King Hereafter Read Free Page A

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 seeminglythreatening 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