Thunder God

by Paul Watkins

  Nobody stopped us. Nobody spoke. The thousands of people who had gathered in the clearing stood motionless and silent.

  When we reached the ground, I turned to look up at the Nacom. They had gathered at the edge of the precipice, but there they stayed, staring down at us. The hot breeze ruffled the feathers of their capes.

  Olaf and I began to make our way through the crowd, which swept apart like a receding tide to let us pass.

  We reached the stone arch at the entrance to the clearing, passed beneath it and kept going down the vine-ridged road. On and on. No one following. We began to run and kept running, feet pounding the dusty road, pausing only rarely to catch our breath. Sometimes I looked back and saw only the white path dissolving in heat haze. Olaf wiped the paint from his face and smeared it on the tree trunks as we passed.

  We moved in silence all through the day, never stopping. Ribbons of shadow, cast down through the leaves, slithered like snakes over our skin. We marched on into the darkness, under the rafts of stars, the black air cleaved by bats and streaks of fire falling from the sky.

  That night, in the distance, we heard the mournful sound of the shell horns but met no one along the trail. The darkened houses that we passed seemed empty of all life.

  We did not speak.

  It was dawn when we arrived back at Yochac. The village was still sleeping. The sound of waves and the rustle of palm tree leaves echoed among the huts.

  At the water’s edge, I found the rowboat just where I had left it. Olaf and I dragged it down into the surf and made our way out to the Drakkar.

  Without a word, we hauled up the anchor and raised the sail. Soon we were heading towards the reef.

  When I looked back, I saw one man standing on the beach. It was Achel, the slave who had knelt before Olaf, begging for his freedom. Behind him, butterflies danced in the morning sunlight. He raised one hand to say goodbye.

  We rode out over the breakers through the gap in the reef. The jagged rocks slid by beneath us. Soon we reached the deeper water and the pale green sea turned dark beneath our hull. It was only then that we remembered the silver, which we had left buried in the jungle. But it was too late to turn back. Before long, the low-lying coast had sunk from view. Then we were alone again out on the ocean, waves racing past as we steered across the endless field of blue.

  It was months before we saw our home again.

  For days, Olaf raged like a man caught in a never-ending fever. He did not eat or drink except what I forced down his throat, nor did he seem to know me or even where he was. One night, to stop him jumping overboard, I tied him to the mast, where he howled out his madness to the unanswering moon. By the following morning, he was himself once more, as much as he or I would ever be ourselves again. We were both changed forever from the men who had set sail to the west, already lifetimes ago.

  At last, we reached the wreck-strewn coast of Africa. From there, with the help of the bearing dial, we travelled north. By then, the scar across my chest had healed into a pale and jagged line, like the shadow of a lightning bolt.

  The Drakkar became so frail that when we rounded the windswept tip of northern Denmark, the boat was taking on water as fast as we could bail it out. We pulled into Hedeby to make repairs, noticing as we rode the Drakkar up onto the sand that the great crucifix which had stood on the headland was no longer there. We were even more surprised to see that the church in the centre of Hedeby was being used now as a covered market place. The platforms were empty now, where priests and would-be priests had once harangued all passersby with threats of hell and promises of salvation. It was within the canvas-walls of the alehouse that we learned what had happened while we were gone. King Trygvasson was dead, killed at the battle of Rugen, when he jumped from his warship into the sea, still wearing the weight of his armour, rather than be taken prisoner. Without the backing of the king, the Christian priests had lost their footing in the country. Most of the churches had never been built, and all new taxes imposed by Trygvasson were cancelled, at least for now.

  At Hedeby, we ran across the Bulgar, as he prepared to head down the Dnieper with another load of goods. We showed him the gifts we had been given by the Maya, the feathered headdresses, the ornaments of jade and heavy half-moon scapula of gold. He bought them all, but would not believe us when we told him where they came from. ‘It is no concern of mine,’ he said. ‘Jade is jade and gold is gold. That is all I care about.’ When he bit down on the gold to test its worth, his front tooth broke in half. ‘Very pure,’ he said, and lisped as he counted out the silver bars he used for payment. Then he put a feathered hat upon his head and set sail for Starya Ladoga.

  Olaf and I left Hedeby with a new mast, new tar on our hull, and 140 pounds of silver.

  The closer we came to Altvik, the more nervous we became, not knowing whether we would find our homes intact. If Arneson had returned to collect his money before the death of Trygvasson, we knew he would have kept his promise and left only ruins behind.

  It was after dark when we rounded the point and came into the bay. The village was still there, slumbering beneath the first snow of winter, which had just begun to fall. Blue smoke drifted from the rooftops. There was no sound but water running in the streams and the slap of gently breaking waves.

  Quietly we rowed ashore. Our bow ground up onto the sand.

  Even before I went to find Kari, to share with her the news of Cabal’s death, Olaf and I made our way through the empty streets and up the hill to the temple.

  Out on the ocean, we had made a promise to each other which we now intended to keep.

  We swung open the doors and walked inside, then started a fire in the hearth, using wood from the log pile I had built before I left.

  As the glow of flames lit the room, we saw that it had not been used in a long time, probably not since we left. Dust had settled on the benches and the jaws of the pillars were grey with cobwebs.

  Olaf looked around. ‘This place made enemies of us,’ he said.

  With those words, we threw more logs on the fire. Smoke began to swirl around the room. As we piled on wood, flames spilled out over the ring of stones and reached above our heads. Soon the roar was deafening. The roof beams caught fire. Over the tops of the flames, I saw the faces of the pillars, mouths open as if crying out in pain.

  One of the rafters fell to the ground, scattering sparks across the benches, which had also begun to burn.

  The smoke forced us outside.

  We staggered into the clean air, and for a while we could do nothing but choke the ashes from our lungs.

  Flames jumped through the opening in the roof and set the turf ablaze. The thundering howl of the inferno pushed us back.

  From around his neck, Olaf took the black stone hammer. For a moment, he weighed it in his hand, then threw it into the fire.

  The roof collapsed in upon itself in a crash of breaking timbers. Wall stones scattered across the ground. Only the pillars were still standing. Bright flames, like manes of orange hair, streamed from their heads. Then slowly, they too began to fall, first one and then the other, crumbling from below so that they seemed to disappear into the ground. They vanished into the blazing rubble of the temple, sending up a geyser of black smoke and sparks.

  We heard a noise behind us and turned.

  There, in the firelight, stood Kari. She had been running and was out of breath.

  I stepped forward to embrace her.

  ‘Cabal is not with you,’ she said, before I reached her.

  I stopped. Slowly, I lowered my hands. ‘No,’ I said quietly, ‘he is not here.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ she asked, her voice without expression.

  I nodded.

  ‘You are sure? There could be no mistake?’

  ‘No mistake.’

  I embraced her as the tears came to our eyes, and was surprised to feel the curve and hardness of her belly pressed against my stomach. I looked at her and did not have to ask.

  She sniffed and t
ried to smile.

  ‘He is with you still,’ I said.

  She glanced at the ruins of the temple and the black banner of smoke which had unfurled across the sky. Kari did not ask us why. She had known long ago what needed to be done.

  Despite the late hour news of our arrival spread from door to door. Soon the whole village had gathered in the alehouse to hear about our journey.

  Ingolf stared at us in shock, unable to grasp that we were home. He kept coming over and hugging us, as if to reassure himself that we were really there.

  Olaf laid out the silver, just as we had promised. We said it belonged to us all.

  Then even Tola uncrinkled her scowl-lined face, which made her look more like a new-born baby than an old woman.

  It was almost morning before the story of our travels was all told. Whether Olaf and I were believed, or simply pitied as men whose minds had not returned from the voyage we described, I did not know or care.

  The day after the fire, Guthrun and I went to the place where the temple had stood. I dug down through the ashes and showed him the black rock that lay beneath.

  For a long time, he said nothing, smoothing his hands over the glassy surface of the rock. Then slowly he rose to his feet. ‘Let it stay hidden,’ he said. ‘It has already cost enough lives. I would rather that its secret died with us than take the blame for all the blood that would be shed because of it in years to come.’

  *

  Now I have lived here many years, in my house on the top of the hill.

  The Christians come and go. They give out food and promise us a better place, but we like where we are now and tell them so. They shake their heads and set sail for other towns.

  These days, I run a fishing boat, just as my father did before me. Like him, I feel it in my blood when the fish come to the bay.

  I still help Olaf with his summer trading run. We sail north in his boat, which is so patched it is more patches than boat. He trades with Grim and with the Lapps, who still love him for his luck. Then we head south to Hedeby, stopping in at every port along the way. Olaf is known in those places as a teller of tall tales, and I am known as the only one who believes them, but he and I both know that the tallest of his tales is true.

  Kari looks after her son, whom she named after his father. She also mends the broken health of everyone in town and tends a garden planted with seeds gathered from the farthest reaches of my friend’s wandering days. Inside the ruins of the temple walls Kari’s neatly planted flowers shelter from the wind.

  Most days I go walking through the fields. In the shadow of these hills, I feel it still, the great vibration of the earth and the sacredness of everything around me. Often the boy comes with me. He has the gentleness by which his father is remembered in this town, and his mother’s eye for finding treasures others overlook. Watching him, it seems to me as if my old companion did not die but has grown young again.

  Through the purple twilight, I bring the young boy home, letting him ride on my shoulders. I seldom need persuading to stay for the evening meal. Afterwards, I rest in a chair before the fire, listening to Kari sing her child to sleep.

  As his eyes close, I close my own and dream of no world but this world. No life but this life. No judgement on me but my own.

  Author’s Note

  The presence of the Vikings in the New World was first documented in the twelfth-century Icelandic ‘Vinland’ Saga, but it was not until 1961, when Helge and Anne Ingstad excavated the indisputably Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meduse on the coast of Newfoundland in northern Canada, that the story behind the Vinland Saga was established as fact.

  Over the years, other clues have surfaced which point towards the arrival of the Norse on the American continent. These place the arrival of Norsemen all the way from Canada to Central America. In the 1970s, for example, a coin from the reign of the eleventh-century Norse king Olaf Kyrri was discovered in the grave of an American Indian in the state of Maine. Further south, in Newport, Rhode Island, the remains were found of a stone grain silo said to have been built by Vikings.

  Apart from the site at L’Anse aux Meduse, none of the physical evidence to support these other stories has proved conclusive. Some, like the ‘discovery’ in 1898 of an ancient rune-carved stone in Minnesota or a map purchased by Yale University’s Beineke Library and apparently showing a Viking-period chart of the Canadian/American coastline, have turned out to be forgeries.

  One of the most curious and controversial of these unproved legends is that of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, known to the Maya as Kukulkan. According to Spanish clerics who accompanied the Conquistador Hernan Cortez to the coast of Mexico in 1519, Cortez was perceived by the Maya to be the god Quetzalcoatl, returning from the east after five hundred years of exile as he had promised to do.

  There are many contradictory myths surrounding the god/man Quetzalcoatl. This leads hisotrians to believe that there was in fact more than one Quetzalcoatl and that, in these separate incarnations, Quetzalcoatl was the name of both a man, most notably a twelfth-century Toltec ruler, and perhaps other men too, as well as the name of a god.

  It is also possible that the Spanish clerics reinterpreted what they knew of the legend of Quetzalcoatl in order to convince the Maya, and later the Aztec, that Spanish rule over South America was a foregone conclusion even in their own mythology.

  ‘… and they held for certain that in coming times were to come from the sea towards the rising sun white men with beards like him … and in this way the Indians awaited the fulfillment of this prophecy and when they saw the Christians they called them Gods and the brothers of Quetzacoatl.’

  – Fray Olmos, one of the first Catholic priests in the New World

  ‘… This was held as very certain that he was of good disposition … bearded … also said that it was a blonde beard.’

  – Fray Juan de Torquemada on the subject of Quetzacoatl

  Torquemada went on to describe that Quetzacoatl had refused to allow human sacrifices to be made in his name and asked for butterflies to be sacrificed instead:

  ‘You shall sacrifice before him only butterflies.’

  – The Florentine Codex

  If the legend transcribed by these clerics did come from the Maya themselves, then it seems almost impossible that the Maya would have been able to conjure from thin air a description of a blonde-haired, bearded, white-skinned man, a genetic type previously unknown to them. Equally unlikely is the pure invention of European-type clothing, which was also prophesied. In addition to this, a story is still told along the Yucatan coastline of Mexico that, in the lagoon of Yochac, not far from the village of Tulum, a ghost ship with a pointed bow and stern is sometimes seen to rise from the water and head out to sea.

  The Vikings represent the only culture who fit in with these legends and could have reached the Maya long before Cortez. Several replicas of Norse ships have sailed across the Atlantic, the first in 1893 when a Viking ship sailed from Bergen to Newfoundland in time for the Chicago World’s Fair. More recently, another replica, the Saga Siglar, circumnavigated the globe. The Vikings could have rached Central America, in which case their arrival may well have become the stuff of myth by the time Cortez arrived.

  Until the Ingstads excavated L’Anse aux Meduse, the Vinland Saga was thought by many to be nothing more than a fable. Of the other sites associated with Norse people in the New World, Gwyn Jones, in his definitive history of the Vikings, wrote: ‘A single reliable archaeological discovery in any one of them could change the picture overnight.

  About the Author

  Paul Watkins was born in 1964. He is the son of Welsh parents and was educated at the Dragon School, at Eton and at Yale. His novels include Night Over Day Over Night, Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn, In the Blue Light of African Dreams, The Promise of Night, Archangel, The Story of My Disappearance and The Forger. He has also written about his experiences at public school, in Stand Before Your God. He was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in
1992 and 1996, and won the Winifred Holtby Prize for Best Regional Novel of the Year in 1996. He lives in the USA.

  Copyright

  First published in 2004

  by Faber & Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Paul Watkins, 2004

  The right of Paul Watkins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  This ebookis copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–31938–1