King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘The Rhine,’ said the Archbishop, ‘is where you will still find the best compound twills. In Mainz or Cologne. We buried my old friend Pope Clement three years ago in Bamberg in a length made in Thebes, as fine as any I have ever seen: Provost Anno will remember. I sent a bale very like it the other day to Edward of England.’

  ‘As a hint?’ said Thorfinn.

  His handsome face composed, the Archbishop considered the remark. Then he laughed. ‘The King supported us with his fleet shortly thereafter, in the Emperor’s chastisement of the Duke of Lorraine,’ he said. ‘If that is what you mean.’

  ‘I expect,’ said the King of Alba, ‘that is what I meant. I am glad, at any rate, that the Emperor’s ailment has proved less than serious.’

  ‘He is better. In a day or two, he will receive you. And the Queen. A remarkable woman. She has taken the greatest interest in the gift of our friend Isleifr here. Along with, of course, the delectable doves, her little daughters.’

  Someone removed Thorfinn’s platter and put down another, of silver.

  ‘I believe,’ said Thorfinn, ‘that the Emperor’s oldest daughter, the niece of King Edward, is Abbess of Quedlinburg, very near here? Perhaps Duke Casimir plans to visit his kinswoman.’

  On the Archbishop’s other side, the pallid cheeks of the Duke of Poland paused in their exercise and then continued. Archbishop Adalbert said, ‘He hears you, but his grasp of Saxon is uncertain at times. Of course, his father was a cousin of King Canute, Beatrice’s grandfather. I had forgotten. You knew King Canute well, I am told, and even as a young man served the Lady Emma in England?’

  He held out a dish with his own hands to his awkward guest, having side-stepped the matter of Quedlinburg. His own mother had been brought up in that convent, and for a child of eight to be appointed abbess was only natural when the child was royal and the place the stronghold that it was. He wished that Casimir, having received the imperial forgiveness, would stop sulking, take the Emperor’s gifts, and go home, preferably before the end of the banquet.

  Casimir said, in excellent Low German, ‘Perhaps I should call on her. Perhaps I should call on the Abbess and tell her how Bratislav took our church treasure, and carried hundreds of Poles off to slavery, and seized the bones of the apostle Adalbert. Have you no interest in the bones of the apostle Adalbert, Archbishop Adalbert?’

  The Archbishop laid down his dish and turned patiently, releasing a scent of rosewater that betrayed, insidiously, that he had had his uncanonical daily cold bath. He said, ‘Matters for the council chamber have been disposed of in the council chamber. We must think of our guests from afar, who are tired and wish to be entertained.’

  ‘I am tired,’ said Duke Casimir. ‘Tired of being treated as a child because I have a German mother kin to the Emperor. I am Polish. I do not wish to sit with you any longer.’ He stood up.

  The Archbishop rose as well. ‘You have a touch of fever. I can see it,’ said the Archbishop kindly. ‘Here is the Provost, who will see you to your quarters, and I shall send my own physician to attend you. A bath of hot salt, I always recommend. I know that some are against it. But for the Emperor, as you see, it works wonders.’

  Smiling, he sat down, arranging his wide-skirted gown, as the company half-rose and sat again, and the Provost of Goslar got to his feet with no great alacrity and the Duke of Poland, after staring for a moment, turned on his heel and stalked out.

  ‘I am a great believer in salt,’ said Archbishop Adalbert to the King of Alba.

  ‘… They tell me,’ said the Archbishop of Bremen, ‘that your peoples north of Alba prefer to call you Thorfinn, the pagan name of your forefathers. Old beliefs are hard to uproot, I know, and old practices; and both Orkney and Iceland have had little more than fifty years of Christian witness. What backsliding there has been among the barbarians here, I need hardly tell you, or what pockets of sin still untouched. The Estonians adore dragons and birds, and sacrifice slaves to them. You have seen, sanctified in the church here, the altar to the Saxon god Krodo, made within this last year. In Uppsala, horses and dogs hung with men in their sacred groves until very recently and unless we have care, may do so again.’

  ‘That Christian witness may falter is known to everyone,’ the King of Alba said gravely. ‘Or perhaps I should put it differently. A people cannot be converted until it learns to stop killing its missionaries. And sometimes that is something that only a temporal power can do.

  ‘Olaf Tryggvasson offered Christ to my father in Orkney on the point of a sword, and sent his priest, steel in hand, to baptise the father of your good priest Isleifr there, and through him convert Iceland. In later years, King Olaf the Saint similarly persuaded his countrymen. The end of each, you perhaps know. To those of us who are but common clay, it offers small inducement to multiply churches and found bishoprics. Should the throne weaken and totter, the pagan will return a hundredfold. As threatens in Norway.’

  ‘Because the church in Norway is weak,’ said Archbishop Adalbert. ‘Because its bishops are consecrated no man knows where, in booths and on carpets, and its priests fly to their homeland like hares as king succeeds enemy king. In Germany, the King and the church are brother and sister.’

  ‘But,’ said Thorfinn, black-browed face pensively bent, ‘Germany is the market-place of the world, and has rich lands with which to clothe and nourish its sister. Alba and Orkney are poor, and have to spend the little they have to defend themselves.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the Archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen, ‘but, in your modesty, you would have us ignore both your own effects and the more than seemly attire of your courtmen. Either you are richer than you care to boast, or you wear the skins of your countrymen on your backs.’

  The King of Alba, it seemed, never smiled. The tall brow lifted itself and fell again. ‘The rings? The brooches?’ said Thorfinn. ‘The horse? That came from Spain to Ireland, and was a gift from the King of Dublin for services my fleet had rendered, and tribute owed me. The rest came mostly through trade, which is dwindling as tolls and taxes abroad become higher. The silver that paid for our clothes and the ivory triptych I placed on the altar at Hamburg came, before we fell out, from King Harald of Norway. I hesitated to bring you the triptych, but thought that in the bosom of Hamburg, fruitful mother of peoples, it would come by no defilement. It was plundered, as the inscription makes plain, from the shrine of St Olaf at Nídarós.’

  ‘King Harald should take heed,’ said the Archbishop, and the full, shapely lips pressed together. ‘King Harald should take heed, lest we visit him with the rod of correction and claim from him the obedience of a man who has offended the Lord. I hear King Svein bravely withstands his grievous assaults upon Denmark.’

  ‘King Svein asked me to help him,’ said the King of Alba. ‘But of course I refused.’

  ‘Refused?’

  Thorfinn looked apologetic. ‘How can my fleet ply for silver if they are fighting? Already, the Norwegian trade is lost to us. Slaves are expensive. The tilled land and the pastures are still producing far less than they should, and there is no money for roads and for bridges that would join market to market, and allow workshops to flourish, and provide myself and my priests and my governors with an income from taxes and tolls. I cannot offer a hand to an ally. I cannot offer, as I should, even a son’s welcome to Mother Church.’

  ‘So you say,’ said Archbishop Adalbert. ‘But I wonder if you have considered what Mother Church may offer you? The services of seasoned farmer, of scribe, and of steward: the repository of wisdom in all those places where it may be wanting in the matter of tax-collecting and justice and government. Such things are unknown or unheeded in the innocent and unworldly sphere of the Celtic tribes, and while their hermits may pray for your souls, they will not tell you how to order your bodies, which are the temples and defence of your spirit. Nor are we harsh to the humble flocks who have just crossed our thresholds. The church of Ribe pays no dues to Bremen. None. And yet all our wealth, both of earth
and of heaven, is at the disposal of King Svein. It could be yours as well.’

  ‘It’s working,’ said Odalric of Caithness. ‘At least, Thorfinn’s just drunk off his wine, which ought to mean the worst bit is over.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Leofwine in his Welsh-Gaelic, ‘that the Emperor is to waive harbour and market dues and see that all river shipments are toll-free on Thorfinn’s boats in future?’

  Ferteth, the Dunblane toisech, said, ‘Be careful. The place is full of monks who speak Irish.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Isleifr. ‘They’re all at Bishop John’s, supping with Tuathal and Eochaid. You haven’t known Thorfinn for very long, have you?’

  The Dunblane toisech was sweating. He said, ‘He’s fond of money. It’s natural.’

  ‘Oh, he’s ambitious,’ said Isleifr. ‘You don’t start life as the fifth and last son of an island earl and finish it as head of a kingdom without hacking a long, bloody furrow. He’s ambitious and heathen, and Adalbert is ambitious and holy. But Thorfinn has got something that the Archbishop wants.’

  The same way that King Svein wanted something that Thorfinn had,’ said the Atholl man, Cormac.

  ‘The Lady?’ said the Moray toisech, and grinned. ‘That was a game. This is serious. The Archbishop wants to be patriarch of the north, and Thorfinn can help him. Or the Archbishop thinks he can help him.’

  ‘And is the Archbishop mistaken?’ said Otkel of Orkney. ‘Or perhaps half mistaken? I should rather like to know. Ferocious wolves take large bites. I don’t think I’d like the Archbishop for my enemy.’

  SIX

  N HIS LODGING near the King’s Mill and under the knoll of St Mary’s, Bishop John, the saintliest man in Goslar, was innocently tiddly. The wine which, being Sunday, he had been able to serve along with a reasonable meal was only one of the causes. The other was the sound in his ears: the joyous sound of five Gaelic voices vying with one another in the accents of Ireland and Alba.

  There had been a point, earlier in the evening, when the noise had made him apprehensive. This was what Abbot Ekbert complained of in Fulda, and Archbishop Pilgrim had found so disturbing in Cologne that he had tried to dismiss Abbot Ailill of St Martin’s and St Pantaleon and his brisk communities of Irish monks.

  But Abbot Ekbert was not here, and Archbishop Pilgrim was asleep in Christ these fourteen years, and the present Archbishop of Cologne, in whom ran the blood of Popes and Emperors, had things on his mind other than the conduct of the Irish monks in his diocese. Other things, such as un-Christian dislike of Bishop John’s own lifelong hero, Adalbert of Hamburg and Bremen.

  Thinking about it, Bishop John cried a little, and Abbot Maieul, his friend and Ailill’s successor from St Martin’s Cologne, patted his hand without faltering in the conversational duel he was conducting with the King of Alba’s prior over a cryptogram.

  Everyone knew, of course, that the King of Alba was important because he had a fleet; and it was to be expected that he did some trading. It had been a surprise, however, to find his two priests so congenial. The Prior, Eochaid, was a lettered man, as you would expect of anyone trained in Armagh. The visiting Abbot, Tuathal, had studied in Swords, and for several years, it would appear, he and Abbot Maieul had been exchanging riddles and acrostics and even secular verses, one of which they were now chanting together. It sometimes seemed to Bishop John that the happy nature of Maieul of Cologne led the Abbot alarmingly close to frivolity.

  Bishop John looked up, his eyes refilling with tears, and Prior Tuathal, who was holding his other hand, leaned over and explained the import of the last two lines of the secular verse, which were so unexpectedly witty that Bishop John swallowed his tongue and had to be given drink and banged on the shoulderblades.

  His fourth and fifth guests, who had come with Abbot Maieul from Cologne, watched, smiling with rueful affection. The younger, who had the good Irish-Breton name of Muiredach, said, ‘If you give him any more, he will fall asleep.’

  Muiredach mac Robartaig might be the son of the Abbot of Kells, but he was only sixteen. Bishop John said, ‘Is it for the guests, now, to advise the host what he is drinking, and the mouths of them wet with the hospitality broth?’

  ‘He said something,’ said Sigurd. Bishop John heard him quite clearly. It was unlike Sigurd to be obtuse. Sigurd had been sent especially from Cologne to join the brethren at Goslar and tend the workshops. The Archbishop’s welcome had been cool, but that was because he did not yet know Sigurd as Bishop John did. Bishop John said, ‘Was I talking to you? It was Muiredach here whose manners need watching.’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s saying either,’ said Muiredach. ‘Give him another drink.’

  They gave him another drink, and because arguing made him tired, Bishop John went to sleep.

  When they had made him comfortable, ‘We don’t often breed saints,’ said Abbot Maieul of Cologne. ‘Let us make sure this one comes to no harm. Tuathal. Your King is here to obtain Bremen-consecrated bishops. Why, I wonder? Merely to promote alliance?’

  ‘You are half right,’ said Tuathal. The acumen that had led Thorfinn to place him in Fife, the storm-centre of his new kingdom, was there to be seen in his sharp eyes and thick, pock-marked face. ‘We need alliances because we lack organisation, except at sea. We need Frankish-trained men, with Gaelic as one of their languages.’

  ‘For Orkney?’ said the Abbot of St Martin’s. ‘And what of Malduin, the Gaelic-speaking Bishop of Alba you have already? I do not see him here.’

  Tuathal said, ‘Bishop Malduin was consecrated at York. And York means Northumbria, whose ties to Norway are strong. As for Orkney, Celtic monks have had a stake there and in Caithness from the earliest times. In theory, Irish bishops could serve there.…’

  ‘But Irish bishops don’t know how to organise?’ said Abbot Maieul.

  Eochaid answered. ‘There are other objections. The Bishop of Dublin is consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in England. The Welsh bishops, too. For Canterbury, my King has nothing but respect. But in England, since the time of Gregory, the souls of the northern peoples are held to be a matter for the churchmen of York. And that, as I have explained, holds its dangers.’

  ‘I fear it is true,’ said the Abbot of St Martin’s. He glanced to the pallet where Bishop John, his fur robe tucked around him, was sleeping musically.

  ‘Is it mannerly, do you suppose, to summon the servants in the absence of one’s host and request a little more wine? Sigurd, you are more of this establishment than anyone.’

  ‘His name is Sigurd?’ queried Prior Tuathal as the man thus addressed, with no reluctance, sprang to his feet and departed.

  ‘He is an Irish Norseman from Dublin, trained at Kells. His name in Christ should be Jon, but we do not use it here. Muiredach and I thought you would like him. He does not enjoy the prospect of working at Goslar close to Archbishop Adalbert.… Ah, Sigurd. The wine.’

  Pouring the wine with his powerful hands, the priest Sigurd, it could be seen, wore a half-smile. Tuathal said to him as he sat down, ‘So you have been here a week. How do you like Goslar?’

  ‘As well as any battle-field,’ Sigurd said. A burly man in his forties, his crucifix shone like a mirror and his tonsure had been drawn with a compass. He added, ‘They tried to get me dictating in the scriptorium, till they discovered my stutter.’

  There was a pause. ‘I was not aware,’ said Abbot Maieul, ‘that you had a stutter?’

  ‘You should see,’ said the priest Sigurd amiably, ‘the thirty-two copies of Livy that thirty-two monks are rewriting in half the number of pages. There are other things I’m better at.’

  He rummaged down at his girdle and laid a silver disc on the table. Half an inch in diameter, it bore the legend HERRENNUS EPS, COLONIA URBS.

  ‘Producing those, for example. They brought me here to run the Goslar mint. You know about the mines in the Rammelsberg? Silver, copper, and lead. That’s how Goslar came to be here at all.’

  Tuathal said,
‘We have silver in Cumbria.’

  ‘But no coins?’ Sigurd said. ‘We had coins in Dublin.’

  ‘The Vikings had,’ Tuathal said. ‘But the tribes don’t use coin. They’ve no roads or bridges to pay toll on and they do their own fighting. They don’t even expect coin for their prisoners: the Irish fight to kill, not to ransom.’

  ‘But the Irish,’ said Abbot Maieul, ‘as we have just said, are not organised. Isleifr wished, I think, to see the furnaces to compare them with those at Hervordin, and one of your noblemen—Leofwine?—professed an interest also. It may be that the mine-workings would interest your King Macbeth as well.’

  ‘Macbethad. A fine Irish name. Son of Life,’ said Bishop John thoughtfully.

  His guests turned.

  The Bishop, his eyes on the painted wood ceiling, smoothed the fur over his chest with one gentle, ringed hand. ‘The leader of his king’s forces in the north—was it not so? Regent for his king in the north, and he fought his master and killed him. So barbarians take the throne. King Olaf. King Canute.’

  Eochaid flushed, but Prior Tuathal only smiled and, leaning over, drew the fur robe a trifle higher. ‘King Olaf has been made a saint,’ he said. ‘And it was after a fair fight that King Duncan met his end.’

  The soft eyes turned. ‘But he is a king,’ said Bishop John. ‘Do his people follow him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tuathal. He drew back.

  ‘In adversity?’ said Bishop John. ‘A man needs a God-fearing king, a shriven king, in adversity.’

  Abbot Maieul came over and knelt. ‘Cease to concern yourself,’ he said. ‘King Macbeth is here because he knows what his nation needs, and is preparing for it. And how better to look for salvation than through the church of Bremen and Archbishop Adalbert?’

  Bishop John’s eyes were closing. He smiled. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘There is Christ risen again, one would say. But for the ablutions. Save him, Mary, Mother of God, from the sin he has, of resorting to so many ablutions.’