The Last Viking

  "Absolutely not!" Merry-Death exclaimed, pulling herself upright with indignation. "The lightning that struck Rol... Mr. Ericsson's longship last night was a freak accident... an act of God. It will have no bearing whatsoever on the continuation of the Trondheim Venture."

  Geirolf gave Merry-Death a mental salute. His wife was stronger than she appeared at first glance. She would survive; he could see that in her quick flash of anger.

  "But don't you think it's odd that the lightning storm didn't hit anywhere else in the region?" the first reporter intejected.

  Merry-Death shrugged. "You'd have to ask a meteorologist, although it's always been my understanding that storms at sea are erratic."

  A woman newsperson tried to push forward, but when she was thwarted, shouted, "Is it true that Mr. Ericsson is your husband? How are you feeling, Mrs. Ericsson, about the death of your new husband?

  Merry-Death's eyes went wide with horror at the woman's crass question, and Mike put an arm around her shoulder, answering for her, "That will be all for today, folks. Any further questions should be directed to the college public information office. Thank you."

  With that, the picture faded away and moved on to a commercial for feminine products. Talk about crass!

  Well, that settles it, then. If Geirolf had even remotely been considering a return to Merry-Death's keep, that possibility was wiped out now. Not only would such an ill-considered action subject his beloved to the continual grief of his partings, but now he realized that future attempts to use the time portal would jeopardize the Trondheim project.

  What should I do? Where is the answer to this puzzle? Why did my time-travel reversal fail? How can I ensure that my next endeavor will be successful?

  Geirolf rubbed his talisman belt and lay back, spent, on the bedstead. With all these perplexing questions hammering at his brain, he fell into an exhausted sleep.

  In the middle of the night, the answer came to him.

  He would go to Norway on one of those flying machines. Perchance there he would find some answers.

  Not that he thought the time hole would open for him in another country. Nay, 'twould have to originate here off the coast of Maine. But, for some reason, he sensed that the clue lay in his homeland.

  Thus inspired, Geirolf—knees knocking with fright—boarded a flying machine the next day in Bangor, where a taxi driver had taken him for only five hundred dollars. He'd even stopped along the way at a Wall Mart so he could buy a leather Samson case and sonic clothing. Geirolf was sore tired of the strange looks he gathered everywhere he went. You'd think these people had never seen a man in a readier tunic afore.

  As the flying metal bird took off into ale sky a short time later, Geirolf braced himself within his seat restraints and prepared himself for what should be the most wondrous adventure of his life. 'Twas the fodder of the greatest sagas.

  But he just stared dolefully out the window. All he could think was, I miss Merry-Death.

  What was the meaning of this time-travel mission?

  There had to be a reason why he'd been sent here. It couldn't just be an accident of fate.

  It was probably wishful thinking on his part, but deep down inside his heart, a tiny spark ignited. Thus far, he'd been reacting to the events bombarding him at every turn. for the first time, he was taking action.

  Perhaps... oh, please, he prayed to all the gods, if it be possible, let me find a way that will lead me back to Merry-Death.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," a rumbling masculine voice said from out of nowhere.

  Awestruck, Geirolf glanced right and left, but no one else was paying attention to the God voice. The deity must be speaking only to him.

  "Welcome to the friendly skies..." the God-voice went on.

  Friendly? One of the gods is calling me a friend? Well, that certainly is a good sign. Is it Odin or the all-God?

  "I promise you a safe journey," the God voice continued. Some of the words were not decipherable, sounding like Merry-Death's car telephone. But safe journey, that was surely good news. He had just prayed to the gods to help him find a way to complete his father's mission and be with Merr-Death, and the God-voice had just promised him a safe journey. That was as good as a promise in his mind.

  Geirolf was drained from the emotional and physical battering of the past few days. But, for the first time in many sennights, he felt hopeful. Resting his head on the back of his seat, he allowed sleep to overcome him.

  It was all in the hands of the gods now.

  Chapter Nineteen

  "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 attached in file related to the ship project, which was 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.

  Merry-Death, my love:

  When you read this, I will be gone... back to the tenth century. Please, dearling, do not mourn for me. What we had for a short time was more than many people ever experience in a lifetime. A gift from the gods, to be sure.

  Study the Norse sagas, Merry-Death. I will try, if I am able, to leave a message for you. Some sign that I arrived safely in the past.

  I misdoubt that I can change history because of my experience in your time, but I myself have changed. For the better. Because of you. Surely I will be a finer person for having my heart opened thus.

  Please finish the longship project. I take comfort in the knowledge that you and I will both have filled our honor-bound blood oaths. If we do not, our sacrifice was for naught.

  Take joy in Thea, my love. Adopt children, if you must. But do not value yourself any less as a woman for your inability to conceive. You are all the woman any man could desire. For a certainty, you are all the woman this Viking will ever want.

  With all my love, forevermore,

  Geirolf Ericsson

  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 devestated, 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 muttered 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 held 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.

  It appeared as if they would provide the answers he'd been unable to find in the most prestigious librararies and museums throughout Scandinavia.

  But Geirolf kept his thoughts to himself and instead stubbornly 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, yes she was. Ever since he'd met the intuitive 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. Thank you for giving me access to your precious documents." He bestowed a loud kiss on her flushed cheek afore setting her on her feet again. "Truly, you have saved my life, sweetling."

  Adjusting herself prissily, though obviously pleased with his exuberant appreciation, Miss Svensson walked over to the table and titled her head toward the parchment he'd b en examining. "This is it, then?"

  He nodded.

  "Will you be able to returv to your wife now, Mr. Ericsson?" Her eyes were misty with emotion over his "estrangement" from Merrry-Death, which she viewed as a romantic melodrama—though he hadn't told her 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 Heimskringla.

  "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 Lord!'"

  "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 in 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 fare? If 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, milord." 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 Lindisfame, 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 Lindisfame. His blood-oath to his father had finished 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 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 galls and kittihawks.

  He shuffled through the ancient remains—chiseled sandstone boulders that had withstood the ravage of the centuries. So many changes! Nothing like 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 fate of most Norsemen. Hadn't that been proven to him with his journey to the twentieth century? Hadn't he been shown that Vikings as a separate people didn't surrender to the ages? So, in that regard, he was no different than his fellow Northmen who searched for a new lands.

  But he was a man without an anchor in time, 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, bringing him back to the present.

  "Wh-what?" Geirolf hadn't heard anyone coming behind him. He turned, then took a step backwards.

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

  "Where did you come from?" Geirolf's tour group was up at the castle, which stood on the outcrop of stone on the other side of the island. In the distance he saw the structure glistening like a 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 of mystery. "Who are you?" Geirolf wished he had his sword with him. The priest was regarding him in a most uncanny manner. And. after all, it was a well-known fact that many priestly men were as bloodthirsty as the most awed warriors. Besides, they had good cause to kill Norsemen.

  "Aidan," the man replied.

  Geirolf choked out. "St. Aidan?"