King Hereafter Page 7

  Canute said, ‘But that is only five. Good King Malcolm, lend us your grandson as well. Unless my lord Duncan is unable to swim?’

  Duncan stepped forward. ‘What have I to do?’ he said. Despite his lack of height, he had good shoulders, and the round face with its fluffed upper lip was firm with resolve.

  Earl Thorfinn, from the height of a thwart, bent down and unpinned his brother’s bright cloak, which he bunched and threw to the gunwale, from where, swiftly, it slid overboard and then sank. ‘Oh, the pity of it. But you won’t be needing that,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I’ll tell you what you have to do. You have to step over the rail and run across the oars of the ship, from the front to the back, while her crew are rowing her.’

  ‘No one could do that,’ said Alfgar of Mercia. ‘Who is Olaf Tryggvasson anyway?’

  ‘Was,’ said Thorfinn. He was looking at Canute. ‘His grandfather was one of the twenty assorted sons of Harald Haarfagre of Norway. King Olaf’s called after him.’

  Canute and the young man stared at one another. Then the King’s eyes moved to Earl Leofric, who was speaking. Leofric said, ‘These are men of high birth.’

  ‘Then let them prove themselves,’ Canute said.

  There were six of them, brought up to lead and to rule. A boyhood of perpetual training, in games, at hunting, in battle, had given each of them balance and an accurate eye. They had all had to exercise judgement; to exert concentration; to defeat weariness; to push a task to completion in public, against odds. To all of them except perhaps Skeggi, their reputation and standing was the reputation and standing of their line, and at all costs to be upheld and defended. If they failed, they had to be seen to fail with courage and honour, flinching at nothing.

  ‘Perhaps I may advise,’ said Canute and, rising, looked to the oarsmen, fifteen on each side, who had lowered their blades and were keeping the vessel where she lay, in midstream, pointing up the shallow, fast-running river. Other craft, intrigued, had begun to hover before and behind.

  Canute said, ‘Clear the river ahead with the horn. Oarsmen, you will begin rowing on signal, in absolute unison, to the beat your master will give you. You will not falter, no matter what happens. If one life is lost because you do not keep beat, your master will know how to deal with you. The horn will tell you a runner has started. He will begin from behind you. You must listen, and be prepared to resist his weight as he passes, and keep the time of your sweep. If he falls, you continue to row.’

  The Bishop from Llandaff said carefully, ‘My lord King … A blow from one of these blades could kill a man, or knock him senseless and drown him.’

  Canute turned. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘that you think we are asking too much. Your clerk is only a youth and my lord Alfgar, an only son, is still younger. You are right. I say that these two, if they wish, may withdraw.’

  Alfgar looked at his father, a cry of protest half-escaped on his breath. The Earl of Mercia said stiffly, ‘If the feat will give my lord pleasure, then of course my son will attempt it.’

  My lady Godiva, Sulien thought. Absolve him. He had no alternative. Aloud he said, ‘And I too, if you please,’ He would make a fool of himself: that he knew. But he felt no doom-laden fear. He was agile and light and, when he fell, could keep out of trouble.

  He knew Alfgar felt differently by the set of his jaw. Living in Godiva’s house, he had early learned how good Alfgar was with the spear and the sword and the bow; how he liked to win at running; how proud he was of his splendid body. To fail would be a bad thing for Alfgar.

  The Dubliner he did not know, or the man Skeggi, who was half an Icelander, he had heard. Older by twenty years than the rest, this pair had at least done this before, or attempted it, and had gained in cunning perhaps what they no longer commanded of suppleness.

  There remained the two grandsons of Orkney and Alba. There was no doubt which had the build of a winner. Duncan was twenty, which meant he must have had battle experience. He looked self-reliant. And, for all he was short, he was compactly made, with a sturdy back and deep chest and well-turned, springy legs.

  Nothing could have contrasted more with the lanky, half-shackled frame of his brother. But for a certain brightness of skin and the heavy, well-defined line of the eyebrows, the common blood of their mother had produced no physical likeness in her offspring. To the casual eye, the Earl of Orkney seemed little more than a miscellany of disengaged angles, occupied now in the poop with baring his shins and his feet and rebinding his short, baggy trousers to lie tight at the knee and the thigh. He had long, bony feet with knuckled toes agile as fingers.

  What he was doing was undoubtedly sensible. Sulien pulled off his skin shoes and, untying his girdle, bound his serviceable robe between the legs with the wool, in a figure of eight. Smiling, Alfgar started to do the same with his tunic; but Duncan the prince did no more, it was seen, than unfasten his leggings.

  Turning to make for the prow, Sulien wondered why men, looking forward, were grinning. Then he saw that Eachmarcach of Dublin and Skeggi the Icelander, with more common sense than sense perhaps of occasion, had simply set to and stripped themselves naked.

  Whether for that reason or another, they made the run first. The signal for rowing was given, and a moment later, as the oars settled into their rhythm, the horn blew for the run. There was a double flash of brown flesh as the Dubliner on the port side and Skeggi on the other each handed himself over the side and paused, fist on rail, foot on gunwale, looking at the long, almond shape of the vessel stretching to the horizon, to infinity before him, the last of the oars drawn from view by the slow, perfect curve of the beam. At the fifteen shining shafts barring the water: rising flashing as one, reaching back, and gripping the river again. And below, streaming ahead, masked by sunlight, the body of unknowable water driving on to the sea.

  The oars were seventeen feet long at the beam: longer where the shell swept high at the prow and the stern, and the holes that admitted them, small and snug, with a narrow slot for the blade, were pierced through the third strake down from the edge and the fourth up from the waterline. And since, for the moment of his passing, the weight of a man would have to be borne by each oarsman in turn, it was essential to find footing at the upper end of the shaft, where the movement would be least; and to pass quickly, before the rower’s grip broke and the oar swung in his hands.

  Then, as Sulien watched, Eachmarcach stepped down. His hand left the rail. His toes curled white round the shining wood of the oar just below him. And then, his arms crooked at his sides, he was off, his heels kicked flashing beneath him, his shoulders trimmed against the slope of the oars, settling no longer than a bird might on each. And every time bridging the gap right-footed as Skeggi, his head disappearing on the port side, must be using his left.

  Everyone shouted. There was sweat coming through the cloth on the rowers’ backs. They had not asked to play a leading role in this dangerous game, and if there was an accident, they would pay for it. Eachmarcach’s shoulders were covered in ginger-white fur, and below that his skin was patchily red. He had got to the fifth oar, a third of the way gone. On the other side, Sulien could tell from the roar, Skeggi was moving as well.

  On Eachmarcach’s side, the seventh oarsman was not prepared for him; or perhaps, his concentration faltering, the Dubliner had lingered a moment longer than he should. The oar jerked and, losing its sweep, floundered and cracked against the neck of the blade just behind him. For a moment, between two and three oars at Eachmarcach’s back were out of action, and, driven lop-sided, the gilded boarshead on the sternpost swung to the right. A cross-wave, kicking, ran under the keel, and a surge of noise on the other side of the vessel told that Skeggi had been shaken by it.

  Then the even roar resumed, which would seem to tell that no fall had happened. But Eachmarcach, his attention caught by the shouts, turned his head for one fatal second as the oars, picking up, resumed their full power and he moved from the ninth to the tenth, to the eleventh.

  Sulien s
aw the ginger head falter, half obscured by the swell of the beam, and then jerk. Two arms shot into sight. Eachmarcach yelled. Then, with an expert twist, he aligned his thickset, muscular body and dived, entering the river exactly between the shafts of two oars and gliding outwards, a pale, fishy shape underwater, until, grinning, spouting, and swearing, he raised his head far behind, beyond the digging line of the blades.

  A skiff from one bank pulled off and set out for him. Sulien waved and turned, just as a roar louder than all the rest told him that, one way or another, Skeggi’s trip, too, had come to an end. Then he saw a whinbush of grey-yellow hair and a scarlet face rolling inboard beyond the last of the oars and knew that the feat had been achieved, by one of them at least. And that it was possible.

  He and Alfgar were next. Alfgar, smiling, was pale. He said, ‘Did you notice the shaking just now? After the oars crashed?’

  They’ll know better next time,’ Sulien said.

  ‘No. It wasn’t only the shift of the boat,’ Alfgar said. ‘It’s the tide coming in. I thought I’d better warn you.’

  He had forgotten the Dee was a tidal estuary. He had forgotten to think what must happen when the incoming sea at the top of its flood met the down-moving flow of the river. He said, ‘I expect it will be all right. This will be over in seconds.’ For, of course, it would. But of equal certainty, it would take only one or two such cross-currents to unbalance them. He said, ‘Anyway, it’s good weather for a swim. See you in the water?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Alfgar said.

  They threw a coin, he found, to decide which side they should run on. It was one of Canute’s, with Lux, Lex, Pax, Rex on the die. He did not look to see if the name of Duncan’s father was on it as well.

  ‘Take care,’ said the Earl Thorfinn’s cavernous voice. He was sitting, hugging his bound knees, on the half-deck beside him. ‘If in doubt, put your hand on the rail and let them pull you in. It isn’t worth getting wet over.’

  He looked as a murderer and an oath-breaker ought to look. His expression, on the other hand, had somewhere in it a light or a shadow not evinced since his talk with Godiva. Sulien said, with austerity, ‘It won’t be the first time that the north has dragged Wales into her shiftless enterprises.’ He waited to see, gratifyingly, the Earl’s black eyebrows twitch and then went to the side he had been given, which was the same one from which Eachmarcach had fallen. The horn blew.

  Not to look at the water, streaming like long wool beneath him. Not to look at the faces: the brimming boatful of faces, half turned his way, half to Alfgar. Not to look at the crowds on the shore. But to look only ahead, at the smooth white pine of the oars wheeling, wheeling in their small circles, and to keep, somehow, a sixth sense for the oarsmen, who were afraid, too, and on whom all his foothold depended.

  Sulien said, just loud enough to be heard, ‘I am coming—now!’ And felt the wood, lightly warm, beneath one foot and then the other. ‘And—now!’ he said again, and passed through three feet of air, looking only at the rise of the next oar.

  He did not hear the Danish King address Bishop Joseph of Llandaff. ‘The boy is graceful. Find him a monastery by the sea.’

  ‘He is at Llanbadarn, my lord.’

  He did not see Canute turn to Earl Leofric and say, smiling, ‘The young men do well.’ Only Sulien, watching the Earl of Mercia bow, his eyes on his son, would have known what Leofric was thinking. Too tense. It was Alfgar’s one mistake, to try too hard; to want too much. Not a bad fault in a ruler, but it should not rule his performance. Leofric had told him and told him until Godiva had stopped him telling him because, she said, it was making him worse. And seeing the muscles knot in the calf of Alfgar’s right leg, his father had known, before it happened, how it was going to end.

  None of that Sulien saw, for he was coming up to the seventh oarsman, the one who had faltered after Eachmarcach. The round shaft, coming out of its hole, rotated automatically, as if worked by a wheel, with no sign of trouble. Sulien said, in the same quiet voice, ‘And—now!’ and stepped on it lightly: one foot, both feet; and he was on the eighth, preparing to step on the ninth. His mind, in retrospect, seized the breath of a second to congratulate himself. His ears, dead to the particular voices, could not excise a shout, a roar of cheerful shock and of warning which was unmistakable in its meaning. Alfgar had fallen.

  Sulien’s foot slid on the beam, and all the resources of his body thundered in to his aid. A moment later and he could have steadied himself on the wood, but there was no time for that: already the timber was dropping under his weight. He was unbalanced when he launched himself at the next oar, and he hit it unevenly, the second foot as hard as the first, and then had to get off again. His balance this time was better: almost righted, although when his right foot took the wood, his knee started to tremble. There were five more oars ahead, and Alfgar had fallen.

  His foot on the eleventh oar, Sulien thought of Alfgar and his mother Godiva. His second foot on the eleventh oar, he remembered what the Earl Thorfinn had said.

  But the Mercians were too proud to save themselves. So was he, probably, to imagine he would finish. He wasn’t going to, now he had allowed himself to think.

  He missed his footing. Only his left foot reached the oar, at the wrong angle, so that he had to look down to see what room there was for his right, and so saw the violent water racing below him, and, ahead, the arrows that meant tidal currents flooding in at a pace faster than that of the slow-propelled vessel.

  The water took his eyes with it, and the last of his balance. He fell, his shoulder striking the swinging oar just behind him, and the water drew him in with a great, splashing rush.

  Then, one-handed and choking, he was up on the surface, and two heavy bodies flounced in beside him and had him under the arms, and a little distance off there was a boat with Alfgar in it, his face running with water and grinning.

  So that everything was all right. Except for the last race, the race that was supposed to decide whether Skeggi, who had completed the run, was the winner, or whether he would have to run against one or both of the King’s grandsons, if one or both of the King’s grandsons should manage to finish. The last race, which in fact had nothing to do with that sort of competition at all, but had to do with the ruling of Orkney and the ruling of Alba.

  Sulien said, when they got him into the skiff, ‘I know we can’t keep up with them, but what about rowing on, in case we can find out who wins?’ But Alfgar, he found, had already arranged all that, and had even taken an oar himself, to make it faster. So that, although they had dropped far behind, Sulien could see by the black head that the Earl Thorfinn had drawn his side, the side that had had all the mishaps, and was lifting himself over the rail while his half-brother Duncan the prince did the same on the other side.

  Had he been on board, Sulien would have found that the Earl of Orkney did not speak reassuringly, as he had done, to warn the oarsmen. That he didn’t pause on the rail to remind himself to listen to nothing and look at nothing but the fifteen white oars soaring in front of him. That in fact the only thing he did was to look ahead at the running dark race of the incoming tide and, on the first breath of the horn, to lay one prehensile foot, at a grotesque angle, on the round, sticky surface of the first oar and then, without pause, to skip forward and set the other foot high on the next shaft.

  His stern waggled. ‘The bastard,’ said Eachmarcach with satisfaction. ‘I knew he’d do that.’

  Behind in the skiff, Alfgar watched the dancing figure and said, ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘They say Tryggvasson did it with one foot on each oar,’ Sulien said.

  ‘Well, that’s hardly Tryggvasson,’ said Alfgar rudely. ‘That’s—’

  ‘I think,’ said Sulien, ‘that because he isn’t well made, perhaps he practises very hard. This must be the work of a summer. Or more.’

  ‘He’s nearly there,’ said Alfgar, his voice disbelieving. He caught a crab with his oar and looked back: a ridge of water bucked
under their keel and plunged jostling ahead to where the longship had drawn away. ‘And just in time. That’s the flood-tide on its way. Where’s the other boy?’

  Boy? Duncan was twenty. The age Canute had been when he became King of Denmark and England. Sulien said, ‘I can’t see. They’re all up at the other end, cheering on Orkney.’

  Later, he realised that it was because they were all up at the stern cheering the Earl Thorfinn to his victory that none but the oarsmen saw the change in the run of the water; the change for which normally they would have altered stroke but could not, at this moment, under pain of death. And later, too, was given by others a picture of Duncan, sweat on his jaw, his shoulders firm, the tunic stuck to his thighs, copying with steady persistence the two-footed step, the concentration, the technique of Eachmarcach and Skeggi, hearing neither the roar of acclaim up ahead or the change in the sound of the water. As the Earl Thorfinn leaped from the last oar and, victorious, rolled aboard into Skeggi’s hands and the welter of welcoming buffets and laughter, the stern of the longship rose and smacked, and then, pair by pair, the oars kicked and bounded.

  Before Duncan’s eyes, the line of looms broke in disorder. Then the shaft below him gave way and he was jumping, with nowhere to jump to. He must have tasted salt before he hit the water. An oarsman cried out, and wood clashed against wood as men dragged at the oars to keep clear of him.

  They succeeded. The blow that felled him came not from the blades but the hard, oaken strakes of the vessel as the surge flung him drubbing against them. Those who were there saw him sink, and did not see him surface again.

  From the skiff, they saw the longship shudder, and heard the thin ring of a command above the confusion of shouting, upon which the oars rose and changed pattern. The royal ship slowed on her course and then, held by back-paddling, returned and swung in mid-river. On her port side, visible now, there were two swimming heads in the river, and as Sulien watched, another man jumped over the side. All the swimmers were strangers. Sulien said, ‘Duncan has fallen.’