Last Rituals

CHAPTER 24

The good weather from the previous evening seemed likely to hold. They were at the aviation school office where Thora and Matthew had hired a plane the day before. While Matthew completed a form for the pilot, Thora took advantage of the complimentary coffee. The fare had surprised herthe scheduled flight time to Holmavik was just under an hour either way but it cost less than if they had driven and stayed at a hotel. She had even been offered a lower price if they were willing to accept a trainee pilot. She opted for the higher fare.

"Okay, we're ready." The pilot smiled. He was so young that he must have just been promoted from the lower fare bracket. They followed him to a small plane that accommodated four people including the pilot. Matthew offered Thora the seat in front, but she declined when she saw how cramped it was in the back. Although tall, she was still smaller than Matthew and therefore less likely to need a shoehorn to get her out at the other end. She climbed in and buckled up.

The pilot took his seat and handed them each a headset. "Put these on. The plane's a bit noisy, so we have to communicate through the mikes on these headphones." Thora and Matthew put the clunky apparatus over their heads and plugged them in. The pilot turned on the engines, and after a short discussion with the control tower they took off.

They flew over Reykjavik, which looked much larger from the air than on the ground. Matthew looked down, fascinated, but Thora found it more rewarding to look ahead, a rare opportunity on a plane. "There aren't many tall buildings," observed Matthew, looking back at Thora. She found it mildly embarrassing to talk over the sound system in case the air traffic controllers were listening in, so she just nodded and averted her gaze downward, watching the low-rise houses zip by. The city and its suburbs were characterized by the Icelandic need to live in a house. Not an apartment, a house. Apartments were mere stepping-stones. Thora craned her neck to try to see her own home, but could not. They were heading inland, away from the sea. Once they had flown over the boundaries of the residential areas, Matthew turned back to Thora. "What happened to your trees? There's hardly any vegetation down there," he said in an unnaturally loud voice.

"Oh, most people think the sheep ate them," replied Thora, now almost certain they were out of earshot of flight control.

"Sheep?" repeated Matthew incredulously. "Since when do sheep eat trees?"

"They don't," said Thora. "They get the blame, though. I don't think there were ever any trees, to be honest. Maybe some shrubs." She looked down at the barren ground. "I like it this way, actually. Who needs trees?"

Matthew shot her a quizzical glance and then went back to scanning the mountainous landscape up ahead.

The flight to Holmavik went quickly and the airstrip in the village soon appeared. Thora saw a gravel runway with a single shed, nothing more. It was just outside the village beside the main road. The pilot flew over the runway and sized it up; then, satisfied with what he saw, he turned the plane and made a soft landing. They unfastened their belts and got out.

Matthew took out his mobile to make a call. "What's the number of the local taxi company?" he asked the pilot.

"Taxi company?" He laughed. "There's not even one taxi here, let alone a whole company. You'll have to walk."

Thora smiled along with the pilot, pretending she had known this all along. But like Matthew she had expected to be able to take a taxi from the airstrip down to the museum. "Come on, it's not far," she said to Matthew, pulling her shocked companion with her. They crossed the road, which was completely devoid of traffic, and walked to the gas station and shop at the entrance to the village. They went in to ask for directions. The girl working there was very helpful and even went outside with them to point out the museum. It could not have been easier; a walk down the road, along the shore into the village, and there, right next to the harbor, was the museum. A black wooden house with a turfed roof, it was just barely discernible in the distance. It was only a few hundred yards and the weather was good. They set off.

"I recognize this from the photographs on Harald's computer," said Thora, looking back at Matthew. The pathway was so narrow that they could not walk side by side.

"Were there many shots from here? Anything worthwhile, I mean?"

"Not really," Thora replied. "Actually just typical tourist shots, apart from a few that he took inside the museum, where photography is prohibited." She cautiously skirted a patch of ice on the path. "Watch out here," she warned Matthew, who strode over it. "You're not exactly wearing the right shoes for walking." She glanced at his black patent leather shoes. They matched Matthew's other clothes: pressed trousers, a shirt, and a half-length woolen coat. She was wearing jeans and outdoor shoes and had put on her goose-down coat as a precaution. Matthew had not yet commented on the coatmaking do with a raised eyebrow when he picked her up and she squeezed into his car, the upper part of her body triple its normal size.

"The last thing I expected was to have to go hiking," Matthew said crossly. "He could have warned me, that man." "That man" was the curator of the sorcery and witchcraft exhibition at the museum, whom Matthew had phoned the day before to make sure it would be open. "It's good for you. It will teach you not to be such a dandy," teased Thora. "That doesn't work up here in Iceland. If we don't finish this job soon I'll have to take you into town and buy you a fleece jacket."

"Never!" declared Matthew. "Even if I had to stay here until my dying day."

"If you don't, that day will come sooner than you suspect," she retorted. "Aren't you cold, thoughmaybe you'd like to borrow my coat?"

"I made a reservation at Hotel Ranga for tonight," he said, swiftly changing the subject. "And I'm going to swap the rental car for a Jeep."

"See, you've gone half-native already."

Finally they made it all the way to the museumwithout slipping on the ice. The museum looked old-fashioned from the outside. The yard in front of it, enclosed with a stone-built wall, was covered in beach gravel and a few driftwood logs. The door was deep red, contrasting sharply with the earth-colored hues of the building itself. A portly raven was sitting on a wooden bench outside. It looked skyward when they arrived, opened its beak wide and cawed. Then it spread its wings and soared up to the gable where it watched them go inside. "Appropriate," said Matthew as he opened the door for Thora.

Inside they found a small service counter on the right with several shelves directly in front of them displaying witchcraft souvenirs. All very unpretentious and tidy. Behind the counter sat a young man, who looked up from his newspaper. "Hello," he said. "Welcome to the sorcery and witchcraft exhibition."

Thora and Matthew introduced themselves and the young man said he had been expecting them. "I'm just working here temporarily," he said after shaking their hands and introducing himself as Thorgrimur. His handshake was old-fashioned, firm and steady. "The director of the museum is on sabbatical, but I hope that's no problem."

"No, it's fine," said Thora. "But is it true that you were here this autumn?"

"Yes, that's right. I took over in July." He gave her an inquisitive look and added: "May I ask why you want to know?"

"As Matthew told you yesterday, we're investigating an incident connected with a person interested in witchcraft. He came here this autumn and we thought we ought to drop in for some insight into his world. I presume you remember him."

The man laughed. "You can't be sure. A lot of people come here." Then, realizing that they were the only visitors, he added: "This time of year is nothing to go byit's packed here in the tourist season."

Matthew gave a faint smile. "You know, this man isn't so easy to forget. He was a German history student with a very unconventional appearance. His name was Harald Guntlieb and he was recently murdered."

Thorgrimur's face lit up. "Oh, yes, he was allall covered inhow can I describe itornamentation?"

"If you can call it ornamentation," said Thora.

"Yes, sure, I remember him. He came here with another man, a bit younger, who said he felt too hungover to come inside. Soon after that I read in the paper about the German being murdered."

"That fits," Matthew said. "This guy with the hangoverdo you know anything about him?"

The man shook his head. "Not exactlywhen your friend said goodbye he told me he was a doctor. I think he must have been joking. He had to make an awful noise to wake him up when they left. I was in the doorway watching. I remember thinking how improbable a doctor he was, passed out on the bench outside."

Thora and Matthew exchanged glances. Halldor.

"Do you remember anything else about their visit?" asked Thora.

"I remember he was very well informed. It's nice to have visitors who know as much as he did about history and witchcraft. As a rule, people don't know anything; they can't even tell a revenant from a poltergeist." From their expressions he could tell these visitors were two more in that category. "How about taking a walk around the museum and I'll tell you about the main exhibits? Then we can talk about your friend."

Thora and Matthew exchanged glances, shrugged, and followed the curator inside.

"I don't know how much you know about these matters, but I should maybe give you a little background." Thorgrimur walked up to a wall covered with the skin of an unidentifiable animal. The fur faced the wall, and on the hide facing outward a magic symbol had been drawn, much more complicated than the one carved on Harald's body. Beneath the skin a wooden box was mounted on the wall, resembling an old-fashioned pencil box. It was half-open and full of what looked like hair, along with a silver coin. A simple symbol was carved on the lid and on top of it was a strange creature that could have been mistaken for a mutant hedgehog. "In the age of sorcery, the common people in Iceland lived in appalling conditions. A handful of families owned most of the property while almost everyone else starved. The only way they could see to escape from their poverty was through magic and supernatural powers. In those days this wasn't considered unusual. For example, they thought the devil went around in the company of men, trying to ensnare their souls." He turned to the hide on the wall. "Here's an example of a spell to get richthe symbol represents a sea mouse or circular helmet. You needed the skin of a black tomcat, then you drew this symbol or circular helmet on it with the menstrual blood of a virgin."

Matthew grimaced and looked out of the corner of his eye to see whether Thorgrimur touched the symbol. Noticing this, the curator told the German dryly: "We used dark red ink." Then he continued. "They had to catch a small vermin that according to folklore lived along the shore and was called a sea mouse. It had to be caught in a net made from a virgin's hair." Thora felt Matthew running his hand down her long, loose hair. Stifling a giggle, she brushed his hand away inconspicuously. "Then they made a nest for the mouse from a wooden box and the hair and put a stolen coin in it, and then the mouse was supposed to fish a treasure from the sea and into the box. Then you had to put the circular helmet over it to prevent the mouse from escaping and causing a storm at sea."

He turned to them. "So it wasn't just hocus-pocus."

"No," replied Matthew, and pointed to a wall with a glass case containing what looked like the lower half of a human body. "What on earth is that?"

"Ah, that's one of our most popular exhibits. Corpse breeches. They were also supposed to make you rich." Thorgrimur walked over to the showcase. "Of course this is just a replicaobviously." Thora and Matthew nodded eagerly. Behind the glass was the skin of the lower half of a male body. To Thora it resembled a pair of gross, pink tights, hairy and with the genitals attached. "To acquire corpse breeches you made a contract with a living man to take the skin off the lower half of his body when he died. When that person died his body was unearthed and the skin removed from the waist down, in one piece. These were the corpse breeches that the other person would wear. Corpse breeches were supposed to graft to the wearer's body and if he put a coin in the scrotuma coin that he had to steal from a rich widow at Christmas, Easter, or Whitsunhe would never find the scrotum empty, because it would always contain plenty of money."

"Couldn't they have chosen a different place?" Thora pulled a face. Thorgrimur simply shrugged.

"And what's this?" Matthew asked, as Thorgrimur took them over to a large photograph of a woman in a long, coarse skirt in folk costume style. She was sitting down with her skirt hitched up to expose her bare thigh. On the thigh a wartlike protrusion pointed up in the air.

"You know of course that the majority of sorcerers who were executed in Iceland were malethere were twenty men but only one woman. This is because it was mainly thought to be men who practiced witchcraft in Iceland, unlike in the rest of Europe. This spellknown as a tilberiis remarkable for being the one Icelandic charm that only a woman could perform. To make a tilberi she had to steal a rib from a grave on Whitsun night, wrap it in wool and wear it inside her clothes between her breasts, go to the altar three times and spit the communion wine over the bone, which would bring the tilberi to life. Then it would grow, and to keep it hidden under her clothes the woman had to make an artificial nipple from the skin on her thigh. The tilberi fed there, in between roaming the countryside at night to suck the milk of ewes and cows, which it spat into the woman's butter churn in the morning."

"He wasn't exactly a pinup," Thora said, pointing at the exhibit. The tilberi was wrapped in wool and barely visible apart from an open toothless mouth and two tiny white eyes with no pupils.

Judging from Matthew's expression, he agreed. "Was this one woman who was executed for witchcraft accused of doing that?"

"No, in fact she wasn't. But there was a case in the southwest of Iceland in 1635 when a woman and her mother were suspected of having a tilberi. It was investigated but did not turn out to be true, so they narrowly escaped."

They went on strolling around the museum, looking at the exhibits. Thora was struck most by a wooden stake standing in the middle of the room surrounded by bushels of straw. As she stood silently contemplating it, Thorgrimur came over and told her that all twenty-one suspected sorcerers had been burned alive. He added that three were known to have tried to break out of the pyre when the stakes to which they were tied burned through. They were thrown back into the flames to die. The first execution took place in 1625, he said, but the proper witch hunts began when three sorcerers were burned at the stake in Trekyllisvik in the northern West Fjords in 1654. Thora mentally calculated how recent this actually was.

When they had seen enough, Thorgrimur took them to the upper floor. On the way they passed a sign stating that photography was prohibitedthe same sign that had appeared in the photo Thora had seen on Harald's computer. Thorgrimur showed them a large family tree showing the kinship among the most prominent witch hunters in the seventeenth century. He pointed out how members of the ruling class had planted their descendants in the offices of the magistrates and judges. After reading the genealogy, Thora understood exactly what he was talking about. Matthew paid little attention. He left them and went over to look at a showcase containing replicas of sorcerers' handbooks and other manuscripts. He was bent over the case when Thora and Thorgrimur came up to him.

"Actually it's incredible that any books of sorcery have been preserved at all," Thorgrimur said, pointing to one of them.

"Do you mean because they're so old?" Thora asked, leaning forward to take a better look.

"Well, that too, but mainly because it was a capital offense to possess them. Some are handwritten copies of older manuscripts that had presumably suffered damage, so the originals are not all from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

Thora stood up straight. "Is there any index of all these magic symbols?"

"No, unfortunately there isn't. No one has made the effort to record them as far as I know." With a sweep of his hand he said: "All these symbols on exhibit here represent only a few pages from the manuscripts and old booksa tiny sample. So you can imagine how many symbols there are."

Thora nodded. Damn it. It would have been marvelous if Thorgrimur could have shown them a list against which they could check the unknown symbol. She moved to look at more manuscripts. The showcase stood in the middle of the room, enabling visitors to walk around it while viewing the pages on display. Matthew, who had been hunched over to get a closer look at one of the panels, suddenly straightened up.

"What's this symbol?" he asked excitedly, tapping on the glass with his finger.

"Which one?" Thorgrimur asked, and took a look at the document.

"This one." Matthew pointed it out to him.

Although Thora had to lean across the case to see what Matthew was pointing at, she was quicker than Thorgrimur to realize which symbol had caught his attentionsimply because it was one of the few symbols that she recognized, the one that had been carved on Harald's body. "Well, I'll be damned," she muttered.

"This one at the bottom of the page?" Thorgrimur asked as he pointed one out.

"No," Matthew said. "This one in the margin. What does it do?"

"Well, I don't know," Thorgrimur replied. "I can't say, unfortunately. The text on the page doesn't refer to itit's an example of a symbol that the owner of the book added to the margin himself. That wasn't unusual; symbols like this occur in more works than just those specifically describing magic."

"What manuscript is it from?" Thora asked, peering at the text accompanying the document.

"It's a manuscript from the seventeenth century, owned by the Royal Archive of Antiquities in Stockholm. It goes by the name of the Icelandic Book of Sorcery. Naturally the author is anonymous. It contains fifty spells of various sortsmost are innocent, aimed at personal advancement or defense." He stooped to read the same text Thora had been peering at. "Some of them are darker, thoughfor example, one is a death charm, to kill the target. One of the two love spells is also pretty heavy black magic." He looked up from the case. "Funny. Your friend Harald was passionately interested in precisely this section of the exhibition, the old books and manuscripts."

"Did he inquire about this same symbol?" Matthew asked.

"No, not as far as I recall," Thorgrimur replied, then added: "I'm not exactly an expert in this particular field so I couldn't help him muchbut I do remember that I put him in touch with Pall, the director I'm standing in for. He knows all about these sorts of things."

"How do we get in touch with him?" Matthew asked excitedly.

"That's the troublehe's abroad."

"So? Can't we phone him or send him an e-mail?" asked Thora, no less eager than Matthew. "It's quite important for us to find out what this symbol means."

"Well, I have his number somewhere," Thorgrimur said, much calmer than they were. "I suppose the best thing is if I call him and talk to him firstgive him the rundown. He can contact you afterward."

Thorgrimur went behind the counter, produced a notebook and flicked through it. Then he reached for the telephone and dialed a number, taking care not to let them see it. A short while passed before he started speakingonly to leave a voice mail message.

"Sorry. He didn't answer. He's bound to call as soon as he gets the messagemaybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day."

Making no attempt to conceal their disappointment, Thora and Matthew gave Thorgrimur their cards. She asked him to let them know the moment he got in touch with Pall. He gladly agreed and put their cards inside his notebook. "What about that friend of yoursdid you want to know why he was here?" he said when he had finished.

"Yes, certainly," Thora replied. "Did anything besides the manuscripts interest him or did he mention that he was looking for anything?"

"It was mainly the manuscripts, if I recall correctly," Thorgrimur said, thinking back. "Actually he made me an offer to buy the sacrificial bowl in here, but I couldn't tell if he was joking."

"Sacrificial bowl? What sacrificial bowl?" Matthew asked.

"Follow meit's just inside." They followed him into a small room where a stone bowl was in a display case in the center. "This is a bowl that was used during sacrificesit was found nearby and the police forensics team has confirmed that there are traces of blood in it. Centuries old as it turns out."

"That's a hell of a lump of rock," exclaimed Thora. "Couldn't they have made do with a wooden one?" The stone artifact had to weigh at least several pounds. It had been hollowed out to make the middle concave.

"So it's not for sale, then?" Matthew asked.

"No, definitely not. It's the only original exhibit at this museum, and I don't have the authority to sell the objects here anyway."

Thora peered at the stone. Could this be the object that Harald had coveted? It seemed unlikely, but stranger things had come to light during their investigation. "This is definitely the same stone?"

"What do you mean?" Thorgrimur asked in surprise.

"Well, I was just wondering if the director could have taken Harald at his word, sold him the stone bowl, and had another made to replace it?"

Thorgrimur smiled. "Not a chance. It's the same stone that's always been here. I'd bet my head on it." He turned round and left the room, with them in hot pursuit. "As I saidhe just mentioned it casually."

"But was there anything else he said or asked about?" Thora asked. "Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Well, as I said he was mainly interested in the old sorcery books and manuscripts," Thorgrimur repeated. "He did ask me about The Witches' Hammer, if I'd ever heard or seen anything about an old edition of it in Iceland. I'd never heard such a story and told him so. Maybe you don't know what I'm talking about?" He looked at them.

"Oh, yes. We've heard of it," Matthew answered for them both.

"I asked him what he based his claim on and he said that some old letters suggested a copy found its way to Iceland."