King Hereafter (60 page)

‘I have no one else,’ Rognvald said. He smiled again. ‘Are you not sorry for me? Why don’t you tell me to go home to King Magnús or Harald Sigurdsson?’

‘I can’t think why not,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Unless it were that you would at once suspect me of wishing to have back the rest of the Orkneys.’

‘And don’t you?’ said Rognvald.

‘I did have them once,’ Thorfinn said slowly. ‘And of course it is hard to give part of them up. About the disputed third, we should likely never agree, but, as you know, I have never tried to take it from you. But your father’s share belongs to you: about that there is no doubt at all. I cannot think of anyone else in the world who could have taken those northern isles with my agreement, and I cannot think of anyone else I should ever share Orkney with, to the day of my death. Once, we might have ruled jointly, but now it is
different. You are Earl of two-thirds, and Thorkel Fóstri will rule the rest for me, and be your good friend so long as you are his. And when I come north, we shall meet.’

‘I think,’ said Rognvald, ‘… I think you have probably given me what I deserve, if not something rather better. I shall reconcile myself, in your absence, to Thorkel Fóstri. I shall not, however, share a cloak with him.’

He laid down the now empty flask and, clearing a space on the flagstones between them, picked up the knife and proceeded to scratch out a gaming-board. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What shall we play for? Love? Or money?’

‘Money, I feel,’ Thorfinn said, ‘would be safer.’

When the rescuers came three hours later, the rattle of dice still proceeded from inside the mound, half drowned now and then by an outburst of arguing voices.

The voices sounded entirely amicable and proved, on investigation, to belong to two men, one fair and one dark, sharing a cloak on the floor, far below them. By the side of the fair man was a small pile of what appeared to be chicken-bones. By the side of the dark was a still larger. ‘Thorfinn!’ said Thorkel Fóstri; and the dog Sam, who had brought them there, jumped about in the new snow and redoubled his barking.

‘I told you he was a magnificent tracker,’ Rognvald said, throwing the dice.

‘Indeed you are right,’ Thorfinn said. ‘The baying of the great hound Garm, who belongs to the present and the future. I could almost forgive him for other things.’ Above, Thorkel Fóstri called again, and the dog’s yapping rose a note higher. Showers of snow fell from the opening. Thorfinn threw, his eyes on the board, and raised his voice. ‘Do you mind? If you stop calling, we might have peace to finish the game. Is Styrkar there?’

‘My lord?’ It was the voice of Rognvald’s chief officer.

‘Oh, Styrkar,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Your Earl wishes to borrow from you a considerable sum of money. What do you have?’

There was a pause. ‘My lord?’ said the same voice. ‘I have a little hacksilver, of course. And my arm-rings.’

‘I hardly think that will be enough,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Rognvald? Shall we count the bones here, or take them with us and let the clerks do it?’

Beside him, he knew Rognvald was grinning, in spite of the pain he was in. The stupefaction above was nearly tangible. They could hear murmured talk, and some busy tramping, but even when the ropes came, and then the help they needed, no one asked how they came by their injuries, either then or when they were got somehow on horseback for the ride back to Brodgar.

In fact, the ride was the worst part, for it ended in public by the frozen lake, before both hirds and the folk of the steading, where the men had stayed overnight, crammed into barns or in front of the big fires in deerskins. In Groa’s face, the first he saw, Thorfinn saw reflected his own disarticulated appearance. Rognvald, he was happy to see, looked rather worse when he came, cautiously, to take his leave. ‘We shall go straight back to the east. You
are a sledge short. I am leaving you one of mine, with a rider. He can bring it back when it’s got you to Orphir.’

He knew the sledge Rognvald meant. It was smoother-running than any remaining to him. And it was true, he could not have ridden to Orphir. He said, ‘And you? They found no ribs missing when they looked at you in there? I thought that pile of bones was higher than it might have been.’

‘I hope, all the same, that Styrkar satisfied you,’ Rognvald said. ‘You can keep the rugs in the sledge. If you don’t want that stinking cloak, I could take it for Sam to sit on.’

Thorfinn picked the cloak up from the bench where they had put him. It did smell, now, and they had brought him another one. He held it out and, when Rognvald came, gave him the cloak and the light clasp of his two hands under it, as Rognvald stood over him. Thorfinn said, ‘What shall I wish you?’

In the pale face, the handsome eyes were too large and too bright. ‘Just peace, I believe,’ Rognvald said, and smiled, and walked away.

Thorfinn was not a small man, so the sledge would not take Groa as well, but she rode at his side during the short journey to his own hall at Orphir, and if he did not remember quite all of it, it was not surprising, as his night’s sleep had been fairly sparse.

In fact, when he did open his eyes near the end of the journey, he thought at first they were arriving somewhere quite different, for he did not expect to round the hill and see spread on the shore not only the buildings of his house-stead, implanted between here and Swanbister, but six strange longships drawn up on the beach, and tents by the score set up on either side of the stream and halfway up the hill.

He looked up, to see Groa staring down, frowning also. He said, ‘Thorkel!’ and his foster-father, riding ahead, paused and turned. Thorkel said, ‘I don’t know what it is either, but there’s Bardi riding uphill to tell us. You look terrible.’

‘It was worth it,’ said Thorfinn. The snow was beginning to melt, and the sledge bumped and grated. Killer-Bardi got closer, and Thorkel Fóstri touched Rognvald’s driver on the shoulder so that he slackened pace, and the sledge ran to a halt. Killer-Bardi, arriving, stared down at the King and said, ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘Whose ships are they?’

‘They came at daybreak. He’s waiting for you in the hall. Kalv Arnason,’ the steward said. ‘The Lady’s uncle. From Norway.’

‘Let’s go down,’ said Thorfinn abruptly.

He had built a stockade round the main buildings last year, but the gates were already open, and the riders swept in, half the hird going ahead of him. The sledge drew up at the door of the hall, Groa dismounting beside it, and before he had begun to think how to get out, Kalv was striding out of the doorway and up to them. He said, ‘My little niece!’ and kissed Groa lavishly. He looked as if he had had a bad voyage, and his hair was greying. Then he turned to the sledge.

‘Well, Kalv?’ said Thorfinn.

Kalv, at least, noticed nothing wrong with his newly returned host. ‘My dear boy!’ he said. ‘Or should I say my lord King these days? I hardly expected to find you in Orkney, the heel-end, as it were, of all your kingdom. Why should a man stay in Orkney when he has the milk and honey of Alba there for the taking?’

‘Why should a man leave Norway when he has the milk and honey of King Magnús for the taking?’ Thorfinn replied. ‘Why the visit, Kalv?’

‘Visit!’ said Kalv. His smile stretched wider. ‘This time, nephew, I have more to offer you than a barrel of herring on my way out to Dublin. This time I have come to stay, with six of the finest warships you ever saw, and three hundred champions to man them.’

There was a little silence, during which Thorfinn heard Groa catch her breath. He said, ‘You have? Then let us go into the hall and hear about it. Thorkel?’

From staring at the late regent of Norway, Thorkel Fóstri turned slowly and looked at his foster-son. Then he said, ‘I’ll get you a chair,’ and strode away, calling to someone. Which was not helpful, since to leave the sledge promptly was, at that moment, the first necessity in Thorfinn’s mind.

He said to Starkad, ‘Give me your arm,’ but even as the standard bearer started forward, Kalv said, as if no one had spoken, ‘Why am I here, do you ask? Because of the ingratitude of kings’ sons, that’s why. Did I or did I not take a party to Russia, paying all my own expenses, to beg King Magnús to come back and rule us, instead of Canute’s son? Have I not been King Magnús’s guardian and friend all the years of his boyhood? Did he not give me and everyone else the fullest amnesty?’

‘For killing his father?’ Thorkel Fóstri was back, although without the promised chair. He said bluntly, ‘What is it, Kalv? Has Magnús thrown you out?’

Kalv went pale, and then red. ‘He has broken his word,’ he said. ‘Retracted his amnesty. Threatened all those who had anything to do with the death of his father. I had to fly for my life. I never mean to go back. I wouldn’t go back if he begged me. You’ll need someone to look after Orkney for you, and keep that young wastrel Rognvald in order. He might as well learn that in this part of the world he’ll never cheat his way into the ruler’s real favour: he’ll always be an oath-breaking foreigner who is holding a nice piece of land he isn’t entitled to. You’ve been too slack with him. Leave it to me. These six longships there will see that you get back your lost third of Orkney, if not all of it.’

Too late, the chair had arrived. With Thorkel’s hand on his wrist, Thorfinn pulled himself out of the sledge and, using his good leg, reached for and captured the chair-rail. There, without sitting down or answering Kalv, he twisted to speak to the sledge-driver.

Before he had fully turned, the horse had started to step, and before he could speak, the equipage was moving off, gathering speed over the snow as it made for the gateway.

‘Well!’ said Kalv. ‘He was in a hurry to get to his supper.’

‘He was in a hurry to get to Rognvald,’ said Thorfinn, and sat down and let them deliver him, finally, to his hall-house at Orphir.

ND SO
,
MY
dear Malduin,’ said Siward, Earl of Northumbria, ‘it seems that your young cousin is having a little trouble in Orkney, and that Alba will have to do without him for the rest of the winter at least. I ask myself what I can do to help matters.’

The Bishop of Alba, sitting opposite in a cushioned chair, pursed his lips and continued, for the moment, to draw off a fine pair of sewn gloves he had just collected from his York lodging on the way here. He might not be dressed in his ceremonial robes, but some respect was due to his rank, and the son of a fur-pedlar ought to remember it. Also, he objected to the sudden summons from Fife. It was a long way to travel in winter, and Elfswitha his present wife was never slow to suggest what the markets and workshops of York might provide to make life in Alba more bearable.

Not that he found it untenable. When this fellow Siward killed Earl Eadulf, Malduin’s household had been upset for weeks until matters settled, for, after all, if the new Earl of Northumbria were to make war on the Bishop’s cousin Thorfinn of Alba, the Bishop wished to choose the right side. Then he had had his interview, like this one. Earl Siward wished him to continue serving the King of Alba, as before, from his hall in Fife.

He had done so and, since Thorfinn his cousin troubled him very little, had succeeded in creating for himself, with industry, a way of life very nearly as convenient as the one Earl Eadulf had disrupted. And after fifteen years in office he had acquired, also, a certain authority that allowed him to forget, unless he must absolutely remember, that his father Gilla Odhrain had married the Earl of Orkney’s sister and that his half-brother Ghilander still sat like a peasant among the black ewes in the Hebrides.

Now he laid the paired gloves with precision on his lap, folded his hands, and bent a confessor’s gaze on the son of Thore Hund. ‘According to my information,’ said the Bishop, ‘King Magnús of Norway has had nothing to do with what happened. The Earls fell out, and the King received an injury of little importance. Your minions, surely, have informed you of this.’

The Earl’s fingers, flicking over and over through his beard, did not falter, nor did his gaze move from the Bishop’s. ‘And so,’ he said, ‘you expect your cousin Thorfinn to come south in the spring?’

‘He will have his tributes to collect,’ said the Bishop. Behind him, footsteps crossed the boards. In front of him, Earl Siward dropped his hand from his beard.

‘Ah, Ligulf,’ said the Earl. ‘You remember Ligulf of Bamburgh, I am sure, Bishop Malduin? He and I married sisters. Ligulf: the Bishop has been singularly deep in prayer this winter, and appears to know very little of what is going on in Orkney. For example, have you not heard, my lord Bishop, that six shiploads of refugees from Norway have been given shelter by your cousin of Orkney, thus renewing the skirmish between the two Earls? And since the boatloads include women and children, your cousin has had to give them land on which to live, rather than add them profitably to his hird?

‘It is as well, perhaps,’ said Earl Siward, ‘that all this escaped you, my lord Bishop, or you must have been concerned for your brother in the Western Isles, who might well have been swept aside to provide a living for this fugitive Kalv and his crew. But, of course, neither the Western Isles nor Orkney itself, one supposes, would be free of harrying by Earl Rognvald, so the Norwegians have been accommodated in Caithness.