Constantinople, some months later
The warm summer sun beat down on Hardrada"s face as he stood in the prow, the position he always took now. The ship skimmed across the surface, a slim, black dart on the silver of the sea.
Jerusalem, the Holy City, was weeks behind him. The sisters, as silent as ghosts, faces unreadable, as plain and as dowdy as sand, pressed a leather purse in his hand when he left them. He rooted himself on the place the wily Arab guide told him was Golgotha and he peered across the sprawl of that legendary place.
They said the walls were gold, the streets embedded with jewels.
None of it was true.
No stirring rolled through his guts, no tears sprang from his eyes, though he tried his best to gather up some response to what he saw. A hundred thousand souls, mingling
