King Hereafter (99 page)

‘Is my son dead?’ said Emma. ‘I was not aware of it. Naturally, I shall accept your tribute of silver, which is overdue. In exchange, I am happy to confirm what you already know. Edmund Ironside’s son is a man who enjoys indifferent health and has never led an army or seen one led in his life. Until his daughters become marriageable, he does not exist.’

‘Or until he has a son,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Barter, however, was not in my mind. I wished merely to ask, since the King, God be praised, is in his prime, how I may serve him? My lands, as you know, are not wealthy. But so long as I hold the seaways, and the ship-stations I require in the isles of the Sudreyar and in Ireland, I may continue to defend Cumbria for you against any ambitious earl or alien landing.’

‘I should hope so,’ said Emma. ‘Since such, I believe, are the terms upon which you hold Cumbria and stir your finger in Cumbrian silver. Am I to believe that Macbeth’s fleet is impotent against two exiled Saxons and an Irish bully? If so, Cumbria ought to be in better hands.’

He had brought her money, and she had paid him. She had warned him. All that he said in this room would be transmitted to Stigand, and thence to the Godwin family. He said, ‘My fleet is preparing already,’ and left it at that. The warning would reach Harold Godwinsson. With the way the rain fell in Ireland, none of the roads would bear an action till spring.

‘You are fortunate that Tostig, Harold’s younger brother, did not go to Ireland,’ Emma remarked. ‘My son Edward has never forgiven Earl Godwin for his brother’s death, but he favours Tostig. A young man to watch, in my opinion. Should the family ever return.’

Between Ealdred’s brother and the woman Thola, a glance flickered. With Emma, one did not show surprise or consternation, or ask alarmed questions. Thorfinn said, ‘Could the Godwin family endure life in England with your son’s many close and noble officers from over the water?’

‘I hardly think so,’ said Emma. A trickle from one unwinking eye drifted over the parchment bag, infusing all its seams. The woman of the chamber leaned forward and dried it with a square of fine linen. Emma paid no attention. She said, before the hand had left her face, ‘Our Norman friends, no doubt, would be required to leave, in that event. Not an irreversible tragedy. They are good mercenaries. At present, of course, you draw yours from Ireland.’

It was made in the form of a statement, and Thorfinn was in no haste to answer it. She thought the Godwin family would return. Given the backing of Flanders, it was not impossible. So Eustace was out of the running, and Svein of Denmark.… He supposed that Godwin could claim the throne by right of possession, but little else; he was married to King Svein’s aunt; his wife was King Canute’s sister-in-law; his daughter was Queen. Until he had had Emma’s son killed, he could have counted on Emma for anything. All the south-east coast of England, at the very least, would support him.

Emma said, ‘What are you thinking? You were one of the ugliest boys I have ever seen, and you have not changed. If you had been a handsome man, would you still be Earl of Orkney and Caithness and nothing more?’

‘Canute was a handsome man,’ Thorfinn said.

There was a pause. The shields lay still. The scarf-ends on her chest rose a little. ‘His nose was crooked,’ said Emma. ‘But he conquered England at an age when you were still learning how to give orders in Dover.’

‘He was a great King,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But he fell heir to his father’s
ground-work in conquering England, and he inherited Denmark from his brother. Norway he took but could not hold, not because of King Olaf but because of the Trøndelagers. I do not know why he wanted an empire, unless it was because it is in the character of men of the north to care little for their posterity so long as their own names will live. To be known in one’s time and after it can be inducement enough.’

‘Fame? Is that all you want?’ Emma said. ‘You fought for Orkney and Caithness: that was your heritage; that was a matter of pride. Perhaps Moray was a matter of pride also: you took it back from the man who slew your stepfather. But Alba you need not have touched. It belonged to your grandfather, yes. But you could have left it in Crinan’s hands until his grandchildren grew; or let the Northumbrian Earls have it. But you took Alba and Cumbria and added the islands and Ireland, and now, my lord Siward says, you have your eye on Lothian and maybe the rest of Bernicia. You deal with Popes and with kings, but I do not see a great dynasty rising to follow you. Is that all you wish? A name that men will remember? And if your enemies take from you, bit by bit, all you have conquered and you are left in your old age with no more than your father Sigurd possessed, will you die an embittered man? For it may happen.’

Sulien had said that to him once, but no one else; not even Groa. He answered with the truth, as he had answered Sulien, because it could harm no one and she was dying.

‘His name is all a Viking expects to leave, and he hopes to make it a glorious one. Reared in obscurity, among a pack of kindred, the drive for renown and the drive to annexe one’s rights are probably equal. Until my brother the King of Alba died, the pattern was, as you say, probably simple. And I didn’t want his kingdom. It was too big to hold for tribute in the only way I knew.’

‘I thought I had taught you otherwise,’ Emma said.

‘I learned a great deal from England,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Including respect for the damage Northumbria and Mercia could inflict. Without a fleet and without my grandfather’s allies, Alba had no defences. Crinan had very little interest in Alba, and no following. His resources were elsewhere. He would leave at the first sign of trouble, and Alba would be fought over until it became a lawless wasteland, like the pagan lands of the Baltic. So, in turn, my northlands on its borders would be threatened.’

‘So,’ said Emma. ‘You made of Alba a buffer for Orkney. Then you realised that it could not be relied on to do even that unless it could be induced to unite its disparate regions, to find a common object in feeding and defending itself. Perhaps you looked at other countries, at their farms and their towns and their way of life, and felt shame that the land of your grandfather should be so backward?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Thorfinn. He paused. ‘Also, being so vulnerable, it required outside support; it required colonies to sustain it. A strong Alba could dispense with the Isle of Man and with Ireland. It should have a trading-fleet of its own, and not one built in Caithness and Orkney. It should survive, no matter what happened to me.’

‘And you would be content with that as your monument?’ Emma said. ‘A land for others to rule?’

Thorfinn looked at her. ‘Wife and mother of kings,’ he said, ‘forgive me if I remind you that we come from the same stock. What kings may follow me I do not know, and I do not care. When my day is ended, it is ended. But, as with you, on some book my name will be written.’

‘Even if, as with me, you have to pay twice its worth to have it done,’ said Emma equably. ‘You have not thought to ask my lord Odo where his brother the Bishop Ealdred has gone.’

Thorfinn turned, and Odo of Winchester closed his mouth and straightened a little. ‘You wish me to tell my lord of Alba?’ he said to Emma.

The pillows had dragged the veil once again a little askew, and her shapeless face was bracketed by the long hoops of hair. Through it, her dignity and her contempt burned unimpaired.

‘Naturally,’ said the Lady-Dowager. ‘Or I should hardly have mentioned it. Are you afraid that this King will run with a trumpet to Norway? Norway knows.’

‘The succession?’ said Thorfinn. ‘In its remoter provisions, as we know—the King your son being in his full vigour.’

‘You’re no fool,’ said Emma. ‘Ealdred has been sent to Normandy. To invite Duke William the Bastard to take the throne of England when Edward dies.’

She stared at Thorfinn, and their eyes held.

‘It would hardly be a game,’ Thorfinn said softly, ‘without all the men competing.’

Emma of England sat back. She smiled. She rested one sleeve on her pillow and extended her hand, a little, towards her visitor. The fingers trembled. ‘I know I can rely on you,’ she said, ‘to do the right thing. You came on a Swedish ship?’

‘Yes,’ said Thorfinn. He rose and went forward and, taking the hand, kissed its wrist, and placed the kiss of peace also on her cheek, lukewarm as dried apple. He stepped back.

‘Tell the master next time to bring me some sables,’ said Emma, ‘now I have silver to pay for them. If I am dead, Edward can wear them for mourning, in case his frame of mind is not otherwise perfectly evidenced.’

Thola opened the door for him, leaving. More than anyone of her age perhaps, Emma had been hated. But, without her, the world was about to be a less intriguing place.

She lived only till March, and was gone before the sables had time to arrive that would signal to the world whether or not her son Edward mourned her.

Ralph her grandson saw her buried, with his mother Goda, Emma’s daughter, whose new husband Eustace remained tactfully behind at Boulogne. Earl Leofric attended the funeral Mass with his son Alfgar, and all the Normans and Bretons who in the past fifty years had joined the households
of the two Kings she had married, and of her royal stepson and sons, as well as that of her own.

William, by the grace of God Duke of Normandy, did not witness the obsequies of his great-aunt; nor did the King of Scotia, whose blood-link with her was even more tenuous, and who had turned from her deathbed to face, without her, a new landscape whose ghost she had drawn for him.

No doubt, as the Lady Emma designed, the warning reached King Diarmaid in Ireland, and the Godwinssons: Attack Dublin in the spring and you will face Thorfinn of Scotia, who has made himself Eachmarcach’s protector. A warning she thought sufficient to deter Diarmaid from attack.

She was wrong. Her wits blunted by age and by sickness, she misconstrued Diarmaid’s temper, which would have taken such news, had it reached him in time, as no more than a challenge.

In fact, hungry for war as he was, it never reached him at all. Despite the rain and the roads, the combined forces of Leinster and the sons of Earl Godwin marched upon Eachmarcach with winter still on the land, and before any fleet of Thorfinn’s could take the water against them.

Before Thorfinn himself had returned, the news passed from Galloway to the Clyde, and from there to Groa and his courtmen, waiting for him in Perth.

When his cavalcade was seen moving up from the south, Groa remained in the hall with Cormac and Tuathal while the rest ran out to the gates and the shouting and barking of dogs mingled with the distant horn-blowing of the King’s servants. It was not her place to give him such news. What it meant to him, she would know when she saw him.

When she saw him, she knew not only what it meant to him, but that it had been no news; for his hand as he entered the hall was on the shoulder of Erlend their son.

She held out her hand to the boy, smiling, and, when he was within her arm, looked over his head to her husband.

‘You have heard the news from Ireland,’ she said. ‘Diarmaid has driven Eachmarcach and the Norsemen from Dublin and made himself King.’

‘I’ve been in Chester and Man,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Eachmarcach is on the island with what is left of his men, staying with his nephew Godfrey. I left Bishop Hrolf with him. Diarmaid was clever to move in the winter. And Eachmarcach is not what he was.… Godiva says she can’t keep Erlend in food any longer and perhaps we would send him back in the autumn when the new harvest is in, if it’s a good one. I’ve told him he can join Paul in Orkney when the weather allows. I’m hungry.’

There had been peace for too long. She’d grown used to it.

She had forgotten what it was like to wait like this in her chamber after the meal while her husband brought his men round to his way of thinking, patiently talking, discussing, explaining, until when he finally reached her, jaded from the long, heavy travelling, he could only say, ‘I brought Erlend back as a precaution. The rumour is that Harold Godwinsson is only lingering till better weather before making a bid to get back to England. The
King is bound to oppose him, supported by Siward and Mercia. It may well be the end of Earl Harold. And then we shall see what my fleet can do to put Eachmarcach back where he would like to be.’

Groa said, ‘And if Harold of Wessex prevails?’

‘It will shake us a little,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But it will shake Siward and Mercia more.’

Thorfinn was probably right. But it was the end, meantime, of the other plans he had been making for the spring and the summer. The councils he held had to do more with the raising of levies and the supply of ships and of equipment, and less with the new forest-clearing and ploughing, the new ditching and trenching and the laying of paths and marsh-bridges and all the matters of efficient spring husbandry.

He held meetings and he moved, incessantly, from end to end of his kingdom. When the news came that Harold Godwinsson and his brother had sailed south from Ireland, Thorfinn was in Orkney, climbing about three half-made longboats and talking, with sawdust and salt in his hair.

Thorfinn came south to Inverness, where news might be more quickly received, and Lulach and Tuathal met him there.

They knew nothing more, either of Harold’s destination or his intentions. Discussing the matter, Tuathal said to the King what Groa had stopped herself from saying. ‘You say if Earl Harold is killed, you may be able to reinstate Eachmarcach. But Eachmarcach is old, and there is only Godfrey his nephew left of his line. Godfrey can hold the island of Man for you, but could he keep Dublin once you put him there?’

Since Rome, the association between the King and the Prior of St Serf’s had become a firm, working partnership, at the core of a team of which Eochaid and Sulien were the soul, and men like Thorkel Fóstri and Cormac and Odalric the capable craftsmen.

So, roving up and down before Tuathal’s pock-scarred, enquiring face, Thorfinn spoke as to a colleague. ‘Do you imagine I’m going to plunge Alba into a war for all I can get out of Ireland? My father thought he had a claim to be King of Dublin, and the Brian war killed him. No. A friendly trading-port, some extra fees, and a reserve of men I can draw on for two or three years until this country can stand on its feet: that’s all I want. And there is a limit to what I will pay for it.’