King Hereafter (109 page)

‘The devotion that’s in it!’ said Bishop Jon abstractedly. ‘Like Paul the hermit, alone like a bird on his rock, naked except for his hairs. Although I did hear he had a lad or two with him. Malduin, that is to say.’

‘Two young Fife men. That’s right. Fothaid’s father was blinded and
Cathail’s killed in the year King Duncan died. They’ve both been brought up in Ireland and the Bishop has taken them into his household.’

‘And their fathers’ lands?’ Bishop Jon enquired.

‘The King apportioned them between the monastery at Kinrimund and the priory at St Serf’s until the heirs grew from childhood. What happens next will be his decision.’

‘Well, does he want a home for the priest, I would take him with pleasure,’ said Bishop Jon, ‘and no doubt you could find room for the other if called on. D’you still send those terrible cryptograms?’

‘How else would I know what was going on in Cologne?’ said the Prior blandly.

‘I hardly like to suggest,’ said the Bishop. ‘But when my hat is on, you’d hardly notice the notch the Emperor clipped in my ear. Have you heard the news of the Athelings yet? King Edward’s nephew that was exiled to Hungary?’

Prior Tuathal’s clever eyes opened. ‘He’s dead?’

‘He’s frail, but a good stone’s throw from death,’ the Bishop said. ‘His third child, they say, will arrive at any moment, God protect them. And with the Holy Father a prisoner and the Emperor in uncertain health, the situation of that little family must be arousing a host of eloquent prayers this minute. And the heir with only two little girls so far, and no great prospect of life.’

‘You’ve told the King?’ Tuathal said. ‘What did he say?’

‘You could write it without fraying your pen.
Pray for a girl
, was all he said, to my recollection. He had just heard about Baldric and his party leaving, and was speaking entirely in the vocative. I left before I found myself dispatched to Teviotdale,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘There is a dangerous rising afoot against Duke William in Normandy, and half my lord Osbern’s relatives have gone to the aid of the Duke, the flesh-seeking spears in their hands. My lord Osbern himself is still here.’

‘Until when?’ said Tuathal.

‘Until, no doubt, he sees who is winning. I wish him and his friends no evil,’ said Bishop Jon, shaking down his book-satchel and peering into it, ‘but it’s a difficult thing to make plans for your country with them sitting there, their heads switching from this shoulder to the other, and so sleek you would think it was a cow that licked them all. Do you have a prayer for a caementarius on you? I have to bless this tower before it falls down or the masons perish of liver-rot.’

‘I’m never without one,’ said Tuathal. ‘If I suggest to the King that he spends Christmas at Scone and attends special Masses of Supplication for the continued well-being of his country, would you support me?’

‘He has already proposed it,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘He has, you must agree, a remarkably clear idea of policy, if the topography of God’s Kingdom at times eludes him a trifle. Here is a blessing for bells. It will do admirably. Is there a bell?’

‘I’ll go and look,’ said Tuathal.

*   *   *

The Masses were held at Christmas, and at Scone instead of the newly finished cathedral at Birsay, for the King did not go to Orkney that winter. They were held in the open, before a portable altar, and three bishops were present, in gold and crimson and purple and white, as well as all the churchmen who could contrive to be there, and several thousand people from Fife and Angus and Lennox and Strathearn and even further away. Afterwards, Thorfinn gave a great feast.

Osbern of Eu and his companions attended, in splendid humour because of the good news the King had brought them from Cumbria.

The King had ridden everywhere that autumn, but he had spent longest with Thor and Dunegal and Leofwine in Cumbria, where he had gleaned the first tidings of Duke William’s victory against his rebel kinsmen.

Everyone knew that Duke William still had his hands full with Anjou and Aquitaine, but a victory was a victory, and the Normans drank deeply that Christmas, but not so deeply, as Osbern cheerfully assured his employer, that they would not be able to defend Scotia against anyone who tried to interfere with it.

‘And if Duke William calls?’ had said Thorfinn calmly.

It was the real danger, and it turned Eochaid cold to hear Thorfinn speak of it openly, as if it amused him. At least the Normans enjoyed the way he dealt with them. Perhaps they knew, as Thorfinn did, that the Pope was learning Greek, there in his imprisonment in Benevento, so that he could the better engage the help of the Eastern Emperor to throw the Normans out of their new lands in Italy. If he ever got out. If the Byzantine Empire would ever bring itself to unite with the Empire of the West.

But Eochaid kept his counsel, as Tuathal did, about everything except what Thorfinn had to know.

Like Tuathal, Eochaid had been in the saddle all autumn, mostly at the King’s side, until he had had to return to his own Scone to prepare for this Christmas.

He had made another visit as well, about which he had not told the King. While in Cumbria, he had obtained leave from Earl Leofric to ride south through Mercia and spend two days in the quiet of Oswestry with Thorfinn’s
periglour
Sulien, who had travelled from Llanbadarn to meet him.

A young man of twenty-one, Sulien had talked music and manuscripts in Moray with Eochaid. Now, more than twenty years later, the Breton presbyter had lost none of his grace or his repose. He listened, saying nothing, to all the Prior had to tell him, and, at the end, strolled in silence beside him, his hands lightly clasped at his back.

They had left the church and the low huts behind, and the sun was warm, and the soft air off the hills. Sulien said, ‘You are concerned about Lothian. You are right. But don’t mistrust the King’s judgement. Whatever he did or did not do, Earl Siward was going to make trouble in Lothian. With his kinsmen and the Godwin family hounding him, and Mercia threatening to overwhelm him, he had to extend north, or else clear his rivals out of Northumbria. And no one was going to help him do that. What Thorfinn did
was earn a breathing-space, and the right to lodge some sort of defence in the area. Earl Siward can be a nuisance. But, alone, he can’t be a threat to the nation.’

‘I wanted to hear you say that. And the Normans?’

Sulien smiled, walking still. ‘Do you want my expert opinion? I don’t see much of my homeland, but my brother is married into the kindred of Osbern of Eu, and I saw Osbern at Ewias. He’s a good fighting-machine, and honest. I should have invited him, as Thorfinn did, but only time will tell if he was right. It identifies him with the Norman cause and the Norman heir, which becomes a threat if Duke William is successful. On the other hand, if Duke William
is
successful, Thorfinn has a sponsor as strong as King Canute or the Lady Emma ever was and, one supposes, guaranteed security for Orkney with no Norwegian overlord. How are matters with his wife’s family?’

‘We hear from Denmark from time to time,’ Eochaid said. ‘Finn Arnason holds Halland for King Svein, but his sight is worse, and he is never at court, although he can still fight on shipboard and the young men respect him. His kinsmen in Norway don’t seem to have suffered. His niece Thora has given Harald an heir, and still shares his bed with the Russian. His nephew John has married Earl Siward’s daughter, but there is no sign of an alliance between Earl Siward and Norway. It was what Thorfinn feared.’

‘But England and Wessex would never allow it,’ said Sulien. ‘Is Thorfinn afraid?’

There was a long silence. Then Eochaid said, ‘No. He is like a man riding a dolphin.’

They walked. Then Sulien said, ‘But you are afraid. Of what?’

‘Of fowl-pip,’ said Eochaid. ‘Or a bad harvest.’

Sulien stopped. ‘So he hasn’t given in,’ he said. ‘Even after all these years. Even after all you and I and the others could do. Even after Rome. You would think, if you didn’t know better, that Lulach was right: that he was the son of the Devil.’ He broke off.

‘He’s the son of Earl Sigurd,’ said Eochaid. ‘You’re talking about something I’ve never been told about, and I didn’t come here to find out. Tuathal knows more than I do. He heard Thorfinn answer the Pope’s questions in Rome. And, despite what he answered, Pope Leo gave him absolution. He walked barefoot to three shrines, and he returned shriven, and has done more for the church than any King of Alba before him. Nor could anyone know that he had reservations; that he didn’t feel as we all did, treading that ground. But …’

Sulien began walking, slowly, again. ‘No one can know, but they sense it. Is that what you are saying?’

Eochaid said, ‘It hardly matters. Even if he had brought his kingship pure and intact back from Rome and launched a holy crusade such as apostles dream of, two years is not enough to sew a kingdom together.

‘Moray and the north will always be his, and the rest would have joined them in time with no more than what he was offering: equal rule, equal justice, equal worship. But with the peace breaking, he had to bring in help.
And now old churches are acquiring palisades and fortified towers faster than gospel-books, and new churches appear where a Norman baron sees the need for a fortress. The mormaers agree with his policy now. But they are not unshakable.’

‘And the young leaders?’ said Sulien. ‘The men who went to Rome?’

‘For them, Thorfinn can do no wrong,’ Eochaid said. ‘But will the people follow them? The conduct of the nation means nothing to those who live in clay huts. If Odin does not bring them peace and good harvests, then it is the duty of God and the King. If either fails, it is the fault of the King, since God is without blemish. A diverse people in time of hardship need a priest-king. The English know that. Edward is anointed with holy oil: he has the power of healing, they say; he loves his chaplains and worships daily, prostrate, where he can be seen. The Emperor submits to great fasts and to flagellation.’

‘While Thorfinn builds,’ Sulien said. ‘With nothing but common sense in the mortar, and a tongue that can adjust most problems and people to scale, and an arrogance that will not connive at pretence, even if pretence is of the essence of kingship. There is nothing I can do.’

‘Nothing?’ said Eochaid.

‘Even if Lulach did not exist, there is nothing I can do,’ Sulien said. ‘If you are wise, you will not even say we have met, for he would be troubled for your sake and mine, and he will be troubled by other things soon enough.’

‘We are in good heart,’ said Eochaid. ‘It may pass. We only need peace, and events may so turn that we receive it. He may ride his dolphin to shore. I have never yet seen him lose courage.’

‘He will do his utmost for you,’ Sulien said. ‘You can trust him for that. He will need you when he turns against Lulach.’

The breeze rattled Eochaid’s springing black hair over his ears and pulled at the ends of his lashes. He said, ‘I’m sorry. You said—’

‘I said what you thought I said,’ Sulien replied. ‘There will come a day, sooner or later, when he will not want to see Lulach. Lulach will understand. But Thorfinn will be at a crossroads he cannot leave without help.’

Eochaid said, ‘If he sent for you, would you come?’

Sulien said, ‘He will not send for me.’

Before the Christmas rinds had been thrown to the pigs, Osbern of Eu had gone, in one of Thorfinn’s remaining ships, and twenty men with him, in seas as ready to rob them of life as the war they were joining in Normandy.

For two months, while the fighting swayed back and forth overseas, Bishop Hrolf, released by the same storms from sentinel duty in the islands, took it upon himself to oversee the defences of the more vulnerable parts of the mainland. He asked everyone who had been to Denmark about the barracks at Trelleborg and Aggersborg and Fyrkat. He enquired about the uses of ancient hill-forts, and discoursed on the adaptation of antique buildings for military purposes—to wit, the Colosseum in Rome and the amphitheatre at Arles. He pointed out the aptness of Roman strategic sites for present-day purposes, exemplifying Cramond on the river Forth and Cargill by the river
Tay. He had reason to believe, he said, that the Normans in Herefordshire had made good use of the Roman building-materials ready to hand, and there was no reason why others should not do the same. He walked all over Lyne picking up blocks of red sandstone ashlar and pointing out the old grooves and cramp-holes. He found the quarry they came from. He quoted, to the irritation of his more sensitive colleagues, an Irish poem on the subject of forts:

There were times when men went and made confessions to Bishop Hrolf, to stop him talking about engineering. Finally, the only one listening to him was Thorfinn, who listened to everybody, usually while doing other things, disconcertingly, at the same time.

He had good reason, of course. Olaf of Norway was not the only sea-lord, veteran of countless shipboard battles and raids, to find a straightforward land-conflict beyond him. And if he required a tutor, Thorfinn could have found none better than the Normans, natives of a crowded, belligerent duchy full of strong young barons fighting for power.

Such was not the condition of Scotia, whose disparate regions, lacking the same resources and manpower, had begun to knit together under a King whose descent embraced them all. In recent years, all her wars had been frontier battles, fought round her coasts to repel raiders and oust alien settlements. Of a massive invasion such as England had suffered under Canute and his father from Denmark, or such as Duke William was resisting now from the King of France and Geoffrey of Anjou, Alba had no experience.

That the kindred of Osbern of Eu and the kindred of William fitzOsbern with their friends had succeeded in carrying Duke William to a resounding victory against the invasion of his combined enemies was therefore news of more than ordinary importance. It came in the spring, when men’s minds were occupied more with the new wave of cattle-fever than with wars far overseas.