First to Burn (34 page)

“There is no eating or drinking in the museum.” Dr. Haukssen raised his voice as if speaking to a group of children.

“Of course not.” Wulf jerked his chin back like a turtle. “I’m talking about a fundraiser, not children snacking on mass-produced crackers.” From the corner of his eye, he spotted Theresa’s twitching lips and flaring nostrils. He knew she’d never acknowledge wanting him to misbehave, but how could he resist teasing her when she was this easy? “Have you considered rooftop beehives? Single-source artisanal honey is the food world’s next gold mine.”

Theresa dropped two steps behind and almost completely muffled her snort.

Objective number one achieved
.

“Beehives. No, I do not believe I have considered beehives.” The director tilted his head and blinked several times at Wulf. “I thought you want to know about Beowulf?”

“Of course she does, I mean, we do.”

“We are here.” Their escort’s shoulders sagged with relief as he ushered them into a white-painted space. “The storage units contain several swords you may view.” He opened a drawer whose gliders were as silent as the room.

Disappointment crashed through Wulf as strong as the North Sea. All three swords arrayed on the plain white linen had blades, the iron black with rust and flaking with age. He hadn’t thought their quest would be easy, so why did he suddenly feel like he was wearing someone’s extra-extra-small body armor?

“These are wonderful, and we can use them to represent the sword Hrunting.” Theresa extracted Heaney’s
Beowulf
translation from her shoulder bag and waved it at the director. “But, sir, you know we’re looking for a hilt alone. No blade.”

She pointed to a passage. “Line 1614. ‘And the inlaid hilt embossed with jewels; its blade had melted and the scrollwork on it burnt, so scalding was the blood of the poisonous fiend.’”

“I beg your forgiveness.” The gentleman bowed slightly. “You, madam, have done your research.” He shut away the swords and moved to another stack of drawers.

A museum with holdings this vast would have dozens, maybe hundreds, of swords and hilts. If he had to ride this roller coaster every time a drawer opened, he might start to actually age.

“The description continues.” She flipped pages. Those fingers that could work miracles on patients or on him traced to the next blue highlights. “At line 1694, ‘In pure gold inlay on the sword-guards there were rune markings,’ blah blah, ‘scrollworked hilt,’ etcetera.”

He hadn’t realized she’d mastered so many of the books in her breakfast-room office. She’d either charm the hilt out of the old man or badger him until he gave up, but one way or another, if it was here, Wulf didn’t doubt Theresa would find the remainder of the sword.

“You are quite literal, yes?” Dr. Haukssen curled his fists around the drawer pulls.

“Our documentary emphasizes facts. Since Heorot’s been located near Gammel Lejre—”

He cut her off with a raised finger. “Potentially located, madam.”

She waved aside his caution. “There are marshes to the west, as described in the story. Or should I say history? What if it was all true?”

None of the relics in the next drawer were the one they sought. The two hilts with lobed pommels weren’t the barbed work of the giants, the third had runes that told the wrong story and while the fourth sported a bejeweled pommel of small stones set in gold scrollwork, it didn’t have the dragon-eye-size ruby. Fifteen hundred years hadn’t erased his memory of the jewel that had glowed like enchanted fire in the swamp while they carried Grendel’s head.

“We intend to show the evidence for, and against, the truth,” Theresa continued.

“Very American, your approach.”

The four hunks of metal could have been forged at the same hearth where he and his brother had volunteered for the voyage. These might have been used, held, even treasured, by men he’d known. Men whose bones were dust and their names erased from the earth. But these hilts could connect him across the chasm of time. “May I hold one?”

Theresa gasped, and he looked from her to Dr. Haukssen and then he realized his mistake. These relics had drawn out his original language, a tongue he hadn’t spoken, not even with Ivar, for more than a thousand years.

“You speak...not Danish.” The man’s watery blue eyes, bulging with surprise or, oddly, fear, consumed his lined face. “You speak the language of the Geats, do you not?”

“A teensy bit.” Pinching his first finger and thumb together, Wulf switched to English and tried to salvage their cover. “We practice authenticity for our research.”

“Do not lie.” Like a man fifty years younger, the curator ran across the room to a red-handled alarm and rested his hand on it. “Scholars come every season. Only twice have I heard that language. Who are you? What is your true purpose?”

“Why should I answer?” This close to their goal, he’d blown it. He looked at the rows of closed drawers as frustration piled higher. One old man couldn’t stop him if he wanted to search.

“From 1931, my father was director here. In 1943, two Nazi officers came and my father heard their boots.” As his words picked up speed, the man pounded sharply on the wall. “Bang, bang, bang, down the hall like so,
ja?
”

Theresa’s hand, small and warm, slipped into Wulf’s.

“My father told me to hide in a chest, so I did not see the men who killed him, but I will never forget their language. It has been my life’s study.”

Theresa squeezed his hand hard enough to be his anchor as the hair on his arms rose with apprehension. He knew, even without more description, that Unferth had been one of the Nazis who’d killed Haukssen’s father. From the beginning of Hitler’s domination, Unferth had looted Viking artifacts for his dream of recreating Heorot.

“You were not one of those men. Your voice is different.” He pointed at Wulf. “So tell me. How do you speak this language? And
why
are you here?” His pointing hand turned, changed into a plea. “Who killed my father?”

“If you can tell us about Beowulf’s hilt—” Theresa jumped in to answer without releasing Wulf’s hand. “I promise, he’ll explain. It will save lives.”

The museum director’s gaze dropped to where their hands linked. As if Wulf’s connection with Theresa conveyed a message, Dr. Haukssen nodded and crossed to pull a binder from a shelf. “This is a photo inventory of St. Ansgar near Gammel Lejre.” After flipping past pictures of architecture and pew carvings, he stopped at a black-and-white glossy of a crucifix. “Approximately 1100, the monks and the Church repurposed pagan items by adding Christian symbols.”

Mentally peeling away the decorations on the cross as Dr. Haukssen continued, Wulf struggled to wait through the description.
This one
, his blood thundered,
this is the right one.

“The crown is formed from the original pommel decoration, an unusual barbed style. Not Germanic like most finds in Zealand.” The historian’s finger hovered to avoid smudging the photo, and Theresa bent so close her dark hair brushed the old man’s sleeve. “The horizontal piece where Christ’s arms are nailed was a sword cross guard. I have assumed it was part of a decorative or ceremonial weapon due to its large size.”

For fifteen hundred years, Wulf had succeeded as a soldier and a mercenary by trusting his instincts. Now they told him to share his knowledge. “The pommel we seek would have a large red stone in the center. It looks black in some lights.” He pointed to the photo. “I don’t see it.”

“How know you this?” Dr. Haukssen spoke in halting Geatish, the way people read aloud in French or Spanish if they have never heard the rhythms but know the letters.

“I was there.” Wulf showed his respect by replying in the old language.

“At St. Ansgar?” The other man’s gaze pinned him, as if searching for a lie.

“No, at the start. At Heorot.” He stood unmoving before the curator’s scrutiny.

“You...you can’t be true.” The historian stumbled over the idea as much as he did speaking the ancient tongue. “That is fifteen hundred—”

“Many ideas challenge scientific belief. God. Love.” He switched to English so that Theresa could understand. “A man like me. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“You do not look like a—”

“Ancient warrior?” Spreading his hands, he continued. “Two hands, two arms, two legs. Modern tools don’t change the man. I pulled the oars with Beowulf. I fought Grendel.” He touched the scar on his temple.

“A legend—” He shook his head as if his intellect balked, and yet at another level he must have believed, because he asked, “The man who killed my father? Who was he?”

“Unferth. Hrothgar’s skald. He always wanted prestige and never understood it came from courage, not from violence. Now we must stop him.”

“I once saw the moon shine on this cross through a window,” Dr. Haukssen whispered. “A red glow came from the Christ head. The jewel is under the painted face. This—” he slid the photo from the book and handed it to Wulf, “—is the hilt you seek.”

Wulf braced one hand on a cabinet as the proximity to his objective momentarily weakened his knees. Maybe with the DNA they could destroy Unferth, and then maybe—until Theresa’s wild proposal he hadn’t thought of the possibility in a thousand years—he could become a normal man. For Theresa. For himself.

“But the crucifix is no longer at St. Ansgar.”

Theresa stared at the curator, mouth open, her obvious worry reflecting his. Had Unferth beaten them?

“The church needs a new roof and wiring. Its contents are in storage at Sagnlandet Lejre.”At their blank looks, he continued. “The historical center at Lejre. It is an outdoor village museum two hours away.” His bushy white eyebrows rose. “It is now closed for the winter.”

Wulf assessed Theresa’s coat. This would require a gear upgrade.

The museum director pulled a ring of keys from a drawer. “I believe tomorrow I shall inventory the warehouse at Lejre. Shall you meet me here at nine?”

The longest part of fifteen hundred years might be the next eighteen hours.

* * *

Kahananui navigated the snow ruts to what he claimed was the seedy section of Copenhagen, but even in the Northern dusk the area looked to Theresa to be less sketchy than The Mall at Short Hills. Wulf conversed with Deavers, leaving her to stare silently out the window and wonder about tonight’s sleeping arrangements. She’d assumed that they’d continue sharing a bed, but maybe she shouldn’t have. Perhaps Wulf had other plans, like retrieving the weapons he and Deavers had been discussing.

“Where are we?” she asked as they slid to the curb. The yellow-and-white five-story building sported the first graffiti tag she’d seen since arriving. It was a recycling symbol.

“Remember Rome?” Wulf said. “New lodgings, in case we were followed.”

Shivering, she imagined how cold the sewers were here in February. From the way Kahananui had been driving, with unsignaled turns and frequent mirror checks, she knew none of them expected securing the hilt to be a gimme, but at least Wulf had three of the world’s toughest soldiers backing him instead of one measly doctor.

An olive-skinned woman in a skirt far too short for this much snow stopped to stare at the taxi, then shifted a hand to her hip to open her coat.

“It’s a hooker hotel.” Deavers stated the obvious. “Desk clerk has amnesia.”

“I need my suitcase.” Her leg charger was still in the previous room, and she’d be immobilized—deadweight—without it.

“Packed everything when I sanitized the room. It’s in the back,” Deavers said.

She hadn’t realized that’s what he’d been doing when she and Wulf went to the museum. She didn’t have time to wonder what else she’d missed because Wulf was already offering his hand to help her out of the taxi.

Inside the lobby, an old man sat behind a counter. Without looking up from his sports magazine, he pointed Wulf to a wall of post-office-type boxes. Hundred-krone notes inserted into a door revealed a key card, two condoms and two toothbrushes, in an admirably Scandinavian combination of efficiency and hygiene.

“I’d be happy to carry you.” Sweeping his arm to indicate the staircase, Wulf raised his eyebrows, as if that changed his offer of aid into flirtation. “I enjoyed it last time.”

He undoubtedly meant to refer to carrying her to the sauna, but she couldn’t help picturing her mother and Carl standing in the foyer as he hauled her to her room in New Jersey. Wrong night to remember. Dropping her head, she focused on the carpet and tried to block out memories of her mother’s laughter—a little too loud and high, but always Jeanne’s signature. Her throat clogged, and she had to squeeze her eyelids tight.

“Don’t think about it.” He must’ve guessed the direction of her thoughts, because he hoisted her in his arms and took the stairs two at a time, still talking. “One thing I’ve learned is when you fall in a pile of shit, dig up, not down. Don’t think about what’s past.”

“Honestly?” This close, she could see the stubble on his cheeks and the tension in his jaw. “That’s not helpful. Even my VA therapist wouldn’t give you a job.” Contradictorily, of course, her spirits lifted. Perhaps being carried as if she weighed nothing was more efficacious than antidepressants.

“I don’t have any better material to offer.” Setting her on her feet next to door 318, he inserted the key card. “Except sex.”

“Why, yes, I think that would qualify as better.” The green blinking light, the click of the door, his hand on the small of her back—all of it gave her an almost dizzying sense of déjà vu.

Instead of leaving as he had in Rome, Wulf came in and searched the bathroom, behind the curtains and under the bed. There was no closet, or she knew he would have searched it too.

The room could’ve been a surgical suite, its walls were so white and the furniture so clean. “Are you sure this is a pay-by-the-hour place?” Even the oversized black-and-white photos resembled high-end waiting room decor, except for their subject matter: extremely large, extremely naked breasts and buttocks. “Maybe Danes really like modern
art.
”

Wulf snorted. “Cruz is never mistaken about these things. Stay here while I recon the exits. I’ll be back in four minutes.”