Lands in Africa and in Sicily, in Gozo and Cephalonia, had once supported this room with their tribute. Before the coming of the Saracens, before the Eastern Emperor showed his greed, twenty-five thousand gold solidi each year came to the papal curia from Sicily and Calabria. No wonder this Pope would do anything to get the Normans out.
After the Washing of Regeneration, they witnessed the ceremony of Consignatio in the chapel of the Holy Cross next door, passing the closed doors of the oratory of St Andrew the Constantinopolitan and the oratory of St John the Baptist, whose dalmatic, boxed in the altar, could stop floods or bring rain and ought, said Bishop Hermann, to parade twice a day in the Baptistry.
They attended a Stational Service at the Lateran and rode back with their entourage through the crowded, torch-lit streets and over the Tiber to the hospice.
Supper was found to be over, and the little fish that was left lay like horn on the plate. ‘I wonder,’ said Alfred, ‘what they’re eating in the palace. They’ve done their penance; you heard?’
How a young man of this cast of mind could become Sheriff of Dorset, with its mint at Wareham, its proximity to Emma’s great port of Exeter, might have been hard to understand unless you knew all his antecedents in Flanders and Brionne and Brittany.
Bishop Ealdred said, ‘I take it you are speaking of the King of Alba and his retinue, and, further, that you are surprised that, having come to Rome, they have also troubled to purchase spiritual favour. Why do you suppose that they came?’
‘Why did we come?’ said Bishop Hermann. He leaned back against the wall and stuck his feet out. A good businessman, but a trifle too smug: about his wit; about having been chaplain to the King of England. He was only from Mons, after all.
Bishop Ealdred said, ‘Both Alfred and Goscelin know very well why we are here. The King vowed to visit Rome in thanksgiving for his return from his long exile in Normandy. However, his counsellors would not allow him to leave England, things being as they are.’
‘The Godwin family being as they are,’ Alfred said. ‘What penance do you think the Pope will lay on King Edward? Thorfinn has been on bare feet round all the churches.’
‘Macbeth,’ said Bishop Ealdred automatically. He added acidly, ‘Round not quite all the churches, surely. There has hardly been time.’ He could feel his patience leaving him, as it often did when he was hungry. There was bread and cheese and some wine in one of his boxes: he had sent for it.
Bishop Ealdred met Hermann’s knowing eye and frowned irritably. When he, Ealdred, had his audience with Pope Leo, there were a number of topics to be aired that had little to do with King Edward’s spiritual future. Topics to do with the future of Edmund Ironside’s descendants, wherever they might presently be. Such as in Passau, with the widow of Stephen of Hungary? Topics to do with the confirmation of new and worthy bishops much loved by King Edward, such as Ulf, the King’s former chaplain, who had been expelled by his flock and was on his way to the Pope to complain personally.
‘Why has Alba come?’ Bishop Ealdred said. ‘Vanity. Superstition. To gain merit in the eyes of his people. To emulate Canute. As a bulwark against Norway, which has quarrelled with his wife’s father. To please Emma the Lady-Dowager, who he seems to think is going to live for ever. What else is there?’
‘The food, I suppose,’ said Bishop Hermann.
Asleep later on his uncomfortable mattress, mollified with bread and cheese, the Bishop of Worcester did not hear the brief conversation between the oldest and youngest of his companions.
‘Women?’ said Bishop Hermann. ‘In the name of Christ, Alfred. It’s Easter.’
‘I’m not in holy orders,’ said Alfred. ‘I don’t care if it’s the day of the Immaculate Conception. If I have to wait more than thirty minutes, I’ll go in and corrupt Goscelin.’
‘It’s almost worth it,’ said Bishop Hermann, ‘to refuse you. And I don’t know why you think I should know. But if I were to guess, I’d say …’ He paused and thought. ‘Try the sulphur-baths.’
The Pope’s banquet took place on the following day, and Macbeth of Alba’s departure feast was held two days later.
The envoys of England were at both, although their initial encounter was of the briefest.
With all the foreign princes and churchmen in Rome, they took part in the great procession that marched from St Peter’s to the Liberian church of St Mary, where solemn Mass was to be heard. The icon painted by St Luke and finished by angels led the way, followed by the Cross, the Deacon, the Primicier, the militia with their red banners and cherub-topped lances, by the notaries, advocates, and judges, by the choir, and by the sub-deacons led by their prior.
After the foreigners came the Roman abbots and the Cardinals with their white horse-cloths. The Pope came next, on a great horse with a scarlet mantle and horse-cloth that battled with the brighter orange-vermilion of his hair and his beard. Two cubicularii carried a baldaquin over his head, and beside him and after him rode the prefect and senators, the nobles and captains and officials from the Campagna, together with the Pope’s personal servants bearing his robes for the rain, and a silk bag containing all he would need for the Mass.
It did not rain. The bells rang, against a great deal of chanting, and incense eddied about, followed by sneezes.
An immensely tall man with black hair, whom Bishop Ealdred did not at first recognise, leaned over and said in Saxon, ‘Lights in St Paul’s. You got the money in, then?’
Languorous behind Bishop Ealdred, Alfred giggled.
Bishop Ealdred said, ‘My lord King. Forgive me. Although it is a long time since we first met in Forres …’
And then broke off, for ahead was the looming bulk, six hundred years old, of the Basilica Liberiana, the church of St Mary of the Snow on the Esquiline Hill.
Inside, the church was immense, with pillars of Pavian marble and a jumble of thin, unmatched bricks from some ancient pillage. The Magi wore Persian costumes and the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, appeared as an Empress of the East in diadem, earrings, and pearls.
Under the wingless angels, the priest Eochaid was emboldened to say to his King, ‘What is it? The audience tomorrow? You have nothing to fear.’
‘No. Yes. I think you should come with me,’ Thorfinn said.
Eochaid waited. When the singing began, he said, ‘If you take anyone, I think it should be Tuathal.’
There was a silence. Then Thorfinn said, ‘If you think so.’ He did not look round.
After a while, Eochaid said, ‘We came here on pilgrimage. It is the Easter service.’
The choiring voices rose, stage by stage, like a fountain. The Pope’s voice, sonorous and impassioned, flowed from their midst.
‘You didn’t tell me the legend,’ Thorfinn said. ‘About the magical circle of snow.’
‘That fell in August? The sort of weather we have in Scone. That’s why they built the church here. I didn’t think you’d be interested,’ Eochaid said.
There was a long interval. Then Thorfinn said, ‘It is a theme in my family. In my stepfather’s family. Lulach’s son will be named Mael Snechta.’
‘Isleifr’s priest-father was named Gizur the White,’ Eochaid said. ‘It is the same idea. The man of magic. The Druid. The White Christ.’
‘I suppose it is,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Tomorrow, I must remember. My oath must carry real conviction. Not to sacrifice to demons. Not to drink the blood of animals. Not to celebrate Thursday. And not to masquerade in the skins of beasts on the Kalends of January. Although it can be chilly in Scone.’
The priest Eochaid was rarely angry, but on this journey he had learned to know when anger would serve him. He said, ‘On this day and in this place, wounded vanity is not the best orator.’
‘On this day and in this place,’ Thorfinn said, ‘my grandfather’s grandson would agree with you, even if my father’s son had reservations. I think we should be quiet. Bishop Ealdred is looking annoyed, and I want him in a good humour.’
* * *
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br /> At the papal banquet that followed the service, Bishop Ealdred was in a good humour, for reasons which, to do him justice, were not wholly due to the skill of the Lateran kitchens.
This feast the Pope had chosen to give in the Triclinium, the hall where, two hundred and fifty years previously, another Pope Leo had received Charlemagne. Garlanded on the apse was Leo’s monogram, above the handsome mosaic of Christ, piecemeal in brown against a mathematical blue sky. About him stood the Apostles, and below his feet issued the quadruple rivers of Paradise.
There was mosaic, too, on the flat walls on either side of the apse. On the left, a seated Christ gave keys to a kneeling Pope Sylvester and a banner to the Emperor Constantine, beardless in Frankish costume. On the right, a seated St Peter offered a Roman standard to a kneeling Charlemagne, bearded in blue with bands round his legs; and a pallium to the miniature, folded figure of Leo himself.
The present Leo, minium only in colouring, presided at his table under the mosaic, with his priests and cardinal-bishops seated at the board on his right, and the cardinal-deacons on his left at another. Before him, down the length of the hall, ran the long lines of tables, ribbed with the glowing faces and reaching arms of his princely guests and lesser churchmen. Heads of every shade and fashion of barbering and faces clean-shaven or with beads forked or flowing or close; with moustaches uncut or wholly absent, or trained Saxon-style to droop like parched corn over the dog-teeth.
And tunics and robes, also, from the weaving-sheds and workshops of many lands, in all the colours of the mosaics: oyster white and dull gold and carmine, salt green and earth red, azure and violet, figured with foliage and medallions and writing, flowered with pearls and emeralds, garnets and sapphires, encrusted with gold.
From each of these men, he, Leo, would extract his due, because the society known to the missionary saints no longer existed; and without money the church would collapse, and with it all order.
For himself, little sufficed. To feed and clothe his followers as well as himself, he had kept his bishopric of Toul. The gold chalice on the table before him, with its trumpet foot and gemmed filigree bands, had been made for St Goscelin of Toul, his predecessor, and was here because little else of silver or gold remained in the Lateran treasury.
Of the rest of the plate on the table, most had been given by the Emperor Henry. Like his own, Henry’s faith he believed to be deep. Like himself, the Emperor knew the self-abasement of the whip and would lead armies, weeping. Not for himself the busy halls of Michael Cerularius in Constantinople, inhabited by the dyer, the artificer, the confectioner, the render of spices, filled with the pneumatic melodies of silver blackbirds and golden blackcap warblers. Not for the Emperor the rising throne, the mechanical lions of Constantine VII that roared and beat the ground with their tails. He and his protector lived moderate lives. On days of penance, he slept on the floor, his head on a pillow of stone. He would be surprised if Henry did not do the same.
And yet—that very alliance between Empire and Papacy that the mosaics in this room commemorated was presently his greatest concern.
Humbert, dear Humbert seated there, shining and talkative between the two priests from Alba, had been brought to Rome not for his music but for his Greek. Some day, when diplomacy could do no more, force might have to be used to drive the Normans out of Italy, and he might have to send an envoy to the court of the silver blackbirds to ask the Eastern Emperor to lend the Western his aid.
And because he would depend also—did depend—on the Emperor, he must have regard to the Emperor’s interests in all his dealings: with Baldwin of Flanders and those he was sheltering; with his own family of Lorraine; with the King of France and his enemies and his allies. The sword of anathema, you might say, was in his own hand as often as the sword of physical destruction was in Henry’s.
Simony, heresy, incest. They must all be stamped out, and without such grounds he would never excommunicate. But the truth was that sin was everywhere. If he were not to lay flat the internal structure of the church and render helpless those laymen who supported it, he could only proceed by choosing here and there a churl of substitution, a scapegoat. It was the policy that dictated the choice of scapegoats that he wondered, through the night, if he would be forgiven.
The large, well-dressed Saxon over there, deep in talk with the Bishop of Coutances, would come to his audience tomorrow primed with penitential messages from his master the King of England. But somewhere in the conversation there would emerge a reference to England’s recent support in the Emperor’s wars, and England’s consequent suffering through the excommunication of both her trading-partners in Flanders and Boulogne.
For the irregularity of their unions, Eustace of Boulogne and Ingelram of Ponthieu deserved to be excommunicated. Equally, the Count of Anjou had imprisoned a bishop and could not be forgiven. Brittany and Nantes were a matter of pain, and he did not want to think about them.
Because of a letter that had reached him today, he must call before next week’s synod a man he admired, Lanfranc, the brilliant Prior of Bee in Normandy.
It was, there was no doubt, his very brilliance that had entangled him in religious dialogue with this heretic Bérenger. But it must be stopped. That was what was important, not the fact that Lanfranc’s friend the Bishop of Nantes had been deposed, thus admitting a chain of vacancies which would give Hildebrand there possession of the church of St Paul’s here at Rome.
It was Hildebrand who had suggested the restoration of the traditional Easter synod. Without Hildebrand, he sometimes felt, they would all be lost.
It was Hildebrand who had suggested placing the King of Alba between Prior Lanfranc and Hugh of Semur, the new Abbot of the great Burgundian foundation of Cluny, beloved of Hildebrand and of the Emperor and his lady, and the most energetic centre of reform since St Benedict pointed the way to salvation.
He had asked the King of Alba, on the occasion of his first audience, about the raven on his banner, it being in his mind that the Blessed St Benedict himself had been guided by three such birds to found his monastery, cradle of the faith, at Monte Cassino.
The answer had not been entirely satisfactory, but he had not been displeased by the rest of the discussion. He understood, from his last conversations with the Emperor and Archbishop Adalbert, the importance of the lands this King now ruled over. As his dear Toul, Leucha civitas, was the key of Lorraine, so Orkney with its fleet and its boatbuilding peoples, its strategic position in those waters which, they said, congealed in winter into meadows of salt, was the key to the dominion of the north.
To this, the man Macbeth had added Alba. As did Olaf and Harald of Norway, so this seafaring adventurer, it seemed, was now prepared to adopt a pastoral country and accept responsibility for it.
A man who could do such a thing was not without gifts as well as ambition. It was seen that he was acquainted with the world and observed the courtesies! He could exact proper behaviour from his servants and from his noblemen, comporting themselves with decency there at the table.
It did not, of course, alter the understanding that the visit should end very shortly. With the opening of the synod, accommodation, of course, was at a premium. But, more than that, Leo knew how familiarity altered the pagan: how respect lessened as he found his way from the Sacred Highway to those parts within the walls where the buildings had not been restored or the roads cleared of refuse, and where, in winter, the wolves came to howl. When he discovered also the market for women, and drink, and the useful offices of the money-lenders. When, sick of a place where the corn-strips were covered with marble and the rivers with refuse, he assuaged his longing with riot and violence.
The Pope talked, and ate with animation, but those closest to him observed that his eyes, beneath the weight of the tiara, were red-rimmed and damp.
TEN
ETWEEN THE POPE’S banquet and the King of Alba’s, the English Party hardly took respite.
Deploying his mission about their duties in th
e city and out of it, Bishop Ealdred received their reports and digested, in the efficient curia of his mind, all their implications.
Wherever they went, it seemed, the officers of the King of Alba were already in evidence.
Some of the activity, naturally, had to do with the homeward journey, and with the banquet. It was amazing, however, how often Hermann or Goscelin would return with an account of how they had seen the man Leofwine of Cumbria at this goldsmith or that merchant’s, or the big, fair Norseman Otkel down at the wharves, with the priest Isleifr translating for him; or the little brown-bearded man Hlodver sitting on the edge of a tumbler’s mat, his arms full of cabbage-leaves crowded with dates.
Alfred called on the Bishop of Rennes and found no less than three of the King of Alba’s men with him. The Fougères half of Alfred was related to the Bishop of Rennes. Alfred was related to everybody. Bishop Ealdred, receiving his account, said, ‘And what did you learn?’
‘Well: I asked them how they enjoyed exchanging the smoky roofs of Tours for the gilded roofs of Rome, but they weren’t very amused. It seems everyone says that.’
‘How disappointing for you,’ said Bishop Ealdred. ‘And what else did you gather?’
‘The Irishmen have been up to the Palatine again,’ Alfred said, ‘visiting the grave of Cairbre Ua Coimhghillain, who died twelve years ago. They didn’t find anything.’
‘Except their deceased Irish friend, one would imagine,’ said Bishop Ealdred. ‘What a pity. It seems that they are going to leave Rome with half their mission uncompleted. And nothing else?’
‘No. They were nervous,’ said Alfred.
‘They were probably expecting the Archfiend,’ said Bishop Ealdred. ‘Clearly, you met him on your way out. The continuous aura of sulphur is, I must tell you, a little disturbing. Ah. Hermann.’
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