King Hereafter
Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
Dorothy Dunnett was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. She is the author of the Francis Crawford of Lymond novels; the House of Niccolò novels; seven mysteries;
King Hereafter
, an epic novel about Macbeth; and the text of
The Scottish Highlands
, a book of photographs by David Paterson, on which she collaborated with her husband, Sir Alastair Dunnett. In 1992, Queen Elizabeth appointed her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She died in 2001.
Books by
DOROTHY DUNNETT
THE LYMOND CHRONICLES
The Game of Kings
Queens’ Play
The Disorderly Knights
Pawn in Frankincense
The Ringed Castle
Checkmate
King Hereafter
Dolly and the Singing Bird (Rum Affair)
Dolly and the Cookie Bird (Ibiza Surprise)
Dolly and the Doctor Bird (Operation Nassau)
Dolly and the Starry Bird (Roman Nights)
Dolly and the Nanny Bird (Split Code)
Dolly and the Bird of Paradise (Tropical Issue)
Moroccan Traffic
THE HOUSE OF NICCOLÒ
Niccolò Rising
The Spring of the Ram
Race of Scorpions
Scales of Gold
The Unicorn Hunt
To Lie with Lions
Caprice and Rondo
The Scottish Highlands
(
IN COLLABORATION WITH ALASTAIR DUNNETT
)
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 1998
Copyright © 1982 by Dorothy Dunnett
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published
in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd, London, in 1982. First
published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
New York, in 1982.
The author and the publishers would like to thank the following
for the use of small quotations from other sources reproduced
in
King Hereafter
:
Sidgwick & Jackson (
The Viking Achievement
by Peter Foote
and David M. Wilson); The Hogarth Press (
The Orkneying Saga
translated by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards); Penguin Books
(
King Harald’s Saga
translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann
Palsson); Constable & Company (
Wandering Scholars
by Helen
Waddell); Pelican Books (
The Celts
by Nora Chadwick); Penguin
Books (
Njal’s Saga
translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann
Palsson). We regret that we were unable to trace the representatives
of Alexander Burt Taylor, editor of
The Orkneying Saga
.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Dunnett, Dorothy.
King hereafter.
I. Title.
PR6054.U56K5 1982 823′.914 81-48112
eISBN: 978-0-307-76234-4
v3.1_r1
Wealth dies.
Kinsmen die.
A man himself must likewise die.
But word-fame
Never dies
For him who achieves it well
.
Wealth dies.
Kinsmen die.
A man himself must likewise die.
But one thing I know
That never dies—
The verdict on each man dead
.
(Hávamál)
NOW WITCHCRAFT CELEBRATES
What is this,
That rises like the issue of a king;
And wears upon his baby brow the round
And top of sovereignty?
—From hence to Inverness,
And bind us further to you
.
HEN THE YEAR
one thousand came, Thorkel Amundason was five years old, and hardly noticed how frightened everyone was. By the time Canute ruled England, Thorkel was nineteen and had heard as much about the old scare as he wanted, from the naked lips of men who might be able to read and to write, but who wouldn’t know one end of a longship from the other.
He understood that folk had thought the Day of Judgement was coming, because a thousand years had passed since the White Christ was born, in that age when the Romans had conquered the world.
All the world, that is, except for the north.
The Romans had not conquered Denmark, or Norway, or Sweden. They had not conquered Ireland, or his own Orkney islands, or Iceland to his north. They had overcome England, beginning in the toe and pushing north until they stuck on the border of Alba and built their frontier wall there, stretching from sea to sea.
The barbarians who followed the Romans had learned all about the White Christ by the time that Charlemagne and the Pope had formed their big new Empire over the ocean. The Vikings who followed the barbarians liked the old gods.