King Hereafter (42 page)

He had lost the battle. That was Duncan’s first thought, even as he found himself fighting, as army crashed against army and his own bodyguard ran to protect him. He had lost the battle, and to save other men’s lives and his own, he ought to surrender. That was the convention.

Someone thrust through the ring of men about him, and he used his sword again. Thorfinn was fighting, too: he could see his helm and his sword-arm thirty feet away in the mass of struggling men. To call his attention, he would need his trumpeter. His chain-mail creaked with his breathing, and the leather beneath scraped his neck. He turned his head and shouted, against the uproar, for his standard-bearer.

The priest was at his side, a reddened axe in his hand. The priest said, shrieking in his west-Cumbrian accent, ‘My lord! Escape while you can! That pagan devil will kill you!’

Duncan stared at the priest. ‘We’re outnumbered,’ he said. He frowned while he protected himself. He had never surrendered before. He had besieged Durham and, repulsed, had simply retreated. When raiders tried to land on his coasts, he had fought them and killed or driven them off, keeping the leaders to ransom. He had never been conquered in battle by an army larger than his own. He said, ‘He is my brother.’

‘Does he remember it?’ said the priest. ‘The prize is great, and he is not noted for piety. In his place, you might have been tempted yourself.’

One of his protectors, fighting about him, had heard. One of them said, ‘We could get you out, my lord King, while the fighting goes on. Then the priest could go forth and call surrender. They’ll stop quick enough. You’ll save lives. There’ll be no ransom to pay or oaths to keep. Quick. We’ll come with you.’

He must have agreed, although he did not remember it, or taking off the mask helm that identified him. Someone found another and rammed it, bloody still, on his head as they fought their way to the edge of the battle. Most of the Irishmen were trying to do the same, and had no eyes for anything but the enemy. The last bit was the worst, and six of the twelve men with him had died before suddenly they were among trees and away. As they went, he thought he heard the noise lessen a degree in the centre, and fancied he saw a flash of white cloth. Then there was no sound but that of their own running feet and their breathing. Duncan threw the helm away.

They had thought to make for the ships, and had started in that direction when they came across another group flying, who told them that Thorfinn had taken the ships. And of course that must be right, for otherwise none of this would have happened. A little after that, they had the first luck that came from the day and found a garron grazing where its rider had been killed, and
then a second one. He had seen the hoofmarks everywhere in the soft ground and understood now. So this was how it had been done.

He took one garron and two of his men took another, and they made for the hills, with four armed men at his stirrups. They made for the hills because they had no means to cross water, and the mountains showed the way to the west, where he might escape and be safe.

They also made for the hills because that was where the woman was, and the monk.

When they learned that, he knew the priest had been right and God was with him. For they had almost passed the man by who gave the news to them: a local man, early wounded and left in the heath, where they heard him calling, for he thought they were men of Thorfinn’s. Before he learned they were not, he asked them to take him with them to where the monks were, at the smith’s house. After that, hoping for his life, he told them the rest.

So, at the end of a day in which he had been tricked and tricked again, Duncan had at last been vouchsafed a truth; a morsel of information that might be more important than anything that had befallen him yet. For of course Thorfinn’s wife would not be left to wander at will in the battleground of the peninsula; neither would Dubhdaleithe and his monks. If they were near at all, they could only be waiting there where the peninsula rose to the hills in the body of Ross. The glen of Thor’s goats, the man said, where the river Averon ran down past the smith’s house. Not so far from Strath Rory. Four miles, or five.

They would have her defended, and he had six men, that was all. But it might be enough to snatch Moray at least from the ruins of all he had hoped for. And if everything failed, and his enemies came after him, he would have a hostage beyond price in the woman, and a dead man, he hoped, in the monk.

There was a long view from the Druim na Caerdaich, and sharp eyes among the smith’s children, so that one of his sons was the first to call out that there were horsemen moving on the other side of the river, and that they were making for the little cabins that made up his family’s farm. Two horses, he said, and seven people, and them plunging in and out of the bog like men from chalk country.

‘The monks will sort them,’ his mother said.

The holy monk, the one who had been abbot, was behind the peat stack, and the others were in the rear of the bothies or crouched by the midden. The first thing Duncan knew was a hiss passing one of his ears and a yell from behind, followed by a thud as someone tumbled. He drew rein to wheel, and saw that he was surrounded, just within arrow-range, by a circle of men in brown robes.

The most powerful-looking of them all, a man with a beard like a mat, had emerged, still grasping his bow, by a peat stack. He lifted his voice. ‘Duncan of Alba. If you would wear your helmet again, I suggest you and your friends step down from those ponies and stand in the middle, where we can see you. Is it a battle you’re running from?’

‘Dubhdaleithe Albanach?’ Duncan said. After a moment’s pause, he dismounted. ‘Do you think me your enemy, that I bring six men to visit you when you have twice that number? I wished to speak to you.’

‘You did?’ said Duftah. ‘Now, God forgive me if I have misjudged you. You are here to offer me Kells?’

Duncan smiled. His hair, flattened by the helmet, did not rise even in the wind. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘My father has long since fallen out with his cousins in Ireland. One day, your brother will die and you will be Abbot of Armagh. To be Coarb of St Columba as well would only be just: did your grandfather not hold both offices, as the great soul-friend of Ireland?’

‘Indeed he did,’ Duftah said. He let his bow to the ground and leaned on it. ‘But here you are in the bog, with no throne about you that I can see. How could you make me Abbot of Kells when even Thorfinn will not raise a finger?’

‘Thorfinn is afraid of the power of Columba,’ Duncan said. ‘As you very well know, men will bow to the heathen while he has them in his power, but they will turn to Christ as soon as they are free of him. Come south to Alba and I will show you whether or not I can make you Abbot of Kells.’

‘
Is
afraid?’ Duftah said. ‘I made sure you had taken the head of him before you came riding for me.’

‘I left that to others,’ Duncan said. ‘Is the Lady here?’

‘Somewhere,’ said Duftah. ‘So you are saying that soon she will be a widow. Now, there is a lasting pity, and she so young. I would be sorry to think that you and your men would dishonour her.’

‘Not unless,’ Duncan said, ‘you would think it dishonour to make her the wife of the King. I have long wished to make her my lady. Will you not bring her so that I can tell her?’

‘Oh, she’s here,’ said the monk, astonished. ‘Would you not have noticed her? The eager one over there, with my sword in her hand.’

He flicked a finger at one of the monks, whose hood, promptly tossed back, revealed a flag of shining red hair and a pair of shining light eyes under brows black as soot. ‘It seems a small army,’ said Groa, ‘to take the north with; but no doubt most of them ran at the sound of your name. Did you wish to offer me something?’

‘A king’s hand in marriage,’ said Duncan. ‘And safe passage for your friends of Armagh, once they lay down their arms. My army is not far away, and I should not like to see them hurt.’ He smiled. ‘Is there a woman alive who would not want the title of Queen? Is there a woman alive who would become it better?’

‘You’re right,’ said Groa. ‘Except that I have, to my knowledge, a husband living.’

‘What of it?’ said Duncan. ‘It is a marriage that death, or the church, can annul for you. Here is my horse. Let me take you away from this wilderness.’

The girl thought, digging the point of the sword-blade into the turf, both hands wrapped round the pommel. She raised it and leaned the flat on one shoulder. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘at least you took thought to come, with all the
other matters that must occupy the mind of a king at such times. There are some who take no heed how their womenfolk fare, from one year’s end to another.… I will go with you. Or, at least, I shall when you have got the Earl Thorfinn behind you there out of the way.’

Duncan jumped.

So silently had his enemy come through the trees that neither he nor his men had heard a hint of them. So close had been his success: so near his moment of escape. And now, ringing the clearing behind him were thirty axemen or more, led by one of unnatural height with a face like the beak of a dragon-ship within his expensive gilt helmet.

Thorfinn of Orkney, his brother, put up a finger and thumb and eased off the helmet. His rumbling voice, like his height, was ridiculous. He said, ‘I am afraid the question does not arise. There has already been a slight contest, which I have won. You, my lady, are still my wife, and the King here is now my prisoner.’

The powerful, handsome man beside Thorfinn disagreed with his master, it seemed. He said, ‘Then you’re a fool. The King came here to get rid of you. Kill him.’

‘He doesn’t want to die,’ Thorfinn said. He walked forward, taking his time over it, until he was so close that Duncan could smell the sweat and the blood and see the battle-tiredness, like his own, bitten into his half-brother’s face. Thorfinn said, ‘Give me your sword.’

It would have been easy to make one savage slash, and Duncan drew breath to do it. Then his eyes ran round the men standing waiting, and he set his teeth and held out his sword. Thorfinn’s companion, moving forward, disarmed the men who were with him.

Thorfinn said, ‘I have paid the shipmasters to take the rest of your men back to Berwick. You may go with them. First, you will come with me and, in the presence of your men and mine, swear that as Earl of Caithness I hold all the land north of Eskadale free of any duties or tribute towards the High King of Alba. You will swear that I owe Alba nothing for Orkney. You will swear that as Mormaer of Moray I shall pay Alba what Findlaech my stepfather paid, with the same rights. And you will repeat the promise you made on your accession, that after me the rule of Moray will be invested in Lulach my stepson. All that you will swear.’

Again, the older man with Thorfinn interrupted. A man who spoke in pure Norse, and with a familiarity that identified him. This was Thorkel, one remembered: Thorfinn’s foster-father. Thorkel saying, ‘Of course he will swear it. And come back next year with a bigger army. Thorfinn, you can’t do it this way.’

‘There is no other way,’ said Thorfinn shortly.

‘Yes, there is. Kill him,’ said his foster-father. ‘Or if you’re too nice for that, let me kill him. Or if that doesn’t suit you, why not the traditional duel, the
holm-gangr?
We haven’t got a holm, but I’m sure my lord your brother would prefer that to outright execution. If he kills you, I swear I’ll release him.’

‘What?’ said Thorfinn’s wife.

‘This is murder,’ said Duncan. He cleared his throat.

The foster-father went on interfering, and no one told him to be quiet. He said, ‘It would be murder to let die all those who laid down their lives today, thinking to buy peace for the north, only to find that the whole war has to be fought again because Thorfinn couldn’t face up to his duty. I’ll fight him if you like, but you should. In a fenced ring, with no other helping, and with whatever weapons you please. It was how your father settled his people’s quarrels, and your stepfather. If you had chosen it at the start, a lot of Caithness men would be living today.’

It was demeaning to appeal to a servant. If, as it seemed, Thorfinn had no will of his own, then it could not be avoided.

‘It is murder,’ said Duncan to the man Thorkel. ‘Look at the difference between us. He said I could go. Do you doubt my oath? Of course I should agree to all that he asks. He has won the right, in fair battle. Let us go back to the ships. This monk can hear my oath on a Christ’s book.’

His voice stopped, and no one spoke. Thorfinn studied the grass. The Lady said, ‘Thorkel Fóstri is right. It should be a duel between you.’

Thorfinn lifted his head. ‘And you would belong to the winner?’

‘What choice would I have?’ the Lady said.

‘Then we fight,’ said Thorfinn briefly.

They chose a stretch by the river and staked it, while the smith’s family, with their belongings, came down the hillside and crossed the water and stood watching and silent. Through the trees, men were arriving, in twos and threes, as word filtered through to those few on this side of the peninsula. The man whom Duftah had-killed was dragged out of the way, and the remaining five hung about beside Duncan, who had been given the use of a hut, and food and ale if he wished it.

He had jibbed at going into the booth, and Thorkel Fóstri had pushed him instead into the next one with the anvil in it, and the tongs and draw-plate and nail-iron and ladle hanging still on the wall. ‘Try this one,’ he said. ‘Four stone walls. We can hardly burn it around you.’

Outside, Thorfinn sat on a log, with a leather flask in his hand, and Groa watched him. Duftah said, ‘Speak to him.’

‘Afterwards,’ Groa said.

‘And if there is no afterwards?’ Duftah said.

‘Then he will not know what he has missed, will he?’ Groa said, and walked away. Then Thorfinn stood, and laid the flask down, and, sliding his sword from the scabbard, looked at it. Duftah opened the door of the smithy and spoke, and a little later Duncan emerged, walking stiffly.

For a moment, by the stakes, the half-brothers faced one another. Then the monk said, ‘What you do, you do, each of you, for your peoples. May God indemnify both your souls. My lord King, will you enter on this side.’ He waited. ‘My lord Earl, on that.’ Again he waited, and so did the two men, facing each other.