King Hereafter

  No one spoke, or breathed. Across the tables, Sulien saw how white Groa had become, and waited until, her eyes meeting his, she remembered her friends. The silence stretched on, while Thorfinn studied the man who had spoken and the man, breathing hard, stared back at his face. Then Thorfinn said, ‘I do not think that all the men here believe as you do, or the oath they have each taken would go for nothing, and the God in whose name they made it. But if any man does, I say only this. If in the days to come, or in the years to come, I or any man in my charge behaves as you have described, then he is released from his oath and his allegiance, and free to end my rule in any way that he can. Indeed, if I were to act as you say, I could not survive.’

  He paused. ‘You have spoken, and I have heard you. Any man is free to speak, and for that you will not be punished. But your acts you must stand by, and for these you are now being judged. For the lives you took among your own people in Moray, and for your inciting of a rebellion on the eve of this assembly, you and your fellow must accept the due penalty, which is death. Take them out and behead them.’

  Still no one spoke. No one moved, save a group of helmeted men who marched from the door and laid hands on the condemned men in silence. There was a brief struggle, during which the spokesman again lifted his voice in a scream. ‘You cowardly fools! Will you sit there and let him take me? He has sent his men north. There he is! Run at him!’

  The guests at either side looked away. Along the tables, a man shifted on his bench, and then another, till each, finding himself alone, subsided and became very still. The howling of the two victims travelled along the hall and through the door, and dwindled, and stopped, with precision.

  Be it courage, be it bravado, they had let him do it.

  Sulien drew a long, shaking breath and saw Duftah’s hand uncurl beside him. At the cross-table, Groa still sat immobile, her chin high in its swathes, her eyes open. And Thorfinn, standing unarmed beside her, lifted his eyes from the board and drew breath, slowly, to speak to his people.

  His words never came. They were forestalled by a young, high voice calling in Norse from the furthest extent of the chamber.

  ‘Uncle! Thorfinn, my dear disciple of Odin! Hardly the wand in your hand, and you have to teach your new vassals manners! If you need some help, there are men I could send for.’

  Rognvald. Rognvald, whom Sulien had last seen carried drunk off a scarred Viking longship, among the wounded and the dead and the plunder. Rognvald, lovely as Baldur, with the golden hair lit by the sun from the doorway, and the blue eyes filled with hilarity, and in his uplifted arm a sword, down which a river of fresh blood was streaming, from the severed head stuck open-eyed on its point. The head of one of the two condemned men they had watched leave the hall a few moments before.

  Of all those round the table, the King’s nephew was known to no one except perhaps a few Moraymen, and few could understand what he said.

  It hardly mattered. He spoke to the King familiarly in Norwegian, using the pagan style he had abandoned and the name of the god he had repudiated. No one could mistake that, or the cheerful contempt in his voice, or the triumph with which he held aloft the fresh-hewn head of one of their fellows.

  The roar was in their throats when Thorfinn spoke: so quickly, in that immense, deep voice that was all he had of physical beauty, that it filled the hall before other sound could be heard. He said calmly, ‘This is a cockerel from Norway who needs to be given a lesson. Take his sword, and what is on it.’

  He was looking not at his own men who had returned panting to the doorway, but at the men sitting nearest to Rognvald. Realising it, they glanced at one another and then, as Rognvald angrily took a step backwards, threw themselves upon him, gripping him, while a third wrested the sword from his grasp, and its burden.

  ‘What!’ said Rognvald, and wrenched at the fists holding him. ‘What are you doing?’

  Thorfinn looked not at him, but at his own men. ‘Punishment does not include indignity. Take what he brought in, and give it what burial the man’s kindred would want. And since my nephew has lent a dead man his sword, it may as well furnish the living. Keep the Earl Rognvald’s sword and send it to the dead toisech’s family. As for the Earl Rognvald my nephew …’

  They could hardly hold Rognvald now, so violent was his resistance, and there was blood by his mouth and the marks of handling springing red along his jaw and the tanned skin of his arms. He said, ‘You are using me. You are using me to raise your credit with a herd of sheep-milking Irishmen.’

  He had spoken in Gaelic. In bad Gaelic, but with some words there at least that men would understand.

  Thorfinn answered him in the same tongue.

  ‘With the wand newly in my hand, as you say, I am punishing misconduct in this realm, whether committed by a man who owes me allegiance or a man who is of the blood of my family.’ He turned again to his men. ‘Take him out and thrash him.’

  ‘What!’ said Rognvald.

  Sitting still at the tables in their separate places were the two men who had half-risen when the sentence on the executed men had been passed. That Thorfinn had noticed it had been apparent to none. Now he turned and, looking from the one to the other, said quietly, ‘It may seem to you that this order will not be carried out. I should be obliged, therefore, if you would both accompany my nephew and witness his punishment.’

  They stood slowly, first one and then the other, as he was speaking. At the end, they glanced at each other and quickly away. Then the nearest said grimly, ‘Yes, my lord King,’ and, leaving the bench, walked to the door, pursued by his fellow. Rognvald stopped struggling.

  He had never looked so to advantage, Sulien thought, as now, standing straight and slender and defiant, with his head flung back and his bruised arms at his sides, facing his uncle.

  Rognvald said, ‘You have thrown away Orkney for a straw-death among peasants.’ And, turning, walked out, with armed men about him.

  They watched him go, and then all the eyes in the hall returned to the cross-table.

  ‘I suppose,’ Thorfinn said, ‘the making of a king is rarely done without pains. We seem today to have had more than our share. On the other hand, perhaps there are some things that it is better for all of us to know now, rather than later. I have confidence in you. I hope you will have cause to have some in me, in time to come. Meanwhile, there is food still on the tables, and wine to which, having listened to me, you may now feel you require to apply yourselves and which, having spoken, I am now happy to have served to you in whatever abundance you wish.’

  He sat, at last. The rumble that answered him had the echoes of amusement in it, and did not die away, but altered to the sound men make when they are discussing matters too delicate to shout aloud but too momentous to leave to a better occasion. Then, as the wine went round without stint, louder talk came, and laughter, and normality, hesitating, settled in and took charge.

  Sulien said, ‘I want to be sick.’

  ‘The trouble with you,’ said Duftah cheerfully, ‘is that you forget to pray.’

  * * *

  They left, most of them, before nightfall, but long before that, as was seemly, Groa had left the hall. She did not expect Thorfinn to come for a long time, and so stayed with Lulach and her women for a while before withdrawing to the inner chamber she shared with her husband. For two hours, she paced backwards and forwards, the breath from her night-robe stirring the brazier embers and bending the flames of the candles, until she heard his voice outside, and someone replying. Then the latch rattled and lifted.

  Because she had learned to read the unreadable, she knew, as he stood with his back to the door, slowly pressing it shut, that at this moment she was not his wife, but one more person to face.

  She had prepared, in two hours, the words that on this day she should speak to him, and the things she must do. Discarding them all, she said, ‘The bed is there. Could you sleep?’

  ‘Probably never again,’ he said. It was meant, she thought, to be
amusing. Latterly, he had taken off the silk robe: it would be at the monastery, with the wand and the gospels. Bound above his black brows he still wore the gold band, and would always wear it. He said, ‘I have just come from Rognvald.’

  With that said, she could not move. The inner eye of love knew that beyond him was a jar of wine, and a pitcher, and that he had drunk nothing as yet. She said, ‘What happened?’

  ‘He forgave me,’ he said.

  With irony? With thankfulness? It was impossible to tell. And, not knowing, what could she say? He understood, far better than she did, the implications of everything that had happened since the moment Rognvald walked into the hall. He knew Rognvald better than she did: he knew, as she did not, how close the links between Rognvald and himself might be, and how personal. There was nothing whatever she could say except, ‘Once he came in, there was nothing else you could do.’ And that he knew already. It was not that kind of reassurance he needed.

  He must have been watching her. He said, ‘You are longing to cross to that jar and make me as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible. But then I should have to forfeit my conjugal rights, and I am sure that would be bad for the kingdom. Doesn’t the barley rot on the stalk, should the King of one day fail to display his fertility?’

  ‘Then come here,’ Groa said. Her body, listening, started to tremble.

  He left the door. ‘Where?’ he said, and, lifting the robe, slipped it from her shoulders. His fingers also were unsteady, and his eyes, watching what they were doing, were more black than brown. He lifted his hands to the white, marbled globes of her breasts and cupped them, his fingers moving over the soft, darkened aureoles, over and over so that her bones melted.

  Then, slowly, the caress stilled and Thorfinn looked up. ‘Groa?’

  She smiled, holding his eyes, but did not answer. His free hand, slipping gently downwards over her skin, reached her waist, and then her belly, and rested there.

  ‘In a month,’ she said, ‘there may be something to see. It is a little early.’

  He let both hands fall and stood back a little, so that the light from the candle fell on her face. ‘The King’s fertility,’ he said, ‘has already manifested itself?’

  ‘In Tarbatness,’ Groa said. ‘I am awed. Since you were not present either through my first child-bearing or my second, how did you know what to look for?’

  ‘There is no secret,’ Thorfinn said. ‘In every Norse camp, there are slave-girls who are carrying.’ He drew a soft breath, quick as a gasp, and got rid of it. Then, moving forward again, he lifted his hands and settled her robe once more on her shoulders. ‘Wine,’ he said. ‘Is it not an occasion for wine?’

  Her thoughts on the unborn child, she was slow, this time, to read him. ‘Sit,’ she said; and as he threw himself down on the mattress, she crossed the small room and found two beakers and filled them. ‘I suppose,’ she said, her back turned, ‘it will be a son again, since that seems to come easily to you. And you will name him Erlend as you wanted, after your great-great uncle, Skull-splitter’s brother.’

  She turned round, the wine in her hands, and then stopped. He still sat, elbows on knees, as she had left him, but now his two fists were raised to his brow, flesh rammed against flesh in immobile violence, his eyes shut, his lips open and rigid.

  She set the cups down, and did not know what to do.

  Without moving, he spoke. ‘I am so thankful. It is news above any other I would have wished. It is only that I am tired.’

  Then she said, ‘Thorfinn!’ quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points.

  ‘No! Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth!’ The name reached her like sling-shot.

  Groa said, ‘They are the same man. I should know. I married both.’

  The candles flickered; and the aromatic twigs mewed in the brazier and dispatched a milk-blue twist of smoke to spiral between them. His eyes opened, and she thought, What have I said that is as important as that?

  He rose; and when he spoke, it was after a long interval. ‘Then … Whom you love, I should cherish,’ he said. He came and stood before her, his face grave but no longer leaden. He touched her cheek, and then put his arms closely around her, drawing her head to his shoulder and brushing her hair with his lips.

  ‘Be thou alone my heart’s special love: let there be none else save the High King of Heaven.… It shall be Erlend. He was fathered by Thorfinn upon Groa and will be born to Macbeth and to Groa, who alone can make one man whole. Can you make me sleep without wine?’

  ‘I can try,’ she said.

  THREE

  MAN OF JUST over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom. To acquire a kingdom of dissident peoples with no towns, no money, and a number of different languages, with few and indifferent roads, and with frontiers so vague that their demarcation virtually did not exist, would have been a daunting task for a man of that country trained for its kinghood.

  That it was left to a man from the north was not a measure of the country’s despair, because the country had no voice to speak with. It was evidence only that, of the assorted families who carried most weight in all the separate corners of the kingdom, many had now lost their leaders; some were so placed that one overlord was as good or as bad as another; and some, weary of generations of coastal fighting, were prepared to place themselves in the enemy’s hand, provided he had a fleet and fighting-men to defend them.

  Long before this, Sulien had thought of these things, because it was his nature to look ahead, and he had accepted what Thorfinn would not accept: that only Duncan’s life stood between him and the throne. When he left Ireland to go to Thorfinn at Kinrimund, it was in the face of black despair, for he knew his own limits and thought, whatever he found, to face a country destined for ruin and a man who would be his enemy henceforward.

  It had not been like that, for, whatever disorder circumstances had brought about in Thorfinn’s life, it was not one of the intellect.

  He would not make the decision whether or not to take the kingdom: not until the last moment. But what he had done, with meticulous clarity, was to think through what that decision, either way, would entail.

  When Sulien found him, Thorfinn already knew what the greatest difficulties were, and what might be done to solve them. In the brief time they had together after the fever broke, Sulien sat and asked questions, and Thorfinn answered them.

  From the bottom of his soul, Sulien believed in the Most High; and he saw this as God’s will, that a man, whatever his blood, brought up to be a warrior-merchant of the north, should stop to turn every gift to preparing himself for such a burden, should the charge be vouchshafed him or not.

  But it had been allowed him; and before he left, late that autumn, Sulien saw come to pass all the things that Thorfinn had spoken of, lying there in the Bishop’s house, with Alfgar, with Crinan hammering at his doors and requiring to be dealt with.

  ‘About Alfgar. If there is an enthronement, then it will have to be quick and simple, and even then there will probably be trouble. So, no eminent visitors. We send them a messenger later with the news that a new King has been proclaimed, together with some expensive trifle.’

  ‘And Crinan?’ Sulien had asked.

  ‘The boys would have to stay at Dunkeld, and Crinan at Alston. There is no reason why he couldn’t remain officially Abbot, and his rents would be collected on his behalf and used to maintain his grandsons. After Malcolm was old enough, one would have to think again. But he couldn’t be allowed into Dunkeld at first. In any case, Dunkeld would be useful. I would bring some of the ships down to the Tay.’

  ‘The Bishop of Alba?’

  ‘Poor Cousin Malduin. He would have to come back for the king-making, and I should have to ask the new Abbot of Kells to come over. You will have heard that neither Crinan’s house nor Duftah’s was successful in the election, but that won’t st
op the abbots from making war on one another. Kells and Downpatrick have been burned already. I suppose one of the lessons the Irish church learned from the Vikings was that you can set fire to altars and the Trinity pays no attention.’

  ‘I think—’ Sulien had begun.

  ‘That I should spare you such blasphemy. Very well. Bishop Malduin is a liability, but I couldn’t dismiss him without stirring up trouble over Lothian and the St Cuthbert’s churches, which I couldn’t yet afford to do. So he would stay, but in Alba, not Durham, and would be kept on a very short tether.’

  ‘There are some holy men you can trust,’ had said Sulien. ‘You talked once of the Culdees. There are Irish monks like them all over the Rhineland, all with friends accustomed to trade.’

  ‘I thought of it,’ Thorfinn said. ‘A carrying-trade might be possible. There is no surplus that I can see to support anything else.’

  ‘Then what about these?’ Sulien had said. The coins of Sitric, Eachmarcach’s uncle, were not quite the Byzantine replicas that Sitric had aimed at, and you would guess from the spread hands on either side of the alarmed silver face that the pendicles of the Ottoman crown had unexpectedly puzzled the die-maker. But it was coinage, the mark of a civilised country.

  Thorfinn had picked one up and flipped it. ‘It must make Crinan weep for his profession. But at least it’s their own. We use other folks’ silver up north; you know that. You need money when you hire mercenaries or when you pay off attackers.

  ‘Duncan got Irish troops to come over for silver, and for what they could get out of it: he possibly promised them tracts of Moray and Angus, once they had got rid of me and a few of the toisechs. But I couldn’t call in the Irish, except the Irish of Dublin, and I wouldn’t call in anyone else. So, to begin with, everything I did would have to be paid for by my own trading in the north, in the ships that the people of the north build and furnish for me. The rest of the country would have to keep me in food-rents, together with as much of a hird as they will let me have, and enough stored to sustain men on campaign and exchange for their fighting-equipment. Under no circumstances,’ Thorfinn had said, ‘would it appear that we are likely to indulge in the sins of the rich.’