She said, ‘I can’t tell you what to do.’
She knew he was smiling: something rare, that he kept only for her. She felt, again, the warmth of his head at her knee.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘that it is no nickname to call thee the Ever-Blooming, because of the excellence of thy shape, and because of thy intelligence, and because of thy family. And it is no nickname to call you the Favourite, because thou art the beloved and desired of the men of the whole world, for the splendour and lustre of thy beauty.…’
He moved from Gaelic to Norse, and she felt the change in him as one stream of blood ran into another. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that you will never tell me what to do about Rognvald. I only weep, as a man, for Rognvald, because when I have done it, he will not have you waiting, as have I, to carry his head on your knee.’
Towards the end of August, there arrived off the island of Westray in Orkney two strongly manned ships led by Thorkel Fóstri, the King’s foster-father.
The last time Thorfinn had sent a messenger to his nephew Rognvald, the messenger had returned tied to a sledge with his hands cut off, and nearly dead from an old, hairy cloak bound tightly over his face.
This time, Thorkel Fóstri said what he had to say with fifty axemen behind him and more on the shore. It was Earl Rognvald’s steward he spoke to, since Earl Rognvald sent word that he was busy, and that if a man sent his nurse instead of coming himself, he could hardly expect another man to do more.
The same steward brought back the reply, half a day later; and Thorkel Fóstri sailed with it to Sannick in Caithness, where Thorfinn had gone to settle a new dispute between Kalv Arnason’s men and the old settlers. There, he took his foster-father to the guest-quarters he was living in and heard him out in silence. At the end:
‘Well,’ said Thorfinn, ‘barring the insults, which are more imaginative than I have heard before, the reply seems to be what we expected. Find Kalv, and we shall tell him about it.’
As was to be expected, on being told the news, Kalv became extremely disturbed. His face became as red as his hair still was in places, and his hand wiped at his belt where his axe used to be. He said, ‘I want you to tell me again. You have sent demanding of Rognvald the third of Orkney that King Magnús elected to give him, and since, naturally, Rognvald refused, you have begun to raise an army to take it?’
‘You have it,’ said the King. ‘Although I doubt very much if the army will ever see action. Rognvald’s men at least will be very aware that he has only the resources of two-thirds of Orkney to fight me with, if as much, whereas I have all Caithness and Moray and the Western Isles, with as many from Alba as I might coax to follow me.’
‘Alba?’ snapped Kalv. ‘Alba won’t fight Orkney battles for you, and you’re a fool if you think so.’
‘I don’t,’ said the King mildly. ‘But Rognvald’s men are unlikely to realise it.’
‘So,’ said Kalv. ‘You expect Rognvald to give up his uncle’s land without a murmur and sit tamely in Westray while you take the southern isles and East Hrossey from him? He won’t, you know. You know what he’ll do? He’ll complain to Magnús of Norway, who is sitting over there biting his nails to think of an excuse to invade us. It’s the end of you, and of me.’
‘If Magnús wants war, then I agree with you,’ said the King. ‘But does he? The attacks on Denmark were costly. And although he may guess that Alba won’t fight my battles, he can’t be sure what England would do. Also, he may need all his resources if there is to be a quarrel over his own kingdom. It seems very likely that Harald Sigurdsson is on his way back.’
‘Guesswork,’ said Kalv. ‘You’re laying down cheese at a bear-hole.’
‘It may therefore turn out,’ said the King, ‘that Rognvald will be persuaded to make the best of things and go back and settle in Norway, where his foster-brother the King may well have need of him. Does that not seem likely?’
‘No,’ said Kalv rudely. ‘And from the look on cousin Thorkel’s face, he doesn’t think so either. It’s a pity he’s afraid to say so. I never thought, when I saw him beat you for your mistakes, that one day I would watch him licking your boots while you made them.’
‘Indeed,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Now you come to mention it, my boots were remarkably clean on the day you came begging for shelter. I know what Thorkel Fóstri thinks about this. I know the dangers. The matters you point out have all been thought of. If you dislike my way of doing things, you have only to move out of my guest-quarters.’
Kalv got up. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It is easy to insult a man who is down on his luck. There is valour in that, and all the good breeding that mixed blood is noted for. You are saying, I take it, that either I fight Norway for you or starve.’
‘If I fight Norway and lose,’ said Thorfinn agreeably, ‘then you may discover a fate worse than starving, for if King Magnús changes his mind, still Harald Sigurdsson may find it hard to overlook what you did to his brother. That is for you to decide. I have not asked you to fight for me, nor, if I ever do, shall I abuse you in any way if you refuse me. That is because you are an Arnason, and because of your niece my wife and your cousin Thorkel Fóstri, whose kinship you may well be thankful for. I think we have finished what we have to say to one another.’
Throughout this speech, Kalv’s chest moved up and down, and it was not at all clear that he shared this opinion. At the end, he stood in silence for more than a moment, without replying. Then he turned on his heel and walked out.
‘So?’ said Thorkel Fóstri.
‘So now we watch,’ said the King his foster-son. ‘And see if Rognvald sends to Norway or goes there himself. And then we watch to see who or what comes back. And meantime we pray—should we write to Sulien?—we pray that Harald Sigurdsson arrives very soon in his nephew’s kingdom of Norway and proves to be as rich and as aggressive and as belligerent as report makes him out to be.’
‘He may be so much all these things,’ Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘that he sails to help Rognvald at the head of a war-fleet.’
‘True,’ said the King. ‘In which case I have made a serious mistake. And it is wholly your fault for not having beaten me sufficiently.’
For four weeks, Earl Rognvald made no move, and Thorfinn remained in the north, waiting. Then, as autumn moved towards winter, four longships left the harbour at Hfn and set sail on the west wind for Norway. Leading them was the flagship, with Rognvald aboard.
Reporting, Thorkel Fóstri was matter-of-fact.
‘He has dismantled his halls and taken the hird. You could walk into the whole of Orkney at this moment, if you wanted. The story is that he has gone to ask Magnús for an army.’
‘And do his people think Rognvald will get it?’ asked the King. He had been interviewing two of his men from the south all that morning, and Thorkel Fóstri knew that there was trouble in Alba. But it couldn’t be helped. He said, ‘Magnús has the men to spare. And there is no sign of his uncle coming as yet. Report has it that Magnús will try to persuade Rognvald to settle in Norway, but that Rognvald sets too much store on this feud to agree.’
He stopped, eyeing Thorfinn. ‘He’s a brave man, I’ll say that for him. He could do nothing against you with only the men he has in Orkney. So he threw everything he possessed into the game. Orkney abandoned, in the hope that when he returns, it will be with the whole of Norway behind him.’
‘The winds will be against him now,’ Thorfinn said.
‘Oh, he won’t come back this side of winter,’ said his foster-father. ‘By the spring, we should know what is happening. Not all my cousins are sitting here at your table.’
‘I’m not sure whom to thank for that,’ Thorfinn said, ‘but I do, every day. I must depend on you, as with everything else, for that warning. And meantime it is a matter of ships and more ships.’
‘You hold to that?’ Thorkel said. ‘You won’t move into Orkney? You could win them over, in a winter.’
‘They would fight to the death for me, I am sure,’ Thorfinn s
aid. ‘So would the people of Caithness and parts further south, excluding, of course, Kalv and his kinsmen. I prefer, if an army is coming, that it makes no landings at all. Or, if I can’t prevent that, at least Rognvald should meet no resistance in his share of Orkney, and little in mine, if I am not there. Next to losing Orkney, it would be short-sighted to turn it into a desert.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘There is a great deal to be said for the long view, provided that it won’t take three generations to show the returns for it. I’m getting old. I’m fifty.’
‘You are fortunate,’ Thorfinn said.
There followed a winter that none of Thorfinn’s household took lightly, although he himself showed nothing of either concern or apprehension, but merely expended on Alba the torrent of energy that had been pent up in the north through the autumn.
With him moved his household, including his wife and his stepson Lulach and his older son, who was now eleven; and under the eyes of his young courtmen and his sons, he set about repairing the damage that even a few months of absence had done to his hardly established command of Duncan’s country. They were present at the interview he held in Fife with the Bishop of Alba, from which the Bishop departed sallow of face; and at the boisterous exchange with Alfgar of Mercia in Cumbria, who had burst in with a tick-bag full of gossip and precious information, indiscriminately mixed.
Always, Groa enjoyed Alfgar’s company, even when the extravagance of his compliments forced her, laughing, to put her hands over her ears; but she envied, too, the equanimity with which Thorfinn sat through the unsparing account of what Swegen of Wessex had done to the Abbess of Leominster before asking, mildly, what the news about Harald Sigurdsson was.
‘He’s still in Russia, so far as I know,’ Alfgar said. ‘Married to Jaroslav’s daughter; but not because her seven brothers would like him in Kiev. If that fellow takes over Norway, England will have to look out. So will you. Unless, of course, you become his vassal for Alba as well as Orkney. That would give everybody something to think about.’
‘Including your father,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Alfgar, to everybody but you, the passing years seem to bring a certain accession of tact. Tell your father that I have no intention of either allying myself with the King of Norway or becoming his vassal for Alba. If I have to, I shall deliver a nod on behalf of Orkney, but no more than a nod. In return, I expect you to tell me if Earl Leofric has been seen hunting from time to time with Earl Siward.’
‘They never hit anything,’ said Alfgar. ‘You’d hear that the Bishop of Durham got a sharp reprimand for meddling with other people’s churches, but Siward had him reinstalled almost before he had crossed the river. You want to watch,’ Alfgar said, ‘and not get defeated by Norway. If the English think that King Magnús is going to get a foothold through you in the north, they’ll back Siward to do anything he likes, including marching straight into Alba. You know he’s trying to get one of the boys back from Ireland?’
‘No,’ said Thorfinn. Then he said, ‘One of Duncan’s sons … Of course. Donald must be twelve; perhaps thirteen. Where is the boy?’
‘That’s what’s puzzling Siward. It’s a pity,’ said Alfgar, ‘that you didn’t persuade King Edward to take over both boys. And now the third one’s in Ireland, isn’t he? What does that look mean?’
‘It means that I have that matter, at least, in hand,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I hear you have a daughter as beautiful as your mother.’
‘I’ve got a new boy as well,’ Alfgar said. ‘With the same wet-nurse Edith had. It was worth all the labour to get her in the household again. I don’t believe in quick weaning. Was it you who said that both my sons had noses like Lapps’?’
‘Yes,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But then, so have you. Ask about it some time.’
Alfgar’s laugh rolled over the wall-hangings. He shook his head at Groa. ‘He will sit there making jokes instead of looking to the storm-beach he calls a kingdom. Tell him, can’t you, that the rest of us will begin to find life very difficult unless he makes some effort to take the thing seriously? The days for playing at Vikings are over.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Thorfinn. ‘They have only begun.’
Later, he said, ‘What is this? Groa, what is it? It was only Alfgar.’
And through the tears that, amazingly, had broken down all her self-control she said, ‘It isn’t that. Or not only that. I heard the news that came this afternoon.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, yes. Magnús is raising a levy in Norway. It seems that he has offered Rognvald both a fleet and an army to chastise me with in the spring. But we knew that was likely.’
‘And Kalv?’ Groa said. ‘Magnús has offered him back all his lands and his status in Norway, provided he supports Rognvald against you. That was in the message as well, wasn’t it?’
‘What do you do to my messengers that make them tell you all their secrets?’ said Thorfinn. ‘My love, my love; O glory of women; smile at me. It is a time for making jokes, and laughing at them.’
‘Time to take Lulach from Moray so that he may see, as he may never see again, how a kingdom should be ruled,’ Groa said. ‘Time to try to teach Sigurd the same lesson, although he is only eleven. But Erlend, at five, has to be left with his nurses. You were Rye when your father died. What do you recall of him? Anything?’
‘Then we should talk,’ Thorfinn said. It was a gift he had, that he would not fight against the inevitable, but listen to it, although not necessarily to surrender. And, recognising it yet again, it stole the words from her.
So he said them instead. ‘If you are left, you will hold Moray. For Lulach, it would be best to look for a marriage with the lands about Moray, to knit his interest to whatever king may take Alba. It does not sound desirable, or even profitable; but Bishop Malduin has a young daughter, as well as a family claim to the mormaerdom of Angus, and Lulach might do well to bind himself there. For you, you will also have to think of a husband.’
The sound she made, had she been a human being, would have been a denial. He took it as such.
‘What we have is ours, and dies with us. You have sons. Even if they are offered Orkney, it will be many years before they are old enough to hold power, or to lead. A man must do it, and a man you can influence. You sheared your hair to the roots, but you married Gillacomghain. You saw him burned by my men in front of your eyes, yet you married me. What we have should make the chain stronger, not weaker,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Crinan tried to tell me that soul-friendship between a man and a woman must be a mistake. I will not believe it.’
She said, ‘You are telling me to take to husband the man who will kill you.’
‘You say that,’ he said, ‘as if it cost me nothing. O Befind, whose fair body is the colour of snow: smile at me.’
And from his courage she took courage, and smiled.
TEN
s HE HAD done twenty-five years before, a beautiful child on the jetties at Nídarós, Rognvald of Orkney took his hurts to the man he thought would best help him. And, though he had his own troubles, the King of Norway kissed him and promised him a well-equipped army, although not the largest, and a well-found fleet of warships, although not the greatest, with which to chastise the swaggering bully who thought to defy the King of Norway’s own partition of Orkney. Enough, with luck, to wrest Orkney whole from Thorfinn. Enough, perhaps, to land on Caithness and annex it to the Norwegian crown.
Or at least so Rognvald, returning the embrace with tears on his cheeks, allowed him to go on believing. And indeed, with the ships and the men he would gather in Shetland and Orkney to add to these, such a feat might well be within his grasp.
He sailed late in the spring on a light easterly wind, and by the time he reached Hfn and found it empty, the armies of Thorfinn, lying patiently waiting in Caithness, knew the quality of the enemy’s fleet and its number; and stirred and quickened, like seed well fed and watchfully tended to which the hour of springing has come.
For three weeks, Thorfinn had husb
anded them while the real grain had grown unregarded round empty houses and the flocks and the herds had all gone, barring what was required to feed the men who lay under awnings round Thurso bay: the three thousand men who would sail under his banner; the two thousand who fed them and served them, who acted as guides and as runners, and who would augment, at need, the forces already deployed in small numbers at all those points where a landing might be made.
In small numbers because, from the beginning, Thorfinn’s battle-plan had depended oh a conviction that nothing could shake.
To Thorkel Fóstri, expostulating, Thorfinn said, ‘Whatever he has told King Magnús, Rognvald wants only to kill me. That he can only be sure of doing at sea. It is a sea-battle he wants, and a sea-battle we shall give him. At the end of it, winner or loser, he might fall on the shore of Caithness, but I promise you that he will be in no state to attack it.’
It had pleased the Caithness men, and the Orkney men had made no demur. Long since, anything of value had been removed from the Orkneys, including food. Rognvald’s newly arrived army would require a day, perhaps two, to rest after their journey, but after that their attack wouldn’t be long delayed. They could support an army only with what they brought with them.
Copsige, a man of enterprise, watching from Cornholm, had carried the news of Rognvald’s ships. ‘Only thirty of them, my lord Earl, but great ships: as great as Grágás, all of them, and filled with men. As many men as your sixty will hold. My lord, the armies are even.’
Thirty ships against sixty: that was the second strand in the battle-plan. Thirty tall-sided ships who would seek, therefore, to use their advantage by grappling and who, once lashed to the enemy, would require steady water under the keel. Which led to the third strand: the sea.
Between the scattered islands of Orkney and the long, rocky coast of Caithness lay the most dangerous passage of waters ever known about England or Alba, whose tidal current could run twice as fast as a longship, and whose waves could rise two hundred feet up the towering cliff-faces and overwhelm islands.
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