Peter lay on the cold concrete. His lips tingled. Sawdust choked his nostrils. The air around him buzzed with voices. He opened his eyes and saw a thicket of legs, table legs, chair legs, human legs. Thoughts settled down like snowflakes.

He jumped to his feet and instantly regretted it.

"Sit down," said a woman with a foreign accent, Israeli. She had olive skin and beautiful dark features. It all came flooding back with a name, Davila. "You have a concussion."

Peter fell into a vacant chair, head clanging, something about a bell being rung. He wiped the drool and sawdust from his cheek. Then he reached up and felt the throbbing goose egg on the back of his skull.

"I told him your name," said Davila. "Your real name."

It was then Peter noticed the old man with the wind-blown hair, pure white. He was sitting in a chair and fiddling with his crooked bifocals. They had been on his beak-like nose when Peter tackled him. The Viking broadsword with its heavy iron pommel lay on a nearby table.

"Had I known who you were I would have greeted you far more hospitably," said the man. He rose from the chair, wincing and holding his ribs. Then he approached and asked Peter to stand. "I am Tomas Markussen, curator of the Museum at Nidarosdomen, the great Cathedral at Trondheim."

As he shook Peter's right hand, he offered his left hand beneath. The usual means of identification. Tomas Markussen was a Son of Simon. They completed the cross and spoke the passwords, Davila watching on impatiently. When they had finished, Peter asked Markussen why he had attacked them.

Davila answered for him. "He thought we were here to kill him."

"Yes, but this lovely young lady set me straight, although I have yet to forgive her for picking my lock."

"God, how long was I out?"

"Long enough for me to explain myself." Then Markussen repeated what he had told Davila. The bombing of the British Museum was all over the news, he said. Adriana Fitzimmin was dead, her parents too, killed in a suspicious fire shortly after the bombing. Metropolitan Police were looking for two suspects, a woman and a man seen by neighbors exiting the house just before it erupted into flames. The male suspect was linked directly to Adriana Fitzimmin, and both had been spotted together on a ferry bound for Ireland.

Peter turned to Davila. "Jesus."

She nodded grimly.

Markussen shrugged his shoulders. "So when you two broke into my workshop—"

"You thought we were the killers," said Peter.

"Precisely. Someone has been murdering the Sons of Simon one by one, each in the same horrible manner. I know what happened to your father. Adriana emailed me the day before the bombing. I am truly sorry, Peter."

"Did you know him?"

Markussen smiled. "I did. He was the handsome American graduate student who stole the heart of every girl in the city."

"Then you know what he was working on."

"Of course I do."

"And you must have met my mom too."

"She was the only one who could match his wits."

Markussen checked the outer door to make sure it was locked. Then he led them to a narrow door at the rear of the workshop and stood with his back against it. He cleared his throat, chin raised ceremoniously, and began to recite a poem:" The Irish fled at Olav's name, fled from a young king seeking fame." He paused, nodding for Peter to continue.

He knew the poem by heart. "In Bretland and in Cumberland, people against him could not stand."

They finished in unison. " Thick on the fields their corpses lay, to ravens and howling wolves a prey."

Markussen sighed and leaned wearily against the door. "Until just now, I wasn't completely sure you were Daniel Barshman's son. But I doubt you no more. You may just be the last Son of Simon."

"The last? What about you?"

"I am a member of the order, but I have no personal claim to descent from Simon the Zealot, as you do." He unlocked the door, wincing again. "Come inside. Let me show you what your father was working on."

It was a small reading room with a wooden table, lacquered wooden drawers, and that certain musty smell paper and leather acquire through decades of cohabitation. Markussen donned his crooked bifocals and thumbed through a ledger until he found what he was after. From a high drawer, he took a document folder and set it on the table. He slipped on a pair of fine white gloves, untied the folder's strings, then reached inside. Reverently, he extracted a single page of ancient-looking parchment. Lines of minuscule black script, unadorned in any way, formed a dense block in the center of the page.

"Is this it?" said Peter.

"This document was the main reason your father came to Trondheim."

Davila leaned close. "It's medieval."

"Late twelfth century to be precise. The page is vellum, split calfskin, the script Caroline-Insular. It's actually written in Old Norse, not Latin like many of the manuscripts of the time." He paused as if deciding how to proceed. "Is either of you familiar with the Icelandic sagas?"

"Yes," said Davila. "I read Njal's Saga at university."

Of course she had.

"Excellent," said Markussen. "Njal's Saga is considered Snorri Sturluson's finest work, a fantastic example of the medieval Icelandic prose tradition. He also wrote a collection of sagas called the Heimskringla, which includes Olav Tryggvason's Saga. It's a hagiography, a Christianized account of Olav's not-so-Christian life."

"Does it say he was baptized at Smerwick?" asked Peter.

"No. According to the saga, Olav was baptized by a hermit in the Isles of Scylli. But this is hagiography, and Olav's story was altered and redacted to shine a light on his Christian qualities, hide those that weren't so Christian, like pillaging and murder. Thus, it is in what the Church omitted that we discover the truth. And in the surviving version of Olav Tryggvason's Saga, there is a chapter so heavily redacted that only two sentences remain."

He angled the document for Peter to see. "This is the original chapter, before it was redacted by the Church. It narrates a fateful encounter between King Olav and a young Viking explorer in the year 1000, the same year Olav died. Your father made the first English translation."

Markussen traced his gloved finger around the edge of the paragraph and began to read. Peter had heard his father speak Old Norse on occasion, but it never sounded anything like this, so rich and alive, the throaty vowels and sturdy consonants rolling off the Norwegian's tongue.

Leifur sonur Eiríks rauða, þess er fyrstur byggði Grænland, var þetta sumar kominn af Grænlandi til Noregs. Fór hann á fund Ólafs konungs og tók við kristni og var um veturinn með Ólafi konungi.

Then in English:

Leif, a son of Eirik the Red who first settled Greenland, came that summer from Greenland to Norway. And as he met King Olav, he adopted Christianity, and passed the winter with the king.

Markussen explained. "In the surviving version of the saga, the chapter ends right there, after two short sentences. Now listen to what the Church removed." The man seemed to know it by heart.

In the spring, Leif desired to see his home in Greenland again. As Leif made ready to sail, King Olav asked if he desired to serve his king.

Leif replied that he desired to serve his king but also to see his kinsmen again.

Then the king said, That is good, because I ask you now to do both things.

Leif was puzzled and wondered how a man could both serve his master and leave his side.

The king replied, Hear my confession and you will understand. He reminded Leif of Halfred Vandraskald's famous verse:

The Irish fled at Olav's name—

Fled from a young king seeking fame.

Thick on the fields their corpses lay,

To ravens and howling wolves a prey.

Then Olav recounted to Leif the churches he had plundered and the priests he had murdered prior to his baptism. And Olav said, Ever after have I sought to bring Christ to our people. Norway and Iceland I have baptized. But you, Leif, will take the Seeds of Salvation across the sea and baptize the people of Greenland. Thus may you serve me and see your kinsmen again.

For this Leif was glad, and he sailed from Norway to Iceland and thence to Greenland, his home.

Peter gripped Davila's arm. "You know who this is, right?"

"Indeed," said Markussen. "The most famous of all the Viking explorers, Leif, son of Eirik—Leif Eirikson. According to other sagas, Leif Eirikson pushed his ships far past Greenland and in the year 1001 set foot in North America, almost five hundred years before Christopher Columbus. And the Vikings were in North America. There is archaeological proof."

Davila nodded, eyes wide. "L'ans Aux Meadows in Newfoundland."

"I don't get it," said Peter. "How could my dad translate this and think the Mustard Seeds were anything other than a metaphor for Christianity? I mean—"

Someone was pounding on the workshop's outer door, shouting in what sounded like Norwegian.

"It's the police! Someone must have reported you," said Markussen.

The clerk at the visitor center.

Davila jumped up and pressed herself against the wall by the open doorway, craning her neck, peering through the workshop to the outer door. "Don't let them in!"

"But you're innocent. You need to set things straight."

The pounding grew insistent.

"It might not be the police," said Peter. "We need to get out of here. All of us."

There came a deep boom as something far bigger than a fist struck the outer door. It sounded like a battering ram.

"Is there another way out?" said Davila.

Markussen just stood there, bifocals clutched like a rosary to his chest. Slowly, deliberately, he set them on the table. Then he pointed at the drawers closest to the back wall. "Pull them out, starting with the bottom one."

Boom. Splinters of door clinked against the workshop floor.

Beneath the drawers was a hole in the floor just wide enough for a person to slip through. Peter helped Davila down then signaled for Markussen to follow her. "Come on! What are you waiting for?"

"You go first," he said, holding his ribs and wincing. "It's quite a drop. I'll need you below to catch me."

Peter slid down the hole and landed hard on the stone floor, head throbbing. He reached up for Markussen, but the drawer slammed shut above him, nearly taking off his hand. He tried to push it open, but Markussen held it closed from above. "What are you doing?" Peter yelled.

Boom.

Markussen's muffled voice filtered down through the drawer. "I won't be able to make it. It's too difficult! Go and warn my uncle. There's a passage running through the catacombs to a boathouse on the river. Take the boat to Munkholmen, the only island in the harbor. My uncle is in a cottage at the northwest edge. Greet him as a Son of Simon, and he will tell you more than I can. Go!"

Another drawer slammed into place, then another and another until Peter and Davila were left in total darkness. They could hear the outer door give way with a muted crash. Heavy footsteps followed. Then came the unmistakable ring of an iron sword clattering against the concrete.

______________________

Image: Medieval Icelandic Manuscript

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