key.”

“You’re talking about the menorah,” Costas said.

Maria nodded. “But wait for the rest of the story. It gets even better. By 1042, after more than a decade in the service of the emperor, Harald had had enough of campaigning. He’d got all the fame and plunder he wanted and was now bent on reclaiming Norway. So on his final return to Constantinople from the wars, he resigned from the Varangian Guard. The emperor, Michael Calaphates, was a weak man who seems to have been okay with this, but the empress Zoe was furious. She already had a grudge against Harald. Apparently he’d asked for her beautiful niece Maria’s hand in marriage, but Zoe had refused. The story later put about by the Varangians was that Zoe herself wanted Harald, and this was the real reason she was so upset about his departure from Constantinople.”

“A love triangle,” Costas chuckled. “The Thunderbolt of the North had finally met his match.”

“Harald was thrown in prison but was released by a mysterious lady, maybe another lover. The story goes that Harald summoned his Varangians and they exacted terrible revenge on the emperor, blinding him in his bed. That same night Harald broke into Maria’s apartment and kidnapped her. This is what Snorri says happened next:

“They went down to the Varangian galleys and took two of them. They rowed to the Bosporus, where they came to the iron chains stretched across the Sound.

Harald told some of the oarsmen to pull as hard as they could, while those who were not rowing were to run to the stern of the galleys laden with all their gear.

With that, the galleys ran up on to the chains. As soon as their momentum was spent and they stuck on top of the chains, Harald told all the men to run forward to the bows. Harald’s own galley tilted forward under the impact and slid down off the chains; but the other ship stuck fast on the chains and broke its back.

Many of her crew were lost, but some were rescued from the sea.”

“That’s it,” Jeremy said excitedly. “What I was saying yesterday. The timbers you found in the chain in the Golden Horn were from Harald’s second ship. Snorri doesn’t say it actually sank, which explains why you only found the wood broken off in the chain. The skull with the helmet must be one of the drowned Varangians.”

“What happened to your namesake?” Jack asked Maria.

“According to Snorri, Maria was released unharmed when they reached the Black Sea and even given an escort back to Constantinople. Maybe her kidnapping was Harald’s way of cocking a snook at Zoe, but he’d already moved on and was planning to marry King Yaroslav’s daughter Elizabeth, probably a girlfriend of his in Kiev before he joined the Varangians.” Maria smiled at Jack. “But others think Maria remained with him and was his mistress and true love to the end.”

“So you think the menorah was stolen on the same night?” Costas persisted.

“Yes. If the Varangians had time to kidnap Maria, they also had time to snatch the greatest treasure they knew of in Constantinople.”

“That maybe explains the menorah symbol on the Hereford map.” Costas stared into the middle distance for a moment, lost in thought. “If the Vikings were only interested in the treasure as gold bullion, then it seems odd that the shape of the menorah should still have meaning years later when Richard of Holdingham wrote down that runic inscription. Maybe the fact that it was forbidden treasure, not palace-plunder, gave the menorah added significance. It could have become a symbol of Harald’s prowess, his manliness, a spoil of victory like in Roman days, to be endlessly trumpeted by the Vikings in sagas and feasts. When they got back home the story of that final night in Constantinople must have kept the Varangians in free drinks for the rest of their lives.”

They all turned to Jeremy, who averted his gaze and then glanced down at his computer, then looked Costas full in the face. He paused for a moment before speaking, his tone oddly troubled. “You’re probably right. But that may only be part of the story.”

At that moment the pilot’s voice came over the cabin speakers to announce that they were beginning their descent into Kangerlussuaq, the former US air base that now served as Greenland’s main international hub on the west coast. Jack looked out his window and saw that they had crossed the edge of the Greenland ice cap and were now approaching the Davis Strait, the wide channel of ocean between western Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. Below them lay sinuous fjords and expanses of green that suddenly made the Viking settlement of these shores seem plausible, an inconceivable thought on the barren east coast. As the aircraft banked sharply and turned back east they came in line with the longest inlet of them all, Søndre Strømfjord, with the bleak and sparse settlement of Kangerlussuaq scattered over the valley at its head. A few minutes later the undercarriage dropped and Jack could make out two aircraft parked in bays of the former military airfield in the centre of the valley, the first an Antonov An-74

transport jet which had preceded them with Costas’ precious gear and the second a Lynx helicopter bearing the distinctive logo of the International Maritime University.

“We’re coming over the icefjord now. Take a look out to port and you’ll see the tips of icebergs through the mist.”

James Macleod took his hand momentarily off the cyclic and pointed past Jack at the jagged pinnacles of white that appeared like peaks of distant mountains through the clouds. In the passenger compartment behind them, Maria and Jeremy leaned forward to follow his gaze. With the three-hour time difference from England it was still early morning, and the sun had yet to burn off the sea mist caused as the cold air tumbled off the ice cap and met the warmer air rising from the sea. In the summer sun it was actually warmer at three thousand feet than on the surface of the ice cap, but even so the temperature was a few degrees below zero and they all wore fully insulated flight suits as well as helmets, a precaution against turbulence as the helicopter encountered thermal updraughts over exposed land and water along the coastline.