‘All the same,’ Skeggi said. ‘I wonder if all the men who supported King Malcolm will find quite so much to admire in King Duncan? A war might not even be necessary.’
Thorfinn stood up. A further shower of cowhair fell into the fire and, sizzling, stank for a second time. He held up the pared skin. ‘Do you see that? It will shortly be vellum.’ He pointed to where Sulien was crouched. ‘Do you see that? It will shortly be ink. By applying the one to the other, we are about to conquer ignorance and make war on stupidity. When you make a mistake, it doesn’t bleed. When you have a success, it lasts not just till next week but for ever. Go and open the ale-cask.’
Thorkel Fóstri went, and the hall settled down to normal talk again. On the way back, he stopped beside Sulien. ‘What was all that about?’
Sulien looked up. His hands were black. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But, at a guess, he has given us all the sensible arguments his head has already supplied. What the child in him or the god in him are saying is a different matter.’
Sinna, who always knew, said this baby was going to be early, and she was right.
Of all her lodgings in the province, Thorfinn’s wife picked Lumphanan in the south to live in for the weeks before the child was due.
It was not a choice her housecarls thought much of, or her steward. It was too far south; it was less than secure; why not pick one of the islands now: what about Spynie? they said.
But she could see nothing wrong with Lumphanan, set in wooded hills between Monymusk and the Dee river, where the bridal progress had ended three years before. Surrounded by pools and by marshland, the rising ground by the small church was safe, and held within its stockade all she required in the way of buildings to serve herself and her household. And chief among her women was Sinna, who might not be very sensible when it came to flagging armed men, but who had been slave to Groa’s mother and had delivered her in her time of both Groa herself and her sister Sigrid, now wed to a great earl in Norway, grandson to old Hakon himself.
She did not miss Sigrid, or her mother, a great deal. She missed Finn. Her father had always been courtly to her, even when she was small, and had tried to teach her the lessons about courage and loyalty that he would have taught to his sons.
Which was all very well for a man. But a woman, although she must have courage, had to make up her own mind about the meaning of loyalty. Emma, from Normandy, had married a Saxon king and then, after he was dead, had crossed the sea again to marry his conquerer. As she had done.
And Emma, who had had three children by her Saxon husband, had left the sons to be reared in Normandy, and the daughter to be married there, and now favoured above all the son Canute her second husband had given her. Which she, Groa, would never do. Never, and never.
In the last weeks, it was a trouble to move, but she felt better walking about the well-kept timber buildings on the higher ground, and down and over the causeway to the houses of the people who lived here all the year round with their flocks and their cattle, hunting and fowling and growing their patches of crops. Here they wove on their tall looms, and made their ewe-milk cheeses and malt, and brewed their ale, and collected their honey, and came out when the travelling packhorses came to the meeting of ways and set up their booths, so that they could buy new blades for their knives, and bowls from Shetland, and a pair of brooches or a chain for a dowry-gift.
And from the same houses, when the beacons were lit or the split arrow came down the pass, glinting in an upheld fist, would come the sons who would take their swords and their shields and go to fight for her husband.
They paid their dues to the toisech, the head of the chief tribe, and he stood to the district in place of its peace-maker and governor. And through the toisech they paid their dues to the Mormaer, who guarded the province and spoke for them to the King.
Except that the Mormaer of Moray was the Earl of Orkney, who had married the dragon-head on his ship.
She was watching the last of the old peats being brought up the slope from the covered stacks to the shed by the hall door, dry and crumbling in their strapped creels, when a mellow, meaty sensation drew her attention to the mound of belly under which were her feet.
The sensation thickened into a pang and then expired, like the retiring mud of a geyser. She said to Sinna, ‘Why do I make wagers? You are always right. You may have the blue cloak.’
And after that it was quick, for although it was five years since Lulach was born, she was still barely twenty. Shamefully, she got excited again towards the end, when the pains rose, and blared like a bull-horn, with barely time for a breath in between.
Then there was one abrupt crisis of violence, and a paddling sensation, and a pause, and then Sinna held up a dark-coloured starfish with fair hair on its head and on its shoulders and halfway down its back.
Of its gender there was no possible doubt. ‘Welcome thy coming,’ said Sinna. ‘Welcome, my heartlet. Thy mother has a prince in the very likeness of the Earl your father.’
And turned round, dismayed, as the girl, squealing, buried her head in her pillow.
On closer examination, however, she appeared to be laughing.
Towards midnight, she woke from the birth-sleep, lying on clean linen with a fresh robe about her. Beyond the door, a cat seemed to be mewing. Beside her was sitting Sinna, her hands folded and circles under her eyes. There was a satisfied look on her face.
At the foot of the bed stood Thorfinn of Orkney.
She was dreaming. The lamp flickered, and his shadow ran jagged over the beams, about to bring down death like his father’s black raven. She dug her elbows into the mattress and felt her quiet body give a spurt of anger. The smug expression on Sinna’s face altered and she said, ‘Why, you’re not to be alarmed. The Earl has come to see his son. Is that not—’
‘Be quiet,’ said the Earl.
He was plainly dressed but clean, with the single gold arm-ring she had seen above his elbow that night at Tullich. He showed no signs of dust. Groa said, ‘Have you been waiting long?’ Whether she had been sleeping for hours or for minutes, she had little idea.
‘It seems like months,’ he said. ‘In fact, about two days altogether.’
‘Not here,’ she said.
‘Up in the hill-fort,’ said Earl Thorfinn. ‘It didn’t seem the best moment to introduce thirty good fighting-men into the establishment. They are here now, however, and will supplement your own housecarls after I’ve gone. Since you will choose to give birth to the King’s nephew on the King’s doorstep.’
She assimilated all that. Everything he said was an insult. What made her angriest of all was the fact that he knew the baby had come, and that it was a boy, and now she would never know what he thought about it. She said, ‘I suppose you’ve seen him, too? It’s more than I have.’
‘I should have thought,’ said the Earl, ‘that you would have had a passing introduction. He looks like something very special from inside a mountain.’
‘He’s your very image, my lord,’ Sinna said.
That struck Groa as funny, and she laughed quite a lot. When she managed to stop, she said, ‘If it had been a girl, would you have had it exposed?’
‘On the contrary,’ her husband said. ‘I had promised to rear her for Thorkel. They say you are well,’
‘Not quite well enough to give you another as yet,’ Groa said. ‘But that will mend in a matter of weeks. Blow a horn when you are ready.’ She paused and then said, ‘What priest will sprinkle the water?’
‘A bold one,’ said the Earl. ‘The Christian rites can, I think, wait. The child has already received his name: Sigurd.’
The air in her throat rose and set, like a bread-cake. He saw her looking at him and said, ‘What did you expect? He will be the next Earl of Orkney. You must both appear there as soon as you can travel.’
‘How can I refuse?’ the girl said. ‘It surprised me that I was allowed to bear him in Moray. Or do I smell policy after all? If Lulach were dead, the mant
le of Moray and Orkney would fall on this child, wouldn’t it?’
‘He could claim them. But Lulach, I have just been reliably instructed by Lulach, is about to outlive me. I am taking him to Duncan’s consecration at Scone. I know he is six years old. He will be safe. You may even want to come, too, if you are well enough.’
Her elbow jabbed the pillow again. ‘Lulach is here! You haven’t …’
‘It may be,’ the Earl said, ‘that you cannot quite be first with everything, but I have kept for you the exclusive privilege of introducing Lulach to his half-brother. He arrived an hour ago with his household. Before I send him in, I have to ask you what gift you want from me. I believe this is usual.’
Transfixed on one elbow, she stared at him. ‘What truck have we with what is usual? I have your handsome son. What else could I want? A saddle?’
‘The good manners of your father,’ said Earl Thorfinn, ‘might not come amiss. What do women like? A pair of brooches? A ring? I shall send for whatever you want.’
‘I will take whatever you give your slaves on such an occasion,’ Groa said. ‘Unless you think that, being your wife, I might ask for something more personal. For example, the band that you wear above your left elbow.’
There was a silence. Then he said, ‘I am sorry. That is for a man, and the man it is destined for is already chosen.’
‘Indeed,’ said Groa. ‘Tell me when he comes to give birth. That is a child of yours all the world will want to see.’
He made no comment on that, but only unstrapped his purse and, carrying it to her bedside, emptied upon her table all it contained. He said, ‘There is what silver I have. When the goldsmith comes next, have him make what you want, and hone the two edges of your tongue as well, if you feel that they need it.’ Then he went out.
Ten minutes later, Lulach was by her bed, his lint-white head inclined over the wrinkled scrap in her arms. ‘Sigurd,’ he said. ‘I have heard of no Sigurd.’
‘He is named after his grandfather,’ Groa said. ‘He was a man of many conquests, a great man. And Earl Sigurd’s grandfather was called Earl Thorfinn; and Earl Thorfinn’s grandfather was called Earl Rognvald, whose brother Earl Sigurd was the first Earl of Orkney, two hundred years before this. So you see he bears a very good name.’
‘Better than Rognvald?’ Lulach said. ‘Or don’t you know the answer? An old Icelander could tell you that.’
‘Then you must find one and ask him,’ said Groa. ‘What do you think of your brother?’
The clear, pale eyes frowned. ‘I know of no Sigurd,’ Lulach said.
* * *
The birth-feast was held a week later there at Lumphanan, and was not large, for food was scarce and any that men had in store was required for the king-making next month. The chiefs of the district came, and some of those travelling south to Duncan’s summons. By then, the fur had begun to leave the child’s back and shoulders and the wild hair was shredding and rubbing off from his scalp, so that there remained only a fair-headed infant with Earl Thorfinn’s acorn eyes and across his cheeks the small arrows of newborn dissipation.
Groa was surprised at the richness of the gifts men brought with them, until she realised that men pay to propitiate.
She saw her husband on the occasion of the feast, but at no other time. Two weeks after that, in a litter, and accompanied by the combined households of Moray and Orkney, she moved to the mouth of the Dee, where the infant would remain with his guard and his wet-nurse until she returned. Then, with Earl Thorfinn and her older son Lulach, she set out for the sacred hill in mid-country where her husband’s brother was to be made King of Alba, and she, the Lady of Moray, would stand for the first time before all these alien peoples as the Lady of Caithness and Orkney as well.
Or, as Sinna had said, when the baggage-train came from the north with her clothes-chests and her horse-harness and her ornaments, ‘He may be a troll with a troll for a son, but he is king of the north, my heartlet, and you are his lady. Show them what an Arnmødling is.’
Afraid, she thought. And short-tempered. And lonely.
FIFTEEN
O THE DISAPPOINTMENT of some of his vassals, the new ruler Duncan neither ate, mated with, nor took a bath ritually in horse-flesh.
He did however, fill the riverside haugh by the Moot Hill with newly built halls and service-huts to supplement the old booths and pavilions that men used when they met to pay tribute or argue for justice. The first thing that everyone saw, sailing up the wide river Tay, or travelling overland from the north or the south, was the little monastery by the ford in the distance, dwarved by the new buildings and the hosts of brilliant banners. Flags flew also from the fortress of Perth on the other side of the river, where the new King was staying with his Northumbrian wife and her babies.
The Earl of Orkney and Caithness had brought his own canvas, above which fluttered the banner of Moray, alone. He and his household were barely installed when a message crossed the water from Perth, inviting the lord Macbeth and his lady to sup with his half-brother Duncan.
Notified, the lord Macbeth’s wife dressed accordingly and was interested to see, when she presented herself to her husband, that he, too, had adopted Saxon attire. His eyebrows rose. ‘Did you wear that thing when you came with Gillacomghain?’ he said.
It had caused Sinna some trouble to keep the fine linen uncrushed on the journey so that the veil flowed down her back and swathed her cheeks and neck without blemish. Groa said, ‘I shall do better than you with your tunic. The hall at Perth is famous for draughts. If you are Macbeth, what am I? Margaret?’
‘Silent, if possible,’ he said. If he thought it dangerous to trust himself unsupported in the stronghold, he said nothing of it. But Thorkel was left behind, and he took to serve them only house-slaves and Sinna, with a few of the well-born of Moray as escort and attendants.
The King’s lodging at Perth was well built, as was that of Forteviot, a short ride to the south. Passing the confluence of the Tay and the Almond, one could see from the boat the height of the split-trunk stockade, and the thickness of the gatehouse, and the cone helms of men on the wall-walk. A smell of food and the crying of children drifted over the water.
The presence of old men and of children were the mark of any event of importance to a nation, for they were the memory-stream. But where were the old men of this nation? The last monarch had died in November, and gathered here now were the young contenders, with their brides swiftly married and swiftly made pregnant, and the children who would vie with each other in turn. In two or three days, Duncan would be consecrated as King of Alba because for twenty years his grandfather had proclaimed him as such, and for ten had made sure, by dint of his sword and his silver, that no rival lived who could challenge him.
Until the young men, like Groa’s husband, grew rich. Until the children, like her two sons, grew up.
At the gatehouse, Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld and father of the King-elect, waited to conduct them inside, and trumpets blew as they met. ‘To warn them to get out their knives?’ Groa said.
‘To warn us to keep our mouths shut,’ the Earl said; and, walking forward, greeted with apparent cheerfulness the lord Abbot with the soft brown beard skeined now with grey whose coins, they said, financed every war in England and Denmark and lined purses from Cologne to Pisa.
‘And here is a change!’ the lord Crinan said. ‘I bear greetings from Canute to his housecarl, but am afraid to deliver them, so splendid have you become. The Lady of Moray is, of course, more beautiful than before, despite her company. You have a son, lady. May he be blessed.’
She inclined her head and smiled into the lord Abbot’s eyes. From this man’s schemes had come the fire that had killed her husband Gillacomghain. Through the kinsmen of his son, this man had tried to claim Caithness and had failed. Beside her, Earl Thorfinn said, ‘We thank you. He has no teeth as yet, but they will grow.’
‘Then when he is old enough, tell him to eschew bad advice,’ my lord Crinan said. ??
?Or walrus-fangs will hardly avail him. Edith is here with her sons. And Wulfflaed my daughter, who has borne a son of my name. I have become a patriarch.’
‘I hear my lord Duncan is also a father,’ Groa said. It did not do to appear entirely dumb.
‘Two sons,’ said the lord Crinan, smiling. ‘The elder named Malcolm after his dead grandfather. And his sweet wife is already near her time with a third. Dear Alba! Your air is sweet with the laughter of children.’
The hall door had opened, and the uproar within signified neither sweetness nor laughter. ‘That is,’ said the lord Abbot amiably, ‘at times they also behave like their elders. My son, here is your fellow, the other fruit of your mother Bethoc, of blessed memory.’
Perhaps because of his round, russet cheeks: perhaps because of his lack of height: perhaps because of the smooth-bedded eyes, his youthfulness was always the first of the prince Duncan’s characteristics. Even now, it came to mind first as he turned, despite the pale tunic deep-banded with gold and silver embroidery, and the gold glittering on his knife-sheath and buckle, and at the neck of his tunic, and from all the rings on his short hands as he closed them on the upper arms of his brother and then folded them tightly over the white veil of his brother’s new wife while he kissed her full on the mouth.
It was an objectionable kiss, from which Groa did not draw back, although when he released her, she saw from the watching eyes about her that it had been marked and even anticipated. One of the observers, naturally, was Duncan’s wife Ailid, whose condition perhaps accounted for a few things other than her expression of muted dislike. Beside her was a three-year-old boy with red cheeks.
At her side, Groa’s husband had shown no concern while Duncan embraced her, and she had not sought to catch his attention. But now, presenting himself to Duncan’s lady, the Earl neither gave her his hand nor saluted her, but merely bowed and remarked, ‘And this is your young pjokk? He looks healthy.’
She was short, like Duncan, and had to look up a long way. ‘I fear I do not know your language,’ she said. This is my son Malcolm, the prince of Cumbria.’