Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
To that, also, the King had given a great part of his attention, but when, late in the spring, word came of the sighting of ships from Normandy in the Clyde, he left his wife and household at Perth, where they had stayed a full week, and rode with a small retinue westwards to meet them.
He came back without warning, overriding his own harbingers and flashing through the opening gates and straight to the hall, heralded only by the flag streaming above him. The hall-door slammed.
Groa heard it, emerging from the dairy with her steward. Of the few men
with Thorfinn, she had recognised Osbern of Eu and the Riveire boy, and the sallow face of Gillecrist of Strathclyde. As the rest of the retinue began to come, straggling, into the yard, Groa dismissed her steward and went to her rooms at the other end of the hall, where Anghared, Ferteth’s wife, was sewing stockings and talking to Eochaid’s sister Maire, who was teaching one of Sinna’s girls how to embroider.
They stopped talking when Groa entered, and she could feel their eyes on her back as she stood at the window, watching.
The yard was full of movement: of boys leading the incoming horses off to the stables, and bringing fresh ones. More men entered the hall by its main door, and several times someone came out beckoning and stood on the steps, issuing orders. Three horsemen left, members of the armed household, and someone of greater consequence accompanied by three or four servants on garrons but no pack-mules. It could have been Tuathal.
Through it all, she could hear, as probably no one else could hear, the ground-bass of Thorfinn’s voice through the heavy timbers in the hall. Not raised, for that would be unheard of. But speaking shortly, as in the hunting-field.
She was not needed, so she did not interfere. A serving-man, sent to the kitchens, reported that they were already busy, having had their instructions, and in due course she and the women attending her ate where they were, in the chamber. By that time, many more men had arrived, swirling up through the yard to be sucked into the hall, as if it had become the quiet, humming centre of some whirlpool of power. The yard was still noisy with jangling harness and talk at dusk when the women had gone and the bracket-torches below the fiery sky to the west glowed like running water dyed red.
Much later, when it was dark and the yard was quieter at last, the door from the hall opened, and then her own, and Thorfinn came in.
The anger of his arrival was gone, beaten underfoot by hard work, like men treading cloth in a trough. There lingered perhaps an echo of grimness, and an echo of something else: an expression she had seen on the faces of men who have just loaded ship for a voyage. There were no overtones of distress, and none even of weariness, although she was a better judge of these things than most people.
She finished what she was doing, which was pouring wine, and carried a cup to him in silence, since any enquiry seemed pointless. He waited until she was seated, and then said, ‘Precautions, that’s all. King Edward has let young Malcolm go. He’s been sent north to Northumbria to join his uncle Siward.’
‘Why?’ said Groa.
‘Opinion varies. Duke William’s success? It looks as if he is going to hold Normandy. Also, there’s news from Quedlinburg through St Omer. Edward Atheling has a son, heir to the English throne if Edward dies. And Pope Leo is ill, and not expected to live.’
‘In prison? He’s dying in prison?’ said Groa.
‘No. He’s been freed by the Normans in return for full recognition of all their conquests to date in Italy. He wrote to Greece:
I look forward to the day
when by the Eastern and Western Emperors together, this enemy nation will be expelled from the church of Christ and Christianity will be avenged
. But Constantine didn’t answer.’
‘All your work,’ said Groa. ‘All your work in Rome.’
‘Oh, there is always work,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Only the picture changes, and one’s work must change with it. We are not dealing with Emma. We are dealing with Earl Harold Godwinsson of Wessex, who has quite different ambitions.’
‘Including infanticide?’ said Groa. ‘Does Earl Harold know where Edmund Ironside’s new-born grandson is? Do you know?’
‘What you can be sure of,’ said Thorfinn, eluding the question, ‘is that the Pope and the Emperor Henry both know, and that one is dying while the other enjoys indifferent health and has only a three-year-old son to succeed him. If I were Harold of Wessex, which I’m glad I’m not, I should send a polite embassy soon, preferably under Bishop Ealdred, to extract the child before someone else has a better idea. As his guardian, Harold would have fifteen years before the boy became anything to be reckoned with. And it would encourage Duke William to forget any silly ideas about the succession that King Edward put into his head.’
Groa said, ‘If you were Harold of Wessex, I might get some direct answers. Why has he sent Duncan’s eldest son north, after he has been kept at court all these years? Isn’t Malcolm a rival for Siward’s earldom?’
‘Nearly everyone you can think of is a rival for Siward’s earldom,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But, without a faction behind him, he isn’t much danger, although I suppose he could combine in time with a cousin or two. An outbreak of strife in Northumbria would suit Harold very well, I imagine, especially if Siward got himself killed in the course of it. They could appoint English-trained Malcolm as Earl and steer him from Wessex. And if Malcolm got killed, they always have Donald. An inexhaustible supply of Duncanssons. What’s Maelmuire like? You’ve seen more of him than I have.’
She paused, collecting her thoughts and studying his face at the same time. It gave nothing away.
‘Religious,’ she said. ‘In spite of Cormac, whom he loves. Nineteen, with a big appetite and nice manners: Cormac again. Takes a long time to learn anything new, but perseveres. All his friends are younger than he is. He doesn’t like girls, but is fond of reading and has to be summoned by relays of hand-bells from his chief joy, the herb-garden.’
‘He doesn’t like single girls. What about you?’ Thorfinn said.
‘We are friends,’ Groa said. She searched his face again with her eyes. ‘The tact did not pass unnoticed. Why should this topic matter? You talked about everything else as you usually do. Why should I feel Maelmuire is important?’
‘I don’t know Duncan’s other sons,’ Thorfinn said. ‘That’s all. Stop trying to think. You’ll grow wrinkles.’
It was said with no expectation of diverting her, and she paid no attention accordingly. She said, ‘So the precautions are in case Siward decides to promote Malcolm as King in your place? Is that likely?’
‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Or not very. We have, I admit, been less vulnerable in the past than we are now, but Northumbria alone could never expect to overrun Alba. And Siward knows that the moment he steps from his chair, a family friend will do his best to replace him. If Siward had been strong, Harold of Wessex would never have sent Malcolm to him. Harold wants Northumbria for the Godwin family, not an inflated Siward or a Scotia so weak that Norway could step in and settle there.’
‘But you are sending round to put everyone on his guard, just in case. In the spring, when they’re busy,’ said Groa.
‘It’ll take their minds off the cattle-fever,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Cease to concern yourself. My herb-garden, like Maelmuire’s, is being looked after by others. My sage will flourish without you: my pennyroyal and rue, my mint and poppy and southernwood, my parsley and radishes. Like Strabo’s gladioli and lilies and roses, I keep you for sweetness’ sake only.’
She smiled at him, accepting the love and the irony both, and allowed him to end the discussion.
So it was serious, whatever it was.
And, for the first time, he was not going to tell her.
He went to Kinrimund at the end of the month, on the heels of two silly clashes between troops from the new church-fortresses in Lothian and their opposite numbers in the property of St Cuthbert.
The results might have been worse: a number of cattle lost from one side to the other, some barns and carts burned, and half a dozen women held hostage and returned in other than mint condition.
Between feuding families, almost a normal occurrence. Among edgy garrisons, with military pride an ingredient, something to be squashed immediately. With Osbern of Eu and a group of his own leaders and their following, Thorfinn had visited the Lothians and made his views known to the offending bands with frightening precision.
That was when, without awaiting Rogation Week, the air over Alba became filled with the smell of split wood and turned earth and the dank odour of freshly laid mortar as men carried out the King’s orders and places of refuge and defence were repaired and strengthened from the west side of the kingdom to the east. From Glamis, her home for the moment, Groa moved about her concerns with the farm people and tried to ignore the rumble of wagons taking felled timber to the palisade, or men with pickaxes and shovels on their way to Dunsinane, where the old ring-fort below the watch-station had received new stone-and-earth walls, and shelters for folk as well as animals.
It was coming close to midsummer, and a time when every man had more than enough work on his own land; but Bishop Hrolf, rendered pentecostal amid the dusty glory of his chosen element, dispensed his rota of tasks with a bone-clear, indisputable justice that only the hardier ever disputed, and then under plain fear of excommunication.
It was to Bishop Hrolf, indeed, arriving unexpectedly that evening with
Prior Tuathal behind him and a string of riders as hot and soiled, though not as cheerful, as he looked himself, that Groa expressed her surprise.
‘Of course you are welcome. Breasal will show you where to go, and then you must come back to the hall. You will know: the King has left for Kinrimund. I thought he meant to take you both with him.’
Wood-flour clad the heated planes of Bishop Hrolf’s brow and cheeks and gloved the powerful crag of his nose save, endearingly, for the double fingermark where he had blown it. Tuathal, in a leather helmet borrowed from someone, had wiped his face, seamed with infilled pock-marks like a well-repaired amphora.
Bishop Hrolf said, ‘Ah, Kinrimund. Very wise. Enough is enough. No, my lady. The King is better advised to deal with this himself. A pity. For myself, a great pity. But no one can say Bishop Malduin has not received latitude. Every courtesy and consideration. But there are temporal rights as well as temporal privileges, and a kingdom must be ruled. Excuse me.’
Groa looked after the Bishop as he retreated. Prior Tuathal, also watching, remained at her side.
‘He’s embarrassed,’ said Tuathal. ‘After all, he and Bishop Jon were brought in because Malduin wasn’t doing his job. You know, probably, that Malduin wouldn’t have anything to do with the fortifications in Fife and the Lothians, and would only release his land-workers when under a direct order from my lord your husband.’
She knew. At Abernethy, when she had teased Bishop Malduin over his squirrel, the confusion of allegiance from which he was suffering had been very plain. He was Thorfinn’s first cousin, and his very revolt against his heritage had driven him into the arms of Siward and Durham. Now, with this new drive of Thorfinn’s, when the adherence and co-operation of every man was important, it was a matter that must be resolved, and seen to be so.
Groa said, ‘If that’s what he’s gone to Kinrimund for, then I wish I’d known. I would have said a charm over him, against the shot of gods, elves, and witches. Except that if the Bishop’s good wife is there, she’ll probably have said it over the Bishop already. What is the worst that can happen?’
‘That the King should lose his temper,’ Tuathal said.
In the event, it was Bishop Malduin who lost his temper, as he might not have done if Elfswitha his wife had not been sitting draped in white cloth in the corner, with her large, shallow eyes fixed on himself, even when the King was starting to speak to her. Her household utensils glittered and clanked in her lap, keys against scissors, knife against comb and spirtle and needle-case. Hitched to her girdle, a battery to be respected, as many a junior, including Colban her son, had discovered.
Now the King said, ‘I am sorry to say as much before your lady, but it was by your wish that she stayed. I repeat, however: I do not think we face war. But Earl Siward’s acts are not those of a friend, and I must take steps to protect myself. The union between the regions of Scotia is recent, and must be bolstered in time of stress. A bishop who cannot make up his mind which side
he is supporting is inconvenient. So I must ask you: Will you come to Scone and make it publicly known that this kingdom is your prime care? That, in war and in peace, you will strive, with your prayers and with what material aid you can summon, to work for the sole weal of Scotia? And that if, God forfend, a state of war should exist between this kingdom and England, or any conflict should arise between this kingdom and Northumbria, with Earl Siward or with the Bishops of York and of Durham, that you will choose to support this kingdom and no other?’
In the ensuing silence, Elfswitha’s weapons clanked once and the shallow eyes stared.
The Bishop stood up. ‘It is an insult,’ he said. ‘My service is to mankind. My only master is God.’
‘You are Bishop of Alba,’ Thorfinn said.
‘A land without priests and without churches. Where Irish monks preferred not to come. Nevertheless,’ said Bishop Malduin, ‘I did what I could. I have found young men and trained them. I have ordained those who were fit. I have performed all the offices that my calling requires, whatever the discomfort. Even when what few benefits might exist were pre-empted over my head by two strangers. That is the duty I owe to my cloth. But engage in warfare, no. Encourage young husbands and fathers to walk out to slaughter—again, no. Not to save myself from your anger, or my body from whatever punishment you may choose to inflict on it. It is against my beliefs as a man of the church,’ said Bishop Malduin.
The King did not rise. Standing alone in the room, with his wife’s glare enshrined on his right and the King, in riding-trousers and tunic, occupying the whole of a high-backed chair on the left, made Bishop Malduin feel isolated and unsure. Once, stepping out to read before twenty-four pairs of eyes, he had been sick in front of twenty-four porridge-bowls.