King Hereafter (126 page)

The place to which she always returned, however hard the journey, was the monastery in whose care the King lay, and those others who had also failed to recognise when to surrender.

Monymusk had been Lulach’s choice, and she thought Thorfinn would have approved it. Its little stone church and the hall and hospice and cabins on the banks of the Don stood buttressed by the low hills of Mar, safely north of the borders of Angus, whose loyalty was as yet unknown, and south of both Deer and Mortlach, whose doors stood open to receive him if danger returned.

During the weeks when Thorfinn did not open his eyes, or did not know her when he did, no danger stirred. From Dunkeld to Stow, the country lay in its blood also, emptied of life.

Siward and his Northumbrians had gone, and the overseas mercenaries along with him. If Malcolm or Thor of Allerdale, finding themselves tricked, had attempted to drive their Cumbrians north, that bruised army, already far from home and glutted with booty, must have baulked. The first sure news of the Cumbrians was that they were marching off west, where their ships were waiting.

Leaving Malcolm stranded, naturally, in his tents beside Scone, protected only by the ranks of the disaffected: Ghilander and Kineth and Colban, Cathail and Fothaid, their friends and their kinsmen. And, of course, Bishop Malduin.

Thorkel Fóstri, the first of the northmen to arrive, with Paul and Erlend galloping behind him, was also the first to invoke the peculiar powers of the northern gods against Malduin of Alba, against Thor of Allerdale, and against King Svein of Denmark and all their lovers and kindred.

She had prepared the boys for what they would see in Thorfinn’s chamber. They came out silent, Paul with his hand at the neck of his young brother, and she spoke to them, and then let Sinna take them to the little hall outside the monastery, where Lulach and Morgund were, and her women.

Then Thorkel Fóstri came out, and paid no attention to the men in the four occupied beds, or to the brother moving about them, or to herself in her plain lay-helper’s robe, but sank down on a stool in the doorway and, dropping his head in his hands, burst into curses.

Groa said, ‘The monks are fasting. For him, and for the others.’ After a bit, she said, ‘We may all feel like that, but you know that he doesn’t. He accepts that people alter their plans all the time, and believes the art lies in being prepared for it. He will take all the blame for this upon himself. Cursing his kinsmen won’t help anybody.’

Thorkel Fóstri flung his hands down and glared at her. His eyes were wet, but he paid no attention to them, fanning his anger. He said, ‘Svein of Denmark isn’t his kinsman. I thought your father was his war-leader in Halland? It was a waste of time, wasn’t it, the months he spent with the foreigners, courting Svein and Adalbert and the Emperor, cajoling the Pope? The Pope’s banner and the Pope’s bishops did nothing to save him. And Svein took his silver and then resold all his ships to his enemy.’

It might have occurred to him, you would think: the agony she had gone through, trying to divine what had happened in Denmark, and her father’s share in it.

It had occurred to him. He was only, in his misery, pulling her down beside him. Because, perhaps, she seemed composed. Because she had been there when it happened, and he had not. Groa said, ‘I’m sure my father didn’t know what was happening. I can only think that someone persuaded King Svein that Thorfinn was planning a secret alliance with Norway. Someone like Harold of Wessex. He’s King Svein’s first cousin.’

‘So’s his brother Tostig the Frog,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘But why strengthen Siward, if Wessex wants into Northumbria?’

‘It would get rid of Thorfinn,’ Groa said. ‘Without the extra power, I don’t think Siward would have risked leaving York. And once he left York, he might not have got back, even if he lived to get out of Alba.’

Thorkel Fóstri’s eyes were drying. He said, ‘I heard there was a rising and Siward had to return. So Wessex fomented it?’

‘They meant to,’ Groa said. ‘They probably tried to. But someone else got in before them. There are a lot of dissatisfied merchants in York.’

Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘You speak as if you knew who it was.’

‘Is it likely?’ said Groa. ‘Three hundred miles north of Siward’s capital? It failed, anyway. Earl Alfgar was telling me. He was here two days ago, hoping to talk to Thorfinn.’

‘To
talk
to him?’ said Thorkel Fóstri.

Groa said, ‘I gather that, in Mercia, wounds however dangerous would by now be invisible and a magical spring of new blood have restored what is deficient.’

She was being unfair. At that bedside, even Alfgar had been silent, looking down at the closed eyes and the brown, naked body, dressed only in wood and pulped herbage and bandages. That humming centre of energy, suspended on eider-feathers, blank and pliant as wax in its mould.

She wondered if Thorkel Fóstri understood what she was saying.

It seemed that he had. He said, ‘You spoke of alliance with Norway. Was that Alf gar’s idea?’

‘Perhaps,’ Groa said. ‘He didn’t say. Chiefly, he came to see how Thorfinn did. I thought it best to tell him that there was no chance of an alliance between Alba and Norway so long as Thorfinn was alive. He said he would come back.’

‘None?’ said Thorkel Fóstri. His eyes scanned her face, as if reading the weather. In Thorfinn, unless you knew him, the dense brown eyes gave nothing away.

She said, ‘For the same reason that he would not let the north fight for him. You know that.’

‘The north fought for him,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘Killer-Bardi is dead, and the men from eight ships along with him. They tell me you lost six mormaers.’

Mael-Isu and Gillecrist. Ferteth and Malpedar. Cormac and Eochaid. Lorcáin the Bard and Klakkr the young body-servant. Hugh de Riveire dead, and Osbern Pentecost and all his men slain or taken prisoner. Missing: one hard-working, exuberant bishop called Hrolf: And killed in the field, three thousand men who had fought for Thorfinn of Alba.

She said, ‘We have you and Lulach. And Gillocher and Morgund. And Odalric and the rest in the north. That is why it was wise not to allow them to fight.’

She did not mention Prior Tuathal or Bishop Jon because they lay before him, in two of the beds in this room, with the same chance of life that Thorfinn had.

Alfgar had been brisk, bending over them. Alfgar had said that never, in his long acquaintance with hard men, had he ever come across such a stiff-necked trio as her husband and these two, and if it so happened that they did not intend to leave their beds for a bier, he did not see who was going to succeed in making them.

He had also said something about being inclined to have a short discussion with Thor of Allerdale, except that he owed him some money.

When, now, Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘What can I do?’ she gave him the answer she had given Alfgar. ‘I have spoken to Lulach and all the people who know Alba best. Winter is coming. There seems no immediate danger. The way we are, to think of revenge or retribution would be crazy. And, in any case, it is for Thorfinn to do what he thinks necessary, not anyone else. His reputation is not so weak, nor is ours, that we have to rush to prove anything. We shall all know, soon enough, what he wants to do.’

‘Shall we?’ he said.

‘Lulach says so,’ said Groa.

He stayed for some days, talking to the others, until he satisfied himself that what she had told him was true.

Earl Siward was not going to return: had not even shown any wish to resurrect the forts of the Lothians and stamp with ownership of a sort the smoking desert he had made of most of it.

The broken buildings, the burned and trampled crops of Fife and Strathearn presented Malcolm likewise with a problem in Scone. As the days grew cold, it became clear that there was insufficient food and shelter for the numbers that alone would guarantee him some kind of safety.

The men of Angus who had followed Kineth and Ghilander and Colban, and the men of Fife who had followed Bishop Malduin and the new young lords Fothaid and Cathail had families in Bernicia to think of, and hearths of a soldier’s kind, and only temporary, but at least better than this, with the cold river overflowing its banks and nothing to eat but salt stores and what you could slaughter. And even that was sometimes suspect; tainted with the murrain that afflicted the cattle that autumn, so that any beasts they had found, that Siward’s army or Allerdale’s had not eaten or driven away, or that the owners had not herded up to their invisible grounds in the mountains, were half carcass already, and were for burning, not eating, half of them.

In the spring, it would be different. In the spring, all Malcolm’s loyal men, all those who had struck a blow for the sole and rightful Bishop of Alba would come back, with their wives, to receive the land that was to be their reward. So Malcolm’s uncle Thorfinn in his time had taken war into Fife. So Thorfinn had usurped for the Crown, for himself and his Queen and his stepson, for the Prior of St Serf’s and his party of penmen and property-managers, the lands whose owners had died, leaving a line behind them that had lapsed, or whose heirs lay as yet in the cradle.

In the spring, they would come back, and would be forbearing with the thralls and the little farmers who had found their way back to their land from Mar and Moray, wearied with living in earth-houses and cabins and tents, and with relying on meal and ale given in charity. A family liked to sow its own seed and till its own land, come the spring-time. Some of them would be allowed to come back. For the rest, there were peasants enough in Bernicia and west of Bernicia to work their land for them, if need be. Slaves were easily got. And with the booty they had, they could pay for them.

There was a risk, of course. If Earl Siward had stayed as he should, and sent his ships back and forth with proper provisions, they might have got some buildings up now, and enough of a garrison, here and there, to make quite sure that their hard-won land was not snatched from them. It had wrecked their plans, that retreat of Earl Siward’s. There had been a time when, urged by Bishop Malduin, Malcolm had all but struck tent and marched off south after him. With Siward and Allerdale gone, and the King still alive, all the pains of conquest, it seemed for a moment, might have gone for nothing.

But of course that was not true. Most of the fighting-men of Alba were dead, as were most of their leaders. The flag blessed by the Pope had proved
worthless. The King himself was struck down. If Thorfinn lived, would anyone follow him? And if he raised an army tomorrow, how far could the tatters of Alba hold Scone, never mind Atholl, Angus, and Fife, and Siward’s Lothians and Allerdale’s Cumbria?

It was not hard to guess what Malcolm must be thinking, and all the reports that came north went to confirm it. Before Thorkel Fóstri went home, it was clear beyond doubt that the few thousand men who had gathered at Scone were not going to stay there, a wintry outpost in a deserted country.

And so it proved. By the time Thorfinn was rousing, at last, from his journey, Malcolm and Malduin and all their army had gone.

As perhaps he would have wished, the hour when Thorfinn came to awareness was private to himself, for both his wife and his stepson were absent, driven elsewhere by the endless cries for help, the ceaseless battle to deal with the ravages of what had happened.

The brethren at Monymusk, too, were hard-pressed by the needs of the sick and the dying outside the monastery as well as in it. The monk who, entering Thorfinn’s chamber at night, found the King lying awake and himself again thought it enough to run with the news to his fellows, and in the morning to break it in triumph to the two patients still in the outer room.

When he had gone, the Prior of St Serf, the morning bristles fringing his pock-scarred face, swung his legs to the edge of his pallet and said, ‘I’m going to see him.’

Bishop Jon, being from the waist upwards wholly restored, was shaving himself. He said, ‘I agree as to the necessity, but I can’t say I’m impressed by your chances. Your legs look like ribbons.’

‘Faith will uphold me,’ Tuathal said. He put his feet on the rushes and his knees creaked. He said, ‘I quote, in the teeth of you, St Brigit, who could hang her cloak on a sunbeam.’

‘It’s snowing,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘Ah, why am I worrying? I see you would hardly let down a thistle for swiftness and lightness.’ The scum from his half-naked jaw dripped unnoticed on to his towel, and his brow had creased in three directions. Tuathal limped quickly over the reeds and knocked on the jamb of the inner door.

‘Come in,’ said Thorfinn’s voice. And Tuathal pushed the hanging aside.

There was nothing in the room but the bed, and a stool and table beside it, and a crucifix on the wall. No longer uncovered since the fever abated, the King lay with a decent quilt drawn to his waist. Above that, the white cage of bandaging still covered his shoulders and neck and his upper arms, holding his elbows close to his sides. His hands and forearms, which were quite untouched, were folded across his chest in the only manner, probably, that was open to him. Even the battle-swelling in his right hand had gone, that showed he had fought the last hours of the day using only his axe. Tuathal had seen Norsemen on raids plunge their right hands in cold water, in the course of a long killing, to restore them.

Above the bandages, the beaked face with its tall brow had acquired no
beauty from the strictness and pallor of illness. His hair, bundled black on the pillow, met the black, bristling line of new beard clothing his jaw and the shelf of his lip. And under the single black hedge of his eyebrows, his eyes stood open within the black, stocky line of his lashes: lashes so short and so scattered that you would say nature had excelled, yet again, in the economy with which she had made him.

Tuathal said, ‘My lord King … How are you?’

‘Brooding,’ said Thorfinn.

From the other side of the curtain, Bishop Jon heard his fellow-churchman utter a sound which was not a cry of alarm, but could almost have passed for a laugh. The murmur of voices, which had only just started, broke off; and then the King’s voice said something again, speaking quite normally although not very loud; and Tuathal replied in the same tone.