Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
Orm’s cousin Gunnhild of Lade had been the first wife of King Svein of Denmark. ‘Lusty,’ said Sigrid, Groa’s sister.
‘So said Gunnhild?’ Groa enquired.
‘So say I,’ answered Sigrid austerely. ‘You will be lucky to get through your first night unmolested. Whether or not your husband will protect you, I suppose you know best. A barren woman has few defences.’
‘Thorfinn?’ Groa called. ‘Will you protect me from King Svein’s advances?’
‘I never saw any harm,’ Thorfinn called in reply, ‘in a little rape in the
autumn. Svein has seven concubines, Guthorm says. He wrote the names down for me.’
‘Is he joking?’ Sigrid said. ‘He does not smile.’
‘Thorfinn never smiles,’ said the Lady of Alba. ‘Perhaps King Svein of Denmark is a merry man, of the kind a woman can warm to.’
For three weeks after the King of Alba’s arrival in Denmark, the Danish court feasted its eyes on the red hair of the Lady of Alba, lit by the October sunshine of the day and the wax lights of the night at the banquet table.
During that time, no business was discussed nor any untoward approach made on either side. At the gates to Aalborg, King Svein had ridden forth to meet his guests and, taking the hand of the Lady, had chastely kissed her, according to custom, on either cheek.
The flawless face had not escaped his observation. Neither had the brown, unwinking gaze of the King of Alba, or the fact that the magnificent horses he and the Lady Groa were riding were certainly not from the stables at Borglumkloster and must therefore have sailed here from Alba.
The only exchange between himself and the Lady had occurred at the doors to the guest-quarters, where she had paused, glanced about, and remarked, ‘Is there not a strong smell of fish?’
To which King Svein had replied quickly. ‘In your own quarters, no. In fact, they have been newly built for that reason. The odour elsewhere will, I am told, disperse before very long.’
And had broken off because the King of Alba, looking down at his wife, had said forbiddingly, ‘And because of the niceness of your senses, must complaint and contumely attach itself to the simplest of functions? Isleifr has passed through, that is all, with his bear. King Svein welcomes everyone, yourself included.’
Smiling a little, King Svein led his guests to their residence.
He had been right. Seventeen years evidently blunted the appetite, even for luxuries: for fire and sweet fruit-flesh; for deep wine and honey. And there was no haste, for in some things he liked to think of himself as an artist, and this Lady would sleep here all winter.
Such was still the pattern when in November the priest Sulien and his servants rode into Aalborg with his baggage and two mule-loads of red Pingsdorf stoneware full of good Rhenish wine.
Groa was absent from the guest-quarters, staying at the hall set aside for her parents. Sulien paid his respects to the King, proffered his gift from the vineyards of Germany, and, on being allotted both a welcome and a guesthouse, found his way at length to the hall of Alba, bearing a spouted pitcher and two matching beakers.
The hall was full of men: well-dressed chieftains from Orkney and Caithness, stalwart landed-men from Moray and Angus and Perth, from the hilly land to the south, and from the Cumbrian beaches and mountains, mixed with young hirdmen of Svein’s, of their own standing and calibre.
The Bishop of Alba was not present, and Sulien saw only two priests:
Eochaid, now Prior of Scone, who had been with the household since the killing of Duncan, and Tuathal, the man Thorfinn had made Abbot of the Culdees of Loch Leven. Arnór Jarlaskáld, he noticed, was not of the party.
Then Thorfinn saw him and, waiting for him to approach, said, ‘You don’t look any different. You have come from the Pope’s synods at Rheims and at Mainz? Bishop Walo returned three days ago, travelling cross-country riding his crozier. There has been a lot of whispering.’
‘The Pope and Archbishop Adalbert spent a lot of time talking of Denmark. I have enough wine for two,’ Sulien said.
Then unless you want two other people to have it, you had better come into my chamber,’ Thorfinn said; and about him, men smiled: even men from Angus and Perth.
In the chamber, Sulien said, ‘They appear, poor fools, to tolerate you. I didn’t think it was possible.’
‘You would be surprised,’ Thorfinn said, ‘what money can do. All right. Tell me about Bruno. Or I shall tell you. Military, forty-seven, and not averse to using his head. Warms the Lateran chair for five minutes, and then marches north from Rome into Germany and, with the sword of anathema, helps his cousin the Emperor put down rebellions in Lorraine and Flanders. Tours Alsace; honours, at a price, the churches of kinsfolk; keeps a promise to consecrate the church of St Remigius, Apostle of the Franks; and throws in a synod that demands the presence of all good-living French bishops just when their liege lord King Henry wants them somewhere else fighting for him. Whose bad planning?’
‘The Pope’s, if you like,’ Sulien said. ‘He’s apt to follow an impulse, and he hasn’t got his household together yet and won’t until the Lorraine business is safely over and he can call in some of his relatives from that quarter. The fund-raising was sensible enough. He’s got rich brothers and sisters and cousins he can milk all over Rhineland and Burgundy and the Vosges, and he needs money if he is to begin to do anything. Apart from pilgrims’ offerings, he’s got virtually nothing else. Between them, the Saracens and the Greeks and the Normans have overrun the papal lands in south Italy, and the princes of the Roman Campagna have whipped away what the church used to have there. The mistake, I think, was in holding the synod in France.’
‘The King thought he was poaching?’
‘The King agreed at first, and then someone persuaded him that he would lose face and authority if he let the Pope come in and harangue his bishops. A two-day fever and a discreet cancellation would have saved everyone’s face.’
‘But instead?’
‘But instead the synod was called, with excommunication for any French bishop who chose to march instead to King Henry’s battles. Which, naturally, most of them did, since their livelihood depends on King Henry and not on Pope Bruno-Leo. Thorfinn, why are you so interested in Pope Leo?’
‘Because I enjoy listening to a Breton scion trained in Scotland and Ireland and about to join a major Welsh monastery discoursing on the troubles of the Coarb of St Peter. What else happened at Rheims?’
‘I’ll tell you if you tell me what you’re doing in Denmark. And without Bishop Malduin,’ Sulien said.
‘Do you want your wine back, too?’ Thorfinn said. ‘I shall do what I can.’
It was no longer so simple as once it had been; but it was not difficult. Sulien said, ‘We are very autocratic, of a sudden, for a half-breed pretender on a precarious throne? Go on. I doubt if Groa hears quite everything. You have to talk to someone.’
The sound of singing, muffled, came through the wall, and of talking and laughter.
Inside, the fire-basket glowed and flickered between the two men, and red light sank through the beaker in Sulien’s hand and glared on the King’s jagged profile: the cheek-knob, the scimitar nose, the globe of the brow beneath the Indian-black hair. ‘If I began, I should never stop talking,’ Thorfinn said. His eyes did not lift. ‘So tell me what happened at Rheims.’
Sulien studied him. Then, smiling a little, he lifted his beaker, drained it, and, setting it down, folded his arms and leaned back.
‘Two things you should know about,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps three. Make sure, when you become king of the Western world, that your servants know how to control the enthusiasm of your subjects. The crowds for the consecration of St Rémi were such that the brethren could neither get into the church nor the Pope leave his house, and the relic, which the Pope at first carried on his own shoulders—’
‘Weeping?’ said Thorfinn.
‘Weeping, as you say—caused such a surge of the population that a fair number were trampled to death when it issued, and the bearers finally had to pass the saint’s body into the new church by way of a window.… Do not underrate, in your calculations, the hunger that poor men feel for spiritual comfort. The people stood in the open all night, their torches burning, and sang.’
‘One must worship an oak if one is to live under it,’ Thorfinn said. ‘What do you want with my knife?’
Sulien finished the nimble movement by which he had drawn it out of its sheath, and turned its blade so that the runes, small as they were, sparkled red. ‘To live under two oaks,’ Thorfinn said, ‘doubles the duties, but also imposes a sense of proportion. You said there were three things I ought to know about.’
‘There appear to be more,’ Sulien said. He laid the knife down. ‘The Pope spoke against simony, and altars served by laymen, and incestuous marriages, and the abandonment of legitimate wives for adulterous unions; against monks and clerics abandoning the habit or making war; against thefts, injustices to the poor, sodomy, and various heresies. The churchmen present were then asked to declare on oath that they had never bought or sold holy office. But you don’t want to hear about all that.’
There was a short silence. Thorfinn said, ‘I have never seen you so angry. I thought it was with me.’ He waited, and then said, ‘So, he spoke against all
those things, and then he acted in a way you did not like. Tell me. He may still be a good man.’
‘He
is
a good man,’ Sulien said. ‘He excommunicated, of course, those bishops who obeyed the King of France and failed to attend, including Beauvais and Amiens, strong adherents of Boulogne and Flanders. He denounced Geoffrey of Anjou for imprisoning a bishop of the opposite faction and Theobald of Blois for setting aside his wife, whose family also opposed Anjou. Two counts were excommunicated for incest, both of them sympathetic to Flanders. Geoffey of Coutances, whose kinsman Nigel-Constantine led a revolt against Duke William of Normandy, was allowed to keep his expensive bishopric, but the Archbishop of Rheims, Primate of all Gaul, was accused of simony and told to report to the Easter synod at Rome, having also relinquished a monastery the Pope thought should properly belong to Toul, his own bishopric. Does this mean anything to you?’
‘It means something to
you
. Go on,’ Thorfinn said.
‘This time you are
my
confessor?’ Sulien said. He drew a steadying breath. ‘You must judge. The Bishop of Nantes has been deposed and is to be replaced by the abbot of Hildebrand’s monastery in Rome. That offers control of the mouth of the Loire, where the King of France, you will remember, is lay abbot of St Martin’s of Tours.’
‘That, I imagine, is going to unsettle a lot of people, including Eachmarcach,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And so I expect he also said something about Dol.’
‘The Pope,’ said Sulien, ‘entertained a serious complaint by the clerics of Tours against Dol in Brittany. Archbishop Juhel has been likewise commanded to appear at the synod at Rome to defend himself. I can see, now, that you are listening.’
‘I am listening. Is there anything more?’
‘Trifles. He forbade Baldwin of Flanders to marry his daughter to Duke William of Normandy, who is descended, as she is, from Duke Rollo.’
‘Is she?’ said Thorfinn. ‘Matilda?’
‘Through Adela, the wife of her great-grandfather,’ Sulien said. ‘Their children would be idiots. The Emperor is suspicious of Normandy and Anjou. The Emperor is quelling a war with Flanders and Lorraine. The Pope is acting accordingly. You should meet him,’ said Sulien. ‘You would get along famously.’
He regretted it as soon as he said it. But Thorfinn only grunted and, rising, collected his beaker and refilled it and his own. ‘No one likes to be wrong,’ Thorfinn said. He brought the wine back and set it down. ‘I tried to tell you that board-games are inescapable. Since Charlemagne’s time, the Emperor of the Romans has protected the Pope. Bruno has to consider his interests or lose any power for good he may have.’
Thorfinn moved away and sat down again. ‘Anyway, the picture isn’t as one-sided as all that. The Pope is opposing Lorraine even though they are closer in kinship to him than to the Emperor. Geoffrey of Anjou is stepfather to the Emperor’s wife. In continuing the case against Dol, the Pope is doing
the French King a service. You said the English legates to Rheims were all of Emma’s faction.’
‘I’m sure Walo told you who they were,’ Sulien said. ‘All three are related; all three speak Bruno’s dialect. The two abbots work together closely for trade and have mint-rights all over England, and especially in Somerset. The Bishop of Wells, also in Somerset, used to be Canute’s priest. Is there anything else I can tell you?’
‘Now
I
am the person you are angry with. You know why I am in Denmark,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Now Norway is cut off by war from the Archbishop of Bremen, I am free to consider what the church of Bremen can offer me. I know Walo argued a case for Denmark at Mainz, but what happened no one, naturally, is likely to tell me.’
‘What happened at Mainz? A confrontation between Denmark and Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen,’ Sulien said. ‘They’ve been testing each other’s strength ever since Svein came to the throne. Now Svein is demanding an archbishop of his own so that Denmark can rule its own church; and Adalbert doesn’t like it.’
‘Svein would need a lot of new bishops,’ Thorfinn said. He looked thoughtful.
‘Which either Adalbert or the Pope would have to consecrate. Therefore, deadlock exists at the moment,’ Sulien said.
Thorfinn continued to look thoughtful. He said, ‘What is higher than an archbishop? A patriarch? How many of those are there?’
‘Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch … five, I should think,’ Sulien said. ‘No, that’s impossible. For Adalbert to make himself into a new patriarch, he would have to seed the north with archbishops like dandelions.’
‘I don’t think,’ Thorfinn said, ‘that I could come to care for archbishops like dandelions. A few modest bishops is all I require. Now Duncan’s sons are growing up and Bishop Malduin is still paid and supported from York, I need lettered men I can rely on, to train our own young men and ordain them. You know all that. For generations, we’ve taken them from Ireland. It worked, in a way, because the same families ruled in both countries, but it gave Alba no chance, in bad times, under bad rule, to develop a strong church of its own. The result has been poor husbandry and rank ignorance. Germany has monks who speak both our languages.’