King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  There was a middle-aged woman he was quite fond of, whom he brought out instead, and indeed the way Kalv led her off, anything else would have been an extravagance. And if his own girl was disappointed, she had the sense not to show it.

  Erlend, the son sired by Thorfinn but born to Macbeth, arrived at the King’s house at Forteviot, just south of Perth, where his father had lived for a month awaiting that moment by the side of his wife; and not, as on another occasion, behind the walls of a hill-fort.

  This time, the birth was easy, for the child was not large, but middle-sized and wiry, with a loud voice that was heard right away. As soon as it was seen that it was a son, Thorfinn let it be told what name it would be known by.

  To all but Groa, the choice seemed at first an eccentric one. Erlend son of Earl Einar of Orkney had fought and died some sixty years before this, at the side of Earl Erik Bloodaxe. It was no name for a Christian king.

  Second thoughts demonstrated that therein lay the grounds for its choosing. It was not the name of a Christian king, but the name of a future joint Earl of Orkney. Whatever the future might hold for him, the christening water was claiming no kingdoms.

  Like his stepbrother Lulach in Moray, like his brother Sigurd in the nursery, he offered no provocation and should have no rivals of Alba breathing over his shoulder. It was a clever choice, men said, and showed that the new King carried Norse wits at least where his Celtic heart ought to be.

  So said all but Groa, who had remembered that the name Erlend means Foreigner.

  Kneeling by the bed, Thorfinn said, ‘He is a sglumach. Do you know what that means? A fine fledgling.’

  ‘Indeed!’ said Groa. ‘I thought it was less complimentary.’

  He looked the better, she thought, for the enforced stay of the last few weeks. Until it became too hard for her, they had moved incessantly in the seven months that had passed since the enthronement: from Glamis to Perth to Inchaffray; from Forteviot to Kinrimund; from Monifieth to Loch Ore or Loch Leven, where their hall was on an island, next to the new island-monastery of the Culdees. And gradually men were coming about him, and not only their servants and Eochaid, her former clerk who acted as house-priest, or the toisechs who knew him from Moray.

  A singer had been found who could make verse in the Irish style, because in no way at all could Arnór Jarlaskáld be brought to a sense of what was required. Down from Caithness and Orkney floated the verse he was making already, in praise of his master:

  ‘The Man of the Sword,

  Seeking Scotland’s throne,

  Ever won victory.

  Fire flamed fiercely,

  Fast fell the Irish host,

  And flower of Welsh manhood.’

  So sang Arnór:

  ‘Humbled the homesteads,

  Burning in Alba.

  Red flame from smoking thatch

  Shot high; for that day

  Dire danger failed not …’

  If ever a skald wrote himself out of office, it was Arnór.

  And now Arnór was with Rognvald. Thinking of it, she was moved to speak to her husband as he watched the child in her arms. ‘That was the first winter you have ever spent out of Orkney. This is the first spring you have never taken your longship to sea. How do you feel?’

  ‘Deprived,’ he said. The infant had closed a fist round one of his fingers, and he left it there.

  After a moment, it must have occurred to him that she might take him seriously, and he looked up. But she was smiling.

  With infinite care, he held that year to the course he had laid out for himself, accepting the news about Orkney, accepting the formidable change in Northumbria and moving slowly onwards, having embraced them as best he might in his plans, as tree-wood might grow over a canker.

  He thought to have the better part of two years before both Crinan and Siward became restive, and he had to attend to Lothian and to Cumbria and prepare for the moment when Duncan’s sons left his grasp.

  At no time had he been under any illusions about that. He either killed them or he released them to go wherever they wished, when the eldest was of age. He had been to Dunkeld once to see them, and to satisfy himself that they were being well taken care of by the monks and the lay men and women who served the monastery.

  He had found Malcolm a ready talker, fresh-faced and brown-haired like his father, with the promise of stocky power behind the skinny awkwardness of an eleven-year-old. Donald, at nine, was fair and sullen, and Maelmuire at five, more interested in a ball he wanted to play with than a man his nurse called the King, but who turned out not to be his father.

  Malcolm talked and laughed, his eyes flickering; and it was easy to see that he knew just who this King was and what he had to do with his father. By questioning, his uncle found that he would like a bigger horse, and a helmet, and not to have to eat seal-meat and blood-puddings.

  His uncle, who had well-defined views about bribery, agreed to the necessity for a horse, indicated that he would have to earn the helmet by good behaviour, and said that he did not often eat seal-meat himself, unless there was no other choice, but he had an uncle who did so frequently when taking part in a seal-hunt and had even been known to try bear-flesh.

  As for blood-sausages, they were a favourite tit-bit among Icelanders, and he supposed that you would be glad of them if there came a bad year for the hay and the grazing and there was little else to do but slaughter what you had and eat it down to the toes and the tail. ‘In Alba,’ he had said, ‘that is not necessary, nor in Caithness or Moray or Orkney.’ Then Malcolm had asked, with animation, to hear about seal-hunts.

  ‘Poor boy,’ Groa had said when she heard. ‘He knows, of course, that his father set out to attack you, and died as a result. You won’t overcome that in a moment. Loyalty alone would forbid it. In any case, he probably thought you would come in with an axe and make ropes of them.’

  And Thorfinn had replied, ‘Certainly I felt he entertained a few doubts about the nature and extent of my upbringing. His family are a difficult lot. There was the Fair in Mag Muirthemni, to which the Ulstermen would bring in their wallets the tongue of every man they had killed. After that, why object to a blood-sausage?’

  ‘Would you like me to visit him?’ Groa had said. ‘Or Lulach? There is a year between them, but Lulach would be careful.’ She did not need to add, ‘And he is not your son but Gillacomghain’s.’

  ‘I feel,’ said Thorfinn, ‘that Lulach would only confuse the issue. No. There is no remedy. You could read in their eyes what Duncan has said of me. You could see in Malcolm’s face that he already saw himself King, and a better one than his father. They have nothing to cling to but hatred.’

  ‘Until Crinan gets hold of them. Or Siward,’ Groa had said.

  ‘Crinan is a man in his sixties whose business is finance, not leading war-bands on behalf of children,’ Thorfinn had said. ‘As for Siward, he has taken Northumbria, but I don’t see him issuing any challenges to Hardecanute as yet. He has to set about making Eadulf’s shoes fit him first. And, however wealthy he might be, he can’t be as rich as Emma. She will keep him in check.

  ‘We have a year. We have at least a year to find our own feet in Alba before anything happens.’

  They had less than a year. That autumn, when the coughing would keep him walking the floor every night, and blood ran coiling into his ale-cup, King Hardecanute went to see his mother at Winchester.

  A day later, the Lady Emma summoned her closest friend in the world, Bishop Aelfwin, and directed him to carry certain messages to her middle-aged half-Saxon son Edward in Normandy.

  The Bishop returned; and in due course another embassy left Winchester, this time of a much more imposing sort, and carrying with it the younger sons of a number of people hoping for continued favours from the Lady, who were left as hostages with the hosts of her son Edward. And when that deputation returned, it brought with it Edward himself, Hardecanute’s half-brother, with a retinue which of design was not large but which co
nsisted entirely of young, strong, bright-eyed Normans.

  In June 1042, King Hardecanute died, aged twenty-four: the last of King Canute’s family. And Emma’s sole remaining son Edward, from dividing the glory and wealth of England with his half-brother, was left King of England, with no other rival.

  For some days, the Lady Emma received no one. Then she sent for and kissed her son Edward, and gave him a ring, which he later had valued, and presented rolls of cloth to Ralph her grandson and to her nephew Osbern, who had come from Normandy with him.

  To Bishop Aelfwin, who had stood behind her chair throughout, she gave the head of St Valentine, for her dear son Hardecanute’s redemption.

  ‘What now?’ said Groa.

  ‘Now,’ said the King of Alba, ‘I go sailing with Rognvald.’

  FOUR

  HORFINN!’ SAID ROGNVALD; and his dog Sam, which was of the small kind that kills rats and frequents badger-holes, barked and barked.

  ‘That is,’ said Rognvald, ‘my lord King, you are welcome. The lack of ceremony I must apologise for. It crossed my mind, when I saw the dragon, that it was Thorkel Fóstri again, with his sour, miserly face, come to nudge my beam in case I collect the wrong rents. But I see it is yourself.’ He looked down and Arnór Jarlaskáld, within his arm, looked up and smiled. Rognvald said, ‘Or perhaps you have come to ask me to take care of your third of Orkney? We all notice you have little time for it now.’

  Although he had spoken of lack of ceremony, there were forty men standing around him on the beach-head, and he had raised his voice just a little so that all he said could be heard.

  The King his uncle did not interrupt him. Behind Thorfinn on the jetty stood only Starkad his standard-bearer, although there were others in the skiff that still bumped in the water. The longship he had come by stood off in deeper water. This time, it was not Grágás, but the great dragon presented by Canute, its shields and banner announcing beyond all doubt the presence of the King of Alba. When Rognvald had finished, the King said, ‘I have my own rents to collect, and thought we might sail in company. Also, there is some trouble in Kintyre and Galloway where Eachmarcach’s brother’s son seems to have forgotten whose land it is. I have promised to call for Eachmarcach on Man and see what can be done about it.’

  ‘With one ship?’ said Rognvald. ‘I have to tell you, my uncle, that if you are asking me or my men to come and help you, it would seem that you presume a little too much on the warm feeling I have for you.’

  ‘I have eight more ships waiting off Saviskaill,’ said the King. ‘Do you wish to come? I should like to leave on the next tide.’

  Rognvald dropped his arm, and beside him Arnór stood looking from one of his masters to the other. On Thorfinn’s face nothing could be read, and Starkad behind was as impassive. But in the skiff, the faces watched, grinning and eager: Orkney and Caithness faces known to them all.

  Thorfinn’s men, then, would still fight for him. And if he, Rognvald, took every ship he could spare, he would still be outnumbered.

  Rognvald smiled. ‘How well you know me,’ he said. ‘Of course I will come, provided there is a proper agreement about the booty.’

  ‘I thought I told you,’ said the King. ‘We are rent-collecting.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rognvald. ‘But I am sure Eachmarcach’s brother’s son has some goods that don’t belong to him and that he isn’t likely to have need of very soon; and there might even be some men of Diarmaid’s about with a ship or two low in the water: I hear he has made himself King of Leinster at last. There is only one matter that pains me.’

  ‘Yes?’ said the King.

  ‘There is the dog. He has just got into my ways, and I shall have to leave him behind. Or, as you see, he would kill himself barking at vermin. You will come to the hall? And your merkismar?’

  ‘Why not? Gu borgar fyrir hrafninn: God pays for the Raven, they say. It is only fair that you should find the price of the ale. Arnór, what verse have you been making?’

  Arnór opened his mouth.

  ‘Indeed,’ Rognvald said, ‘up to this moment I have to tell you that he has been too busy to put nail to harp-string. But now, perhaps, that will change.’ And, laying his slender hand on the King’s arm, he walked him up the slope to the hall.

  After three weeks, Groa could bear it no longer and, taking Lulach with her, set sail from the Tay to Caithness, where she joined Thorkel Fóstri at Canisbay.

  Thorkel Fóstri was angry with her. ‘What are you afraid of? If Norway is going to push its claim to Denmark and to England, now that Hardecanute is dead, it will need all the friends it can make. Magnús isn’t going to fall out with a man who is not only King of Alba but holds Caithness and a third of the Orkneys as well. And Rognvald is too shrewd to cross Magnús,’

  ‘That is not what I am afraid of,’ said Groa flatly. ‘Although I think you are wrong. It’s my belief that when Rognvald looks at Thorfinn, he sees neither a king nor a kinsman, but a man two years older than himself by whose orders he was publicly thrashed. And what Magnús wishes or does not wish is not likely to enter his thoughts.’

  Thorkel Fóstri stood, his arms folded, and looked at her. ‘Rognvald never forgets what King Magnús wishes,’ he said. ‘But if not that, what do you fear? The fighting? Thorfinn is a master, and he doesn’t let his skills rest between battles: they cost him too much. Or …’ He hesitated, and then evidently decided to speak. ‘Or is it Rognvald himself? There is nothing you need fear there, now.’

  Now. She said, ‘It seems I am being foolish. But I should like, now that I am here, to wait for the ships coming back. Lulach does not know Caithness or Orkney.’

  Thorkel Fóstri hesitated again. Then he said, ‘The King said, if you came, that I was to ask you not to make the journey to Orkney. He will explain, he said.’

  She smiled and nodded and walked away slowly, leaving him to his embarrassment. The dear and prescient lover or the clear-sighted King: one or other had guessed what she would do, and probably why. She would not go to Orkney.

  After that, the wait was a long one, but she did not waste her time. From Thorkel Fóstri she borrowed half a dozen of his shaggy, big-headed garrons, and with these and one of her younger women, and sometimes with Lulach, she rode from one group of steadings to the next along the coast, and sat with the womenfolk, and walked out with the children to the shore.

  East towards Duncansby, she stood on the broken, glittering shell-sand, white and lilac, of Sannick Bay and spoke of the ailments of geese, and the making of tallow from sheep-fat, while the fulmars rose and fell with motionless wings in the salt airs round Duncansby Head, and she thought of another grey goose, but did not speak of it.

  They were repairing fish-nets at Huna, beside the grooved block of slate where the fish-hooks and the needles were rubbed, and the knives and swords, at a pinch, to keep them brilliant. At Huna, she stood with her back to a hurdle of dark trunks of seaweed and looked at the long dolphin shape of the island of Stroma, with white spray breaking and breaking under its neck, to the east. But she did not ask to be taken over, for the steward of Stroma was an Orkney man.

  Then she rode west to where the biggest headland of all stood dark red against the afternoon sky, and set her pony up round the lochans and bogs to the top, where she tied it to a rock and climbed to where the pony could not go but a man or a woman could lean on the wind as into the bosom of God and look upon the whole sunlit world of green grass and blue sea, from the land’s edge that lay towards Norway to the smudged snow-capped peak of Ben Loyal, far to the west, pointing to the way her husband’s ships had sailed.

  There was nothing now on the sea but a trio of fishing-boats, and a wide merchantman hurrying west, and the birds. And to the north, Hoy and Stroma and Ronaldsay, of the forbidden Orkneys.

  Her skirts jerked and tugged and the wind boxed her ears with soft woollen hands while her hair wrapped itself round her throat. She pulled her shawl over her head and forced her way down and back to her garron.r />
  Below the headland was the beach the fleet most often used, and she took Lulach there, where, two miles long, the olive-brown wave-shadows moved in, one after the other, towards the unbroken sheen of the sand.

  That night, in the field, helping Lulach lift the saddle from the wide, unkempt back of his garron, Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘Luloecen, I would ask you something.’

  The white head came up, and the clear eyes. ‘Luloecen?’

  They were alone. Thorkel Fóstri stood with the saddle between them and said, ‘What did you say to your stepfather? What did you tell him that brought the King and your mother together?’

  The pale eyes were steady. Lulach smiled. ‘They were married,’ he said.

  ‘He had to have children,’ Thorkel said. ‘You made him your prophecy, and he knew what he must do, and what he must not do. Then, at Tarbatness, he allowed this to happen. Why?’

  ‘Can’t you guess? I told everyone,’ Lulach said, ‘when I was Snorri. I told him her destiny. He is a great man, but only a man.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’ said Thorkel, and started back as the boy snatched the saddle from his arms and, hugging it, circled him.

  ‘It’s written,’ said Lulach. ‘But you cannot read, can you?’

  Next day, the sun-signals began to run all along the coast from the west to tell that the Earl’s fleet had been sighted, and by afternoon all the King’s friends were in Thurso, waiting. Those folk who ran out to the headland saw the longships approaching in convoy: fourteen coming in where fourteen had set out; and then the five ships of Earl Rognvald altering sail to make for the east mainland of Orkney.

  The rest turned for the beach, and the rivermouth.

  Four years ago, Thorkel Fóstri had let Lulach go down to the wharf for this sort of home-coming, and Lulach had watched the Earls come drunken home and had been present at the encounter afterwards, whatever it was, that had ended in Sulien’s departure.