by K. T. Tomb
“Rule well, Ivor,” he said, then turned to the people present and shouted. “Hail, Jarl Ivor!”
“Hail, Jarl Ivor,” they replied.
Ivor mounted his war horse and led the procession to the center of the town at Drammen and paused so the people could see him.
“Hail, Jarl Ivor!” Svein shouted.
“Hail, Jarl Ivor,” they replied.
Ivor rode into the Great Hall on horseback, dismounted and sat on the throne on the raised platform. Again Svein made his announcement and as soon the men had finished their cheering, the feast began. When everything was progressing nicely, Ivor left the throne and sat at the head of the feast table. Freda sat to his left rubbing the tiny swell of her belly and below her at the table, now more appropriately dressed, was Agartha, Gildi and Thyri. She seemed happy tonight, not as sick or upset as she had been the night before; Ivor had held her in his arms and lulled her to sleep when the pregnancy pains had held her in their grip. It was clear that she had over exerted herself during the funeral.
“You are well my love?” he asked her quietly.
“I am better than I was last night, Ivor,” she replied.
“I notice that there is meat on your plate.”
“The medicine woman insisted that I must find the appetite for it. She said the pain is from my child telling me he wants to grow and there is no food for him to do so. She gave me some clear crystals, which she said she takes from the sea, to sprinkle on the food. It makes it tastier and also it keeps my stomach calm, so I am much better than I was last night.”
“That is good, Freda, you scared me terribly. Please, do not do it again.”
He smiled at her and she returned his smile, reaching for his hand under the table.
When the feasting was finished, the slaves came in with the mead and served the guests generously. Svein, his Captain, all the officers of his armies, the merchants, farmers and priests moved to the front of the room and stood before Ivor’s throne. One by one, they all pledged themselves to his service and wished him a long and successful rule. When it was just his warriors and his closest men who remained with him in the Great Hall, Alaric’s wives, the shield maidens, came before Ivor. Thyri, then Gildi and lastly Agartha knelt in front of the throne and promised themselves as wives and warriors to him. Ivor accepted their service as warriors but released them from their bonds of marriage.
“My warrior maidens, you were not justly treated as wives before and it was not something that you chose for yourselves. You are welcome to stay in Drammen in the protection of my court but you are now free women. If you stay here, you will be the personal guardians and servants of Freda, she is your kinswoman, a citizen of Oslo, but otherwise you may do as you please. Go and choose new husbands whom you love and bear them many children.”
The three women were shocked and yet delighted at their Jarl’s words and quickly stepped back and rejoined the others in the room. Everyone knew that there was only one person left to present themselves to Ivor, and that was Freda, his predecessor’s wife. There was an eerie silence in the room as she walked from her bedroom door, into the Great Hall and to the step in front of Ivor’s throne; around her shoulders, she was wearing the grey wolf‘s pelt of the Jarlkona. When she stood before the new Jarl, she allowed his Captain, Svein, to remove the cloak from her shoulders and drape it respectfully over the empty chair on Ivor’s left hand side. Freda pulled at the buttons of her stomacher and undid the laces of the dress, allowing her garments to fall to the floor.
There was a gasp of surprise when the other courtiers caught a glimpse of her slightly rounded belly and her enlarged breasts. It was clear that she was pregnant, but how? Jarl Alaric had been impotent.
Freda kneeled on the lush furs before Ivor’s throne, and then she placed her head down to the step turning her head to the left. It was the submission of the old family; in which those left behind by a defeated or dead Jarl present themselves prone before the successor. In doing so, they make it clear that should the new ruler refuse to accept their fealty he may simply slay them.
Ivor stepped down from the throne, and picked up the cloak of grey wolf’s fur from the chair beside him. He spread it over Freda’s shoulders and helped her to her feet. When she was comfortably seated, he turned to the people in the hall and said loudly, “She is Freda, Jarlkona of Drammen. She is now my wife and she is carrying my child. If you truly love me, then you must love them both as well.”
At that moment, Svein signaled to two soldiers at the back of the room and they stepped forward carrying the standards of Drammen mounted neatly on the flagpoles with the golden finials. Ivor was not frightened to see those birds again; they were the bringers of his destiny. The men dropped the staves into holes place at each end of the platform. The falcons faced the hall so that the one that looked left faced Freda and the other faced Ivor.
“They are beautiful, my love,” Freda said, admiring them.
“They are more beautiful than you think but they will never be as beautiful as you, wife,” he replied smiling at her.
He was not afraid of the deeds those golden birds had been a part of; he had done what was needed, what no one else had found the courage to do all these years. They had played their part in his coup perfectly and the only other person in the world who knew what had happened in the forests near Sandefjord was on a ship back to Scotland with sacks full of good Roman gold. He would probably never have to leave his country to do such work again. It was as if he had been protected and made undetectable by Freyja’s cloak of falcon’s feathers. A single arrow had brought Alaric down, the archer had been able to identify his retinue because they carried the falcons in front of them, and he had singled him out by his black cloak. His death had been swift and honorable and necessary for their survival.
So, at the end of Alaric’s reign and the beginning of his, Ivor was not afraid of having the Falcons of Freyja perched before his throne; they had done their work well.
Chapter Four
Chyna placed her laptop on the desk in her hotel suite’s living room and turned it on.
As soon as she was online she went to the last email she had received from Lana which had been forwarded from the source in Oslo. The falcon, it seemed, wasn’t a statue at all; it was the decorative finial from a flagpole, similar to the standards the Roman Legion would carry at the head of the army when they were on the march. In fact, that was what they had thought it was originally, especially since the gold quality had been tested and confirmed as Roman refined gold of the period. However, careful examination of the bird’s features showed that it wasn’t the eagle of the Roman Legion, but a falcon. The distinctive details in the feathers, the beak and the claws further suggested that it was Norse, even before they had analyzed the goldsmith’s marks. The falcon was a sacred bird to the Norse Vikings; they believed that the great goddess Freyja had a cloak of falcon feathers which made the wearer invisible and that the cloak had once helped Loki and Thor recover the hammer, Mjölnir, when it had been stolen. Her source also insisted that the finial was one of a set of two.
Chyna powered down the laptop and closed it with a sigh as she prepared to leave the hotel room and go to the warehouse where Dr. Epstein would be waiting for her and her team; just her for the moment. “Two falcons?” she muttered. “Maybe going this alone isn’t going to be such a bright idea afterall.”
Dr. Epstein’s warehouse in Damascus was housed in a large industrial park on the south side of the city. When Chyna arrived, he was standing outside the building waiting for her.
“It is an honor to finally meet you,” he announced, as he took both of her hands in his. “We’ve been really lucky with the excavation of this site, Miss Stone. A lot of political aspects came into play very quickly and it’s important that I give you some of the background before we start.”
“Certainly, Doctor,” Chyna replied. “We are at your disposal.”
“We?” he asked. “Looking around them.”
&n
bsp; “The rest of my team isn’t present at the moment, but we are already working on the project and are in constant contact.
“I’m not sure you fully understand the nature of why I invited you here, but no matter. It is better that we don’t discuss things out here.”
He gestured with his hand and directed her to his office and closed the door behind him, gesturing for her to take a seat.
“How was your flight, Miss Stone? I trust that the rental vehicle and hotel accommodations are up to your standards?” he smiled, making an attempt at awkward small talk.
“I have no complaints,” she responded. She decided to ignore the fact that she had been followed and that she had nearly cold-cocked Kadan when he surprised her in the airport.
“Very good,” he said. There was a moment of silence while Chyna waited for him to begin.
“Well then, let’s get down to it… That is, if you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind a bit,” she smiled.
“The site at Hamah was slated for excavation by the Syrian government more than ten years ago when some shepherds in the area turned up a few bronze jugs near a cluster of hills. Preliminary searches found that the hills were actually burial mounds and the scientists were sure that a treasure trove of relics was most likely buried just beneath the surface of the land there. It was subdivided and completely fenced off, access was restricted but nothing further ensued.
“However, recent political activity in the nearby city of Homs prompted certain officials to fast track the site’s excavations and that’s when my team and I were called in. Apparently, we’re well known for our speed and accuracy in working sites located in tumultuous regions. At the moment, we believe that everything has been unearthed from the site and the excavation has been terminated for now. Unfortunately, the situation in Homs is escalating quickly. Everything that was found is here in this warehouse. It’s all been cleaned and dated but that’s about as far as my teams capabilities go; we are analysts not curators. So that’s where you and your team come in, Miss Stone.”
Chyna nodded, but did not speak as she considered what he was saying.
“The item descriptions, age and photographs have been entered into a detailed database, the document you received was produced from it, but they now need to be categorized, catalogued and organized into a coherent exhibit for the National Museum of Damascus.
“With things up north looking as if they’ll take a turn for the worst, the U.S. Embassy here is threatening to close up shop, so the local government is on an aggressive P.R. campaign to try to keep the diplomats calm and hopefully dissuade them from abandoning ship. Hence, the tight deadline to get the exhibit opened and turn some of the focus away from Homs and back on Damascus. You have two weeks to put the exhibit together; invitations to the opening have already been sent out.”
Chyna raised her eyebrows at his last statement. How presumptuous of the Syrians? She hated being put on the spot. Maybe her gut instinct had been right from the start and taking this assignment had been a big mistake, especially while they were in the midst of trying to start up Found History East. Sorting through what was, no doubt a mess, by herself did not appeal to her at all. She’d really stepped in it this time. Ugh! Coulda, shoulda, woulda; she didn’t live her life in regret.
“We’re up to the challenge Dr. Epstein,” she replied confidently, in spite of the fact that meeting the challenge was more of an “I” than a “we”. It was quite obvious that she was going to have to put things on hold back in New York and bring the rest of the team to Damascus. To save face, she needed to buy some time. An idea to do just that struck her.
“Before we get started, I’d like to see the exhibition space at the museum so I know what we’re working with, and then we’ll be back in the morning to get started. That should give you enough time to set up a workspace for us and get us the necessary clearance to access the warehouse and the artifacts.”
“That sounds fair enough, Miss Stone,” he agreed. “Let’s drive over to the museum right away. I’ll just give Fatma a call; she’s the curator over there.”
“Would that be Fatma Maulidi, by any chance?” Chyna asked.
“Why yes, do you know her?”
“We did our post graduate degrees at NYU together but I haven’t seen her since then. It will be great to catch up with an old friend.”
The National Museum of Damascus was impressive to say the very least. They entered through a colossal façade which consisted of the preserved gateway of the Qasr al-Heer al-Gharbi, an eighth century castle that was built by the Umayyad Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik about fifty miles southwest of the township of Palmyra. It was evident from the very beginning of their experience at the museum that the Syrians took their history very seriously.
Fatma was waiting just inside, but the moment she saw Chyna she stepped forward eagerly with her arms open; the two hugged enthusiastically.
“What a surprise!” Fatma exclaimed as she stepped back from their embrace. “What brings you to Syria, my dear?” Fatma asked.
“We’re curating your next exhibit,” Chyna announced.
Fatma’s face lit up with excitement.
“I was told that we would have some celebrity archaeologist setting up the Hamah display but I didn’t know who it was. I can’t believe it. Chyna Stone, you’ve become quite a hotshot, you know.”
Chyna laughed. Fatma always had a hilariously cynical way of putting things but then again Chyna had found it was a common way for women in eastern cultures to make conversation.
“It would seem so, Fatma, but they have us on the deadline from hell and Jared here just let me know that the invitations already went out; so there’s no time for mistakes on this one. Where are you planning to set this up?”
Fatma led her over to the second wing where all exhibits of ancient Syrian relics were housed.
“We curate according to time period. This is the ancient Syria wing, so these Phoenician artifacts would fall in that category. This alcove is what you’ll be working in.”
Fatma pulled a long drape aside and allowed her to walk through. It was a fair amount of space, not too large, as Chyna had feared it might be. It was about forty feet deep and sixty feet wide. Display cases lined the back wall but the other two sides were comprised of twelve display pedestals each and two rows of stone benches ran down the middle of the room for visitors to sit on.
This is going to be a piece of cake, Chyna thought, smiling as she considered how quickly her team could… The only problem was that the team wasn’t with her. With her focus on the expansion of Found History, she had not properly assessed what she was getting herself into. In fact, she had sort of jumped the gun concerning the falcon when she ought to have waited to see what she was really being asked to do. Time to call an audible, she told herself.
Back in Fatma’s office, Chyna photocopied a floor plan of the area inside the alcove and asked to use her fax machine. Along with the photocopied floor plan, she scrawled out a quick note:
CHANGE OF PLAN.
Totally misread this one. We are to curate an exhibit of Syrian artifacts.
Need the entire team SOONEST!
With that urgent piece of business out of the way, she stowed the papers, and then turned to her long time friend.
“Fatma, may I speak to you alone for a minute?” Chyna asked.
“Sure,” Fatma replied.
“There’s a piece which came up out of the ground with the Phoenician artifacts that doesn’t seem to belong to the period nor to the civilization in the region. We have a few theories but I’m going to need to speak to an expert. Do you have any contacts at the Norwegian Archaeological Society that can help me?”
“I think I know just the person who can help you. He worked at the Oseburg Viking Ship exhibit for many years, even supervising a lot of the recent preservation work done on it.”
“Thanks so much, Fatma, I think he might be the right person to help with this mystery.”
/> With Bjorn Gunnarsson’s number stored in her Blackberry®, Chyna retreated back to the hotel. As she drove, she was chastising herself for having made such a stupid mistake. She had allowed herself to lose focus, which had nearly made her look like a complete fool. She hoped that she had covered things up well enough, but she still wasn’t happy with herself for making such a critical error.
“Okay, Chyna,” she said aloud as she entered her hotel room and glanced at herself in the mirror. “It’s time to get your shit together and get this thing back on track.”
She glanced at the time, wondering if anyone would be in the office in New York at that hour. She was just about to try a call when her own phone rang.
“So, what’s up?” Lana asked.
“You’re already in the office?”
“Not yet. Oscar is. He called me as soon as he saw your fax.”
“I screwed up,” Chyna admitted. “I need you guys here soonest.”
“We’re already on it, Boss Lady,” Lana quipped.
“Awesome! That’s one of the many reasons I love you guys.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Just chill a while and enjoy Damascus. We’ll get there as soon as we can.”
After disconnecting the call, Chyna wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She certainly had some time to kill. That was something that rarely happened. She decided to take advantage of it. It would do her some good to clear her head and reset herself for the real project she had undertaken.
