Sandra Hill (27 page)

“What the hell is this?” Mike exclaimed a week after Rolf’s “death.”

After seven days of soul-wrenching anguish, Meredith had finally gathered enough strength that morning to log on her computer, at Mike’s urging. She’d intended to retrieve the instructions Rolf had said he’d typed in related to the ship project, which was at a standstill.

But she’d found much more. A letter to her from Rolf.

It was like a message from beyond the grave. Even though Meredith knew he’d written it the week before, it still felt as if he was talking to her now, from a thousand years away.

Meredith wept…silently, at first, then great shuddering sobs. Mike took her into his arms, trying to soothe her with soft spoken words and pats on the shoulder.

Thank goodness, Thea was in school and unable to witness this breakdown. Poor Thea! Even though devastated, she was handling Rolf’s “death” better than any of them.

Finally, when Meredith calmed down and they sat in the kitchen over coffee and Oreos—for some reason, Meredith had developed a taste for Oreos—Mike said,
“We need to talk, Dr. Foster. What’s that crap in Rolf’s letter about time travel?”

Meredith sighed and told her grad assistant the whole story. He deserved an explanation. After fifteen minutes, she concluded, “So, in the end, Rolf planned his ‘death.’ His departure from me…this time…was ordained from the start.”

“Holy hell!” Mike said under his breath, staring at her as if she’d told him aliens had just invaded Maine. Then more loudly, he repeated, “Holy hell!”

“Oh, I don’t expect you to believe any of this,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “It was hard enough for me to accept, and I was living with the evidence.”

“Actually,” Mike began tentatively, “it makes a weird kind of sense.”

Her eyes went wide. “You believe in time travel?”

“I never did before,” Mike said with a snort of self-derision, “but there were so many niggling contradictions about Rolf. And he knew so damn much about the tenth century.”

“We can’t tell anyone about this,” she said quickly.

Mike nodded. “If nothing else, they’d put us in a looney bin. Or close down the project.” He studied her for a moment. “Do you think it’s possible? Rolf, a medieval Viking?”

She shrugged, then straightened resolutely. “Yes…yes, I do believe.”

After that, Meredith’s healing progressed more rapidly, especially since she now had someone to confide in.

She studied the Norse sagas meticulously for more than a week, but nowhere could she find any with even a remote message from Rolf. But then, many of the
skaldic tales had been lost over the centuries, most never having been put to paper.

Work resumed on the Trondheim Venture as a result of persuasive arguments by Meredith before the foundation board. The only stumbling block was that the Annapolis man they’d hired to captain the voyage in August had suffered a heart attack, and they’d been unable thus far to find a replacement. But, with all the obstacles Meredith had faced these past months, she considered this a minor problem.

Then, a month after Rolf had left, Meredith was delivered a tremendous shock, and her life turned upside-down again.

“But how is it possible, Dr. Peterson?” she asked, plopping down in a chair before the physician’s desk. She’d gone in for a checkup that afternoon because of persistent weight loss and flulike symptoms of nausea.

“The usual way,” Dr. Peterson responded with a wry grin. “I assume you’ve had sexual relations with a man.”

“Of course,” she said, frowning at his deliberately misinterpreting her words. “You’ve seen my medical records. You know that I’m infertile…incapable of bearing children.”

“Meredith, I ran the tests twice to make sure. You’re pregnant, no doubt about it.”

“But how…I mean, was my original diagnosis incorrect?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he replied, choosing his words carefully. “Hell, Meredith, science isn’t perfect. Unexplained things happen all the time.”

Unexplained things happen all the time
, Meredith repeated in her head.
Tell me about it! I’ve lived the unexplainable
.

“Call it a miracle, or call it a fluke of science. Just be happy. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, tears brimming her eyes.

As she walked down the Bangor street a short time later, her lips twitched with a secret smile. She kept putting a palm to her flat stomach.
A baby! I’m going to have Rolf’s baby!

She didn’t know if the talisman belt was responsible for this miracle, or God, or even Rolf’s Norse gods. But Rolf had left her with the greatest gift of all. A part of himself.

So, for Meredith, there was finally a meaning to Rolf’s time travel.

“Praise the gods!” Geirolf shouted in an attic alcove of Oslo’s Vestfold Heritage Museum. His jubilant exclamation was accompanied by a brisk rap of his victorious fist on the rickety table in front of him.

He could not care. Finally,
finally
, after one long month of searching, he had found the key that might allow him to stay in the future with his wife.

“
Mis-ter Er-ic-sson
,” a crotchety voice reprimanded. The female form of Miss Hilda Svensson was just now poking its wiry gray head up the narrow stairwell. “This is a research facility, not a beer hall. You must respect the academic environment of your fellow scholars.”

Geirolf grinned sheepishly and thought about telling her he was a Viking, not a scholar. And he could have pointed out that she was the only mortal being he’d spied this past week in her three-story home, which was pretentiously called a museum, while actually housing only generations of her own family’s historical books and letters. Not that they weren’t valuable. In
truth, it appeared as if they would provide the answers he’d been unable to find in the most prestigious libraries and museums throughout Scandinavia.

But Geirolf kept his thoughts to himself and instead stood, barely avoiding whacking his head on the low ceiling. Then, with a whoop, he gathered the elderly woman into his arms and swung her in a circle. She was an angel, really she was. Ever since he’d met the diminutive Norse woman a sennight ago, she’d opened her museum home to him, renting him a room and giving him access to her hoard of hidden papers, protected in acid-free, clear plastic covers in climate-controlled closets.

“I’ve found the key to my puzzle, Miss Svensson. Bless you for giving me access to your precious documents.” He bestowed a loud kiss on her flushed cheek before setting her on her feet again. “Truly, you have saved my life, sweetling.”

Adjusting herself prissily, though obviously pleased at his exuberant appreciation, Miss Svensson walked over to the table and titled her head toward the parchment he’d been examining. “This is it, then?”

He nodded.

“Will you be able to return to your wife now, Mr. Ericsson?” Her eyes were misty with emotion over his “estrangement” from Merry-Death, which she viewed as a romantic melodrama. Though he hadn’t told her all the details, he had informed her that a separation from his beloved wife was necessary unless, or until, he found some important historical data.

“I think so,” he said. “Look at this. One of your ancestors, a scribe in the service of the Norse king in 1250, has left a copy of a missing page from
The Heim-skringla
.”

“The
Chronicle of the Kings of Norway?
” she translated.

“Yea. ’Twas written by Snorri Sturluson afore his death in 1241.”

“Is that important…the missing page, I mean?” Miss Svensson asked, her frail fingertips pressed against her trembling lips. She probably hadn’t had so much excitement in her life for decades.

“Very! I read a copy of the book back in the United States of Am-eric-hah, but it did not say how long the famine lasted.” He tapped a forefinger on the plastic, midway down the page. “This is the most important line to me. ‘And in this year of our Lord, nine hundred and ninety-seven, a great famine continued to besiege the land. A thousand and more good men, women, and babes succumbed to the scourge afore a great calm swept the country the first night of the spring equinox. After that, the earth flourished again. Thanks be to God!’”

“But…but I don’t understand.”

“It’s the date that’s important. I cross-referenced the spring equinox of 997 with the Demon Moon occurrence of 1997, and they occurred on the same day of the month.”

“And?” she prodded, her brow still furrowed with bafflement.

And that means that the need for me to return to the past ended with my being thrust through the time portal, along with the sacred relic. But he couldn’t tell Miss Svensson that, without revealing all. “
And
that means that there is no longer any encumbrance to keep me from returning to my wife’s side.”

Except for a few more questions that must be resolved. Such as, why was I sent into the future? If re
moving the reliquary from Norway, or even from that time period, was enough to wipe out the famine curse, then why did the gods require my going a thousand years to Merry-Death? Why not a sennight, or a year, rather than a century? Why to a country on the other side of the ocean? And why not some other woman, rather than Merry-Death?

The twists and turns of his life were all so confusing, but still Geirolf was overjoyed at today’s discovery. Standing suddenly, he flashed a mischievous smile at his marvelous benefactress, whose eyes were level with his chest. “M’lady, how would you like to celebrate with me over a horn of mead?”

To his surprise, she flashed him an equally mischievous smile. “’Twould be my pleasure, m’lord.” Then she added, “Shall I open those Oreos you had me special order from the grocer?”

He threw back his head and laughed, deep and long. Her mention of the heavenly cookies was another sign from the gods, he was certain.

Several days later, still scrambling for answers, Geirolf traveled over the causeway leading to Lindisfarne, in Britain. It was impossible to cross to Holy Island two hours before high tide and three hours after; so, his time was limited. But then, time was at the crux of all his troubles.

He wasn’t exactly sure why he’d felt the need to come to Lindisfarne. His blood-oath to his father had ended with his discovery back in Norway that the famine had ended with his time travel. At the very least, he hoped to leave the relic in the monastery. A closure.

But there was no monastery, only the ruins of what had once been the sanctuary of its founder, St. Aidan.
With the booming sea as a background and the cries of sea birds overhead, Geirolf fancied that the mournful chants of the Dark Age monks carried on the wind.

His head shot up with alarm. Had he been restored to his own time? But no, it was just the breaking of waves against the rocky shore and the trills of gulls and kittihawks.

He shuffled through the ancient remains—chiseled red sandstone boulders that had withstood the ravages of the centuries. So many changes! Nothing was as it had been in his day.
He
was not as he’d been in his day.

Geirolf was lost.

A man with no country, to be sure, but that was true of most Norsemen. Hadn’t that been proven to him in his journey to the twentieth century? Hadn’t he been shown that Vikings as a separate people didn’t survive the ages? So, in that regard, he was no different from his fellow Northmen who searched for a new home.

But he was a man without an anchor in time, as well, and that was the puzzle that nagged at him. Where did he belong? Was he destined to travel through time till he found his final resting place?

“Good tidings, my son,” a kindly voice said, jolting him back to the present.

“Wh-what?” Geirolf hadn’t heard anyone come up behind him. He turned, then took a step backward.

Standing before him was a tonsured priest of indeterminate age. He wore the traditional brown robe of the monastic community, with sandals and a cowl hood. The skin of his face was smooth and translucent, his eyes a penetrating blue.

“Where did you come from?” Geirolf snapped. The tour group was up at the castle, which stood on a dra
matic outcrop of stone on the other side of the island. In the distance, he saw the structure glistening like a proud jewel in the midday sun, framed by a steep rock face bright with thyme, valerian, mallow, and gillyflowers.

The holy man just curved his lips upward in a slight smile of mystery.

“Who are you?” Geirolf wished he had his sword with him. The abbot was regarding him in a most unsettling manner. And, after all, it was a well-known fact that many priestly men were as bloodthirsty as the most hardened warriors. Besides, they had good cause to hate Norsemen.

“Aidan,” the man replied.

“Aidan?” Geirolf choked out. “St. Aidan?”

“Well, I know naught about sainthood,” the man said, his ethereal eyes twinkling as if at some jest.

“Are you the monk who started a religious order on Lindisfarne?” Geirolf couldn’t believe he’d actually asked such a question. If true, it would mean that the monk had lived here more than thirteen centuries ago. Ridiculous!