Eight turned south, into the night, and their sails, which they ran up directly, bloomed and dissolved on the black sea like foam. Two drove ashore and were later redeemed by David of Deerness and his family, who buried what they contained: the Northumbrian bodies in the turf and the brooches and arm-bands and finger-rings in the chapel, for the glory of God. The weapons and the ship-hulls and timbers they allowed the Earl Thorfinn to have, later, for a consideration.
The five ships of Earl Thorfinn and the flagship of Carl Thorbrandsson, from which he struck the banner, thereupon moved round to Sandwick, there to unload the dead and the injured, and to apportion what booty there might be. They lit fires on the shore and ate and rested while the longships were being set to rights, with Thorfinn moving about them, his long shadow roving over the shore, and their faces, and the turfy slopes up to the hall of Thorkel’s father and all the booth-shapes round the big steading.
The women, come out of hiding, brought them bread in baskets, and new-slaughtered beef, and lard and cheeses, but only one cask of ale, for there was work still to be done. And although his cousins and friends shouted to their chieftain Thorfinn, and congratulated him and themselves, and made colourful boasts, it might have been seen that the Earl had come quite a long way from the ungainly boy who ran down the oarshafts at Chester and got an affectionate blow on the ear for it, mixed with insults.
To Arnór Thordarson, watching with the bright skaldic eye, it seemed that Thorfinn stood outside the camaraderie of common success, untouched, as he was untouched in the flesh. From fourteen, he had sailed and watched men kill and be killed: gathering taxes was no sinecure, and some said no legitimate business either. Boys travelled on all the longships and often women as well. You watched a youngster change from his first callow fears to the time when he strode into battle as a man should, tasting danger like salt, exulting in his own skills; ready if need be to find his grave in a place of courage and honour, knowing his fame would be sung by the skalds, and his sons would do no less after him.
Of the boy Thorfinn, he knew only what others had told him: of a silent, withdrawn child of few bodily gifts, but those worked upon like the dwarves working metal, until he could hold his own in any of the half-homes or half-wars he might find himself in.
His years with King Canute had broken that sequence. What his men saw now was what they had to lead them, and they thought it adequate, Arnór judged. But hardly the joyous, furious rogue, the rip-roaring Earl, the wild, self-seeking, irresistible figure his father Sigurd had been.
In the middle of the night, when they were ready, Thorfinn sent round all his men with word to go to the ships, and this time, when Arnór asked, he was allowed to go with him.
The wind still blew in the right way for Thorfinn’s purpose, and they all knew the dark waters too well to miss the way, or mistake the currents, or be swept into the Swelchie whirlpool, as they said had been Earl Hakon’s fate. They were making down past the islands of Orkney and across the firth to the island of Stroma, where a beacon would be lit as they passed.
So Arnór knew. But still it was strange as they passed the low, black shape of the island and saw, soft orange, the fire bloom on its slope and then, as they left it behind, spooning its light in the wave-troughs, another smudge of colour far ahead on the mainland. Thorfinn said, ‘Gillacomghain is there in Thurso. And Thorkel and his men are round them, hidden, waiting for us.’
‘Prince,’ said Arnór. ‘I have made a verse.’
The youth Thorfinn did not look at him, or thank him, or express any of those things due from an earl to his personal skald. ‘Keep it,’ he said, ‘until we have won more than half the battle. If we win it.’
‘Lord, how could you fail?’ said Arnór dutifully; and sent a curse through the air to his foster-mother.
If it reached its destination at all, it was unlikely to disturb Fridgerd Gamli’s daughter, who in a long life had survived a good deal more than her foster-son’s petulance. In any case, her attention at present was on something much more compelling: on a boy of twenty-one who had found his way, some would say by her arts, some would say by no very great coincidence, to the cluster of huts where the young and old of Thorfinn’s household had taken refuge until this day’s work should be over.
To Sulien, nothing seemed out of the way. He had watched Thorfinn’s ships cross in the sunset to Orkney, and then had come here to find a spring he had noticed, for he was thirsty and had no wish for the ale-horn. Then, as he stooped to drink, a voice spoke. ‘And good evening to you, Soulinus son of Gingomarus, y doethaf or Brytanyeit. As it is a good evening, I hope, for your friends.’
Wisest of the Bretons, she had called him: an old woman’s mockery; except that the little he knew of the wise-woman Fridgerd, sitting now, he dimly saw, at the spring-side, had not led him to think her malicious. He said, ‘I hope it is a good evening for us all,’ and bent to take his drink. When he had done, she said, ‘Sit, if you are in no haste. You are not needed yet.’
He was not sure what she meant. He said, feeling his way, ‘It is not my battle. Nor, I suppose, is it yours.’
‘The blood of this land runs in Iceland,’ she said. He saw she was smiling. She said, ‘I have no quarrel with you, or your church.’
He was aware, then, of his youth, and of all that he had laid himself open to by his headstrong flight to the north when he might have sailed safely to Ireland. He said quietly, ‘Did you cast the runes for him?’
She sat very still, her smile gone, her face kindly and serious. ‘For the Earl Thorfinn? No. For myself, yes. They tell me that he will win half this battle.’
Sulien said, ‘Did you tell him?’
‘He did not need to be told,’ Fridgerd Gamli’s daughter said. ‘Nor do you. There is no magic, either black or white, about that. I shall be here only a short time, but another like me will come. And when you have gone, there will be others to follow you. It is for you to remember that he finds himself in a land where people speak with two tongues and worship in different ways.’
‘But he cannot follow two creeds,’ Sulien said.
‘At present,’ said Arnór’s foster-mother, ‘he believes only one thing and thinks of one thing. But one day he is going to stand and look about him and wonder why he was born into two worlds. A small thing for a serf. A perilous thing for a clever man and the families he holds in his hand.’
She was wise. She had put into words his reason for coming. He said, ‘There are monasteries here. I could find work to do for a while.’
Her hands relaxed, smoothing her skirts, dim in the dark as she made to get up. She was smiling again. ‘Five years would be enough,’ she said. ‘Four, perhaps. You have seen your successor.’
He was still staring up at her as she rose and left him.
He must have fallen asleep by the spring, and was dreaming of a great noise, like a battle at sea or the public acclaim of a multitude, when he woke and heard the distant sound that had woven itself into his sleep: the noise indeed of a great crowd, but not one of acclaim. The sound of many men at death-grip with one another, filling the summer night sky over Thurso. And then as, starting up, he ran to the settlement, he saw the low clouds to the east take each to itself a tinge of brightening colour, hazed by a feathering column of smoke.
The trap had been sprung. The sleeping army of Moray had been surrounded and challenged.
Had Sulien been with Thorkel, instead of asleep by the spring in those hours, he would have seen him lying as he had lain all day with his men, out of sight of the bay, and of the big timber hall, the collection of cabins and stockyards and barns, the one or two steadings that made up the settlement known as Thurso, on the rising ground between the beach and the river Skinandi.
There, within the tall oak stockade round the Earl’s empty hall and its grazings, lay Gillacomghain and his army, with his scouts posted around. The horses they had taken inside, and the animals they had collected to feed them, and the carts with their tents and the
ir meal-bags, their ale and their weapons, dragged all the way from the east coast at Wick, where they had been landed. There were women with them as well: news that Thorkel had received with annoyance, for women involved in a battle caused nothing but trouble. He hoped, giving the requisite warnings to his company, that the other side would have enough common sense, at the least, to give them their own quarters.
Already, Gillacomghain and his men would have been moved to wonder, perhaps, at the empty house-steads in Wick and the lack of resistance; but, after all, the fleet had brought them in daylight and, thus warned, the Caithness people might not unreasonably have taken to their heels.
So Gillacomghain had marched unhindered to Thurso and entered it, and now could afford the luxury of a night’s sleep, however dissatisfied he might be with the conquest. For of course he had found Thurso empty as well, and Thorfinn vanished: escaped to Orkney and gone to earth no doubt on his lands before the Berwick fleet had time to arrive and prevent it.
Perhaps Gillacomghain or his scouts had seen Carl’s Northumbrian ships sail to Orkney before the light failed. He could not know how they had fared. But it must seem certain that, once escaped, Thorfinn would hardly bring back a handful of men to confront the whole army of Moray now in possession here. Gillacomghain might expect that his ally Carl, having chased Thorfinn to Orkney, might call here at Thurso before sailing homewards. More of Carl he could not expect. The land in dispute was not Orkney, and the overlords of Orkney had given no sanction for a landing here.
So might Gillacomghain think. But Thorkel, knowing better, watched the sun sink and counted the time during which, there to the north, the ships of Thorfinn and of the fleet from the south must be engaged. The night grew dark, and then a little lighter, and then, brought from man to man, the message he wanted.
The beacon was burning on Stroma. As he had ordered, on the opposite headland, another was glowing in answer. The man who touched it off would be able to see, by its light, the dim sails of Thorfinn’s fleet approaching, with five longships or fewer, with Thorfinn aboard or left dead or injured at Sandwick.
In theory, it did not matter. In theory, it meant that the seaborne half of the Moray invasion had been defeated, and that the only enemy left was the one lying here, round the haven of Thurso.
When he might have been needed, Thorfinn had gone to the court of the Saxons. It was as well, Thorkel thought, that Caithness had a man of experience at hand for such battles as this. Whatever had happened at sea, Thorfinn’s men had one success behind them and would no doubt be glad enough to see someone else take the brunt of the fighting next time. Indeed, there was no point in waiting.
He said as much to his second in command, who happened to be Skeggi, and naturally Skeggi agreed. So Thorkel rose and sent his fire-message round, and in no time at all the men were on their feet and dispersing, and the Moray outposts had been silently disposed of and the stockade approached and ringed by all the able men of Caithness and Orkney here under his command, to move at his order.
Then the well-paid man inside did what he was paid to do and, on the signal, drew back the bolts of the gateway, and the horns blew and brayed all round the army, and, screaming, Thorkel and his men hurled themselves in, shield upon shield, sword upon sword.
The hoot of the horns came over the water, and the shouting that followed.
Thorfinn stood, saying nothing, in the prow; but the other men in the dragon-ship crowded and pointed, and on the other ships as well, so that their course grew erratic and the captured vessel had to be thrust off with oars to avoid a glancing collision.
Arnór said, ‘What has happened?’
‘Thorkel has attacked,’ Thorfinn said. ‘It is a thing he does, when he is sure of being successful.’
By the time they got to the shore, the hall was on fire: a sky-running river of flame that became a golden ladder and gradually a collapsed heap of angles. The light made molten gold of the dragon-head as Thorfinn’s Grágás slid up on the sand, and burnished his helmet and the rest of the gold on his person. Drunk with victory, the land army streamed down the seaweed and shingle towards him. His other ships, flocking to shore, were already half empty. Their crews, splashing into the water, floundered up through the sand, excitement colliding with excitement. In the middle of his men, on the higher ground, stood Thorkel.
The boy, as far as could be seen under the monstrous golden helmet, was unhurt. Thorkel said, ‘Gillacomghain is dead.’
‘Oh,’ said Thorfinn. He sprang forward and stood looking down at his foster-father while the crowd called and jostled about them. He said, ‘How?’
‘In the hall,’ Thorkel said. ‘With fifty of his own men. We set fire to it. Only his household stayed with him. We let the Moray men, the friends of Findlaech, come out if they wished. They’re all there, penned in under guard with the rest of the army. They stopped fighting very soon. They stopped fighting at once, come to that, when they saw Gillacomghain was dead.’
The heat from the hall reached them where they stood. Thorfinn looked at it. Someone in the crowd said, ‘You didn’t let all of them come out if they wished, then. Tell him about the one whose head you cut off. The Earl of Caithness, he was going to be.’
Thorfinn looked away from the hall then. ‘Maddan?’ he said. ‘Have you killed the nephew as well?’
‘I killed everyone I knew of who stood against you, or might stand against you one day,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘I thought Gillacomghain should burn.’
‘You did it without me,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Why? Was it Sulien?’
What Sulien might have to do with it was beyond Thorkel Fóstri. Around him, he could feel the men becoming restive. They had done well and should have their due, even if he received none. He said, ‘We thought we would save you the trouble. Didn’t we, lads?’
And at that at least the boy came to his senses and began to say and do the things required of him, so that soon matters were as they should be and the ale-casks could be opened and the victory celebrated round the bright-glowing heat of the hall.
Thorfinn went to the Moraymen and spoke to them. ‘Your Mormaer Gillacomghain is dead. I am the heir of his uncle Findlaech, whom he killed. Whom will you have for your Mormaer?’
There was a spokesman. There always was. He stood forward and said, ‘We will have you, my lord.’
‘Whom do you speak for?’ said Thorfinn.
‘For us all, my lord. We will swear, if you like.’
‘I will take your oath in Forres,’ Thorfinn said. ‘When I come there to my stepfather’s house. And you will come with me, to tell your friends what you have seen and what you have promised. What my stepfather did for you, I will do. Act to me as you acted to him, and no man will suffer.’
Sulien, arriving, caught that, and saw that he had come when the triumph was nearly over. There had been no shortage of voices on the way to tell him what had happened. The runes had been right.
Then Thorfinn turned and saw him and said, ‘Your condition, as you see, has been obeyed to the letter.’ For the first time, there was an emotion somewhere in the alarming, deep voice. Sulien saw that it was anger.
Then Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘What about the women? We’ve put them over there.’
Thorfinn said, ‘He had camp-girls with him?’
‘Not only camp-girls. Some of good family, including his own. To make the point, I suppose, that he was settling here.’
The place Thorkel had indicated was a good timber-built house on the same rising ground as the hall. The family it belonged to had arrived there and were apparently trying to get in: the door had been barred from the inside, and an argument was going on. Thorfinn said, ‘Go and eat, my foster-father. I’ll see to the women.’ Thorkel stopped, and then turned and walked elsewhere.
Sulien said, ‘Can you manage all the women on your own, or shall I come?’
‘Come if you like,’ Thorfinn said. He got to the door of the house and spoke pleasantly enough to the folk outside. He kn
ew them, and they gave him a hearing and after a while turned aside, grumbling, to find other shelter. Then he stood alone but for Sulien beside him and, raising his voice, gave a brief order.
‘Unbar the door or I will burn it down.’
For a moment, there was silence. Then a woman’s voice whimpered and was cut off; and another murmured. Footsteps came near, and there was a jarring sound of wood on wood from inside. Then the door swung slowly open.
Inside, there was a small fire. But the light from outside was much brighter, washing into the doorway and through the windows from the embers of Gillacomghain’s funeral pyre. In its light, Thorfinn stood as he had come from the sea, with his face smeared with sweat and dirt, and his ring-mail dulled with other men’s blood. He had given his helm to someone flattered to carry it, and its weight had left a circle of red round his brow and his flattened, salt-tangled hair. He was so tall that he had to bend to stare into the gloom of the house.
Faces appeared, underlit by the fire, pulled into unnatural shapes by fear and exhaustion and grief. Thorfinn said, ‘Which of you is Ingibjorg, Bergljot’s daughter, mother of Luloecen?’
A voice somewhere answered, ‘I am.’
Sulien saw Earl Thorfinn turn towards the sound, but could not see, either, which of the women had spoken.
The Earl Thorfinn said, ‘Ingibjorg, Bergljot’s daughter, I have to tell you that Gillacomghain your husband is dead.’
A rustling ran through the group and then was stilled. From the back of the house, someone rose and picked her way forward to the light: a tall girl with uncovered hair the colour of ox-blood, not very long, and a tunic robe of dyed linen, creased and grimy with charcoal. There were circles under her eyes, which were colourless, translucent as pond-water. She said, ‘Then I suppose I am your prisoner. Who are you?’
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