King Hereafter (18 page)

He must have fallen asleep by the spring, and was dreaming of a great noise, like a battle at sea or the public acclaim of a multitude, when he woke and heard the distant sound that had woven itself into his sleep: the noise indeed of a great crowd, but not one of acclaim. The sound of many men at death-grip with one another, filling the summer night sky over Thurso. And then as, starting up, he ran to the settlement, he saw the low clouds to the east take each to itself a tinge of brightening colour, hazed by a feathering column of smoke.

The trap had been sprung. The sleeping army of Moray had been surrounded and challenged.

Had Sulien been with Thorkel, instead of asleep by the spring in those hours, he would have seen him lying as he had lain all day with his men, out of sight of the bay, and of the big timber hall, the collection of cabins and stockyards and barns, the one or two steadings that made up the settlement known as Thurso, on the rising ground between the beach and the river Skinandi.

There, within the tall oak stockade round the Earl’s empty hall and its grazings, lay Gillacomghain and his army, with his scouts posted around. The horses they had taken inside, and the animals they had collected to feed them, and the carts with their tents and their meal-bags, their ale and their weapons, dragged all the way from the east coast at Wick, where they had been landed. There were women with them as well: news that Thorkel had received with
annoyance, for women involved in a battle caused nothing but trouble. He hoped, giving the requisite warnings to his company, that the other side would have enough common sense, at the least, to give them their own quarters.

Already, Gillacomghain and his men would have been moved to wonder, perhaps, at the empty house-steads in Wick and the lack of resistance; but, after all, the fleet had brought them in daylight and, thus warned, the Caithness people might not unreasonably have taken to their heels.

So Gillacomghain had marched unhindered to Thurso and entered it, and now could afford the luxury of a night’s sleep, however dissatisfied he might be with the conquest. For of course he had found Thurso empty as well, and Thorfinn vanished: escaped to Orkney and gone to earth no doubt on his lands before the Berwick fleet had time to arrive and prevent it.

Perhaps Gillacomghain or his scouts had seen Carl’s Northumbrian ships sail to Orkney before the light failed. He could not know how they had fared. But it must seem certain that, once escaped, Thorfinn would hardly bring back a handful of men to confront the whole army of Moray now in possession here. Gillacomghain might expect that his ally Carl, having chased Thorfinn to Orkney, might call here at Thurso before sailing homewards. More of Carl he could not expect. The land in dispute was not Orkney, and the overlords of Orkney had given no sanction for a landing here.

So might Gillacomghain think. But Thorkel, knowing better, watched the sun sink and counted the time during which, there to the north, the ships of Thorfinn and of the fleet from the south must be engaged. The night grew dark, and then a little lighter, and then, brought from man to man, the message he wanted.

The beacon was burning on Stroma. As he had ordered, on the opposite headland, another was glowing in answer. The man who touched it off would be able to see, by its light, the dim sails of Thorfinn’s fleet approaching, with five longships or fewer, with Thorfinn aboard or left dead or injured at Sandwick.

In theory, it did not matter. In theory, it meant that the seaborne half of the Moray invasion had been defeated, and that the only enemy left was the one lying here, round the haven of Thurso.

When he might have been needed, Thorfinn had gone to the court of the Saxons. It was as well, Thorkel thought, that Caithness had a man of experience at hand for such battles as this. Whatever had happened at sea, Thorfinn’s men had one success behind them and would no doubt be glad enough to see someone else take the brunt of the fighting next time. Indeed, there was no point in waiting.

He said as much to his second in command, who happened to be Skeggi, and naturally Skeggi agreed. So Thorkel rose and sent his fire-message round, and in no time at all the men were on their feet and dispersing, and the Moray outposts had been silently disposed of and the stockade approached and ringed by all the able men of Caithness and Orkney here under his command, to move at his order.

Then the well-paid man inside did what he was paid to do and, on the signal, drew back the bolts of the gateway, and the horns blew and brayed all round the army, and, screaming, Thorkel and his men hurled themselves in, shield upon shield, sword upon sword.

The hoot of the horns came over the water, and the shouting that followed.

Thorfinn stood, saying nothing, in the prow; but the other men in the dragon-ship crowded and pointed, and on the other ships as well, so that their course grew erratic and the captured vessel had to be thrust off with oars to avoid a glancing collision.

Arnór said, ‘What has happened?’

‘Thorkel has attacked,’ Thorfinn said. ‘It is a thing he does, when he is sure of being successful.’

By the time they got to the shore, the hall was on fire: a sky-running river of flame that became a golden ladder and gradually a collapsed heap of angles. The light made molten gold of the dragon-head as Thorfinn’s
Grágás
slid up on the sand, and burnished his helmet and the rest of the gold on his person. Drunk with victory, the land army streamed down the seaweed and shingle towards him. His other ships, flocking to shore, were already half empty. Their crews, splashing into the water, floundered up through the sand, excitement colliding with excitement. In the middle of his men, on the higher ground, stood Thorkel.

The boy, as far as could be seen under the monstrous golden helmet, was unhurt. Thorkel said, ‘Gillacomghain is dead.’

‘Oh,’ said Thorfinn. He sprang forward and stood looking down at his foster-father while the crowd called and jostled about them. He said, ‘How?’

‘In the hall,’ Thorkel said. ‘With fifty of his own men. We set fire to it. Only his household stayed with him. We let the Moray men, the friends of Findlaech, come out if they wished. They’re all there, penned in under guard with the rest of the army. They stopped fighting very soon. They stopped fighting at once, come to that, when they saw Gillacomghain was dead.’

The heat from the hall reached them where they stood. Thorfinn looked at it. Someone in the crowd said, ‘You didn’t let all of them come out if they wished, then. Tell him about the one whose head you cut off. The Earl of Caithness, he was going to be.’

Thorfinn looked away from the hall then. ‘Maddan?’ he said. ‘Have you killed the nephew as well?’

‘I killed everyone I knew of who stood against you, or might stand against you one day,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘I thought Gillacomghain should burn.’

‘You did it without me,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Why? Was it Sulien?’

What Sulien might have to do with it was beyond Thorkel Fóstri. Around him, he could feel the men becoming restive. They had done well and should have their due, even if he received none. He said, ‘We thought we would save you the trouble. Didn’t we, lads?’

And at that at least the boy came to his senses and began to say and do the things required of him, so that soon matters were as they should be and the
ale-casks could be opened and the victory celebrated round the bright-glowing heat of the hall.

Thorfinn went to the Moraymen and spoke to them. ‘Your Mormaer Gillacomghain is dead. I am the heir of his uncle Findlaech, whom he killed. Whom will you have for your Mormaer?’

There was a spokesman. There always was. He stood forward and said, ‘We will have you, my lord.’

‘Whom do you speak for?’ said Thorfinn.

‘For us all, my lord. We will swear, if you like.’

‘I will take your oath in Forres,’ Thorfinn said. ‘When I come there to my stepfather’s house. And you will come with me, to tell your friends what you have seen and what you have promised. What my stepfather did for you, I will do. Act to me as you acted to him, and no man will suffer.’

Sulien, arriving, caught that, and saw that he had come when the triumph was nearly over. There had been no shortage of voices on the way to tell him what had happened. The runes had been right.

Then Thorfinn turned and saw him and said, ‘Your condition, as you see, has been obeyed to the letter.’ For the first time, there was an emotion somewhere in the alarming, deep voice. Sulien saw that it was anger.

Then Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘What about the women? We’ve put them over there.’

Thorfinn said, ‘He had camp-girls with him?’

‘Not only camp-girls. Some of good family, including his own. To make the point, I suppose, that he was settling here.’

The place Thorkel had indicated was a good timber-built house on the same rising ground as the hall. The family it belonged to had arrived there and were apparently trying to get in: the door had been barred from the inside, and an argument was going on. Thorfinn said, ‘Go and eat, my foster-father. I’ll see to the women.’ Thorkel stopped, and then turned and walked elsewhere.

Sulien said, ‘Can you manage all the women on your own, or shall I come?’

‘Come if you like,’ Thorfinn said. He got to the door of the house and spoke pleasantly enough to the folk outside. He knew them, and they gave him a hearing and after a while turned aside, grumbling, to find other shelter. Then he stood alone but for Sulien beside him and, raising his voice, gave a brief order.

‘Unbar the door or I will burn it down.’

For a moment, there was silence. Then a woman’s voice whimpered and was cut off; and another murmured. Footsteps came near, and there was a jarring sound of wood on wood from inside. Then the door swung slowly open.

Inside, there was a small fire. But the light from outside was much brighter, washing into the doorway and through the windows from the embers of Gillacomghain’s funeral pyre. In its light, Thorfinn stood as he had come from the sea, with his face smeared with sweat and dirt, and his ring-mail dulled with other men’s blood. He had given his helm to someone flattered to carry
it, and its weight had left a circle of red round his brow and his flattened, salt-tangled hair. He was so tall that he had to bend to stare into the gloom of the house.

Faces appeared, underlit by the fire, pulled into unnatural shapes by fear and exhaustion and grief. Thorfinn said, ‘Which of you is Ingibjorg, Bergljot’s daughter, mother of Luloecen?’

A voice somewhere answered, ‘I am.’

Sulien saw Earl Thorfinn turn towards the sound, but could not see, either, which of the women had spoken.

The Earl Thorfinn said, ‘Ingibjorg, Bergljot’s daughter, I have to tell you that Gillacomghain your husband is dead.’

A rustling ran through the group and then was stilled. From the back of the house, someone rose and picked her way forward to the light: a tall girl with uncovered hair the colour of ox-blood, not very long, and a tunic robe of dyed linen, creased and grimy with charcoal. There were circles under her eyes, which were colourless, translucent as pond-water. She said, ‘Then I suppose I am your prisoner. Who are you?’

It was not a question he was often asked now. He said, ‘I am Thorfinn of Orkney, Earl of Caithness.’ The tone was the same as when he was addressing the shadows. It was, Sulien observed, perfectly courteous so far as it went.

There was nothing particularly critical in the girl’s gaze either. She merely looked and sounded exhausted. She said, ‘I see. Then you are going to hold me for ransom?’

‘Ransom?’ said Earl Thorfinn. He sounded surprised and a little impatient. ‘No. I am going to marry you.’

OOLS THAT THEY WERE
, Thorfinn’s men of course thought that the great days of Orkney were back again, with a lusty young Earl who could thrash a Northumbrian fleet twice the size of his own and then throw his enemy’s widow over his shoulder together with the province she and her son were heir to. She was, it was agreed, getting a bargain; for, although no one thought him a virgin, she would be the first of his wives and the senior one, at least for a while. And it might be that, after Gillacomghain, she could even teach him a thing or two.

Looked at sensibly, such a marriage was not only the natural but the sensible resolution of the feud between Thorfinn and the murdering rulers of Moray. Nothing could give more offence, wherever they might be, to the shades of Gillacomghain and his brother. It would put Thorfinn in possession of the whole of his stepfather’s Moray. It would give him an Arnmødling wife kin to Thorkel Fóstri himself; one of the very girls he had considered long ago, in the days of Kalv’s match-making. Of course, Thorfinn needed a wife, and the girl was an excellent choice. Thorkel Fóstri did not know, therefore, why he was angry, unless it was over this foolhardiness his foster-son showed in not taking counsel beforehand.

The Breton from Llanbadarn, Thorkel noticed, was as disconcerted as himself and, after coming away from Thorfinn’s company with a red face later that day, had not come near him again. So all one could say, Thorkel supposed, was that the father’s blood was coming out in the boy, as well it might; and that at least Orkney would have a man for an Earl when Brusi died, which seemed very likely to happen this year.