King Hereafter (48 page)

Thorfinn said, ‘It is usual at these times to talk of the succession. I am doing so only in order to tell you that the next King will be chosen by you on my death, and not beforehand. My stepson Lulach, who is here, is eleven and will soon take his place as the future Mormaer of Moray. My only son Sigurd is a child of five, and will be Earl of Orkney and of Caithness when the time comes, whatever else the future may hold for him.

‘There remain the three sons of my late brother. They are at Dunkeld, since to send them south now would defeat the purpose that prompted you to ask me, and not the men of Northumbria, to become lord of Alba.

‘In two years’ time, the eldest, Malcolm, will be twelve and the youngest, five. The future of the youngest might be best served by leaving him at Dunkeld. The abbacy is at present in his family, and may well fall to him one day. If, at the end of two years, the other two wish to leave, I do not mean to stop them. Today, you have made me King of Alba till my death: they have no claim on the throne until then. If they fall into the hands of another power, as they may well do, then at least this kingdom will have had two years to prepare, and to settle. I have to learn to know you, and you have to learn to know me. There is one last matter.’

His voice had changed, and the murmuring that had run round the room
stopped. Thorfinn said, ‘I spoke of justice. You enforce it among yourselves, and when your power fails, you call on the King’s. To give us all security, I also must enforce it. When the army of Duncan my brother marched through Moray, the leaders, for their own ends, despoiled the country and slaughtered those who resisted. Most of those concerned have paid for these acts, but not all. I am told, by the men of Moray who are here, that two of these leaders have been seen on the Moot Hill and in this hall. Have them stand.’

Duftah said, ‘What is he doing?’ Tapped on the shoulder, two men in different parts of the hall rose slowly and stood, pressed awkwardly between bench and table and glancing round, anger on their faces.

Thorfinn said, ‘Thank you. I am further told that since we began to gather here, a rising occurred in Fortriu, where two former henchmen of the late King gathered men from a hill-fort and launched an attack on the men of Moray as they set out to join me here. The leaders, it is said, are the same men.’ For the last few moments, his gaze had moved only between the two standing there in their places. Now he said to each of them, ‘Do you deny this?’

One was silent. The other said, ‘He won’t speak to a brother-killer, but I will. So would every man here, if he had the stomach for it. They may eat your food and stuff your gold in their purses, but do you think they want the kingdom of Malcolm and Duncan to lie under a Norse heathen who’ll let in the hordes from the Frisian Sea to scour our grain-barns when the crops fail in Norway, and, when we can’t pay the dues they wring from us, will land and burn us to the ground and carry our women off to get slaves on in Orkney? We all know what you are. They may lie down under you now, but you will need to keep your sword at your bedside from now on, and your place warm beside Odin in the next world, for neither Christ nor Christ’s people want you in this.’

No one spoke, or breathed. Across the tables, Sulien saw how white Groa had become, and waited until, her eyes meeting his, she remembered her friends. The silence stretched on, while Thorfinn studied the man who had spoken and the man, breathing hard, stared back at his face. Then Thorfinn said, ‘I do not think that all the men here believe as you do, or the oath they have each taken would go for nothing, and the God in whose name they made it. But if any man does, I say only this. If in the days to come, or in the years to come, I or any man in my charge behaves as you have described, then he is released from his oath and his allegiance, and free to end my rule in any way that he can. Indeed, if I were to act as you say, I could not survive.’

He paused. ‘You have spoken, and I have heard you. Any man is free to speak, and for that you will not be punished. But your acts you must stand by, and for these you are now being judged. For the lives you took among your own people in Moray, and for your inciting of a rebellion on the eve of this assembly, you and your fellow must accept the due penalty, which is death. Take them out and behead them.’

Still no one spoke. No one moved, save a group of helmeted men who marched from the door and laid hands on the condemned men in silence.
There was a brief struggle, during which the spokesman again lifted his voice in a scream. ‘You cowardly fools! Will you sit there and let him take me? He has sent his men north. There he is! Run at him!’

The guests at either side looked away. Along the tables, a man shifted on his bench, and then another, till each, finding himself alone, subsided and became very still. The howling of the two victims travelled along the hall and through the door, and dwindled, and stopped, with precision.

Be it courage, be it bravado, they had let him do it.

Sulien drew a long, shaking breath and saw Duftah’s hand uncurl beside him. At the cross-table, Groa still sat immobile, her chin high in its swathes, her eyes open. And Thorfinn, standing unarmed beside her, lifted his eyes from the board and drew breath, slowly, to speak to his people.

His words never came. They were forestalled by a young, high voice calling in Norse from the furthest extent of the chamber.

‘Uncle! Thorfinn, my dear disciple of Odin! Hardly the wand in your hand, and you have to teach your new vassals manners! If you need some help, there are men I could send for.’

Rognvald. Rognvald, whom Sulien had last seen carried drunk off a scarred Viking longship, among the wounded and the dead and the plunder. Rognvald, lovely as Baldur, with the golden hair lit by the sun from the doorway, and the blue eyes filled with hilarity, and in his uplifted arm a sword, down which a river of fresh blood was streaming, from the severed head stuck open-eyed on its point. The head of one of the two condemned men they had watched leave the hall a few moments before.

Of all those round the table, the King’s nephew was known to no one except perhaps a few Moraymen, and few could understand what he said.

It hardly mattered. He spoke to the King familiarly in Norwegian, using the pagan style he had abandoned and the name of the god he had repudiated. No one could mistake that, or the cheerful contempt in his voice, or the triumph with which he held aloft the fresh-hewn head of one of their fellows.

The roar was in their throats when Thorfinn spoke: so quickly, in that immense, deep voice that was all he had of physical beauty, that it filled the hall before other sound could be heard. He said calmly, ‘This is a cockerel from Norway who needs to be given a lesson. Take his sword, and what is on it.’

He was looking not at his own men who had returned panting to the doorway, but at the men sitting nearest to Rognvald. Realising it, they glanced at one another and then, as Rognvald angrily took a step backwards, threw themselves upon him, gripping him, while a third wrested the sword from his grasp, and its burden.

‘What!’ said Rognvald, and wrenched at the fists holding him. ‘What are you doing?’

Thorfinn looked not at him, but at his own men. ‘Punishment does not include indignity. Take what he brought in, and give it what burial the man’s kindred would want. And since my nephew has lent a dead man his sword, it may as well furnish the living. Keep the Earl Rognvald’s sword and send it to the dead toisech’s family. As for the Earl Rognvald my nephew …’

They could hardly hold Rognvald now, so violent was his resistance, and there was blood by his mouth and the marks of handling springing red along his jaw and the tanned skin of his arms. He said, ‘You are using me. You are using me to raise your credit with a herd of sheep-milking Irishmen.’

He had spoken in Gaelic. In bad Gaelic, but with some words there at least that men would understand.

Thorfinn answered him in the same tongue.

‘With the wand newly in my hand, as you say, I am punishing misconduct in this realm, whether committed by a man who owes me allegiance or a man who is of the blood of my family.’ He turned again to his men. ‘Take him out and thrash him.’

‘What!’
said Rognvald.

Sitting still at the tables in their separate places were the two men who had half-risen when the sentence on the executed men had been passed. That Thorfinn had noticed it had been apparent to none. Now he turned and, looking from the one to the other, said quietly, ‘It may seem to you that this order will not be carried out. I should be obliged, therefore, if you would both accompany my nephew and witness his punishment.’

They stood slowly, first one and then the other, as he was speaking. At the end, they glanced at each other and quickly away. Then the nearest said grimly, ‘Yes, my lord King,’ and, leaving the bench, walked to the door, pursued by his fellow. Rognvald stopped struggling.

He had never looked so to advantage, Sulien thought, as now, standing straight and slender and defiant, with his head flung back and his bruised arms at his sides, facing his uncle.

Rognvald said, ‘You have thrown away Orkney for a straw-death among peasants.’ And, turning, walked out, with armed men about him.

They watched him go, and then all the eyes in the hall returned to the cross-table.

‘I suppose,’ Thorfinn said, ‘the making of a king is rarely done without pains. We seem today to have had more than our share. On the other hand, perhaps there are some things that it is better for all of us to know now, rather than later. I have confidence in you. I hope you will have cause to have some in me, in time to come. Meanwhile, there is food still on the tables, and wine to which, having listened to me, you may now feel you require to apply yourselves and which, having spoken, I am now happy to have served to you in whatever abundance you wish.’

He sat, at last. The rumble that answered him had the echoes of amusement in it, and did not die away, but altered to the sound men make when they are discussing matters too delicate to shout aloud but too momentous to leave to a better occasion. Then, as the wine went round without stint, louder talk came, and laughter, and normality, hesitating, settled in and took charge.

Sulien said, ‘I want to be sick.’

‘The trouble with you,’ said Duftah cheerfully, ‘is that you forget to pray.’

*   *   *

They left, most of them, before nightfall, but long before that, as was seemly, Groa had left the hall. She did not expect Thorfinn to come for a long time, and so stayed with Lulach and her women for a while before withdrawing to the inner chamber she shared with her husband. For two hours, she paced backwards and forwards, the breath from her night-robe stirring the brazier embers and bending the flames of the candles, until she heard his voice outside, and someone replying. Then the latch rattled and lifted.

Because she had learned to read the unreadable, she knew, as he stood with his back to the door, slowly pressing it shut, that at this moment she was not his wife, but one more person to face.

She had prepared, in two hours, the words that on this day she should speak to him, and the things she must do. Discarding them all, she said, ‘The bed is there. Could you sleep?’

‘Probably never again,’ he said. It was meant, she thought, to be amusing. Latterly, he had taken off the silk robe: it would be at the monastery, with the wand and the gospels. Bound above his black brows he still wore the gold band, and would always wear it. He said, ‘I have just come from Rognvald.’

With that said, she could not move. The inner eye of love knew that beyond him was a jar of wine, and a pitcher, and that he had drunk nothing as yet. She said, ‘What happened?’

‘He forgave me,’ he said.

With irony? With thankfulness? It was impossible to tell. And, not knowing, what could she say? He understood, far better than she did, the implications of everything that had happened since the moment Rognvald walked into the hall. He knew Rognvald better than she did: he knew, as she did not, how close the links between Rognvald and himself might be, and how personal. There was nothing whatever she could say except, ‘Once he came in, there was nothing else you could do.’ And that he knew already. It was not that kind of reassurance he needed.

He must have been watching her. He said, ‘You are longing to cross to that jar and make me as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible. But then I should have to forfeit my conjugal rights, and I am sure that would be bad for the kingdom. Doesn’t the barley rot on the stalk, should the King of one day fail to display his fertility?’

‘Then come here,’ Groa said. Her body, listening, started to tremble.

He left the door. ‘Where?’ he said, and, lifting the robe, slipped it from her shoulders. His fingers also were unsteady, and his eyes, watching what they were doing, were more black than brown. He lifted his hands to the white, marbled globes of her breasts and cupped them, his fingers moving over the soft, darkened aureoles, over and over so that her bones melted.

Then, slowly, the caress stilled and Thorfinn looked up. ‘Groa?’

She smiled, holding his eyes, but did not answer. His free hand, slipping gently downwards over her skin, reached her waist, and then her belly, and rested there.

‘In a month,’ she said, ‘there may be something to see. It is a little early.’

He let both hands fall and stood back a little, so that the light from the
candle fell on her face. ‘The King’s fertility,’ he said, ‘has already manifested itself?’

‘In Tarbatness,’ Groa said. ‘I am awed. Since you were not present either through my first child-bearing or my second, how did you know what to look for?’

‘There is no secret,’ Thorfinn said. ‘In every Norse camp, there are slave-girls who are carrying.’ He drew a soft breath, quick as a gasp, and got rid of it. Then, moving forward again, he lifted his hands and settled her robe once more on her shoulders. ‘Wine,’ he said. ‘Is it not an occasion for wine?’

Her thoughts on the unborn child, she was slow, this time, to read him. ‘Sit,’ she said; and as he threw himself down on the mattress, she crossed the small room and found two beakers and filled them. ‘I suppose,’ she said, her back turned, ‘it will be a son again, since that seems to come easily to you. And you will name him Erlend as you wanted, after your great-great uncle, Skull-splitter’s brother.’