King Hereafter (136 page)

‘I see,’ said Thorfinn. ‘And then what? You expect to take Gloucester and march on Winchester and London? Earl Harold can call out all his brothers and the levies of the whole kingdom.’

‘Leave me out of it,’ Alfgar said. ‘This is between King Gruffydd and Norway. But I dare say they will get a lot of booty, and do a lot of damage to Earl Harold’s lands, and kill a lot of his men, and even block off his trade for quite a period. The numbers Harald of Norway can spare from his war with Denmark won’t be all that big. But it would be an earnest, you might say, of things to come. You’re talking of getting what you want by fighting. I’m talking of calm negotiation and really no fighting to speak of.’

He smiled at Thorfinn. ‘It’s a pity, isn’t it, that Siward left you so low? Once the musters are called, Tostig will be out of Northumbria, hurrying south again with his army, and, for the second time, you can win from it no advantage. I don’t suppose your Orkneymen would fight for Northumbria.’

‘I haven’t asked them,’ said Thorfinn. ‘And don’t put your next question. The answer is no.’

Alfgar disliked being hurried. Guthorm had no objection at all. Guthorm said, ‘You need men. We need food, shelter, and a station for rest and repairs when we send a fleet west to attack England. We have to pass between Orkney and Caithness on our way from Norway to Wales, and each time our force will be bigger. If men are battle-stirred, it is hard to turn them from what they want, in any case.’

He smiled, and all the scars stretched. ‘Help us, and we shall land a Norse army to sweep Alba clean of your enemies.’

‘Except those of Cumbria,’ Thorfinn said.

Leofwine flushed, but held his eyes. ‘You would not find us enemies,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But I imagine I might find you in the Earl’s house in Northumbria if things were to go right. Is that the bargain, Alfgar?’

Guthorm answered for him. ‘One day, who knows? But at present we can’t expect all the Godwinssons to give way before us, and Tostig has other powerful friends. You would, however, have your southern lands cleared and the nephew you have there got rid of. And, with our ships in the sea and our men in the north, I doubt if Tostig would think it worth troubling you when his brother will need him so badly.’

Thorfinn said, ‘You disappoint me, Leofwine. I thought you and Thor would have made a firm bargain. Or had you forgotten that Earl Siward’s daughter had married an Arnason? The Queen’s cousin, in fact. I could remind you as well that Guthorm here is grandson to the man who was grandson to Eric Bloodaxe, King of Northumbria. Offers from King Harald are always worth looking into.’

‘John Arnason has no interest in Northumbria,’ Guthorm said. He was not
smiling any more. ‘Ask the Lady your wife. If you thought Finn her father would send help from Denmark, now you know your mistake. You have just heard my lord Alfgar. The Irish will not follow you. They have gone home with their silver, and if they fight for anyone, it will be Cumbria they will choose. You are at the mercy of everyone around you, and we are offering you the way to peace and security. Without, if you wish it, so much as putting a man of Alba in the field, or appearing in it yourself,’ He paused. ‘I know what Finn’s daughter would say.’

‘So do I,’ said Thorfinn drily. To Alfgar he said, ‘He is eloquent. That’s why he and Eachmarcach got on so well. Is that all you wanted?’

‘You don’t understand,’ Alfgar said. Lobes of irritation and puzzlement had settled about the root of his nose, as if accustomed to find their way there. He said, ‘You’d think we were offering you some horse you didn’t much care for. Norway is sparing some men to mount a series of attacks on Earl Harold’s western lands. You may have the use of them if you will agree to allot them a station in Caithness or Orkney.’

He would never understand, even when it was explained to him. And every word, of course, would go straight from Guthorm to King Harald his master. Thorfinn said, ‘I lost two-thirds of Alba because I would not let my own northmen fight Alba’s battles. I spent the first third of my reign neglecting Alba so that I might keep Norway’s hands out of Orkney.

‘If those were mistakes, I am about to repeat them. There is no prize you could mention that would make me form an alliance with Norway. Even, Alfgar, to help you.’

Guthorm said, ‘Perhaps your nephew Malcolm might feel differently.’ The temper that had killed Eachmarcach showed now, in the rims of his eyes.

Thorfinn said, ‘He might not think it a very good bargain. For he has no more men than I have, and once your Norse army has gone, it’s unlikely to get back, isn’t it? For if my Orcadians don’t fight in Alba, they are very forward indeed when it comes to fighting for Orkney. You would never get your fleet back to Wales. You would never get a ship round north Scotland to Ireland, or trading to France, or for any reason that I didn’t agree with. Because I should take every ship I possessed and stop the firth with them.’

He never raised his voice much, except in the open, and he had not raised it now. He made a pause, and said, ‘Tell King Harald. I don’t advise him to court my lord Malcolm. Harald is not King of England yet.’

Alfgar, pursuing a thought of his own, wasn’t listening. Alfgar said, ‘It’s nonsense. Norway doesn’t want Orkney. And what’s the objection to Norsemen throwing out Malcolm? The soil of Alba isn’t so sacred. You invited Normans there yourself. You settled them, even.’

‘On vacant ground, properly allotted. Yes, I did,’ Thorfinn said. ‘A picked body, highly trained and under full control of their leaders, who lived among the families they were protecting. There is a difference.’

‘And you would do it again?’ Guthorm said.

Guthorm was dangerous. Thorfinn said, ‘If Earl Ralph and Duke William were both to turn aside from their present preoccupations and send more
trained men to settle in Alba—yes. I should do it again. Tell me if you manage to persuade them.’

Alfgar was staring at him. Alfgar said, ‘Are you crazy? What’s wrong with Norway? You’re Norse yourself, aren’t you? And, anyway, Malcolm’s your enemy, not Harald of Norway. You’re a king. You use anyone you can get. Look what I had to use against Hereford. But it succeeded.’

‘Yes. It succeeded,’ Thorfinn said. He got up. ‘I know you felt this was a chance for a good alliance between us. I’m sorry to spoil it. Time will tell which is right. But I think you will find the Norse fleets do their work, even without Orkney bases.’

‘It would have been like old times,’ Alfgar said.

‘Yes. Wouldn’t it?’ Thorfinn said.

Leofwine walked beside him when eventually they left Alfgar’s room and made their way over the yard to the hall where his mother was waiting. Guthorm had said nothing more. Leofwine had said very little, but he could feel his thoughts, breathing beside him.

What it was, Thorfinn could guess and, having no desire to be oppressed with it, kept his own silence. After a few steps, he saw that on his other side a girl had appeared, the same pretty girl who had stared at him in the bower. She said, ‘My lord King. You left your wine untouched.’

Which was true. He had laid it down unnoticed a little after she had poured it. He saw she held it in her hands now, and said, ‘Forgive me. I was no longer thirsty. You kept it?’

She answered the note in his voice with a smile. ‘It would not please you now. I poured a fresh cup instead, since the Lady of Mercia asked me. She wished to make you a gift of the goblet.’

Except that it would have been unwise, he would have kept Godiva’s scarf. In his life, there was a special place for the Lady of Mercia.

The cup was worth a deal more than the scarf. It was something from long ago, made in bronze with two little handles, and thickly embossed with men and heroes: Odysseus, Heracles, Philoctectus. A lavish gift. A gift that spoke very specially of Godiva’s teasing affection.

He could not carry it full of wine. He took the cup and saluted the girl as he lifted it, ready to drain it. Her face loosened and became very soft, like the face of someone asleep, or coaxing the climax of love, or stopped, for the very first time, by the stir of a child in her belly.

He said, ‘No. You will drink it for me.’

Had she cared less, she might have brazened it out. But she stood there with hate in her eyes, and then, turning, ran. She made for the gate, not the hall. It would never enter her head but that he would tell the Lady. He doubted if anyone even in Godiva’s entourage would know much about it. She would be recommended to the hall, a high-born friend of a friend. He knew with absolute certainty that none of the Mercian family would have been implicated. He wondered, in those few seconds, who her father or lover had been, and how he had killed him. At the ford over the Tay, perhaps, when the horses stamped in the mud and the trees stretched and walked in their greenery.

Leofwine said, ‘What did you say to her? If you don’t want the wine—’

Thorfinn had begun, slowly, to pour it away. He stopped.

Leofwine said stiffly, ‘I beg your pardon, my lord. There will be wine in the hall.’

Thorfinn thought of the longship taking the seas from Cologne, and the talk, and the laughter. He thought of Cormac, the last to die on Dunsinane. He said, ‘Yes. The wine in the hall will be better,’ and went on pouring until the goblet was empty.

HE ATTACK ON
Herefordshire by King Gruffydd of Wales, aided by the son of the King of Norway, took place in the middle of June and ran the exact course of its predecessor: destruction, deadlock, and a suing for peace, ending in conciliation on the English side. Orkney was not involved.

By harvest-time, when Tuathal and the new-made Bishop Isleifr arrived back from Bremen, it was long over, although Denmark, when they called there, was still full of gossip about it. Having withstood a feast given by King Svein and visited Finn and Bergljot, the Lady’s father and mother, Tuathal took ship and returned as quickly as he might. For all his precautions, it was not a time for one of his few experienced men to be far from Thorfinn’s side.

He said as much to the Lady when he found her with the household at Kineddar, by the sand-strewn flats of the Lossie, awaiting the return of the King from some affair that had taken him south.

Already, he noticed, the women about the King’s wife were both younger and older than he had been accustomed to find, just as the courtmen were different. Given time, the heirs to the mormaerdoms grew into their training, and if you were lucky, the wise men came out of whatever monastery they had retired to and helped make the bridge from the old war to the new. Unless you found a king who could change men’s nature, so that no war ever came.

The Lady said, ‘Of course you had to go, when we need the goodwill of Denmark and Saxony more than ever. And if you hadn’t been consecrated somewhere, the Archbishop of York would never have stopped meddling.’

Her spirit had not changed, at least, although he saw Isleifr glance at the dark red hair, a little longer now, pinned into its coif. From her welcome of Isleifr and the quick, searching questions about her parents, you could guess how, stranded in Alba, she must sometimes miss her own kind. In the south, she and Thorfinn never spoke other than in one of the Celtic tongues. When they were together, he did not know what language they used. He asked after the King.

‘Oh, he is never still,’ she said. ‘But you know, perhaps, how difficult things
are. To protect themselves, the bigger families who have returned to the south have had to surround themselves with stockades and ditches against Malcolm’s sympathisers, who have done the same. It means that when fighting does break out, it kills whole families. Thorfinn has been helping Scandlain in Fife, and has been a lot in Angus and Atholl as well.’

‘Is that wise?’ Tuathal said.

‘Add your voice to that of everyone else,’ Groa said. ‘He doesn’t listen.’

‘Thorfinn?’ said Isleifr. At fifty, and a bishop, he looked little different from the priest Tuathal had first met at Goslar six years before, although the gown hid the horseman’s legs and flaxen-furred arms, and his freckled scalp peered with greater success from its encroaching jungle. He was the hairiest man Tuathal had ever met and, in Bremen and after, had been very good company.

Now, evidently, he had stopped to give thought to something. He said, ‘When did Thorfinn ever care what sort of figure he cut? Heroics are for heroes, and good luck to the fools. He can’t imagine that he can hold together such provinces by his good looks alone. You tell me that Malcolm will pay for his head. Once a king loses his mystery, men will kill him for nothing.’

Tuathal gazed at the new Bishop, who said, ‘Ah. That is—’

The Lady said, ‘Don’t worry. These things get about. There is always someone who thinks one would be the better for knowing. I think you’re wrong. I think that it seems to him that to care for them now, when they need help, might well alter things in his favour. And his visit to Chester, there is no doubt, increased the weight of responsibility he feels he must carry.’

‘He refused an alliance with Mercia?’ Tuathal said.

‘He refused an alliance with Norway. More than that, hardly anyone has managed to get out of him. But it would seem that Harald of Norway has offered to help Alfgar get rid of the Godwinssons, and thought to get a foothold in Orkney by offering Thorfinn something similar. As you would hear, Alfgar, who prefers a short view, went ahead with his scheme.’