FOURTEEN

HE ATTACK ON Herefordshire by King Gruffydd of Wales, aided by the son of the King of Norway, took place in the middle of June and ran the exact course of its predecessor: destruction, deadlock, and a suing for peace, ending in conciliation on the English side. Orkney was not involved.

By harvest-time, when Tuathal and the new-made Bishop Isleifr arrived back from Bremen, it was long over, although Denmark, when they called there, was still full of gossip about it. Having withstood a feast given by King Svein and visited Finn and Bergljot, the Lady’s father and mother, Tuathal took ship and returned as quickly as he might. For all his precautions, it was not a time for one of his few experienced men to be far from Thorfinn’s side.

He said as much to the Lady when he found her with the household at Kineddar, by the sand-strewn flats of the Lossie, awaiting the return of the King from some affair that had taken him south.

Already, he noticed, the women about the King’s wife were both younger and older than he had been accustomed to find, just as the courtmen were different. Given time, the heirs to the mormaerdoms grew into their training, and if you were lucky, the wise men came out of whatever monastery they had retired to and helped make the bridge from the old war to the new. Unless you found a king who could change men’s nature, so that no war ever came.

The Lady said, ‘Of course you had to go, when we need the goodwill of Denmark and Saxony more than ever. And if you hadn’t been consecrated somewhere, the Archbishop of York would never have stopped meddling.’

Her spirit had not changed, at least, although he saw Isleifr glance at the dark red hair, a little longer now, pinned into its coif. From her welcome of Isleifr and the quick, searching questions about her parents, you could guess how, stranded in Alba, she must sometimes miss her own kind. In the south, she and Thorfinn never spoke other than in one of the Celtic tongues. When they were together, he did not know what language they used. He asked after the King.

‘Oh, he is never still,’ she said. ‘But you know, perhaps, how difficult things are. To protect themselves, the bigger families who have returned to the south have had to surround themselves with stockades and ditches against Malcolm’s sympathisers, who have done the same. It means that when fighting does break out, it kills whole families. Thorfinn has been helping Scandlain in Fife, and has been a lot in Angus and Atholl as well.’

‘Is that wise?’ Tuathal said.

‘Add your voice to that of everyone else,’ Groa said. ‘He doesn’t listen.’

‘Thorfinn?’ said Isleifr. At fifty, and a bishop, he looked little different from the priest Tuathal had first met at Goslar six years before, although the gown hid the horseman’s legs and flaxen-furred arms, and his freckled scalp peered with greater success from its encroaching jungle. He was the hairiest man Tuathal had ever met and, in Bremen and after, had been very good company.

Now, evidently, he had stopped to give thought to something. He said, ‘When did Thorfinn ever care what sort of figure he cut? Heroics are for heroes, and good luck to the fools. He can’t imagine that he can hold together such provinces by his good looks alone. You tell me that Malcolm will pay for his head. Once a king loses his mystery, men will kill him for nothing.’

Tuathal gazed at the new Bishop, who said, ‘Ah. That is—’

The Lady said, ‘Don’t worry. These things get about. There is always someone who thinks one would be the better for knowing. I think you’re wrong. I think that it seems to him that to care for them now, when they need help, might well alter things in his favour. And his visit to Chester, there is no doubt, increased the weight of responsibility he feels he must carry.’

‘He refused an alliance with Mercia?’ Tuathal said.

‘He refused an alliance with Norway. More than that, hardly anyone has managed to get out of him. But it would seem that Harald of Norway has offered to help Alfgar get rid of the Godwinssons, and thought to get a foothold in Orkney by offering Thorfinn something similar. As you would hear, Alfgar, who prefers a short view, went ahead with his scheme.’

‘We heard in Denmark,’ Tuathal said. ‘Alfgar prudently kept out of the way. But King Gruffydd and the Norwegians attacked, and killed the Sheriff of Hereford this time, and the new Bishop. Alfgar’s father, Earl Harold, and Bishop Ealdred of Worcester led an army against them, and there was a parley, which ended in King Gruffydd submitting to England, and Bishop Ealdred receiving in gift the now vacant bishopric of Hereford. I was told by someone,’ Tuathal said, ‘to model myself on Bishop Ealdred. But, however long I live, I feel I can never hope to do half as well.’

‘Tell that to the King,’ the Lady said. ‘He needs news. He has been waiting for you. I won’t ask you what else he wanted you both to do, other than return blessed by Archbishop Adalbert, because I think I can guess. But could you tell me, because I don’t think I can wait any longer, what was the answer?’

He wondered if she really knew, and decided that of course she did, for there was only one way now out of the troubles of Alba.

Tuathal said, ‘The answer was yes. I don’t see what else he could have done. But I hope he never regrets it.’

*   *   *

It was not an autumn anyone cared to remember. A drought at the wrong time had produced burned grass and a scanty harvest and a shortening of tempers that made the unrest everywhere worse. The harvest was bad, but no one was starving, and the exhaustion of battle was lifting. Where there had been apathy, there was the clash of argument, followed soon enough by the clash of steel, as boys turned to youths and, listening, took up their father’s swords.

It could not go on. This autumn, somehow it had to be contained until the winter put its seal on the violence. And then, next year, it would have to be dealt with.

The autumn had passed and the blessed winter was just beginning when the news came to the court where Thorfinn was. He heard it alone, and then brought it to the next gathering of his household. He said, ‘That was a ship from Denmark, bringing news out of Saxony. The Emperor Henry died in October. It will make a difference.’

Tuathal watched him. He showed no signs of concern or alarm. He was still considering, clearly, just how big a difference it would make.

Bishop Jon said, ‘Now, there’s a loss. Would he be forty? I doubt it. And a good man. Before he took a hand in the matter, there was a Pontiff or two whose toe I should have let go without kissing if I could manage it.’

Thorfinn said, ‘His last Pope is to step into the Emperor’s shoes, it seems, until they can form a proper regency for his heir, who is only five. The Emperor asked for his heart to be buried at Goslar, and his body to be laid by his father at Spires. He died with the Pope by his bedside.’

‘Gebhard of Eichstedt,’ Bishop Hrolf said. ‘He’ll manage well enough. When you think of it, there was never a Pope set foot in Germany for a hundred and fifty years before Benedict, and they’ve hardly been out of the place since, except to shake their fists at the Normans. So the child’s mother will be regent?’

‘Subject to her councillors,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I remember Agnes of Aquitaine and Anjou. If she has time for anything other than the immediate problems of the Empire, which I doubt, it won’t be to help us in any way. If Bishop Tuathal hadn’t been to Bremen so recently, I should have had to send him. That trip may save us.’

The Lady said, ‘Adalbert likes consecrating bishops for the north, it’s true, and if ever he’s going to be a patriarch, he’ll have to cultivate them. But he must wonder from time to time if the King of Alba is paying very much heed to the northern half of his property. The cathedral of Birsay may well have fallen down by now, for all the attention it’s getting.’

Tuathal kept his gaze on his hands. Bishop Jon, he saw, was doing the same. Thorfinn said, ‘Thorkel Fóstri keeps an eye on it. Do you think it matters? We couldn’t send anyone north this late in the year. They might not be able to cross back for weeks.’

The Lady said, ‘How long is it since either Bishop Jon or Bishop Hrolf was in Orkney? Three years?’

Bishop Jon said, ‘In the spring, one or two of us could be there and back before you’d know it. You’re right. There they are, tearing their hearts out building more ships than the sea can carry for weight, and no one giving them a kind word. Also, if Harald of Norway changes his mind, there may be some fighting they ought to be prepared for. I’ll go, my lord King, if you’ll let me. Perhaps you might even find time to come with me.’

Tuathal turned his hands over and examined the other side. Bishop Hrolf, he sensed, was surveying the rafters.

Thorfinn’s voice said, rolling a little, ‘Soft as lead, like the Sarabites, and known by their tonsure to be lying to God. All right. Whose idea was it?’

‘Mine, just now,’ said the Lady. ‘Otherwise we should be making a better job of it. You won’t get an apology from any of us. If Orkney needs a share of your time, you don’t need to refuse it just to show how unselfish you can be. None of us has any illusions about your character.’

‘Not by the time you have finished with it,’ Thorfinn said. His colour had risen, which was unusual, but he did not look angry. He said, ‘How could I possibly go?’

‘Good,’ said the Lady.

Tuathal, who was not married, could not find anything in what the King had said to warrant either that degree of satisfaction or that degree of finality, but he was prepared to believe that somehow an argument had been presented and a case had been won.

He felt, when he thought about it, nothing but the most profound relief.

They had built another Grágás for the King and sent it to Caithness to fetch him.

Riding from Canisbay to Thurso, he went down to the shore to inspect the new ships and saw it at once, its prow swooping over its fellows.

It was bigger than Grágás, and much more elaborate: built of broad strakes that could only come, through whatever middlemen, from trees felled in Norway. Thorkel Fóstri, waiting beside it for his welcome, was of course the man to arrange that.

The King’s orders to all his shipbuilders had been to make ships that were smaller than the custom, and easy to work with in battle, which in turn meant fewer losses. In place of this vehicle, fit for a King who ruled from Orkney to Cumbria, he could have had two useful longships to counter Harald of Norway with. He went towards his foster-father’s embrace and was moved by the look on the other man’s face to give his thanks as they should be given, and dismiss his ingratitude.

It had been the same, in a way, with the people who had come to greet him everywhere on this journey, round the halls where he stayed and on his way in between. Until the great gale, he had been north almost every year of his life, and of course had met most of the households one way or another, if only settling their quarrels in a meeting for justice, or greeting them at a feast or tribute-time. For the rest, it was leaders like Hlodver and Odalric and their families who served him, and the young men who sailed and fought with him.

It was what he expected, for although he had been only five years old when his father left for the Irish war in which he died, Thorfinn could remember with a child’s clarity the talk and the feasting in the weeks beforehand as the captains gathered in the great hundred-foot hall in Birsay over which, now, he had built a better. And the sea before they set off, dancing with gold; and the moment when the sails sprang open, with a sound like forest trees whipping in thunder, and the look of the fleet, like foxgloves thrown on the water.

He did not remember the look on the faces of the women or the old men, although he knew it now. He supposed his father had been no more conscious of how they felt than they, in turn, understood what the Earl did when he crossed the sea. Any more than, in his own time, the people of Orkney and Caithness thought about his summer absences south, visiting his conquered earldoms elsewhere. It was the custom, in summer, for young men to go fighting and raiding and tribute-gathering and quelling those who thought, during the winter, that they would like to change masters. He had kept Orkney free. And he came back in winter. That was all they were concerned about.

But now it was spring, and although three years had passed since he had been north, whole settlements came out to meet him. In Freswick, someone called out to know how it had gone in his wars with the English. He could not tell what they had heard. It looked as if they thought he had gone seeking new honours for his earldom, as his father had gone seeking a kingdom in Ireland. He said what came easily to him, and they seemed pleased.

The new ship had received a name already, and of course he agreed with it. Skidbladnir, the name of the legendary vessel that had nothing but fair winds; that was big enough to hold all the Aesir, and yet would fold small enough to put in a bag.

He could imagine Tuathal’s cynical stare and was glad, on the whole, that he and Bishop Hrolf had been left behind with his mormaers to strengthen and fortify the Deeside frontier of Mar and Moray, which had been decided on before he left. With him, he had brought only thirty of his own household and Bishop Jon, whose special care the islands were. The company was fewer than the Aesir, and the new dragon-ship carried them with no trouble. Halfway between Thurso and Orkney, standing in the stern between the steersman and Thorkel Fóstri, it came to Thorfinn that he was on the sea in his own ship again.

He turned, and Thorkel Fóstri said, smiling, ‘Your mind was on other things. I know that.’ A little later, he said, ‘Arnór was here, but he left when he heard you were coming. Perhaps it was embarrassment, or perhaps he was afraid of King Harald. He always asks what Irish bard you have now.’

‘A dead one,’ said Thorfinn. To have Arnór in Alba composing eulogies on the battle-prowess of the Earl of Orkney would have been the quickest way, he supposed, to sever the two halves of the kingdom for good. He said, ‘Did Arnór bring some gossip with him?’

Thorkel shrugged. Now the old lameness showed, when he walked quickly, and his hair and beard were quite grey, although well kept, and his dress was fine. After all, he had been given an earl to rear in his household, and had done it properly, despite the Celtic stepfather. As Earl’s spokesman and cousin of the Arnasons, he was used to the councils of rulers as well as to the life of a sea-lord. The years of power in Orkney had brought him great authority.

The lightness in his nature had never changed, but, fortified by his other qualities, it had never come to matter. They were going now to his great hall at Sandwick, as had become the custom while their own hall-houses were being prepared, and they would find it, as ever, full of cheerful, well-trained serving-people, some of them slaves and some free; some of them concubines and some Thorkel’s sons or daughters by concubines and even small children of the next generation, also of his blood.

In some ways, Thorkel Fóstri had always lived like a Viking lord, as Thorfinn’s father had done. You took a wife if policy required it, and policy had never made that demand on Thorkel Fóstri. The only son he was interested in was not of his siring, and to rear a rival would have been purposeless.

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘Gossip? He spent all his time talking about a new verse-form he thinks he’s invented. We’ve had nothing but Hebrew psalms and Norse Kenningar in the hall-house for weeks. I was glad to escape it.’

‘Hebrew psalms?’ said Bishop Jon. Obedient even in wind, his hair was composed all round his tonsure as if painted. His eyes moved to Thorfinn. ‘I’ve been looking at the oars. And do you see how they’ve fixed in the mast-fish?’

Thorfinn said, ‘Who else is at Sandwick?’ He saw Groa turn at the tone of his voice.

The years had taught Thorkel Fóstri something about his foster-son. He said slowly, ‘Why? I thought you would welcome him. I didn’t mean you to guess. I suppose the Hebrew gave it away.’

‘Sulien of Llanbadarn,’ Thorfinn said. He knew already, from the surprise in Groa’s eyes, that she knew nothing of it, even before she shook her head slightly, guessing what he wanted to know. Thorfinn said, ‘Apart from the company I already have, there is no one I’d rather meet. Did you send for him?’

‘Send for him? No,’ said Thorkel Fóstri. ‘He was passing, he said.’

‘On his way from Wales to Moville, perhaps. One of Sulien’s special circuits,’ Thorfinn said. ‘The Normans used to have a phrase for it. I ferait buon l’envier trachi la mort.’

Thorkel Fóstri knew no Norman-French. He said, ‘What does that mean? A man with no sense of time or direction?’

‘More or less,’ Thorfinn said. ‘It means, a good man to send to find death. It’s a joke. So what is amazing about the mast-fish … ?’

Sulien was smaller and lighter than he remembered, but not in any sense fragile. His first words were, ‘You learned of me, sighing. Now you will have to keep the peace between your three lovers who each long to possess you and Orkney together.’ He paused. ‘No. I am wrong.’

‘You are right,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Forgive me. At Earl Alfgar’s suggestion,’ Sulien said. ‘That is all.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Perhaps you don’t know how tired you are.’

He must be, to be as transparent as that. He stepped forward and said and did what he should have done first, and at the end, releasing him, Sulien said, ‘Where is your sense? Orkney is your medicine. Forget your planning, disregard your people, and take it.’

It was true that his mind was tired, but his body was not; which was just as well, for the medicine of Orkney was not for weaklings. And although he cleared his mind of his planning, for there was nothing else he could do, he did not disregard the people, either those close to him or those who knew him only as Earl, for that, too, was part of the medicine. In the cold, fresh air smelling of salt and of peat, he raced with them, on shipboard and horseback and foot, and plunged over the little hills, hunting, and watched horse-fights and ate round towering fires in the open, with singing and declaiming and laughter, and drinking not by measure at all, but as if no man had studs to his cup.

If Sulien was with him, he kept from him the ale brewed with kelp-barley, with which southern tastes and southern stomachs did not always agree. Often Sulien was elsewhere, and Thorkel Fóstri rode at his right hand. Sometimes he had only his two sons and Groa. He knew, as Sulien did, what was needed of him and, if he could, did not fail them.

He did not stay on the main island, but went everywhere: to the north islands and the south islands that had once belonged to his brothers. To Westray, where Rognvald’s hall was his now. With Paul and Erlend, to Sanday to fish, coming alongside the peat-boats from Eday with their sticky black load, the torfskeri rammed in at all angles, like quills on a hedgehog. He stood on the red cliffs that were made like shelves in a book-tower, their green caps cut into fingers of turf, and watched the sea at their base, scribbled and scrawled over with white, and the gulls fleeting below, faster by far than the fishing-boats underneath them.

Because it was spring, everything was covered with flowers: the grassland, the machair, the salt-marshes, the cliffs, the dunes and the wetlands, the moors and the peat-bogs, the shingle and the bare, rocky outcrops, the banks of the streams and the lochs.

Groa knew the names of them all: blue and yellow, purple and white, high and low. He knew the banks of yellow flags, the sky reflected in their broad leaves, and the sharp, sweet pink of the thrift. He knew better the wisps of bog-cotton, or the fleshy star of the insect-eater with its bald violet flower that told you, when running, where not to step.

He liked to see what was practical. The number of foals and suckling calves. The women pacing on a still day through their corn-plots, the straw basket of bere-seed strapped to the neck like the Brecbennoch, and no less full of prayers. The sound of a sledge pulled over wet turf just after dawn as someone went to rake lichen. An open barn-door with, inside, the coils of rope of grass and heather and straw that had made the winter storms pass more quickly. A good horse, Isleifr said, kept itself in tethers from its mane and its tail.

The timber houses, silver-brown, which had weathered the gale, and the bright chestnut brown of new wood where a fresh home had been built. The new roofs, of sealskin and turf, grass and earth, woven reeds. The herringbone peat-stacks, layered like the red cliffs or like the tooled stones of the burial-mounds. The smell of sweet milk and the sound of a churn. The quack of hazel-rods, splitting for withies. The beehive towers of the brochs, forty feet high and a thousand years old, and still kept in repair for the same reason that they had been built, for the sea that made Orkney safe in winter was the path that led to her doorway all summer.

At a ford, a crossroads, at the neck of a pass, you built a fort. But where the Romans had long gone, or had never been, the only road was the one where a keel could run. Whoever held Orkney had to hold Caithness as well. Hence all the wars of his forefathers. For, unless you held your road by both margins, you had no security.

Hence also, you could not keep Fife without expecting and planning to hold Angus as well. If you possessed Lothian, you must, for safety, try to plant your people in southern Fife, on the opposite shore. If you lived in Brittany, you looked across the Narrow Seas to Dorset and Devon and Cornwall, as Juhel was doing. If you owned Flanders or Normandy, you might think your need was greater still.

Always, peoples had fought until they owned both sides of the road, or both banks of the river. And gave themselves no respite until they did.

That night, Sulien said, ‘It is time that we talked.’

They were at Orphir, and all that day Thorkel Fóstri had been talking of crossing to the mountains of Hoy, where the falcons were.

They could catch falcons without him. Thorfinn left them on the shore next morning, arguing about who was going to row, and took Sulien, riding alone, north to Birsay.

They rode in silence, over the hill and into the stair country, where soon, against a low swell of hill, the Ring of Brodgar showed pale.

One of the monoliths had dropped in the gale. The rest still stood, some fifteen feet high; some brown and stooped, and weathered like rotten silk. He chose to ride past them, between the two lochs that had only once frozen, in his experience, and a swan rose in a flurry and, neck and body undulating, flew slowly round in a white, loosened coil. ‘The swans of Urd?’ he said to Sulien.

The spring of Urd, which also nourished its swans, was the spring of Destiny, and to it each day came the Norns to draw water. Urr, Verandi, and Skuld. Past, Present, and Future.

‘Lulach is helpless,’ said Sulien. ‘Give him love. He doesn’t deserve anything else. If you shut your mind to everything that has been said, it cannot hurt you.’

‘You mean it cannot alter things,’ Thorfinn said. A white hare, that had forgotten the end of winter had come, looked at them with polished eyes and fled over the brown heath that it knew was hiding it.

‘I mean I can’t talk when I am riding,’ Sulien said. ‘But it might occur to you that you have always assumed that you had the power to alter things, and you have always been proved right. No one is going to take that power from you, unless you run away from it yourself.’

It was a ride of three hours to his new hall at Birsay, for they stopped now and then, for one reason and another, although they talked of nothing that mattered when they did. Marriage, thought Thorfinn, suited Sulien. He did not speak of his wife, but there were four children growing up near the monastery: Rhygyfarch, Daniel, Jevan, and Arthgen. Love for them all warmed Sulien’s voice when he spoke of them, but of the first, most of all.

He was a famous teacher now, the boy who had defied his own teachers to spend five years in Alba before reaching his intended training in Ireland. A great scholar; a composer of Latin verse. A man who divided his time, it would seem, between St David’s and Llanbadarn and any other group of pupils who needed him, and for whom the ring of a bishop was something not to be sought, but to be avoided.

It was not hard, when you had been his first pupil, to see why.

They reached the bay opposite the Brough about midday and had something to eat and drink in his mainland hall, along with the manager of the farms and his family. Then, without waiting for the causeway to dry out, he and Sulien took boat across the short distance from the mainland shore to the long slipway that led up through the cliff-rocks to the settlement and his new hall and church.

Once, before the ocean broke through the neck of it, the island of Birsay had been the north horn of this wide bay where the new boats lay trim in their nousts. Like Deerness, it had been a place of safety sought by many peoples. There was a broch still on its far tip, and there had been a Christian church and a Christian cemetery where now stood his new church.

He took Sulien there when he had greeted those people he should, and visited the hall and the house used by the priest when he came there. Outside the church was a grave-marker from the old cemetery, with the spider-drawings you saw by Forres and Glamis, and the disdainful eagle, and three stalking figures in Assyrian robes with their square shields and their spears. If any Pope-Emperor had ordered the implantment of that little church, it was more likely to be the lord of Greekdom than the lord of Rome.

Thorfinn said, ‘We built in the same place, since it was holy. As you see, the church is small.’

There were only fifty-five feet of it, in squared stones, carefully mortared. A rectangular nave, and a narrow choir, with an apse on the east side. Since the gale, the tower had never been rebuilt. Inside, it was sweet and clean, with fresh rushes in the nave and the smell of new carpentering. A plain cloth lay on the stone altar, for the gold easily dulled in the sea-air, and the most precious things were in the hall or the priest’s house. But those necessary for the Mass were in their places, and within the altar, in the box made to fit it, the first banner Thorfinn had brought back, blessed by the Pope and sanctified at the tomb of St Peter.

‘Bishop Jon dedicated the church for us,’ he said. ‘To Christ and St Peter. The flag lies with others, which we use when they, too, have become potent by contact. A wise precaution, as it turned out. I wonder what happened to the first one? Somewhere a wound has miraculously healed, or a nest is breaking from the weight of eggs in it, or a murderer in his shroud is being admitted to Paradise.’

There was a bench along one wall, with straw matting on it. Sulien sat down and crossed his strong, bare feet in their sandals while the brown wool of his robe fell to the rushes. Except that he was beardless and had no shield and spear, he could have passed for one of the three calm, fierce warriors on the gravestone outside. He said, ‘I was foolish, seven years ago. I should never have talked to you of my disappointment at Rheims.’

Thorfinn sat himself on the edge of the choir flagstones and leaned back on his hands. ‘It would have made no difference. Pope Leo wanted to make the church stronger and purer, but he knew as well as anybody that he had no power at all unless he helped the Emperor hold down Lombardy and the old duchies and his more boisterous neighbours. And to keep the papal office in being, never mind get rid of the Normans encroaching on it, he needed to get money in every way possible, and especially by pleasing his wealthiest relatives. Then, in turn, his family will supply advisors and lords of the church to the Empire, and Popes to Rome; and very good, too, if the Pope is of the quality of Leo and the Emperor is of the quality of Henry. But it can’t always be so.’

‘You don’t hear me quarrel with you,’ said Sulien. ‘Although you have done the same here. Three good bishops, chosen by a good king. But it can’t always be so.’

Thorfinn said, ‘I thought once that the Celtic church could mould itself to the new needs and let us keep the best of the old style of worship. So did Juhel of Dol, I know. But there is too much against it. Even in Ireland …’

‘Even in Ireland, the Celtic church is failing,’ Sulien took his words. ‘Because the abbot-families are war-like, and it suits the kings to make them their allies. Your great Duftah of Armagh himself has just fought a pitched battle over relics with the Coarb of Kells and St Finnian. You can’t look to Ireland for aid. Nor to the Culdees. They will save your soul, but they won’t help you to rule. And you need a church that will do both, as the Emperor does. Even if when you die, as when an Emperor dies, the church holds your people to ransom. Am I right?’

‘I wish,’ said Thorfinn, ‘there was another way. Isleifr is lucky in Iceland. The great priest-families merely send their sons abroad to be trained, and when they return with good alliances, the old ways go on barely modified.… No. I am not serious. We are a land of many and disparate peoples. Iceland is not. It will take longer, that’s all, to find our solution.’

Silence fell. The smell and the sound of the sea came through the little window behind him, and a drift of incense, very faintly, from the new altar.

Sulien said, ‘They say Holy Church always limits the time men stay when they come to the Pontiff, for before very long the marble wearies them, and the gold and the fountains, and they long for their cabins at home.’

Thorfinn said, ‘You are asking if I lean towards Rome for other reasons? I suppose that is what is wrong with Bishop Ealdred and Geoffrey of Coutances, with their dreams of gold-laden cathedrals. But if you went to Norway, I don’t think you’d find King Harald trying to re-create the splendours of Constantinople.’

Sulien said nothing.

Thorfinn said, ‘I am no different. Harald went east to win gold and, when he came back, bought his power with it. I went to Rome to buy, too, what would keep me in power. I even had money. Perhaps I should have built a copy of the Lateran Palace by the sands at the mouth of the Lossie; or another St Mary of the Snows in the bracken by Essie, or even an octagonal baptistry somewhere. I thought it would be foolish.’

Sulien said, ‘Why didn’t you use the men of the north against Siward?’

Thorfinn got up and wandered through to the apse. Then, returning, he stopped at the window. So far, generalities. Afterwards, this was the part that was going to hurt. He said, ‘They might not have come. They might have lost their heads if they did. The division would have been worse afterwards than before.’

‘Did your friends in Alba appreciate that?’ Sulien said.

‘Some of them. For the rest, it worked well enough. I even had some taunts about northmen being afraid to do any fighting.’

‘And that was good?’ Sulien said.

‘No one likes being despised. But it means that they were not thought of as foreign aggressors. And that is something new. Time is all it needs,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Time to make the joins firm. The north, the northwest, and Moray fixed firmly and easily to Alba. And Cumbria and Strathclyde restored the way my grandfather had it, whether under nominal rule from England or not. Three languages, I know. Three cultures, I know. But it can be done.’

‘Yet Duncan gave you the country in two pieces, and now it has fallen in three. Do you regret taking the kingship?’ Sulien said.

Thorfinn turned from the window. He leaned on the wall and folded his arms. ‘Every year, I might have given you a different answer,’ he said. ‘I was fairly sure that if I didn’t take it, I should lose Moray. It seemed possible that I could refuse, however, and hope to live out my life here and in Caithness, and perhaps in Ireland and the west, in the way I had always done, and with Groa. Although my frontier with Alba would always have been at risk, and I should have had a lifetime of sparring with Norway.’

‘You have had that anyway,’ Sulien said.

‘But mostly from a position of strength. As it was, I should have had exactly the life that my father had.’

‘But, instead, you wanted the life of your grandfather?’ Sulien said.

‘I expect so,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Although, at the time, I don’t suppose I should have said so. I think I thought of it as a challenge of a kind I hadn’t yet faced. Like one of Tuathal’s cryptograms, to which there was an answer, if I thought hard enough.’

‘I remember the mood,’ Sulien said.

‘And you didn’t like it. I remember, as well. But do I regret it now? I don’t know. For a while,’ Thorfinn said, ‘it seemed a good game. Skill against skill, and skill against luck. But with my grandfather, it was mostly mercenaries who were killed.’

‘Luck?’ Sulien said.

‘Or chance. Or the three ladies at the spring of Urd, if you like,’ Thorfinn said. ‘If they choose to be unkind now, there are not so many moves I can make in return.’

‘Your divided country may be an asset there,’ Sulien said. ‘If there is trouble in Alba, you can deal with it, knowing the north lies safe behind you, with two grown heirs and Thorkel Fóstri to guide them, and the fleet nearly restored. Is it Alba where you expect your war to be?’

‘There is war in Alba already,’ he said. ‘War among the people, against themselves. It can’t go on, and I can’t keep the peace with what I have left.’ He paused, and reached a decision. ‘I have asked William of Normandy to hire me an army, and he has agreed.’

No riposte in answer to that, in the lilting Breton voice. It was a relief to have said it aloud. Moving to the nave, Thorfinn opened the heavy door a little, so that warm air drifted in, and he could see the graveyard, rising to the scatter of longhouses further up, and the green hill against the western sky. The unseen sun on his left struck the grave-marker, picking out the brick plumage and the powerful claws of the eagle. Behind him, Sulien said, ‘You think you can control them?’

He shut the door and turned back. ‘I did it with a smaller group,’ he said. ‘Very few of these will want to linger in Alba. Duke William made a pact with the King of France at the end of the year. If Anjou settles, Normandy will be a rich duchy, and it will suit these men to go back and be part of it. All I want are enough men to clear Alba of rebels.’

‘You mean kill them,’ said Sulien. ‘Otherwise, they would come back, once the Normans had gone.’

‘Yes. I mean kill them,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Because of them, the people loyal to me are dying every day and the country is falling to waste.’

‘You have another choice,’ Sulien said. ‘You could reverse your decision of seventeen years ago and be content with your earldom of Orkney and Caithness.’

Thorfinn said, ‘It is not quite the same choice. This time, no King of Alba could afford to let me live.’

Sulien did not speak. No enemy he had ever faced had been as hard as Sulien could be. Thorfinn said, ‘Do you imagine I think about nothing but games?’

Sulien said, ‘You sometimes give that impression.’ He was not smiling. He said, ‘You didn’t ask me why Earl Alfgar asked me to come and see you.’

‘No,’ Thorfinn said. Sitting below him, Sulien had changed his position. Looking down on him, he could see nothing but the shaved top of his head, and his down-bent fair lashes, and two long-fingered hands encircling one knee. He had wondered why Alfgar should have done such a thing, but had said nothing. If the matter was urgent, Sulien would tell him. When he did not, he had assumed that there was an embarrassment somewhere. Alfgar—or Godiva—had thought him in need of help, temporal or spiritual, and had sent for Sulien. Or Alfgar had intended to lay on Sulien an embassy he did not care for, such as persuading himself towards an alliance with Norway and Mercia, to lend power to King Gruffydd in driving the Saxons out of Wales.

He had not forgotten that once he himself had allied with King Gruffydd, to their mutual advantage, and then shortly afterwards Gruffydd had sacked Llanbadarn. The last thing Sulien would help sponsor was an invasion. Sulien knew what greed could do. He had said almost nothing about the Norman mercenaries, but his opinions were none the less plain. Thorfinn knew, who had had to weigh the risk over and over before sending to Normandy. In Italy, the Normans had conquered and stayed, and every footmark had become a ladder-rung to the next conquest.

So now he said, ‘No,’ wondering what Sulien was going to say that could not be said at the beginning but had to be presented to him like canon tables, arcaded about with all the other considerations they had discussed.

And Sulien said, ‘Earl Alfgar wanted me to give you a warning. He said that he thought Denmark and Norway were by way of making some temporary peace. And that if that were so, Norway might send much more than a token fleet next time when they wanted to damage Earl Harold on the Welsh border. He said that you had already refused once to league with Norway, and to allow them the supply-base they needed. Earl Alfgar said that he was in no doubt that when and if the King of Norway’s fleet came to the firth, he would attack you here in Orkney. That was why I said you were fortunate. Even if you find Alba and the Normans have all your attention in the south, yet you have two good sons and all your powerful leaders to look after the north for you.’

It took Thorfinn’s breath, but he would not show it. This had always been one of the risks. He knew what Sulien intended him to feel, and he felt it. But, at the same time, you could say that his invitation to Duke William had been vindicated. Whoever was locked up here, doing battle with Norway, at least Alba would not lie helpless to any invader. He said, ‘Did Alfgar know when?’

‘No. But he thought it might take King Harald a little time to get his ships back north and in order. Perhaps midsummer or later. You will see why there was no need to tell you earlier. Will you stay in Orkney?’ Sulien said. ‘When do your men-at-arms come from Normandy?’

‘In a month, perhaps. It may be that I have Alba settled before King Harald’s fleet comes to the north,’ Thorfinn said. ‘If it comes. Perhaps I could even sell my used Normans to King Harald to employ against Wessex. After all, they are Wessex’s natural enemies. Do you think a new game is about to start? Front to front, shall eagles claw each other?’

Sulien had looked up. ‘You mean it,’ he said.

‘Does it matter?’ said Thorfinn. He touched Sulien lightly on the shoulder and then, impatient at the disparity in their heights, dropped to the rushes at his feet and sat cross-legged, looking up at him.

Thorfinn said, ‘I am not very good at making promises, and I don’t know why you take this trouble with me. But although, yes, I mean it, I also understand what you are saying to me, and I agree with it. Only my opponents and the three ladies do not always let me take the course I should prefer. And in this case I am led to believe that all decisions are out of my hands, whatever I do. So when I say does it matter, that is all I mean.’

Sulien said slowly, ‘It is easy to excuse yourself because of a shadow.’

‘Then I don’t. My fate is in my own hands,’ Thorfinn said.

There was another silence. Then Sulien said, ‘If you had faith of any kind, I could get rid of this for you.’ Then the note of bitterness went, and he said in his musical Breton, ‘I think the time has come to say what you fear and see if we can talk about it. If you had no Celtic blood, I suppose you would never have heard the legend of Luloecen the Fool. That is it, isn’t it?’

Long ago, Thorfinn had realised that Sulien had read the histories of the man whose name Lulach bore. The Luloecen of centuries past, of whom, to the superstitious, this Lulach might seem a re-embodiment. Only to the superstitious.

Tuathal also knew. Thorfinn had never discussed it with either. To bring it into the open was like laying bare not a scar but a wound. He kept his voice even.

‘For a legend, or course, it has turned out remarkably apt. Five hundred years ago, the seer called Luloecen lived at the court of King Ryderch of Strathclyde, and prophesied the death of the King, and of St Kentigern, and of Morcant, St Kentigern’s enemy. Both names, Ruaidhri and Morgan, are in Lulach’s family.’

‘And in the family of Findlaech your stepfather,’ Sulien said. ‘What other tales have you heard?’

Suddenly, it was too much. Thorfinn twisted and got to his feet. ‘No. This is foolish. We are grown men, if nothing else.’

‘Then behave like one,’ said Sulien. ‘What other versions have you been told?’ He paused and said, ‘You may be discussing fantasies, but witchcraft is my business.’

Thorfinn turned. ‘No. We’re not speaking of witchcraft,’ he said. ‘Lulach is untouched and innocent, and these are matters that stand outside his knowledge, as much as they stand outside mine. Hear it all, then. In this and other tales of the Madman, the Wild Man, the Fool, the prophecy changes and becomes a threefold foretelling of death. Luloecen the Fool foretold his own. The Lulach of our time knows his own fate. And mine.’

He stopped; and then said, ‘Seven-eighths Celt or not, I should have found out about it all anyway. Odin was hanged, and pierced by a spear, and suspended over Mimir’s well. Guin, Badud, Loscad. Wounding, drowning, and burning. The threefold death comes in all languages.’

‘Always by slaughter, drowning, and burning?’ Sulien asked.

‘Nearly always. I have had my burning and slaughter,’ Thorfinn said.

‘But that was not what Lulach prophesied for you?’

Thorfinn said, ‘Lulach never prophesies. He tells you what has already happened, through many eyes. Sometimes it might all be true. Sometimes it is impossible that it should be. He told me of the High King Diarmait mac Cerbaill who gave judgement against St Columba in the matter of the book of St Finnian, and who had to suffer the Threefold Death as was prophesied. He would not die, he was told, until he ate the flesh of a swine that was never farrowed; but of course he was given bacon one day from a piglet cut from a sow, and died with his house burning about him. That was the first.’

‘You escaped from the house,’ Sulien said. ‘What was the second?’

‘That men are threatened or die when woods walk,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And that trees may prophesy death. A German historian and a French poet told such a story of Alexander the Great, and because of another poet called John, a prophecy came to rest against my name. That when the wood of Birnam should come to Dunsinane, then should I make my end.’

‘You are alive,’ Sulien said.

‘The third event has passed, and I am also unharmed by it,’ Thorfinn said.

‘Who was Hector? I don’t know. But he foretold, or recorded, my death at the hand of Macdubh or Malduin.’

‘Malduin is dead,’ said Sulien.

‘But what he set in train is not yet over,’ Thorfinn said. ‘To take the gloomy view. The sensible view is that it is a mixture of legend and coincidence and fantasy, told by a child and forgotten even by him in his adulthood. Lulach has never repeated or reiterated any one of these warnings, except perhaps when he sent me a twig from the forest. I asked him about that, and he answered me. And that was many years after.’

‘A symbol for the wood?’ Sulien said.

‘I suppose so. A stick can stand for many things. The wand of kingship. The rod of the coffiner. The yew-twig of sterility.’

And now it was time to stop, for he could hear the flatness this time in his own voice. Sulien said, ‘You have sons.’ And after a moment, ‘If he told you of any fate he has heard of, then you must put it from your mind.’

‘No. My sons will flourish, he says. Or did flourish. But none of their descendants ever reigned, nor did they.’

‘That is not sterility,’ Sulien said.

‘No. It is only vanity,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Hurt the worse because Malcolm’s sons took the throne of Alba, Lulach says. And after them, in a line unbroken for a thousand years and more, kings of the blood of … What name would you hate most to hear?’

‘I think, Malduin,’ Sulien said.

Thorfinn said, ‘I think you are right. Well, it’s better than that. A little better than that. After the seed of Malcolm, it seems, all Scotia’s kings will derive from our late friend Earl Siward of Northumbria. Hear and congratulate us, Thore Hund of Bjarking.’

Sulien got up. He walked to the steps of the choir and, turning, stood in the light, so that Thorfinn could see clearly the steady, judicial gaze. Sulien said, ‘Is that where the real canker lies? I thought that immortal fame was the only desire of a Viking. The future they leave to their women.’

No enemy he had ever faced …

Thorfinn said, ‘I am not a Viking.’

‘Are you not, Thorfinn Hinn Rikr?’ Sulien said. ‘With your black goose-mother the sea, and the ghosts at your elbow? Or is Thorkel Fóstri right when he laments the heljarskinn strain in the blood-line? What glorious name would you leave to posterity had you ruled Alba Viking-fashion, with an axe, as Harald rules Norway? There is the path to the unity that has escaped you. You would die monarch of a united Scotia, with no need to care what legacy of hate you left behind you. And the fate of your wife would be unaltered.’

Thorfinn turned on his heel. He found himself facing the altar; and after a moment he moved slowly over and touched it, smoothing the edge with one finger. He said, ‘You are warning me that my reign will be forgotten.’

‘I am telling you,’ said Sulien, ‘that, whatever Lulach may say, men will look back and see a king who strove to build for his people; and although the gales may still blow and the flood come and cover it all, the foundations will stand.’

‘A picture of ringing success,’ Thorfinn said.

‘Look at me,’ Sulien said.

Thorfinn turned.

Sulien said, ‘What I am telling you is that the name each man leaves is a small thing compared with the mark he puts on the world. You may succeed, in the end, in creating the good land you have worked for. Had circumstances been kinder, you would have been sure of it: had Pope Leo lived and been less beset with the struggle against the Normans in Italy, with the Saracens, with the enmity of the Eastern Empire. Had the Holy Roman Emperor lived, and been relieved of the wars on his frontiers. Had the Lady Emma been younger, or her barons less wayward …’

‘Had Canute lived,’ Thorfinn said. ‘If I may share in the game. Canute might have made himself master of Alba and perhaps even of Ireland, but I have seen worse overlords. Of course, my task might have been easier, but, sooner or later, everyone dies. You sound as if you believe the gales and the floods one day will stop.’

‘One day,’ Sulien said, ‘I think the Throne of St Peter will be as firm as it seemed, for a moment, it might be; I think the Empire will find a design by which to rule that does not break down between one prince and the next. I think the storms will subside and as nation settles by nation, there will be a place for quiet rule, and for building. Till then, it will be the fate of most leaders to die in their prime, and the fate of most women to carry forward their essence; their habit of mind; their spirit; their disciplines.… Be grateful for that, whatever Lulach has told you. You have sons. But, through Groa, what there is of your kingship will pass on as in a lamp, where the flame is what matters, not the vessel. And the flame nothing can touch.’

‘Yes,’ Thorfinn said. After a moment, he heard reeds rustle where Sulien had been standing, and realised that his own eyes were pressed shut. He opened them.

Sulien was standing beside him. He said, ‘Your mother married three times. You are not Groa’s first husband. She accepts it.’

‘As I remember, it was a fairly dim lamp I received from Gillacomghain,’ Thorfinn said. He drew breath, but could not find quite the voice he wanted. ‘Of course, you are right. Everyone has lists of suitors. Thorkel made one for me; I made one for Lulach. Groa’s father got a priest to draw another when she was young.… I wonder what names would it contain now? Godfrey of Man? Diarmaid of Dublin? Thor of Allerdale? The sons of Maldred and Crinan? Malcolm? Tostig? Duke William, even, if his wife were to die … I suppose Groa has thought of them, too. I have never discussed it with her. That is, she knows that she must carry the kingdom, if she is left, to the man who is able to win it from me.… It does not seem a subject to dwell on. I have done enough damage with my hybrid heritage without hurting the friends I have left.’

‘As I am doing?’ Sulien said.

‘You are my conscience,’ Thorfinn said. ‘When you cease to hurt me, I shall be either perfect or dead. I wish I could repay you better. I wish I could lay my whole heart on your altar-table. It is a bedevilment of my birth. In death, I shall be split, no doubt, also: my heart in the Celtic isle of Iona and my body in Birsay.’

His arms still at his sides, Sulien smiled, the warm, radiant smile that had never changed since his boyhood. He said, ‘You were ordained by God when you took your kingdom at Scone. Mab maeth, you are blessed. If you don’t want to be twice blessed, I shan’t force you.’

Thorfinn said, ‘What did you call me?’

‘Fosterling. It is one of your names,’ Sulien said. ‘You have so many: Macbethad … Son of Life. Why not use the Christian ones? There is even a prayer with your name in it. A quaint one, for simple, frightened people who are not like you at all. You would never hear it in Rome.’

To repay Sulien, since the proper price was not in his means, he let him recite it, and was not sorry.

Then they walked to the hall.