King Hereafter (139 page)

Sulien said nothing.

Thorfinn said, ‘I am no different. Harald went east to win gold and, when he came back, bought his power with it. I went to Rome to buy, too, what would keep me in power. I even had money. Perhaps I should have built a copy of the Lateran Palace by the sands at the mouth of the Lossie; or another St Mary of the Snows in the bracken by Essie, or even an octagonal baptistry somewhere. I thought it would be foolish.’

Sulien said, ‘Why didn’t you use the men of the north against Siward?’

Thorfinn got up and wandered through to the apse. Then, returning, he stopped at the window. So far, generalities. Afterwards, this was the part that was going to hurt. He said, ‘They might not have come. They might have lost their heads if they did. The division would have been worse afterwards than before.’

‘Did your friends in Alba appreciate that?’ Sulien said.

‘Some of them. For the rest, it worked well enough. I even had some taunts about northmen being afraid to do any fighting.’

‘And that was good?’ Sulien said.

‘No one likes being despised. But it means that they were not thought of as foreign aggressors. And that is something new. Time is all it needs,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Time to make the joins firm. The north, the northwest, and Moray fixed firmly and easily to Alba. And Cumbria and Strathclyde restored the way my grandfather had it, whether under nominal rule from England or not. Three languages, I know. Three cultures, I know. But it can be done.’

‘Yet Duncan gave you the country in two pieces, and now it has fallen in three. Do you regret taking the kingship?’ Sulien said.

Thorfinn turned from the window. He leaned on the wall and folded his arms. ‘Every year, I might have given you a different answer,’ he said. ‘I was fairly sure that if I didn’t take it, I should lose Moray. It seemed possible that I could refuse, however, and hope to live out my life here and in Caithness, and perhaps in Ireland and the west, in the way I had always done, and with Groa. Although my frontier with Alba would always have been at risk, and I should have had a lifetime of sparring with Norway.’

‘You have had that anyway,’ Sulien said.

‘But mostly from a position of strength. As it was, I should have had exactly the life that my father had.’

‘But, instead, you wanted the life of your grandfather?’ Sulien said.

‘I expect so,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Although, at the time, I don’t suppose I should have said so. I think I thought of it as a challenge of a kind I hadn’t yet faced.
Like one of Tuathal’s cryptograms, to which there was an answer, if I thought hard enough.’

‘I remember the mood,’ Sulien said.

‘And you didn’t like it. I remember, as well. But do I regret it now? I don’t know. For a while,’ Thorfinn said, ‘it seemed a good game. Skill against skill, and skill against luck. But with my grandfather, it was mostly mercenaries who were killed.’

‘Luck?’ Sulien said.

‘Or chance. Or the three ladies at the spring of Urd, if you like,’ Thorfinn said. ‘If they choose to be unkind now, there are not so many moves I can make in return.’

‘Your divided country may be an asset there,’ Sulien said. ‘If there is trouble in Alba, you can deal with it, knowing the north lies safe behind you, with two grown heirs and Thorkel Fóstri to guide them, and the fleet nearly restored. Is it Alba where you expect your war to be?’

‘There is war in Alba already,’ he said. ‘War among the people, against themselves. It can’t go on, and I can’t keep the peace with what I have left.’ He paused, and reached a decision. ‘I have asked William of Normandy to hire me an army, and he has agreed.’

No riposte in answer to that, in the lilting Breton voice. It was a relief to have said it aloud. Moving to the nave, Thorfinn opened the heavy door a little, so that warm air drifted in, and he could see the graveyard, rising to the scatter of longhouses further up, and the green hill against the western sky. The unseen sun on his left struck the grave-marker, picking out the brick plumage and the powerful claws of the eagle. Behind him, Sulien said, ‘You think you can control them?’

He shut the door and turned back. ‘I did it with a smaller group,’ he said. ‘Very few of these will want to linger in Alba. Duke William made a pact with the King of France at the end of the year. If Anjou settles, Normandy will be a rich duchy, and it will suit these men to go back and be part of it. All I want are enough men to clear Alba of rebels.’

‘You mean kill them,’ said Sulien. ‘Otherwise, they would come back, once the Normans had gone.’

‘Yes. I mean kill them,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Because of them, the people loyal to me are dying every day and the country is falling to waste.’

‘You have another choice,’ Sulien said. ‘You could reverse your decision of seventeen years ago and be content with your earldom of Orkney and Caithness.’

Thorfinn said, ‘It is not quite the same choice. This time, no King of Alba could afford to let me live.’

Sulien did not speak. No enemy he had ever faced had been as hard as Sulien could be. Thorfinn said, ‘Do you imagine I think about nothing but games?’

Sulien said, ‘You sometimes give that impression.’ He was not smiling. He said, ‘You didn’t ask me why Earl Alfgar asked me to come and see you.’

‘No,’ Thorfinn said. Sitting below him, Sulien had changed his position.
Looking down on him, he could see nothing but the shaved top of his head, and his down-bent fair lashes, and two long-fingered hands encircling one knee. He had wondered why Alfgar should have done such a thing, but had said nothing. If the matter was urgent, Sulien would tell him. When he did not, he had assumed that there was an embarrassment somewhere. Alfgar—or Godiva—had thought him in need of help, temporal or spiritual, and had sent for Sulien. Or Alfgar had intended to lay on Sulien an embassy he did not care for, such as persuading himself towards an alliance with Norway and Mercia, to lend power to King Gruffydd in driving the Saxons out of Wales.

He had not forgotten that once he himself had allied with King Gruffydd, to their mutual advantage, and then shortly afterwards Gruffydd had sacked Llanbadarn. The last thing Sulien would help sponsor was an invasion. Sulien knew what greed could do. He had said almost nothing about the Norman mercenaries, but his opinions were none the less plain. Thorfinn knew, who had had to weigh the risk over and over before sending to Normandy. In Italy, the Normans had conquered and stayed, and every footmark had become a ladder-rung to the next conquest.

So now he said, ‘No,’ wondering what Sulien was going to say that could not be said at the beginning but had to be presented to him like canon tables, arcaded about with all the other considerations they had discussed.

And Sulien said, ‘Earl Alfgar wanted me to give you a warning. He said that he thought Denmark and Norway were by way of making some temporary peace. And that if that were so, Norway might send much more than a token fleet next time when they wanted to damage Earl Harold on the Welsh border. He said that you had already refused once to league with Norway, and to allow them the supply-base they needed. Earl Alfgar said that he was in no doubt that when and if the King of Norway’s fleet came to the firth, he would attack you here in Orkney. That was why I said you were fortunate. Even if you find Alba and the Normans have all your attention in the south, yet you have two good sons and all your powerful leaders to look after the north for you.’

It took Thorfinn’s breath, but he would not show it. This had always been one of the risks. He knew what Sulien intended him to feel, and he felt it. But, at the same time, you could say that his invitation to Duke William had been vindicated. Whoever was locked up here, doing battle with Norway, at least Alba would not lie helpless to any invader. He said, ‘Did Alfgar know when?’

‘No. But he thought it might take King Harald a little time to get his ships back north and in order. Perhaps midsummer or later. You will see why there was no need to tell you earlier. Will you stay in Orkney?’ Sulien said. ‘When do your men-at-arms come from Normandy?’

‘In a month, perhaps. It may be that I have Alba settled before King Harald’s fleet comes to the north,’ Thorfinn said. ‘If it comes. Perhaps I could even sell my used Normans to King Harald to employ against Wessex. After all, they are Wessex’s natural enemies. Do you think a new game is about to start? Front to front, shall eagles claw each other?’

Sulien had looked up. ‘You mean it,’ he said.

‘Does it matter?’ said Thorfinn. He touched Sulien lightly on the shoulder and then, impatient at the disparity in their heights, dropped to the rushes at his feet and sat cross-legged, looking up at him.

Thorfinn said, ‘I am not very good at making promises, and I don’t know why you take this trouble with me. But although, yes, I mean it, I also understand what you are saying to me, and I agree with it. Only my opponents and the three ladies do not always let me take the course I should prefer. And in this case I am led to believe that all decisions are out of my hands, whatever I do. So when I say does it matter, that is all I mean.’

Sulien said slowly, ‘It is easy to excuse yourself because of a shadow.’

‘Then I don’t. My fate is in my own hands,’ Thorfinn said.

There was another silence. Then Sulien said, ‘If you had faith of any kind, I could get rid of this for you.’ Then the note of bitterness went, and he said in his musical Breton, ‘I think the time has come to say what you fear and see if we can talk about it. If you had no Celtic blood, I suppose you would never have heard the legend of Luloecen the Fool. That is it, isn’t it?’

Long ago, Thorfinn had realised that Sulien had read the histories of the man whose name Lulach bore. The Luloecen of centuries past, of whom, to the superstitious, this Lulach might seem a re-embodiment. Only to the superstitious.

Tuathal also knew. Thorfinn had never discussed it with either. To bring it into the open was like laying bare not a scar but a wound. He kept his voice even.

‘For a legend, or course, it has turned out remarkably apt. Five hundred years ago, the seer called Luloecen lived at the court of King Ryderch of Strathclyde, and prophesied the death of the King, and of St Kentigern, and of Morcant, St Kentigern’s enemy. Both names, Ruaidhri and Morgan, are in Lulach’s family.’

‘And in the family of Findlaech your stepfather,’ Sulien said. ‘What other tales have you heard?’

Suddenly, it was too much. Thorfinn twisted and got to his feet. ‘No. This is foolish. We are grown men, if nothing else.’

‘Then behave like one,’ said Sulien. ‘What other versions have you been told?’ He paused and said, ‘You may be discussing fantasies, but witchcraft is my business.’

Thorfinn turned. ‘No. We’re not speaking of witchcraft,’ he said. ‘Lulach is untouched and innocent, and these are matters that stand outside his knowledge, as much as they stand outside mine. Hear it all, then. In this and other tales of the Madman, the Wild Man, the Fool, the prophecy changes and becomes a threefold foretelling of death. Luloecen the Fool foretold his own. The Lulach of our time knows his own fate. And mine.’

He stopped; and then said, ‘Seven-eighths Celt or not, I should have found out about it all anyway. Odin was hanged, and pierced by a spear, and suspended over Mimir’s well.
Guin, Badud, Loscad
. Wounding, drowning, and burning. The threefold death comes in all languages.’

‘Always by slaughter, drowning, and burning?’ Sulien asked.

‘Nearly always. I have had my burning and slaughter,’ Thorfinn said.

‘But that was not what Lulach prophesied for you?’

Thorfinn said, ‘Lulach never prophesies. He tells you what has already happened, through many eyes. Sometimes it might all be true. Sometimes it is impossible that it should be. He told me of the High King Diarmait mac Cerbaill who gave judgement against St Columba in the matter of the book of St Finnian, and who had to suffer the Threefold Death as was prophesied. He would not die, he was told, until he ate the flesh of a swine that was never farrowed; but of course he was given bacon one day from a piglet cut from a sow, and died with his house burning about him. That was the first.’

‘You escaped from the house,’ Sulien said. ‘What was the second?’

‘That men are threatened or die when woods walk,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And that trees may prophesy death. A German historian and a French poet told such a story of Alexander the Great, and because of another poet called John, a prophecy came to rest against my name. That when the wood of Birnam should come to Dunsinane, then should I make my end.’

‘You are alive,’ Sulien said.

‘The third event has passed, and I am also unharmed by it,’ Thorfinn said.

‘Who was Hector? I don’t know. But he foretold, or recorded, my death at the hand of Macdubh or Malduin.’

‘Malduin is dead,’ said Sulien.

‘But what he set in train is not yet over,’ Thorfinn said. ‘To take the gloomy view. The sensible view is that it is a mixture of legend and coincidence and fantasy, told by a child and forgotten even by him in his adulthood. Lulach has never repeated or reiterated any one of these warnings, except perhaps when he sent me a twig from the forest. I asked him about that, and he answered me. And that was many years after.’

‘A symbol for the wood?’ Sulien said.

‘I suppose so. A stick can stand for many things. The wand of kingship. The rod of the coffiner. The yew-twig of sterility.’

And now it was time to stop, for he could hear the flatness this time in his own voice. Sulien said, ‘You have sons.’ And after a moment, ‘If he told you of any fate he has heard of, then you must put it from your mind.’

‘No. My sons will flourish, he says.
Or did flourish
. But none of their descendants ever reigned, nor did they.’

‘That is not sterility,’ Sulien said.

‘No. It is only vanity,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Hurt the worse because Malcolm’s sons took the throne of Alba, Lulach says. And after them, in a line unbroken for a thousand years and more, kings of the blood of … What name would you hate most to hear?’

‘I think, Malduin,’ Sulien said.

Thorfinn said, ‘I think you are right. Well, it’s better than that. A little better than that. After the seed of Malcolm, it seems, all Scotia’s kings will derive from our late friend Earl Siward of Northumbria. Hear and congratulate us, Thore Hund of Bjarking.’