To them all, Thorfinn had said the same thing. ‘This is your country. I do not want it, but you have no other protector in Alba. South of Alba, there are many men who would gladly govern, in the name of King Duncan’s children, for the ten years it would take for King Duncan’s heir to gather and lead his own army.
‘The choice is yours. If I rule, I rule as king, by right of royal descent, not as tutor to the sons of my half-brother. If you wish to give Alba to the Earls of the south, I shall return to Moray, and to my own Caithness and Orkney.’
And the bolder of the chiefs from Angus and Atholl and Fife and Strathearn replied in the same way. ‘If you were to rule, prince, who would be your mormaers? Men of Orkney?’
To which Thorfinn’s answer, too, was identical. ‘The men of the north belong in the north, and have enough business there without looking further. The mormaers who ruled under King Duncan would remain, if they so wished, to rule under me. The mormaerdoms fallen vacant would be filled by their toisechs and by me, in consultation.’
The first time he heard it, Sulien had stood before Thorfinn as he came away and said, ‘You would accept this burden, if they agree? You would accept it?’
And Thorfinn, no expression in his face or his voice, had said, ‘What Viking did you ever know to refuse an offer of such land and so many riches? Study has made you foolish.’
She had married a very great man; or a Viking. She did not yet know which.
Within a week, Bishop Malduin was back in Durham, muttering replies before the surprised rage of Earl Eadulf.
‘He would not hear of my staying. My lord Earl, I had no alternative. I was unarmed, in the camp of a war-leader. He insisted on sending me home.’
‘And your errand?’ Earl Eadulf said.
‘He is holding Alba at present by force,’ Bishop Malduin said. ‘There are armed camps everywhere, and the people are muttering.’
‘And his intentions?’
‘Those he has not yet announced. But he is asking all Duncan’s men which they would prefer: rule under himself, or rule by you or your friends, my lord Earl.’
‘What!’ said Earl Eadulf. ‘But you told him, I hope, what I asked you to. You told him that I had no claims to press against Alba other than those I already held in King Duncan’s day, provided that I might take Cumbria off his hands.’
‘I told him,’ said the Bishop. ‘And he thanked you for the offer concerning Cumbria, which he would have been delighted to accept …’
‘Would have been?’ Earl Eadulf said.
‘… but for the embargo of King Hardecanute, whose leave he had asked, and who would by no means countenance the passing of Cumbria into your hands, my lord Eadulf. I regret,’ said Bishop Malduin, ‘that under the circumstances I could not obtain the assurances my lord Earl was anxious for. It was not my fault.’
‘Emma,’ Earl Eadulf said. He looked the Bishop of Alba up and down. ‘Does your cousin know Emma? The Lady? Does he?’
‘He was her husband’s housecarl. Yes. I thought you knew. Yes, he knows the Lady Emma,’ the Bishop said. ‘But that is a long time ago. The Lady Emma has not seen him for years. But his recent visitors have included Earl Alfgar. And my lord Crinan, the late King Duncan’s father.’
‘I wonder,’ Earl Eadulf said, ‘that he did not ask you to stay to adorn his new kingdom. He knows now, if he has exchanged greetings with Winchester, that while Hardecanute is King I cannot take Cumbria or send an army further north: as far as the Lady Emma is concerned, I am too strong here already. So there is little doubt, is there, what ruler Alba will choose?’
Bishop Malduin did not answer, for this was his opinion as well, and he saw no need to make matters worse by confirming it.
In Alba, as the time set aside for consultation drew to its end, the small doubt there had been was no longer evident. Beneath the gloved hand of Thorfinn, the country lay silent, sullen, and waiting. Seated in his carved chair before an empty desk, by a stand-desk that was also empty, the Earl of Orkney looked at his foster-father with something like anger and enquired, ‘Well?’
‘You have only to lift your hand,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. And after a moment, ‘What else were you born for?’
‘Why not happiness, like other men?’ Thorfinn said.
‘You have that,’ said his foster-father. ‘But if you try to trap it, it will change. Why do you resist? It is your right.’
‘I resist because it is no use resisting,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Do you not think that is unfair? I shall be King because I was King; and I shall die because I did die; and did I remember them, I could even tell what are the three ways it might befall me.’
He stood up and walked round the desk, and turned, facing Thorkel Fóstri. He said, ‘Prepare your men and mine for marching. You will lead them to Caithness. The Moray men, and the Moray men only, will go with me to Scone.’
Thorkel Fóstri looked at him. ‘Then you will take the throne?’
‘If they offer it,’ Thorfinn said.
‘They will offer it,’ said his foster-father. He paused. ‘I would gladly be there.’
‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘You are of Orkney.’
TWO
T TRIBUTE-TIME, in October, the new Abbot of Kells crossed from Ireland and was given a princely escort to the monastery at Scone by the man who had summoned him, the lord who was half-brother to the late King Duncan of Alba.
To the monastery or to Perth, or to the guest-quarters about both, came other churchmen, including the Abbot Duftah of Tain, and his brother the Abbot of Deer, and the Bishop of Alba, returned once more, rebelliously, at the behest of both his masters.
But, most important of all, there came to the Moot Hill that October the men of Alba, with their tributes, in sufficient numbers to put beyond doubt the decision of the tuaths. In the absence of another natural leader—in the absence, indeed, of any leaders at all—they were prepared to accept the heathen, the foreign grandson from the north, and remain to give their silent endorsement to the brief ceremony that made him so: the truncated Mass held within the church, the walk to the Court Hill, the robing and oath-taking ritual upon the stone on which Duncan had sat six years before.
None made jokes this time about a ritual marriage with mares, for the hird, his closest friends, were absent: Arnór and Thorkel Fóstri; Starkad and Eachmarcach. No man from Orkney or Caithness saw their great Earl Thorfinn become Macbeth, King of Alba. Only the men of Alba, with among them Sulien of Llanbadarn, and Lulach his stepson, standing tall and white-haired and watchful, and his wife.
Sulien stood, his hands folded together, and watched chieftain after chief step up the hill and, kneeling, take the vow of allegiance, his hands between the hands of the tall man who, twelve years before, had come to Chester, nervous, obstinate, gallant, to tackle King Canute and his grandfather both and outface them, somehow, with the newly freed Alfgar gambolling about him and Duncan watching, apprehension on his face.
Now there was the face of a man, instead of the bony, flickering features of youth; and instead of the hlā, there was a thin band of gold confining his hair, for Alba’s kings wore no crown. And in place of the cloak sunk below the waters of Dee, the silken robe woven with gold that had crossed many lands to be made into a vestment fit for a king.
The ceremony was to be no pagan shout of triumph: it was, of design, quick and quiet.
The feast afterwards told a different story.
Even Sulien, who knew something of Thorfinn’s possessions, caught his breath when he entered the hall with the rest and saw the hanging lamps, with their scented oil and golden twined beasts, and the glistening silk of the hangings, and the burden of glass and of silver and gold on the woven cloth of the long boards, set Saxon-style with the cross-table at the far end.
There stood the chair Malcolm had used, and Duncan after him, with its posts foiled in gold and wrought with pebbled stones of different colours. ‘He keeps fine state, for a berserker,’ someone said, as Thorfinn stood there, wit
h his wife and his stepson, and then sat, so that all could sit.
Not Thorfinn. Macbeth. For evermore now, his baptised name, even if it seemed to be no part of him. Sulien wondered if either he or his wife had heard that remark, and knew that if they had, it would seem no more than just. Even Groa, before the day began, had said, thinking of all her husband must do, ‘Well, Sulien. At least his Gaelic is good; or so it seems to me after all I learned in Moray. Do you think so?’
And he had looked at her and said, ‘My lady, he is almost pure Gael: have you never realised it? Of his four grandparents, three were from Alba or Ireland, and the fourth was a quarter-Gael by descent. I don’t know who my lord Crinan’s mother was, but I doubt if Duncan could claim as much. Remind him.’
‘Remind him that he and I come of different races?’ Groa had said.
‘You are here, alone of his friends,’ Sulien said.
‘I am here as the widow of the Mormaer of Moray, and Lulach as his son,’ had said Groa flatly.
And it was true. She was there to remind the men of Alba that their new King was not only an Earl of the north but already, for eight years, had taken his place at their side as Mormaer of Moray. The churchmen were here to reassure the devout: the faithful would not be required to sue Odin or eat horseflesh or expose their latest-born children. The gold and the silver were there as a reminder of material things: with a simple oath of allegiance they had bought not only a man but a fleet, an army, a wealth of moveable riches.
Abbot Duftah of Tain, smiling, was sitting beside him. ‘I have just heard a man say,’ he said, ‘that in England they pay Danegeld to make the Danes go away, and here in Alba we pay them to come. Nevertheless, he does well, I should judge. What of Cumbria?’
‘The question of Cumbria,’ Sulien said, ‘was settled at the Feast of Teltown. Were you disappointed that none of your line became the new Abbot of Kells?’
Duftah laughed. ‘Would I be human if I were not?’ he said. ‘But it takes the sting out of the disappointment, I will say, to find that Crinan’s house failed to supply the post either. He is a good man, Abbot Robhartach, and there’s a justice about the affair that you’ve maybe not noticed. It was the Abbot’s own father Ferdomhnach that ousted Crinan’s line from the abbacy thirty years ago. So friend Crinan is feeling the cold?’
‘I would guess so. At least he offered Thorfinn joint rule of Cumbria so long as he could have access to Dunkeld and stay Abbot there.’
‘I see,’ said Duftah, ‘that you have the same difficulty as myself, Thorfinn. It is a name I shall miss, though Macbeth is a better. Son of Life, it means, or of the Elect. Well, that you might say he now is, whether the trumpeter angels have observed it or not. Ah, praise God. The food.’
The food came, in profusion. The drink, when it came, proved to be wine, not ale, and was served with a more careful hand. The aim, clearly, was to encourage the guests to relax, but not to render them either quarrelsome or incapable of listening to what their host wished to say to them when the time came.
Malduin, Bishop of Alba, ate with both hands and watched everything from his high seat not far from his northern cousin, who had exchanged his thunderbolt so easily for the cross and the symbols of kingship.
After the tension of the ritual and what preceded it, the present comfort, the Bishop saw, was already bringing relief. There were few women present: no man had been certain enough of this gathering to risk wife and family unless it might be more dangerous to leave them at home. But each man at least knew his neighbour, and though talk at first was subdued, so that one could hear plainly the sound of the harp, and then of the flutes and some stringed instrument playing out of sight somewhere, shortly there was a little laughter and some louder exchanges. Presently, when the tumblers came in, and then a man who sat on a stool and sang a long, reflective ballad about a number of people they knew and did not like, the occasion almost began to take on the colour of a celebration.
In any case, he, Malduin, must make the best of it, for this time he would not be going back. That had been made quite clear by Earl Eadulf. If his cousin took the throne, he was to stay at his side and act in the best interests of Durham while (it was implied) depleting the treasury of his cousin and not that of Eadulf.
And since this time he had not been asked to leave, he supposed that he would have to obey. Down the board, he saw the faces of the monks he had brought back with him beginning to brighten a little now when they saw that there was good food about, and no shortage of silver. Beside the woman Groa, the new Abbot of Kells was laughing heartily, his tonsure red with the summer’s sun. He was probably right to be merry, with full tithe-barns behind him after his first progress round the Columban churches in Ireland and the dues of Dunkeld still to come, with whatever the new King cared to give him as his enthronement-gift.
The new King, whose hair was not the red-gold of the Celt or the straw-white of the Norseman but black as that of the Picts who had ruled this land two hundred years ago. Whose nose and cheekbones and jaw might have been chipped out by a chisel underneath the tall brow, round as an egg below the gold band and the thickness of his hair. His cousin Thorfinn-Macbeth, who was rising to speak.
He spoke in Gaelic, beginning, as was the custom, with a toast to the church and the Trinity. Much of what he said after that had already been affirmed on the Moot Hill, and had to do with the undertakings he had made: to see justice done; to protect and foster their interests. He touched, to end with, on other matters.
‘I will not bring men from Orkney or Caithness south to hold your mormaerdoms. They have their own frontiers to guard. Therefore, if we are to defend this country, I shall need your help.
‘I do not propose on your behalf, either, to claim more land than my stepbrother Duncan held, and my grandfather before him. Lothian will, as before, allow the dues of its churches ruled by St Cuthbert to go to St Cuthbert. Cumbria, as before, will be held under the King of England and ruled on his behalf. I have the promise of the late King’s father, my lord Crinan, that I shall have his aid in this.
‘Those of you who are concerned for the future of the Christian church need not fear. As you see, the Bishop of Alba is returned among us, and we have the care once more of the church of Columba. Christianity in Orkney is only fifty years old, but long before that men had freedom to worship as they pleased, and this will continue. I have taken one step already to help with the cure of souls in Fife, which has long, through no fault of Bishop Malduin’s, been without pastors. With the leave of the Loch Leven hermits, I am causing the monastery there to be rebuilt, and a group of monks, led by Prior Tuathal, will settle there.’
He paused. They were not, Sulien saw, greatly stirred by the new church, except to wonder what land or dues it might require of them. They were, however, interested in weighing up what they had got for a king. So far, they had accorded him silence, and the atmosphere at least was not inimical.
Thorfinn said, ‘It is usual at these times to talk of the succession. I am doing so only in order to tell you that the next King will be chosen by you on my death, and not beforehand. My stepson Lulach, who is here, is eleven and will soon take his place as the future Mormaer of Moray. My only son Sigurd is a child of five, and will be Earl of Orkney and of Caithness when the time comes, whatever else the future may hold for him.
‘There remain the three sons of my late brother. They are at Dunkeld, since to send them south now would defeat the purpose that prompted you to ask me, and not the men of Northumbria, to become lord of Alba.
‘In two years’ time, the eldest, Malcolm, will be twelve and the youngest, five. The future of the youngest might be best served by leaving him at Dunkeld. The abbacy is at present in his family, and may well fall to him one day. If, at the end of two years, the other two wish to leave, I do not mean to stop them. Today, you have made me King of Alba till my death: they have no claim on the throne until then. If they fall into the hands of another power, as they may well do, then at least this kingdo
m will have had two years to prepare, and to settle. I have to learn to know you, and you have to learn to know me. There is one last matter.’
His voice had changed, and the murmuring that had run round the room stopped. Thorfinn said, ‘I spoke of justice. You enforce it among yourselves, and when your power fails, you call on the King’s. To give us all security, I also must enforce it. When the army of Duncan my brother marched through Moray, the leaders, for their own ends, despoiled the country and slaughtered those who resisted. Most of those concerned have paid for these acts, but not all. I am told, by the men of Moray who are here, that two of these leaders have been seen on the Moot Hill and in this hall. Have them stand.’
Duftah said, ‘What is he doing?’ Tapped on the shoulder, two men in different parts of the hall rose slowly and stood, pressed awkwardly between bench and table and glancing round, anger on their faces.
Thorfinn said, ‘Thank you. I am further told that since we began to gather here, a rising occurred in Fortriu, where two former henchmen of the late King gathered men from a hill-fort and launched an attack on the men of Moray as they set out to join me here. The leaders, it is said, are the same men.’ For the last few moments, his gaze had moved only between the two standing there in their places. Now he said to each of them, ‘Do you deny this?’
One was silent. The other said, ‘He won’t speak to a brother-killer, but I will. So would every man here, if he had the stomach for it. They may eat your food and stuff your gold in their purses, but do you think they want the kingdom of Malcolm and Duncan to lie under a Norse heathen who’ll let in the hordes from the Frisian Sea to scour our grain-barns when the crops fail in Norway, and, when we can’t pay the dues they wring from us, will land and burn us to the ground and carry our women off to get slaves on in Orkney? We all know what you are. They may lie down under you now, but you will need to keep your sword at your bedside from now on, and your place warm beside Odin in the next world, for neither Christ nor Christ’s people want you in this.’
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