Groa, riding up, had no trouble hearing that. ‘I don’t recall refusing to go,’ said the Lady of Moray. ‘I do recall refusing to turn round and run at the blow of a whistle. Do we move on and talk at our rest-place, or do I tell Morgund to get his sword ready?’
Unfortunately Morgund, who looked after five districts, was no match for Skeggi, who spent eight months of every year fighting and the rest playing at fighting. ‘I’ve got his sword ready for him,’ said Skeggi prosaically from behind the captain, and indeed he had, with his hand at Morgund’s neck and the point of his own sword pressing against Morgund’s spine.
‘Look, my lady. If I don’t get you back fast enough, it’ll be bloodshed, and if you don’t come away now, it’ll be bloodshed, and all for nothing that matters. Will you turn your horse and ride north, or are you willing to face Thorfinn over what’s going to happen?’
His voice was plaintive, and if she didn’t know her husband’s hird, she would have thought it dangerous bluff.
Fortunately or otherwise, Skeggi didn’t know how to bluff. If she didn’t turn round, he would kill Morgund. And then, of course, the rest of her troop would kill him.
She said, ‘I shall send your nail-clippings to a friend. And your master’s.’ Then she turned her horse round.
Skeggi withdrew the sword and held it out, patiently, to its owner. ‘You’d have to find him first,’ he said. ‘And that’s a task I’d not wish on a one-legged man.’
‘He’s not there?’ Groa reined up her horse. ‘All this rush, and he isn’t even there? Where is he?’
‘I told you,’ said Skeggi patiently. ‘I was to get you back fast. He’ll find out soon enough if I didn’t. And you’ll find out where he’s been when he gets back. Maybe.’
‘If I’m still there when he gets back. Maybe,’ Groa said coldly and rode on, in the rain.
At St Cormac’s when she got there was a flamboyant welcome from Dubhdaleithe and a sweet one from Lulach. Earl Thorfinn and all the hird except Thorkel were missing. There was, however, a box of her husband’s beside a group of new wooden cabins that had been built over the rise from the wattle huts used by the monk and his followers. On top of the box was a packet of neatly waxed cloth, and inside the cloth, when she opened it with no compunction, was a scrap of much-folded vellum written all over in Sulien’s characteristic, flat-topped, beautiful script.
What it conveyed was no personal news, but merely two items from some monkish annals. The first said, There has perished Donnchad MacGillapadraig, Arch-king of Leinster and Ossory and Champion of Ireland, who found death together with a prey. His successor is chosen.
The second said, There sleeps in Christ, Maelmuire Uah Uchtain, coarb of Colum-Cille, and the Fair of Teltown itself on the day after the Feast of St Germain.
Afterwards, she wondered what Earl Thorfinn would have done if she had gone to Lulach’s mentor to have the note read to her. At the time, she was merely mystified, and ashamed, and resentful because she was ashamed, and because her prying held no danger at all, since her husband was quite unaware that she could read in any tongue, far less Gillacomghain’s Irish Gaelic.
She put the parchment back in the bag, and would have put it in the box to await the Earl’s arrival, except that the box had been locked.
And that, too, she resented.
‘Behave as you usually do,’ Thorfinn had said impatiently to his foster-father before he sailed off so carelessly. ‘What is the trouble? She can stay by the monk with the boys and her household, and you’ll be at Dingwall. Go and see her from time to time. Get her what she needs. Answer whatever you like to her questions. But just keep her there until I tell you to move her.’
This, a man could do with a concubine or even with most married women Thorkel Fóstri had cause to know. But his cousin Finn Arnason’s daughter, this infant bride, this widow, this tall, supple girl in her mid-twenties with hair like haws on the bough, and arched feet that sprang through the mosses of these northlands where she was exiled, was not anyone’s wife, or even the Lady of Moray, but a sharp, buoyant mind, half freed to the winds by this brusque break from routine, half stranded alone in a thicket where pride and fear would not let her rest until she had discovered why she had been brought there.
The thought of Thorfinn tied to a woman was not one his foster-father had drawn pleasure from. But five years of neglect such as this was an offence to the girl’s family—to his family—as well as to the young bride. Thorkel Fóstri resented her and was sorry for her at the same time, and the astonishing flowering of her physical beauty made it even more difficult, when he called on her at last, to obey his foster-son’s casual edict.
With no state to keep, with no needlework to occupy her hands while she received complaints and gave orders and entertained visitors, she had left her fine robes in their boxes and dressed as her women did, in a strapped tunic of wool, bright-banded at the hem over gay short-sleeved linen tied with silk at her throat; and her dark red hair, knotted and ribboned, was lifted high from her white nape. She came off the hill to meet him, reluctantly, he could see, while below on the shore came the squeals of her younger son and the women, and Lulach’s white head showed, and his brown, glistening arms, delving for shellfish. Groa said, ‘Come and sit in the sun and tell me what war you are preparing for.’
From the knoll she led him to, its boulders scoured and glazed by the wind, you looked down on the broad, sandy flats of the firth, and the children. Thorkel said, sitting, ‘What has Duftah been saying?’
‘Is that what you call him? It’s easier, I dare say than Dubhdaleithe. Lulach calls him St Duthac,’ Groa said. She sat, her skirts falling over her bare feet. She said, ‘Duftah hasn’t told me anything. He didn’t need to. It’s like the waterfront at Nídarós on a feast day, with the ox-carts and the horses and the longships whipping up and down the firths on both sides.
‘Magnús would attack Orkney if he had fallen out with Rognvald, which he hasn’t; so it can’t be that. It can’t be Svein or Hardecanute: they’ve hardly climbed into their thrones. The truth is, I suppose, that Duncan has sent, demanding tribute for Caithness, this time with menaces?’
‘Something like that,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘It’s as well to be prepared.’
‘But Earl Thorfinn isn’t here?’ Groa said. ‘So perhaps he isn’t taking Duncan as seriously as you are. Did you send for me?’
Afterwards, he saw that he should have lied; but then he had not yet got her measure. ‘No, Thorfinn did,’ he said.
‘To bargain with?’ said Groa. ‘Would you agree to that, without consulting me?’
‘Bargaining? You are here for your safety,’ Thorkel said.
‘Then Earl Thorfinn is going to refuse payment again?’ Groa said. ‘Perhaps I should be even safer if he simply paid tribute for Caithness, even if he had to do it from his revenues out of Moray. I shouldn’t object.’
Only a fool would take her up on that, although he saw clearly enough that one day Thorfinn would have to answer for it. Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘It may not come to anything. These are only precautions. Duncan is embroiled in a concern of his own at the moment, and we are waiting to hear the results of it.’
Contemplatively, Thorfinn’s wife was studying him. She said, indeed. Duncan has been King of Alba for six years now, and has done nothing whatever except hold on to Cumbria and watch all his relatives creeping up on him. You mean something has pushed him into action?’
‘Duncan is besieging Durham,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘Does that make you feel better? Thorfinn’s going to disown Bethoc his late mother, he says, and proclaim himself a bastard like the Duke of Normandy and King Magnús. Certainly you wonder how she came to give birth to this imbecile Duncan.’
‘Lulach says—’ said Groa, and stopped.
‘Another fancy?’ said Thorkel Fóstri, smiling.
Groa said, ‘He has a string of birth-tales to do with my husband. One of them claims that the lord Macbeth’s mother was beguiled by a tall
, handsome man who turned out to be the Devil. When the half-devil son was born, the Devil made … promises.’
‘The Devil was Sigurd,’ said Thorkel, still smiling. ‘And you could call Thorfinn half a devil at times, or even a whole one. But I promise you that Bethoc and the late Earl of Orkney were properly contracted, even though the church had to settle with Crinan first. From the bed of the Abbot to Orkney must have been quite a shock in one way. But Sigurd was a great man. Tell Lulach that. Before they went into league, he and Findlaech had many a match against one another, with little to spare on either side. Now, what do you need that I may bring you? I sent a cook. Have you need of a cobbler?’
‘Not, I suppose, unless Duncan fails to take Durham,’ Groa said. ‘Where is Earl Thorfinn, and when is he coming back?’
‘When did you know Thorfinn trouble to send word of his movements?’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘But he can’t be far. And of course he will come to see you as soon as he gets back. You may be sure of it.’
Reporting the conversation three hours later to Thorfinn, who in fact was no further away than his headquarters at the Moot Hill of Dingwall at the head of the next firth, Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘I don’t suppose there is a chance that we are all wrong and Duncan will manage to capture Durham? We know he’s got the Ossory men and Maldred’s Ulidian uncles and of course Maldred himself and his tenants. And, whatever extra ground Eadulf may have won for himself the other day., Duncan can still draw on plenty of liegemen in Cumbria. He hasn’t got the skill to break through into the bluff, but at least he can block the peninsula neck and line the riverbanks and starve Durham out. Don’t you think he has enough men for that?’
‘He’s got enough men,’ Thorfinn said. Someone had brought in three late gulls’ eggs and he was juggling with them. ‘He’s even got some good advice. Thor from Allerdale has gone along with him, and his war-band.’
Thorkel looked at his foster-son in silence. Then he said, ‘So that’s what you were doing.’
‘Well, none of Earl Eadulf’s other four nieces is going to send her husband in to help Duncan,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I tried to convince Alf gar that it was a good idea, and he nearly sank the boat laughing. After all, Duncan was the one Eadulf attacked, and Duncan might as well take the risk. Eadulf is going to defend Durham to the death anyway. It was his grandfather who founded the place and set up the shrine of St Cuthbert there. It’s rich: it’s a great stronghold; it’s got lands that would make a saint’s mouth water, in Lothian as well as England. Whoever holds Durham and Cumbria has the north of England in the palm of his hand, and the south of Alba as well. And if you throw in St Oswald’s head, you have the chance of a foothold in the Shrewsbury district to boot.’
‘Bones of Christ,’ Thorkel said faintly. He pulled himself together. ‘So what about Crinan?’
‘My guess,’ said Thorfinn, ‘is that Crinan is at this moment being saintly in Kells.’
‘I brought you Sulien’s note,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘Was that what he suggested?’
‘More or less. What he was saying,’ Thorfinn said, ‘was that we may expect to see Duncan’s army on or before the third week in July. Unless, of course, someone kills him at Durham.’
‘Such as Thor?’ Thorkel Fóstri said.
‘God’s splendour, no,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I don’t want Duncan dead. Hasn’t it struck you yet that such is my appointed role in the life of Duncan’s kindred: to get rid of Duncan so that they can step into his shoes? Think of Orm. Think of Ligulf. Think of Maldred. Think—if you have the fortitude—of Kalv’s nephew Siward.’
‘You’re right,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘Now you mention it. Give me Duncan to fight against, any day.’
Knowing Thorfinn, he waited and, when the three eggs came flying towards him, caught them quite deftly.
Despite the services of Thor his brother’s third cousin, King Duncan of Alba was routed at Durham as his grandfather had been over thirty years earlier.
After the battle was over, Earl Eadulf, as was the family custom, engaged a number of women to groom the handsomest enemy heads and mount them on poles round the market-place. He paid them in cows, but they would have done it for nothing, such was the pleasure of combing the curly bronze hair and the long moustaches and the virile red jut of the chin-beards. That every trophy was Irish could hardly diminish the triumph.
Duncan’s head, being still on his shoulders, was not among them.
The activity in and between the two firths that enclosed Groa’s peninsula reached a peak of frenzied proportions; and halted. Women stopped milking the house-cow with their chins on their shoulders; and seals came back to the firth. Then, in a day or two, only the seals were there, and the monks, because everyone else had moved out.
Thorfinn rode to visit his wife.
Sinna saw him come, from where she sat in the sun with Sigurd outside one of the little thatched huts, talking to one of the slaves as she ground meal for their cakes in a hand-quern. Above the grumbling scrape of the quern you could hear, far off, the voices of the monks who looked after Duftah and studied with him, and overhead, distinct when the girl’s hand fell from the handle, the buzz of a lark, very high, its wings beating fast and then still. Groa, in the wood house, heard the hoof-beats and came to investigate.
She had been braiding her hair, and the light took her head and her face like a gemstone. The same sun, as he came near, fell full on the face of her husband, etching its alps and its ridges.
Sinna pushed the girl, and she got up and ran to take the Earl’s reins, while he sat where he was without speaking. Then he gave them to her and dismounted, but as Sinna made to follow the girl and the garron, he stopped her. ‘No. I have come to ask you all to make ready to leave. There is going to be fighting, and I want you in safety.’
Between the huts there was a movement, and Lulach walked slowly across to his stepfather. He said, ‘Who is coming?’
‘Duncan has lost Durham,’ Groa suggested. ‘And since he can’t hold the south, must protect the rest of his patrimony from you and Rognvald and, if he can, increase it?’
‘Partly,’ said Earl Thorfinn. He turned to Lulach. ‘We are speaking of my half-brother Duncan, the King of Alba. He married into the Earl of Northumbrian family and hoped to add the east side of north England to the west, but he is finding the other claimants are stronger. So he has to look to the north.’
‘To Moray,’ Groa said. ‘It isn’t just Caithness, is it? Duncan wants you out of Moray in every way. He wants control of the mormaerdom. He wants me, and he wants Lulach. And if an Irish force came over to help him at Durham, he has, too, a bigger army at present than he could ever hope to scrape together again, even allowing for what the defeat may have cost him.
‘So he is using it quickly while it is there, and while he and it can make common cause before the time for the Fair at Teltown—because that is where they choose the new coarb of Colum-Cille, isn’t it: the new head of the Columban church of Alba and Ireland? And his father Crinan might be a candidate because of his family, just as Duftah might have a claim through his great-uncle of Armagh and Kells. So—’
She stopped, her hands at her mouth, and stared at him. ‘And so,’ she ended slowly, ‘Duncan is coming for you; for me; for Lulach … and also for Duftah.’
There was silence. Lulach, his hand on Sinna’s shoulder, said nothing. A snipe rose near at hand, the sun sharp on its striped brown-and-white eel-back, and lifted its call like a reed underwater. Earl Thorfinn said, ‘Sulien’s letter. Who else knows about it?’ And then, at the half-smile in her eyes, he said, ‘I beg your pardon.’
‘She has been able to read for a long time,’ Lulach said. ‘Sulien could have told you.’
Her son was the same height, now, as Sinna. The old woman moved and took the boy by the arm as it dropped. The old woman said, ‘You are at fault, Earl, in leaving us here. Where can we go now, so that no one will find us?’
‘To Caithness,’ said Earl Thorfinn. ‘There is a sh
ip waiting. You will be quite safe, whatever happens. If Duncan moves north of Tarbatness, you will have word, and the shipmaster will take you to Norway. If you wish to go.’
‘Or Orkney?’ said Groa.
Her husband looked at her. ‘There, too,’ he said. ‘It is unlikely to concern me, either way.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Groa said. ‘I thought you more possessive than that, even under the sods.… Sinna, go and tell them to pack everything. Everything we have. We are leaving nothing behind. We have …’ She turned to Earl Thorfinn. ‘How long?’
‘You hardly need to tell them,’ said the Earl. ‘There have been thirty faces watching us ever since I arrived. You have three hours.’
‘Three …’ She stared at him. ‘You left us here until Duncan’s army was three hours away?’
‘He is a good deal further off than that,’ her husband said. ‘I only want to make sure that your ship is out of sight. He believes you are here. He must go on believing it.’
Sinna turned the boy round and scurried over the pebbled grass, calling. Groa said, ‘I don’t understand. You have let Duncan come this far north without going to meet him? Through Moray?’
‘He has no ships,’ the Earl said. He brought his gaze back from the settlement. ‘He was bound to march. He has some provisions with him, and he will find more on the way, and no resistance. Until he gets to Inverness, he is in his own land and will expect none. I am only his Mormaer there, and only that because I am Findlaech’s heir and your husband. He would expect to find loyalty to you there and will find it. But he will meet no one anxious to fight him on my behalf.’
‘He must think we have a strange marriage,’ Groa said. ‘When the Mormaer’s wife and her people will let the invader enter and march through her province to make war on the Mormaer her husband.’
‘He has already suggested to you, I believe, that our marriage is void,’ the Earl said. ‘He will know, surely, that you are only here because you were forcibly brought here to keep you out of his hands. He hopes to hold Moray still, under a new mormaer, when all this is over, so he will try not to harm it. He thinks I am in the west, cruising: the information reached him very convincingly. He knows Duftah is here, because he has been told that as well, and Duftah has told me that he will not leave. Once he steps beyond Eskadale, he is in my land with an invading army, and must face the consequences.’
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