King Hereafter (107 page)

The time for repairs, it would seem, was about to give way to the time for offence, if not injury.

In the end, they met among the monastery buildings at Melrose, on its river-girt promontory thirty miles inland from Berwick.

The third Abbot of Melrose, founded from Lindisfarne and Iona four hundred years previously, had been St Cuthbert. Resident in that fact was a potential profit; but it would, clearly, have to be worked for. The palisaded earthwork that once lay across the neck of the promontory, beside which they foregathered, was beaten half flat; and the huts, once the two parties of principals had made their way inside, were mostly empty and ruinous.

The largest intact building, erected beside the small church, was occupied by three resident monks, a lay servant, and a group of men from Berwick, who, under the supervision of a black-robed clerk, were carrying out and setting up before the building a trestle table with a stool for each end, and a couple of benches. The table was remarkably clean and had a patina that suggested an acquaintance with money rather than supper-plates.

The sightseers on the banks of the river, who, sensing something afoot, had been gathering for a few hours, dodged about, seeking a view between bushes. They had already witnessed a spectacle: the sight of the two cousins (Norwegian, surely? You never saw a black Irishman that height), tall as two abbeys, arriving in cavalcade, one from the north and one on the Roman road from the south, and dismounting and greeting one another.

Then the men-at-arms under the two banners, the King’s and the Earl’s, had waited outside, and the rest had got round the gate and walked talking inside: the King Macbeth with less meat on him, like a man who fed at sea, and Siward of Northumbria the way he always was, with his chest round as a shield under his tunic, and only his hair and beard greyer than you would think for a man not much past fifty.

Living where they did, everyone could identify Earl Siward’s party. It was more a family, really, than a deputation, excluding the Bishop, of course: Aethelric of Durham, whom the monks had wanted to disown after that business eight years ago, until he had had to go to Siward and slip him a bit of St Cuthbert’s best to get him reinstated.

Aside from the Bishop, it was what you would expect. Osbern, the oldest son and the hope of the family, if a bit wild as yet. Siward of Warwickshire his cousin, who was younger and worse, except in front of the old man. Ligulf of Bamburgh, the Earl’s brother-in-law, whom no one crossed at all and even the Earl didn’t swear at. And Forne, merchant of York, who had been a master coiner at Nottingham now for years, and had thought his fortune made, no doubt, when he married the sister of Duncan—King Duncan, the last one to rule Alba and Cumbria. There was a young boy with him, who would be one of the sons.

The native denizens of the no-man’s-land they called Lothian, between the Firth of Forth and Northumberland, then turned their attention to the six figures walking behind Macbeth of Alba, but, except for Bishop Malduin, who was easy to recognise because of his embroidered robes and his doubtful expression, the three middle-aged men and the two young ones were unfamiliar.

The local overlords, the magnates of the neighbourhood, who had spent a frenzied few weeks petitioning and being petitioned by their would-be superiors, had not been invited and therefore sat at home, drinking behind closed doors and not available to enlighten their countrymen.

Thorfinn said, ‘Now that we all know one another, perhaps we should sit down?’ and pulled out a stool at one end of the table for Earl Siward, as a host might, before taking the other end himself.

Tuathal of St Serf’s, sitting down on one side with Cormac and Eochaid, saw Lulach smile and shot a brief glance to warn him. Thorfinn would have his reasons for whatever he did. But they needn’t be underlined.

Already, he thought, Siward had suffered a little in the opening moves. He had brought with him the Bishop of Durham, which was mandatory, and which of course Thorfinn had matched by bringing Malduin, flashing an expensive ring of unknown provenance.

But of Siward’s remaining small group, three were youths, and one of them, Crinan the son of Forne, not only took his name from his grandfather but looked, with his soft brown hair and tranquil gaze, remarkably like Thorfinn’s stepfather.

The message was plain.
This is the new generation, who will run Lothian and maybe all Scotia when Macbeth is dead
.

If he understood it, Thorfinn gave no sign, greeting Crinan. On the other hand, Siward could not quite conceal his moment of stillness when Cormac of Dunkeld, bustling up, had drawn forward the boy standing beside him and said, ‘And now, my lord Siward, may I have the pleasure of introducing you again to your nephew. Maelmuire. Maelmuire, of course, of Atholl, Duncan’s son. You met him … Well, after a fashion, you met him ten years ago or so. He was eight. If you remember? I’m sure you wouldn’t have known him. Maelmuire, your uncle.’

Maelmuire, Duncan’s youngest son and the only one still in Thorfinn’s keeping, whom Siward had already tried to capture once. And whom, casually, Thorfinn had now brought south from his fastness to greet his uncle.

Maelmuire has nothing to fear from you now, nor have I. What was that you were saying about the next generation and where and what they would rule?

Oh, yes, one might smile inwardly. But not openly, yet.

It had been a hot summer, and dust rose from the rough flags as they settled. Thorfinn, looking down the short length of the table to his wife’s cousin opposite, said, ‘I heard about your wife. I’m sorry.’

He did not specify whether it was the mother of Osbern or the mother of the baby Waltheof who had died. The omission meant, Tuathal knew, that he had not yet found out. Like most people of Scandinavian blood, Siward sometimes troubled with gospel-marriages and sometimes didn’t. The property-deals were always carefully documented.

Earl Siward said, ‘I thank you. I have heard about your ships. I am sorry. They are not so simple to replace, are they? And the work of reproduction less enjoyable.’

‘I can’t say,’ said Thorfinn, ‘that I’ve ever bedded a ship, but I’ll take your word for it. We still seem to have some left. You wanted to talk about Lothian?’

It was hot. The sun shone equally on them both: their shadows, enormous and jagged, covered the ground between the table and the eating-house, and waves of heat beat on the tonsures of the Alban priests.

Tuathal, who knew that thoroughness was the secret of success, had long since extracted from Thorkel Fóstri all that he could tell about Earl Siward of Northumbria, and had deduced a good deal more. The hulking nephew of Kalv Arnason had been only a youth when King Olaf had killed his uncle Ølve at the spring feast at Sparbu and had given to Kalv his uncle’s rich widow in gratitude.

Then, Siward’s father had submitted to Olaf, but before ten years had gone by, his father had finished his dialogue with Olaf’s enemy Canute, tucked the Lapp fur-monopoly under his belt, and shared with Kalv the blows that killed King Olaf at Stiklestad.

The son’s reward had been a comfortable living in England, both before and after his father’s death. Siward was probably already one of the richest men in Scandinavian York, as well as a useful war-leader and a forthright advisor to Canute and his heirs by the time it occurred to the Lady Emma that
she might do worse than encourage him to take over Northumbria.

There had been no difficulty about that. Siward had merely killed his wife’s uncle, as Carl Thorbrandsson had already killed his wife’s father, and had joined thereby the bloody brethren of kinsmen whose lethal manoeuvrings had kept him busy for the twelve years he had now held the earldom.

Did he regret his exile? Had he envied Kalv, turning his coat so adroitly over and over, and at least buying back some years at Egge?

‘Envy? He despised Kalv. Kalv was a fool,’ Thorkel had said. ‘There was only one man he envied.’

‘He hated Thorfinn? Always? I suppose he must have done,’ Tuathal had said, thinking aloud. ‘Or the Lady Emma would never have risked making Siward her buffer between the rest of England and Scotia. But then, what if Siward had tried to take over Scotia?’

‘Twelve years ago? Against Thorfinn’s manpower, and his money, and his fleet? Even with England and Denmark behind him,’ had said Thorkel Fóstri with scorn, ‘I doubt if he would have got a levy over the Forth. And England wouldn’t have backed him. Magnús had Norway then, remember, and half a foot in Orkney already through Thorfinn’s nephew Rognvald. England would rather have had Thorfinn in Scotia, I can tell you, than Siward or Norway.’

And that, thought Tuathal, was still true. Despite Thorfinn’s present weakness, it was still, thank God, true. He had said, ‘And Thorfinn? He’s used to dealing with princes these days. Does he resent being forced to barter with someone …’

He had paused, having caught Eochaid’s eye, to rephrase the question, but Thorkel Fóstri’s voice, at its most sardonic, had taken him up. ‘Someone like me, from the barbarous north? Haven’t you noticed yet that Thorfinn is prouder of being Earl of Orkney than he is of ruling Scotia? He fought for Orkney and won it, against men just like Siward. His own kind. He knows them too well to despise them.’

His own kind? Thorfinn was three-quarters Celt. They were not his own kind. Tuathal had said, ‘So it’s just another negotiation? Thorfinn neither likes nor dislikes Kalv’s nephew? I find it hard to believe.’

To which Thorkel Fóstri had answered in a way he had not expected. ‘When did you ever know whether Thorfinn likes or dislikes a man? He takes them for what they are, and deals with them accordingly. It’s the secret of his success. You don’t fight the sea by getting angry with it, or persuade it to be kinder by loving it.’

The bitterness was plain for all to hear. Eochaid had got up and left, and he, Tuathal, had asked only one or two questions more.

He was not embarrassed. It merely appeared to him a paradox worth someone’s attention: how a man such as Thorkel described could inspire what Thorkel undoubtedly felt for him.

Prior Tuathal pulled his hood absently over his reddening crown and sat, his chin in the sun, bending his sharp intelligence to the exchange between the Earl and the King by which all his theories were about to be tested.

Siward’s shoulders were massive, and his beard sat like a cushion between them. The hair on his face was untrimmed, and his nose had spread with drinking, but the weather-hard skin was not the skin of a drunkard, and if the hair on his temples was thinning, you could not see it for the leather fillet he wore. His eyes were bright blue. He made Thorfinn look like an Arab.

Earl Siward said, ‘You can’t blame churchmen for getting it wrong. We can settle this face to face. I know your position, and you know mine. Earl Godwin died, and now young Harold of Wessex sees Welsh and Irish and Norsemen behind every curtain and is looking to Mercia to protect him. Leofwine’s been made Bishop of Lichfield. Alfgar’s cousin Leofric’s been given Coventry now as well as Peterborough. And Alfgar himself, of course, has got East Anglia again, so Mercia stretches from sea to sea south of us both, and cutting us both off from Wessex.’

‘I had noticed as much,’ said Thorfinn. ‘So an alliance against Mercia is what you are proposing?’

Siward said, ‘I’d be a fool if I did, seeing that you and Alfgar have been cultivating each other for thirty years. You’re better off than I am. You’ve lost your ships, you’ve lost your friends in Ireland, you’ve lost the Lady Emma and the active support of the Pope, but you’re still strong enough to stop Harald of Norway from using you as a base, and you’re no threat to Wessex so long as you get rid of those Normans.’

‘Ah,’ said Thorfinn. ‘You’re proposing that you and Mercia and the Normans and I invade Wessex and drive out the Godwinssons again? Mercia wouldn’t agree to it. And Duke William, they tell me, is being kept too busy hanging on to his dukedom to worry about the crown he’s been promised.’

The Earl dragged his fists back from the table and, opening his shoulders and mouth, stretched his sinews, as if parting Philistine pillars. Then he exhaled through his nose and laid his fists, with care, back on the table. ‘You feel no call,’ he said, ‘to treat these things seriously?’

‘Not if getting rid of Osbern of Eu is going to be the point at issue,’ Thorfinn said.

‘He’s a cousin of William of Normandy,’ said Earl Siward. His nose had begun to shine in the heat, but his eyes were wide open and calculating.

‘So am I. So are you, probably, in the widest sense. I could throw them out and replace them with Bretons,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But
they
are all cousins of Duke William as well. And would also require land in the Lothians.’ His skin, polished brown below the thin, short-sleeved tunic, showed no change with the heat. Above one elbow he wore a thick gold band of Norse design that Tuathal had never seen before.

Of his own kind
. A man not incapable of irony, Thorkel Fóstri, it seemed, could not necessarily detect it in somebody else.

Earl Siward drew breath. Thorfinn forestalled him. ‘I thought—am I wrong?—that you were one of those who voted for Duke William as heir. In which case you are right: you are worse off than I am. For whereas my wife’s family is discredited, you have just married a daughter into Norway. Wessex
may not trust you or even want you. What if Mercia and I were to take over Northumbria?’

One of the young men, the son Osbern, glared and turned to his father.

They all had to learn. Siward’s beard relaxed. He said, ‘I wish you meant it.’

‘It was an interesting thought,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I’ll give you another. I want the land west of Wedale and the south bank of the river Forth to do with as I please. I also want the rights to all other churches in the Lothians, now existing and to be established, which are not and have never been in the past dedicated to the shrine of St Cuthbert. The remaining Lothian lands and the remaining churches you may retain.’

Silence fell. Even after Tuathal started to breathe, Earl Siward still remained motionless. Then Siward said, ‘And the Normans?’