Crusader Gold by David Gibbins Read Free Book Online Page B

off they both looked up at each other in astonishment.
    “The Vinland Map,” Maria whispered.
    With her heart racing, she pulled out her magnifying glass and began scrutinising the lines. Only a few weeks earlier they had attended a conference at Yale University on the latest dating evidence for the famous Vinland Map, a drawing now thought to have been a forgery but based on a lost map that predated Columbus by some fifty years, a map which showed a shoreline said to have been discovered by the Vikings centuries earlier to the west of Greenland.
    “It’s incredible,” she exclaimed. “It’s exactly the same. There’s the river leading to the lake and the large inlet lower down. And the legend looks identical, in medieval Latin.”
    With the magnifying glass the faint smudge at the top became legible: Vinlanda Insula a Byarno repa et Leipho socijs.
    “Island of Vinland,” Jeremy murmured. “Discovered by Bjarni and Leif in company.”
    “It proves the authenticity of the image on the Vinland Map beyond doubt!”
    Maria was flushed with excitement. “But if this is truly the hand of Richard of Holdingham, then it dates more than two centuries earlier than the Vinland Map.
    You can forget early English history for a while. You may just have discovered the oldest known depiction of North America.”
    They stared at each other in amazement. The Mappa Mundi and this sketch dated from the thirteenth century, almost three centuries before the first European voyages of discovery to the New World, hundreds of years before the first maps of the American shoreline were thought to have been drawn.
    “There’s more writing farther down.”
    Maria had been focussed on the upper part of the depiction and had failed to register a second faint inscription beyond the drawing. She moved her magnifying glass a few inches lower.
    “This definitely isn’t on the Vinland Map,” she said. “It’s in the Roman alphabet, but it isn’t Latin or French. It looks like Old Norse.”
    She passed Jeremy the glass and took the map to hold it for him, tacitly acknowledging his greater expertise in the language of the Vikings.
    “There’s a curious rune here,” he murmured. “It’s set at the beginning of the inscription like the illuminated letter of a medieval text. A single stem with branches on either side, angled up. It looks symmetrical. Five, maybe seven branches altogether, including the stem. Very odd.”
    “Can you make out anything else?”
    “Harald Sigurdsson.” He paused and looked up. “That’s Harald Hardrada, Harald Hard-Ruler, king of Norway. Killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in his attempt to take the English throne in 1066, only weeks before the Norman Conquest.”
    “It’s not possible,” Maria whispered incredulously. “Go on.”
    “Harald Sigurdsson our King with his thole-companions reached these parts with the treasure of Michelgard,” he slowly translated. “Here they feast with Thor in Valhalla and await the final battle of Ragnarøk.”
    He looked up and eyed Maria with disbelief.
    “Isn’t Michelgard the Viking name for Constantinople?”
    For a moment she was too stunned to speak. Then she let the scroll roll up and passed it over.
    “Guard this with your life. Don’t breathe a word of it to anyone.” She picked up the Bede and scrambled hurriedly towards the wall, extracting her cellphone as she went. Just as she was about to crouch through, Jeremy called out excitedly.
    “That rune,” he said. “I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. It’s not a rune at all.
    I can’t work out why on earth it should be here, but there’s only one thing it can be. It’s the symbol of the Jewish menorah.”
    3
    I T’S INCREDIBLE,” JACK SAID. “I KNEW HARALD Hardrada and the Vikings had been in Constantinople, but I never dreamt he’d been across the Atlantic. It puts Christopher Columbus in the shade once and for all.”
    “You’ve lost me already,” Costas replied. “Vikings in