King Hereafter (111 page)

The King said, ‘It has its attractions, as an idea. Unique, of course. I can’t think of anyone, from my lord Pope down to Bishop Ealdred, who would agree with you, but attractive, for all that. If you were a hermit or even a monk, you would have little trouble indeed in implementing it. Unfortunately, on becoming a bishop you forfeit your right to that particular principle. If you do not help your people, or allow them to help themselves, they may all die, and take you with them. If the master you rely on for your temporal well-being has not dealt with you, that is, already. What is the fate of false coiners?
Genitalibus et oculis privatus?
Their wives do not, I’m sure, like it.’

Elfswitha clanked twice.

‘You threaten, my lord,’ said the Bishop.

‘Not unless you are a false coiner, as well as a greedy and cowardly man. You quote principles. You have no principles,’ said the King. ‘You have no guiding rule save self-interest. Yet you are my Bishop and you can, as you say, fulfil the spiritual calls that men make on you. I have to tell you that you must also fulfil the other obligations you have to your people if you are to remain in this kingdom. I shan’t place an axe or a flag in your hand. But if I and mine prepare to defend the kingdom, you and yours must do the same. Choose.’

The Bishop’s legs trembled with anger. ‘Abuse will not serve you,’ he said. ‘I join the martyrs, punished for what I believe. What does Peter Damian himself say of the Pope’s illness? That it is due to the wrath of the Lord against a militant prelate. Shall I fear your anger when that other might be my fate?’

‘Sit down,’ said the King. He half-rose and the Bishop, looking round, found a chair higher than his wife’s stool and sat on it.

The King said, ‘Let’s be plain. You want Durham. You won’t get it now. If you go to Siward, he’ll make you fight, too. You had better, therefore, resign yourself to it. The only difference would be this: In Alba, you would have a see. In Northumbria, you would not. Which is it to be?’

The Bishop wished he had remained standing. He drew himself up in his seat, preparing for martyrdom. Elfswitha’s voice, from the corner said, ‘We will stay. You give us no alternative. We will stay in Alba.’

The Bishop looked at his wife.

‘And co-operate in every way?’ said the King. ‘In the encouragement of your people against their enemies? In the provision of labour for attack or defence?’

The shallow eyes delivered their message. ‘You leave us no alternative,’ echoed the Bishop. He looked at the King. ‘You compel us.’

‘That is my right and my privilege,’ said the King. ‘And my power. For all of that, no doubt I shall answer, as you will, to an authority other than Peter Damian. I have made myself understood?’

‘You have,’ said the Bishop with stiffness.

‘And you agree to remain on my terms and proclaim them?’

‘I do,’ said the Bishop.

‘Then, since I am busy, as you are,’ said the King, ‘there seems little more to be said. Such words between cousins should not have had to be spoken. I am sorry. I will not ask for your blessing. Only think, when you pray, of your people. Whatever lies between you and me, they should not suffer.’

He saw the King to the gates and, coming back, heard the clangour of Elfswitha’s malevolence before he arrived at the door of their chamber.

Whether struck down by the Lord’s retribution or by his failure in Italy or by the neglect of his sponsor the Emperor, the ninth Pope Leo, Bruno de Nordgau, died in April in the city of Rome, far from his beloved Toul and the Vosges of his family. The Alpine snows closed over his militant steps, and the sinners he had excommunicated for one reason or another turned their thoughts from irregular union or simony, if they had ever been on them, and peered into the mists of what promised to be a very long vacancy. In the home of Hildebrand, gathering dust, lay a long, padded box containing a golden rod entwined with roses.

The news came to Perth on the day of the King’s special council, and was brought to Thorfinn by Bishop Jon as he prepared to leave with Prior Eochaid for the Moot Hill.

Bishop Jon, a warm-hearted man, had been weeping, and even Eochaid, remembering, found himself moved near to tears.

So to end all that endeavour. And what, now, of Adalbert of Hamburg and Bremen, the Metropolitan of the North, and his white-and-pearled caparison, and his iron ambition? What of Isleifr’s white bear, uselessly rampant in Goslar, while Isleifr waited in vain for his summons to consecration? What of Juhel of Dol and his careful and simian plotting to keep his suffragans out of the grasping fingers of Tours?

Bruno of Nordgau had been fifty-one years old when he died. Ten more years of his pontificate might have set both the church and the statesmanship of western Europe in a different direction. He had snapped the circlet of runes from Thorfinn’s throat. But the Norns had smiled, and lifted the shears in the end.

Of what he felt, Thorfinn’s face gave no sign. Perhaps Bruno’s death, long expected, had already been consigned to the past. It was part of Thorfinn’s philosophy: the Viking philosophy that lived afresh each coming day. There was the imminent council to think of, and the fact, of which everyone was aware, that Bishop Malduin had not so far arrived to confirm his allegiance as promised. And that the ships had again been delayed: the long-awaited new ships commissioned from King Svein of Denmark, about which King Svein of Denmark had been so apologetic.

Lost in thought, Eochaid did not at first hear the shouting outside, or see Thorfinn thrusting his way through the crowd to the door until he had almost gone.

Something about the note of that call, something about Thorfinn’s manner as he stood in the yard listening to the stammering rider who stood grasping his saddle and speaking into his ear made Eochaid’s shaven scalp tingle, and his body shrank, for a moment, from its clothing.

Then Thorfinn looked up and, catching sight of the Prior, walked to his side as eager helpers swarmed to the messenger. The King said, ‘Come to my room. I have sent for Tuathal and Osbern.’

The texture of his voice was unfamiliar, and his face, when Eochaid glanced up, was drained with some sort of force which Eochaid suddenly saw was consuming anger.

He followed the King into his chamber, and Thorfinn in silence walked to the window and stood there, looking outwards. Almost at once, the door behind Eochaid opened, and Osbern of Eu came in, looking heated, and followed by Tuathal, his thick face enquiring and grim.

The door closed.

The King said, without turning round, ‘That was a message from Lothian. A clerk of Durham, collecting church-dues with an armed escort from Melrose, came into conflict yesterday evening with an equally large party of Normans under Flodwig of Dol, and a running battle ensued. Several farms were burned or devastated in its path, with some consequent deaths. Of the opposing parties, a score of men lost their lives or were badly hurt on each side. Among the Northumbrian dead was counted Osbern, the only adult son of Earl Siward.’

The King turned; and even Tuathal flinched.

The King said, ‘My lord of Eu, you and your countrymen have brought this nation to war. I hope, when Siward comes with his army, that you find the field as easy to quit as it has been to enter.’

O AVENGE THE
death of a son is not hasty work, if he is to be honoured.

To raise major levies, King Edward’s leave would have to be sought by Earl Siward. To muster an army would take time—but not too much time, for men were hard to come by at harvest. In high summer, provisions were plentiful, but would have to be gathered and loaded. Auxiliary shipping was not unlikely, to carry reinforcements and food and extra weapons and take off the wounded. York’s ships were mostly trading, in summer-time. To collect a small fleet would take a week or two.

So Norse mind interpreted Norse, as Alba moved, prepared by her King, from the state of armed defence to the state of imminent war.

Those were the weeks when the minutes were measured like mancuses of purest gold. When Thorfinn was never to be seen in one place for more than a few hours, and when he no longer looked like a man with a fleet ready loaded for sea, but like a man already on board and lifting his ship to meet the first swell of the storm.

The first wave, and the next, and the third. The news that Kinrimund was empty and Bishop Malduin, his wife, and his household had vanished, no one knew where.

The news that the Bishop of Alba was in York, and that two young Fife men, Fothaid priest-son of Maelmichael and Cathail son of Dubhacon, had travelled there with him.

The news, received much later in silence, that Ghilander also had fled, with Colban the Bishop’s stepson, and that Kineth of Brechin had gone with them, leaving Angus leaderless.

The secret news from Dunegal of Nithsdale, using a name that only Thorfinn would recognise, that Thorfinn did not talk of at all, at least before Groa.

His energy, she saw, was not abated, or his confidence shaken. In place of zest, there was determination, that was all.

She moved into Fife to be near the Forth estuary, where Thorfinn was oftenest to be found. He visited her there one evening, Bishop Jon and Eochaid in tow, and the three men talked without ceasing, before food and
through food and after it, Bishop Jon making notes in his own hand on a slate with a stylus that squealed. Then he ceased to make notes and listened, his clean-shaven jaw sinking lower and lower until, with a small thud, the slate dropped to the floor and Thorfinn, turning, saw that he was asleep.

‘Don’t wake him,’ said Groa. ‘Morgund will be here soon anyway. He arrived this afternoon and I sent him off to rest. He had Lulach with him.’

‘Lulach?’ said Thorfinn. ‘I didn’t send for him.’

‘You are calling on Moray to fight for you,’ Groa said.

‘I shall be calling on the northern fleet, such as it is, to fight for me,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But I expect Thorkel and Hlodver and Odalric to stay where they are and look after my interests until I tell them otherwise.’

Somehow she had ruffled him: a rare occasion indeed. Otherwise, he would never have referred to the only point upon which he and his advisors were at odds.

At no time since the earliest plans were drawn up would Thorfinn consider drawing men from the north to fight on land in Alba.

With his ships, he had been liberal. Only one fighting-ship remained off the island of Man, and two of moderate size further north in the Sudreyar. Six were at sea, on the business of trade—an act of faith that he might have cause to regret. The rest were on the Caithness coast, refitted and waiting, with men of Orkney and Caithness to man them.

If the new ships came from Denmark, the Caithness flotilla might not be needed. If the new ships did not come, the handful now in the north represented the only sea-force Thorfinn could lay against any fleet Siward might bring.

Few as they were, they might be sufficient, for the men in them would be seasoned seamen and raiders who would brawl for the love of it, on shipboard anywhere; who would defend their own northern lands to the death, on land or on sea; but who would never march south in cold blood to throw away life defending a foreigner’s ground. One day perhaps, but not yet. There had not been time to teach them. That Groa understood, even if Thorfinn’s southern council did not.

He had carried the day, of course, for although in fourteen years he had made himself supreme King in Alba, he was born to the north, and from Moray to the northernmost island of Orkney he was the leader men trusted and knew.

One day, when he was gone, they would turn to Paul, and to Erlend when he was old enough. It was to safeguard Orkney that Paul was being left there at this moment. It had hurt him, Groa knew, that his father did not need him at his side now, in the first hour of real danger since Rognvald had tried to claim the north seven years before. But he had been reared to rule Orkney, and he would keep his place.

There had been little dispute about anything else Thorfinn had wanted to do since the day he was told of the fighting in Lothian. That evening, pacing the floor of his chamber before the most able of his mormaers and his churchmen, he had said, ‘What would I do if I were Siward and I had just lost
all hope of my heirs ruling Northumbria? And he has, make no doubt of it. The only other son is a child, and his nephew will have no better chance than the rest of his brothers-in-law and their offspring against the brethren of Wessex, once Siward goes. What would you do, my lord Prior?’

And Tuathal, whose authority Groa had watched advance through the years, had said, ‘I should make for Wedale straight off, and every fortified place with Normans in it. And I shouldn’t leave Lothian until I had killed every Norman I could find, and all the families who were supporting them. I should destroy the crops and burn every building, and flatten what wouldn’t burn.’

‘How well you know Siward,’ Thorfinn had said. ‘But would he do that all over Lothian, or only in Wedale? The St Cuthbert churches elsewhere are his, you must remember, and their lands and their people. The rest of the churches are mine, and the fringe of land south of the Forth estuary, but there are not necessarily Normans in all of them. Also, my share of the Lothians has been in the care of my cousin the Bishop of Alba. They may have come to share his lack of discrimination.’