King Hereafter (143 page)

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Thorfinn said. Groa, too, could see what was coming.

‘You sound confident,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘What do you have to offer that Earl Tostig and his nephew can’t take for themselves?’

Bishop Jon said quickly, ‘Is it the May prey you’re thinking of, and them jumping about, whirling their axes? The Northumbrians go about things in a cooler way, I’m told, especially if they have Earl Harold behind them. Silver, now, speaks with a very sweet voice. And so does land. The King might have to lose Fife as well as Lothian, and even Angus on top of Fife, but it’s not impossible that another year Duke William will have his duchy trim and in order, and Fife and Angus and more will be put back where they belong. On the other hand, once you let Norway into Orkney, you will have lost Orkney for good.’

Thorkel Fóstri had never looked away from the King. He said, ‘And you would be content with that? To give away what you have, rather than fight for it?’

‘I have fought for it,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And lost. I don’t mean to fight again until I am sure of winning. And to win Alba at the cost of Orkney would be a poor bargain, if by a little guile we can keep both.… My foster-father, let me talk to Malcolm tomorrow. Let me send word afterwards to your ships. If there is to be fighting, I shall call on you. I promise it.’

It was the one answer that could have satisfied Thorkel Fóstri. It was an answer, at least, that sent him out of the camp to rejoin his men until morning. Left behind, Lulach said, ‘You hadn’t asked for a meeting with Malcolm tomorrow?

‘No. But I shall now,’ said Thorfinn.

Groa said, ‘They’ll know the Orkney fleet is here. Won’t that frighten them?’

‘Not a great deal,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Even with all Thorkel Fóstri has brought, the English army is still much the bigger. They’ll try to get what they want without fighting. They may even try to lengthen the talks, if Earl Tostig is on more friendly terms with King Harald of Norway than he is with Earl Harold
his brother. But if they don’t get what they want, they’ll certainly fight for it.’

‘It’s a south wind,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘If you were to talk fast, the fleet could still get back to Orkney in time. Now, there is a great man, your foster-father; but whatever, in the name of God Who all can, made him do the like of this?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Who wants to take a trumpet to my lord Malcolm tomorrow? I suppose it had better be Tuathal. Bishop Jon—’

‘I’ll tell him to come to your chamber at dawn. Take sleep, my lord King. And you, my lady. We’ll leave you.’

The door closed, and on the inside Thorfinn lifted the heavy lever and pushed it home with a thud. He stood and looked at it.

‘It would have been enough,’ he said, ‘merely to apologise. He didn’t need to bring the whole Orkney army to make up for it. Whatever I do now, I can’t stop it falling on his head. And on mine. And on yours.’

He turned. ‘Will you promise me not to hate him for it? No. You won’t. How filthy I am. It comes of turning so quickly in so many different directions. What is the proper weekly order for a king? Sunday for drinking ale. Monday for legal business. Tuesday for chess. Wednesday for watching greyhounds hunting. Thursday for marital intercourse. Is it Thursday?’

‘I’m sure it’s Thursday,’ said Groa. She had spread her cloak underneath her on the pallet and was lying, watching him.

‘Regina optima et benigna,’
he said. ‘Queen Medb, goddess and giver of drink of the sovereignty of Alba, who slept with many kings. Shall I make submission at sword-point tomorrow, lying flat on the ground with the point of a sword in my teeth? I suppose I could, if the cryptogram demands it. I wonder if I shall ever find out what it spelled.’

He came to the pallet, the ties of his tunic pulled loose, and knelt beside her, resting his elbows.
‘I know where stands a hall, brighter than sunlight…
I am too dirty, and you are too beautiful. Will I tell you that I love you? It occurred to me today. It occurs to me all the time, and sometimes you are not there, but I think perhaps you know.’

‘I know,’ she said.

‘Then live, my strength, anchor of weary ships. My honour, my strong city, my sure peace.’ His head was on her knee, his eyes tight-closed, and she stirred the sooty hair clogged with sweat and dust, and smoothed her hand from ear to neck.

Then he moved and, in turn, she felt the touch of his hand. He said, his lips against her skin, ‘I want you. I’m so dirty. Beloved, will you take me?’

It was not, this time, like the lazy, tumbling nights of a northern summer. It came to the first touch, in seconds, and remained sharper than pleasure, like the blazing white wand of a goldsmith. Half-returned, her body vibrated, embroidering its own history of cataclysm, and she knew from his breathing that he, too, had reached the same place.

Before she was struck with sleep, he kept her by him with caresses, and his familiar voice, close to her ear, made a hermit’s hut of the little room, sealed off by nothing else from the jangling, half-awake circus of war that lay just
outside its walls. Then, she did not remember where she had heard him speak these words before.

Then the dawn came, and showed her an empty bed, and the spears flashing red in the sunrise.

The meeting between Thorfinn, King of Alba, and Malcolm his nephew took place, with the prudence of all such events, on an island in the midst of the Dee, the opposing hosts being ranged on each bank.

It did not take long, and the King of Alba, concluding, was not observed to lie flat with a sword in his teeth. On the other hand, those who returned from the meeting to the hall where Groa had remained were remarkably silent and avoided the room where she stood, as did Thorfinn himself. When, finally, there was a knock on the door and a man entered, she did not know what to expect.

It was Bishop Tuathal. He said, ‘You have not seen my lord King?’ For Tuathal, his tone was sharp. She said, ‘No. No one has told me what happened.’

Tuathal said, ‘He will be coming. I thought he was here.’

Groa said, ‘Have they made peace?’ If they had, the Orkney ships could go. He must know that was the crux.

Tuathal said, ‘Maelmuire was there, and Forne and Gillocher. And Aethel-wine of Durham, who is bishop there now, like his brother. My lord Malcolm had the Earl Tostig by him all the time, and sometimes one answered, and sometimes another. I went with the King and two mormaers. He had bathed and wore silk trimmed with gold, my lady, and an otter-skin cloak. It made an impression.’

‘He would mean it to,’ Groa said. ‘Bishop Tuathal—did they make peace?’

Tuathal said, ‘My lady, the only terms they would consider were total surrender. Alba to belong to my lord Malcolm, and the King to be sent to Northumbria, where he would be treated, they said, like an honoured guest.’

‘He offered them other things?’ Groa said. There were no possibilities she had not heard discussed, or had not helped with. Everything that had
happened had been foreseen and talked out in one way or another. Except that Thorkel Fóstri would bring the fleet and the men of the north. Far-sighted though they had all been, no one had dreamed of that.

‘My lady, they would accept nothing else. Surrender the land and his person, or fight.’

She thought of Orphir, and her sons. She said, ‘He chose surrender. But they would never let him survive.’

‘He knew that, my lady,’ said Tuathal. ‘No. He spoke of the killing there had been already, and said that he thought that a king or a would-be king who loved his country might spare it by adopting the old customs. He had done it himself with my lord Malcolm’s father. That was, he said, that the head of one faction should challenge the other to a duel to the death, as the King of France did to the Emperor. If my lord Malcolm won, then he would have Alba with no royal prisoner to care for. If my lord Thorfinn won, then Alba would be his, and Earl Tostig would retreat south until, no doubt, he could groom one of my lord Malcolm’s brothers. The King said that, so far as he was concerned, that was the only offer he would consider. If they failed to accept it, he would land all his northmen and give battle.’

Tuathal spoke most of it looking out of the window. Groa said, ‘Bishop Tuathal. Why should he make such a proposal? It offered my lord Malcolm nothing. So why in the world should he agree to it?’

‘My lady,’ said Tuathal. ‘My lord Malcolm has agreed to it.’

Because speed mattered so much, Thorfinn saw people quickly while the flat plot of ground was being roped off. Because, for lack of firm ground elsewhere, a duelling-spot near Lumphanan had been chosen, it had been agreed that the Lady his wife should be hostage for the safety of his nephew and enemy Malcolm.

Having agreed to it, he placed the matter with firmness to one side of his mind and began to look for the people he wanted.

There were not so many. Bishop Jon and Bishop Hrolf, because the disjointed kingdom would not make matters easy, and there were some ways of solving the problem. Gillocher and Morgund and Scandlain and some of the other young men, who would need all the tact they hadn’t yet got to survive. Tuathal, whom he had lost temporarily, and Lulach his stepson, who kissed him and said, ‘As soon as my mother leaves, I shall be gone. I have nine months. I told you.’

He paused. ‘What are you thinking? That I didn’t warn you of this? But I am only a river, with all my voices. And no two drops of water reflect the same way.’

‘What am I thinking? I was wondering,’ said Thorfinn slowly, ‘what story the river will carry of me?’

Lulach smiled his sweet smile, and his swan-white hair shone in the sunshine. ‘So many stories,’ he said, ‘that, a thousand years from today, every name from this world will have faded save those of yourself and your lady. That is immortality.’

‘The dream of every Viking. Instead of truth, I think today you offer me comfort. You were always kind,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Help her, Lulach.’

‘You know me,’ said Lulach. ‘You know me now. I will say anything.’

He met Tuathal at the door of the hall, where it was hard to talk because of the excitement, with people pressing about and shouting to him. They appeared to be quite confident that he would defeat and kill Malcolm. He said to Tuathal. ‘I’d better talk to them presently, so that they know what to do. And Thorkel Fóstri has to be told. He’ll make no effort to stay. The wind is still from the south.’

Tuathal said, ‘They’ll get to Orkney in time.’ His face looked grim and drawn. ‘The Lady is wondering why Malcolm accepted the challenge. I must confess, so am I.’

Change, and adapt. Sitting in one’s silks in the sunlight and observing, unobtrusive among the servants of Tostig, a familiar face: that of Copsige of Cornholm, who sometimes fished off the Gloup. Thorfinn said, ‘Oh, Malcolm knew I would lose. He has that kind of conceit.’

Tuathal said, ‘My lord … You must prepare her.’

Thorfinn said, ‘She is prepared. As she was Gillacomghain to Moray, so she will be Thorfinn to Alba. You, too, will be needed. Under you, the land will hold steady.’

‘I cannot care,’ Tuathal said. ‘This is a day when the priest needs a priest. I cannot feel God’s friendship. I cannot accept such an ending.’

‘Why not, if I can?’ said Thorfinn. ‘I failed. I pay the price of my failure. There is no injustice there. As to the good or bad in what I have done, I am content to leave others to judge.’

His face was calm. He said, ‘Forget that Scotia ever existed. There will still be Alba. And Orkney.’

To Groa he said, ‘They will take you to a tent, and you will not look out.’

‘I will not look out,’ she said.

He said, ‘You have everything there is of me, save a little I gave to my people. Now you hold that as well.’

And last of all, when he had released her and moved to the door, to stand outside where all the sky was enclosed with thick hills and dark, heavy forests, he said, because he could not prevent himself, ‘When next you stand by the sea, say goodbye for me.’

She walked quietly to the tent they gave her among the Northumbrians, and her attendants walked with her in silence. Once inside, they left her alone, and although Sinna watched her without cease, Anghared and Maire did not.

When the noise of the crowd became louder and then changed suddenly to rolls of shield-rattling and the blaring of trumpets, she sat with her arms round her knees and stared into the little fire they had built for her, which she was ’glad of, although it was August.

Looking at it, she hardly heard the single voices declaiming, although you could not ignore the bellow that greeted the speech-maker. During the wave of bustle and expectancy that came after, she stared at the light until her eyes
began to sting, and she squeezed them shut and then studied the fire again.

There was a brief chime of sound such as a smith might make, trying an anvil, and then a roar bigger than any that had gone before, which continued.

She continued to stare at the fire.

Not very long afterwards, the door of the tent stirred, and someone held it aside, and shadows moved up and down, of people approaching. One shadow stepped through and became a man, still not very clear, as her eyes, when she looked up, were dazzled and he stood blocking the light.

He was not of any great size, and his voice, when he spoke, was ordinary and rather breathless.

He said, ‘Which is Ingibjorg, Bergljot’s daughter?’

‘I am,’ she said.

The man said, ‘Ingibjorg, Bergljot’s daughter, I have to tell you that Thorfinn your husband is dead.’

There was a silence.

She realised she did not have to think of anything new.

She said, ‘Then I suppose I am your prisoner. Will you ransom me?’