Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
As for the Lothian lands in lay possession, Thorfinn’s message explained, there certainly seemed to be some confusion as to where the frontiers lay, and to which overlord, if any, the present owners should pay service and dues. He
proposed to draw up what could be learned of the history of this area, and hoped that the Earl of Northumbria would ask his old men to do the same, when a meeting might be called to their mutual benefit.
In the meantime, said Thorfinn, since the western portion of Lothian adhering to the lands of Strathclyde and Cumbria and the old see of Glasgow had never, as he understood it, been in dispute, he intended to dispose of the land there as he thought best, with such fortifications as he considered necessary to preserve order.
To which effusion Earl Siward of Northumbria made no response whatever, although he must have received it, since Bishop Malduin’s wife was with her husband in less than two weeks. Their words on greeting each other were not recorded.
By then, in any case, Thorfinn was in Scone with Osbern of Eu, drawing maps and discussing strategy. War-talk for night after night as the lamps burned in the hall, after days spent in sport and hunting and exercise. War-talk or defence-talk. It was the same thing. The young men about Thorfinn were learning Norman-French and listened, their eyes shining, to what Duke William did, and Humphrey, Tancred’s son in Apulia, and Count Geoffrey in Anjou. It was a surprise when, just short of Christmas, Thorfinn decided the weather was good enough to take his wife and personal household north to join his two sons in Orkney.
‘And leave the Normans and their disciples?’ said Groa. ‘You’ll never get back. They’ll install King Osbern in Scone come the spring-time.’
‘You can’t trust anyone, can you?’ Thorfinn said. ‘There they are in Jerusalem with armed deacons round the True Cross, they say, to stop pilgrims biting bits off when they kiss it.’
He was not disturbed. He knew, of course, his own power over his men. And now the Normans would know it.
In a sense, they did not leave the newcomers behind. There was only one topic, it would seem, in the staging-posts they passed on their way, in the halls of Kineth of Angus and Gillocher of Mar, of Malpedar of Buchan and of Morgund of Moray, before the fires of Hlodver at Dingwall and Odalric of Caithness, and finally at Birsay in their own hall on the shore, with Otkel leaning forward asking questions, and Thorkel Fóstri and Killer-Bardi and the rest sitting silent, listening, with the Earl’s sons and his wife.
One topic: William of Normandy. Because fighting-men are always eager for details about a new fighting-leader, the questions began, and continued. And Thorfinn gave to them his considered answers, as ever.
Listening to him, Thorkel Fóstri wondered, as he had at Scone, what Thorfinn thought of this, the first of the next generation of rulers. Norway, Denmark, the Empire were in the hands of men of Thorfinn’s own age, at the height of their vigour. Such also were most of his friends: Sulien and Alfgar of Mercia, for example. And Siward of Northumbria, whether counted as kinsman or enemy, must be nearly ten years Thorfinn’s senior.
But the sons of Earl Godwin and the sons of Thorfinn’s brother Duncan and this young great-nephew of Emma’s were the men who would see Europe
and perhaps guide it, some of them, through the second half of the century. William of Normandy, in his mid-twenties, was already married to Matilda, the daughter of Baldwin of Flanders, flouting Pope Leo’s injunction, linking him not only to Lille and Bruges and Ghent, but to Tostig, the son of Earl Godwin who had married Judith of Flanders, Matilda’s aunt.
In the field, William had shown himself both brave and resourceful. Somehow he had survived the attempted assassinations, the palace revolutions of his childhood, and was beginning to gather about him men who were willing to gamble their fortune with his, as well as others who were still not committed, and yet others who might, before he grew any stronger, take any chance that presented itself to push their own claims.
He was inventive, in his tactics, in his use of equipment. He was harsh: his brutality in the taking of Alenčon was such that the war against him collapsed and men’s lives, you might say, were thereby preserved in the end. Canute had done that, in his earliest days, when he mutilated the Saxon hostages confided to him. Then had entered upon a wise and just rule, marked by church endowments and by pilgrimage.
As Thorfinn had done at the start of his reign, in Fife. And had followed the same pattern afterwards. It was a standard sequence of conquest, and not confined to pagans. Only that year, the Emperor had hanged Manichee heretics in Goslar, so Isleifr had told him.
So there was much to admire in William, bastard son of Duke Robert of Normandy, whose ancestors and Thorfinn’s were the same. What Thorkel Fóstri wished he knew was whether Thorfinn admired the new Duke, or whether he felt as he, Thorkel Fóstri, had once felt and still sometimes did, looking on a younger, able, ambitious man with all his future before him. He wished he knew, because, sooner or later, for the sake of his country, Thorfinn was going to have to choose.
Eventually, they talked themselves out; or at least the talk became overlaid by the preparations for the Christmas feast, only two weeks away, and those matters of business that had been laid aside for the Earl’s attention: the visits he had to make, and the people he had to see. Paul, at seventeen, had begun to take his share in the running of the islands under Otkel, and his father the Earl must be shown the results and discuss them; with Erlend, a silent eleven, listening avidly.
There was the building on the island of Birsay to visit, with Bishop Jon to explain the niceties of the church and of the hall, both of which were roofed and full of carpenters attempting to produce a cathedral and a palace in time for the celebration of Yule.
It would have been inconsiderate of the King and his wife to spare them their self-imposed task; to dismiss the sweating craftsmen to their homes to enjoy the feast-time in front of a longfire with their wives and children, or drinking with the Earl in his comfortable timber hall, well fired and warmly hung, on the opposite shore.
It would have been inconsiderate, and the possibility was not discussed,
although Groa, moving from hall to hall with her husband, took the chance to pack a few extra boxes with thick clothes and blankets, and spent a little time during her last call at Orphir studying the crucifix Bishop Jon had pinned over her bed and wondering whether or not it would be Christian to pray for a wind.
Just a small wind; for a small wind was all that was needed to make the passage between the shore and the island of Birsay difficult for a large number of people. A wind large enough to make it certain that no Yule feast could be held, and small enough to allow the workmen and their womenfolk and the hall people who were over already to cross to the shore and spend Christmas with a clear conscience at home.…
It was perhaps less a prayer than a wish, in its final form; but by the time the Queen went to bed that evening, it looked almost as if she had been heard.
That day, Arnór Jarlaskáld had made one of his erratic descents upon Orkney, and the talk in the hall was worth listening to, as was the singing, but it was as well that the women should know when to leave. Preparing for bed in the new wing that was not now a new wing, after the fire that seemed so long ago, Groa heard the chorussing and the laughter, muffled through two walls, and smiled.
In two hours or a little less, it would end, and Thorfinn would come in, a little drunk or more than a little drunk, as he could afford to be only in Caithness and Orkney, and so deliver himself, briefly, into her charge.
God knew she did not want him lowered by doubt, or by pain, or by despair, as Lulach had once seemed to accuse her. But, now and then, she wanted to be at his side when his mind was still and there was nothing there but the sweetness within the forbidding exterior; and the love.
She awoke to a door banging. All the doors of the hall and its adjoining chambers were fitted with strong latches, and were closed at night; to find one left loose was unusual. She lay, half asleep, listening to the blustering wind outside her shutters, and then, satisfied by the sound of steps somewhere outside, and the decisive snap as someone shut and latched the loose door, she went to sleep again.
The next time she woke, it was to the slamming of the same door and the thud of two others further away. In her own room, the door was still latched, but was rattling, with a rhythm she could hear repeated outside in the strong, irregular fluster of a wind from the east, with the hiss of a roused sea behind it.
The bed beside her was empty, but there were men in the yard: she could see a glimmer of light between the shutters and hear a flotsam of voices now and then, when the wind died.
They would be securing the boats, and perhaps some of the stock, and looking to the hay and peat-stacks. Orkney lay on the track of the Atlantic winds: every bush in Orkney was wind-pruned; every hill was marked and terraced with wind-stripes. Everyone knew what to do. It lacked five days to Christmas, and it might be, with a good wind and a following swell, that they might not have to spend Christmas at Birsay. She went to sleep, smiling.
The third and last time she was wakened that night, it was by the voice of
her husband saying, ‘What it is to have a clear conscience. My Queen, there is a gale and a high tide coming together, and the general view is that the women and children might be better off up in the hill-houses.’
She surveyed her husband. She had heard of storms great enough to flood some of the booths near to the shore, but never one that had thrown more than spray on the walls of the longhouses. The inland sea at her door might be seven miles across, but it was enclosed on three sides by islands.
Beside her, the lamp suddenly rattled and she felt her hair lift. Behind Thorfinn, the door slammed shut with a force that made her bed jerk. He said, ‘Come.’ If he had drunk anything at all, it had left him.
He had a lantern lit by the time she had dressed, wrapping herself last of all in the big, hooded cloak she had brought for Birsay. He said, ‘Have you a basket? Take your jewel-box. And these.’
What he pulled out and flung on the bed were garments of his own: a thick jacket and breeches and boots. He said, ‘In a high wind, the cloak will pull you over. Now come.’
At such times, you did not disobey Thorfinn or even talk to him. She saw the weight he had to exert to drag the door open. And that was an inner door. Then she was in the empty hall, with all the candles blown out and only some lamps guttering here and there. And finally Thorfinn laid hands on the outer door and began to move it, fraction by fraction, as if it were a gravestone, until she could force her way out. Literally force her way out against a baffle-wall of inimical air that leaned against her, pressing unevenly. It sucked out the air in her head and her lungs, and she twisted her head sharply, snatching breath from the folds of her cloak. Then she felt a hand on her elbow and the voice of Bishop Jon said, ‘I’ll take you.’
Then she was battering her way at his side, thrown by her cloak, along the stout southern wall of the building and then hurled free round its corner and sent, propelled by the wind, at a staggering run up the hill that led inland, with Bishop Jon, in leggings and jacket as Thorfinn had been, with his arm locked in hers, acting as drag-anchor and lantern-bearer at once.
She could not look round. But behind her she could hear, all over the bay, the scraps of men’s voices shouting, and the rumble of rollers as the ships were drawn up to safety, and the lowing and bleating of animals being driven uphill. Once, a dog squealed and went on squealing in pain, and a flying plank, grazing her shoulder, reminded her of what a high wind could do.
They had nearly arrived at the first of the longhouses scattered over the hillside, belonging to the families who stayed in Orphir all the year round and cared for the land and the hall on behalf of the Earl. Bishop Jon said, ‘Sinna and some of your own women are there already. They will be glad of your company. And all the men, you understand, will be needed to make things secure. High tide is at seven in the morning. It will be dark, which is troublesome, but the wind hasn’t been blowing so long. It may spend itself before the next one.’
He did not remember, perhaps, that she came from Trøndelagen and knew about the sea. Whether the storm blew itself out quickly or not, the seas it
moved took longer to reach their height, and longer, too, to die away. The next high tide, twelve hours after this one, was the one they had to be afraid of. The vigil in the longhouses was going to last for a day, and perhaps for part of the next night at least.
He took her to the biggest house, whose womenfolk she knew well. On the landward side, they had opened a shutter a little and she could see inside. It was packed with women, young and old, and with children. She could see Erlend, looking angry. She said, ‘Have you enough men?’
He stopped, his back to the wind. ‘My lady,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘We have enough men for what is needed down there, but not enough to stand guard over the longhouses; not until after the tide. All of the houses are in good shape, and there should be no trouble. But if trouble comes, it’s able-bodied people with a head on their shoulders like yourself and your friends that will be needed.’
At the door, she stopped for the last time. ‘It’s a south-east wind, isn’t it? What about Deerness and Copinsay and Sandwick? What about Sanday and Stronsay? And the Pentland Firth? Thurso?’
‘Do you think,’ said Bishop Jon, ‘that your husband and his forefathers have never seen storms before and don’t know what standing orders to give? He’s just taking precautions. Arnór will make a verse about it tomorrow.’
Someone had made a pronouncement on it already.
The Gods are never so dangerous as when they wake from sleep
. She opened her mouth and then closed it again, because, whatever she said, he would have a patient answer. St Columba, too, had been nice to his importunate gardener. ‘
Ah, beloved! ’Tis thou should be lord of this monastery!
’