King Hereafter (5 page)

‘I should worry about that, in your shoes. If Canute ever got a grip of Alba, the Moray cousins would push you out and rule the whole of the north. I suppose that’s why they burned Thorfinn’s stepfather. What are they called?
Malcolm and Gillacomghain? That’s what I mean,’ explained Kalv, stretching comfortably. ‘You’d think, all things considered, that Thorfinn would be here, taking an interest.’

Thorkel Amundason shrugged, saying nothing. For six years he had waited, his foster-son’s words in his head, watching him grow, and dreading the demand that was certain, surely, to come, but so far had not.
Thorkel Amundason, give me an army. I mean to drive Malcolm and Gillacomghain from Moray
.

Dreading it, because such an attack would be doomed. Moray was part of the kingdom of Alba. And if the King of Alba, the other Malcolm, had taken no steps to punish Findlaech’s murderers, then it was not for Thorfinn his grandson to do so. The men of Caithness wouldn’t support him. The men of one-third of Orkney wouldn’t cross to fight for a child-Earl in Alba. And the sort of silver that would hire him an army was not within their resources.

Whereas it might well be within the resources of Malcolm and Gillacomghain, who had paid homage to King Canute of England, with the approval, one supposed, of Malcolm of Alba.

Stick to Olaf
, Kalv was advising; and there was no doubt that he was right. Olaf was the only bulwark against Canute and his dreams of an empire of the north. Thorkel was surprised, indeed, that Kalv had risked going about with this fellow, his wife’s nephew Siward. You heard of some district leaders in Norway who had already crossed to join Canute in England. He thought of asking Siward what his father was up to these days, and decided against it. In any case, Kalv was still pursuing something.

Kalv said, ‘So you’d better look to your alliances, my friend, if you want to hold off King Canute and the Moray men. Thorfinn’s eighteen. It’s time you got him a wife. Only, if you’ll take my advice, not an Irish one. I know he’s got Ossory blood on both sides, but, believe me, you’d get nothing out of it.’

Thorkel did not mind being steered. He wondered how much Kalv was being paid. He said thoughtfully, ‘You’re right. What about an heiress from Dublin?’

Kalv’s face changed, as he expected. ‘Sitric’s family? Well, they’re Norse, and we trade with them, of course. But I ask you, who would marry the best town in Ireland to a lad with nothing more than a toe-hold in Orkney and the rights in a bit of the cold end of Alba? Unless he has attractions I haven’t seen yet?’

‘His father thought he was going to take over Dublin when he was killed at Clontarf,’ said Kalv’s nephew surprisingly. Kalv gave him a look, and turned back again.

Thorkel said placidly, ‘It’s difficult, isn’t it? Who could Thorfinn suitably marry? You can’t suggest a girl in your quarter? What about Finn’s two little daughters?’

Kalv said cheerfully, ‘Keep it in the family? If they weren’t already spoken for, I’d say you couldn’t do better. But there are a lot of other well-founded families in Trøndelagen who breed fast and might well be tempted. I’ll try one or two when I get back, if you like. Don’t marry him off till the autumn.’

Thorkel promised, and their ale-horns were refreshed, and emptied, and filled again. Kalv had achieved, it would seem, what he hoped for. Only once Thorkel himself brought back the subject. ‘And so Finn’s daughters are spoken for. Already? Who is Ingibjorg contracted to marry?’

Kalv did not shift in his seat, but by a small margin only. ‘Oh, you know what contracts are,’ he said. ‘She’s a child. Time enough to take it seriously when she’s twelve. Till then, we’re not making much of the news, although Finn, naturally, is pleased with the match. He’s signed to marry his daughter to Earl Brusi’s son Rognvald.’

So his cousins the Arnasons were backing Brusi and Orkney, and not Thorfinn and the cold end of Alba. Well, good luck to them. Thorkel Amundason smiled, and congratulated Kalv on his niece’s prospects, and agreed yet again with Kalv’s conviction that the hope of the north was King Olaf.

He believed it himself. Between the rival kings Canute and Olaf lay Caithness and one-third of Orkney, the land of his stewardship. Olaf surely would protect him in the interests of his own Orkney lordship. While Canute there in the south was already in league with Malcolm and Gillacomghain, his foes in neighbouring Moray.

He had never discussed with Thorfinn the present war over Norway, and how it threatened his lands. He never saw Thorfinn, except getting on to a ship or getting off it again. He had assumed that Thorfinn had lost interest in the management of his affairs, since Thorfinn showed none.

Until last week, that was. But that was something that Kalv here didn’t know about.

When last week the envoy from Alba had arrived, it was pure bad luck that Thorfinn happened to be at home, having a shipload of cattle to land which came (he said) from somebody’s tribute.

No one was ever impressed by Thorfinn. The envoy from Alba had taken one look at him and delivered his message, which was a demand from King Malcolm of Alba that his grandson should join him in Cumbria.

As a child, Thorfinn had sustained periodic summons to be viewed by his grandfather. Sometimes the inspection took place in Scone or Forteviot in the middle of Alba. Sometimes it brought him to Glamis, further east, where his mother had made her home now. Sometimes, as now, it required him to travel the full length of Alba and over the border to the land in the north-west of England that was not Alba at all, but was held by the Kings of Alba as vassals of the King of England.

Since the burning of Findlaech, Thorfinn had not seen his grandfather on any occasion, and his mother twice only. He preferred to stay at sea. If messages came, it was Thorkel Amundason who answered them.

As the envoy’s speech drew to an end, Thorkel had wondered if he was meant to answer this one as well. Thorfinn, sectioned into a chair like a crane-fly, gave no impression of listening closely. In six years, nature had afflicted the boy with an extremity of untoward height, and made of the shapeless nose a flange like a rudder. Other changes were few.

The envoy had ended, and Thorfinn after all had replied. He said, ‘I’ll come.’

Thorkel Amundason could feel the shock and the rage again now. He had said, ‘My foster-son. There are matters to think of.’ And to the messenger: ‘Does my lord King expect the Earl Thorfinn to stay long?’

‘I think not. A day or two only,’ the envoy had said.

‘A journey such as that for a day or two only?’ Thorkel had exclaimed. He had shown, he thought, no satisfaction. Now he would hear the reason.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Thorfinn had interrupted. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll go.’

‘The King your grandfather will welcome the news,’ had said the envoy, damn him. Cumbria, where he came from, was full of Irish and Saxons and Norse, and his Norse was quite fluent. The envoy had added, ‘Perhaps my lord Earl will come south with me?’

By then it was time, clearly, to take the matter in hand. Thorkel Amundason had said, ‘Excuse me. I fear we go a little too fast. Tell me, sir. What does my lord King want with his grandson?’

But the chance of a straight answer was past. ‘My lord, a family gathering, I would suppose?’ had said the envoy. ‘The King did not confide in me. But is it not natural, after all these years, for the King’s two grandsons to meet in one place?’

And that was all he would say. He had left the next day. The only victory Thorkel achieved was to persuade the fool his foster-son to wait a few days before travelling.

He had tried, of course, to stop him going at all. He had tried until the last moment when, surrounded by boxes and barrels and sacks and the members of his sparse household, Thorfinn was about to wade out to his vessel. He had been in mid-tirade when the boy turned on him. ‘Don’t you know why he wants me in Cumbria?’

‘To stick a knife in your back,’ had said Thorkel Amundason shortly. Beneath it all, that was his fear.

‘No. He needs me,’ Thorfinn had said.

‘
Needs
you?’

‘It’s the talk of the islands. King Canute has summoned my grandfather to do homage for Cumbria.’

‘Then I suppose he will,’ Thorkel had said. ‘Cumbria is important to him.’

‘Yes. But he might not be allowed to keep Cumbria,’ Thorfinn had said, ‘unless he can convince Canute his overlord that he can stop me from helping King Olaf.’

Around them, the routine of loading had gone on. Thorkel had said, after a while, ‘But you are a vassal of Olaf’s.’

‘Not for Caithness,’ Thorfinn had said.

His stare was unwinking. Thorkel had stared back. Malcolm and Gilla-comghain had done homage to Canute for Moray. It didn’t give Canute rights over Moray. It did give him leave to use the harbours and provisions of Moray in pursuit of his war against Olaf. Thorkel said, ‘You think your grandfather will want you to pay homage for Caithness to
Canute?
’

‘To allow Canute rights in Caithness,’ Thorfinn amended. ‘And perhaps even in my third of Orkney.’

‘And will you?’ Thorkel had said. It had sounded jocular, such was his alarm and despair.

‘What do you suppose?’ was all Thorfinn had answered. And, turning, had boarded the ship and sailed south.

That was last week, and Thorkel had heard nothing since. Of what had happened last week he had said nothing at all to Kalv Arnason. Now he was listening to Kalv, and half-agreeing to a Norwegian marriage, and wholly agreeing when Kalv said once more, as he did on departing, ‘Tell the boy, wherever he is. Stick to Olaf and Norway. It’s the best chance we’ve all got of survival.’

ake me think like a man
, the twelve-year-old Thorfinn had said to Thorkel his foster-father, and for a while, it was true, had taken Thorkel for tutor.

Make me act like a man
, he had said also; and for that, his tutors were many and various, and the foremost of them all was the sea.

He had others, mostly men older than himself, whom Thorkel knew about and put up with. Most of them were on board with Thorfinn now as he sailed south to answer his grandfather’s summons. First for fighting was Skeggi Havardson his father’s nephew, twenty years Thorfinn’s elder and his standard-bearer. First in mischief was a man older still: Eachmarcach, the nephew of King Sitric Silkbeard of Dublin.

On his way south to Cumbria, Thorfinn had diverged to take on board Eachmarcach, who spent his time sailing the western seas, looking for trouble. Learning where they were going, Eachmarcach laughed until he had to be slapped on the back., A broad, freckled man with a tightly curled ginger thatch, the heir of Dublin had little reverence for King Malcolm of Alba, Thorfinn’s grandfather. And he could imagine (he said) King Malcolm’s face when he saw himself, Eachmarcach, in Thorfinn’s company.

Thorfinn, who could imagine it too, grinned but said nothing of moment, being doubled up in the midst of a wrestling-match. He had been a nuisance of a boy, and was growing up to be a nuisance of a man, it was obvious. The ragbag of crewmen who sailed with him found him amusing.

Arrived in no great haste at his rendezvous, Thorfinn left his ship and its crew on the coast and rode inland on the horses provided, taking with him Skeggi and Eachmarcach and such housecarls as an earl’s train demanded.

That journey, too, was remarkable less for its speed than its eccentricity. When they reached the place of King Malcolm’s Cumbrian camp, it was to find it all but deserted, apart from a waiting guard and a few hostages. King Malcolm’s army had moved south to the Mercian border. King Malcolm himself, with his household and Duncan his grandson, was in Mercia, England, summoned there on short order by Canute to pay homage for his
province of Cumbria. The Earl Thorfinn, ran the order, was to join him in Chester immediately.

‘Will you go? I burned Chester once,’ Eachmarcach said. ‘At least, I burned some of the wharves up the river.’

‘More fool you,’ Thorfinn said. Mercia, south of the Cumbrian frontier, was one of the great English earldoms and its busy port Chester was one of Dublin’s best markets.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Eachmarcach. ‘We’d captured some very strong ale. I wanted to marry the Lady of Mercia. You know. Leofric’s wife. But the old Earl called out the guard. You’ve seen the Lady of Mercia?’

‘Heard of her. That’s her son over there,’ Thorfinn said.

Eachmarcach looked at the hostages. Two were elderly. One was a raw-faced youth of fifteen with an unpleated shock of fair hair, playing some sort of game in the dust. None of the captives was shackled, and the guard stood about, watching. The youth talked and laughed all the time. He had a laugh like the flapping of crows’ wings. For the son of a famous beauty, he was, as usually happens, nothing out of the way. Eachmarcach said, ‘That’s how to live to be eighty. Don’t trust yourself into English hands without first asking for English hostages. Alfgar. That’s what the boy’s called. Alfgar, the sole heir to Mercia.’

The youth looked round, as if he caught the sound of his name. Eachmarcach grinned, since his nature was to be friendly. Thorfinn did not smile at all. Thorfinn said, ‘He isn’t very well guarded.’