His side hurt, and he went early back to his house before the celebrations were over.
Afterwards, when the harm had been done, Thorkel Fóstri was wont to say that the year now dawning, of Thorfinn’s twenty-ninth birthday, was the year when the three Norns laid their hands on the fabric of his foster-son’s life and wove in the thread that was to run to the end.
Other men felt the torque first.
Ealdred, Earl of Northumbria, riding out of York on some business in the north, was set upon and killed by a small group of men who broke through the ranks of his retinue, slashed, and withdrew before they could be stopped.
The killers were led by Carl son of Thorbrand, who six years before had led a fleet against Thorfinn at Deerness.
Then, it had been a matter of obliging a friend; but this time, the object was vengeance. Twenty years before, on Canute’s advice, Carl’s father had killed Earl Ealdred’s father, and Earl Ealdred had responded in turn by bringing about Thorbrand’s death. He was not the first to desire it. Earl Uhtred himself had tried to get rid of Carl’s father, even when he had Carl’s sister to wife. There were no soft men in Northumbria.
Five daughters went into mourning, including the wives of King Duncan of Alba, Alfgar of Mercia, Siward son of Thore Hund, and Orm nephew of Forne. The earldom of Northumbria, as predicted, went to none of their husbands, but to the late Earl’s only full brother Earl Eadulf, half-brother of Maldred’s wife and uncle therefore of Crinan’s two grandsons.
Despite this sad fact, it was reported that the five husbands, with the possible exception of Alfgar, showed no signs of jealousy but, on the contrary, redoubled the care with which they cultivated that part of their wives’ lands which fell to the middle and western sides of the country.
In this, Alfgar of Mercia would undoubtedly have taken his share had his attention not been distracted by some fierce raiding by the men of Gwynedd on the Mercian frontier which required prompt action by himself and his uncle Edwin. The opposition being stronger than either of them expected, they retired after a damaging success.
In Bruges, the Lady Emma considered the future of her son Hardecanute in Denmark and her stepson Harold Harefoot in England and decided that she would enjoy a visit from her oldest surviving son, the half-Saxon Edward in Normandy, now in his mid-thirties, unmarried, and with no occupation other than hunting, at which he was by now extremely accomplished, when he could afford it.
Edward’s visit to his mother was short. She asked him to lead an attack against Harold Harefoot and he refused, directing her attention instead to her other son Hardecanute in Denmark.
It was a predictable reverse, but one she did not enjoy. After Edward had gone, she sent another courier to Denmark, bought the head of St Valentine, and through an excellent young man called Hermann of Hainault, whom her late husband had come across at the Flemish monastery of St Bertin’s, commissioned the writing of her biography.
It was, she ruled, to contain no allusions whatever to her first husband King Aethelred, the father of Edward.
In other parts of Europe, young men stirred. In Sweden, Svein Ulfsson, nephew of the late Canute, listened to the news from Denmark and began, quietly, on his twentieth birthday, to make certain arrangements.
In Constantinople, a powerful twenty-three-year-old called Harald, half-brother of the late canonised King Olaf, shut the lid of his first chest of treasure and, taking his sword, went out thoughtfully to join Georgios Maniakos in Sicily and begin filling the next.
In Hungary, the vehemently converted King Stephen, alias Salomon, died in the arms of his Venetian nephew Peter, tranquil in the belief that his German widow Gisela would be maintained as she deserved by his nephew Peter when King.
Peter, who had no such intentions, was promptly embroiled in a national revolt by the Magyar nobility and allowed his aunt Gisela to starve without interference. What had happened to Stephen’s protégés, the Lady Emma’s two Saxon stepsons, hustled abroad during King Canute’s reign after the death of Edmund Ironside their father, was a matter for speculation throughout Europe, especially as both boys should now have reached the age at which they might be expected to multiply.
The concept of a warren of royal Saxons flourishing under the care of some unknown and ambitious monarch was one that roused either goose-pimples or hilarity, depending on where it was being debated.
In Normandy, Duke William the Bastard attained the age of ten years. In Dol, on the Norman-Brittany border, the Archbishop Jarnegon died and, after many and appropriate gifts to Count Alan, was replaced by his former archdeacon Juhel de Fougères, who communicated immediately thereafter with his friends in Mercia, Devon, and Alba.
In York, Ealdred, the new Earl of Northumbria, suddenly realised that the history of thirty years since had repeated itself; and that the silver mines, the St Cuthbert’s Cumbrian shrines, and the western harbours for Ireland had all silently disappeared from outside his control.
Emulating the history of thirty years before, he gathered an army and, marching west, proceeded to attack Cumbria, as his father Uhtred had done.
With remarkable alacrity, the five husbands of his five nieces all vanished before he got there, with the exception of Duncan, King of Alba and ruler of Cumbria. Which made the pattern complete, since it was Duncan’s grandfather King Malcolm whom Ealdred’s father had defeated so firmly all that time ago.
Whether because of this impending event or in ignorance of it, Thorfinn of Caithness, Moray, and Orkney took to sea with his fellow-Earl and all the ships he possessed and sailed west and south towards Cumbria. This time, he did not say where he was going, nor, as the weeks passed, had his people any idea what had happened to him or their kinsmen.
In the end, Thorkel Fóstri, who controlled his foster-son’s affairs now on land rather than by sea, sent to Thorfinn’s wife, who in turn sent for Sulien and her son Lulach.
Sulien had news to tell her. She listened to what he had to say, and did not try to stop him when he left for Caithness, taking Lulach and his servants with him, By fate or by coincidence, he arrived at Thurso as Thorfinn’s fleet began to come in.
From Trelleborg to Tønsberg, from Rousay to Rodel, there could have been few boys of the age of nine who had not stood on the shore of their fathers and watched the boats of the kindred come home from their viking. When, at fourteen, they buckled on the sword their father had bought and carried their box up the gangplank, they knew the worst and the best, and were prepared for it.
To Lulach it was unknown. The horns blew for the longships’ arrival, and Sulien, his robe crumpled still from the riding, his fresh face unsmiling, took the boy by the shoulder and walked him downhill from the door of the hall, disregarding the others, men and women, who left their houses and, brushing by, made for the beach and the jetty before him.
Thorkel Fóstri, rising, was moved to stop him, and then paused and, taking his stick, walked slowly down after him. For more than five years, the Breton had been friend and surrogate father to Lulach. Whatever Sulien’s motives, the lad would come to no harm. Then the sails began to appear round the western headland and, like everyone else, he began to count. As the sails dropped and the figureheads were taken in and they began to work under oar to the beach, you could see the damage.
The grey-goose figurehead with the scarlet sail made for the rivermouth and the wharf, as Sulien had expected. He and the boy took the ford over the river to where the burned hall had once stood and the new building now looked down on the sweep of the shore. Far over the sea, the sun picked out the clear green of the Orkney island of Hoy, while here, behind the new hall, the eastern horn of the bay lay as if stitched in pink on the braided blue silk of the seascape.
Thorfinn’s figurehead came down, bright against the stiff flaps of scarlet as the sail was roughly stowed. The lower strakes of the boat were foul with weed, and the timber above was chopped and shaved as if tooled by an adze. Three of the thwarts stood blank and empty, and the gunwales, with their ca
reful gilding, were scuffed and gapped. The oars lifted on her larboard side and she slid to her place by the wharf, while a man vaulted ashore with a cable. Lulach ran and held out his arms for the prow rope, which someone threw to him, grinning.
On board, there was a lot of talk and laughter and other sounds. Someone screamed once, and then a second time. The gangplank came down, and Lulach came slowly and stood by Sulien, along with the dozen or two others who had joined them by this time. The first man, carrying another over his shoulder, steadied himself and began to come ashore.
There were sixty men on board, a third of them wounded in one way or another, and two who had died so recently that they had been brought home to be buried. They came ashore in various ways, according to their wounds and their natures: some shouting and capering; some limping but joyous, with a clinking sack and perhaps a fur hat over one eye; two had a girl by the hand. One man crawled down the gangplank, and three were dragged ashore on their boxes. A man with his youth well behind him hopped down on two makeshift crutches, with his white-matted chest filled with necklaces: of glass and silver and amber and cornelian and great beads of walrus ivory that glistened like butter.
The crowd opened and swallowed them with screams of dismay and delight and a great wave of laughter. Thorfinn came ashore, carrying Rognvald in his arms.
Lulach’s eyes filled his face. ‘Stepfather?’ he said.
Thorfinn stopped. Rognvald’s head lay over his arm, its mouth open. The long yellow hair, rough with salt, swayed and dangled.
Thorfinn’s eyes moved from Lulach to Sulien and back to Lulach. Shifting the weight on his arms, he lifted Rognvald’s motionless body and pitched it face down on to the grass by the quayside. It struck the ground with a sound that began like a grunt and accelerated. Rognvald raised himself a hand-span from the turf and, hair hanging, vomited into it, without opening his eyes.
‘You’ve found an occasion to celebrate?’ Sulien said. The smell of ale hanging over the ship was thick as wadmoll.
‘Clearly, it was a mistake,’ Thorfinn said. His gaze switched to Lulach. ‘And who are you these days? Someone no one has heard of?’
The clear gaze showed disappointment, not disapproval. ‘No. Or I shouldn’t exist. What have you done?’ said Lulach.
‘Sailed here and there,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Visited friends. Sometimes, if I found my friends had guests they didn’t want, I encouraged them to leave. Sometimes, if I found my friends had guests I didn’t want, I encouraged them to leave also. It is the first rule a good landlord must keep to: to take care of his tenants and his property. Sulien agrees.’
His eyes were brown-black and glittering with what he had drunk. Sulien said, ‘Go on. I brought Lulach so that he could listen to you.’
‘I thought you had brought him so that I could listen to him,’ said Thorfinn, and Sulien, struck silent, looked at him.
‘Oh, come,’ Thorfinn said. ‘There must be something that you can say? I keep hoping between one visit and the next that I shall find someone who understands me enough to quarrel with. I forget that you and Lulach are children.’ He put his arms lightly round both their shoulders and turned them in the direction of the new hall. The noise at the quay began to die away.
‘I am not a child,’ Lulach said.
‘No, Luloecen the Fool, you are not a child,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Dead men do not frighten you, and you know Arnór’s verses before he has invented them.’
‘Not all of them,’ Lulach said, and recited.
‘One battle-shower
Will the English remember.
Ne’er was a greater.
There with his warrior band
Came the giver of Rings.
The keen-tempered sword
Bit the stout-hearted host.
.….
Upon England’s shores
The Earl bore his banner—
Ever and again
Reddening the eagle’s tongue.
The Prince bade them carry—’
‘Stop it!’ Sulien said, and put his hand over Lulach’s mouth.
They had got to the hall. There was no one there but some elderly slaves, whom Thorfinn sent running for tables. When they were seated, the three of them: ‘No. Don’t stop,’ said Thorfinn. ‘You came here for a purpose, and you will go through life bearing your failure unless you complete it.… We have committed every sin except that of dishonouring our parents, since some of us have none. We have cleared Diarmaid’s men from my father’s holdings on the islands and mainlands of Alba, and Eachmarcach’s enemies from Anglesey and the Welsh coast, with the invaluable aid of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn; and installed Godfrey, Eachmarcach’s nephew, to look after our combined interests in Man. We found the Severn channel and discouraged some rough men from interfering with the settlements on Caldy and Flatholme and Lundy. We discovered my half-brother Duncan battling to save his royal heritage in Cumbria against an unprovoked attack from his wife’s uncle Earl Eadulf, and took the chance to clear a base for ourselves on the river Waver and the Hougan peninsula, with the discreet help of my third cousin Thor of Allerdale—’
‘You fool!’ said Sulien. ‘You fool! You mounted a double attack with Eadulf against King Duncan in Cumbria? That was why you left so quickly? Don’t you see what you have done?’
‘Obtained two bases on the Hougan peninsula and the river Waver,’ said Thorfinn. ‘I didn’t need to collaborate with Eadulf. He signalled his intentions with trumpet calls all over Bamburgh.’
‘He’s stupid, isn’t he?’ Sulien said. ‘It amazes me sometimes that he has lived as long as he has. How long do you think his good fortune is going to last?’
‘You mean which of the five husbands is going to kill him?’ Thorfinn said. ‘I am really too drunk to tell you. But somehow I don’t think it will be Duncan.’
Sulien flushed. Slowly, he placed his two elbows on the board in front of him and pressed his hands into his eyes. He said, ‘If I thought you knew where you were going, I could forgive you. Sometimes you make it appear that you do, but I think you are playing with us.… If you go where you are going by default, by drifting, by following other men’s fancies, you will freeze in hell, and deserve it.’
Thorfinn leaned back in the high chair. The mark of the helmet was still red round the sun-browned dome of his brow, and his unshaven chin was dark under the untrimmed black of a half-grown moustache. With relaxation, his lids had grown thick. ‘You won’t be content until you have preached,’ he said. ‘So why not preach?’
Sulien dropped his hands sharply. ‘Sêit mo srôin. Blow my nose, says the leper. Is there no voice in your own head to listen to? There is a chance to spite Duncan and you take it, regardless of Orkney and Caithness, left behind you exposed to whatever may come. There is a peace pact between Norway and Denmark—have you heard it?—so that Magnús is free for the first time since he came back from Russia to look around his dependencies and correct anything of which he doesn’t entirely approve. If a fleet had come, what could we have done?’
‘Mentioned Rognvald’s name, and asked them to number off and come in as invited,’ Thorfinn said. ‘You forget that we possess the golden talisman, the King’s foster-brother. Also that I have had the good sense to wed an Arnmødling.’
It was a slip, although he realised it as soon as he had made it. ‘Certainly,’ Sulien said, ‘you married Finn Arnason’s daughter. It can hardly be long before her father or one of her uncles crosses the sea, I suppose, to ask if you think she is dead or rate her as a slave-girl, that you pay no more attention to her than to some painted wood on your ship’s prow. Yes, look at Lulach. I brought him to hear what concerns him.’
‘Have you finished?’ Thorfinn said.
‘I haven’t even finished with Norway,’ Sulien said. ‘Do you never look at the west coast of Norway and see reflected in it the cause of half your own troubles: the sea inlets and mountains that cut off region from region, as they do also in Wales? No one can rule such a country un
til they find some common belief: a structure along whose veins the blood of nationhood can be made to run.… Olaf placed his hopes in the church, and Canute followed him, using English bishops and English abbots to fashion it.
‘But now Harold Harefoot is King of England, Magnús must have his bishops consecrated elsewhere. Rome is far away. But the Archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen is always ready to dispatch his evangelists: to convert the heathen and open his lap to the heathen’s tribute of bear fur and walrus tusks. Whether or not Magnús has designs on Orkney or Shetland or Iceland,’ Sulien said, ‘you may depend on it that Hamburg and Bremen will look to him to call in the black sheep to the fold, and then your vassaldom will really start. For if people learn to pay their dues and cleanse their souls in Orkney, will they not expect to do the same when they stay or visit their kinsmen in Caithness? And if there is one metropolitan and one church in Caithness and Orkney, what is Moray to do? Either Norway will take over your empire, body and soul, or your empire will break in pieces while you are sailing and drinking and encouraging rough men to move from one windy cliff to another.’
‘I forget what your solution is,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Although, to be sure, I have heard it often enough. We join up the monk at Eynhallow with the group at Papay Minni; and the three men at Applecross with the other good and solitary souls at Lismore and Tullich and Dornoch and Kindrochit and Insh and Glendochart and all over the rest of my provinces, and make them all bishop-princes, answerable only to myself and the Lateran? They wouldn’t enjoy it.’
‘You surprise me,’ Sulien said. ‘I didn’t know you had made an inventory of your soul-doctors. When do we look for the results?’
‘You have seen them,’ said Thorfinn placidly. ‘Until recently, my conduct would have shocked you. You haven’t an answer?’
‘At least I look for one,’ Sulien said. ‘You talk of a dozen small houses, scattered over all your country. Perhaps you have visited them: I doubt it. But I can tell you that I have, because that is why I came here, to study and to learn. I have seen monasteries, yes: monasteries which struggle and fade, and are given another injection of monks or of money from a mother-house somewhere in Ireland, and who struggle on once again, with poor teachers or none; with the remains of a library, or a single book-satchel hung on a hook, with one dog-eared gospel inside it, and the prayers for the sick and the dying.
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