King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Since his wound at Loch Vatten, his leg would stiffen at times, as it had done this last week, and instead of watching over his foster-son, as he had done all his life, Thorkel Fóstri had to sit at the fire listening to his women quarrelling over the spinning, and cuffing the latest brat or two out of the way, until the pain and his bad temper lifted and he could get back to the boy’s side again. The boy whose destiny he once had thought he had in his hand. The boy he used to curse for his presumption, and whom he had nearly abandoned for Rognvald.

  The years had taught him their lesson. He had reared Thorfinn, but had not had the making of him. And time had brought Thorfinn other friends. He had learned to accept them, as he had learned to come to terms with the girl, the beguiling girl who had taken for herself that part of Thorfinn’s inner thoughts that his foster-father had never had.

  So that it was with no bitterness towards her but only anxiety that he heard her out, and then said, ‘You are right. It must not go on. It can only end fatally if it does. You both go home, or you bring it to a head.’

  ‘I can bring it to a head,’ Groa said. ‘But if I do, they will fight. And Rognvald will fight to the death.’

  ‘He won’t win,’ said Thorkel Fóstri.

  ‘You can’t be sure. No one can,’ Groa said. ‘If he doesn’t kill Thorfinn, he could still leave him maimed for life. And if Thorfinn kills him, it may undo all he has spent this devilish winter trying to bring about. He could lose the goodwill of all Rognvald’s men, and Orkney itself, once King Magnús heard about it. Rognvald is Magnús’s foster-brother.’

  ‘And is that worse,’ Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘than losing your husband, until the day he appears belly up in the sea, buoying a fishing-net? If Rognvald has his way, death in a fair fight is not how Thorfinn will finish.’

  For a long time, she was silent. Then she said, ‘Thorfinn thought he could tame him.’

  ‘It is the Celtic in him,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘You would do well to help him root it out. He thought he could tame Erlend his brother, and would have found out his mistake soon enough, had I not had the good luck to cut off Erlend’s head. No doubt he would have tried to serve Gillacomghain the same way. Would you have been glad if he had?’

  She flushed and then lifted her chin. ‘I suppose you may say as much to Thorfinn, if he will let you. I do not think you have the right to say it to me.’

  ‘No,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘You are right. He needed a woman: I had not realised it. And, as it has turned out, he could have found none better.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Groa thoughtfully, ‘if he had spared Gillacomghain, he might not now be having such trouble with Rognvald. So it is hard to know, isn’t it, which of us is at fault?’

  He was being played with, by a girl, as once long ago he in his turn had amused himself with his cousin Kalv Arnason. He began to be angry, and then came to his senses and smiled. He said, ‘I never met an Arnmødling lacking in courage. Will you do it, then? When? I will come back tomorrow, if they have to lay me on the sledge.’

  ‘Yes. Come back,’ said Groa. ‘We shall both need all the help we can get.’

  In the event, she had to do nothing, for Rognvald caught her after sundown one afternoon as they were travelling in torch-lit cavalcade from Birsay to Orphir.

  They had been later setting out than they intended, but the snow was not deep and the ground hard and good for the horses and the sledges packed with their possessions, for they would be at Orphir for three weeks at least before moving on. With them were all of the hird who were not in Caithness, as were Sinna and her young sons: perhaps fifty riders in all. And with Groa in the sledge were three of her women.

  They had passed Isbister when they saw the dancing flares to the east, beyond Beaquoy, which grew larger and plainer and lit, finally, the faces of Rognvald and a great party, come from the east mainland, to command his uncle Thorfinn’s hospitality at Orphir for one night, or perhaps more.

  The hall at Orphir was big, and there was food in plenty. Also, having belonged to Earl Einar, the lands of Orphir, strictly speaking, fell within Rognvald’s claim, although he preferred, it seemed, to see his uncle there meantime, rather than in his stronghold of Birsay. Thorfinn therefore acceded, agreeably enough, and the two parties fell into line and picked up a gay, jogging pace while the sound of voices and laughter and the jingle of horse-harness fled with their shadows over the sparkling night-fields of snow, and Rognvald edged his horse to trot by Groa’s big sledge. ‘And greetings to my lady aunt,’ he observed. ‘I heard that your husband had tied you to the stock of the bed lest you and I continued our half-finished business.’

  Groa looked up. The winter-fair face looking down at her, with the coils of yellow-gold hair straying over his furs, had the bloom of beauty that Rognvald never lost, no matter what he might do, and the torchlight danced in his eyes. He said, ‘I suppose there is no room in the sledge for a nephew?’

  The sledge she had chosen was one of the largest they had, drawn by two good horses, with a man from Buckquoy riding one of them. ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Groa; and the next moment, laughing, he had flung his reins to his own nearest man and, kicking his feet free of the stirrups, had vaulted lightly down among them as the sledge sped beside him. The runners dug into the snow, and it swerved, causing the rider ahead to look back. Groa raised a hand to reassure him, and then made room for Rognvald beside her. He put an arm round the fur of her cloak and smiled; and she said, ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  His smile broadened. ‘How disappointing,’ he said. ‘I wanted to kiss you. But let me guess. Thorfinn is frightened, and has asked you to beg for him?’

  The women were staring at them. ‘Is it likely?’ said Groa.

  ‘Then,’ said Rognvald, ‘it must be, after all, that your wishes and mine are the same. Why do we need to go to Orphir? Tell your driver to turn east.’

  ‘We are going to Orphir,’ Groa said. ‘And on the way there, I am going to address you like an aunt. What are you thinking of? I would not allow a child of mine to behave the way you do. Here you are, at thirty-two Earl of Orkney, with silver and ships and men to follow you, and you think of nothing but wasting Thorfinn’s time and your own with this stupid feud. You hold two-thirds of Orkney, which in my view is twice as much as you should have, but Thorfinn has not tried to take it away from you, as he very well might have done.

  ‘He has not tried to harm you. If you left him alone, he would be where he ought to be, looking after his lands in the south, and you would be able to order your life as you please, with no rival in Orkney but Thorfinn’s steward here in the west. What is the sense in trying to injure each other? Either you lose your life or, if you succeed in killing him, you make yourself hated by all his people, and lose your sport anyway.’

  She ended breathlessly, and with some apprehension, which she hoped was not obvious. She had had no idea he would let her speak without interruption, but he had been silent, smiling, all the way through.

  Now his dimple became deeper still. ‘As you say. I should lose my sport—some of it. But I should gain the whole of Orkney, shouldn’t I—and a great deal more, as stepfather of your two little sons?’

  He had slipped his hand, still smiling, under the rug that covered their laps. She thought her responses were quick, but she had barely flinched when there was a sudden crack and Rognvald, with a hiss, snatched back his bared fingers. Unna, the oldest of her three women, smoothed the rug again over their knees and sat back, her silver knife-case gripped still in one hand. Rognvald, staring at her, had lifted his arm.

  ‘You are going to strike an old woman, are you, Rognvald?’ said Groa. ‘Your men will burst with pride. And do you really expect me to believe that any of this has to do with me, or with my sons, or with Orkney?’

  ‘Fortunately,’ Rognvald said, ‘in this world, women have only one simple function, and what they believe or do not believe is of no importance to anyone. I have decided to take you to the eas
t mainland. Tell your driver and the women to get out, or I will throw them out.’

  The sledge slowed. ‘They are going to get out anyway,’ Groa said. All around her, men were drawing rein and the other sledges, too, were running down to a halt. Ahead, the night had become brilliant with fire: a ring of flares ended beside a vast bonfire that lit the low walls and barns and sleeping-quarters and drink-hall of a big steading. ‘And so am I. And so are you. The Loch of Stenness has frozen, and the family at Brodgar have invited us to an ice-feast. No doubt,’ said Groa, ‘they would welcome you, but if you do not care for it, there is no reason why you should not ride straight on to Orphir.’

  For a moment, she thought he would try to force the sledge out; but by now it was safely surrounded. Rognvald said, ‘You knew, of course, that we were nearly at Stenness when you asked me to join you. How prudish you are. And of course it won’t save you in the end, or your grotesque bedfellow. I will stay.’

  And then Thorfinn was beside her, and lifting her out, and did not leave her all through the feasting.

  At the end, when the big, savoury cauldron on the fire was nearly empty, and the horns had been filled and refilled from the vat, the others bound the polished bones on to their boots and pushed off on to the loch with their double sticks.

  Rognvald was among them, and all his men, on skate-bones lent from the household. Watching them skim flashing past the flares as the bat-games and the races began, you remembered the years he had spent in Russia. The men he had with him now were his own special hird, who, like himself, had fled from King Olaf’s death-battle to Jaroslav’s court in Novgorod.

  Like him, they had thrown off their furs, and the bright-dyed stuff of their jackets glowed and dimmed like fruit on a vine as they amused themselves after the contests, weaving and interweaving across the white field of the lake that vanished west into darkness while, to the north, high on the ridge between lakes, the great ring of monoliths whose makers’ race had known Wessex and Brittany, too, lent its nearer stones now and then to familiar fires.

  Then a spray of cold slush slapped their faces, and Rognvald, halting before them, said, ‘I declare, uncle, you are shaking. Is it fear for yourself, or your wife, or the figure you cut on the ice? A silver cup says you won’t race with me. A golden cup says you won’t win.’

  ‘A fairly safe wager, under the circumstances,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But if you are in such sore need of a cup, then who am I to refuse you?’ And Groa, silent, watched him bind the bones to his feet and pick up the sticks and step out into the noise and laughter on the lake and did not stop him, for it took courage to stand, a king and a leader, and pit the practice of one or two frozen winters against his enemy and the skill of six years. But on the ice, surrounded by men of both factions, nothing more than humiliation of a humdrum kind could come to him, which no doubt he would pass off. And so long as Rognvald was on the ice, she was safe.

  In the event, a score of them took part in the ensuing race to and from the row of boulders, half swallowed in darkness, which was their makeshift boundary mark. The woman of the farmstead, her face flushed and smiling, swung the tallow-dip that gave them their starting signal and the skaters set off, in a whooping, uneven row, their backs brilliant in the firelight.

  It was not to be expected that, drunk or sober, at war or at sport, any man of such a group would dream of pinning all his faith on his natural gifts. Shoulders and knees, elbows and hips and the pointed ends of the skating-sticks came into play instantly, until the receding line, bunching as it progressed, looked less like a contest of skaters than the crews of two longships that had just had a head-on collision. They receded, roaring, with one man at least among them traversing the ice on his shoulders, and Groa, laughing, shook back her hood and talked across the fire with the other women where they sat at ease on the shore on the heaped, straw-stuffed hides.

  She watched, as long as she could, the ducking, swaying head of Thorfinn, who was demonstrating, it would seem, that the balance required of a youth skipping on oars at nineteeen can serve him just as well in other ways fourteen years later. Then she could distinguish nothing but a dark line on the ice which became a mound which became, in turn, part of the darkness. The shouting continued.

  Having reached the boundary, the contestants did not return as quickly as they had gone, but, held in woman-talk, Groa was not unduly concerned. Not far away, one of the passenger-sledges had been turned, and a pony brought down from the horse-lines was being clipped into its harness: someone feeling the cold, no doubt, had decided to make for his warm bed at Orphir.

  That there was a connection between the two did not cross her mind until a pair of hands closed on her arms and jerked her upwards. She gasped, kicking and wrenching, but the man behind her, whoever he was, did not let go, although one of the women shouted and picked up the big ladle and two more were running towards her. But he was too strong for her and too quick. Before he could be stopped, he had thrown her into the sledge and held her there while a dark figure vaulted on to the pony’s back and, seizing the reins, flung the horse and the sledge into motion.

  The man holding her down dropped his hands and jumped back. The rider ahead, whose back was all she could see, raised his whip-hand and brought the thong coiling down, so that the garron kicked up its heels and, ears flattening, lengthened its pace. The snow began racing below her. Already it was too late to jump. Already the black bulk of the steading was blocking the flames of the fire, and the cries of the women were thinning, overlaid by the hiss of the runners.

  Then the rider ahead, whip and reins in one hand, twisted round, smiling, and looked at her, his teeth dimly white below the black circle of fur he had pulled over the bright, gilded hair. ‘Why not jump?’ Rognvald said. ‘I don’t want you. I only want Thorfinn to follow me.’

  The sledge swerved. The horse was running wild. Rognvald paid no attention, twisted round, smiling, with the reins lying loose in his fingers.

  Groa said, ‘I am not getting out.’

  ‘You are hoping for rescue?’ Rognvald said. ‘I have told my men not to come after me. Thorfinn will come, of course: he will follow the tracks. My guess is that he, too, will come alone. He knows that in a duel one does not need companions.’

  The sledge lurched, and he half-turned and, looking ahead, took the reins in both hands again. He was still smiling. They crossed a ridge of bared rock, and she gripped the sides of the sledge as it bucketed. He was steering straight, she saw, for another. She took a short breath and called. ‘If he finds me in the snow, he won’t come after you.’

  This time, he did not turn, but she could just make out his words, although the wind snatched his voice. ‘He won’t find you, my beautiful aunt. I shall make quite sure of that.’

  There was a mound ahead, one of the great burial mounds that shouldered out of the snow-covered turf all about them, only just blacker than the cloud-covered sky overhead. She saw him guide the horse to its slope and flung her weight to the right just as the runner on that side mounted the incline and ran jumping, striking sparks from the half-submerged stone-work. Then it thudded down to the level and the sledge was running evenly again, for the moment.

  ‘Do you think,’ Rognvald said, ‘that the stream will be frozen? It runs very fast. A skin of ice, perhaps: not much more. It isn’t, of course, a very broad stream. Any horse could leap it. What the sledge will do, there is no telling, is there, until we find out?’

  She knew the stream, and she knew what the sledge would do. It would overturn. And in that icy water she would not drown. But unless taken quickly to warmth, she would die.

  Which was what he wanted. Not to rule Orkney as stepfather to Sigurd and Erlend. Not even to rule Orkney, two-thirds or all of it. But to stand in the centre of Thorfinn’s world so that he had no world that was not Rognvald his nephew. Then her eye fell on the two thick, plaited cords that joined the sledge to the yoke of the horse, and she remembered the knife at her belt.

  She had little ti
me, and the use of hardly more than one hand, or she would have been thrown from the racing, bucketing sledge as she laboured. But, bracing herself as best she could, she began work on the thongs, sawing quickly, first on one side and then the other, for if one were to part prematurely, the sledge would scythe round under the galloping heels and nothing then was likely to save her. She must so work that the last strands would give way together and, evenly balanced, the sledge would merely run gently on, losing momentum.

  Then Rognvald would turn as his horse ran free of the weight, and, coming back, would bend over her. And she would still have the knife in her hand.

  She had the thong half through when the first cry came from behind, and at that second she stopped what she was doing, because Rognvald turned, scanning the darkness behind her. Then he lowered his gaze. ‘Do you play board games? It was a risk I took, that your husband would bring his friends with him. I believe he has brought one. How unfair. I must point it out to him.’

  Then she looked round as well, and saw, far behind, two galloping horses, their torch-flares streaming like hair-stars. Unencumbered, they were gaining ground fast. Then Rognvald laughed, and she turned and made out, dim black on dim grey ahead, the line of the brook he was making for.

  This time, she did not heed whether he saw her or not. She grasped the front board of the sledge and slashed the ropes through, one after the other.

  The sledge kicked. Like a towed skiff severed at sea, its nose swung wildly, first to one side and then the other, and the harsh saw of the runners alone would have told Rognvald what had happened, without the sudden stumble and peck of his horse. He began to wheel round. Then his eyes lifted to something behind her. He laughed a second time and, leading the reins in an arc, turned his mare back again and pressed her into a trot. For a moment, Groa could see horse and rider black against the grey of the snow. Then there was nothing but the sound of muffled hooves drumming as Rognvald rode off, spurring from trot to full gallop.