King Hereafter (142 page)

When she caught up with Thorfinn, she heard what the scouts were saying. That the Northumbrian foot were coming steadily north from Stirling to the Tay crossing. That the body of Northumbrian horse, racing ahead, was already well on its way: through Scone; through Glamis. Malcolm’s banner was with it, and the flag of Durham with the pennant of Forne. Then someone who had seen it in Winchester identified the flag of Tostig, Earl of North-umbria and younger brother of Harold of Wessex.

At Monymusk, she was allowed a rest of five hours. Thorfinn, who had arrived ahead of her, had had perhaps an hour’s sleep, she judged from the look of him, and was eating and talking at the same time before riding off south. When she came into the hall, he broke off and got rid of the man he was talking to and, gathering his horn and what was left to eat, opened the door of their chamber with his back and followed her in.

She said, ‘It’s all right.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘War happens suddenly, but there is time for what has to be said.’

She said, ‘You mean Malcolm may be there already when you get to the Dee?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I’ve got another banner, twinned to the one the Pope gave me. Sulien approved.’

‘And the Brecbennoch?’ she said. ‘I thought that was here.’

‘Tuathal has it,’ he said. He put the pile of food down on a board and said, ‘You won’t have eaten. I’ll get—’

‘Finish it,’ she said. ‘Thorfinn, for the sake of God. I’ll eat your company.’

He looked at her then, and picked up the meat. He said, ‘Sulien says that
Fothaid is now an ordained priest. He was in Malduin’s household.’

She said, ‘But Tuathal has been consecrated.’

‘No one else can be Bishop of Alba. Also, it seems that, now the Emperor is dead, the Athelings, the Saxon heirs, have been released. They are being sent to Earl Harold, and not to Duke William. It makes Harold of Wessex their guardian, especially if none but the children are left. Duke William is now a greater rival to Earl Harold than Denmark. But Wessex still fears Harald of Norway.’

She said, ‘Thorfinn. I know it all.’

There was a little pause. Then he said, his voice quite different,
‘Superba
, I believe you do. Do you know the story of the sibyl called Groa? When Thor and the giant Hrungnir fought a duel, Thor came from it with a hone sunk in his head. When Groa recited her spells, the hone worked its way loose.’

‘She was married to a man called Aurvandil the Brave,’ Groa said. ‘Another of your names?’

‘Sulien would not approve,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But at least we began by talking about the Brecbennoch and the Banner of St Peter. I have to go. I will see you at St Finnian’s hill at Lumphanan.’ He paused. ‘What a lot St Finnian has had to do with my affairs lately. A short-tempered man who, I’m sure, continually gave his wife instructions she did not need.’

‘Since she wouldn’t need them, how could it matter?’ said Groa.

So she slept in a cold bed, but very deeply, and had to be wakened to ride on with the rest. There were not so many now, for all the force Thorfinn had was now down on the banks of the Dee.

The scouts’ news she listened to, anxiously. The banners of Earl Tostig and Malcolm had moved from Glamis to Forfar to Brechin and were making their way now over the range of the Mounth by the great pass that led to the banks of the Dee between Kincardine and Banchory. The footsoldiers, showing no disposition to spread, seemed to be following, much behind, in their footsteps.

They would reach the Dee, as Thorfinn had once pointed out, something like two miles or perhaps three from Lumphanan. And since they were not spreading out, it would seem that they intended no irresistible attack over the river, where their power would sweep aside the weaker force, thinly spread, that was all Thorfinn could pitch against them.

Arrived at Lumphanan: ‘You think they mean to discuss terms?’ Groa said to Thorfinn when, at last, he came within her sight late that evening.

He was dirty, but he looked no more tired now than he had the day before. He could snatch sleep, she knew, in the saddle. Even while she spoke to him, men called, smiling, and he waved in return.

He said, ‘Groa?’ and she knew that he had forgotten she was near, and her eyes filled at the artless softening of his face and his voice. Then he said, ‘Yes. They seem to be making camp over the river, and there’s no sign that they mean to cross. They couldn’t, anyway, until their main force comes up.
Where they are, they’re well protected and perfectly safe, with a guard on each flank and a watch on the hills behind them.’

‘They must have been confident,’ Groa said, ‘to outrun the foot by such a distance. What a surprise they would get if your Normans came.’

‘What a surprise we should all get,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And I don’t see why we should despair of it. Once the proper messages have been exchanged, and the bishops have visited one another and delivered their warnings and blessings, and Malcolm and Tostig and I have haggled over a meeting-place and conditions and hostages, and once the three of us finally sit down to decide what it’s worth not to kill one another, you would be surprised what a long time I intend to keep them talking. They will have time to give birth to my soldiers in Caen and wean them and rear them to puberty. Have they found you a tent, or are you in the hall?’

To the east of two little lochs, on rising ground, was the old timber hall with its palisade in which Paul had been born, with the church of St Finnian beside it. All about, on the wooded slopes rising from the lakes and the marsh, were the summer tents and campfires of Thorfinn’s men, some newly erected and bright, but most soiled and worn from the weeks of their waiting. She said, ‘I’m in the hall. They put a pallet in your chamber. I don’t mind if I don’t sleep.’

It was as well, for the room turned out to have nothing to do with sleeping, but to be a kind of meeting-place to which he returned periodically, and to which tired men came in, without knocking, to wait for him. She had not undressed. She put the candle out in her corner and sat curled against the wall, her arms holding each other under her cloak, and her hood masking her hair. Mostly, no one noticed her, but sometimes someone she knew well would come across and bend over and speak.

Then Lulach found she was there and awake, and, when he could, came with news and once a bowl of soup. The hall and cabins were full of men, and the women of the household, she supposed, were long gone. Her own attendants were where she herself ought to be, asleep in a strong tent with a guard to look after them, and old Sinna to heat something over a fire.

Outside, it was never quiet, even when complete darkness came; and the sound of a galloping horse followed by several others did not make the impression it should, until the rising of men’s voices showed that something had happened.

Thorfinn was out, and the room was empty except for Gillocher, awaiting him, who had fallen asleep, candle-lit, with his arms on the table. Then Morgund came in. He said, ‘My lady?’ and came to her corner.

‘Yes. What is it?’ she said.

Morgund’s face was smeared with metal-blackness and wood-smoke, and there were white marks where he had been rubbing his eyes. He said, ‘It’s ship-news, my lady. Nothing to do with this war. It seems that things are moving in Norway at last, and King Harald has ordered a fleet to put to sea against Orkney and Caithness, to take them in readiness for a big war against England next year. So my lord King was right, and that answers them all,
doesn’t it? If he’d shipped all those men down from Orkney, he’d have lost more than Orkney and Caithness. In the long run, we’d all be done for.’

He smiled at her and got up, hesitated over whether to waken Gillocher, and then went out, leaving him sleeping. The fate of Orkney and Caithness had nothing to do with this war. The men of Orkney and Caithness would deal with it, with their great fleet and their tough Viking chieftains and the Earl’s two fine sons, Paul and Erlend.

Her sons. Her sons who, unlike Lulach, were only human. Erlend, untouched by trouble at sixteen, and happy in the care of his foster-kindred. Paul, who trod at his father’s heels through every visit, but who knew, in his heart, that the world of high power and cunning and lonely kingship was not for him.

Her heart thudded, thinking of them. Then she set her mind to what she had been told, and saw that Morgund was right. Orkney was well prepared for this, and could handle it. And, once and for all, it proved that what Thorfinn had done, as Earl of Orkney and King of Alba, had been right.

You would think it was news to keep her awake all the same, thinking of the two boys she and Thorfinn had left. Instead, she fell sound asleep, propped like an owl in her corner, and missed Gillocher going out and half a dozen people, no doubt, coming in, and even, she found on waking, the presence of Thorfinn himself, whose cloak lay on the other pallet, creased and moulded as if he had been resting there and had suddenly risen.

And that, indeed, was what had probably happened, for outside was the hubbub that she now realised had probably wakened them both. News, again, from the sound of hooves trampling. And news that, on the whole, Thorfinn preferred, it seemed, to hear in private, for in a moment the door opened and he brought the messenger in.

Lulach and Bishop Jon were behind him, and this time she had not been forgotten. Thorfinn said, ‘Are you awake? Groa, this is another ship-message. I didn’t want the men outside to hear until we are ready.’

He had opened his leather flask as he was speaking and, handing it to the rider he had just brought in, led the man to a stool and sat him down. ‘Now. A message came from Duke William of Normandy.’

‘Yes, my lord King. It came up north, by the west seas. He sent one by the east coast as well, but it seemed to be waylaid.’

‘By whom, I expect we know,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Drink, don’t sit with it in your hand. Now. A message from Duke William to me? Saying what?’

‘My lord King, asking your forgiveness. The duke faces a double invasion himself, from King Henry of France and the Count of Anjou. He has no men to spare. He cannot even tell whether he can survive it. But he says to tell you that no men from Normandy can come to your help, my lord, this year.’

‘Well, I doubt if we will need them next year,’ Thorfinn said. Outside in the darkness, you could hear that more horses were arriving, and the half-open shutters showed the glimmer of torches down the slope, and the flash of ring-mail and helmet.

Thorfinn lifted his head. ‘Is this more of your party? What ship brought you here?’

‘Has he not told you yet? Mine,’ said Thorkel Fóstri from the door.

No one said anything. Bishop Jon, who had dropped to a chest, rose slowly to his feet, the candle-light scanning his crucifix. Lulach looked at his mother. Groa, who had been studying the man on the stool, lifted her gaze to the grey beard and tired face of Thorfinn’s foster-father, and then to Thorfinn, tall as a king-post, his face carved in black and white, thinking. He said very quietly, ‘What have you done?’

Thorkel Fóstri smiled. ‘You were afraid to call on Orkney. You needn’t have been. I told them their Earl was down here with no troops to speak of, and an English army of eight thousand against him. I told them that Duke William had failed you. They said,
There are the ships. Here are we, the Earl’s men. What are we waiting for?’

‘You’ve brought them all?’ Thorfinn said.

‘They’ll be at Deemouth tomorrow,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘And they’ll be disembarking.’

Groa covered her face with her hands. If she could have stopped her ears, she would have done so.

Already the contentment on the older man’s face had started to change. She could imagine, as the empty moments went by, how it must be fading and altering. She could not imagine what was going to happen.

Thorfinn’s voice said, ‘My foster-father … A message reached us this evening. King Harald’s fleet is on its way to attack Orkney.’

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘No. We should have heard.’

‘They will know in Orkney by now,’ Thorfinn said. ‘You have perhaps thirty hours to get back.’

Silence. Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘I still say we would have heard. What report had you?’

Thorfinn said, ‘Thorkel, there is no doubt about it. How many ships and men did you leave?’

‘Almost none. They would be the same to King Harald as you would have been to Earl Tostig,’ Thorkel Fóstri said.

Would have been
. Groa opened her eyes. She said, ‘Thorkel. Where are Erlend and Paul?’

They were all pale in the candle-light, but under Thorkel Fóstri’s cheekbones and within the coigns of his nose great cavities had blackened and sunk. He said, ‘I did not think this battle-field was for them. I left them in Orkney.’

‘This battle-field is not for you, either,’ Thorfinn said. ‘You must go back.’

‘Run?’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘It was what they said of us, wasn’t it? That we were afraid to come and fight against Earl Siward. Your people have come from Orkney to save you. If you want to spurn them, you will have to tell them yourself. I am not going to lead them back home.’

She could see Thorfinn’s thoughts turning this way and that. He said, ‘Then you have lost Orkney for me, and killed both my sons.’

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘Are you frightening me or yourself? Men such as your
sons are not killed: at worst, they are taken hostages. I don’t believe King Harald’s ships are on their way. But even if they were, we have come to save Alba for you. Is that such a small thing?’

Thorfinn said, ‘It is worth a king’s ransom, never mind princelings, to know that there are men in Orkney who would do this. I know they will follow you anywhere, but I can’t let them pay the price of losing their homes. Anyway, there is no need. We can’t fight; we have not the power. Earl Tostig knows it. If we ask him to negotiate, he will.’

He walked across and looked down at the older man. ‘Go back. It will do us no harm. It will be better than letting your army run free where they are not understood. They are needed to protect Orkney. And we can settle this very simply round a table.’

‘When?’ said Thorkel Fóstri.