King Hereafter (4 page)

‘Go on, then,’ said the boy. ‘Find another minor to dry-nurse. Find another land full of heirs to be thinned out. There’s Rognvald out there. He needs someone to wipe his nose. Look at him.’

The yellow-haired boy, noticed at last, took a step over the threshold. Tears still ran from the peerless blue eyes over the flawless skin. Losing grip suddenly of his temper, Thorkel said to Rognvald, ‘And what’s wrong with you?’

The son of Earl Brusi shut his lips, and his breath mewed behind them. He said, ‘Are you going?’

‘Yes, we’re going,’ said Thorkel shortly. ‘If you’ve lost your father, go to Thord Foleson and ask.’

Earl Brusi’s son gave a great sob and then shut his lips again. ‘My father’s going without me,’ he said. ‘He’s going home to Orkney without me.’

In the silence, the shouts of the men at the wharves came quite clearly. Then Thorkel Amundason moved and, taking the youngster by the arm, led him gently into the room. There, one hand on his shoulder, he studied him. ‘But why, Rognvald? Why would your father leave Norway without you?’

The pink lips trembled. ‘Because the King says he has to. He says that if Father will be his good friend in Orkney, he can have the third share … King Olaf’s share … the share that uncle Einar left to him. So Father will have two-thirds of Orkney, and I am to stay here as hostage. I don’t want to live in Norway,’ said Rognvald; and the tears ran from his eyes to his chin.

Kneeling, Thorkel smiled and took out his kerchief. ‘You don’t want your father to be a great Earl of Orkney?’ he said. ‘You don’t want to grow up to be a fine war-leader and King Olaf’s right-hand man? A brave young man like you?’

He knew, without looking, that Thorfinn had opened the door and walked out, his footsteps marching down to the waterside. He had time to wipe the child’s eyes and begin another reassuring, sensible sentence before his cousin Kalv’s voice said, from the doorway, ‘Ah. I was looking for some lost property. I see it has found its way to the right market. So, my dear Thorkel, are you changing your mind? You would like to stay with us in Norway?’

‘If it’s safe,’ Thorkel said. He straightened slowly. ‘And if, of course, you will have me.’

‘Oh, it’s safe enough,’ said Kalv airily. ‘Provided you don’t say very much and seem humble. Safer than it would be for your former menacing little nurseling. He’d be advised to get off while his skin’s whole.’

‘He’s gone to embark,’ Thorkel said. ‘Don’t you notice how quiet it’s become? They’ll be killing a sheep for him in Moray in a couple of days.’

Kalv was staring at him. The child, taking the kerchief from his fingers,
blew his nose in it. Kalv said, ‘You mean Moray in Alba, his mother’s new home? Did he tell you he was going there?’

Thorkel Amundason put his hand on the golden head of the ten-year-old. ‘He didn’t need to,’ he said. ‘The whole stupid scheme was probably the ruler of Moray’s in the first place. Findlaech. His mother’s third husband. The first thing that boy Thorfinn will do in Moray is berate his stepfather for advising him wrongly.’

Kalv’s mouth had opened as well. He said at last, ‘Well, Finn was right. You and the boy are a pair to keep clear of. You’ve been with your foster-son ever since Sparbu. You were bear-leading him off and on for seven years before that. And he didn’t tell you what happened before he left Alba?’

Thorkel looked down at the child Rognvald. ‘Go outside,’ he said. ‘Go outside. I’ll come in a minute.’ And to Kalv, ‘What, then?’

Kalv’s face was rosy with pleasure. ‘The boy’s stepfather Findlaech was burned alive in his hall by two nephews,’ he said. ‘Thorfinn escaped with his life. Everyone else he knew died except the widow his mother, who was away at the time. The older of the murdering nephews is now ruling Moray and, of course, won’t let Thorfinn’s mother come back.

‘Your Thorfinn has not only lost the lordship of his share of Orkney. He’s lost his stepfather’s Moray as well. All he has on the mainland is Caithness, with his two cousins prowling the frontiers.…

‘That was why the boy fled here to Norway. To escape his cousins. And to try and claw half of Orkney out of Brusi his brother before people learned that he didn’t have Moray behind him.

‘We thought you had him trained to your heel,’ said Kalv amiably. ‘But I see times change. And this one is prettier.’

Because the tide had not yet turned, the longship with the boy Thorfinn of Orkney aboard did not put to sea as soon as she was loaded, but rode at the jetty while the provisions were properly stowed and the crewmen settled and the merchants and seamen took each other’s measure. She was not an Orkney ship: merely a cargo vessel with a passage for sale. The boy, invisible beside the prow dragon, had not expected Thorkel to come himself to take off his luggage. When the smooth voice addressed him, he went white and got up slowly.

Thorkel’s face was square as a four-cornered table. ‘Lord,’ he said. ‘The King has laid on me a blood-fine to pay you.’

The black hair, tufted and burned, shook in the wind. ‘The Earl Brusi you must pay,’ the boy said. ‘For Earl Einar’s death you owe me nothing. I have told you. You may go.’

Thorkel’s cloak stirred; and his hair; and his beard; but he did not move. ‘The law requires,’ he said, ‘that a blood-fine be paid. If you do not wish the King’s will to be done, you must impose one of your own. The King said that I might return to Orkney freely and enjoy all my possessions.’

‘You may,’ said the boy. ‘If you want to.’ It was a girl’s voice. But the contempt in it was a man’s. He sat down on his sea chest again.

‘I want to,’ said Thorkel. ‘But, whatever you think, I am not a man who serves two masters. Therefore, since you dismiss me, I cannot go home.’

‘Then serve Brusi,’ the boy said. ‘He has two-thirds of Orkney. There must be a living for you in that.’ His colour had changed again. But the brows, in a straight line, had not altered.

‘My father did not set me to serve Brusi,’ Thorkel said. ‘He set me to serve where I am neither liked nor am I trusted. My task is to serve you. I would finish it.’

‘You don’t want to stay in Norway?’ said the boy. ‘I have come into a fortune suddenly? What have you heard?’

‘That you saw Findlaech your stepfather burn,’ Thorkel said, ‘when I was not there to help you.’

In public,
the boy
was what Thorkel Amundason called his foster-son, for only thus could he contain the knowledge that in this child was something he could neither outguess nor control.

Now he saw it confirmed yet again, in the willpower that would not break down into weeping, although the boy’s mouth became small and the narrow throat twisted with effort. Thorkel Amundason said, ‘Thorfinn, Grown men grieve for their kindred.’

Perversely, it worked, in that the boy plunged into speech. After a moment, he even dragged his voice into its usual pitch, although he breathed as if he had been running. He said, ‘I mean to have Orkney. I mean to see my cousins burn as Findlaech mac Ruaidhrí burned. I shall see King Olaf into his grave before I become any man’s vassal for what is mine, ever again.… What are you saying? Instead of the King, I must tell you what the blood-fine for my brother is to be?’

‘You have the right,’ Thorkel said. ‘If you tell me never to come to Orkney again, I will obey you.’

He could see the boy’s eyes, a dense and violent brown, trying to read him. Thorkel took a step closer and, with formality, knelt at his foster-child’s feet. ‘When you give a punishment, you must give it quickly,’ he said.

‘But mine is a very slow punishment,’ Earl Sigurd’s youngest son said. ‘To come with me to Orkney. To defend the land as I shall do. To stay and serve me, and to obey me so long as we both are in life. Is that too much to ask?’

Long ago, this had been Thorkel’s own dream. To be a wise and powerful counsellor, admired of princes, at the side of a willing and dutiful foster-son.

It was no surprise, now, to find the dream had reversed. He said, ‘If you want it.’

‘I need you,’ said the boy. It was a cry of anger, not one of appeal. A cry born of a wave of frustration and fury that made him jump to his feet so that only skilful handling brought Thorkel Amundason upright also, and out of his way.

‘For I am not grown yet,’ said the boy. ‘How long, how long before I am grown? And I make blunder upon blunder and mistake after mistake.… Why don’t you stop me? You are a man. Make me think like a man. Make me act like a man. That is what I want you for.’

Nothing warned either of them, standing among the barrels and packs.

Moved by something he did not understand, Thorkel Amundason said, ‘My lord, whatever you have need of, I shall try to find it for you.’

ND
that
,’ said Kalv Arnason for the sixth time, ‘is a bargain you must wish you had never made.’

He said it every year on his summer voyage when he saw his cousin Thorkel in Caithness. Sometimes, mercifully, Thorkel was elsewhere on the concerns of his stewardship: engaging tribute from here; putting a spoke in a blood-feud there; judging, correcting, advising. He had three good men to help him, and a body of housecarls, in case affairs took him south, within sight of the green lands of Moray in Alba, and a hunting party of Thorfinn’s cousins showed signs of interest. Thorkel had no wish to be burned alive in his lodging like Findlaech, the last ruler of Moray.

This year, he was at Freswick on the east of Caithness when Kalv’s fleet moved in past the broch and round Skirza. Thorkel left the big steading and walked to the shore with the Havardson reeve to see the crews settled under canvas, with a welcome of ale and fresh meat and barley cakes.

This was, naturally, why Kalv always stopped in the first place: it was a staging-post on the long voyage from Norway to the traders in Dublin. On the way out with the east wind, Kalv would lay down an offering of sealskins or soapstone or amber. On the way back with the west wind, it might be a jar of good wine, if he felt generous.

But seldom money. That, he used to say, was for his traders to worry about. He supplied the ships, and he protected them: what would he do with money at Egge? If he wanted some good Irish slaves or a sword, the traders would find them for him.

Somewhere at Egge, Thorkel was inclined to think, must be a stout wooden chest crammed with thin silver pennies and hacksilver.

There were eight merchants this time, including a man Thorkel knew well, married to one of Kalv’s sisters. Kalv had also brought Siward, a nephew of his young wife’s whom Thorkel had never met, and who looked quarrelsome.

Kalv was carrying, as a guest-gift, some of the finest beaver skins Thorkel had ever seen. Praising them, Thorkel placed them on a swept space on the
hall floor. The next time he looked, Kalv’s nephew, leaning back, had stretched out his heels on them.

Thorkel raised his eyebrows. Kalv, swearing, leaned forward and hooked out the bundle so that his nephew nearly slid after it. Siward sat sharply up. Although uncle and nephew, there was not much to choose between them in age; but whereas Kalv was spry and sinewy, Siward was built like a bullock. Then one of the prettier serfs put down a platter of pork, and Siward swung his knees in and stretched like a bow for the ale-horn.

Under cover of the eating and talk, Kalv said, ‘So your foster-son is away. I am astonished. Now,
that
—’

‘—is a bargain I must wish I had never made. When I decide to leave to fight Saracens, I shall let you know, Kalv, in time for your next year’s arrangements. Naturally, the boy is away every summer. So are you.’

‘On business,’ said Kalv. ‘What is
his
business? He should be learning to rule.’

The nephew Siward lifted a loaf and pulled it apart. ‘According to gossip,’ he said, ‘Thorfinn’s brother Earl Brusi is doing the ruling while Thorfinn roves about, spending his taxes. What’s wrong? Has he fallen in love with his suit of rings and his axe? He does still own a third of Orkney, doesn’t he?’

Thorkel Amundason shrugged and, smiling, passed him more bread. ‘He likes adventure,’ he said. It was true. Young men did fall in love with fighting. It was truer to say that Thorfinn’s love affair had been with the sea ever since, at fourteen, he had got his first longship. Thorkel had no reason to think his foster-son backward in attaining the normal accomplishments with girl-serfs, but it was the vessel
Grágás
he had married.

It was not what Thorkel had foreseen when he saw himself lord in effect of the Orkneys. But he had Caithness and a third of Orkney to rule in the boy’s absence, which for most men would be power enough. Remembering Nídarós, Thorkel said, ‘And what of Rognvald in Norway? Homesick as ever? He must be sixteen.’

‘Homesick?’ said Kalv. ‘With every courtman in Norway fighting the next for his favour? Rognvald, let me tell you, is the new Baldur. Cultivate Brusi’s son and you’ll never go wrong. Pity he isn’t a girl. Marry him to Thorfinn, and their son would be master of Orkney.’

‘Under King Olaf,’ said Thorkel.

‘What else?’ said Kalv. His self-importance, as always, was maddening. ‘I had the impression you were under King Olaf at present. The way things are, you’d better stick to him anyway. Canute isn’t content with ruling England and Denmark, that’s obvious. But for Olaf, you might find Canute overrunning Norway and the whole of Alba as well, right up to your Caithness frontiers and beyond, if he felt like it. And your uncle-burning neighbours in Moray won’t stop him. The story goes that they’ve paid Canute homage already.