King Hereafter (132 page)

It was natural, too, if they allowed their cattle to drift into the empty grasslands that had once belonged to Fothaid or Cathail or some of their kinsmen. When the time for the hay-cutting came, they would crop theirs as well. And, long before that, would have been through the ruins of every house, picking out what was of value.

As people spread, quarrels broke out. Someone moved without leave into the substantial holding that had been the chief hall of Mormaer Kineth in Angus. It had been empty but for a steward, put in by Lulach to safeguard the kale and the bere and the livestock with some hired men and slaves.

The family who took it over, with their household, ran to a fair number of men and offered no violence, beyond waiting until the steward was out on his business and then simply barring the doors of the main hall against him.

To any attempt to get them out, however, whether by the lawful steward, outraged, or by their less fortunate and equally furious neighbours, they made it clear by the numbers and display of their weapons that violence was what they would offer.

It had to be dealt with, and Thorfinn took what men he had and flushed them out, hanging the ringleader. He had a suspicion, which no one was able to confirm, that the dead man had been a former crony of Kineth’s.

He understood, by that time, that a good many of the sudden brawls that would break out in one or other of the half-empty provinces were not entirely due to the heat, or the stresses of war and exile and loss, and anxiety over what was still to come. They were fights between factions.

On the one side, and still by far the larger, he believed, were the men who had fought beside him last summer, and who still supported him.

On the other were those who had not openly defected with Malduin and the rest, and who had not yet opposed him face to face in the field. But Malcolm, one now realised, had not been idle in his new house on the slopes of Dunedin. There was many a man in Alba whose mormaer was dead, and who did not mind who his next lord would be, provided that he had a firm undertaking that his land would not be broached, or his wife raped, and that
under Malcolm he could continue to thrive and even grow wealthy without having, this time, to fight for it.

There were some, toisechs or of mormaers’ families themselves, who had only accepted himself as their King because he had done exactly this: wasted their land and left them with no alternative but to prostrate themselves and their families in another war.

There were men who resented him for other reasons, some of them old, and some very new. He had heard that kind of grumbling often enough, and knew when to turn a deaf ear to it. But the first time he heard what they were now saying, shouted at him out of a crowd as he made one of his early testing rides out of Mar and into the edges of Angus and Atholl, set his teeth on edge, although he showed nothing of it, he thought.

There was no quick reply that could satisfy, and so it was best to make no answer at all, except what might be conveyed by his presence unarmed among them, and a hard morning’s work, dispensing news and justice, advice and practical help.

A week or two later, something happened that he had to take note of as well. He did not speak of it. There was nothing concrete, and certainly no concerted movement against him. To build forts and put Moray men into them, or men from the north, would be the silliest response he could make. But, in the meantime, he put aside any idea of raising Scone or Perth or Dunkeld and setting himself there again, under his banner of Alba. The provocation might cost more than the gesture. And the ribbon-pattern, he now knew, had changed subtly again.

To Groa he said nothing at all, and very little to anyone else. He received his friends from Orkney and Caithness as he normally did when their ships were passing, and collected their news. He learned that the new Pope had honoured the promise made by the old to Isleifr, and that next year Gizur’s son was to travel from Iceland to Bremen to receive his staff and his ring as a bishop.

Thorfinn received, and shared with Groa, news of her father and mother in Denmark, and apprehended that the arrival of Bishop Hrolf there had caused great amazement, not to say admiration, and that King Svein, who had a fancy for practical jokers, had announced that he was going to keep the Bishop all summer and make him a sending-home gift of every girl he got demonstrably pregnant.

(‘Maire will be sorry,’ said Groa.

‘
What!
’ said Thorfinn.)

About King Svein’s response on the matter of money, no one had heard even a rumour.

There was no word from or about Alfgar in Ireland. The western islands, once the clearing-house for all such gossip, were no longer so easy of access without a powerful fleet. With Diarmaid’s Dublin ships on the look-out on one side and Allerdale’s vessels patrolling from Cumbria to the Clyde, not so many knörrs now would sail from the Garonne and the Loire and share their cargo between Dublin and Orkney. Diarmaid did not care for it.

There were exceptions. Among them were two elegant ships from the
Rance who sailed between Orkney and Caithness one day and arrived at Inverness with Odalric aboard, picked up for pilot.

Lulach came for his stepfather, and Thorfinn rode to Inverness himself to look at the cargo. It was everything he could have wished, and he was able to pay for it all, because just then Bishop Hrolf arrived home, with no feminine company, but conveying a box holding three times the silver Thorfinn had paid for the fifteen ships ordered from Denmark.

As well as the cargo, the two ships from the Rance came with presents. Odalric and Lulach were both with Thorfinn when he opened the boxes and unloosed the mouths of the bales.

Inside were such things as he had forgotten just lately to think of. Wine and spices; oil and basalm. And bale upon bale of exquisite silk.

There were no elephants woven into it, but it was not hard to imagine somewhere the lions of Tancred. Or the mark of Coutances, as Bishop Geoffrey paved his way into heaven. Although, of course, the articles had ended up not in his church but at the feet of the terrestrial lord who could serve Bishop Geoffrey’s church best.

‘And those?’ Lulach had said, indicating the chests still unopened in one corner. ‘Still more gifts?’

And Thorfinn had said, ‘No. Those were paid for. In silver from Bishop Hrolf’s hoard.’

‘How else would you pay for them?’ Lulach had commented.

Thorfinn did not look up or make an answer: Odalric would see nothing in it. But he remembered the very tone of the remark when, many days later, he was back south, and round a council-table somewhere, and the doors were closed and the chests opened.

Inside was what William of Normandy had sent him, and what he had paid for in silver. There was a top cover of spoiled hide, roughly cured with the scuffed hair still on it, and similar skins between layers, so that when the lid was prised off, it smelt like the shed of a tanner.

Between the layers flashed steel. A great deal of it, neatly arranged and packed with economy. Spearheads and axe-blades. Two-edged swords, some with their handles and some still to be fitted. Knives of the same order. And in another and larger box, helms of a kind they had become familiar with very recently, and suits of mail: just two of them, of the sort boys had pointed and laughed at when they had seen them carried, hung on their poles, into or out of Osbern of Eu’s tent.

The dismay, lowering upon him from all round the table, was as ripe as the hides in the box. Thorfinn said, ‘This box I shall have taken and buried. It came with the rest, and I have paid for it, but I do not propose to wear the marks of vassaldom yet. It is there, however, and if some day it means safety instead of annihilation, any one of you may dig it up and make use of it. As for the rest, we fought the last war with steel bought in Germany, and so probably did Thor and Siward.’

‘My lord …,’ said Tuathal. His rugged face looked no different, although he was a bishop now, in the Celtic fashion, without, as yet, the consecration
the Roman obedience demanded. The silk in one of Duke William’s bales would make him a cope more splendid than any Malduin had had.

Tuathal said, ‘My lord, we are grateful to be taken into your confidence.’

Which, one had to admit, was discretion itself. Thorfinn said, ‘Whoever follows after me will have no trouble in picking the reins up. What you know is all there is to know. I only showed you so that you may bear it in mind in any negotiations we may have with Earl Tostig. Earl Tostig is married to Judith of Flanders. And Judith of Flanders is aunt of the half-blood to Duke William’s wife Matilda.’

Someone had half-worked it out. Gillocher of Mar was illumined. ‘Which makes Earl Tostig of Northumbria into Duke William’s uncle!’ he said. ‘So
that’s
why there’s been no aggression. No attack through the summer. No effort to give Malcolm an army. My lord, do we have an ally in Northumbria now?’

‘I should be happy to think so,’ said Thorfinn politely. ‘But, in that case, who are the spearheads destined for?’

It was Tuathal the realist who answered. ‘You. Or Tostig. Or Malcolm. And either end of them, at that. I don’t think Normandy minds in the least which.’

‘Well, Bishop Tuathal,’ Thorfinn said. In Tuathal’s clever face he could see every nuance of his voice striking home, and he knew Tuathal would guess already what his next words were going to be. ‘Well, Bishop. In that case, whom do we favour for your consecration? Archbishop Maurilius, I think you mentioned?’

The Archbishop of Rouen. Duke William’s Archbishop. Whom Tuathal had certainly mentioned.

Another thing he liked about Tuathal was that when he lost a point, which was seldom, he always conceded it freely. Now he said, ‘How wrong I was. I suppose, of all the names we discussed, only Adalbert of Bremen or the Pope himself will serve us now. Would you say?’

It was Hrolf, newly back from Svein of Denmark, to whom he appealed. Bishop Hrolf, thinking, put his fingers together in the way in which, in more carefree times, he would prepare to horrify his observers with the double-jointed collapse of each digit.

He did it now, out of habit, and they all watched his thumbs hanging outside his joints without a quiver. He put them all back, abstractedly.

‘At first impression, a determinedly frivolous man,’ he said. ‘King Svein of Denmark. But to repel, for all these years, the attacks of a soldier of international repute such as Harald of Norway argues great skill as well as great perseverance. So one overlooks the juvenalia.’

Gillocher, in what he thought was a whisper, said, ‘He wouldn’t try any girls? Or he couldn’t get any pregnant?’

‘My lord Gillocher,’ Thorfinn said. ‘You are saying that when next I have an embassy for Denmark, you would like me to send you?’

Although, as now, he had sometimes to be kept in order, everyone liked Gillocher. His wife was a different matter.

‘My lord King,’ said Gillocher. ‘No, my lord King. You must have mistaken what I was saying.’

‘I hope so,’ said Thorfinn. ‘My lord Bishop. You found King Svein shrewder than he appears, with which I should agree. And on good terms with the Archbishop of Bremen, you said. And shamefaced, a trifle, over the matter of the alienated ships, in which you could discern no permanent malice?’

‘No one could be sure,’ Bishop Hrolf said. ‘But I think not.’

Thorfinn said, ‘Our aim in meeting the Pope was to obtain the services of the best missionary bishops in western Europe, which we now have, in a context that did not associate us necessarily with the Metropolitan of Hamburg and Bremen and his Scandinavian empire.

‘We have Bishop Jon and Bishop Hrolf, but we no longer have the same Pope, nor do we know his mind on the subject of Archbishop Adalbert. All we know is that Norway is no longer under Adalbert, because of Adalbert’s associations with England.

‘Now England’s Archbishop is excommunicated, the only risk, so far as we are concerned, is that Norway may again ask to enter Bremen’s authority. While Norway and Denmark are at war, I don’t think that is likely. And, despite what he did, I think that for us King Svein is still the better ally.

‘It would appear that he thinks so, too, or he would never have repaid our silver. Let us cultivate him. Let us appease Adalbert, who is still admired by the Emperor. Let us, in time, try to form with this new Pope the bond we had, or were beginning to have, with Pope Leo. Let us request Archbishop Adalbert to consecrate Bishop Tuathal, and if, Bishop Tuathal, it displeases you, then let us dismiss the idea.’

Tuathal said, ‘He is not a man I admire. I don’t see who else could do it. Yes. I agree. When and where?’

‘I was going to suggest,’ Thorfinn said, ‘next year, perhaps, with Isleifr?’

The resistance died out of Tuathal’s face until it looked smooth as a pool in a rainstorm. He said, ‘Isleifr’s getting his bishopric? There won’t be a sane man on Iceland all winter. My God …’ He looked at Bishop Jon and back again. ‘What will he take to Saxony this time?’

‘You,’ said Thorfinn peacefully.

Adapt, and adapt. There came news of another conflict, a bad one near Abernethy, with several people killed. As before, it seemed to Thorfinn that agents had been working among the few modest families who had returned there. He found out and tried the aggressors, and again dealt with them summarily. Before it ended, there was some fighting, and this time, he knew, he had been observed.

Tuathal had been there, in a leather jacket and not yet in the Saracen silks. Riding back, Tuathal said, ‘If you must do that, my lord King, you will need a left-handed sword.’

He did not intend to discuss the matter. He had said briefly, ‘It is only a matter of time. It isn’t worth it.’

‘Then meantime,’ Tuathal had said, ‘you had better leave the fighting to others. They tell me at Kinrimund that the trouble in Fife seems to be spreading.’

‘Would you like me to take the monks out?’ Thorfinn said. They were brave men, and a civilising influence, even though the coastal regions were his and there was always a ship there as safeguard.

‘They wouldn’t go,’ Tuathal said. ‘No. It occurred to me that, nuisance though they are, these particular trouble-makers would be unlikely to slaughter a bishop. I thought of returning to Loch Leven, if you would allow me. In full bishop’s attire, if such could be managed. Then at least they would have justice of a sort, and someone to appeal to.’