Page 104 of The Last Viking

Geirolf Ericsson

Meredith wept…silently, at first, then great shuddering sobs. Mike took her into his arms, trying to soothe her with soft spoken words and pats on the shoulder.

Thank goodness, Thea was in school and unable to witness this breakdown. Poor Thea! Even though devastated, she was handling Rolf’s “death” better than any of them.

Finally, when Meredith calmed down and they sat in the kitchen over coffee and Oreos—for some reason, Meredith had developed a taste for Oreos—Mike said, “We need to talk, Dr. Foster. What’s that crap in Rolf’s letter about time travel?”

Meredith sighed and told her grad assistant the whole story. He deserved an explanation. After fifteen minutes, she concluded, “So, in the end, Rolf planned his ‘death.’ His departure from me…this time…was ordained from the start.”

“Holy hell!” Mike said under his breath, staring at her as if she’d told him aliens had just invaded Maine. Then more loudly, he repeated, “Holy hell!”

“Oh, I don’t expect you to believe any of this,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “It was hard enough for me to accept, and I was living with the evidence.”

“Actually,” Mike began tentatively, “it makes a weird kind of sense.”

Her eyes went wide. “You believe in time travel?”

“I never did before,” Mike said with a snort of self-derision, “but there were so many niggling contradictions about Rolf. And he knew so damn much about the tenth century.”

“We can’t tell anyone about this,” she said quickly.

Mike nodded. “If nothing else, they’d put us in a looney bin. Or close down the project.” He studied her for a moment. “Do you think it’s possible? Rolf, a medieval Viking?”

She shrugged, then straightened resolutely. “Yes…yes, I do believe.”

After that, Meredith’s healing progressed more rapidly, especially since she now had someone to confide in.

She studied the Norse sagas meticulously for more than a week, but nowhere could she find any with even a remote message from Rolf. But then, many of the skaldic tales had been lost over the centuries, most never having been put to paper.

Work resumed on the Trondheim Venture as a result of persuasive arguments by Meredith before the foundation board. The only stumbling block was that the Annapolis man they’d hired to captain the voyage in August had suffered a heart attack, and they’d been unable thus far to find a replacement. But, with all the obstacles Meredith had faced these past months, she considered this a minor problem.

Then, a month after Rolf had left, Meredith was delivered a tremendous shock, and her life turned upside-down again.

“But how is it possible, Dr. Peterson?” she asked, plopping down in a chair before the physician’s desk. She’d gone in for a checkup that afternoon because of persistent weight loss and flulike symptoms of nausea.

“The usual way,” Dr. Peterson responded with a wry grin. “I assume you’ve had sexual relations with a man.”

“Of course,” she said, frowning at his deliberately misinterpreting her words. “You’ve seen my medical records. You know that I’m infertile…incapable of bearing children.”

“Meredith, I ran the tests twice to make sure. You’re pregnant, no doubt about it.”

“But how…I mean, was my original diagnosis incorrect?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he replied, choosing his words carefully. “Hell, Meredith, science isn’t perfect. Unexplained things happen all the time.”

Unexplained things happen all the time, Meredith repeated in her head. Tell me about it! I’ve lived the unexplainable.

“Call it a miracle, or call it a fluke of science. Just be happy. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, tears brimming her eyes.

As she walked down the Bangor street a short time later, her lips twitched with a secret smile. She kept putting a palm to her flat stomach. A baby! I’m going to have Rolf’s baby!

She didn’t know if the talisman belt was responsible for this miracle, or God, or even Rolf’s Norse gods. But Rolf had left her with the greatest gift of all. A part of himself.

So, for Meredith, there was finally a meaning to Rolf’s time travel.

“Praise the gods!” Geirolf shouted in an attic alcove of Oslo’s Vestfold Heritage Museum. His jubilant exclamation was accompanied by a brisk rap of his victorious fist on the rickety table in front of him.