Rognvald returned from Gareksey grim-faced and sharp-tongued. Skarfr inferred that the attempt to make Sweyn face up to his guilt had gone as expected. The Jarl’s sole achievement had been to send Sweyn off raiding again so there was less chance of any confrontation between him and Thorbjorn. Given the sea-rover’s restless spirit, he would probably have taken to sea again anyway, without being prompted. Gareksey never claimed his attention for long, perhaps even less so now that his wife was in residence, not just his mother. Nobody suggested that Sweyn was a family man, except when it came to avenging murdered kin. And vengeance was as much to his taste as sea-roving, so the combination of duty and pleasure was little hardship, more of a purpose in life.
But Sweyn was Sweyn. Orkneyjar was calmer without him, if only for a brief respite.
His dark counterpart, Thorbjorn, made much of putting aside his wife, accompanied by allegations against her entire family that would have sparked one-to-one combat had any male representative been present. Which was of course the aim. All in Rognvald’s Bu breathed a sigh of relief that those insulted were well out of earshot.
As if in a dance measure where each man changed partners, Skarfr hid his avoidance of Thorbjorn in the pattern of daily movement and Hlif disguised her avoidance of Skarfr in the same manner, all of them polite as traders abroad.
When Skarfr observed a steel-capped wooden stick attached to Hlif’s belt, he wondered what it was. When he saw her open a leather pouch, draw out wooden runes and cast them in front of some goggle-eyed maidens, he knew what she was up to and he didn’t like it. He watched, heedless of her irritation. When she’d finished her singsong prophecies and the girls had gone, he caught her elbow before she could escape.
‘Really, Hlif – a wand and rune readings! Playing the witch is dangerous!’
She shook off his hand as if it were a beetle and her eyes blazed. ‘Not “playing”, Skarfr. Just choosing my weapons, ones you can’t steal! As you pointed out, when you said I wasn’t worth a saga, Witch Frakork was more respected than mere wives and mothers – or housekeepers.’
She stalked off and he hurled the words at her retreating back. ‘Yes and she was burned for it!’
The next time he saw her, she was glacial politeness once more. Trudging through this pretence, racking his brains for how to undo the damage of his words on Hlif without making matters worse, Skarfr’s only solace was work. He was the first to volunteer, whether cutting peat, rebuilding houses after storm damage or cleaning out the bilges in the ships. He made an occasional sullen trip to market in Kirkjuvágr, where he spent what coin he had on ale and willing girls. More particular in his choices than on his first visit, he still wanted to learn what pleased them.
‘You know your way around a woman’s body,’ one told him, swinging her black hair. Not red, he thought. Never red. ‘And you know how your own parts work.’ She ran a teasing hand down the curled hairs on his groin. He quivered, a hound scenting game.
‘But once a man learns how all women are alike, he should learn how we are all different. What this woman wants from you.’ And then she showed him.
Afterwards, he felt a void. There was only one woman worth learning.
He took a deeper pleasure in checking on the slow progress of the cathedral. Stone by stone it grew and its makers still seemed untroubled that they would not live to see it finished.
The stonemason of Skarfr’s first visit let him carve another apprentice symbol in the stone and there was a strange thrill in making such a mark, knowing it would be seen by generations yet to come. Skarfr could almost understand the builders’ patience, work as an act of worship. But he was young and restless, disappointed in love and life, raging against the cruel fates. His mood was not fertile ground for spiritual contemplation.
When Rognvald summoned him, he hoped it was for a task that was bloody, lengthy and elsewhere.
‘It’s Sweyn,’ said Rognvald, tight-lipped.
It’s always Sweyn.
‘Margad, the steward of Sweyn’s lands in Ness, is robbing his own people in Sweyn’s absence and they’ve petitioned me directly as Jarl. Maybe they don’t trust Sweyn to take their part against the steward. I must show that an overlord cannot act in such a manner with impunity so we set sail today. Thorbjorn will captain one of the ships but I want you on mine.’
‘Of course, Sire.’ But why not on Thorbjorn’s? Rognvald knew they’d sailed together before. Skarfr shifted uneasily under the Jarl’s penetrating gaze.
‘Thorbjorn speaks well of you and I am pleased that you keep a respectful distance from my ward.’
Skarfr swallowed and responded to the news from Ness, which suddenly seemed a safer topic. ‘Surely Sweyn will deal with this man Margad and spare you the journey?’
Rognvald’s smile was wry. ‘Sweyn has indeed heard of the charges and has sailed to Ness, where he’s joined Margad in punishing any man who has spoken out and in plundering rebellious villages to make a point about loyalty to their lord.’
Was Inge caught up in this abuse of power? Would she be faced with Thorbjorn when Rognvald’s men caught up with Margad? Over Skarfr’s dead body!
‘So,’ Rognvald continued, ‘I must make the same point. By punishing Margad. And thereby reminding Sweyn he is not above the law.’
Skarfr couldn’t decide whether Rognvald was deceiving himself or merely trying to shape the story he wanted told.
‘Jarl Harald will sail with Lord Thorbjorn. And I want you with me,’ repeated Rognvald, as if the two statements were connected. ‘You have the qualities I value in a man: strength, skill and skaldcraft.’
Skarfr shook his head in denial but Rognvald had not finished.
‘My verse and my saga should not die with me. You have a skald’s training and you are young. You will live by my side so you experience what I do, so that you don’t just memorise my poetry – you understand how it was born as well as the allusions. And you will pass on all my words, a monument as towering, as immortal, as St Magnus Cathedral.’
‘Sire,’ stammered Skarfr. ‘You know I can’t speak in public.’
‘Yet.’ Rognvald’s tone brooked no contradiction. ‘And while you are mute, you have more space in your head for my work.’
Skarfr could hardly say that his head was full of his own compositions. And besides, he already knew Rognvald’s work off by heart and would enjoy learning from such a master. He would have an excuse to listen to all the word-duels Rognvald started for the sheer fun of spontaneous versifying. He would have access to the highest level of repartee and skaldcraft without the pressure to perform. Rognvald and his skalds would always perform their own work so he would never be called upon. And he would have a reason to be there, a role. He could say he was a witness, remembering for posterity.
‘A witness,’ he said, marvelling at how well this would suit him.
‘Yes,’ agreed Rognvald. ‘So my words live on.’
Skarfr was being told he must build that monument one day but anything could happen between now and Rognvald’s death, which was years away. He might die himself before that happened, a hero’s death in battle. Meanwhile, he could enjoy the advantages of his new role. And he wouldn’t be on Thorbjorn’s ship.
‘It would be an honour, Sire,’ he said. And he meant it.
On this voyage, Skarfr was now a full member of the crew. He took a turn with the steerboard, under Rognvald’s supervision. The Jarl was an experienced, reliable captain and his even temper kept his crew and ship sailing smoothly. No risks and no races. Even Thorbjorn maintained a respectful course, no doubt salivating at the prospect of settling scores with Sweyn.
Their mutual quest for vengeance was another dance of narrow misses and distance. Holbodi and Olvir Rosta had thumbed their noses up at Sweyn, sailing on with their lives, as he had done to Thorbjorn.
While he kept watch with the Jarl, Skarfr studied him. Yes, he was older than Sweyn or Thorbjorn, his peat-brown hair and pleasant face lacking their dynamism, like a carthorse beside colts. Yes, he preferred making peace to making war. But he’d earned the scars on his muscular frame and, now he knew Rognvald better, Skarfr would not bet coin against him in any contest, from swimming to wrestling. His vaunted nine skills were no braggart’s claim. Unlike Sweyn and Thorbjorn, the Jarl considered the cost of winning before he competed. A verse tournament left no dead bodies or wounded pride.
Without taking his eyes off the sail and his crew, Rognvald dropped random thoughts like tasty morsels for his newly appointed saga-maker to chew on.
‘It is hard seeing my daughter only when I go hunting in Ness but she is better off with her family there than with me. We must do what is best for others and for Orkneyjar. She cannot be Jarl and I must think about the future, about an heir.
‘Thorbjorn is effervescent; sparkling company but mere froth. He has neither poetry nor statecraft. Harald will not learn from his godfather how to care for his people and juggle with his warriors’ conflicting natures.
‘I sometimes wonder whether the Orkneyjar tradition of two jarls is not a recipe for constant strife, splitting loyalties and making succession a hundred-handed-giant of rival claims. And driving a wedge into any division, making mischief, is King David of Skotland, the most irritating of neighbours, always pushing his latest favourite as jarl, via the murder of the present incumbent.’
He spoke of his own murder – or Harald’s – in the same tone he used for ‘Move the steerboard a little sun-wise, smoothly as you go.’
‘Erlend Haraldsson might become a problem. He is braying his rights to anyone who’ll listen, egged on by his woman and her Skottish clan.’
Erlend, son of the jarl murdered by Frakork. Direct heir to a jarl versus Rognvald, son of a jarl’s sister and choice of the king of Norðvegr. There were Orkneymen who thought the king of Skotland should have more say over their jarl’s appointment than their own king, who never left Norðvegr.
Erlend’s claim was stronger but Rognvald was in situ. There were always two jarls. Two must heed their people. Was it Harald who was vulnerable?
‘His woman?’ queried Skarfr.
‘Harald’s mother, Margaret Hakonsdottir, an embarrassment to all who know her, but it’s obvious what Erlend sees in her. Lustful as a cat and hasn’t lost her sleek looks. After Harald’s father died, she lived in sin with Sweyn’s brother Gunni before Erlend claimed her. They spread word that Erlend took her “by force” to Hjaltland but I doubt there was much force involved as she’s with him still. Don’t mention her to Harald unless you want a tirade against sluts.’
What stronger claim to the jarldom than a jarl’s son married to a jarl’s daughter? Harald’s claim came from his mother and from Skottish support so Erlend matched him on both counts and outbid him with his lineage.
‘But I fear no challenge while I have Thorbjorn,’ stated Rognvald, as if marshalling his pieces on an invisible board.
He sighed. ‘And Sweyn.’ Who was in his tower of Lambaburg, with his steward Margad and sixty armed men, preparing for siege. Men only, may the gods be praised.
Skarfr had expected a saga story. Not a shield-wall, which he now realised was as rare an event as a swallow in winter. But at least a traitor within, unlocking a secret door or a hero, perhaps himself, scaling the wall at night and opening the barred gate. Or even the longer process of starvation, stopping water supplies, building a battering ram. But no.
It wasn’t Rognvald’s fault. He held firm in parleys, would brook no concession and demanded that Sweyn give up Margad.
Unfortunately, not only was Sweyn predictably stubborn, saying that he would give up nobody, he also executed a plan so outrageous that the Orkneymen were left surveilling an empty coop. The two chickens had fled, leaving the men in the tower fearful of reprisals but grinning at the manner of the death-defying escape.
Sweyn had gathered and knotted together all the rope in the building, lowered Margad down to the sea, then shinned down himself. They swam to the nearest landing-point then fled to shelter in King David’s court, where they were plied with a heady brew of sympathy and admiration. The Skottish king knew how to woo powerful men.
Another letdown for Skarfr to add to his store. Raiding, battle, siege – as exciting as rope-burn. Which he hoped Margad and Sweyn had to a painful degree, in their privates. No saga story, just days camped on soggy earth, hearing two men trade disagreements like bairns over a bannock, ended by the news of Sweyn’s escape. Trickery again but executed with such panache that men hid their smirks.
Thorbjorn’s expression would have withered barley and improved little when Rognvald stayed his hand, refusing to make an example of the men in the tower. Instead he ordered his mercurial captain to chase Sweyn, taking the Surf-rider and forty men.
The air lightened with Thorbjorn’s departure but Skarfr still expected a sombre voyage back to Orkney, licking wounds and pretending they had not been royally fooled.
Not wanting to be kicked for their lord’s appeasement, the crew of the Fjord-hound worked with careful precision and Skarfr also tried to avoid drawing Rognvald’s attention. But he could not ignore the Jarl’s direct address and he steeled himself against the storm, as if he were once more facing Botolf’s lashings.
‘He scaled down from the cliffs from a tower window, using a mish-mash of badly-knotted ropes,’ said Rognvald, his voice deep with a hint of growl.
‘Scaled down the cliffs from a tower window,’ he repeated. ‘Rocks below and perils at sea.’ First, he shook his head. Then his whole body began to shake. He was trying to wipe the tears streaming from his eyes but he kept doubling up, clutching his stomach. Skarfr had never seen such all-consuming rage. Then he realised.
The Jarl was laughing.
When he could speak, breathless with convulsions, he said, ‘Only Sweyn.’
And then again, ‘That’s your saga story, Skarfr. Sweyn.’
He was right. A story was not always where you looked for it.
Open smiles spread from the steerboard to the dragon’s head and the mood lightened. Men even chuckled, began to tell each other the story of how Sweyn escaped in the night. And they’d been there, as they would tell their children. That they had lost no longer seemed important against such an adversary.
Skarfr’s heart lifted with the wind. He loved sailing and he was suddenly glad that Rognvald was his captain, not Thorbjorn.
The Fjord-hound did not go straight home. While the men camped and relaxed with dice and bawdy stories, Rognvald went alone overland on a visit that Skarfr suspected had much to do with a little girl and nothing to do with politics.