King Hereafter Read Online Free PDF Page B

it himself. Between the rival kings Canute and Olaf lay Caithness and one-third of Orkney, the land of his stewardship. Olaf surely would protect him in the interests of his own Orkney lordship. While Canute there in the south was already in league with Malcolm and Gillacomghain, his foes in neighbouring Moray.
    He had never discussed with Thorfinn the present war over Norway, and how it threatened his lands. He never saw Thorfinn, except getting on to a ship or getting off it again. He had assumed that Thorfinn had lost interest in the management of his affairs, since Thorfinn showed none.
    Until last week, that was. But that was something that Kalv here didn’t know about.
    When last week the envoy from Alba had arrived, it was pure bad luck that Thorfinn happened to be at home, having a shipload of cattle to land which came (he said) from somebody’s tribute.
    No one was ever impressed by Thorfinn. The envoy from Alba had taken one look at him and delivered his message, which was a demand from King Malcolm of Alba that his grandson should join him in Cumbria.
    As a child, Thorfinn had sustained periodic summons to be viewed by his grandfather. Sometimes the inspection took place in Scone or Forteviot in the middle of Alba. Sometimes it brought him to Glamis, further east, where his mother had made her home now. Sometimes, as now, it required him to travel the full length of Alba and over the border to the land in the north-west of England that was not Alba at all, but was held by the Kings of Alba as vassals of the King of England.
    Since the burning of Findlaech, Thorfinn had not seen his grandfather on any occasion, and his mother twice only. He preferred to stay at sea. If messages came, it was Thorkel Amundason who answered them.
    As the envoy’s speech drew to an end, Thorkel had wondered if he was meant to answer this one as well. Thorfinn, sectioned into a chair like a crane-fly, gave no impression of listening closely. In six years, nature had afflicted the boy with an extremity of untoward height, and made of the shapeless nose a flange like a rudder. Other changes were few.
    The envoy had ended, and Thorfinn after all had replied. He said, ‘I’ll come.’
    Thorkel Amundason could feel the shock and the rage again now. He had said, ‘My foster-son. There are matters to think of.’ And to the messenger: ‘Does my lord King expect the Earl Thorfinn to stay long?’
    ‘I think not. A day or two only,’ the envoy had said.
    ‘A journey such as that for a day or two only?’ Thorkel had exclaimed. He had shown, he thought, no satisfaction. Now he would hear the reason.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Thorfinn had interrupted. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll go.’
    ‘The King your grandfather will welcome the news,’ had said the envoy, damn him. Cumbria, where he came from, was full of Irish and Saxons and Norse, and his Norse was quite fluent. The envoy had added, ‘Perhaps my lord Earl will come south with me?’
    By then it was time, clearly, to take the matter in hand. Thorkel Amundason had said, ‘Excuse me. I fear we go a little too fast. Tell me, sir. What does my lord King want with his grandson?’
    But the chance of a straight answer was past. ‘My lord, a family gathering, I would suppose?’ had said the envoy. ‘The King did not confide in me. But is it not natural, after all these years, for the King’s two grandsons to meet in one place?’
    And that was all he would say. He had left the next day. The only victory Thorkel achieved was to persuade the fool his foster-son to wait a few days before travelling.
    He had tried, of course, to stop him going at all. He had tried until the last moment when, surrounded by boxes and barrels and sacks and the members of his sparse household, Thorfinn was about to wade out to his vessel. He had been in mid-tirade when the boy turned on him. ‘Don’t you know why he wants me in Cumbria?’
    ‘To stick a knife in your back,’ had said Thorkel