King Hereafter (8 page)

Immeasurably deep, rumbling over Alfgar’s first words, Earl Thorfinn’s voice spoke instead, addressing the King. And without translation King Canute answered and then, looking at the old King of Alba, added something again.

The Gaelic followed. ‘My lord King,’ said the interpreter, ‘hears with pleasure that King Malcolm has seen fit to release Alfgar of Mercia, his former hostage. My lord King is of the opinion that the talks may now proceed with a freer heart on each side.’

King Malcolm placed his knotted hand hard on the cross on his breast and inclined his head. An old campaigner, he found words almost at once. He said, ‘I have come to know with whom I am dealing. Certainly, let us proceed.’ But he was breathing heavily enough for the noise to reach them all, and at Thorfinn his dear grandson he did not look at all.

The little lesson was over. From youth to age, as sharp a challenge as Sulien had ever heard one grown man give another in the field. A lesson Malcolm could do nothing about, although for a moment, blank surprise on his face, Alfgar seemed about to protest. Then Eachmarcach took him by the arm and sat him down, not far from Sulien.

Behind the Danish King, a well-made man with a cloudy brown beard and large evangelist’s eyes had been watching Thorfinn from the moment he boarded. Prodded, Alfgar proved to know who he was. ‘That’s the lord Crinan. Merchant and mint-master. Duncan’s father. Houses in York and Shrewsbury. My God, he must be thankful Thorfinn didn’t get born to his wife.’

Crinan. The first husband of Earl Thorfinn’s mother. In which case … Sulien said, ‘You would think they might have something to say to one another.’

‘Why? I don’t suppose they’ve ever met,’ Alfgar said. ‘Thorfinn wouldn’t probably know him.’

‘But he knows which is Earl Thorfinn,’ Sulien said. He thought of Leofric’s face a few moments ago, and that of Alfgar’s mother, before. Alfgar had called the Earl by his given name, without title; but they had been twenty-four hours in each other’s company, and that was Alfgar’s way.

What had been a confrontation of two kings, each with his circle, each intent on the business of extracting and offering safeguards, extracting and offering concessions, had changed. The opposing circles had blurred, and their intentions. Age and experience and cunning had united them in their own eyes as well as in Sulien’s, isolating the three young men and discounting them, as Eachmarcach was isolated as a foreigner. Only Sulien observed that Leofric’s son and the Dubliner occupied the real attention of the antagonists only briefly, whereas the Earl Thorfinn beside him now held the centre. It came to Sulien that he should have restrained Alfgar from coming here, and that he should not have come here himself.

King Canute was speaking, through his interpreter. He had a matter to raise, in Norse, with the Earl Thorfinn of Orkney. He would have his translator sit by King Malcolm. A grandfather would no doubt wish to know what his grandson was saying. My lord Thorfinn?

The young man got up. It was not easy to stand still on the deck before Canute, braced against the sway of the vessel. Earl Thorfinn was so tall that he could close his hand over the struts of the awning. In the sickly green light, his brow hung like a lantern, with his eyes lost altogether in the shadow beneath. King Canute said, ‘I hear that you, Earl Thorfinn, are pledged a vassal of Olaf of Norway?’

Somewhere beside Malcolm of Alba, someone fidgeted. The Earl of Orkney neither shifted nor blinked. He said, ‘Six years ago. I hoped to be given my proper inheritance of two-thirds of Orkney, just as Eachmarcach here hopes to become King of Dublin when his uncle should die. Unlike me, he has so far received no patronage and therefore has had no disappointments.’

‘I am surprised,’ said Canute, ‘that, having received so small a return for your homage, you should not have thrown off the yoke.’

‘I have done what I can,’ said the youth thoughtfully. He swayed peacefully with a lurch of the deck, his skin boots squeaking a little. ‘I have refused to join Brusi my half-brother in his attempts to deny food and shelter to those at war with King Olaf. With my stepfather dead and Moray denied me, I have no resources for more. I cannot defy King Olaf. I have little money. I have to sail every summer as it is, to bring cattle and corn for the winter, and I lose half of these to raiders. With the ships I have, I can defend nobody, not even myself. Eachmarcach is in the same case.’

‘I know a little,’ said Canute, ‘of the talents of Eachmarcach. His uncle, as I remember, ruled Ireland for eight years after King Brian died. But of you, alas, I know nothing. I have here a letter from your half-brother Duncan which asserts he owes no homage for Cumbria since such is the right of none but English-born monarchs. He has since reconsidered, he tells me. But perhaps you in the north share his feelings? Perhaps you would prefer to be ruled by Norwegian-born kings such as you are used to?’

It was too fast for Sulien. The interpreter muttered in King Malcolm’s ear, and, between that and his own poor vocabulary, he could do little but guess at the dialogue. But he heard that remark, and the pause that followed told its own story. Duncan’s eyes, he saw, were fastened on the Earl’s back.

Earl Thorfinn said, ‘I am sure my brother’s letter was written before he met my lord King. As for me, the Norse blood that I share with King Canute no more decides where my sword falls than his does.’

He was eighteen. No one laughed. Sulien swallowed. Canute said, ‘And what does your Celtic blood suggest that I can rely on? You have been told, I take it, of the death of the lady your mother, whose tongue, it appears, is beyond you?’

He needed a shield
, the Lady Godiva had said, and she was right. But for her, the news would have reached Earl Thorfinn here, with all the impact that Canute intended. You could see the King’s eyes watching the youth; and behind him, unaltered, the vague, tranquil features of Crinan, the dead woman’s husband. With some un-Christian pleasure, Sulien waited to hear her son cheat them of their expectations.

The Earl Thorfinn said, ‘The Lady Bethoc is dead? Indeed, I am sorry to hear it. News takes a long time to travel these days and, as perhaps you will have gathered, I am little in touch with my mother’s kin.’

There was a small silence. Sulien had heard men speak of a dead dog with more emotion. Then King Malcolm said, haste in his voice, ‘Since the death of his other stepfather … Since the Mormaer of Moray was killed, the boy has had no settled home.’

His grandson’s gaze did not move, nor did Canute’s. Thorfinn said, ‘Does that suffice for my answer? As others do, I take the path that will serve me best. And so long as it serves me, I will keep to it.’

Godiva had given him a shield, and he had turned it into a spear to injure his grandfather. The interpreter’s voice fell into silence. The crown on the Danish King’s head glittered green under the awning, and his features, heavy with thought, were shadowless as those of a man in a mist.

No one spoke, even Malcolm. The time for questions was past, and the time for debate, it was clear. Whatever King Malcolm’s status in Alba, he was here as a vassal, and his two grandsons with him. What they were about to hear now from the monarch of Denmark and England was the passing of judgement.

Canute said, ‘I address first my lord Earl of Orkney. Sit, and hear me.

‘I can be a generous King, although you will have heard that I am not slow to act if those to whom I am generous do not respond as they should. Many magnates known to you in Norway, Earl Thorfinn, have become my men and are either awaiting the day when they may throw off King Olaf’s rule or are already here in the west, ready to cross the sea with my gathering army.

‘If you will be loyal to me: if you allow my ships what shelter and provisions they need on those shores of Caithness and Orkney which your steward controls, I undertake that, when I am ruler of Norway, you will hold beneath you the two-thirds of Orkney to which you say you are entitled.’

Over the beak of his nose, the Earl of Orkney’s brows made a single black bar. ‘Two-thirds of Orkney?’ he said.

King Canute said, ‘Your entitlement, so I understand. While Earl Brusi your brother still lives.’

There was another silence. Then Earl Thorfinn said, ‘I agree.’

Sulien did not watch him accepting that invitation to murder; discarding his oath to King Olaf. He stared at the deck while King Canute, summoning Eachmarcach now before him, gave and received the same kind of promise: in exchange for loyalty to his interests, the King of the Saxons would support Eachmarcach’s rightful claim as next ruler of Dublin. Only when, his tone altering, King Canute finally addressed the King of Alba and Duncan his grandson did Sulien bring himself to look up.

‘My lord King of Alba and my lord Duncan of Cumbria. You have already told me that, except for service in war, you will do homage for these lands of Cumbria to me and to the monarchs who follow me as rulers of England, whatever their birth. I am prepared to accept your pledge on these terms, with one extra condition.

‘Yours, my lord Malcolm, is not an easy country to rule, divided as it must be by nature and by its different races. Cumbria in the south you hold, as we have established, under myself through the lord Duncan. Caithness in the north is held by your other grandson who is also, in his own right, an Earl of Orkney. Alba, which lies between the two, is held towards the north by the brothers Gillacomghain and Malcolm, ruler of Moray, who owe allegiance to you, but act independently at times also. Of their friendship I have had to assure myself separately.

‘South of Moray, the provinces are under their own leaders or mormaers, as you call them, who acknowledge yourself as their over-king. The heart of your kingdom, if it has a heart, is there in the centre of Alba, in Fife and Angus and Atholl where lie your principal palaces and your holy places, Scone and Dunkeld.’

He looked round, and back at King Malcolm. ‘I have studied these things, for weakness in your lands, my lord, lays us both open to the intruder. I propose therefore that there should be returned to the councils of your kingdom the strong intelligence and good sense of my lord Crinan, your daughter’s first husband, and that the abbacy of Dunkeld, vested in him on behalf of your daughter, should not be granted away on her death, but that my lord Crinan should enjoy its rights and its privileges, together with the duty to protect and foster this abbey for life. On that condition, and on those we have already agreed, do I offer you the peace that you seek.’

No one spoke. Outside, Sulien could hear the pooling sound of the river embracing the vessel, and the hiss and splash of plying small boats and skerries. Outside the awnings, the men of the ship and the servants of both Kings and the Bishops talked together in whispers.

More than fifty years since, on this spot, an English king had exacted obedience from his vassals as Canute was doing, and at the end of the conclave had had himself rowed for the oath-taking, with his vassal kings at the oars, to the church of St John round the river-bend.

The present summons to Chester, following that, had been an insult. The fact that Malcolm had come had told Canute all he wanted to know about the course of this meeting. So Malcolm, who had come to pay homage at a price,
was being asked to pay more than he wanted. He was being asked to take into Alba one of England’s great moneyers, Crinan the mint-master, whom accident had made the father of Duncan, but whose interests and acumen had led him to more lucrative regions long since.

The stewardship of the monastery of Dunkeld had never been denied him, nor a fair amount of its dues. But, formally installed in such a monastery at the head of the great waterway of the Tay, the lord Abbot of Dunkeld would hold for Canute a base in the centre of Alba from which all Alba might be controlled.

But a base, after all, surrounded by the armies of Malcolm. The veined eyes gave nothing away, but the old King’s hands worked at the knees of his robe as he thought, assessing it all. Then he lifted the weight of his beard. ‘My lord King, on that I shall agree,’ he said; and the interpreter smiled at his master, repeating it.

It was over. The awning was drawn and men rose, saying little, watching approach the slim royal ferry that was to take the principals, as on that other occasion, to the church of St John for the service of thanksgiving and the ratification upon the altar-table of the new pact. Although this time, as King Canute said smiling, none would be required to labour for him at the oars.

ULIEN HAD NO
special wish, this time, to be near his friend Alfgar or the Earl of Orkney or King Sitric’s nephew as the transfer from the big boat to the shallower began to take place. He saw that Skeggi, the Earl’s standard-bearer, was already in the long-ship awaiting his master. The prince Duncan joined him, crossing with unexpected agility. Even more unexpectedly, he turned and hailed his half-brother, Thorfinn of Orkney, whose cloak he held in his hand. ‘Brother! Here is a seat for you!’

Forgetfully, he had used Gaelic. Gesturing belatedly to explain his meaning, Duncan brushed into the water his brother’s neat, folded cloak. It lay blown on the waves for a moment, and then the river drew it away, the one exquisite brooch glinting as it swirled below and was gone.