King Hereafter (64 page)

‘Whose foundry?’ said Groa. She sat up. ‘Crinan’s? Crinan had a furnace at Dunkeld? Who was he striking for?’

‘Anyone who would pay him. Norway, I expect,’ Thorfinn said. ‘It was in the stone building they used to keep books in. You could smell the hot metal from the waterside. I sent some men to look about while I was talking to him. It’s common enough, of course, for a monastery to melt down its offerings, but this was something much more. And these things are hard to keep quiet.’

‘And now?’ Groa said.

‘I shall complain to the Archbishop of York, and to Earl Siward, and to King Edward, and much good it will do me. I shall have a long talk with the Bishop at Kinrimund. And from somewhere I shall find a new abbot for Dunkeld, which brings me up against a whole field of thistles whose traversing I had hoped to postpone until my other tenures were a little more secure. I don’t know my sons and I hardly know my wife, these days. Are you sick of me?’ said Thorfinn suddenly.

‘Yes,’ said Groa. ‘That is why I am sitting here listening to you, instead of lying in Rognvald’s arms.’

Till she was better, they could do nothing but talk, and she knew it was hard for him, and that he was thinking aloud now for that reason as much as any other. But then she smiled up at him, unthinking, and the candles wavered; and from standing he had laid himself silently at her feet, with his head resting, heavy and warm, against her knees. She touched his hair, as he had touched Lulach’s, and moved her fingers through and through its thick softness.

She said, ‘I had some news from Kalv. He has been receiving messages from my father. The Grand Duke of Kiev has given one of his daughters in marriage to Harald, St Olaf’s half-brother. And there are rumours that, after fifteen years of fighting the Saracens, Harald is about to cross back from Russia and claim a share of the throne from King Magnús his nephew.’

Beneath her fingers, Thorfinn had become very still. Then he gave a sound that might have been a laugh. ‘
True prince of the awning of the sun, help the mighty Rognvald
,’ he said. ‘That’s from Arnór’s latest poem. He has invented some splendid pieces, I’m told, in honour of King Magnús as well.’

He moved a little, resting his weight against the side of the bed, and she lifted her fingers. He said, ‘ Arnór’s third cousin is Harald’s marshal. I used to get all my information through him. Does Kalv have any idea what this means?’

‘He’s excited, of course,’ said Groa slowly. ‘It might be good news, or it might be bad. Harald fought at Stiklestad too, although he was only fifteen. He saw Kalv kill his half-brother. But he may need men like Kalv to get back his inheritance.’ She paused, and then said, ‘Kalv will do anything to get back to Egge. You know that.’

‘So that,’ Thorfinn said, ‘if I have to settle the matter of Rognvald, I should do it soon, while King Magnús is concerned about the prospect of dividing his kingdom, and before Harald Sigurdsson arrives and I have to contend with the war-hardened leader of the Varangian guard?’

She said, ‘I can’t tell you what to do.’

She knew he was smiling: something rare, that he kept only for her. She felt, again, the warmth of his head at her knee.

‘
I know
,’ he said, ‘
that it is no nickname to call thee the Ever-Blooming, because of the excellence of thy shape, and because of thy intelligence, and because of thy family. And it is no nickname to call you the Favourite, because thou art the beloved and desired of the men of the whole world, for the splendour and lustre of thy beauty.…
’

He moved from Gaelic to Norse, and she felt the change in him as one stream of blood ran into another. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that you will never tell me what to do about Rognvald. I only weep, as a man, for Rognvald, because when I have done it, he will not have you waiting, as have I, to carry his head on your knee.’

Towards the end of August, there arrived off the island of Westray in Orkney two strongly manned ships led by Thorkel Fóstri, the King’s foster-father.

The last time Thorfinn had sent a messenger to his nephew Rognvald, the messenger had returned tied to a sledge with his hands cut off, and nearly dead from an old, hairy cloak bound tightly over his face.

This time, Thorkel Fóstri said what he had to say with fifty axemen behind him and more on the shore. It was Earl Rognvald’s steward he spoke to, since Earl Rognvald sent word that he was busy, and that if a man sent his nurse instead of coming himself, he could hardly expect another man to do more.

The same steward brought back the reply, half a day later; and Thorkel Fóstri sailed with it to Sannick in Caithness, where Thorfinn had gone to settle a new dispute between Kalv Arnason’s men and the old settlers. There, he took his foster-father to the guest-quarters he was living in and heard him out in silence. At the end:

‘Well,’ said Thorfinn, ‘barring the insults, which are more imaginative than I have heard before, the reply seems to be what we expected. Find Kalv, and we shall tell him about it.’

As was to be expected, on being told the news, Kalv became extremely disturbed. His face became as red as his hair still was in places, and his hand wiped at his belt where his axe used to be. He said, ‘I want you to tell me again. You have sent demanding of Rognvald the third of Orkney that King Magnús elected to give him, and since, naturally, Rognvald refused, you have begun to raise an army to take it?’

‘You have it,’ said the King. ‘Although I doubt very much if the army will ever see action. Rognvald’s men at least will be very aware that he has only the resources of two-thirds of Orkney to fight me with, if as much, whereas I have all Caithness and Moray and the Western Isles, with as many from Alba as I might coax to follow me.’

‘Alba?’ snapped Kalv. ‘Alba won’t fight Orkney battles for you, and you’re a fool if you think so.’

‘I don’t,’ said the King mildly. ‘But Rognvald’s men are unlikely to realise it.’

‘So,’ said Kalv. ‘You expect Rognvald to give up his uncle’s land without a murmur and sit tamely in Westray while you take the southern isles and East Hrossey from him? He won’t, you know. You know what he’ll do? He’ll complain to Magnús of Norway, who is sitting over there biting his nails to think of an excuse to invade us. It’s the end of you, and of me.’

‘If Magnús wants war, then I agree with you,’ said the King. ‘But does he? The attacks on Denmark were costly. And although he may guess that Alba won’t fight my battles, he can’t be sure what England would do. Also, he may
need all his resources if there is to be a quarrel over his own kingdom. It seems very likely that Harald Sigurdsson is on his way back.’

‘Guesswork,’ said Kalv. ‘You’re laying down cheese at a bear-hole.’

‘It may therefore turn out,’ said the King, ‘that Rognvald will be persuaded to make the best of things and go back and settle in Norway, where his foster-brother the King may well have need of him. Does that not seem likely?’

‘No,’ said Kalv rudely. ‘And from the look on cousin Thorkel’s face, he doesn’t think so either. It’s a pity he’s afraid to say so. I never thought, when I saw him beat you for your mistakes, that one day I would watch him licking your boots while you made them.’

‘Indeed,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Now you come to mention it, my boots were remarkably clean on the day you came begging for shelter. I know what Thorkel Fóstri thinks about this. I know the dangers. The matters you point out have all been thought of. If you dislike my way of doing things, you have only to move out of my guest-quarters.’

Kalv got up. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It is easy to insult a man who is down on his luck. There is valour in that, and all the good breeding that mixed blood is noted for. You are saying, I take it, that either I fight Norway for you or starve.’

‘If I fight Norway and lose,’ said Thorfinn agreeably, ‘then you may discover a fate worse than starving, for if King Magnús changes his mind, still Harald Sigurdsson may find it hard to overlook what you did to his brother. That is for you to decide. I have not asked you to fight for me, nor, if I ever do, shall I abuse you in any way if you refuse me. That is because you are an Arnason, and because of your niece my wife and your cousin Thorkel Fóstri, whose kinship you may well be thankful for. I think we have finished what we have to say to one another.’

Throughout this speech, Kalv’s chest moved up and down, and it was not at all clear that he shared this opinion. At the end, he stood in silence for more than a moment, without replying. Then he turned on his heel and walked out.

‘So?’ said Thorkel Fóstri.

‘So now we watch,’ said the King his foster-son. ‘And see if Rognvald sends to Norway or goes there himself. And then we watch to see who or what comes back. And meantime we pray—should we write to Sulien?—we pray that Harald Sigurdsson arrives very soon in his nephew’s kingdom of Norway and proves to be as rich and as aggressive and as belligerent as report makes him out to be.’

‘He may be so much all these things,’ Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘that he sails to help Rognvald at the head of a war-fleet.’

‘True,’ said the King. ‘In which case I have made a serious mistake. And it is wholly your fault for not having beaten me sufficiently.’

For four weeks, Earl Rognvald made no move, and Thorfinn remained in the north, waiting. Then, as autumn moved towards winter, four longships left
the harbour at H
fn and set sail on the west wind for Norway. Leading them was the flagship, with Rognvald aboard.

Reporting, Thorkel Fóstri was matter-of-fact.

‘He has dismantled his halls and taken the hird. You could walk into the whole of Orkney at this moment, if you wanted. The story is that he has gone to ask Magnús for an army.’

‘And do his people think Rognvald will get it?’ asked the King. He had been interviewing two of his men from the south all that morning, and Thorkel Fóstri knew that there was trouble in Alba. But it couldn’t be helped. He said, ‘Magnús has the men to spare. And there is no sign of his uncle coming as yet. Report has it that Magnús will try to persuade Rognvald to settle in Norway, but that Rognvald sets too much store on this feud to agree.’

He stopped, eyeing Thorfinn. ‘He’s a brave man, I’ll say that for him. He could do nothing against you with only the men he has in Orkney. So he threw everything he possessed into the game. Orkney abandoned, in the hope that when he returns, it will be with the whole of Norway behind him.’

‘The winds will be against him now,’ Thorfinn said.

‘Oh, he won’t come back this side of winter,’ said his foster-father. ‘By the spring, we should know what is happening. Not all my cousins are sitting here at your table.’

‘I’m not sure whom to thank for that,’ Thorfinn said, ‘but I do, every day. I must depend on you, as with everything else, for that warning. And meantime it is a matter of ships and more ships.’

‘You hold to that?’ Thorkel said. ‘You won’t move into Orkney? You could win them over, in a winter.’

‘They would fight to the death for me, I am sure,’ Thorfinn said. ‘So would the people of Caithness and parts further south, excluding, of course, Kalv and his kinsmen. I prefer, if an army is coming, that it makes no landings at all. Or, if I can’t prevent that, at least Rognvald should meet no resistance in his share of Orkney, and little in mine, if I am not there. Next to losing Orkney, it would be short-sighted to turn it into a desert.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘There is a great deal to be said for the long view, provided that it won’t take three generations to show the returns for it. I’m getting old. I’m fifty.’

‘You are fortunate,’ Thorfinn said.

There followed a winter that none of Thorfinn’s household took lightly, although he himself showed nothing of either concern or apprehension, but merely expended on Alba the torrent of energy that had been pent up in the north through the autumn.

With him moved his household, including his wife and his stepson Lulach and his older son, who was now eleven; and under the eyes of his young courtmen and his sons, he set about repairing the damage that even a few months of absence had done to his hardly established command of Duncan’s country. They were present at the interview he held in Fife with the Bishop of Alba, from which the Bishop departed sallow of face; and at the boisterous
exchange with Alfgar of Mercia in Cumbria, who had burst in with a tick-bag full of gossip and precious information, indiscriminately mixed.

Always, Groa enjoyed Alfgar’s company, even when the extravagance of his compliments forced her, laughing, to put her hands over her ears; but she envied, too, the equanimity with which Thorfinn sat through the unsparing account of what Swegen of Wessex had done to the Abbess of Leominster before asking, mildly, what the news about Harald Sigurdsson was.

‘He’s still in Russia, so far as I know,’ Alfgar said. ‘Married to Jaroslav’s daughter; but not because her seven brothers would like him in Kiev. If that fellow takes over Norway, England will have to look out. So will you. Unless, of course, you become his vassal for Alba as well as Orkney. That would give everybody something to think about.’

‘Including your father,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Alfgar, to everybody but you, the passing years seem to bring a certain accession of tact. Tell your father that I have no intention of either allying myself with the King of Norway or becoming his vassal for Alba. If I have to, I shall deliver a nod on behalf of Orkney, but no more than a nod. In return, I expect you to tell me if Earl Leofric has been seen hunting from time to time with Earl Siward.’