Wrack and Rune Page 6

  Cronkite was a young man of tact and feeling. He put his lacerated right arm around Miss Horsefall’s bony shoulders and gave her a little squeeze.

  “Hey, cut that out. You’ve got to stick around till after your birthday party anyway. We’re planning to run your picture on the front page.”

  “Then I s’pose that means I’ll have to put my hair up in kid curlers the night before. Pesky things. I hate sleepin’ on ’em.”

  Yet Miss Horsefall was looking less woebegone as she went to prepare the evening meal for herself and the one old man she had left to feed.

  Chapter 7

  “WELL, WHAT DOES IT say?” Shandy prodded. “Harald Bluetooth was here?”

  “Shut up,” replied Thorkjeld Svenson with that suave courtesy for which he was ever noted. He jabbed a forefinger the size of a bedpost at one of the more carefully worked out patches in Cronkite’s scribbling. “Looks like Orm.”

  “Orm what? Is Orm a word?”

  “Name. Damn good name. What’s wrong with Orm?”

  “Something must have gone wrong with him if that’s Orm’s tombstone,” Cronkite pointed out reasonably.

  “Might not be a grave. Might be any damn thing. Wish Uncle Sven were here.”

  “Where is he, President?”

  “How the hell do I know? Am I my uncle’s keeper? Down at the Senior Citizens’ Drop-in Center pinching some widow’s backside, most likely.”

  “Thorkjeld, you may not speak with disrespect of your learned great-uncle.”

  Sieglinde Svenson had entered the room, queenly in a thin summer dress of some soft blue material, though slightly wan about the eyelids from the strain of marrying off the fifth of her seven daughters and coping with relatives who had thronged from all parts of the northern hemisphere to make sure Birgit and Hjalmar got well and duly hitched.

  “What’s disrespectful about pinching widows? How many men his age would be up to it? Proud of the old letch.”

  “Uncle Sven is not a letch.” Sieglinde had high moral standards and did not care to have such words bandied about in her presence. “He lived in happy monogamy with your Great-aunt Ylva until her untimely passing at the age of eighty-nine. Naturally he is lonely without her and seeks other feminine companionship. You would do the same.”

  “Hell, you’ll outlive me by forty years,” cried Thorkjeld in panic.

  His wife shook her noble blond head. “I shall not. Life without you would be unendurably serene. What is this paper you have here, and who is this attractive but bedraggled young man? I trust he does not want to marry our lovely Gudrun or our sweet little Frideswiede.”

  “He damn well better hadn’t,” growled the bereft father. “Look at him. Doesn’t even have a whole shirt to his back.”

  “This is Cronkite Swope, a reporter from the Weekly Fane and Pennon,” said Shandy.

  “And I have lots of shirts,” Cronkite protested, stung to the quick. “I tore this one slashing through the brambles to get at the runestone and haven’t had time to go home and change. And I don’t even know Gudrun or Frideswiede. Though I’d sure like to if they take after their mother,” he added gallantly.

  Cronkite did have a way with words. Sieglinde awarded him a smile, Thorkjeld a menacing snarl.

  “Urrgh! Where’s this runestone?”

  “In Mr. Hengist Horsefall’s oak grove over in Lumpkin Corners. I never knew it was there until Miss Hilda Horsefall, his aunt, told me about it while I was interviewing her this afternoon. I’m sorry this is such a poor rubbing. All I had with me were a pencil and some copy paper.”

  “Why did you not go better prepared?” Sieglinde asked him.

  “Well, gee, Mrs. Svenson, I didn’t know I was going till I went. They sent me over to write a little story about Miss Hilda’s hundred and fifth birthday party but then the hired man fell into the quicklime so I thought I’d better go find that runestone quick and I ought to be down at the paper only I wanted to make sure it really is a runestone first.”

  “I see. Your explanation makes more sense to me than anything else I have heard during the past month. Then, Thorkjeld, this is a genuine runestone?”

  “Got runes on it anyway. Have to see for myself. Show Uncle Sven.”

  President Svenson was still knitting his craglike brows over Cronkite’s scribblings. “This doodad here. Might be curse.”

  “Curse?” Cronkite almost fell down the front steps in his joy. “You mean like ‘curst be he that moves my bones’?”

  “Arrgh.”

  “And what about the helmet?” Cronkite proffered his fragment of bronze. “Don’t you think this could be part of a helmet? See the hole where the horn came out?”

  “Urrgh!” Svenson replied with more enthusiasm. He clapped the metal against his massive skull. One turbulent lock of iron-gray hair stuck out through the hole like an eagle’s wing. “How do I look?”

  “God,” cried Timothy Ames, who hadn’t uttered a word until now. “It couldn’t be anything else.”

  “Yesus, wait till Uncle Sven sees this! Swope, maybe in ten years I let you meet Gudrun.”

  “Thank you,” said Cronkite. “I’ll be looking forward to it. Right now, though, I’ve got to write my story. Keep the helmet to show your uncle if you want to. I’ll be around to get his opinion first thing tomorrow morning. Nice to have met you, Mrs. Svenson. Thank your wife again for the wonderful dinner, Professor Shandy.”

  Before Swope had quite finished his polite adieux, he was gunning the motorbike he’d ridden over from Lumpkin Corners.

  “I have a feeling we’ve unleashed a monster,” Shandy mused.

  Nobody paid any attention to him. Tim didn’t hear and Thorkjeld was busy kissing Sieglinde in the old Norse manner, which is to say molto con brio, as a prelude to rounding up Uncle Sven and going to see the runestone.

  They found the aged relative heading for the college barns with a purposeful expression on his face and a buxom widow trotting eagerly beside him. The widow was much the taller, but Sven had the longer mustache. Though his chin was bare of beard, the hair sprouting from his upper lip trailed a good six inches below his mouth, or would have were it not at the moment blowing out beyond his ears to mingle with the silver locks that flowed down to his debonair blue and white polka-dotted collar.

  It seemed too bad, Shandy thought, to spoil his plans for the evening, but Uncle Sven didn’t appear to mind. He was as excited as Thorkjeld over the fragment of helmet and pronounced it without hesitation as having come from Uppsala circa A.D. 900. He also said, in Swedish so as not to hurt her feelings, that one could always find a willing woman but a runestone in this benighted wilderness was a treat he hadn’t expected and what were they waiting for?

  Thorkjeld, fired with enthusiasm, clamored to drive the party over to the Horsefalls’. Shandy said him a loud and final nay. He’d do the driving himself. He was simply not up to riding with a berserker tonight.

  On the way over, Uncle Sven studied the rubbing, which Cronkite and Helen had patched together at dinnertime with cellophane tape. He agreed with Thorkjeld about Orm and thought the next word was “Tokesson,” which would mean, obviously, “Orm, son of Toke.” He granted the curse but reserved judgment on the rest of the inscription. At least they were now sure this was not one of those geological freaks that had aroused false hopes in the area before.

  Helen had predicted Peter wouldn’t find the Horsefalls mourning alone on his return trip, and as usual she proved right. A fair number of relatives and neighbors had gathered, bringing cakes, cookies, condolences, and curiosity. Miss Hilda had changed into what had no doubt been her best summer dress for the past thirty years or more: a lilac print, set off by a handsome amethyst brooch that must date from an earlier, more prosperous era. At sight of her, Uncle Sven’s mustache ends began to curl upward.

  She shoved forward two fiftyish men who might have been twins. “This here’s Eddie, Professor, and this is Ralph. They’re the great-nephews we was tellin’ you about.”
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  Both were tallish and spare, with the stooped shoulders, the weather-beaten faces, and the resigned but resolute “What’s Ma Nature and the government going to soak us with next?” expressions that betoken small farmers everywhere. Shandy felt favorably disposed toward both by instinct, though he knew he shouldn’t. Both had large families, iron-jawed wives, and a general aura of not being quite able to make ends meet. Already he could detect murmurs about which of them would get to move in with the old folks and run the farm, and he recognized one of Ralph’s sons as having been a prime troublemaker at the college’s Grand Illumination two years ago, before he himself had taken over that disreputable role.

  Ralph Junior was fifteen or so, big for his age, and, it would seem, already angry enough with an unfair world to do the sorts of damage Henny Horsefall had been plagued with. He probably owned a bike and didn’t live far away. He must know his folks were in the running to get the farm; perhaps he’d decided to hurry matters along by scaring old Henny into feeling the need of protection. Or perhaps somebody else, such as that grim-looking aunt of his, knew the boy’s record as a public nuisance and was operating on the principle of “Give a dog a bad name and hang him.” Shandy began to feel overburdened with likely suspects.

  “Sorry, President,” he muttered. “I might have known there’d be a mob here as soon as word about the hired man got around. We’d better not mention the runestone for the moment. It might start a stampede.”

  “Then what in hell did you lug us over here for?” Svenson growled back.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get to it one way or another. Would you mind pretending for the moment that you’re here as emissary from the college’s Agricultural Laborers’ Assistance Fund?”

  “We don’t have one.”

  “Yes we do. Tim and I founded it this afternoon.”

  “Oh.”

  Svenson didn’t need to be told any more. He went properly and sedately to pay his respects to Miss Hilda and her nephew, thus elevating them in the local social scale beyond their wildest dreams. It was a hitherto unheard-of honor for President Thorkjeld Svenson, renowned academician and holder of the Balaclava County Senior Plowmen’s Trophy since God knew when, to appear in person at an informal gathering in Lumpkin Corners.

  “And I’ve brought my Uncle Sven to meet you, Miss Horsefall. He’s here from Stockholm for my daughter’s wedding. Uncle Sven was a hundred and two last November.”

  “He sure as hell don’t act it,” was the consensus of the assemblage. Uncle Sven, though knowing only about forty words of English and not able to pronounce most of them, was already the life and soul of the party. His mustache now pointed almost straight up. His round little cheeks glistened like two Rome Beauty apples. His sea-blue eyes glistened as he ran a connoisseur’s eye over Miss Hilda and her amethyst brooch.

  The lady herself must be wishing she’d put up her hair in kid curlers last night. She kept patting it to make sure no wisps were flying out from under her hairnet and fussing about not having had no chance to get redded up for company.

  “Ay tank you look svell,” Uncle Sven was assuring her as he steered a forkful of chocolate cake past his mustache. “Ve take valk, hah?”

  “Yes, why don’t you two go off by yourselves and have a nice, quiet little visit?” suggested great-niece-in-law Jolene, perhaps already seeing herself as mistress of the Horsefall homestead. “You need a breather, Aunt Hilda. I’ll be glad to hold the fort for you here.”

  “Maybe you’d like to go wash some dishes, Jolene, since you put on such a performance about claiming the honor last time,” suggested Marie. “I don’t mind pouring the coffee.”

  “Then quit jawin’ an’ pour me some,” said Henny with unaccustomed authority. “After that you can go bile up another pot an’ put the kettle on for tea. Here comes the minister an’ his wife. Jolene, you clean up them plates an’ cut some more cake. Step lively, both o’ you.”

  Astonished by this turning of the worm, Jolene and Marie stepped. Miss Hilda blinked in amazement, greeted the minister and his wife first to show who was still queen of the castle around here, then took Sven Svenson’s arm. Shandy saw his opportunity.

  “I think President Svenson and I will—er—stroll along behind our two senior citizens,” he remarked to Jolene, who happened to be nearest. “As a precautionary measure, you know.”

  He didn’t say what the precaution would be against. Jolene, intent on serving cake to the minister’s wife, merely gave him an absentminded nod. The procession was off. Uncle Sven set a beeline course for the barn. Thorkjeld addressed him sternly in Swedish to the effect that Miss Hilda was no pushover and he’d better do some preliminary spadework. Sven protested that at a combined age of two hundred and seven, he and Miss Hilda had no time to waste on preliminary spadework. Thorkjeld reminded him they were here to look at a runestone and he capitulated.

  “What are you two gassin’ about?” demanded Miss Hilda.

  “Uncle Sven wants to see that runestone young Swope found. He knows all about runestones.”

  “H’mph. I bet I could tell ’im a few things.” She squeezed Sven’s arm and he cast another wistful glance toward the barn.

  “Would it be too far for you to walk to the stone?” asked Shandy, trying to keep the expedition to its avowed purpose.

  “Hell no,” she replied, “though I’d sooner go in a buggy for old times’ sake.”

  “I wish we could oblige you, but if the path is as bad as Swope described, I doubt whether any vehicle except a bulldozer or a tank could get through.”

  “Wouldn’t o’ had no trouble if Henny’d o’ kept that loggin’ road open like I told ’im to.”

  “What road is this, Miss Horsefall?”

  “Cuts in from the Balaclava Road just down past the old Lumpkin place, or used to. I ain’t been that way in a month o’ Sundays, myself.”

  “And the runestone would have been easier to reach by that road?”

  “Easy as pie. Used to be a turnaround an’ you could drive right up to the stone.”

  “We might try getting through with your nephew’s tractor.”

  “Can’t have no fun on a tractor.”

  Miss Hilda’s argument was unassailable. They compromised by Shandy’s driving the tractor on ahead to beat down a wider path over the route Swope had hacked out while Thorkjeld walked behind, carrying Uncle Sven under one arm and Miss Hilda under the other when the going got too rough for their century-old legs.

  The distance was not great, less than half a mile from the house, but it was solid brier patch most of the way and Cronkite Swope took an honored place in Shandy’s list of unsung heroes. Cronkite had even managed to clear a tiny space in front of the stone itself. Uncle Sven had room to kneel and use Thorkjeld’s pet magnifying glass to examine the inscription.

  The stone itself was nothing to get excited about as far as Shandy could see. It was merely a slab of granite perhaps four feet high and two feet wide at the base, such as the Great Glacier had strewn so lavishly over the area, to the dismay of early colonists who had to drag the stones off the fields they’d cut and burned clear and were trying to turn into farmland. Plenty of stones like this one had been piled into stone walls to keep out wandering pigs and shoot at Redcoats from behind.

  Shandy didn’t think much of the runes, either. To him they were only half-obliterated gouges in the granite. Uncle Sven, however, got so rapt in study that he forgot to retain his firm grasp on Miss Hilda, who flounced off in a fit of pique and seated herself on the tractor. He also lost his feeble grip on the English language, so that Thorkjeld had to act as translator as soon as there was anything to translate.

  “Well, what’s it say?” demanded Miss Hilda, considerably out of sorts at having been ditched for a slab of granite.

  “Give him time,” grunted President Svenson. “The inscription is badly defaced.”

  “H’mph. He ain’t in none too great shape hisself.”

  This was pure spite. Thorkjeld
didn’t bother to relay the remark to his uncle, being wise in the ways of women and knowing Miss Hilda didn’t really mean it anyway.

  Sven Svenson went on peering and muttering, often using his sensitive scholar’s fingers to trace a mark that was too dim to make out by eye. At last he began to chuckle. He rocked back on his heels and read off the inscription to Thorkjeld, who laughed a good deal louder, then translated for the others.

  “‘Orm Tokesson found no good drink and only ill-tempered women. This place is cursed.’”

  “Must o’ been before my time,” said Miss Hilda blandly.

  “You mean it’s real?” Shandy gasped. “Good Lord! Now what do we do?”

  “Damned if I know. Get a bunch of archaeologists out here from Harvard or somewhere, I suppose. Let ’em do whatever the hell they do.”

  “I must say I find this hard to credit. Why should a Viking expend all that time and effort hacking a complaint about booze and women into solid granite?”

  “You don’t understand the soul of the Norsemen, Shandy. They were great poets.”

  “This is great poetry?”

  “Well, Orm might have spread himself more if the stone hadn’t been so damned hard. Yesus, what if you’d been cooped up in a longship for weeks, maybe months on end, with the ale running out and the meat going bad and not a goddamn thing to do but row or get seasick. Finally you reach land and go ashore all set for a rip-roaring drunk in sympathetic company and there isn’t any. Can’t you feel the agony behind those simple, poignant words? The dryness in the mouth, the—” Thorkjeld Svenson’s eye happened to light on Miss Hilda’s prim lilac print and he broke off what for him had been a long oration.

  “Poor Orm,” he finished sadly, with head bowed in tribute to one he clearly regarded as a fallen comrade.

  “M’yes,” Shandy conceded. “I hadn’t thought of the matter in that light. Besides, I daresay if your—er—profession involved a lot of hewing and slashing anyway, you wouldn’t regard a few hours’ worth of granite chipping as more than quiet recreation. Has your uncle any idea when this might have been done?”