King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  His heart eased, his eyes bright, Rognvald watched Thorfinn coming and saw, this time, that the black head was bare as his own, for no man there on either side could fail to recognise the two Earls, any more than any man there would lay a finger on either. As if magic enclosed them, they were sacrosanct, united by blood, and by the unique right of the kindred to kill its own members.

  He saw Thorfinn’s prow turn, showing the carving, as it prepared to slide by and grapple for boarding, and he leaped, with his men, to their positions, and laughed aloud with the joy of it. It seemed unfair, then, that Thorfinn had used his encounter with Kalv to advantage, and that, just before the ships closed, a grid of cast steel should fall on Rognvald’s ship, clearing the first line of men and killing half of his oarsmen.

  Because his discipline was good, and his planning, it took seconds to drag down the dead and replace them. But in those seconds another whickering cast scored the clouds, falling this time on their shields, but piercing as well, so that he had to raise his voice over the screaming and draw off, instead of clenching fast, as he’d meant, with the grappling-irons.

  And even drawing off was hard enough, for the other boat, rowing freshly and well, let no space grow between them, but threw its own irons over his gunwales, so that he had to have them cut or uprooted and flung back.

  The men on Thorfinn’s ship were jeering, and he let them. When he was ready, he would fight and they could mock him if they wished, from wherever their heads happened to fall. When he was ready, he shouted, and his men shouted in answer, and blew their horns as, this time, the two beams drove together and the cables flew, crossing from Rognvald’s side to Thorfinn’s and vice versa. Then, as the ropes landed, so the men jumped aboard with their axes and swords, some on one ship and some on the other, and opened the first steaming wounds, and caused the first dead man to clutter the footboards with his shield and his helm and his scabbard.

  Smiling, Rognvald vaulted down from the stern and began to wade forward, cutting and hacking and looking half at what he was doing and half to where, more slowly, Thorfinn stepped down in his turn and, axe in hand, was crossing his vessel. ‘Well, uncle?’ said Rognvald. ‘Does your third of Orkney look good to you now?’

  Thorfinn had stopped. ‘Only justice seems good,’ he said. He was frowning.

  ‘Justice?’ said Rognvald. ‘Then why not see justice done? Put it to the test. Why have you stopped? Three paces more, and we shall have a field of justice all our own. Don’t be afraid. My men will not touch you.’ Pushed by the struggle about him, he staggered a little. He was splashed with other men’s blood.

  Thorfinn said quickly, ‘There is no need. It is clear who has won. Look about you. The Norse ships are leaving.’

  Brusi’s son stood, smiling still, for he did not believe it. It was his men who looked round, in the thick of the fighting, and who began calling, so that at last Rognvald looked swiftly over his shoulder.

  It was true. It was unbelievably true. The ships he had been given by Norway, the ships that had fought all afternoon at his side, had given up before the onslaught of Kalv Arnason and one by one were twisting out of the fighting, were laying inboard their oars and scrambling, were raising the sail that would help them run north, out of trouble.

  Rognvald had seen only that when, with a crash, Kalv Arnason’s flagship hurled itself grappling against his opposite beam and the first of Kalv Arnason’s men began to throw themselves into his vessel.

  Printed with longing, Rognvald’s face turned once towards where Thorfinn stood unmoving in, the midst of his own men and watching him.

  There was no leap that would take him to Thorfinn’s side. There was no weapon made that would reach him. With hate and fury and still that unspeakable longing marring all his fair face, Rognvald threw what he had, his father’s great golden axe, towards the black, towering figure outfacing him, and then, with a gasp, wheeled and, killing and slashing, began to drive back these second invaders.

  He meant, after that, to turn and renew the battle. It was his men who, against all his threats and his orders, cut the shackles on either side and set themselves, with oar and then sail, to escape northwards after their fellows.

  Kalv saw no reason to stop his assault, or to fall back, or to let his prey walk out free from so dainty a trap. It was Thorfinn’s instant disengagement that first drew Kalv’s startled attention, and then Kalv’s anger, and then Kalv’s stubborn back, until, racing in Rognvald’s wake, he became aware that Grágás, flying alongside, was firmly heading him off, and that he was not the only shipmaster giving play to his fury.

  It was brought home to him, indeed, in a moment: when, with a whine and a thud, the golden axe of Rognvald’s father struck by his foot, thrown with venom by Brusi’s half-brother.

  And across the darkening sea, as Rognvald’s ship fled on the tide and the wind towards freedom: ‘Sail where you will,’ said Thorfinn’s echoing voice. ‘Catch whom you can. But Rognvald is for me or for no one.’

  ‘And my thanks?’ Kalv Arnason bawled.

  ‘There is his axe,’ said Thorfinn. ‘And it not in your head. Be contented.’

  ELEVEN

  ENTLY …’ SAID the King; and his wife laughed, and slackened her grasp.

  ‘Was it such a celebration? Yes, I can see that it was. Is that better?’

  ‘It is a little,’ said Thorfinn, ‘like Mael Duin’s voyage to the thirty-one islands: revolving ramparts of fire, through which beautiful people move to haunting music. Yes, that is better. And yes, it has been rather a long celebration. But with cause.’

  They were alone in their chamber at Orphir, so that she could look at him, tracing the new scars with gentle fingers, and ask the questions one did not ask newly arrived on the jetty, with excited people about her, and her sons. She said, ‘So Rognvald is safely back in Norway, having lost most of the force he was given, and with no hope of another? And Kalv and his people have left for the Western Isles, and Eachmarcach is King of Dublin again? Now I think of it, I’m thankful to find you so human in your rejoicing. Otherwise, I should have feared for you.’

  ‘Oh, fear for me,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But not because I am less than human. What does Lulach say of it all?’

  ‘You know he never speaks when you are in danger,’ Groa said. She glanced at him. ‘He has taken to calling you the King of the Jutes. A new fancy.’

  ‘There was a famous prince everyone knows,’ Thorfinn said. ‘A mere six hundred years ago, give or take a decade. That one?’

  ‘His uncle. You never had a brother’s son of the same name as the prince?’ enquired Groa. She smiled.

  ‘The only brother’s son I have is called Rognvald, and is living quietly in Norway, far from where he can cause anyone harm. We have talked about him enough. Come and tell me how you are faring.’

  ‘I have come. I am telling you.’ She could hardly be closer.

  ‘But without so many warm garments between us,’ explained Thorfinn patiently; but his fingertips were not being patient at all.

  After ten years, the Orkneys were his again. Rognvald’s hird, the men who had been with him in Norway and Russia, had gone back to Nídarós in his company. The mercenaries, the dead, and the injured had been hunted for all through the islands the day after the battle, and, once found, had been killed or ransomed, nursed or buried, according to their destiny.

  In a very short time, even then, Thorfinn knew that Brusi’s men would serve him in the end; and that very soon he could sit in Westray, as Rognvald had done, and men would come to him for advice and for justice, as they had come before Rognvald returned.

  Rognvald had been a young god, full of magic and mischief, whom they had loved to lead them overseas to high adventure. But the sun had set on the Viking, or was setting. What remained was still high adventure, but of a different kind.

  One tried in vain to teach as much to Arnór Jarlaskáld, whose verse on the recent occurrence even the scarffs on the rocks were repeating:

 
; Straight and sure,

  True service to one’s lord—

  Unwilling, this one,

  To war with Brusi’s son:

  Awkward our choice

  When Earls are eager

  To fight—friendship

  Is far from easy.

  I beheld both my princes

  In Pentland Firth, hewing

  At each other’s men.

  Deep grew my sorrow.

  Blood streaked the sea,

  Blood fell on shield-rim—

  Bespattered the ship.

  Black blood oozed

  From the yielding seams.

  Sitting on Aith Hope, where he had been forcibly placed with the dead and the wounded, Arnór had used his time well. Without a skald, the deeds of a war-lord would die. It was Arnór’s bad luck, and his master’s, that men should wish, now and then, to celebrate something in their lives other than battles. With a lesser poet who peddled his verses like bits of robbed-out foreign mosaic, one might throw the hearth-stool away and close one’s door on him. But, rare of his breed, Arnór gave love with his kvaedi and hoped for love in return, even from enemies. And if the love remained, and not the verses, it would be equally a judgement of sorts.

  At the great feast that night, at which he had no need to drink because Groa was there and the boys, she said to him, ‘I can feel happiness all around you, like the warmth from a burning wax-light. You will stay in Orkney all winter, till you are sure of your people again?’ And when he nodded, she said, ‘You know you have been drunk on sea-water, not ale. Can you ever be so happy anywhere else?’

  Thorfinn said, ‘Was Canute happy? I suppose he was. About King Olaf I don’t know: he was my age when he died. If you are apprehensive, I suggest you watch what happens to your great-uncle Harald in Norway. He’ll persuade Magnús to give him half the throne soon, when he has finished exhibiting how awkward and how powerful he can be. And then we shall see a King of Norway who has spent half his life with the Orientals. They say Jaroslav’s father in Russia had eight hundred concubines. And seventy years ago his father went about with his head shaven, save for a lock on one side, and long moustaches, and a ring in one ear. Yet in their turn they all come from the northern islands, as you and I do. Will Harald be happy?’

  ‘He is not a Celt,’ Groa said.

  ‘Then he will be happy,’ said Thorfinn. ‘And now that I think of it, so will Rognvald, with any luck.’

  The child they wanted was conceived that night in Orphir, and because her health came before everything else, Thorfinn made her stay at the hall, as soon as they knew of it, and rode about Orkney on his own, with the hird and with their older son Sigurd, who was eleven, and to whom he was God. And she did not grudge him it, but stayed with Erlend and with Sinna and her women and discovered that David the priest was good at board-games, and that Thorkel Fóstri, on the days he preferred not to ride, would tell her things about Thorfinn that she did not yet know.

  It was to be a hard winter, when wolves ran on the ice between Norway and Denmark, and forests froze round Cologne. By October, the first signs were there already, and men travelled less, but returned to their steadings to see to their barns and to make all snug for the harsh weather to come, before feast-time arrived. The couriers that came back and forth, when they could, from the mainland of Alba, stopped arriving and Thorfinn came home with only those courtmen who belonged to his household and restored Sigurd, who could not stop talking, to his mother, and tossed Erlend in the air and asked after Lulach, who was staying at Deerness with Thorkel Fóstri.

  The air of contentment was still there, although tempered, when he held her, with a restraint she knew he did not enjoy. Until this child was safe, they slept in different beds. So he kissed her, complaining, and she said, ‘Ah, the black-headed fighting-men the fifty islands will see, come next July.’ She hesitated, and then said it. ‘I have never seen a son of yours by another.’

  His face did not change, but she turned scarlet under the brown, velvety gaze.

  ‘At twenty-three,’ he said, ‘I cannot recollect having so many. And after that, of course, I was forced into marriage.’

  ‘So?’ she said sternly. She knew that her colour was high, but she had no fears now.

  ‘Is there a question?’ he said. ‘There is this Druid. I ask him what the present hour is good for. And he says, for begetting a King on a Queen.’

  ‘I have met him?’ she said.

  ‘Surely,’ said Thorfinn. ‘He sits on your pillow. And, that being so, what chance do I have, and myself exhausted?’

  Those nights, she went to bed early, when the tables were cleared and the rest of the women withdrew to their sleeping-quarters. Lying on her down mattress, she could hear Thorfinn’s voice, low and rich through the timber wall, and the exclamations and rejoinders of his men, as they sat talking and drinking.

  Masculine talk. The mild, austere voice of her father remonstrating with his hot-headed brothers, persuading Kalv into moderation, explaining to Thorberg and Kolbiorn. The hoarse, lewd voice of Gillacomghain her husband boasting of his prowess to his brother. The good-humoured roughness Thorfinn used with the hird when he was handling them, stirring their interest in something he wanted. If Thorfinn had ever had personal exchanges with anyone, man or woman, apart from herself, she had never heard them. But he must have had: with his foster-father; with Sulien, she imagined. With other women, she did not believe, despite the question she had made him answer. His nature was otherwise.

  She did not know, therefore, as she drifted into sleep, how long into the night Thorfinn talked, or how long he sat with his hands round his horn, saying nothing in particular, with the two men or three who still stayed with him when the rest had crossed to the wall-benches and rolled, stretching, into their skins and drawn the covers over them as the long centre fire glowed and glimmered on the axes and shields, and the painted carving on the pillars and beams. Nor did even Thorfinn know that on such nights men took turns to sit with him in silence while he thought, for toleration and acceptance had grown, a long time since, into something else.

  On such a night, it was Sinna, kept awake by a wriggling Erlend, who realised that a great cold had come suddenly, and that the tapers burned still in the hall, where there were no slaves awake to see to the fire. For a while, she stayed where she was, grumbling and muttering. Then, because what disturbed her girl Groa was to her also a matter of moment, she rose and found another blanket to put on the bed and, having tucked up the boy, pulled her old sheepskin cloak over her robe and opened the door of her sleeping-hut.

  Orphir lay still on the slopes of its hill, hut after hut black on the grey, save only the long shape of the drinking-hall with its amber rectangles of flickering membrane. She could hear the stream that ran down to the shore, and the breath of the sea washing the shores of the Flow, and sense rather than see the low black islands that lay out there over the water: Cava and Flotta and Huna, with Ronaldsay lying behind. And to the west, unseen, the ramparts of the island of Hoy, outside which such a terrible carnage had been wrought five months before.

  Then she saw a longship on the beach which had not been there at dusk. And as she stood, staring, a hand gripped her over the elbow and another palmed her over the face, so that she could neither breathe nor call out, and the voice of Rognvald, Thorfinn’s nephew, said, ‘Be still, little woman, or I will feed your bowels to my dog.’

  Then two men tied her and threw her gagged in a corner, where she had to watch what all the others were doing: the others who came up from the beach with great bundles, which they stacked man-deep round the walls of the drinking-hall before melting into the darkness, steel glinting, to where the sleeping-quarters lay silent.

  There had never been a guard posted at Orphir until the struggle between the two Earls began, and the first thing that Thorfinn had done after the battle was to remove him. Magnús of Norway could never give Rognvald another army. That everyone knew.

  He had not given Rognvald
another army. Rognvald had one ship, with the men needed to sail her. It was all he required, when his only purpose was to kill his father’s half-brother.

  Sinna saw it all happen: saw the hall-lights glint gold on the Earl’s silken hair as he passed and repassed, and willed in vain that Thorfinn within would rise, would extinguish the lights, would open a shutter, would send a man into the yard … anything to avert what was going to happen.

  But nothing averted it, and she watched as the brand was kindled that Rognvald stretched to the darkness round the hall door, as his men did on each of its long sides and its ends. Watched as, stark-lit by the ring of bright fire, Rognvald threw back his fair head and called.

  ‘Hallo there, my uncle! Are you cold? Come out! I have kindled a fire for you, and my aunt, and your soul-friends. Come and warm yourselves at it!’

  Groa was so deeply asleep that the shouting in the main part of the hall did not fully wake her at first, and it was the smoke, oozing thick through the timbers and catching her throat, that roused her at last.

  There was enough light in the chamber to show her where her cloak was, and that Thorfinn’s bed was empty still. Then she saw why the light was orange and red, and what was making it. She was halfway to the door when it opened and Thorfinn’s hands stopped her, gripping her shoulders. Behind him Sigurd stood, pressing hard at his father’s back. When she flung out her arm, he ran to her.

  Thorfinn said, ‘Rognvald has set fire to the hall. Take Sigurd and walk out. He is letting go all the thralls and the women and children. Sigurd, take care of your mother.’ He had flung her cloak over her shoulders and, dragging rugs from the bed, pushed them into Sigurd’s arms. ‘Quickly. I’ll follow.’

  She didn’t move. ‘Erlend!’

  ‘He’s safe. All the huts are empty. The women are safe. They’re waiting. Quickly. Groa, run.’

  The door to the big hall hung open. It was full of Thorfinn’s men, half dressed, steel in their hands. The main door to the yard stood empty, outlined in brilliant orange. Very few slaves slept in the hall. By now, they had gone. Thorfinn said, ‘Groa: I cannot fight till you go.’