King Hereafter (12 page)

Thorkel Amundason forced the first axe-blade off its stake and weighed it in his hands, gazing after the shipmaster as he strode with his fellows back down to the jetty, and if Thorfinn had been there, might have been tempted to give him first trial of the edge of it.
What is he doing? What is the young imbecile doing now?

Then Earl Hakon, the viceroy of Norway, sailed in and, barely observing the welcome-ale, mentioned that, being now lord of Norway, his uncle King Canute was pleased to fulfil the oath he had taken to make the Earl Thorfinn ruler of two-thirds of Orkney. The Earl Brusi had been informed, and had received land in Møre in compensation. Earl Hakon was glad to bear news so welcome and, time being short, would be equally glad to receive the taxes now owed to King Canute: namely, those for two-thirds of Orkney and Caithness.

Along the board, the Earl’s men talked on, but Thorkel could hear how all his own had fallen silent. He said courteously, ‘Being unaware of the great good fortune you mention, we have prepared for you the tribute for one-third of Orkney, as was usually paid to King Olaf, and as no doubt the Earl Brusi has already prepared for his double portion. As to the rest, the Earl Thorfinn owes nothing for the lands of Caithness.’

Hakon Ericsson, last of the great Norwegian Earls of Lade, was no great dissimulator, but at thirty-three knew the tricks of the conference table quite as well as did Thorkel. ‘This I was prepared to believe,’ said King Canute’s nephew with an air entirely reasonable, ‘until I learned that King Malcolm’s tax-servants also have been recently menaced with weapons. If you owe no
tax and no service to Alba, then Earl Thorfinn’s agreement with Norway is valid and the tax is now owed to King Canute.’

It was then, after a very hard year and in prospect of another just like it, that Thorkel’s self-control for a moment gave way. ‘Then that is a matter, is it not, that King Canute must raise with Earl Thorfinn himself in England?’ he suggested. ‘Whatever agreement they come to, you can rely on me to fulfil to the letter.’ And to himself:
He began it without me. Let him finish it, if he can
, Thorkel added.

He paid for two-thirds of Orkney in the end. He had expected to. Just as Earl Hakon had had no real hope of the Caithness tribute—as yet. The talk ended, of course, with a careful reference to the numbers of Trøndelagers who had deserted King Olaf for Canute, including Thore Hund of Bjarking, now in England with his son Siward. Earl Hakon thought he could find Thore land in Huntingdon. Siward preferred further north. Earl Hakon’s own father had found much satisfaction in ruling Northumbria. Thorkel, of course, would have heard the latest news of Northumbria.

Thorkel had.

‘Dynastic marriages,’ said Earl Hakon, smiling. ‘But the Arnasons aren’t coming out of it all too badly. There is Kalv married to a rich widow. Finn got King Olaf’s niece to wife, which no doubt is why Finn felt constrained to follow Olaf to Russia. And now his two daughters are placed.’

‘Sigrid and Ingibjorg?’ said Thorkel. Poor Finn, in Russia. Rognvald had fled to Russia as well. He wondered what Finn had done about Rognvald. He said, ‘I thought the girls were too young. Or is it just a contract?’

‘Thirteen and upwards, I should think,’ Earl Hakon said. ‘One of them is married, anyway. To my cousin Orm. The one with the long hair. Sigrid, isn’t it?’

‘There was one called Sigrid,’ said Thorkel. They both had had long hair, so far as he could remember. ‘What about the other one?’

‘Oh, the other one should be across in the spring,’ Earl Hakon said. ‘You’ll be interested. Of course, they broke her contract to the blond boy who’s gone to Russia. Now she’s signed to marry one of the two lords of Moray. Gillacomghain. The one who submitted to my lord Canute. Maybe,’ said Earl Hakon, smiling, ‘she’ll persuade her husband to let you off with some of your taxes next time he comes collecting over the border? Or maybe you’d find it wiser,’ said Earl Hakon, breaking this time into a laugh, ‘to pay your tributes direct to King Canute instead? We must see what view your young lord Thorfinn thinks it wisest to take.’

There was no comment that he could possibly make, nor was there anything about it that he wanted to discuss with his council, although he ought to. The daughters and only heirs of Finn his cousin were being contracted to those favoured of Canute, whether by Canute’s desire or because Finn despaired of ever returning from Russia. And, for whatever reason, Gillacomghain and not Thorfinn his foster-son had been offered the alliance.

That winter, Thorkel visited his home at Sandwick, Orkney, for the first
time since Earl Brusi held it. Brusi himself stayed in the north. To be a vassal of King Olaf brought him no good now, with King Olaf in Russia and Rognvald, the bright, golden heir, gone also to that cold country over the mountains.

He heard later that Finn’s younger daughter had turned thirteen and Gillacomghain had gone to Norway that autumn to claim her. Then the brother, Earl Malcolm mac Maelbrighde, had finally died, and Gillacomghain had had to leave his new wife in Norway and come back to Alba. After that, he kept economically at home in Moray till the weather got better. There were no raids for six months.

Child marriage, everyone said, was a killer for middle-aged husbands. How many cases did one not know? With cynicism not altogether unmixed with lower emotions, Thorkel awaited the news that Gillacomghain’s little bride had crossed from Norway to join him.

In the event, he had the news before anyone, for Kalv his cousin brought the girl in the spring, calling on Thorkel in Caithness on his way to deliver her to her husband of six months in Moray. Leaving Kalv with his arm round a slave and his nose in an ale-horn, Thorkel went across to pay his respects to Finn’s child at the women’s house and found the little bride with Bergljot her royal mother.

The last time he had seen Ingibjorg was in the rain at Nídarós when Thorfinn had shrilled and vowed away the overlordship of Orkney. Then she had been about five, with long ox-blood hair and black brows over a gaze as clear and transparent and colourless as pond-jelly. Now she was thirteen and sat short-lapped, her small slippers dangling, so heavily pregnant that she might have been sitting a garron. He asked her jocularly what she had done with her hair, which was five inches long, and she replied in a polite, bored voice that she had cut it herself.

You had to excuse Gillacomghain’s hurry, he supposed, when you remembered that there was no one now alive from that stock except Gillacomghain himself and Thorfinn, if you counted Findlaech’s stepson. Had the child married Rognvald as was planned, the result would have been much the same, with a boy’s hot blood to contend with. Daughters of the royal line were well aware of their fate: to cement their father’s alliances, and to breed. Where one contract or one marriage failed, through death or another reason, then according to the need of the moment, the next was made in its place. The child she was carrying could have been Thorfinn’s, had things fallen out differently. As it was, one supposed it would die like the rest of Gillacomghain’s siring. If it was a daughter, Christian or not, he might very likely expose it. Gillacomghain was too old a man now to count on rearing and placing a girl-child.

The bride’s spawn-like eyes made Thorkel uneasy, and he came out as soon as was courteous.

Outside, Kalv was waiting. Kalv backed him into a corn-strip where no one could hear, and said, ‘You’ve heard what’s happened? I was to be viceroy of Norway. Canute swore it. And now Earl Hakon his nephew has everything.’

‘Maybe you should have stayed with King Olaf,’ said Thorkel drily. It was
no business of his if the Arnason family wanted representation on both sides in every battle. ‘Where are you going to now, once you hand over the girl? To King Canute? To complain?’

‘Do you
think
,’ said Kalv, ‘that I have been treated with justice?’

Thorkel let him go.

Gillacomghain’s son was born in the summer and survived, as did his young mother. He was baptised Luloecen, which gave nothing away, as it was not a name known on either side of the family. Fatherhood, it seemed, restored Gillacomghain’s energy. That year, the Mormaer of Moray made three punitive raids into Caithness and the Black Isle, in which Thorkel lost thirty men.

Kalv Arnason’s stay with King Canute was a short one. He next sailed directly north, without calling at Wick or Freswick or Duncansby, and, after an unexpected descent on an acquaintance in Orkney, made his way back to Norway and Egge.

An order came to Thorkel Amundason from King Canute at Gloucester to pay Earl Hakon the required tax for all the lands held by the Earl Thorfinn under Norway. Caithness was included.

There was a piece of parchment as well as the spoken message, and Thorkel took it to the monks at Deerness, who read what was in it. It said the same, except that, underneath, Thorfinn had written
Do this
and added his name. Thorkel had seen the name written before, when Thorfinn had done it once as a joke, but this time it was much better formed, like a clerk’s work. Someone in England must be teaching him.

Also on board were two kegs of wine which must have come from Thore Hund’s ship, because there was an inner skin full of money. There was nothing to show whether it came from Canute or Thorfinn.

Earl Hakon continued to rule for Canute in Norway, and the Trøndelagen people were quiet. In the autumn, he crossed the sea to visit his uncle Canute and, sailing back, was diverted by bad weather to Orkney. No one ever knew whether he reached it or not, since his ship was next heard of in pieces, having overturned with the loss of all it carried.

In Egge, Kalv Arnason waited, throwing a number of feasts.

The news came that the late Earl Hakon’s uncle Einar Tambarskelve and his son had visited King Canute and had asked, as the Earl’s closest relatives, to be considered as the next rulers of Norway. Kalv Arnason stopped throwing feasts, hit his wife, and ordered two longships into the water, even though it was February.

The news came, before he could sail, that King Canute had refused to make Einar or Henry his son the viceroy of Norway. Kalv embraced the news-bearer. The messenger added that King Canute had announced that the next viceroy of Norway was to be the King’s own son Svein, aged just thirteen. Kalv knocked the news-bearer down.

A man called Biorn, travelling very fast, left Norway for Russia with the news that Earl Hakon was drowned and Norway leaderless for the moment. The exiled King Olaf gathered an army and set out to recapture his kingdom
with the three Arnasons, Rognvald Brusason and Harald, Olaf’s fourteen-year-old half-brother.

It was the beginning of the year 1030. Norway, Denmark, Alba, England, and those parts of the north under the Earls of Orkney left the sowing of the harvest to the slaves and the women; and those who believed in the old gods made the old sacrifices, while nothing was spoken of or planned that had not to do with war.

King Canute gathered a fleet and an army and sent them north, but did not go with them. Instead his forces were led by an experienced war-leader from Jomsberg, together with Svein, the young son of the King’s lesser wife, whom he meant to make viceroy of Norway.

This time also, King Canute took thought, as he often did, without consulting his other wife, Emma. And after taking thought, he dispatched north with the fleet his noble housecarl and hostage, the twenty-one-year-old Thorfinn of Orkney.

NDER THE
sun-warmed skies of high summer, Thorkel Amundason chose to await his fate on the sacred green prow of Orkney, the monks’ cliff of Deerness by his father’s homestead of Sandwick.

Long ago, the Irish monks who brought Christ to Caithness had built their huts in the sun, above the terns and the seals, on this God-made tower of layered pink rock, chained to the gulleys and pools of the mainland by rotting spines of pebble and stone.

Now, the church was still there, and smoke rose through the thatch roofs of some of the round, lichened huts, but it was thirty years since an Irishwoman crossed the sea to bear sons to an Earl of Orkney, and no sensible abbot in Ulaid or Leinster would send monks to the Norsemen of Orkney for the sake of a few Irish slaves.

So beside him here on the headland, looking across the blue space of sea and of sky beyond which lay Norway and the war which would settle, one way or another, the fate of all Orkney, stood only David Hvita, the monk from Fair Isle, who lived here with his wife and his sons and a cousin or two who acted as helpers and who was paid by Thorkel’s father to read and write for him, and teach his children, and give him advice, and withdraw discreetly when once in six years the Bishop Grimkell from Norway would come with the ships to collect King Olaf’s tax and glance over the souls of his diocese.

Southwards, behind the low green-and-brown ridges, lay the sea channel that divided Orkney from Alba. There, Caithness was secure, but not only because it was guarded. All Alba lay quiet, as all Orkney lay quiet, awaiting the outcome of this war in the east. And it was to here, to Earl Brusi in his northern islands, that the first news would come, as fast as longship could bring it.