King Hereafter (113 page)

Against invasion, such people would always fight, with all the skills of a hard daily life, with bow and spear and axe to aid them. What they would not yet do, and what Thorfinn had not asked them to do, was to fight as a nation, north beside south, no matter what the threat.

Between them, Canute and his sons had achieved it in England. They had had to farm Cumbria out, but Siward was England’s man, fighting England’s enemies. The difference, Cormac thought, was that under Emma’s care Northumbria had never been allowed to become a threat to Wessex. Whereas, under Thorkel Fóstri, under his sons of Orkney and Moray, Thorfinn might well command the north to come to the aid of Alba the south and might well be obeyed. But the south, witnessing the brilliant array of fighting-men that the north could so amply provide, and their foreign tongue and alien ways, might well think their better safety lay with the enemy.

In the distance, the smoke lay over the land like a corpse-veil. Over the river, the banners glinted red over the fort, and the long line of its shadow began to creep down its rock to the east. Thorfinn said, ‘He’s arrived at the coast and judged our numbers. He ought to muster and start south before nightfall, if he’s going south.’

The Norman Hugh de Riveire, hands on his hips, moved from his viewpoint to the King’s and studied the skyline. ‘Is he a man who would punish and run, this Siward?’ he said. ‘Even with equal numbers?’

‘He is not the man to punish and run,’ Thorfinn said. He turned, and the flash of his movement drew every eye within range. ‘Nor is he the kind to come north at all without a very sure chance of success. I don’t think our strengths are meant to be equal. I think he has come to a rendezvous. In which case, we don’t wait. We cross the Drip ford at nightfall and attack, or provoke an attack as soon as there is light enough.’

The Norman said, ‘What rendezvous? No second army has come into Lothian. I have heard your couriers. Not even a ship has been sighted. And if it were, there is your fleet waiting out in the estuary to welcome it. Your excellent ships. Ten, did you not say, in the Forth and two held back, waiting at Taymouth? A small fleet, but no smaller then Siward’s will be, considering what manpower he has. The reinforcements will never land.’ Polite reason vying with impatience made his French quicker and more idiosyncratic.

He added fretfully, ‘Your own new ships will come sooner, that you have purchased from Denmark. You fight now, and perhaps you throw away your biggest advantage.’

‘I had thought of that,’ Thorfinn said. Only once had he ever lost his temper
with the Normans. His eyes rested on de Riveire’s face. ‘There was a danger that allies of Siward’s might approach him from the south-west. There is no sign of them so far. But we would be as well to take no risks. The Danish ships have taken too long already. They may well arrive when this is all over.’

‘From the south-west?’ There was coming anger as well as puzzlement in de Riveire’s face. He frowned at Cormac.

‘My lord of Atholl has been told,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And my lord of Eu also. We had no wish to spread alarm. We hoped that, in time, our fears would prove baseless. We still have no proof. But Earl Siward’s delay is inexplicable otherwise. He also must know that my ships from Denmark might arrive at any moment. It is wiser to attack while we can.’

‘From the south-west?’ the Norman repeated. His brow had cleared. Given a military problem, Osbern of Eu and his men resembled nothing so much, Cormac thought, as a starving man with a knife set before a belly-piece of fat pork and an ale-horn. He was smiling at the King with something that, under normal circumstances, might have been admiration. ‘More of your cousins or your brothers marching against you, my lord? We have the same trouble in Cotenville.’

‘A third cousin, merely,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But, unluckily, he could bring the power of Cumbria with him. His name is Thor of Allerdale.’

It still had the power to turn the stomach, that whisper of shifting allegiance that Thorfinn himself had picked up weeks ago, and that Dunegal of Nithsdale’s hurried warning of danger had seemed to confirm.

Dunegal of Nithsdale had not come to Thorfinn’s standard, nor had any of the men of Dumfries and the western lands of St Cuthbert. Absent also was Leofwine, who had taken Thorfinn for King as Cormac had, or so it seemed, on the glorious journey to and from Rome, and who had stood trembling as Cormac had on the steps of St Peter’s, one of a brotherhood that had seemed to promise a future none of them had so far dreamed of.

They were not here, nor was Thor of Allerdale himself; but, after all, it was strategy such as this which had kept Allerdale free despite the wolves at his frontiers. And the wolves had not all come north. The banners gathering there on the banks of the Carron on the other side of the Forth did not include those of Orm or Gamel, the kindred of Siward’s wife, or of Osulf her cousin, whose father Siward had killed, or Copsi or Carl Thorbrandsson or Archil, all powers in York.

They did not include the banners of Edward of England, or the Fighting Man or the Dragon of Harold of Wessex. Whatever else they had sent, the south of England had not supported Siward with an army. Some of the magnates of York had not shared his ambitions either, one had to believe. Not every thane had been left behind to act as a watchdog.

But some had. And with Northumbria there, even half-manned at her borders, Cumbria had to keep guard.

So one might argue. But the arguments did not convince. For, as Thorfinn had said, his royal nephew Malcolm was not with his uncle. And without Malcolm, the excuse for conquest had gone.

Thorfinn said, ‘The night will be short enough. The men should have a good supper and rest. Let us go down.’

They strode down and found more news already arriving. The enemy, having mustered at Dunedin, was not turning south. Instead, it was marching west, six thousand strong, along the opposite bank of the river towards them.

At the door of his tent, Osbern of Eu looked at the King.

‘You are not disturbed?’ he said. Therefore, there is no danger of an attack during the night?’

‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘He’ll manage twenty-five miles or so by nightfall, and that will bring him to the stream over there called the Carron, with a dozen miles of forest and boggy ground between himself and the main river-crossing. He’d never traverse that in the dark, and his men will be tired. He’ll probably take them over the Carron and put them into the
coille torr
, the forest there, for the night.

‘By morning, we ought to be on the same side of the Forth as they are, and facing the open space to the west of the forest. There’s a Roman road there, and some firm ground if you know where to look. Bishop Hrolf will tell you all about it in a moment. Unfortunately, Forne and the Fife and Angus men will know of it as well.’

‘If they are waiting for reinforcements,’ remarked Osbern of Eu, ‘they will be in no hurry to fight in any case. Then what?’

‘Then we send an invitation,’ said Thorfinn. ‘A pressing one.’

T FOUR O’CLOCK
, nearly an hour before sunrise, the first black bird began to sing and Thorfinn moved from light sleep to full awareness a moment before Klakkr son of Bathrik, his body-servant for many years, touched him on the shoulder and gave him the sentry’s report: no movement from the enemy in the wood.

The familiar Scandinavian-Irish of Caithness was linked, as his sword was linked, with the high, cold brilliance of the moment. The dawn waking to battle, with his friends sleeping about him. The strong hand of Skeggi, still half-laid on his axe. The warm hair of Rognvald, shining like eglantine among the crushed bracken.

Odin, Father of Victory
, said the runes on his own Ulfberht axe. It lay over there with the gold helm made in Germany to replace the helm of Canute’s that had blown in pearls to the wind, beading the ashes of his forebears’ great hall at Orphir.

A new helmet he owned, and a new circlet of gold, and a white scabbard marked with a cross, and a white shield bossed in steel with a great silver cross studding the cow’s hide. And white gloves with a tunic of silvery mail, lying there in a tent that was empty but for himself and Klakkr.

Last night, the newest bard, who was called Lorcáin, had sung: a song to God, and one to the King. Every arm of his host had its priests, and the two Bishops, Jon and Hrolf, had moved quietly among them once they were settled. Sometimes, above the noise, one voice or another could be heard:
Deliver, O Lord, the souls of thy servants.… May we all reach that Kingdom. May we deserve it. May we inhabit it for ever and ever.… The blessing of God come upon us. May the Son of Mary save us. May He protect us this night
. Or a scrap of Norman-French:
Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament.…

Last night, he had listened to prayers, but had prayed to no one, for that had never been his habit. With the same instinct that had sent Bishop Jon, he noted, to pare his nails and perfect the glossy ring of his tonsure, he on the eve of battle came cleansed from a hot bath: the ritual
laugardagr
observed once a week by his forefathers, of which the other Bishop John in far-off Bremen
would so have disapproved. Despite all his years with his stepfather Findlaech, despite the life he had made in Alba, the Norse came first to his tongue, always, in a matter of war.

Soon, the army outside his tent would kneel to receive the sacrament, himself beside them. Alone of them all, he had been shriven by the Pope—the Bishop would proclaim it yet again—and yet felt no different from the man who had stood on shipboard beneath a sky turned to flame and faced death with no fears and no doubts, for on such a day it was no hardship to die.

No different? That wasn’t quite true. The wild elation had gone, with his early youth and his comrades. Still, the Normans were his kind. Like Tuathal, they liked puzzles, but in steel. They liked solving them, as he did, for the sufficient reward of achievement; but also for power, and to compel the respect of their fellow-men, and to earn a name for skill and for courage.

Such a nature had carried him into his tortuous business of ruling, where he had found himself responsible for people who owned neither ships nor battle-gear, nor skill, nor health, nor ability. People who needed a God and a leader as he needed his sword. People who lived if their leader were successful, and who bled and died for each of his mistakes.

So, now, war was different; but he did not know what to do about it.

He suspected that Bishop Jon, who guessed, and Tuathal, who knew, had long discussed how to lead him to the state of proper sanctity in which a king should dwell. ‘Pray to Brigit, why not?’ had said Bishop Jon encouragingly only the other night. ‘Goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft, if she takes you that way; and if not, enough saints of the name to see you out of any small predicament.
Mise dol a mach orra shlighe-sa, Dhé
 … There’s a fine prayer, now. It should appeal to you.’

While Klakkr brought him ale to drink, and water to splash on his face, Thorfinn ran the lines through the echo-chamber of his mind:

It pleased him. He consigned the thought, as a gift, to one of the two he held most dear.

To the other, he had already quoted Alcuin. ‘Death? An uncertain occurrence; an unavoidable journey. Ceres; sorceress; if it comes, you must wear the royal helmet. You must endure, as a daughter of Eve. That it should all go for nothing: that would be a cheap death indeed.’

Before his people, ten minutes later, Thorfinn said, ‘Every group of families appoints its protector and, when its protector is challenged, must choose which contender to follow.

‘You have chosen to follow me, as your fathers chose to follow my grandfather against the same enemy. I think you are men, as your fathers were, who will not lightly see your homes burned, your women shamed, your cattle driven off, your children taken for slaves. Let us show Northumbria what they have wakened.’

He stood, resenting the fate that had forced him to declaim, while they shook their spears and cheered him.

At Tarbatness, his name had been the battle-cry. Now he heard, roared for him, the war-slogan of Duncan’s doomed men: ‘
Albanaid! Albanaid! Albanaid!
’

A hand fell on his arm.

Eochaid of Scone, friend, priest, and secretary, said, ‘My lord King. There is news.’ His fingers and thumb were stained with ink still, from the long hours with the quill that had assembled there at Dunblane the cartloads of tenting and weapons, of beef and pork and ale-kegs and mattocks, of campaign cauldrons and ovens, of sacks of charcoal for the blacksmiths, of meal for the griddles, and of oats for the couriers, horses, and the toisechs’ garrons, and the powerful mounts that the Normans, alone among Western fighting-men, were accustomed to ride into the battle itself.