King Hereafter (73 page)

Over the years, the Lady of Orkney and Alba had exchanged messages with her parents in Norway, and twice in recent times Finn or Bergljot had managed to cross the German ocean to see her, but not her husband, for friendship with Thorfinn was too dangerous. So Groa already knew that her mother’s fair hair had faded, and that the fine skin was marked just a little, and that her tread had more weight. She knew that her father’s pale blue eyes, so like those of Kalv his brother, saw you clearly when you stood close at hand, and hardly at all at a distance.

She had forgotten, though, through the long years getting used to Thorfinn, how serious they both were. She said, ‘Yes. Very happy.’ She glanced through the sunlit square of the door and beyond to Thorfinn’s solemn face. Of its own accord, her mouth smiled.

Her mother said, ‘He looks well, your husband. He has recovered?’

‘Of course. It was more than a year ago,’ Groa said. One did not want to go into all that. Rognvald’s funeral at Papay Minni; the hunting down of his men at Kirkwall. The day she found Thorfinn gone and realised he had set sail for Norway to confront King Magnús and force him to pardon him.

He had come back from that with his life—just. And when Magnús had died, it seemed possible that the whole trouble would flare up again, now that Harald was fully King. A rich and powerful war-lord, and ambitious. And cruel, people said.

And now had come this summons. King Harald proposed to take to wife her cousin Thora, and his great-niece the Lady of Alba and Thorfinn her husband were both warmly bidden to the marriage-feast.

Homage for Orkney had not been mentioned, but she well knew that it would arise before the visit was over, and that Thorfinn, accepting, had made his dispositions, which so far appeared to possess only negative qualities. He had brought two longships only, and a retinue such as would not disgrace a king on a visit of state but would pose no threat to his host-country either. He had brought Lulach but not the two heirs to Orkney. He had brought her, without the guards that might have been expected, for, after all, the King was to marry an Arnmødling, and to harm an Arnmødling would rouse the whole of Trøndelagen against their new King.

Her mother said, ‘He is well, and you are happy, but you have no more sons?’

Groa brought her gaze back. ‘I thought I told you,’ she said. ‘We lost two.’

Her mother said, ‘Children are lost every day. That does not make you barren. I shall send a woman to you.’

‘I have seen women,’ said Groa. ‘And men. If you think it will help, of course I shall see whom you like. Otherwise, there is no need to concern yourself. It is better sometimes that there should not be too many royal children.’

‘You quote your husband,’ said Bergljot. ‘And you? You are content to have only three men to follow you, and no more than two of them whole?’ She noticed Lulach then, in the corner, and flushed, for she was not an unkind woman.

Groa smiled at her son, who smiled back. ‘Lulach doesn’t mind,’ Groa said. ‘He says he would sooner have a saint for a nephew than a king for a brother.’

‘A nephew?’ said her mother. ‘It is his stepbrother, it seems to me, who has been given the name of a saint. Why let your husband change the good name of Sigurd to Paul? There are none of that name in our family.’

‘Nor in his,’ Groa said. ‘But if he thinks it is wise, then I have no objection. To change from Ingibjorg to Margaret caused me no trouble. I forgot to tell you: Kalv sends you his love.’

‘Kalv!’ said her mother. ‘That fool! But he saved your husband’s life, I am told, in the fight against Rognvald. I expect he did the right thing. Magnús might have invited Kalv back, but I don’t think he would have lived long at Egge. And now he is a great man in the Western Isles?’

‘He is rich enough,’ Groa said. ‘He controls all the Sudreyar and collects tribute, and goes sailing with Thorfinn and with Guthorm and with Eachmar-cach of Dublin when the pirates come raiding.… You know Eachmarcach is King of Dublin again? It doesn’t stop Kalv complaining.’

‘When Kalv stops complaining, he will be dead,’ Bergljot said. ‘And what, I wonder, will King Harald make of your husband tomorrow? As you know, Halfdan my father was a tall man. But I have never set eyes on a man to equal Harald in stature before. I doubt if the King my uncle is used to a man he cannot look down on.’

Outside, the men were rising, and Groa got up, too, signing Lulach towards her. ‘Then tomorrow,’ Groa said, ‘should provide a useful experience, should it not, for both of them?’

The wedding between King Harald of Norway and Thorberg Arnason’s daughter was marked by a feast in the royal hall at Nidarós that lasted three days and three nights.

True, that of the King’s other wife Ellisif had gone on for a month, but the Greek style of worship was different, and the Grand Duke Jaroslav had in any case two other daughters whose gifts he wished to impress upon bystanders.

In the course of it, as predicted, the King of Norway and the King of Alba met for the first time face to face and discovered that, unique for each, their eye-level was the same.

‘Ah,’ said the King of Norway, standing before the High Seat in Magnús’s old timber hall by St Olaf’s. ‘The Earl of Orkney, I believe. Had your nephew killed you, I was going to marry my great-niece your widow.’

‘Indeed,’ said Thorfinn, ‘I expected it.’ He bowed to the bride, a thickset, freckled girl covered with jewels, who smiled broadly in return. ‘In fact,’ said Thorfinn, ‘your great-niece my wife was studying Russian until the very last moment. I have brought a trifle for you both as a memento of … Orkney. We are honoured to be under your roof.’

That was all, for others were waiting. Afterwards, Thora and her mother Ragnhild got to the storehouse where the gifts were guarded and found Thorfinn’s chest and had it unshackled.

Inside was a woven gold headdress, and a silk over-robe of many different colours, embroidered with pearls. Ragnhild said, ‘We must show this to Harald at once.’

‘No! I shall wear it!’ said Thora. ‘Today the silk robe from my husband, and tomorrow the gift of my cousin’s husband of Orkney.’

‘Are you a fool?’ said her mother. ‘Have you listened to nothing I told you? He is the King of Alba, not merely the Orkney husband of your cousin, and this is sent to remind you. Harald’s silk robe was Greek. This is from Cathay. Harald’s jewels were set by Byzantine craftsmen. This headdress is Saracen.
Such a gift brings with it a message.
I have gold. I have a fleet. I have rich friends on the Continent
. We must show this to Harald at once.’

‘
Then
may I wear it?’ said Thora.

Her mother gazed at her. ‘He will either rip it to tatters,’ she observed, ‘or he will have you wear it at once. Perhaps you can influence him one way or another, if it means so much to you. You are his wife. If you don’t listen to me, still instinct must count for something.’

Then the contests began.

Seated with the rest round the wide, grassy space beside the half-finished church, Groa said to her husband, ‘The dress Thora is wearing. Isn’t that the one you gave her yesterday?’

‘Yes,’ said Thorfinn.

Since Rognvald, things were different with him. Groa waited, and then said, ‘You thought she might not put it on. It means that Harald has taken no offence?’

‘It means,’ Thorfinn said, ‘either that your cousin Thora surprised him last night, or that I am going to have to fight my way through half these contests.’

Then the horse-battle came to an end and a shadow stood over them, belonging to a man of King Harald’s sent to suggest that the Kings should try the first throw in the wrestling-match.

Thorfinn stood up, and Groa jumped to her feet.

‘She didn’t surprise him,’ she said. ‘Shall I go and sit by her?’

Thorfinn surveyed her. ‘I shall fight for my throne,’ he said, ‘if I must. But pay for it with the customs of my marriage-bed I cannot yet bring myself to do. If you give her any news that will make Harald’s pleasures one iota stronger or sweeter, I shall divorce you and buy in four concubines.’

Finn Arnason, waiting for her to sit down again, wondered why his daughter was laughing so much, and then wished she were closer, for he thought, before she lifted her hand to her cheek, that he saw the glitter of tears on it.

The wrestling was the first of the contests between the two Kings. Challenged or challenger, each of them fought in every competition that followed, on that afternoon and the next, and men said that, in all the time kings had been married or buried in their day, Trøndelagen had never seen anything like it.

Because it was sport and not war, the trials were reasonably short and the weapons were reasonably blunted. It did not prevent men being hurt, or even being killed, but it helped one family take its prejudices out on another without being called to law for it, and it made men merry, and it beggared some and made others rich men for life with the wagers.

The Kings were not immune. At the end of the first day, after exercise with spear and axe and sword, with horse and with bow, Thorfinn’s dark skin, when he pulled off his tunic, was suffused with weals and bloody contusions, and the King of Norway, smeared with unguents by his loving bride, alarmed her by lying back on the mattress and smiling in quite a new way from
between the long flaxen moustaches that lay with his beard on the blond, matted fur of his chest.

‘Tonight,’ said King Harald, ‘I am tired; and you will do all the work.’

By that time, it was already clear that, physically, the two Kings were equally matched. And the following day, although they still took part in all the games that took place, it was apparent that no dramatic conquest was about to take place and neither King was going to help his reputation one way or another by continuing. Then, after the feast, King Harald challenged the King of Alba, in public, to a game at the tables, with dice.

It had been a long banquet, and the women had already been given leave to retire, including, at length, the bride Thora, who today had displayed all the lethargy that men had come to admire in a consort of Harald’s. Groa said, ‘Shall I stay?’

‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘And take your father away.’

She smiled, her hand hard on his shoulder. ‘What are you gambling for?’

‘Nothing small, you may be sure,’ Thorfinn said. The tone of his voice said something, and she answered it with her hand and smiled again, leaving.

The quarrel broke out very much later, when there were only a hundred or so men left in the hall, all of them Harald’s and most of them drunk.

Drunkest of all, you would say, was King Harald himself, whose great frame, through all the evening, had been dealt horn after horn of French wine, followed, as his taste started to blur, with ale from the casks in the corner.

An ordinary man would have succumbed. Harald would pick up the dice, throw them, and call; then, lurching out to the yard to make water, would plunge himself bodily into some trough and take his place five minutes later, hair and beard streaming like straw, water pooling the floor and the board from the squelching remains of his finery.

The last time, standing holding the bench, he put up his hand, swearing, and ripped the clogged silk from his shoulders and chest, down to the underlinen over his hips. Then, stepping out of the mess, he sat down, naked but for his leggings and ankle-boots, and looked at Thorfinn.

‘What are you afraid to show, cousin?’ he said. ‘The knife you have under there, or the tool you haven’t?’

Thorfinn looked up, the coin-brown eyes sparkling under the bar of his brow. He said, ‘It is, of course, the privilege of a host to ask his guests to strip, whatever their sex. However, the fire is burning low. And I would point out that, although the game is exciting, I am not yet wet.’

Thorir of Steig, a cousin of Harald’s, bent over Thorfinn and said, ‘The King sits naked before you. Where are your manners, that you keep on your coat?’

Thorfinn looked round. ‘Alas!’ he said. ‘Are you telling me of a new custom? You must forgive me. It has not yet reached the hovels of Orkney. When the King strips, we all strip. Cousin Harald, there are a hundred men of yours here. Where shall we all put our clothes, to be sure of finding them in the morning?’

No one moved. Behind Thorfinn, Ulf Ospaksson, Harald’s marshal, put a
finger and thumb of each hand to the top of his royal guest’s collar. Thorfinn said, ‘In any case, there are more important things to speak about. The King has been cheating.’

Then, men moved.

Thorfinn looked round. He said drily, ‘In Norway, it seems, there are good grounds for suspecting a man who will not take off his clothing.’

Harald watched him. Thorfinn stood, shaking off the grip at his collar, and around him steel moved and sparkled. Thorfinn lifted his hands and slowly and carefully took off his tasselled jacket, and the belt and light tunic under, and his linen. He said, ‘Although I have a bow and arrow in each, I should like to keep my boots on.’ He waited, and when Harald jerked his head, he sat down. He wore, it could be seen, a bracelet on each arm.

Thorfinn said, ‘Now I shall say it again. Your dice are doctored.’

‘I find this tedious,’ King Harald said. ‘And the sight of you is not as amusing as I thought it would be. You won the second game with dice of your own choosing, and I did not complain. Either you finish this match or you cede Orkney to me in any case. Choose.’

‘Why trouble to finish the match?’ Thorfinn said. ‘Prove to me that your dice are fair, and you can have Orkney now.’

Harald rose to his feet. Browned by the suns of the Middle Sea, his skin bore upon it the white scars of all the long years of his fighting, and in the set of his head you could see, without being told, the strength of physique and of character that had made him the greatest of the Varangian chiefs. He said, ‘I have been insulted enough in my own hall. A guest may miscall my honour once, or even twice, if he is related. The third time, he forfeits his immunity.’

‘Very well,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Provided that, before I am struck down, you appoint one of your men to make public test of your dice before anyone leaves. You have won the Tróndelagers by your marriage. Show them that they can also trust you to lead them in truth and in justice.’