King Hereafter (7 page)

He had expected to meet concern and exasperation. Instead, the Lady heard him with a kind of tolerance, behind which her own thoughts seemed shadowed. She said, ‘I doubt if I could have moved that young man to do something he didn’t want to at eight, never mind at eighteen. Anyone who tries would be wasting his strength. No. I had to give him some news. You and I were talking, when he came, of how a family can be split apart when the mother makes several marriages. Earl Thorfinn’s mother died several weeks ago. No one had told him.’

Ahead, Alfgar had turned and was calling him; the other two were already at the riverbank. Sulien said, ‘Was he upset?’ Taking thought, it seemed to him that very little would upset the unprepossessing, self-possessed youth he had just met for the first time; and that even if it did, no one else would be likely to know it.

The Lady said, ‘One can only guess. He did not answer at once, and then said only what was right for him to say. She was at Glamis, and he has been at sea most of the time. His foster-father brought him up. But the fact that his grandfather didn’t trouble to tell him must have added fuel to that fire.’

Alfgar was calling again. Sulien said, ‘Why tell him now?’

Sometimes—often—she surprised him. Her eyes on the river: ‘He needed a shield, and I owed him something,’ Godiva said.

N BOARD THE
conference ship, the interpreter had got to the word
immoderate
when the horn blew from the shore.

All the language so far had been polite, as befitted a meeting between a Danish King of eleven years’ experience ruling the empire his father had conquered and a King of Alba some forty years older, with a lifetime behind him of controlling the shifting shapes and power factions in a piece of mountainous land, infiltrated through all its headlands and valleys by the clustered homesteads of different races.

No one had to tell Malcolm of Alba why he was here, or what King Canute wanted. Canute was on his way to add Norway to his empire of Denmark and England, and proposed, by threats or promises or the sword, if required, to stop interference from the peoples of this broad neck of land uneasily lying between his sure northern frontiers and Alba.

If Malcolm wished to keep his under-kingship of Cumbria and Westmorland next to it, so convenient for Ireland and the ports of Chester and the Severn, he had to satisfy Canute that King Olaf of Norway would find no support among the peoples who lived in these border lands and traded too with the eastern seaboard—with the half-Norse city of York and the rest of Northumbria.

Ten years ago, Malcolm had fought and defeated the Northumbrians for his rights on that side of the country. Today, no one in his senses would fight Canute for Cumbria. Therefore, Malcolm had to pay homage. He had to agree to hold Cumbria as King Canute’s man, and to do nothing against him. Short of invasion and massacre, he did not intend to be forced to fight for him: that was for Leofric and Godwin and all the other Saxon leaders to do. Whether Canute would try to compel him, he was not yet able to tell.

The presence of his daughter’s first husband had been inevitable, King Malcolm supposed. A clever man, benign in looks as the White Christ, with that beard and those eyes. There were Irish abbots as well as kings in my lord Crinan’s busy ancestry.

Be that as it might, Crinan had managed to get one son on Bethoc, and had
gone on, when that marriage ended, to others as fruitful. An able man, and now, someone told him, the richest dealer in England.

King Malcolm of Alba hardly remembered his own first wife, although he had a very clear memory of the Irish alliance he had needed at the time. She had been a weak breeder. All the boys had died young, and Bethoc his daughter was the only one who grew up. He had had to farm her out three times to different alliances, but she was a strong-minded woman, like himself, and had done well in each.

Not, of course, prolific; but he had reached the conclusion some time ago that a profusion of kinfolk was bad for a kingdom. He had had to clear his own way to the throne through a number of cousins and uncles. If such men lived, they subdivided the land or spent all their time and gear on slaughtering one another.

Bethoc had given my lord Crinan that single son, Duncan. This fellow here, round and shiny and smug as an apple. Then the purging in England had stopped, and Crinan went south to rich pickings just as the big northern alliance began to take shape. No King of Alba wanted to spend the rest of his life pushing Norwegians and Danes off his coasts: it made better sense to join them. If the Danes and the Norwegians succeeded in capturing Ireland, that was all right too. King Malcolm had plenty of kin over there who would see he got a share of the trade.

So when Sigurd of Orkney suggested a marriage pact, it made good sense to give him his daughter Bethoc. Generations of Orkney Earls had laid claim to the land north of Alba through marriages. Most of them got themselves killed, as had Sigurd. If Bethoc gave Orkney a son—and she did; just one, thank God—he could be made Earl of the disputed province, Caithness, and hold it in Alba’s interest once and for all.

Which was what this young lout Thorfinn was supposed to be doing, except that the plan had gone wrong. All but one of his half-brothers in Orkney had died, and instead of being content with Caithness, the fool had laid claim to Orkney as well, which had provoked Norway into renewing its overlordship. And possibly into claiming the overlordship of Caithness as well, the next one knew.

To help prevent that very thing years before, he, Malcolm, had arranged Bethoc’s third marriage to that fellow Findlaech, of the province that had Caithness for a neighbour. When Findlaech’s heirs brought him word that Findlaech was courting Thorfinn and entertaining his grandiose claims to Orkney, he could hardly believe it.

Findlaech had had to go; and he, Malcolm, had made it plain that whoever achieved it had nothing to fear from him. He had made no stipulation about the fate of Thorfinn his grandson. Indeed, when he heard that the boy had escaped, Malcolm was not sure what his feelings were.

Thorfinn and Duncan were his only grandsons, but only Duncan had been reared as a prince. Duncan knew Saxon and both Celtic tongues, and had some training in affairs of law and of fighting. The other boy, one would expect, had learned little enough. They said he had been
allowed to spend the summer on shipboard since he was fourteen.

What he had learned on shipboard, Malcolm could imagine. Enough to lead a plundering band of sea-rovers on cruises dignified by the description of tax-lifting. Enough to kill a few peasants and get a few serfs upon serfs. Not enough, it was perfectly sure, to hold Caithness against Findlaech’s nephews and heirs without either King Olaf or King Canute at his back. And if he had chosen King Olaf, as he evidently had, it would have been better—far, far better—that he should have burned with his stepfather.

It was all at the back of his mind as he watched Canute speaking: a bulky, fair man in the prime of life, his preposterous crown making a wet ridge on his brow under the bilious green the Mercians had picked for the tenting. The interpreter had just said, ‘My lord King, I fear, finds these demands quite immoderate’ when the horn blew from the town side of the shore and the Bishop Lyfing walked over and parted the awning. Canute resumed what he was saying and Malcolm sat still, his damp beard spread on his chest. He could feel Duncan fidget beside him.

Because he knew more than anyone suspected of the English court’s odd Saxon-Norse, the King of Alba grasped precisely what Lyfing was saying when the Bishop, re-entering, spoke quietly to Canute. ‘Arrivals, my lord King, who wish you to send for them. The banner bears a black bird.’

The raven of Orkney. He had come. Thorfinn, the other grandson who ought to have burned, had arrived. And unless he was mad, prepared to be seduced from King Olaf of Norway, or to make a show of it.

The face of the old King showed nothing, but his foot bore down, hard, on the toes of Duncan beside him, who had taken the breath that was about to betray how well he, too, knew Saxon-Norse. King Malcolm of Alba said, clearly for the interpreter to hear, ‘I do not consider these requests in the least immoderate. On the contrary, I have other requirements I have not even enumerated yet.’

At that, as he expected, the meeting was suspended until the new arrivals had boarded, and he took the chance, yet again, to go to the side, taking with him Duncan his grandson. To him he said: ‘What will give this King pause is the prospect of an alliance, a strong alliance, between yourself and your half-brother Thorfinn. You will appear to know Thorfinn well. You will appear to love and respect him. You will, if necessary, defer to him.’

The apple had turned healthily red. ‘I haven’t seen him since he was eleven,’ Duncan said. ‘You sent for him. He broke my sledge with an axe.’

‘Boys’ play,’ said Malcolm. ‘Pay him out for it one day, if it rankles. But not today. By sheer accident, he has a finger-tip on the see-saw. Upset him, and you may lose more than your sledge.’

Skeggi the standard-bearer was not allowed in the boat, even though he was Earl Thorfinn’s cousin: they could hear him complaining on the riverbank, all the way across to the ship. At first, it seemed that only the Earl Thorfinn and Leofric’s son and the Dubliner were to be allowed over and then, by shamelessly invoking the name of the Bishop of Llandaff, Sulien got himself
included. After all, he was temporary clerk to the Bishop, even though the opportunity for clerking was less tangible than the opportunity for watching King Malcolm’s face when his hostage Alfgar stepped on board. Also, the Lady of Mercia had asked him particularly to report on the effectiveness of her awning.

The effectiveness of her awning was the first thing Sulien noticed, because it was lined with a dreadful green that accorded immediately with all he already knew about the Lady Godiva’s views on this meeting.

Beneath it, Sulien was to find, the flow of mutual greetings bore the same tinge. Preceded by the Earl Thorfinn and his carroty royal friend from Dublin, Sulien transferred from the ferry to the conference ship. Alfgar, in a mood of dangerous hilarity, had elected to linger in the smaller boat, disguised in the ferryman’s hooded cloak, stiff with soup-stains and salt. Sometimes Sulien had doubts about Alfgar.

Whether the Earl Thorfinn of Orkney intended first to pay his respects to Earl Leofric, his nominal host, or even to King Canute, who had summoned the meeting, would never be known. As he came to his grandfather’s chair, King Malcolm’s mottled face lifted to his, and King Malcolm said, ‘You’re late, boy. But welcome.’ And so gripped his younger grandson’s hand, Sulien saw, that, short of wrenching apart, the Earl had no alternative but to kneel and kiss the knotted fingers, which he did, with deliberation if without an atom of grace.

Then the other grandson, Duncan, of the pink face and brown, feathered moustache, jumped forward grinning and said, ‘Welcome, brother,’ with his arms wide and his face in a flood of green sunlight. Between his neat brown crown and the Earl’s towering head stretched a gap of between eight and ten inches.

Thorfinn of Orkney, on whose face Sulien had yet to see a trace of emotion, looked down, observed his half-brother’s arms, and, with a nod, laid his folded cloak over them. Then, turning, he steered his ginger-topped friend to King Canute, before whom, without prompting, he knelt also. Earl Leofric, jolted into awareness, leaned over the King. ‘The Earl Thorfinn of Orkney and Caithness, my Lord King. And …’ He glanced at the other man.

The Earl Thorfinn, rising by stages like a siege tower, supplied the missing introduction. ‘And Eachmarcach, nephew of King Sitric of Dublin. He trusts himself to you, my lord King, without surety.’ He spoke in Norse.

It was not a language that Sulien knew well. He had to wait for the polite Gaelic translation before he perceived the kick in the last sentence. But even earlier he had caught sight of the anger in King Malcolm’s eyes. Duncan, throwing the cloak on a stool, walked forward laughing. ‘Have you forgotten your own tongue in … such a short time, brother?’ He spoke in the language of Alba, Irish-Gaelic.

King Canute’s head turned in his direction. So did that of the Earl, patient enquiry successfully imprinting itself on his face. The interpreter, his eyes on the King, was within a measure of offering to translate one half of the King of Alba’s family to the other when King Canute addressed his reply to Thorfinn.

The interpreter translated in Gaelic. ‘My lord King welcomes a man of honour who recognises another.’

Sulien, who had not been presented, sheltered in the lee of his surprised if affable Bishop and watched King Malcolm’s pouched eyes travel from Canute to his grandson of Orkney. The King’s brow, he saw, stood wreathed in veins, fat as the roots of a tree. It was inevitable that Alfgar should choose that moment to bound up from the ferry boat and, flinging back hood and cloak, stride calling to embrace his father.

Duncan’s face became very red, and his grandfather’s yellow. King Canute, his voice sharp, asked Earl Leofric a question, and Leofric, his arm round his son, turned, his eyes bright, and answered. Alfgar, detaching himself, skipped over and dropped to kiss King Canute’s hand. He raised his head, his face smooth with touching humility, and drew breath to explain.