King Hereafter (19 page)

So Thorkel Fóstri told himself; but the situation still did not please him, and it was with divided feelings that he agreed to travel to Norway to see his cousin Finn Arnason about the drawing up of the marriage contract for Finn’s daughter Ingibjorg, while his foster-son paraded off south and made himself Mormaer of Moray. Thorkel took with him the extra Northumbrian ship, freighted with the first threshing of bere, to sell up the fjord at Nídarós while he was there. In the event, he was glad to have a pretext for his voyage, since his cousin Finn Arnason, when he called on him at Austråt, proved far from inclined to invite attention to such an alliance.

In fact, Thorkel was disturbed at the changes in Finn. He had supported the losing side in King Olaf, of course, and had shared his exile in Russia. Returning he had fought for King Olaf again, even against his own brothers.

True, the family Arnmødling was famous for looking after its own, and the same brothers had taken care of Finn and the others after King Olaf died. But Finn, it was evident, could not get used to King Canute’s conquest of Norway, and the canonisation of Olaf had hardly made matters better. In fact, there was unrest throughout Trøndelagen, where people resented the new Danish laws Canute’s wife-regent had presented them with. And if there was to be a revolt, Finn Arnason’s hall was the first place Canute would look for the culprit.

So Finn Arnason, who seemed to have lost weight, and who had taken to peering like a man very much older, welcomed his cousin Thorkel to his board, but said, once they were alone and Thorkel had explained his mission, ‘So you wish your foster-son to marry my daughter. Is this wise?’

‘It has nothing to do with me,’ Thorkel said. ‘I am nothing now but his marshal. I do as I am told.’

And at that Finn drew down his brows in the way he looked at everything now, and said, ‘If that’s true, you have chosen a fine time to abandon him. You would let him risk Canute’s displeasure by a union like this?’

Thorkel admired the silver Herakles on his beaker. He said, ‘The girl is Kalv’s niece as well. Gillacomghain found that no disadvantage. Neither did Canute. But even if Kalv were to change sides again, Thorfinn would still go on with this marriage. It has nothing to do with us, or with Canute, or with Norway.’

‘He
wants
the girl?’ Finn Arnason said. ‘That is always a complication.’

‘If she walked into his house, he would have little idea who she was,’ Thorkel said. ‘He wanted Gillacomghain dead because Gillacomghain murdered his stepfather and stole his inheritance of Moray. But although his stepfather named him as heir, he has no claim by blood. By marrying Gillacomghain’s widow, he will make Moray his beyond question, until her sons, by Gillacomghain or himself, are old enough to succeed. I tell you,’ Thorkel said, ‘he will take the girl, whether you want it or not.’

Finn said, ‘I have no desire to fall foul of Canute because Thorfinn does.’

‘Then withhold your consent,’ Thorkel said. ‘Men will hear of it. And, as I’ve said, it will make no difference. Your daughter will be rich, and the mother of powerful sons. I’m sure you have heard the news. Earl Brusi is dead. As the last living son of old Sigurd, Thorfinn is sole Earl of Orkney.

‘It is all I wanted him to have,’ Thorkel said, and moved the cup between his hands. ‘With Caithness, if he could keep it. Now he holds the mainland of Alba, from the Dee to the northernmost coast: the old kingdom of the north, that the kings of the north and the south have fought over ever since the Gaels came out of Ireland.

‘He has no care for it. He has no notion of ruling it. He will treat it as a source of tax-gathering raids, as Sigurd treated Caithness and the Western Isles. But these are a different people, and he and Orkney may be sorry for it.
All this,’ said Thorkel, ‘the burning of Findlaech has done. There may come a day when Orkney wishes that Thorfinn had burned with him.’

Finn said, ‘Every son, sooner or later, leaves his father. He may not be the worse for it. Nor may the father.’

Thorkel’s hand closed hard on his beaker, and opened again. ‘And daughters?’ he said. ‘Perhaps you should allow them some worthy proverb as well?’

By that time, it was not wholly correct that, had his intended wife stepped through the house, the boy Thorfinn would not have known her. In fact, the night after his foster-father departed, Thorfinn threw out her servants and bedded her, as was only prudent.

Her innermost views on the matter the girl Ingibjorg kept to herself: the days of hair-cropping were over. For two years, Gillacomghain had had nothing to bring to his marriage, and it would have been folly to risk bearing to anyone else.

This boy from Orkney was not a Wend or a Lapp, and had been reared by her father’s own cousin. Her inheritance was rich, and the word
abduction
meant no more than this: that a man should lie with an heiress until he had got her with child, or to warn off other possible predators for one month or two until he could make a firm contract.

In this case, she supposed, the Earl of Orkney was making sure of her in case she or Gillacomghain’s sole heir, her baby, fell into other hands between now and the foster-father’s return with the settlement.

It irritated her that the night the youth had chosen should be the night of their arrival in Inverness, and that the sleeping-quarters she had shared with Gillacomghain should be those he invaded, sending the women squalling out to where, distantly, she could hear her son calling. Her new owner looked preoccupied and unkempt, as if he had been extremely busy and in half an hour would be so again, as soon as the present matter was over. He shut the door. ‘The women say you have finished your courses,’ he said.

She sat on the bed-blanket in her shift and watched him half-undress. He kept on his tunic and made no effort to coax her to take off her linen. She said, watching him untie his leggings, ‘Or this would have happened to me a day or two sooner, on shipboard? What if I deny that this ever took place?’ The distant cackle of the women made nonsense of the remark.

‘Everyone knows it is happening,’ said the Earl. Three days ago, he had had her husband burned alive in his hall. As he crossed to the bed, his height and the candle-shadows together plunged the room into black, wheeling troll-shapes. She drew her feet back on the mattress before he should have to lift them, and the mattress straw under her creaked and muttered under his weight on top of her own.

She tried to show neither pleasure nor displeasure; and he behaved as he should. Since there never had been any preliminaries, she did not miss them. Then, promptly, the business was over and he was dressing again. She felt bewildered, and then angry when she thought of the women out there,
waiting. She said, ‘And when will you have a spare five minutes again?’

In no way did that sound like a request. It came nearer, indeed, to an accusation. He had heard the women as well, and ought to remember she was Finn Arnason’s daughter, and not one of the girl-slaves they supplied him with. He was sitting, a boot in his hand. He said, ‘What need? Now I have a claim on any child you may find yourself with. Failing such an event, it is customary, I believe, to offer a widow the privacy of her bed for a year. You may count on so much. After that, should five minutes prove fruitful, there should be no doubts, at least, over the fathering. How old are you exactly?’

‘Six years younger than you are,’ she said. She sat up and pulled one of the woollen blankets over her shoulders. She was nearly seventeen.

‘So there is plenty of time. Why are you angry?’ said Thorfinn. ‘I have been on your father’s list of suitors and you have been on Thorkel’s from the first years of our childhood. We might each have done worse.’

‘Are there no mirrors in your house?’ said Ingibjorg. ‘If you stopped paying some of your Irish girls, one of them might tell you the truth. A boy’s attempt is a boy’s attempt.’

‘I must confess,’ Thorfinn said, ‘that if that was an attempt, I should be wary of meeting with a success. If you consider your charms deserve better, then why not pour me some ale and entertain me, instead of accepting the traffic and then complaining about it?’

‘The ale is over there,’ she said. She left untouched the beaker he brought her. He took his own across to the stool he had occupied before and sat down and sipped. She said, ‘Thorkel says your father had many wives.’

‘He thought he needed many sons,’ the Earl of Orkney said. ‘But things went wrong, and most of them lived, while his land-holding shrank. My grandfather of Alba, on the other hand, tended to have one wife at a time and breed weaklings. There is a fine balance, not always easy to hit. Who looks after Luloecen?’

‘Three women from Halfdan’s household,’ Ingibjorg said. She knew what was coming. Her grandfather Halfdan had been a half-brother of King Olaf and a grandson of Erik Bloodaxe. She said, ‘It doesn’t matter to me if you want different nurses. He has no special attachments.’

‘Sulien said he should be brought up with men,’ Thorfinn said.

‘At three?’ she said. ‘Sulien is your young Breton churchman, isn’t he? Hasn’t he told you that if you are to hold Christian Moray you will have to pay lip-service at least to the Celtic church and call yourself by your civilized name, not your heathen one? It is years since anyone called me Ingibjorg here.’

‘Let me guess,’ Thorfinn said. ‘You were baptised Margaret, and the family preferred Meregrota, so that at home and in the north you bear the good Nordic wife-name of Groa?’

‘Someone told you,’ she said.

‘I hope they were right,’ said Thorfinn. ‘I should much prefer Groa to Ingibjorg. It takes less effort.’

‘I am sure you have none to waste,’ said the girl. She waited and then said,
‘Thorkel says that once you have Moray you will have no idea what to do with it.’

‘What need I do with it?’ Thorfinn said. ‘It will support me and my household, and I shall visit it from time to time. My home is a ship, not the mainland, and my hearth is in Orkney, not Alba.’

He left soon after that, and the women thought he had hurt her, because she was frowning and silent.

Instead of going back at once to what he had been doing, which was arguing with Gillacomghain’s steward, Thorfinn went and found Sulien.

He was in the smithy, deep in talk with two other churchmen while the smith patched an abbot’s sword and put an edge back on their knives. At the look on the Earl’s face, the young Breton rose and, leaving his companions, joined him outside. Sulien said, ‘Well? Everyone in the place knows what you have been doing. Did she scratch you?’ He could not bring himself to smile.

Earl Thorfinn said, ‘She’s not a nun, you know. It’ll be two months now before it’s plain whether or not she is carrying, and no one else will try to take her till then.’

‘I know all the arguments,’ Sulien said. ‘What did you want me for?’

He wanted the Earl to say that it didn’t matter and to go away. Instead, Earl Thorfinn said, ‘Have you seen that girl in daylight?’

‘No,’ Sulien said. ‘She was under a blanket all the way here, because of the rain. Why? Even if she has two heads, I don’t suppose it matters to anyone.’

This time, he was successful, and the Earl did turn and walk away. It was surprising, then, that Sulien found himself taking the trouble to catch up and fall into step beside him and say, ‘Look. It’s just that we are all human. Even young women.’

The black brows did not soften. ‘If you say so,’ the Earl answered shortly. After a moment, he added, ‘If she had two heads, there would be nothing to worry about.’

‘But she hasn’t. So?’ Sulien said.

Thorfinn stopped. ‘So she’s handsome,’ he said. ‘The handsomest girl I’ve ever seen in my life, and that includes Canute’s court. How am I going to hold Moray with that running loose, turning men foolish?’

Sulien stared at him. For no reason that he could understand, a burden shifted. Laughter welled within him and spilled over. The Earl, he saw, was waiting patiently for him to recover. The Earl said, ‘I know. The finest jest of the season. All I wanted was—’

‘All you wanted was a reliable breeder,’ Sulien said. ‘I wonder what it is that you’ve got? Did she tell you that you needed a bath? Did she say what your face reminded her of?’

‘She would have been unique if she didn’t,’ Thorfinn said. ‘As to the bath, I have one on Saturdays. Saxons don’t have them at all. Celts, I am given to understand, wade in up to the neck in cold rivers and stand intoning psalms. You don’t approve of marriage?’

‘On the contrary,’ Sulien said, ‘I propose to marry as soon as my studies are
over. By that time, I shall know what to avoid. You have no idea how much I am learning.’

The Earl’s face had relaxed. He aimed a blow at Sulien, which did not quite connect, and went off to find the steward and finish his argument.

Opportunities to study the reliable breeder were not lacking in the four weeks it took Thorkel to get back from Norway, for the girl Groa emerged from her bed-blanket to resume in every particular the life she had led when her husband Gillacomghain was alive, with the only difference that her son Luloecen’s attendants had been sent off back home, and other nurses found, of the house of Findlaech. Thorfinn himself never came near her again, being mostly away with his housecarls cross-quartering Moray in the cause of removing any lingering doubts about who the new Mormaer might be. Some settlements were burned, but not many, and a few friends of Gillacomghain found themselves hanged. The weather was very wet.

Thorkel came back in September on a difficult wind, and bearing with him two messages: one containing the formal refusal of the bride’s father to allow the marriage, and the other containing the informal assurance of the bride’s father that if the marriage took place, no compensation would be exacted.

No member of the bride’s family, as was natural, came with him to bless the union. The presence of the bride’s uncle Kalv Arnason, on his way to collect a bad debt in Waterford, was purely coincidental. It was also bad luck for Thorkel Amundason, who felt he had troubles enough of his own without standing daily up to the knees in the undeviating stream of his cousin Kalv’s complaints.