King Hereafter (56 page)

From that, some men never returned, and most of the rest, including Thorfinn, brought back gashes of some sort, from their own spears and tridents or another’s.

This time, he dealt with his ripped forearm himself, and she only found out about it the following night. Throughout, he made nothing of what was happening, and neither, grimly, did she; for she understood all the reasons. For most of the time, she knew, he was more sober than he appeared; for some of the time, against his intention, he was not; and that was a danger no one could protect him from except himself. For Rognvald, never quite sober, never quite incapable, was ready to turn to his own ends every weakness.

So, during the horse-play after the feast, when the whale-oil had been casked and put into store to bring winter’s light and good silver for all their hard work, Earl Rognvald found out his aunt, his beautiful aunt who was four years younger than he was, and dragged her into the capering circle round the flute-player and there, before them all, locked her tight in a long, sucking kiss that was broken by Thorfinn’s nudging shoulder and Thorfinn’s heel in the back of the knee, so that before Rognvald knew it, the girl had gone dancing off in her husband’s arms, while he rolled like a fool on the trampled grass of the yard. And when he started after them, a knot of Thorfinn’s men happened to be in his way, and Thorfinn himself and his wife had vanished indoors.

Indoors, Thorfinn locked the door of the room they shared, and turned. Groa said. ‘That was foolish. Or no. The foolishness was mine, for allowing it to happen. You could do nothing else.’

He said, ‘I should never have brought you.’

‘You had to bring me,’ said Groa. ‘He has to accept you, and your kingdom, and your wife. I am not going home.’

Thorfinn said, ‘It will happen again.’ He turned from her and dropped to his heels before the little, scented peat-fire that warmed the room, its blue smoke rising to the wattle and thatch just above them. His interlaced fingers were hard as the wattle.

‘I can stay indoors,’ Groa said. ‘He only wants to provoke you in public’

‘I could handle him without you,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I have to find a way of handling him
with
you as well, or there will be no peace. I can’t go south and do what I have to do with all this vindictiveness let loose behind me. If I am to rule at all, I have to tame him. If I can’t tame him …’

‘You have to kill him,’ said Groa. ‘That is what Thorkel Fóstri told you, isn’t it?’

‘Thorkel Fóstri’s solutions,’ said Thorfinn, getting up, ‘all tend to a certain uniformity. The sons of Muspell cannot be expected to solve every problem. If I set my men to guard you, it will look either as if I am afraid of him or that I cannot trust you. On the other hand, there are some fairly fierce beldames in Sandwick and Skeggbjarnarstead, as I remember. If you were surrounded by these, it would make it a little harder for Rognvald to get at you.’

‘But might look equally as if you didn’t trust me?’ Groa said.

He looked at her. ‘You would rather have Rognvald than the old women?’

‘Infinitely,’ Groa said gravely, and waited as, with equal gravity, he crossed to where she was sitting.

They had reached no conclusions, for there was nothing in the situation that they did not know already, and if there was a way out, it was not at present obvious. He had troubles enough. And her role was not to discuss them, but to help him escape from them.

It took a week to prove them both wrong. A week to realise that, whatever Rognvald’s intentions had been before, now they were perfectly plain. Vicious sport was no longer enough to take the edge off his hunger. Now he wanted to kill.

Every day, Groa watched Thorfinn leave for his rounds, his councils, his hunting, his feasting, and every night when he returned, the sound of his voice on the threshold brought the tears of relief to her closed eyes. After a week of it, she took half a dozen men and her sledge and her horses and went to Thorkel Fóstri at Sandwick.

Since his wound at Loch Vatten, his leg would stiffen at times, as it had done this last week, and instead of watching over his foster-son, as he had done all his life, Thorkel Fóstri had to sit at the fire listening to his women quarrelling over the spinning, and cuffing the latest brat or two out of the way, until the pain and his bad temper lifted and he could get back to the boy’s side again. The boy whose destiny he once had thought he had in his hand. The boy he used to curse for his presumption, and whom he had nearly abandoned for Rognvald.

The years had taught him their lesson. He had reared Thorfinn, but had not had the making of him. And time had brought Thorfinn other friends. He had learned to accept them, as he had learned to come to terms with the girl, the beguiling girl who had taken for herself that part of Thorfinn’s inner thoughts that his foster-father had never had.

So that it was with no bitterness towards her but only anxiety that he heard her out, and then said, ‘You are right. It must not go on. It can only end fatally if it does. You both go home, or you bring it to a head.’

‘I can bring it to a head,’ Groa said. ‘But if I do, they will fight. And Rognvald will fight to the death.’

‘He won’t win,’ said Thorkel Fóstri.

‘You can’t be sure. No one can,’ Groa said. ‘If he doesn’t kill Thorfinn, he could still leave him maimed for life. And if Thorfinn kills him, it may undo all he has spent this devilish winter trying to bring about. He could lose the goodwill of all Rognvald’s men, and Orkney itself, once King Magnús heard about it. Rognvald is Magnús’s foster-brother.’

‘And is that worse,’ Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘than losing your husband, until the day he appears belly up in the sea, buoying a fishing-net? If Rognvald has his way, death in a fair fight is not how Thorfinn will finish.’

For a long time, she was silent. Then she said, ‘Thorfinn thought he could tame him.’

‘It is the Celtic in him,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘You would do well to help him root it out. He thought he could tame Erlend his brother, and would have found out his mistake soon enough, had I not had the good luck to cut off Erlend’s head. No doubt he would have tried to serve Gillacomghain the same way. Would you have been glad if he had?’

She flushed and then lifted her chin. ‘I suppose you may say as much to Thorfinn, if he will let you. I do not think you have the right to say it to me.’

‘No,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘You are right. He needed a woman: I had not realised it. And, as it has turned out, he could have found none better.’

‘On the other hand,’ said Groa thoughtfully, ‘if he had spared Gillacomghain, he might not now be having such trouble with Rognvald. So it is hard to know, isn’t it, which of us is at fault?’

He was being played with, by a girl, as once long ago he in his turn had amused himself with his cousin Kalv Arnason. He began to be angry, and then came to his senses and smiled. He said, ‘I never met an Arnmødling lacking in courage. Will you do it, then? When? I will come back tomorrow, if they have to lay me on the sledge.’

‘Yes. Come back,’ said Groa. ‘We shall both need all the help we can get.’

In the event, she had to do nothing, for Rognvald caught her after sundown one afternoon as they were travelling in torch-lit cavalcade from Birsay to Orphir.

They had been later setting out than they intended, but the snow was not deep and the ground hard and good for the horses and the sledges packed with their possessions, for they would be at Orphir for three weeks at least before
moving on. With them were all of the hird who were not in Caithness, as were Sinna and her young sons: perhaps fifty riders in all. And with Groa in the sledge were three of her women.

They had passed Isbister when they saw the dancing flares to the east, beyond Beaquoy, which grew larger and plainer and lit, finally, the faces of Rognvald and a great party, come from the east mainland, to command his uncle Thorfinn’s hospitality at Orphir for one night, or perhaps more.

The hall at Orphir was big, and there was food in plenty. Also, having belonged to Earl Einar, the lands of Orphir, strictly speaking, fell within Rognvald’s claim, although he preferred, it seemed, to see his uncle there meantime, rather than in his stronghold of Birsay. Thorfinn therefore acceded, agreeably enough, and the two parties fell into line and picked up a gay, jogging pace while the sound of voices and laughter and the jingle of horse-harness fled with their shadows over the sparkling night-fields of snow, and Rognvald edged his horse to trot by Groa’s big sledge. ‘And greetings to my lady aunt,’ he observed. ‘I heard that your husband had tied you to the stock of the bed lest you and I continued our half-finished business.’

Groa looked up. The winter-fair face looking down at her, with the coils of yellow-gold hair straying over his furs, had the bloom of beauty that Rognvald never lost, no matter what he might do, and the torchlight danced in his eyes. He said, ‘I suppose there is no room in the sledge for a nephew?’

The sledge she had chosen was one of the largest they had, drawn by two good horses, with a man from Buckquoy riding one of them. ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Groa; and the next moment, laughing, he had flung his reins to his own nearest man and, kicking his feet free of the stirrups, had vaulted lightly down among them as the sledge sped beside him. The runners dug into the snow, and it swerved, causing the rider ahead to look back. Groa raised a hand to reassure him, and then made room for Rognvald beside her. He put an arm round the fur of her cloak and smiled; and she said, ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

His smile broadened. ‘How disappointing,’ he said. ‘I wanted to kiss you. But let me guess. Thorfinn is frightened, and has asked you to beg for him?’

The women were staring at them. ‘Is it likely?’ said Groa.

‘Then,’ said Rognvald, ‘it must be, after all, that your wishes and mine are the same. Why do we need to go to Orphir? Tell your driver to turn east.’

‘We are going to Orphir,’ Groa said. ‘And on the way there, I am going to address you like an aunt. What are you thinking of? I would not allow a child of mine to behave the way you do. Here you are, at thirty-two Earl of Orkney, with silver and ships and men to follow you, and you think of nothing but wasting Thorfinn’s time and your own with this stupid feud. You hold two-thirds of Orkney, which in my view is twice as much as you should have, but Thorfinn has not tried to take it away from you, as he very well might have done.

‘He has not tried to harm you. If you left him alone, he would be where he ought to be, looking after his lands in the south, and you would be able to order your life as you please, with no rival in Orkney but Thorfinn’s steward
here in the west. What is the sense in trying to injure each other? Either you lose your life or, if you succeed in killing him, you make yourself hated by all his people, and lose your sport anyway.’

She ended breathlessly, and with some apprehension, which she hoped was not obvious. She had had no idea he would let her speak without interruption, but he had been silent, smiling, all the way through.

Now his dimple became deeper still. ‘As you say. I should lose my sport—some of it. But I should gain the whole of Orkney, shouldn’t I—and a great deal more, as stepfather of your two little sons?’

He had slipped his hand, still smiling, under the rug that covered their laps. She thought her responses were quick, but she had barely flinched when there was a sudden crack and Rognvald, with a hiss, snatched back his bared fingers. Unna, the oldest of her three women, smoothed the rug again over their knees and sat back, her silver knife-case gripped still in one hand. Rognvald, staring at her, had lifted his arm.

‘You are going to strike an old woman, are you, Rognvald?’ said Groa. ‘Your men will burst with pride. And do you really expect me to believe that any of this has to do with me, or with my sons, or with Orkney?’

‘Fortunately,’ Rognvald said, ‘in this world, women have only one simple function, and what they believe or do not believe is of no importance to anyone. I have decided to take you to the east mainland. Tell your driver and the women to get out, or I will throw them out.’

The sledge slowed. ‘They are going to get out anyway,’ Groa said. All around her, men were drawing rein and the other sledges, too, were running down to a halt. Ahead, the night had become brilliant with fire: a ring of flares ended beside a vast bonfire that lit the low walls and barns and sleeping-quarters and drink-hall of a big steading. ‘And so am I. And so are you. The Loch of Stenness has frozen, and the family at Brodgar have invited us to an ice-feast. No doubt,’ said Groa, ‘they would welcome you, but if you do not care for it, there is no reason why you should not ride straight on to Orphir.’

For a moment, she thought he would try to force the sledge out; but by now it was safely surrounded. Rognvald said, ‘You knew, of course, that we were nearly at Stenness when you asked me to join you. How prudish you are. And of course it won’t save you in the end, or your grotesque bedfellow. I will stay.’

And then Thorfinn was beside her, and lifting her out, and did not leave her all through the feasting.

At the end, when the big, savoury cauldron on the fire was nearly empty, and the horns had been filled and refilled from the vat, the others bound the polished bones on to their boots and pushed off on to the loch with their double sticks.

Rognvald was among them, and all his men, on skate-bones lent from the household. Watching them skim flashing past the flares as the bat-games and the races began, you remembered the years he had spent in Russia. The men he had with him now were his own special hird, who, like himself, had fled from King Olaf’s death-battle to Jaroslav’s court in Novgorod.

Like him, they had thrown off their furs, and the bright-dyed stuff of their jackets glowed and dimmed like fruit on a vine as they amused themselves after the contests, weaving and interweaving across the white field of the lake that vanished west into darkness while, to the north, high on the ridge between lakes, the great ring of monoliths whose makers’ race had known Wessex and Brittany, too, lent its nearer stones now and then to familiar fires.