It seemed that someone had broken into the Bishop’s store-room and perhaps even his tithe-barn. There were woven hangings with Saxon designs running along three of the four walls of the biggest apartment of the timber-built palace. In front of the Release of Peter was a carved oak chair, painted and gilded, with nobody in it, and nearby on the rushes another chair and some stools with velvet cushions on them. The wainscoting under the hangings was carved, and so was the board at one end of the room, on which were set candles and a pitcher, together with a number of handsome goblets. There was an embossed silver plate.
A clerk, writing in a corner, laid down his quill and rose, with no undue haste, lifting his wide sleeve-corner over the desk-stand. ‘My lord Abbot; my lord. I trust you have had a good journey? … Allow me to offer you wine. We serve ourselves, being in camp as you see. The Earl hopes to be with you directly.’
The late King’s father smiled and said the right things, aware that Forne had glanced at him. If Thorfinn was using his old title, it only meant that he was giving nothing away. As only living grandson of a king, he could already lay claim to a greater, as his bard at least knew.
It was not that, but the presence of the house-priest himself that was significant. Crinan received his cup, smiling, and said, ‘And you are of the Bishop’s house, my friend?’
A subterranean voice from the doorway said, ‘He is from Deer monastery. Thank you, Master Eochaid.’ And as the clerk smiled, bowed, and prepared to leave the room, Thorfinn of Orkney walked in, crossed to the carved chair, and seated himself with deliberation, his empty hands on its arms. Then he waited.
The silence did not disturb Crinan. He examined his stepson as he knew he was being examined, and noted the changes.
The height was there, as he remembered, but now filled in: the great muscles of chest and biceps and shoulder had knitted across so that there was a compactness lacking before. Now Earl Sigurd’s son moved better: stood better; sat better—not, he would guess, as a matter of practice but because sinews trained to war will keep their suppleness for every exercise.
He looked at the young man’s face. Any man, if he acted well enough, could conceal his uneasiness. No man whom he had ever known could hide the signs of a leader stretched beyond his capacity. A cough, perhaps; or an irritation of the skin; or the fine play of the muscles by the eye or by the lip that no physician he knew had been able to conjure away unless he took the man’s office with it.
Here was a half-bred kinglet from the north in enemy country, with blood on his hands and the father of the dead man confronting him. What could he make of it?
In the face opposite, he could see no tell-tale signals as yet. The eyes studying him in turn were brown as a Spaniard’s; the weathervane of a nose unstirred by irregular breathing; the mouth closed and perfectly still. Where it clung to his neck and his temples, the black hair was wet, as if the prince had been moving quickly through the heat of the campfires and the September sunshine, but his linen tunic-robe was fresh: the gold arm-bands glittered under the short sleeves, and gold flashed from the links of his sword-belt, which he had not taken off.
Crinan waited a long time at ease, sipping his wine, while Forne sat breathing quickly beside him. Then Crinan said, ‘I am here because I need your help, and because I think you need mine.’
‘Not the bereaved father?’ Thorfinn said.
‘No more than the bereaved brother,’ Crinan replied. He knew precisely what had happened to Duncan: there had been no shortage of people to tell him. It interested him to know why Thorfinn had not finished off both his stepbrother and his stepbrother’s army, and what had prompted him to send Duncan south by sea, with his men. You would say that a more experienced commander might have guessed what would happen. You would then wonder how experienced Thorfinn might be.
This was not the time to probe that, but to avoid it. Crinan said, ‘I don’t have to tell you the importance of Cumbria. In return for my wife’s interest in Dunkeld, I made it possible for both my son Duncan and his grandfather to rule there.’
‘I am sure you are right. If I have occasion to see Hardecanute, I shall remind him of your good offices under his father. Meanwhile,’ said Thorfinn, ‘your grandsons will do as well under my care at Dunkeld as they would in Cumbria. Perhaps better.’
‘I think,’ Crinan said, ‘that the world will expect of you a little more candour than this. Alba is without a king, and there is no one of the royal kindred left alive, save yourself and these three boys. In two years, Malcolm will be twelve, and his own man. If you claim him for fostering, you must release him then. If you claim him as hostage, then you claim the throne also, by implication. Is that what you want?’
‘Do I need to claim the throne?’ Thorfinn said.
Crinan continued to smile, but would not have cared to admit how much skill it needed. The brevity of these responses was upsetting, and also the weight of knowledge behind them. He had learned not to expect shouting, but he had expected aggression.
Instead, neither Teltown nor Duncan’s death had been mentioned; and now this. What Thorfinn had implied was true. Legitimate or bastard and of whatever line on the opposite side, the kings of Alba had to fulfil only three requirements. They had to be of the royal blood within four generations; they had to be whole and without physical blemish; and they had to excel, in strength and in leadership, any one of their rivals.
Children, therefore, were debarred until they had grown to manhood; and so had developed the tradition by which first one branch of the royal line and then another would take the throne.
Sometimes several branches would flourish and the choice become a matter of war and contention between them. Sometimes a king would do as Malcolm had done, who had destroyed all his rivals until there was none left to follow but his two grandsons Duncan and Thorfinn.
Duncan to hold Cumbria and add to it Alba, when the time came. And Thorfinn to act as a buffer in Orkney and Caithness against the ambitions of Norway, and later, when this became inconvenient, to be killed or returned safely to the confines of Orkney by the attentions of Gillacomghain.
But then Thorfinn had killed Gillacomghain and, by taking his widow, had extended his rule to Moray as well. An aged man, within two years of his deathbed, Malcolm had been able to do nothing about that. Or perhaps, studying Thorfinn’s nature, he had reached the conclusion that nothing need be done about Thorfinn. He had employed him to help defend his coasts, and had lost some coastal bases in the process, which he might have thought fair exchange, having no fleet of his own.
As for the rest, Thorfinn had shown no particular interest in Moray, never mind in expanding his landholding southwards. Sailing, fighting, and roistering in his patrimony in Orkney were all he asked from life, it would appear; and once the handsome Rognvald appeared, he had ceased to take any interest either in his young wife.
So what had happened now, you might say, was an accident, unforeseen by anyone. Malcolm’s careful dynastic marriages in the north of England had become not a holding of hands but a barrier erected in front of his dear grandson’s face. And, baulked in the south, Duncan had made this inept attempt against Thorfinn, which had failed. And, more than failing, had brought Thorfinn headlong south to this point, where he sat among the blood and the dust, wondering which path to take.
Or not wondering. Nothing he had said or done so far had committed him to any one course of action. He had Duncan’s sons, but had not killed them. He had injured Duncan himself, but had not dispatched him. Now he asked, ‘Do I need to claim the throne?’ knowing that there was only one answer.
‘No,’ Crinan said. ‘The throne is yours by right, if you want it. No doubt you have a stout army of Orkneymen. Can you hold the whole of this country from Cumbria to Orkney single-handed? No one has done, so far. Malcolm had a Findlaech to hold Moray and a Sigurd to hold Caithness, and these you don’t have, for the lines of both end in yourself. Can you hold Cumbria against Ligulf and Siward? Can you even hold Fife and Angu
s and Lothian without Malduin the Bishop? York consecrated him, and York wants Cumbria and Lothian as well as the rest of the north. I offered you a joint rule. I did not think I would have to justify it.’
‘I have nothing against joint rule,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Indeed, I have it already. With Rognvald.’
The heat rose, despite himself, in Crinan’s face. ‘Rognvald has no claim to the throne!’ he said sharply.
‘Neither have you,’ Thorfinn said.
They looked at one another. Then Crinan rose, and Forne followed.
‘On the matter of Cumbria,’ Thorfinn said.
Crinan stood still.
‘On the matter of Cumbria, there may well be something we should talk about, later on. I shall send you a messenger.’
‘I shall be at Alston,’ Crinan said. ‘Unless the Mercians have other plans. Perhaps you could ask Leofric, should you have occasion to see him also.’
He caught Forne’s eyes, and they began the process of leave-taking, with brevity. Thorfinn did nothing to delay their departure, and gave them an escort out of his territory, together with a set of fresh horses. No doubt they belonged to the Bishop and were easily come by.
Forne said, ‘Is it play, or is he in earnest?’
Crinan looked at him. ‘I think you have to hope,’ he said, ‘that he is in earnest. A man like that, who does not know, or does not care, what he is doing, would be a threat I could not contemplate.’
Sulien watched them depart under the blue-and-gold flag of Dunkeld, and then, taking his leave of the priest from Deer, whom he knew well and with whom he had been chatting, walked across the cobbles and in through the door of the Bishop’s palace.
Thorfinn was still there, alone in a carved chair with his head propped on one hand, and his fingers masking his face. As the door unlatched and then fastened shut, he opened an eye between finger-tips. Then he said, ‘Sulien!’ and half-lowered the hand, its palm open.
Sulien walked slowly forward. ‘Father Eochaid says you are an obstinate bastard with wound-fever,’ he said. ‘I was passing, on my way from Ireland to Wales. You’ve had visitors.’
‘Alfgar yesterday. Crinan today,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Now you. An infestation.’
‘And Groa tomorrow,’ Sulien said. ‘She sent for me.’
‘An infestation,’ Thorfinn repeated.
‘You have a decision to take. I suggest,’ Sulien said, ‘that you take it when you are fit.’
‘You want to make it for me,’ Thorfinn said.
‘Of course. Doesn’t everybody?’ Sulien said. ‘Can you walk, or do we have to carry you like the Pope?’
‘I didn’t know the Pope was carrying me,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But indeed I may have to ask him to, before all this is finished.’
It was merely a quip, Sulien thought, to cover his condition. Later, with terrified admiration, he saw that it was something quite different.
The next day, the Lady of Moray arrived, and from that moment, you would say, the poison appeared to leave the Earl’s wounds and they healed. Or so Arnór Jarlaskáld would have it, who, faced with superior competition, had ended by ceding first place to the Earl’s wife and his favourite from Brittany. What Thorkel Fóstri thought, no one knew, but the formal politeness he had always used towards the Lady was now, everyone saw, of a different dimension.
The actual meeting between the Earl and his wife no one witnessed, and indeed at any time they were observed together afterwards, they appeared to be having words, so that the transformation, to the uninitiated, seemed all the stranger.
For a week, nothing happened that the watching world could lay a finger on. The holding-camps in Fife and Atholl and Angus remained, and so did the guard at the crossroads and the ferries. Experimentally, one or two of the hill-forts began to empty, as people crept back to their steadings and began, furtively, to resume daily life without being attacked. In two places, independently of each other, a toisech of Duncan’s army emerged from hiding and, rallying all the men he could find, attacked the nearest encampment and tried to drive Thorfinn’s men out. In both cases, the leader was killed and the men who had risen under him mostly died in the fighting. September waned, and the harvest was fully in, and the time for tribute-paying drew near, with no King to receive it and no King to protect anyone in return.
In Durham, the Earl Eadulf of Northumbria sent for the Bishop of Alba, whose modest hall beside the half-finished church had been held in uneasy tenure ever since the late King Duncan’s attack.
Twelve years as bishop, first to the ageing Malcolm, and then to King Duncan his grandson, had done nothing for the worldly advancement of Malduin Gilla Odhrain, sole Bishop of Alba. The tightrope he walked in the service of his various masters had already been frayed to a thread by Duncan’s ineffable siege of Durham.
Bishop Malduin had been in Durham when Duncan attacked it, and that had saved Bishop Malduin’s skin, for the moment. The best policy, it appeared, was to stay in Durham while Duncan marched north to seek out his half-brother. And now Duncan was dead; and Thorfinn was not only in Fife, but sitting, so the Bishop understood, in Kinrimund, in one of the Bishop’s chief halls, and enjoying the land that supported it.
The Bishop and this marauder Thorfinn were strangers. But men of eminence would not fail to recall that Thorfinn was the Bishop’s first cousin. No one could fail to recall save Thorfinn, who had walked into his hall and was eating his rents without a thought for his cousin’s very special position, or how matters would look to his masters in Durham. A man gave his all to God’s work, and this was the sort of reward he got. There was no justice anywhere, and life was merely a fight for survival in the face of the betrayals you received from your own heathen-worshipping family.
The summons from Earl Eadulf came, and Bishop Malduin presented himself with black rage in his heart, prepared for any sort of iniquity.
With Earl Eadulf was his nephew Ligulf of Bamburgh, and they were both smiling.
‘Well, Bishop,’ said the Earl agreeably. ‘It seems that your family contains a surprising number of quarrelsome people. Here is a man who seems to think he can kill a king and then require bishops to scamper here and there at will. Your cousin Thorfinn has sent to beg the comfort of your spiritual advice in your own hall of Kinrimund. My first impulse, naturally, was to return his messenger’s head to him to rebuke his presumption. But, on second thoughts, it would be un-Christian, as I am sure you would agree, to deny an opportunity for repentance to any man, however blackened his soul. I think you should go.’
Of all he had anticipated, nothing had been as appalling as this. Bishop Malduin said, ‘My lord Earl, I wish nothing to do with this man. He is beyond redemption. I would humbly suggest that there is no place for a bishop in Alba until the new King is proclaimed, on which I should willingly accede to any instructions you may see fit to give me. But in the meantime—’
He broke off, because the Earl and his nephew were both frowning. He might have known it. They were getting rid of him. They had never supported him. They would involve him in Thorfinn’s disaster, and he would die in Alba.
Earl Eadulf said, ‘Meantime, you will also, if you please, accede to my instructions and go to Earl Thorfinn in Alba. When you get there, you will act very carefully in accordance with some information that my lord Ligulf will now give you. You will stay with your cousin until it is clear what he is going to do. You will then return and report on the matter, if he will let you. If he will not, you will be given the means to send messages.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is this such a great thing to ask? Do you not forget, my lord Bishop, that, unlike the rest of us, who stumble on our given way in faint hope of redemption, all that you do is under the shining banner of Christ, with at the end God and His angels awaiting you?’
Bishop Malduin bowed. What was awaiting him was a tall, black-browed war-lord who sliced people’s backs and pulled their lungs out from under their shoulderblades. With the home life of God and His angels it had noth
ing in common.
‘You’re a wild fool,’ said Groa. ‘You should never have sent for him. He’ll find out all he can, and the next thing you know, the Northumbrian army will have taken over Alba in the name of Duncan’s children.’
‘Whiter than the snow of one night was her skin, and her body appearing through her dress. Why are you so beautiful,’ said Thorfinn, ‘and talk so much?’
‘Because,’ said Groa, pulling clear, ‘the Bishop of Alba and his officers have been waiting for you in the hall for all of ten minutes while you have supposedly been changing from one tunic to another. It’s going to be like being married to Edgar, who had to be found and dragged off a mattress halfway through his coronation.’
‘What coronation?’ said Thorfinn, and rammed the last buckle home, and went out, just failing to close the door sharply. After a moment, his wife shook out her dress and followed.
What lay between them was as dear to him, she knew, as it was to herself. But at this moment its purpose must only be to support him, not to compete with the decision that had to be made.
For the decision would be taken: they all knew that now. He had risen, clear of his fever, and had not issued the orders that would have ended it all; that would have sent his northerners back to the borders of Moray and allowed Eadulf and whoever so pleased to march in and take the unsettled, leaderless land.
She thought that he might have done that, after the slaughter, if Sulien had not come. Not that Sulien, she believed, could ever drive Thorfinn into a course he did not wish to follow. But he could make him pause; and consider.
The results of the consideration had been quickly apparent.
For a week now, the district leaders of Alba had been coming in, sometimes in groups, sometimes singly, in answer to the message Thorfinn had caused to be passed among them.
At first, only the toisechs who had not fought for Duncan had arrived. Then, gradually, had come some of the leaders in the families that Tarbatness had decimated, and sometimes a priest, taking the place of more than one widow and her children.
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