Valhalla Gold

CHAPTER NINE

The drive from Bilbao Airport to the Castillo de la Cosa was long and winding, and took them deep into the hills of Gipuzkoa Province. They drove through the town of Urretxu before finally driving north into the mountains where the castle had been nestling away for hundreds of years. Known as the Euskaldunak in their own language, the Basques had lived on the Iberian Peninsula since before the time of agriculture, and since 1978 Basque Country had been an autonomous region in the north-west of Spain.

The castillo was an imposing building of honey-colored stone hidden among dogwood, oak and ash, and a thick grove of hazel trees. Two turrets towered above them as they emerged from the car and walked toward the foreboding entrance in the warm Spanish air.

With no small thanks to an introduction and bribe from Sir Richard Eden, the owner of the property welcomed them warmly and invited them inside. They were shown through to an enormous hall in the center of which was a large table covered in food and wine.

Javier de la Cosa smiled broadly and extended his arms to emphasize his generosity. “Please, you must sample some of our local cuisine before we talk business!”

“That’s very kind,” Lea said. “But we have so little time.”

“Nonsense, you must eat!”

Lea looked at the others.

Hawke shrugged his shoulders, and soon they were all sitting around the table tucking into various Basque dishes like kokotxas, marmitako and pintxos.

“This really is very generous, Señor de la Cosa,” Lea said. “But we need to talk — you could be in danger here.”

“Danger? Rubbish! My family has defended this castle for seven hundred years.”

Ryan closed the notebook full of symbols that the Icelandic professor had given him to study and stared at a dish in the center of the table. “What’s this?”

Javier peered over his glasses at the dish and smiled. “It’s bacalao — a sort of salt cold.”

“Salt cod?” Ryan said, recalling Martha’s bubbling pots and pans back on Bell Island. “Interesting.”

The Spaniard waved a meaty hand at the generous spread. “Try some!”

“Thanks, but I ate in Canada…”

The rest of them tucked in with gusto, and toward the end of the meal, which included plenty of Spanish wine, Javier turned to Hawke and his tone was suddenly all business. “Now — Sir Richard told me you have something of great historical significance that might be of interest to the collection here at the Castillo de la Cosa.”

Hawke and Lea shared a glance. “We think so, yes, and we also think you might be able to help us with something as well.”

“In that case, I’d better see what you have.”

Lea pulled Martha’s small ring box from her pocket and gently pushed the lid open as she slid the box across the table.

Javier stared down into the little ring box. His face straightened and for a few tense moments Lea was scared she had somehow lost the precious artefact, but then a broad grin appeared on the tanned face of the Spanish millionaire and he began to nod his head with unmitigated pleasure.

“I see you have in your possession exactly what Sir Richard described.” He carefully picked up the small invisible bead and held it between his thumb and forefinger. Its strange, watery appearance sparkled for a moment, yet Hawke could only see the indentations made by the bead as it pressed into Javier’s fingers and pushed the blood away from the surface of his fingertips. The object itself was gone from the world.

“What do you think?” Hawke asked. “Is it the same as the ones you have in your collection?”

Javier replaced the bead and clipped the lid shut. “It is exactly the same, yes.”

“Can we see the others?” Hawke asked.

“You may see them, yes. As you know, under the terms of Sir Richard’s agreement this small and mysterious piece of ancient history is the price of admission.” Javier smiled and slid the box into his pocket.

The Spaniard rose from the table and clapped his hands together. “Please, my friends… if you’ll follow me I will show you the collection.” He lowered his voice to a confidential tone. “Not the public collection, you understand, but the private pieces that only the family see.”

He led them away from the grand hall and down a long corridor lined with oil paintings of his predecessors. He stopped at one particularly sombre gentleman wearing a black and red slashed doublet stitched with gold thread. A rakish reticello lace collar framed a vaguely arrogant face, and topping it all off was a broadrimmed black felt hat replete with a turquoise ostrich plume pointing into the vermillion oils of the background.

“Bet he knew his way around a galleon,” Lea said.

“Or a bordello,” Scarlet whispered from the back of the party.

Javier stopped and looked proudly at the painting. “This is Francisco de la Cosa, my ninth great-grandfather. He was the man who started our family dynasty back in the middle of the seventeenth century.”

“He was a treasure hunter?” Victoria said, admiringly.

Scarlet stepped forward. “Someone say treasure?”

Javier looked confused. “No… not really. Francisco was a merchant who made his wealth importing gold and silver from the new world, and also cocoa beans, not to mention ivory and pepper from Africa. He was a very successful man and definitely not a treasure hunter.” As he spoke he beamed with pride and then turned to Scarlet and lowered his voice. “And as far as I know, he never visited any bordellos.”

Hawke gave Scarlet a disapproving glance as Javier started off once again down the corridor. They turned a corner and began to ascend a narrow stairwell that was built into a tower on the northeast corner of the castillo. “What you are about to see is only available to the family, and even then only my immediate relatives. I hope you realize that this is a great privilege, afforded only by the fact you have brought me this bead.”

At the top of the stairwell Javier stopped before a heavy wooden door and took a large iron key from his pocket. He put the key in the lock and looked at each of them in turn. “And even with the bead it still took the incredible persuasive capability of Sir Richard to get you this far.”

He turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door.

Inside was darkness, but then he flicked an old light switch and several naked low-watt light bulbs came to life and cast a greasy, orange light over the room. It smelled of dust and neglect.

Hawke followed Javier inside and the others joined him in single file. The room was not impressive but instead redolent of an unused loft filled with family junk. Three narrow windows were shuttered up and several large wooden tea and coffee chests were stacked haphazardly along the far wall.

“So this is where the magic happens?” Scarlet said.

This time, Javier ignored her comment and moved to one of the coffee chests. “In here is what you seek.”

He patiently opened the lid and pulled an old hessian sack off the top of the contents. “As you will see — or not in this case — the item you desire to see is most impressive.”

He moved what looked like an old blunderbuss out of the way and pulled a cloak from the chest, holding it up to them. From their perspective it looked like a simple garment made from some kind of coarse linen, but then Javier draped the cloak over his shoulder. Hawke could hardly believe what he was looking at when the Spaniard disappeared from view leaving only the bottom of his legs visible.

“Oh wow,” Ryan said, making no attempt to hide his amazement. “I have got to get myself one of those babies.”

Scarlet gave him a disapproving look. “I dread to think what you would do with it.”

“Impressive, no?” Javier said with pride. “As you see, I have only a fragment, but it is still a remarkable thing!”

Hawke studied the cloak without making comment. Javier was still visible to him but in a strange, distorted way. Somehow, Hawke was able to look right through the Spaniard and see the shuttered windows and the tea chests on the far wall, and yet he was still conscious that someone was in front of him.

“It’s like you’re surrounded by ripples or something,” Lea said.

“Exactamente!” Javier cried out. “You see, the beads somehow bend the light around themselves without creating any kind of shadow. They are remarkable… magical! I can tell you my brothers and I had much fun with this cloak when we were children playing here in the castle.”

“This is… outstanding!” Gunnar said, taking step closer. “This must be Sigurd’s cloak!”

Victoria stared in awe. “This is crazy.”

Ryan nodded his head to show his agreement. “But it’s not as crazy as it looks. I was reading about this on the plane from Iceland. Modern science has developed a device known as a Rochester Cloak which uses a clever arrangement of lenses to bend the light around an object so that the person viewing the object simply can’t see it.”

Scarlet sighed.

“What’s the matter?” Hawke asked.

“Wherever there’s a Ryan, there’s a but ten seconds later.”

Ryan smirked. “But… the big elephant in the room is that the Rochester Cloak is not only brand new technology but it isn’t anywhere near as effective as what we’re all looking at right now. This is just the craziest blend of old and new tech I’ve ever seen! I mean, look at it — on the one hand we have an old garment made of what looks like animal skin and a very crude linen, and on the other hand we have a cloaking technology frankly decades ahead of current level of scientific knowledge.”

Javier slipped off the cloak and handed it to Lea.

“What are these strange markings on the inside?”

Javier shook his head. “I don’t know — my father told me they were Runic script but I don’t think so. I had them studied by experts and no one knows.”

“We’ll see about that,” Gunnar said taking a closer look.

“Well?” Lea asked.

“I can’t read this line here… it is similar to the Runic script in your father’s research but different somehow, but this bit is simple…” Gunnar said, suppressing a smile. “It says ‘Sigurd’. This is the Tarnkappe and that means…”

“It was more than a myth,” Hawke said. “It means Thor’s tomb and maybe even Valhalla were real.”

Ryan stepped forward and photographed the strange markings. He emailed it back to Alex without delay and then slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Scarlet looked at them both. “And that means gold, right?”

“And what’s this?” Ryan said, ignoring her.

“What have you found?” Hawke asked.

Ryan peered into the chest and whistled low and long. “Something that might have just changed everything.”