King Hereafter (125 page)

Ligulf said to Forne, ‘What?’

And Forne said, ‘A messenger from the south. Osulf, Orm, and Archil are mustering. He’s right. If he doesn’t get back, he’ll lose York.’

They stood and watched Siward stride out of the tent, and his nephew follow him, speaking still, with the man from Allerdale at his side.

Forne said, ‘Which King would you rather have, if you came from Alba?’

‘What?’ said Ligulf. He brought his attention back. ‘Ah, yes. Your wife’s father had a leaning towards our man on the hill. Well, I tell you this. I sympathise with friend Malcolm. If I were friend Malcolm and carried just a little more weight with my allies, I would get between Siward and his ships and dare him to abandon me before Dunsinane were mine. For whoever plants his banner in Scone, there can be only one King of Alba while Thorfinn is alive.’

A woman’s voice said, ‘No, don’t. Don’t rouse him yet.’

And another’s, close at hand, said, ‘We must. Morgund will, anyway.’

Thorfinn opened his eyes. The third attack then, so quickly. But, of course, it would be. He lifted his head from his chest and said, ‘I’m awake.’ He had thought Morgund died when Malpedar did.

Cormac’s wife said, ‘Not another attack. But some sort of movement down below.’

She looked composed, the way women could in the midst of disaster. The dying fire from the citadel glimmered on the bandaging on her arm. Neither Groa nor the other two women had suffered much hurt so far, except the pains of loss and exhaustion, and those would be worse later on. The firing of the citadel, though, had been a mixed blessing. It showed them their attackers, but it also silhouetted the defenders against the blaze.

The besiegers had cut Tuathal down by its light, although he was still alive. He had heard Bishop Jon’s voice somewhere, too, although he knew the Bishop could not walk any more than Cormac, who had done valorous things propped on the wall. If this was Morgund coming towards him, then he and Gillocher were the only two uncrippled leaders.

Of men, he supposed they had lost a hundred dead, and nearly that number of wounded. Their only success had been with the Black Hill, where his extra defenders had managed to extinguish Allerdale’s attempt to take over the crest overlooking them.

Instead, he still had a few of his own men over there, and by firing the citadel had gulled both Siward and Allerdale, so it seemed, into thinking the Black Hill was now in friendly hands.

That way, they had managed to smuggle across some of the worst of their wounded, and then the country people. They could not get off the hill, for Allerdale’s people ringed it, and Siward held the vale to the south, between the Sidlaws and the hills and braes that led to the Tay. But when Dunsinane fell, they might have a chance of escape.

The thirty or so who were left with him now were all men whose business was fighting, and his friends their mormaers, and his own wife and the mormaers’ womenfolk, who would not leave and who had been their mainstay, with food and weapons and the binding of wounds.

He saw Groa kneeling by someone now, her short, ragged hair whipped by the wind. Somewhere out on the hill, a long red flag blew cold on the bushes instead of lying warm on her breast, or on his. And beside it, the torn gown he had worn in the foolish masquerade which had still brought Jon and himself back to safety and earned enough time to make the Black Hill defence finally possible.

The pity of it was that Malcolm had been determined enough, or stupid enough, or obstinate enough, to launch attack after attack, no matter how many men he might lose, instead of embarking, as one had hoped, on a long, peaceful siege. One wondered just how much encouragement he had received from Thor or from Siward, and what the reasons of Thor or of Siward might be. Siward’s men, at any rate, had taken no part in either attack after the parley. Siward had more sense than to throw away men when he could attain the same end simply by waiting.

Except that now he did not appear to be waiting. Propped in his corner of the turf-and-stone wall, wedged into it like a piece of the masonry, Thorfinn watched the campfires blink and blink as men and horses passed and repassed, and listened to the rising hum of men bestirring themselves, ready for action.

On their side, there was nothing more they could do. He and the others were as ready for action as they could ever be, resting where they would fight. The great outer ring of the fort was long since beyond them to hold, even against a force as circumscribed as the Allerdale one. They had retired first to the inner ring, and now to the crown of the lower hill, where there were buildings behind a stout palisade. The ideal spot, of course, would have been the watch-tower on the knoll higher up, but that was burning still. And the heat, if it kept them away, would at least prevent the enemy also from occupying it.

As Morgund came over, Thorfinn said, ‘All right. Here are your orders. This time we spit on them.’

The planes of Morgund’s face, dim in the torchlight, looked puzzled. Thorfinn said, ‘No. But I don’t think boiling water will do much good this time. Leave the vats full, that’s all. They’ll fire the palisades.’

Bishop Jon’s voice, from somewhere on the ground, said, continuing a
suspended discussion, ‘And the holy nuns there, tending the heavenly fire at Kildare: what would they say now, to hear you miscall our sweet Brigit like that?’

‘Very well. In time of trouble, where was she?’ said Thorfinn. Trumpet-calls how, and orders; and a movement in towards the foot of the hill, hidden even in daylight by the fall of the ground, and now quite invisible. Somewhere above, there should be a moon. At present, there were not even stars. After the clear July day, clouds had come in from the sea, and the breeze had stiffened and turned away the lingering heat of the ground. Now the heat of the fire, too, was dying, and there was no part of his body with warmth in it.

Bishop Jon said, ‘Are ye dead or alive?’

‘Let me think,’ Thorfinn said. He saw Groa come up, and greeted her with his eyes.

‘Alive,’ said Bishop Jon crossly. ‘Thanks to the Blessed Brigit. And am I dead or alive? Alive, I say; and let him deny it with an oath of three twelves who says otherwise. As to Tuathal here, I cannot tell.’

‘I prayed to the Trinity,’ said Tuathal. He sounded drowsy.

‘Traitor!’ said Bishop Jon. ‘Are they coming yet? Ah, the music and harmony of the belly-darts, and the sighing and the winging of the spears and the lances. What about the Brecbennoch?’

‘Keep it,’ said Thorfinn. Lines of torches moving towards the foot of the hill. Other brands, higher up, held by horsemen. Of the lighted snippets that were tents, groups had darkened.

Morgund said, ‘They won’t harm the Lady.’

In the darkness, you could hear Tuathal’s smile in his voice. ‘A woman hung with a relic of the saint who would not so much as acknowledge a dairymaid?
Where there is a cow, there will be a woman, and where there is a woman, there will be trouble
, said St Columba. I keep to the Trinity, myself.’

The moon came out, and Thorfinn could see the look on Groa’s face, and then one by one the others, lying in their shadows against the wall. She said, ‘I have another cloak,’ and knelt, letting the weight of it fall to the ground before she drew it over him. He did not ask who had died.

Eochaid’s sister said, ‘My lady,’ and Groa touched his hand and rose quickly and went.

Then Gillocher said, ‘My lord?’

‘Yes?’ said Thorfinn. The foot of the hill was still hidden, but in the new silver light he could see that files of men were indeed marching out of the tumble of moor they had occupied. And the tents had not merely darkened. Half of them had disappeared.

Unbrushed since morning, Gillocher’s moustaches stuck up like tightly curled wool. His eyes were round. He said, ‘The ladies are right. The Tay is full of longships. And men are marching.’

‘I see them,’ said Thorfinn.

‘You see them on this side,’ said Gillocher. ‘But, my lord, they are on the other side of Dunsinane as well. Marching southwards.’

Thorfinn said nothing. Bishop Jon, his voice nearer and stronger, said, ‘Did
I hear you aright? Earl Siward’s men are marching round the foot of this hill and off southwards?’

‘Towards the ships?’ Thorfinn said. He spoke softly, not to disturb the sweet idea that had entered what was left of his mind. He said, ‘What other banners do you see?’

Gillocher’s head moved backwards and forwards between them. He would never lead an army to glory or out of it, but he made a good job of ruling Mar. And who else did he, Thorfinn, know who had led an army to glory? Or out of it?

Gillocher said, ‘My lord Siward’s flag was in the van. And then the flag of Bamburgh. I’m sure of that.’

‘But not Thor of Allerdale, or Malcolm,’ said Thorfinn, his eyes on the glinting shadows below. ‘For there they are, I think. Moving round to take up Siward’s positions, but more thinly spread. And there’s a new tent with someone’s flag going up. Whose? Morgund? Anyone?’

‘It’s Malcolm’s,’ said Groa. ‘Thorfinn?’

They were all looking at him. He had nothing to give them but hope, and conjecture.

‘Suppose,’ said Thorfinn, ‘that there is trouble down south and Earl Siward has had to withdraw his forces to deal with it. They seem to be withdrawing. And there are the ships. And I’m willing to believe it’s not an elaborate trick. They don’t need one.

‘Suppose that, the ships having gone, my nephew Malcolm and my third cousin Thor remain behind, no doubt in outrage, to deal with us. Will they deal with us tonight?’

‘With all that confusion below?’ Groa said. ‘And with the wounded they’ll have? Unless he’s more irresistible than he seems, I doubt if Malcolm would get Allerdale’s forces to follow him. I think he’ll wait now for morning.’

‘I think so, too,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Which means, if all our guesses are right, we ought to try to get off this hill before daylight.’

‘Now, then,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘Why did we not think to do that before?’

Tuathal, it seemed, had grasped it. ‘Because Allerdale and Siward between them had us surrounded,’ he said. ‘But look. Allerdale’s men have only got round to the north and the east, where they’ve always been. They don’t have the Black Hill, although they think they do. They don’t have the cleft between the Black Hill and the knoll here, although they think they do. We can’t get up Strathmore, because they’re guarding that. We can’t cross the Black Hill and get down the east of the range, because we know they’re there as well. But the south is open. It’s full of Siward’s men on their way to the river, but there’s no cordon resettled there as yet. In the dark?’

‘In the dark, we could climb down the steep side and mingle with them,’ said Thorfinn. ‘If we could walk. If we could pass as Northumbrian soldiers. If my understanding of what is happening is not wholly and extravagantly baseless.’

He paused. They all watched him: the dying, the disabled, the exhausted.

He smiled. ‘I don’t think it is. Let’s do it.’

He saw their faces warm in return; and then the moon vanished.

‘
A Brigit bennach ar sêtt
. I told you so,’ said Bishop Jon.

The sound of his voice, talking, was the chief recollection most people there brought away from their last moments on the hill as the numbers dwindled and dwindled, and the fit men and the women, bundled in tunic and trousers, made their way down the precipitous slopes and set off through the crowds in the dark.

The theory, it seemed, had been correct, and the slim hope had been realised. Whether through the offices of the Blessed Brigit or not, the moon stayed under cover. Those who were disabled or too ill to walk were left to the last, Thorfinn himself being of that number; and Tuathal and Bishop Jon remained with him.

Soon after the first women left, Cormac died, and Thorfinn sent Groa off with his staunch little widow. She went swiftly and without demur. The task of taking the sick down the hill would be heavy and specialised work. She could only hinder.

There was a wait, at the end, while they tried to improvise something on horseback. By then, it was later than it should be; nearer the hour when the sky would start to lighten. Already the bustle below them was lessening. Consciousness came and went, escorted by Bishop Jon’s voice.

‘Plague, tempest, and death, and men languid. Well, what saved us this day we shall never know,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘For, as you are aware, the Pope that blessed the banner is dead, and St Columba and St Brigit and even the Holy Trinity may have their prejudices; especially when faced by a man who has runes on his axe. If we owe this deliverance to the Aesir, all I ask is that you never inform me.’

‘Who are the Aesir?’ said Thorfinn, blandly.

‘You don’t know. Naturally,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘The whole army leaps into battle thundering
Albanaid!
save for the howl of the King hooting
Knyja’s
.’

‘An invitation to move on,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Memorise it.’

Tuathal said, ‘If you had allowed yourself to surrender when that fleet sailed into the Forth, this would never have happened.’

‘If Bishop Jon had allowed himself to surrender at St Cathán’s, this would never have happened,’ Thorfinn said.

‘Then there was the fleet in the Tay,’ Tuathal said. ‘And the Cumbrian army from Dunkeld. Do you never feel you’ve wasted a day?’

They were resting quite close to one another, but he was too cold to answer. Tuathal’s fingers, a little warmer than his own, touched his wrist and then closed on his hand. Bishop Jon said, ‘The jokes you are listening to, such as they are, arise, you should know, from a profound sense of inadequacy, and even of awe. I have seen men overcome obstacles such as these out of pride, and out of greed, and even, be it whispered, from belief in the power of the Almighty. But what brought you to this place, from sunrise this morning? Apart from a most God-given valour?’

A leaf. A twig. A rose. A rod. A prophecy.

LL THAT AUTUMN
, while Thorfinn slept, the red-haired lady of Alba and Lulach her son ruled with the voice of the King, moving from hall to hall in Mar and Moray and Buchan as she had done when Gillacomghain had been Mormaer there, and Thorfinn after him, and sometimes into Cromarty and Caithness, as she had done also in the years before King Duncan died.