King Hereafter (131 page)

The Alfred he remembered had not been as sober as this. Recalling what else had changed, Thorfinn spoke with impatience. ‘I should really prefer cries of alarm to a stricken silence. The wound is healed, and I can walk and talk and even offer you hospitality.’ Then the irritation went and he said, There are few things I could have wanted more than this meeting.’

Afterwards, he wondered whose prayers had been listened to, for it seemed impossible that two people could have presented him with the answers to so much that he wanted to know.

First, that although Viger and Alberic as well as Hugh de Riveire had been killed, Ansfred of Eu had escaped, and his father Osbern himself had been ransomed and was with Duke William in Normandy now.

‘Most of them are,’ said Alfred sagaciously. ‘There’s plenty of fighting left to do in Anjou, but it begins to look as if Duke William will end up on top. I can tell you, no one bears you a grudge for ending the contract when you did, whether an act of fate was to blame, or whether you had started a war you never had any prospect of winning.

‘That is, they would have preferred easier odds, but you fought fairly yourselves, and put the Normans to no risk that Osbern hadn’t already agreed to. As it is, those that survived are going to be with Duke William, with any luck, when his great moment arrives. And I don’t think you’ll see Dol far from his side either, with Flodwig here. At least, that’s my view as an outsider.’

‘So far as I remember,’ Thorfinn said, ‘although allegedly reared on English soil, there is hardly a party you have mentioned with whom you are not interbred, myself apart. Without the help of your Norman friends, none of us would be living. If, however, you do happen to hear what began the hostilities in the first place, I should be glad if you would make a note of it.’

‘And tell you?’ said Alfred, who had not yet quite got his bearings.

Beside him, Flodwig caught Alfred’s eye and pulled a face of exaggerated abasement. ‘No. What he means, although he is too polite to say so, is tell Osbern of Eu,’ he said. ‘If you have no value for your skin, that is.’ He turned to Thorfinn. ‘My lord, Duke William has heard of you.’

‘And dislikes the waste of his stock?’ Thorfinn said.

‘And wishes the land and sea between you allowed of a meeting. I was to tell you from the Archbishop,’ said Flodwig, ‘that the Duke bears no ill-will against men who go to seek their fortune in Spain or Alba or Italy, since, when they are tired, they will bring back their skills and their fortune to the land he will have made ready for them. I am to tell you, my lord, from the Archbishop that the Duke is aware of the long association between yourself and his great-aunt the Lady Emma, to your mutual profit. And says that, since you and he have common ancestors, he hopes the custom of friendship may continue.’

It was all he said, and Alfred did not add to it. So it was all he had been told to say. And Alfred, with his endless kinship with the rich and the famous, had been sent to reinforce its validity. Which meant…

Lulach said, ‘I have poured wine. Will you have some, my lord?’ Lulach, smoothing over the abyss, or the sorcerer’s cave that had opened before him. Thorfinn said, ‘Thank you. Now tell me, how are the rest of my old friends from Rome? How is Bishop Ealdred? And how is Bishop Hermann?’

And Alfred, settled now, with obvious pleasure, into the tenor of things, smiled mischievously and began to tell him.

They stayed a week only, while Lulach had gathered from all their storehouses the hides and the furs that were wanted, and two cages that had not been asked for and for which Thorfinn would accept no payment, one destined for Rouen and the other for Dol. Of the dangers of this, the slightest of gestures, he was aware. But the borderline of danger had already been crossed when he invited Osbern to come north from Castle Ewias.

The silver he received for the hides was worth several times their value, and Thorfinn accepted it without demur, for the service he had performed for Juhel had been a considerable one. He waited only to see the ships off, and then rode for Deer, where his household awaited him.

His mind was so engaged, arriving, that the presence of Groa was a shock of delight. Surprise, at the start of a long-planned reunion was hardly a compliment, so he did not betray it, so far as he knew. Most of the best men he had were there as well, and in less than an hour he had them at board with him, listening.

There was no need to take all day about it, and it was over in another hour, after he had told them all they needed to know.

‘There is a new Pope: another reformer. In the long run, there is reason to believe that both he and the Emperor will listen to any petition we make. But, first, they have to put their own house in order. There would be no point in looking to either for six months at least. So much for that.

‘What this means to the Athelings, the Saxon heirs, wherever they are, no one knows yet. It is said, however, that the male child of that family has survived and is flourishing, although the father is not. They did not appear at Cologne, and they have not been heard of in England. Indeed, the moment the Pope was enthroned, Bishop Ealdred and the good Abbot of Ramsay, his companion, declared their intention of returning home.’

‘If I were to make an inspired guess,’ said Bishop Hrolf, I’d say that the Athelings,
consuetudonis peregrinandi
, were still safely somewhere just inside the German border, saying their prayers in Greek until the Emperor decides what best to do with them.’

‘And I should agree with you,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I imagine Bishop Ealdred reached the same conclusion about eleven months ago, as well. While he was abroad, by the way, our old friend Bishop Hermann has not been wasting his talents. His diocese is being enlarged to include Malmesbury.’

‘Do you say?’ said Bishop Jon. ‘Well, that’s a blow for the absent Alfgar and his father, and the good church appointments that have been flowing into that family.’

‘As you say,’ said Thorfinn. ‘I don’t know how he and Ealdred see themselves. But it looks to me as if the Godwin family are grooming them as a
bulwark round the Severn against Mercia. Two things more.’

He could see in their eyes that they hoped he’d forgotten, so he came to it right away.

‘It seems that Archbishop Adalbert has been growing in power during the interregnum, and he and King Svein frequently feast one another and exchange vows and gifts. Svein is still at war with Norway, with no great losses or gains either way. There is nothing to show that the double sale of my ships was anything more than a stroke of malice to earn him some silver. It is time, I think, we asked him for our payment back, with proper interest. After all, we have both a stick and a carrot. We need an ally, and we might well unite with Norway. We have a bishop to consecrate, and we might well think to favour Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg and Bremen, whose goodwill means so very much to King Svein.’

As the Bishop-elect, Tuathal’s mottled face did not change, but the sharp eyes were watching his King. Tuathal said, ‘I thought you had decided on Archbishop Herimann of Cologne.’

‘I had,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But he died in February. His successor is Anno of Bamberg. Do you remember? The somewhat acid Provost of Goslar. I am told that he would be unlikely to be either protective or tender.

‘The Pontiff cannot be much of a shield until he is established. Of the other archbishops who have a kindness for us, Dol of course is ideal, save that he has been excommunicated. To keep Kinrimund out of English hands is what this is all about, so we can’t ask the Archbishop of York, and Canterbury, of course, is another gentleman who has been excommunicated. There is Humbert of Sicily, but his power died with Pope Leo. And there are really not many left, except strangers—Magdeburg, Capua, Besančon, Trèves, Rheims, Colocza—who would have even less power than Humbert.’

He waited.

Lulach said, ‘What about Maurilius of Rouen? You haven’t told them Alfred’s Normandy gossip yet.’

He realised he was holding Lulach’s eyes, and that Groa had noticed. He said, ‘I was keeping the good news for after. But you may as well hear now.’ And told them, quickly, the fate, so far as he knew it, of all Osbern’s band they had worked with.

Lulach said nothing more, even to remind him of what he had left out. So, to end the debate, Thorfinn called in his arbitrators. ‘Bishop Jon? Bishop Hrolf? Who consecrates the Bishop of Alba?’

Bishop Hrolf said, ‘May I make a suggestion?’

Thorfinn knew what was coming, and he knew he was going to have to agree to it.

Bishop Hrolf said, ‘It is nearly full summer, and no sign that my lord Malcolm or anyone else intends to move into Fife. You’ve taken the precaution of resettling Prior Tuathal’s Culdees from Loch Leven in Kinrimund. They’re holy; they ought to be safe.

‘Why not allow me to visit King Svein before you decide which metropolitan to patronise? In the Celtic church, archbishops were never thought to be
needed if competent bishops were present. You have such bishops. We here, if need be, could consecrate Prior Tuathal, and the people within his ministry’ will ask no more meantime, I can assure you.’

No one spoke aloud the names of the counters they were playing with. Svein of Denmark. William of Normandy. Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen with behind him the shadows of all Scandinavia. And the Emperor.

The King said, ‘A good suggestion. I agree,’ and drew the meeting, as soon as he could, to a close.

To Lulach he said, ‘I thought you never meddled.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Lulach, ‘when it makes any difference.’

Because he was going to Groa, he cleared his mind of that cloud; and his body, so far as he could, of the dragging insistence of his physical longing that, without the harshest of masters, would long ago have destroyed the other harmony they had, that was equal and sometimes could be better.

He had seen often enough the men who, strung up by business or war, would go straight to take their relief like a horn of ale tossed back in the saddle, and follow it by a little banter to keep matters easy.

In all the time he and Groa had known each other, he had never imposed himself on her for that kind of indulgence.

So ran the theory.

He did not know, therefore, how, whenever he came thus determined to listen, she would take him in her arms on the threshold and seduce him.

E HAD SAID
he intended to lose no more men. It was tempting, that year, to change his mind, as high summer came and departed and still his rebels with Malcolm their leader did no more than lie quiet in the southern fringe of his country, with the colonists from Bernicia pastured around them.

The stillness, he knew, was not quite what it seemed. Thinking of their vacant lands in Angus and Fife, the young lords who had joined Malcolm, and men like Kineth of Angus must be harassing Malcolm daily with their demands, already shocked by Siward’s defection and death.

But even to them it must be obvious that their force was not large enough to inhabit the wasted lands further north with any safety. The Northumbrian settlers they had brought with them had achieved what they wanted and were unlikely to march north in anyone else’s cause. And Thorfinn believed what Hrolf had told him again in the long talks they had held before the Bishop set sail for Denmark in the handsomest ship he could give him. Thor of Allerdale, too, had all he wanted meantime, and was likely to be far too apprehensive of his new neighbour Tostig Godwinsson to wish to stir far from Cumbria.

It was wholly tempting, therefore, to send out a summons to all the fit and half-fit of Alba to meet him here, on the Mar border, and march south under his standard to fill Fife, and occupy the ashes of Perth and Scone, and bar the banks of the Forth against Malcolm.

Wholly tempting until you thought what would happen. Even if every fit man came with him, they were badly armed. No victor was ever fool enough to leave good enemy axes and swords on his battle-fields, and they had lost most of what they had. And even had they been well armed, their numbers were still inadequate.

Thus challenged, Malcolm’s rebel army alone would be enough to damage them. Malcolm’s rebel army added to the strength of the settlers, driven to protect their new property, and that of the Cumbrians, roused likewise, would finish them. And, as he had said, with the rest of her manhood destroyed, there would be the end of Alba, for boy-children must be fed and protected before they can become men.

Scone he thought of, and Dunkeld. Far up in the heart of the kingdom, they were out of Malcolm’s reach so far. He had seen two or three English ships. They mostly stayed in the Forth estuary, travelling south now and then to bring back provisions, no doubt, and perhaps people and certainly news. But only once or twice had they come nosing north, putting into slight havens that Kineth of Angus might know, to gauge, one supposed, the chances of a quick landing, or even a small party of occupation in the homelands lying untilled.

Faced with the guard-ships he kept on his coast, they had retired each time without offering battle. They would realise, he took it, that not all the lands they had left were waiting to welcome them. As time passed, more and more of the families whose numbers had been spared found their way south and warily set to work in the field-strips and peat-moors, returning at night to a patchwork of hides and timber, of woven-reed wattle and thatching: good enough in summer weather, and no loss if, running, you had to abandon it.