King Hereafter (71 page)

Thorfinn said, ‘I am not a child, although I lie here like one. Get me on my feet in two weeks and I shall have Orkney in two weeks. Keep me longer and I shall have you hanged, even though you are my foster-father, and the man of this house made a slave again.’

Thorkel Fóstri got up and went out.

Later, when Thorfinn had wakened again and the women were feeding him, his foster-father came and stood in the shadows in the little turf hut they had cleared for a sickroom, and waited until they had finished their fussing and gone.

Always, Thorfinn slept after this, for he spoke to the women and made them laugh, and it tired him out. Now, without letting him sleep, Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘I have found a place in Reaster for you. I will take you there in four days. The smoke here is beginning to be noticed. I have told them at Freswick and Duncansby, and warned Odalric and one or two others you can trust. They will need to know, if you plan to attack this side of Christmas. I have made a list, too, of the men who have escaped from Orkney and the men who are still there but can be relied on. I got David to write it for me. Otkel my nephew is coming to Reaster and will work with you until you can hold a sword. I shall be at Canisbay gathering weapons. If you want me, send word.’

He had meant, then, to walk out. He did not know why he didn’t, for Thorfinn said nothing, but lay throughout open-eyed, listening; and at the end neither stirred nor moved his gaze. Now the sun-tan had faded, the burnt parts of his skin figured brown on pure white, like the hide of a cow.

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘At Inverness … Was that how you escaped?’

The white skin could not become whiter, but he knew what he had done. Then Thorfinn said, ‘Findlaech showed me. But he was too heavy for the loft-floor.’

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘Every year, Rognvald goes to Papay Minni for his tribute of malt. It is a small island, and he can only take a few with him.’ He paused, and then said, ‘You will burn him, then, as he did you and the Lady? … Thorfinn, as long as men live in wood houses, this is how they must kill.’

‘I shall burn him,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And then we shall build houses of stone. It is too late, but it is better than nothing.’

He stopped speaking, but his eyes remained open, saying something quite different.

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘Your father was never as stubborn as this. Where does it come from? Why do I not hang myself, before you do it for me?’

And because he felt a fool, weeping, lowered himself to the bedside, where the rugs muffled his face and where Thorfinn’s ruined hand, already stretched, touched his head and his cheek.

Then it stilled, and he looked up and saw that Thorfinn slept, which for some reason seemed a greater grief than anything that had happened before.

*   *   *

Before Christmas that year, all Earl Rognvald’s friends had agreed how important it was that the Earl should be kept cheerful, in view of the difficult time he was having, with the whole of Orkney and Caithness to look after, and no help to be looked for from Norway. It was also well seen that Earl Siward, though glad of the chance to move into Alba, would readily allow Earl Rognvald to succumb to any misfortune that might overtake him; especially as no one knew what Harald Sigurdsson would do once he had persuaded King Magnús, as seemed likely, to give him half the Norwegian throne. For King Magnús at twenty-two years old was a man, but not a very experienced one, while his uncle Harald at thirty-one was rich, experienced, and ready for anything, including taking over Orkney and Caithness and Alba, once he felt like it.

When, therefore, Rognvald announced that he was going over, as usual, to collect the Christmas malt from the monks at Papay Minni and needed thirty men to crew the cargo boat who could also swim from Ramberry to Quanterness and back at low water, there were forty of them and more who jumped into the sea, although less than thirty came back and he had to make up the numbers later out of his courtmen.

At that time, with H
fn fallen into disrepair and Orphir burned down, Earl Rognvald had moved his household to Kirkwall, where there was a stream and the stumps and gravestones and midden of an old monastery. There was also a good enough harbour, except in north winds; and a back door to Knarston and the Flow that was not to be sniffed at, besides deep bays like Inganess and Deer in the south where you could beach a flotilla if you wanted to.

Best of all, of course, the new hall was Earl Rognvald’s own idea, and had none of the pawmarks of the kindred on it. As the feeling of ownership grew on him, he had even begun to have a church built by the stream, and meant to dedicate it to St Olaf, which ought to please King Magnús and his uncle King Harald.

There were of course other advantages also, as Siward of York had been among the first men to recognise. Now there were three churches to St Olaf in or about the Saxons’ big trade-town of London, they said, and one in Dublin. Whatever the standard-bearers might be doing, you had to think of your trade.

But that was for spring. In December, there was the Yuletide feast to prepare for, and the welcome they got at Papay Minni was always the first sign that the year’s labours were over, and you could eat and drink and rejoice with your friends, for the sea was your lock and bolt, and the weather your shield. Of the thirty men who rowed round Huip on Stronsay, and through Papa Sound, and into the monks’ little jetty, there were, on occasion, a bare twenty sensible enough to ply the oars on the way back, and it took almost as many men, sometimes, to carry Earl Rognvald as it did to carry the malt, with the dog Sam to nip at your heels, whom you kicked at your peril.

This year, the cold had steadied the sea and there was little wind to pull against, which was just as well, in an open boat, for the incoming splatter
froze tight on your beard and your furs and there were reefs you would know all about if the night fell before you were ready for it.

The island itself was a scrap, and the beach little but streaked sand and boulders, with a few nousts built above the tide-mark, and above that, the strip-fields of the monks with their neat dry-stone edging. The soil of Papay Minni was rich, and grew thick crops of bere, and some oats, so that the monks hardly troubled with grazing, save for a milch-cow or two and a half-dozen ewes. They got the cloth for their clothes from the big farm on Stronsay, and a share of feathers and oil, and kept bees, and did their own fishing. And if it was a wonder, sometimes, that they ever found time to pray, no one troubled, least of all their young, handsome Earl and his men so long as they breathed in the warm, mothering smell of the malt as they pulled past the kiln, and saw the familiar faces there on the strand, with bright torches flaring in the murk, and strong hands ready to help the Earl up to the eating-chamber that the monks had built themselves, a dozen years since, to hold themselves and their guests.

Built well and stoutly, of timber.

For all the years the young Earl had been to the island, no man there could remember the match of the pleasure-frenzy that possessed him that night. Even before the drinking became as heavy as it did, Rognvald hurled himself into the mouth of the evening like a man bewitched. His fair face white, his blue eyes brilliant, he was first in the roaring of battle-songs, and the telling of battle-tales, and then tales that the monks, intoxicated themselves, might have shut their ears to, but that there could be no harm in such laughter.

Then the competitions began, that every man who lived with Rognvald half longed for and half dreaded, for in the nature of them some man or another would lose his life, or end it a cripple. But for those who won there was the prize of Rognvald’s excited attention, and his praise, and if you wanted such a thing, and knew how to attract it, perhaps something much more.

That was when, as now, the night was half worn through and the men who had rowed through the day slipped down, despite themselves, on the bench or laid their arms on the table, while the monks slept through their duty in a thicket of ale-fumes and the men still seated with Rognvald round the dying longfire spoke in different voices and laughed in a different way from the drinking-hall manners they had been using before.

Then the man sitting next to Rognvald shifted in Rognvald’s arm and said, ‘Look. The fire is low. Shall I get turf for it? Perhaps, my lord, you could show me where it is kept.’

But Rognvald was sleepy, and said, ‘Why go out? We shall be old enough when this fire burns out.’

‘Old enough?’ The favoured one smiled, teasing him, keeping him awake.

Rognvald looked down at the other man, smiling. His hand, moving up, touched the speaker’s neck, and his ear, and caressed it. ‘Did I say old? I meant warm. I corrected King Olaf, my foster-father, once, when he made a slip of the tongue.’ His finger and thumb, gripping the flesh of the ear, twisted lightly
and began, gently, to increase their pressure. ‘He told me that if ever I made such a slip of my own, I should not expect to live long.’

He smiled into the other man’s face and the man smiled back, with watering eyes. ‘My lord,’ he said, and then gasped as Rognvald’s toying hand made a swift movement.

‘That was at Stiklestad,’ Rognvald said. ‘So you see, my foster-father King Olaf barely outlived his error.’

The ear was bleeding. Rognvald withdrew his arm, laughing, and the men still round him laughed as well; even the sufferer, through his tears. ‘Perhaps it means my uncle Thorfinn is still alive,’ Rognvald said, and laughed very loudly this time, so that he did not at first hear what was said to him by a man at the far end of the hall.

‘My lord? My lord Earl. I smell smoke.’

Then he heard, and stopped laughing, so that the voice of the son of hell outside could be heard quite plainly: the beloved voice saying.

‘
Hallo there, my nephew! Are you cold? Come out! I have kindled a fire for you and your soul-friends. Come and warm yourselves at it!
’

He did not come out, or even move, at the beginning, so that the long-hundred of men surrounding the hall in the darkness had nothing to do at first but stand and watch the ring of firewood catch and blaze round the base of the long timber building and against the shuttered door of the hall.

Then Thorfinn lifted his great voice again and the monks, offered their lives, began to appear dazed and half-awake at the upper half-door, already barred by red flames, and Thorfinn’s men helped them out, with a wary eye to the smoke-filled spaces behind them. A spear did fly out, and then another; and then three or four men who were clearly not men of the church tried to scramble over the half-door at once and were killed before they got past the wood-pile. Another monk, weeping and coughing, clung to the door-post.

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘Rognvald is inside. The priest says so.’

Thorfinn did not answer.

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘He will come out. Whether your axe takes him or not, I promise you mine will.’

The flash of white at the half-door told them, again, that a churchman was coming, and for a moment they saw him quite plainly in his linen clothes, bent and racked with coughing.

There was a pause. Then Thorfinn said sharply, ‘Make way for the deacon!’ and those men detailed for the task jumped forward to help the fellow over the threshold.

He waited till Thorfinn’s men were quite near; then they saw him fall back, as if overcome. They were pressed round the doorway, or as near to it as they could get, when he came at them in a rush and, setting his hand to the door-bar, vaulted clean over it, and over the men there.

The white robe flashed through the light, and, white and gold, the face of the deacon. Then he landed, in the smoke and the darkness; and they heard a sound that might have been a laugh, or a groan, and saw that he had gone.

‘
Rognvald!
’ said Thorkel Fóstri.

‘Who else do you know,’ said Thorfinn, ‘who could have done that?’ Then he said, ‘You had better go after him. I shall keep half the men here.’

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘Odalric will see to the hall. Go back to the boat. You have done enough.’ His men were setting off already, dividing as they went, in the direction that Rognvald had taken.

‘If Rognvald can jump,’ Thorfinn said, ‘I can stand.’

Then Thorkel Fóstri began to run, for the noise of the flames and the screams from the hall were drowning out the footfalls of his party. At the edge of the light, something occurred to him. He turned and shouted.

‘The dog! The dog will track him. He had the dog in the hall.’

Thorfinn’s deepest voice answered him drily. ‘He had thought of that. He had the dog under his arm when he vaulted.’

From north to south, Papay Minni measured less than a mile, with no buildings on it save the monastery. No man could hide on Papay Minni once night was over.

From three points on the island, an active man could swim, with ease, to the neighbouring great isle of Stronsay. But although Thorkel Fóstri’s search parties made their way first to those points, it was in the knowledge that no man, unless perfectly desperate, would try to make that crossing in the night sea of December, with nothing of succour or warmth to welcome him on the far side.