Valhalla Rising (69 page)

Then suddenly, he swam over an open stretch free of the rocks. The bottom was now smooth and flat with a channel cut through the rubble. He judged it dropped off thirty feet before he swam across to the other side, where the jumbled rocks appeared again. Returning across the gap, he measured the width at roughly forty feet. The channel beckoned toward the shore where the rock slide had fallen into the water. He sucked a cubic foot of air into his lungs before holding his breath and diving down to look for an opening through the jagged fall of rock. The boulders, one overcropping the other, looked cold and somber as if there was something diabolic about them, almost as though they held a secret they were reluctant to reveal.

Weeds swayed in the current like the long fingers of a ballet dancer. He found a ledge free of growth that had strange chiseled markings in the hard surface. His heart leaped two beats when he recognized one as the crude carving of a dog. His lungs felt squeezed, and he surfaced for another breath of air. Then he dived again, swimming and sometimes using his hands to pull himself around the rocks.

He watched as a ten-inch smallmouth bass swam from under a large overhanging slab of stone. It saw Pitt’s shadow and quickly disappeared. He angled down and chased after it under the ledge. A dark tunnel appeared through the rocks and beckoned him. The skin on the nape of his neck tingled. Another breath on the surface and he entered the opening cautiously. Once inside and free of the glare outside, he could see that the burrow flared out ten feet ahead. That was as far as he decided to go. Expelling the last of his air, he returned to the surface.

Al had climbed back on the boat, having found nothing of interest. Kelly was sitting on top of the cabin, her feet on the deck of the bow staring in Pitt’s direction. He waved both arms and yelled.

“I found a way inside!”

Kelly and Giordino needed no further urging. In less than three minutes, they were stroking against the current beside him. Pitt did not remove the mouthpiece of his snorkel for further conversation. Excitedly, he motioned for them to follow him. They paused to fill their lungs, and then Giordino and Kelly trailed behind Pitt’s fins through the jumbled mass of stone debris.

They swam through the narrow section of the tunnel, their fins brushing against the sides and disturbing the growth into a green diaphanous cloud. Finally, just when Kelly was beginning to fear that she only had a few seconds left before opening her mouth and taking in a mouthful of water, the cavity fanned out and she gripped Pitt’s left ankle, using his momentum to propel her to the surface.

Their heads came free of the water in unison. They spit out the mouthpieces of their snorkels, raised the dive masks over their heads and found themselves in an immense cavern whose roof towered two hundred feet above their heads. They stared in complete surprise, without fully comprehending what they had discovered.

Pitt gazed up in wonder at the head of a serpent with bared fangs that was staring down at him.

T
he gracefully curved serpent head, intricately carved with mouth agape, stared sightlessly at the water flowing into the cavern, as if searching for a distant shore. On an enormous ledge four feet above the water’s edge, six open wooden boats, held upright by their keels and wedged by wooden cradles, sat side by side, stern to bow. The serpent rose on the bow post of the largest boat nearest the rim of the ledge.

The boats were built entirely of oak, the largest stretching more than sixty feet in length. The sun’s reflection coming through the water in the tunnel cast feathery ribbons of light against the elegantly shaped hulls. From their view in the water, the divers could look up at the keels and the broad, symmetrically arched hulls with their clinker-built, overlapping strake planking that was still held together with rusting iron rivets. Below the rack where shields had once been stored, oars still protruded through small round ports. Now gripped by ghostly hands, they seemed poised, waiting for a command to row. It seemed inconceivable that such aesthetically elegant hull lines could have been designed and built a thousand years in the past.

“They’re Viking,” Kelly murmured in astonished awe. “They’ve been here all the time and nobody knew.”

“Your father knew,” said Pitt. “He knew from the Viking inscriptions that they had settled on the palisades above the Hudson River, which led him to the discovery of the tunnel leading down to the cavern from above.”

“They’re well preserved,” Giordino observed, casting an admiring eye over the Viking ships. “Despite the dampness, I see little signs of rot.”

Pitt pointed up at the masts that were still standing with their furled red-and-white coarse woolen sails, then at the vaulted roof of the cavern high above their heads. “They left them stepped because of the cavern’s lofty ceiling.”

“They look as if all you had to do is drop them in the water, raise the sails and go,” Kelly whispered in breathless wonder.

“Let’s take a closer look,” Pitt said.

After removing their fins, face masks and weight belts, they climbed a rock-chiseled stairway to the top of the ledge and mounted the boarding ramps that ran from the rock to the upper strake of the largest ship. The ramps were sound and obviously put there by Dr. Egan.

The light inside the cavern was dim, but they recognized the objects scattered on the floorboards. What looked like a body was wrapped in a burial shroud. On each side were smaller bundles in burial shrouds. Around the bodies, a treasure trove of artifacts had been literally dumped in scattered disarray. There were gilt-bronzed figures of saints, a stack of illuminated manuscripts in Gospel Latin and reliquary boxes filled with coins and silver chalices, most likely all stolen from monasteries during raids on England and Ireland. Amber necklaces, gold and silver brooches, elaborate silver-and-bronze necklaces and bracelets lay in piles inside elaborately carved wooden boxes. Bronze dishes and incense burners from the Orient, along with furniture, textiles and linen, and a beautifully carved sled for the chief to be towed on in winter snow, were also lying about.

“My guess is this is Bjarne Sigvatson,” said Pitt.

Kelly looked sadly at the two smaller bundles. “They must be his children.”

“He must have been quite a warrior to have accumulated this much wealth,” Giordino muttered, gazing raptly at the treasures.

“From reading Dad’s research notebooks,” said Kelly, “I had the impression important chieftains were sent to Valhalla after a glorious death, along with all their worldly goods and chattels, which included their horses, other animals and their servants. He should also have his battle-axe, sword and shield. I see none of these.”

“The burial was a rush job,” agreed Giordino.

Pitt motioned toward the boarding ramp. “Let’s have a look at the other boats.”

To Kelly’s horror, the adjacent boats were strewn with bones intermingled with broken and shattered household goods. Few skeletons were intact. Most looked as though they had been hacked to pieces.

Pitt knelt and studied a skull with a jagged gash in the top of the cranium. “There must have been a terrible massacre.”

“Could they have fought among themselves?”

“I don’t think so,” said Giordino. He removed an arrow that was embedded between the ribs of one pile of bones and held it up. “This says Indians.”

“The sagas suggested that Sigvatson and his people sailed away from Greenland and were never heard of again,” said Pitt, trying to imagine a face on the skull. “It also lends credibility to the legend Dr. Wednesday told of the Indians slaughtering all the Vikings in the settlement.”

“This proves it was no myth,” Giordino said quietly.

Kelly looked at Pitt. “Then the Norse settlement …”

“Was located on your father’s farm,” Pitt finished. “He found artifacts and was influenced to launch his research project.”

Kelly wrung her hands mournfully. “But why did he keep it a secret? Why didn’t he call in archaeologists to conduct excavations? Why not show the world that Vikings had arrived in what is now New York and begun a colony?”

“Your father was a brilliant man,” said Giordino. “In his mind he must have had a good reason for the secrecy. He definitely didn’t want an army of archaeologists and reporters invading his privacy during his experiments.”

Thirty minutes later, while Kelly and Giordino examined the rest of the Viking ships—not an easy undertaking in the dim light of the cavern—Pitt began wandering around the ledge. In the gloom he spotted a stairway hacked into the rock that led up into a tunnel. He climbed the first four steps with his hand trailing along one wall for support, when his fingers met with something that felt like an electrical switch. He touched it lightly and determined that the lever swung clockwise. Curious, he turned the lever until it clicked.

Suddenly, the entire cavern was illuminated by bright fluorescent lights set into the rock walls.

“Cool,” Kelly uttered in surprise. “Now we can see what we’re doing.”

Pitt walked over to where she and Giordino were searching through one of the boats. “I know another reason why your father kept this place a secret,” he said slowly, deliberately.

Kelly seemed only mildly interested, but Giordino stared at him. He’d known Pitt too long not to recognize when he was about to spring a revelation. Then he saw the direction in which Pitt’s eyes were aimed and he turned and did the same.

A long, cylindrical iron vessel was moored to a dock along the far side of the cavern. The hull was covered with a thin coating of rust. The only noticeable protrusion was a small hatch tower set several feet aft of the forward bow. The vessel had not been visible in the darkened cavern interior until Pitt had turned on the lights.

“What in God’s name is that?” Kelly muttered.

“That,” said Pitt, with a note of triumph in his voice, “is the
Nautilus.
”

T
heir astonishment at standing on a dock that had been built by Dr. Elmore Egan and staring down at the legendary and fabled submarine was equal to what they’d felt with the discovery of the Viking ships. To suddenly find a marvel of nineteenth-century engineering that everybody had thought was fiction was like a dream turned real.

At the foot of the dock, rising along the rim of the rock ledge, was a pile of stones stacked in the shape of a sarcophagus. A wooden plaque with carved letters revealed it as the final resting place of the submarine’s creator: 

Here lie the mortal remains of Captain Cameron Amherst.
Made famous by the writings of Jules Verne

as the immortal Captain Nemo.
May those who someday discover his tomb

 honor him with the respect he deserves.
 

“My esteem of your father continues to grow,” Pitt said to Kelly. “He was a man to envy.”

“Knowing Dad built this monument with his own hands makes me proud.”

Giordino, who’d lagged behind after exploring a side cave, approached the dock. “I found another answer to the mystery that’d been bothering me.”

Pitt looked at him. “Which mystery?”

“If Dr. Egan had a hidden laboratory, where was the source of his electrical energy? I found it in a side cave. There are three portable generating units in there, connected to enough batteries to power a small town.” He pointed down at the dock and the series of electrical cables running along the edge and through the hatch of the submarine. “Ten to one he used the interior for his laboratory.”

“Now that I see the
Nautilus
close up,” said Kelly, “it’s much bigger than I imagined.”

“She hardly looks like the Disney version,” Giordino mused. “Her outer hull is simple and functional.”

Pitt nodded in agreement. The top of the hull rose but three feet from the water, giving a bare hint of her mass beneath. “I estimate her length at about two hundred and fifty feet, with a twenty-five-foot beam, larger than Verne described. She’s close to the dimensions of the first Navy submarine with advanced hydrodynamic design that was launched in 1953.”

“The
Albacore,
” replied Giordino. “I saw her sailing down the York River about ten years ago. You’re right. There is a resemblance.”

Giordino walked over to an electrical panel mounted above the dock beside a gangplank leading to the submarine’s deck next to the hatch tower. He pressed a pair of switches. The interior of the vessel was instantly bathed in light that beamed up through a series of ports along the roof and through larger view ports seen below in the water.

Pitt turned to Kelly and motioned down the open hatch tower. “Ladies first.”

She placed her hands against her chest as if to slow her pounding heart. She wanted to see where her father had worked all those years, to see the inside of the famous vessel, but she found it difficult to take the first step. It seemed to her that she was entering a house of ghosts. Finally, with great force of will, she entered the hatch and climbed down the ladder.

The entry compartment was small. She waited until Pitt and Giordino joined her. In front of them was a door that looked like it belonged on a house more than in a submarine. Pitt turned the latch, opened it and stepped over the threshold.