TWO

UT FOR THE Festival of the Spring Sacrifice, it would never have happened.

You could also blame the native stubbornness of the people round about Nídarós. That is, while King Olaf and his court were intoning Easter Masses at one end of the sea inlet, the Festival of the Spring Sacrifice was preparing to get under way at the other.

Hints of forthcoming revelry had come to Thorkel Amundason’s ears, but he ignored them. His Norwegian cousins might whisper, but it was no business of his. He had suffered the herring of Lent, and the watery wine and the boredom of Bishop Grimkell’s Saxon Latin: atonement could require nothing more. Let the Arnasons whisper: they lived here. In two weeks he hoped to be gone: away from Norway and back to Caithness and his foster-son. Back to plan for the future in Orkney.

Who told the King about the Festival of the Spring Sacrifice Thorkel did not discover, but he suspected his cousin Kalv Arnason. Kalv was short, and red-haired, and had no discretion. Everyone knew what winters in the north were like. After six months with his wife, no man still in his senses would miss the chance of exchanging his longfire for a week of feasting and trading, carousing and horse-fights and wenching, at the host-farm at the end of the fjord. It did no harm and kept everyone happy. Provided the King didn’t hear of it.

The King heard of it on his way into church for the first Mass of the day, when he was hungry. Following him with his retinue into the big timber building, Thorkel saw that something was wrong and hoped it need not concern him. Thorkel was ready to go home, although he had been well entertained and lacked for nothing away from the table. He had brought his own women with him, among the slaves of his travelling household, and had not had to lend them out more than he expected. He prided himself, too, on a little success with the wives of the court. Coming from Orkney, he was well travelled, and had better manners than some of their husbands.

A wife was something he had never troubled to acquire for himself. No marriage, no legitimate sons could vouchsafe him such power as might this cross-bred Earl he was rearing for Orkney.

At the end of Mass, the King got up like a fish on a line, and everyone rose. The King was thickset for a man of twenty-seven, and of no very great height, but he had been fighting since he was twelve years old and was still in the peak of condition. No one knew what his baptismal name had been. That had been given during his roaring Viking days in Spain and Friesland and Rouen until the dream sent him back: the dream that said, Return, and you shall be King of Norway for ever.

And he had been King for four years, and kept his name, Olaf: the name of Norway’s first missionary king, who had done his converting, also, with an axe.

The King’s guests, considerately attending Mass with him, had no idea what they were about to be let in for. Herded with the rest into the royal drinking-hall, Thorkel Amundason watched as the King strode to the steps of the High Chair and, turning, began to declaim. Then, with well-concealed resentment, he heard what the King had to say.

The King intended that very day, he announced, to mount an expedition of his loyal and Christian subjects against those pagans of Sparbu and Eynar and Vaerdal and Skogn whose devilish rites were an offence against the White Christ and himself, as their overlord.

‘With your help, my good Trøndelagers,’ said the King, ‘and with the help of your friends, we shall launch a fleet of the Blessed against the heathen that will give Freya something to weep for.’

Those who didn’t have metal about them reached up with their knife-handles and banged the shields hung on the wall. Thorkel applauded by kicking a barrel. Within a week of his escape, he had to risk his life and a blood-feud by helping King Olaf kill farmers at Sparbu.

Kalv his cousin was grinning. Kalv his red-headed cousin said, ‘Why the frown, Thorkel? Everyone knows your skill with a sword. The late Earl Einar of Orkney could vouch for it. Enjoy yourself, collect some booty, and earn yourself King Olaf’s favour. You may need it sooner than you might imagine.’

Hints from the Arnasons were as good as threats from anyone else. Thorkel said, ‘What do you mean? I have the King’s favour.’

‘So you have,’ said his cousin. ‘But you don’t know whose ship berthed an hour ago. He won’t be expected to fight. But he’ll be waiting here when the King comes back from Sparbu. Earl Brusi of Orkney is in Nídarós. You remember. You killed his brother last year.’

Thorkel smiled. ‘In self-defence. Where is the crime? And with his brother gone, Earl Brusi is richer today by a third share of Orkney. I have no fear of Earl Brusi.’

The eyes of Kalv were round, pale-blue, and candid. ‘Then why is he here?’ Kalv enquired.

Because, thought Thorkel, that hell-begotten boy has been up to something. I should never have left him so long with his mother. I had to leave him or I should have been outlawed. I had to get King Olaf’s pardon. I had to let Earl Brusi settle down to enjoy his two-thirds of Orkney and come to terms with his conscience. Brusi’s not a short-tempered man: he’d never harm his little brother in Caithness. His little half-brother, Thorkel’s foster-son. The interfering young fool who, instead of leaving everything to his elders, had done something stupid enough to bring Brusi here to complain.

‘Why is Earl Brusi here? I can’t imagine,’ said Thorkel Amundason, ‘Another wife perhaps, or a new swordsmith, or some timber? Some men always keep low stocks in Orkney.’

As soon as he could escape from Kalv, Thorkel began to enquire about Earl Brusi of Orkney. But men either knew nothing of him or were not prepared to tell what they knew. When the horns blew from the jetty for muster, Thorkel joined King Olaf’s fleet of axe-armed crusaders, knowing little more than Kalv’s hint had conveyed. Trouble might await his return. While he could, he should fight well for Olaf.

In the end, the Festival of the Spring Sacrifice had not even been started when five ships, led by King Olaf’s own Charlemagne, skimmed noiselessly up the dark fjord and night-landed three hundred men to surround the great farm-house of Maere in Sparbu while the guests slept and the beasts moved in their pens and the wooden barns rustled with mice between the kegs of ale and butter and flour, the barrels of pork and of beef, the crates of salt fish and wadmoll and feathers, of seal oil and squirrel skins and all the other precious goods that the people of the north brought to sell and to barter.

There was an old wooden statue of Thor inside a stone hut, with the timber for a great fire built before it. King Olaf lit the pyre and led the shouting, so that the guests and household of Maere jumped from bed with their weapons and then shrank at the sight of the tightening ring of axe, spear, and arrow about them.

Afterwards, it was said that every one was taken prisoner, and that King Olaf ordered the execution of Ølve of Egge, the ringleader, and of many more besides. Certainly, while the wealth in the barns was loaded on to his ships, the King sent his men-at-arms abroad through the country to harry and plunder wherever a friend of Odin might be suspected.

Kalv Arnason asked for, and was given, Ølve’s rich widow to marry, with her young sons and all her fine farmlands.

Thorkel Amundason took back to the ships a sword as red as the rest, having fought with his usual skill, avoiding the eyes of those Maere men with whom he was friendly. Nothing injured him, and he did not fail to congratulate Kalv before leaving.

He did not, like the rest of them, snore on the half-deck throughout the trip back, full of pork and new beer, with gold rings on his arms. Neither did his cousin Finn, Kalv’s older brother. Finn said, ‘Your little foster-son, the joint Earl of Orkney. Tell me about the boy.’

Tell him about the boy. The oars handed back the cold April air, and Thorkel elbowed his heavy cloak closer. ‘Tell you what? You saw him last summer when King Olaf sent for him. He’s no beauty.’

‘Does it matter?’ said Finn his cousin. ‘When his mother’s a princess of Alba? Do you find the boy difficult?’ The front of Finn’s tunic was patched like leather with someone else’s old blood, blurred where he had tried to scrub it away. He was the most straightforward, so everyone said, of the Arnasons.

Thorkel raised a neatly trimmed eyebrow. ‘Difficult? Are your daughters difficult? They stamp their feet and your nurse lifts her hand to them.’

‘I hear he is attached to his mother’s third husband,’ Finn said, his soft blue eyes round as sea-pebbles. ‘The province-ruler she married in Alba. Does the boy really care about Orkney? Will he want his share when you have got it for him? You’ve fostered him for seven years, but you never trouble to mention his name. What is it? Thorfinn?’

‘He’s called Thorfinn,’ agreed Thorkel shortly. A pagan name, like his own, but that was not why he didn’t use it. With a boy like that, you had to watch your back as well as your front. Attaching a name to him wouldn’t improve your authority. There were other considerations as well. He added, hearing the edge on his voice, ‘You are asking what is my interest in fostering such a boy?’

The soft-focussed eyes considered his. ‘Not really,’ said Finn at length. ‘No, that is not hard to guess. I only wondered if you were thinking that you had picked the wrong child to foster.’

Gulls squealed over the masthead. Near at hand, against the creak of wood and the rush of the sea there sounded the rap of thrown dice, and men’s voices, and the harsh bellows-breath of the sleepers. Thorkel said, ‘What other child is there?’ But he knew. Of the boy’s four older brothers, only one had had a son.

‘Why,’ Finn said, ‘Rognvald, Earl Brusi’s son. Ten years old and so pretty he could have fifty mothers to take the place of his own. He’s here with his father. You know that Earl Brusi’s in Nídarós?’

The youth Arnór Thordarson the song-maker halted beside them with a fan of hot smoking mutton on skewers, and Thorkel took one politely, as if the interruption were of no consequence. Thorkel said, ‘You’ve seen Earl Brusi, then?’ He bared his teeth for a bite.

‘And spoken to him,’ said Finn, watching him chew. ‘He’d just had a talk with the King. Don’t you want to know why Earl Brusi is here? You killed his brother. Or arranged for it.’

Thorkel gave his close attention to the meat. ‘If you know why Earl Brusi is here, then I suppose you are going to tell me.’

Finn said, ‘He isn’t here because of the murder. He’s here to complain to the King about your foster-son. Your foster-son Thorfinn, his little half-brother, who has promised him no peace, it seems, unless Brusi hands him half of Orkney.’

Despite himself, Thorkel’s face grew red round his smile. As if he meant it, he said, ‘It seems fair. Thorfinn and Brusi are the only two brothers left.’

Finn said, ‘Brusi is a grown man with a son to look after, and Thorfinn is a child by a different mother. Earl Brusi claims both his own third of Orkney and the third willed him by the brother you killed. King Olaf agrees.’

‘Does he?’ said Thorkel. Thorfinn, his mind said. Thorfinn, the stupid, half-grown, cocksure little fool.

‘Yes. The King promised, if need be, to support Brusi’s cause with an army,’ said his cousin Finn mildly. ‘At a price, certainly. King Olaf doesn’t give something for nothing.’

‘Whatever the King wanted, I’m sure Brusi would give it him,’ Thorkel remarked. The ship kicked to the current, and he flung the half-eaten mutton away.

‘The King wanted sovereign rights,’ said Finn, ‘over all Brusi’s Orkney inheritance. Overlordship of two-thirds of Orkney. Of course, Brusi agreed.’

‘Kneeling?’ said Thorkel. He laughed.

‘Kneeling, naturally. That is why,’ said Finn his cousin, ‘I wondered if you hadn’t picked the wrong princeling to foster.’

Successfully, Thorkel laughed again. ‘You think I might have found the dainty young Rognvald more promising? But I should have had to kill his father Brusi first, shouldn’t I? And what would be the use, with his land under King Olaf now anyway?’

Stupid, half-grown, cocksure little fool. Long after the conversation had ended, the oars beat the words through Thorkel’s head. He hardly noticed the change in the stroke as the fleet came within sight of Nídarós, or the bustle about him, or the high, gilded profile of Charlemagne, berthed where the King had disembarked half a day earlier.

The first time Thorkel came from his thoughts, it was to find the boat docked and on the jetty an illusion; a nightmare; a grotesque and familiar figure he had believed to be safely at home, five hundred miles west of Nídarós.

Not the complaining Earl Brusi. Not the lovely young Rognvald his son. But a scowling juvenile, thin as a half-knotted thong, with a monstrous brow topped by a whisk of black hair over two watering eyes, thick as acorns.

It raised one arm and called. Its voice had not even started to break.

‘Thorfinn,’ said Thorkel, and the word itself was a groan. Here in Norway, here in Nídarós, here on King Olaf’s jetty was the child-Earl of Caithness and Orkney. His foster-son.

Deliberately, Thorkel Amundason stepped ashore. Deliberately, he stalked towards the belligerent brat on whom for seven long years his hopes had been centred, and stopped before him. He said, ‘Thorfinn Sigurdarson: if you have put a foot wrong, I will take you into a close-house and thrash you over the stool.’

He did not remember, just then, that Finn his cousin was behind him. He was concerned only, as so often before, to search the boy’s face, looking in vain for what was his due in the unyielding, bellicose features, the half-grown nose, the wired lips, the challenging stare. The boy said, piping, ‘Thorkel Amundason: I am nearly thirteen years old and of full age, and you are my servant. Who gave you leave to kill men in Maere for Norway?’

‘My cousins,’ said Thorkel. He took the boy’s arm and turned him, walking, in the direction of the house he had been given. The boy shook himself free. ‘I didn’t notice,’ added Thorkel, ‘that you objected when Earl Einar’s head rolled into the fire.’

‘You mean you could have sewn it back on again?’ the treble voice said. ‘You did well there. Einar’s share of the land went to Brusi, and Brusi ran squalling to Norway as soon as I complained. You wouldn’t know. You weren’t there. You ran off to Norway as well.’

‘I thought you could wipe your own nose,’ Thorkel said. ‘I was wrong. You stupid fool: of course Earl Brusi ran to Norway if you threatened him. I told you to sit still for once and do nothing. Nothing!’

The steep, cobbled path between the wood-and-thatch houses was filling with yelling people and handcarts as the ships were unloaded. As the boy did not answer at once, Thorkel pushed him into a space between two wattled walls and said, ‘So how did you threaten him? As if I couldn’t guess.’ Behind him, he was bitterly aware, Finn was lingering helpfully.

‘I told him you’d come and pick holes in his wall-hangings,’ the boy said in a mutter. He was tall for his age, the women kept saying, but put together in a ramshackle way that gave him no physical presence. In the draught between walls, his eyes were thinly watering once again.

Thorkel said, ‘You told them you’d send your grandfather’s army. You told them to hand over half Orkney or King Malcolm of Alba would attack. Didn’t you?’ Despite his level voice, he was breathing hard, and the boy’s eyes flickered once and then stared back stonily.

‘I haven’t time to bother with that,’ his foster-son said. ‘If you think yourself my advisor, then say something intelligent. I’ve just come from King Olaf. He says if I don’t give him overlordship of my share of Orkney, he will take it and put an Earl of his own to rule under him.’

It had become very quiet. ‘… And?’ said Thorkel.

‘And I said, of course, that I couldn’t do him homage, as I was already an Earl of the King of Alba my grandfather, and his vassal.’

‘And he said, of course, that such only applied to the Caithness lands you hold through your mother, and that the King of Alba had nothing to do with Orkney, which was by rights a Norwegian colony?’

‘Yes,’ said the boy.

‘And then you told him to keep his hands off your bit of Orkney or the King of Alba would attack?’ The yapping voice was easy to mimic. Any other boy would have been shamed.

‘I said,’ said the boy, ‘that, being only young, I should like to go home and consult my counsellors before I gave him my answer. He said I couldn’t go home, but he’d give me an hour to think it over. The hour is almost up.’

Thorkel said, ‘What did you need an hour for? Your brother Earl Brusi became vassal for his share of Orkney right away.’

The boy’s mouth opened. He said, ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Don’t believe it?’ said Thorkel. ‘What else could be the outcome when you sent brother Brusi scuttling to Norway with the whole of Alba seemingly threatening his tail? He needed help, and King Olaf saw that he would pay the right price for it.’

The boy said, ‘He can’t use that weapon with me.’

‘My God. My God,’ Thorkel said piously. ‘He doesn’t have to, does he? He’s got you. Brusi runs crying to Norway, and you run screaming after. All you’ve both done is make Olaf a present of Orkney while you two or some other friend of his runs it for him. Your royal grandfather won’t attack Olaf. He won’t attack him even if you never come back from Norway. He has another grandson with much more convenient attachments. And who in all Alba or Ireland or Cumbria would he find to set sail and battle for you?’

‘I notice,’ said the boy, ‘that men will kill for money. Or power.’

‘Well, your grandfather has little of either to spare,’ Thorkel said. ‘And now you have none either. Go back and promise anything King Olaf may ask. That way you’ll leave here alive. Then go home and tell your mother’s new spouse how his great plan succeeded. It was all Findlaech’s idea, I take it?’

‘No. It was mine,’ the boy said. ‘If I start taking other teachers, I will tell you so.’

That afternoon, the trumpets were blown for King Olaf, and men came to hear what news the King had, and to learn the terms of the settlement between the two Orkney Earls, Thorfinn and Brusi.

It was raining, and the mist had come down almost to man-height, so that most of the folk standing on the cobbled stretch in front of the king-house had their hoods over their ears, except when the intimations seemed to be veering towards trading-rights or harbour dues, in which case they were hooked smartly sideways.

The King and Queen Astrid were dry, being seated under a canopy in front of their hall, its carved timber and gilding glinting under the eaves and the wet, brooding row of royal pennants.

On one side of the royal couple sat Earl Brusi of Orkney, a mild man whose round, sulky face still reflected a recent exchange with Thorkel Amundason. His tunic and cloak, decently rich, echoed the clothes of his ten-year-old son Rognvald. In no other way did Rognvald resemble his father, being straight-backed and milky of skin, with lustrous blue eyes and yellow hair, satin-flat as if sheened by a glass-smoother.

Thorfinn, the twelve-year-old Earl, had a red cloak with a gold brooch like a dish on it, above which his neck appeared like a wick. Beneath the towering forehead, he possessed no other feature as significant as the short, charcoal line of his eyebrows.

The King rose and, using his sea-going voice, disposed briefly of welcome and courtesies and launched into the terms of the pact by which the brothers Brusi and Thorfinn, joint Earls of Orkney, had delivered Orkney into his, King Olaf’s, hands and had pledged themselves to be his, King Olaf’s, vassals. By which right, said King Olaf, he was pleased to announce the allotment of Orkney each could expect from him.

To Brusi, one-third of the islands. To Thorfinn, another third, just as he had had before. And the third share, that of their dead brother Einar, he, King Olaf, now took in his keeping, to dispense in due course at his pleasure.

Beneath the canopy, Earl Brusi’s mouth opened. That had not been in the bargain. Standing among the bonder, Kalv Arnason grinned, his arm round his new wife’s neck, more to keep her from walking away than from any budding affection. Beside him, his brother Finn, with a child at each hand, peered at the king-house, for it seemed to him that under the thatch-drips the black-browed Thorfinn, the boy-Earl, was laughing.

However, when presently the younger Earl rose to follow his brother and kneel and promise homage to Norway, even Finn could see that the boy was not laughing at all, and that the look he exchanged with Thorkel, his handsome protector, was filled with venom.

Then the King called out Thorkel himself, as avowed slayer of Einar of Orkney, and decreed the amount he must pay to the two Earls to compensate for the loss of their brother. No sentence of outlawry was imposed on him.

So honour was satisfied, and so was King Olaf of Norway. Like Olaf Tryggvasson, he had laid the Orkneys under Norway again. The green, fertile islands with their mild climate and clever, boat-building peoples, with the rich, bounding blood of the Picts and the Irish, the Norse and the Danes and the Icelanders, to nourish their life-stream. Orkney, with its hundred small beaches and harbours: the crossroads where every merchant-ship rested, where every tax-boat and warship and supply vessel ran for shelter in the wild, open seaway between Norway and the Viking cities of Ireland; between Norway and her colonies in the western isles, the ports of Wales and the markets of western England, the wine road to Bordeaux and the Loire, the pilgrim road and the fighting road down to Spain and Jerusalem.

Everyone had to pass by the islands of Orkney. And only seven little miles separated Orkney from Caithness and the north part of Alba.

‘So you see what you have thrown away,’ Thorkel Amundason snapped at his foster-son later, in the cold, empty room of his guest-quarters.

Down at the jetty, the half-decks were already in place on the vessel taking them home, and all Thorkel’s six months’ of impedimenta were being thrown aboard quickly, with the meagre roll of his foster-son’s baggage. It would be as well, had advised the Arnasons, to leave early rather than later.

The boy stood, his face lowering. ‘My father paid taxes,’ he said. ‘Earl Sigurd my father used to send taxes to the old Earls of Norway before King Olaf arrived. My—They told me in Caithness.’

The door was open and the wall-hangings swirled. Thorkel said, ‘Oh, yes. The Earl your father flung a bone to the dog now and then. But none in my hearing ever heard him called vassal after Olaf Tryggvasson died. It took his fifth and last son so to honour his grave. The blood of Alba, one supposes.’

It was unfair. Brusi had done the same. It was unfair, but Thorkel was past caring.

‘Then you can suppose somewhere else,’ said the boy shrilly. Outside the door, a yellow-haired child arrived and stood on the cobblestones, snivelling. Neither of them paid any attention. The boy said, ‘Go on. Take your things off my ship. If you write me a bill of promise, I’ll even lend you the blood-fine for Brush.’

Thorkel, who could not write, said, ‘Why not? I’ll do better here under King Olaf than under a vassal of his.’ His voice stayed slow, but he was breathing fast under it.

‘Go on, then,’ said the boy. ‘Find another minor to dry-nurse. Find another land full of heirs to be thinned out. There’s Rognvald out there. He needs someone to wipe his nose. Look at him.’

The yellow-haired boy, noticed at last, took a step over the threshold. Tears still ran from the peerless blue eyes over the flawless skin. Losing grip suddenly of his temper, Thorkel said to Rognvald, ‘And what’s wrong with you?’

The son of Earl Brusi shut his lips, and his breath mewed behind them. He said, ‘Are you going?’

‘Yes, we’re going,’ said Thorkel shortly. ‘If you’ve lost your father, go to Thord Foleson and ask.’

Earl Brusi’s son gave a great sob and then shut his lips again. ‘My father’s going without me,’ he said. ‘He’s going home to Orkney without me.’

In the silence, the shouts of the men at the wharves came quite clearly. Then Thorkel Amundason moved and, taking the youngster by the arm, led him gently into the room. There, one hand on his shoulder, he studied him. ‘But why, Rognvald? Why would your father leave Norway without you?’

The pink lips trembled. ‘Because the King says he has to. He says that if Father will be his good friend in Orkney, he can have the third share … King Olaf’s share … the share that uncle Einar left to him. So Father will have two-thirds of Orkney, and I am to stay here as hostage. I don’t want to live in Norway,’ said Rognvald; and the tears ran from his eyes to his chin.

Kneeling, Thorkel smiled and took out his kerchief. ‘You don’t want your father to be a great Earl of Orkney?’ he said. ‘You don’t want to grow up to be a fine war-leader and King Olaf’s right-hand man? A brave young man like you?’

He knew, without looking, that Thorfinn had opened the door and walked out, his footsteps marching down to the waterside. He had time to wipe the child’s eyes and begin another reassuring, sensible sentence before his cousin Kalv’s voice said, from the doorway, ‘Ah. I was looking for some lost property. I see it has found its way to the right market. So, my dear Thorkel, are you changing your mind? You would like to stay with us in Norway?’

‘If it’s safe,’ Thorkel said. He straightened slowly. ‘And if, of course, you will have me.’

‘Oh, it’s safe enough,’ said Kalv airily. ‘Provided you don’t say very much and seem humble. Safer than it would be for your former menacing little nurseling. He’d be advised to get off while his skin’s whole.’

‘He’s gone to embark,’ Thorkel said. ‘Don’t you notice how quiet it’s become? They’ll be killing a sheep for him in Moray in a couple of days.’

Kalv was staring at him. The child, taking the kerchief from his fingers, blew his nose in it. Kalv said, ‘You mean Moray in Alba, his mother’s new home? Did he tell you he was going there?’

Thorkel Amundason put his hand on the golden head of the ten-year-old. ‘He didn’t need to,’ he said. ‘The whole stupid scheme was probably the ruler of Moray’s in the first place. Findlaech. His mother’s third husband. The first thing that boy Thorfinn will do in Moray is berate his stepfather for advising him wrongly.’

Kalv’s mouth had opened as well. He said at last, ‘Well, Finn was right. You and the boy are a pair to keep clear of. You’ve been with your foster-son ever since Sparbu. You were bear-leading him off and on for seven years before that. And he didn’t tell you what happened before he left Alba?’

Thorkel looked down at the child Rognvald. ‘Go outside,’ he said. ‘Go outside. I’ll come in a minute.’ And to Kalv, ‘What, then?’

Kalv’s face was rosy with pleasure. ‘The boy’s stepfather Findlaech was burned alive in his hall by two nephews,’ he said. ‘Thorfinn escaped with his life. Everyone else he knew died except the widow his mother, who was away at the time. The older of the murdering nephews is now ruling Moray and, of course, won’t let Thorfinn’s mother come back.

‘Your Thorfinn has not only lost the lordship of his share of Orkney. He’s lost his stepfather’s Moray as well. All he has on the mainland is Caithness, with his two cousins prowling the frontiers.…

‘That was why the boy fled here to Norway. To escape his cousins. And to try and claw half of Orkney out of Brusi his brother before people learned that he didn’t have Moray behind him.

‘We thought you had him trained to your heel,’ said Kalv amiably. ‘But I see times change. And this one is prettier.’

Because the tide had not yet turned, the longship with the boy Thorfinn of Orkney aboard did not put to sea as soon as she was loaded, but rode at the jetty while the provisions were properly stowed and the crewmen settled and the merchants and seamen took each other’s measure. She was not an Orkney ship: merely a cargo vessel with a passage for sale. The boy, invisible beside the prow dragon, had not expected Thorkel to come himself to take off his luggage. When the smooth voice addressed him, he went white and got up slowly.

Thorkel’s face was square as a four-cornered table. ‘Lord,’ he said. ‘The King has laid on me a blood-fine to pay you.’

The black hair, tufted and burned, shook in the wind. ‘The Earl Brusi you must pay,’ the boy said. ‘For Earl Einar’s death you owe me nothing. I have told you. You may go.’

Thorkel’s cloak stirred; and his hair; and his beard; but he did not move. ‘The law requires,’ he said, ‘that a blood-fine be paid. If you do not wish the King’s will to be done, you must impose one of your own. The King said that I might return to Orkney freely and enjoy all my possessions.’

‘You may,’ said the boy. ‘If you want to.’ It was a girl’s voice. But the contempt in it was a man’s. He sat down on his sea chest again.

‘I want to,’ said Thorkel. ‘But, whatever you think, I am not a man who serves two masters. Therefore, since you dismiss me, I cannot go home.’

‘Then serve Brusi,’ the boy said. ‘He has two-thirds of Orkney. There must be a living for you in that.’ His colour had changed again. But the brows, in a straight line, had not altered.

‘My father did not set me to serve Brusi,’ Thorkel said. ‘He set me to serve where I am neither liked nor am I trusted. My task is to serve you. I would finish it.’

‘You don’t want to stay in Norway?’ said the boy. ‘I have come into a fortune suddenly? What have you heard?’

‘That you saw Findlaech your stepfather burn,’ Thorkel said, ‘when I was not there to help you.’

In public, the boy was what Thorkel Amundason called his foster-son, for only thus could he contain the knowledge that in this child was something he could neither outguess nor control.

Now he saw it confirmed yet again, in the willpower that would not break down into weeping, although the boy’s mouth became small and the narrow throat twisted with effort. Thorkel Amundason said, ‘Thorfinn, Grown men grieve for their kindred.’

Perversely, it worked, in that the boy plunged into speech. After a moment, he even dragged his voice into its usual pitch, although he breathed as if he had been running. He said, ‘I mean to have Orkney. I mean to see my cousins burn as Findlaech mac Ruaidhrí burned. I shall see King Olaf into his grave before I become any man’s vassal for what is mine, ever again.… What are you saying? Instead of the King, I must tell you what the blood-fine for my brother is to be?’

‘You have the right,’ Thorkel said. ‘If you tell me never to come to Orkney again, I will obey you.’

He could see the boy’s eyes, a dense and violent brown, trying to read him. Thorkel took a step closer and, with formality, knelt at his foster-child’s feet. ‘When you give a punishment, you must give it quickly,’ he said.

‘But mine is a very slow punishment,’ Earl Sigurd’s youngest son said. ‘To come with me to Orkney. To defend the land as I shall do. To stay and serve me, and to obey me so long as we both are in life. Is that too much to ask?’

Long ago, this had been Thorkel’s own dream. To be a wise and powerful counsellor, admired of princes, at the side of a willing and dutiful foster-son.

It was no surprise, now, to find the dream had reversed. He said, ‘If you want it.’

‘I need you,’ said the boy. It was a cry of anger, not one of appeal. A cry born of a wave of frustration and fury that made him jump to his feet so that only skilful handling brought Thorkel Amundason upright also, and out of his way.

‘For I am not grown yet,’ said the boy. ‘How long, how long before I am grown? And I make blunder upon blunder and mistake after mistake.… Why don’t you stop me? You are a man. Make me think like a man. Make me act like a man. That is what I want you for.’

Nothing warned either of them, standing among the barrels and packs.

Moved by something he did not understand, Thorkel Amundason said, ‘My lord, whatever you have need of, I shall try to find it for you.’