King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  And yet … Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have said, ‘I am home. For you, I have achieved such and such. Now I am beyond belief tired. Comfort me.’

  He had said, You have carried my shield for six months. Now lay it down, for I shall take all your burdens.

  He had said: There is no story without its song following it.

  Groa rose and walked across the room and, standing before him, slid her hands through his arms and rested them flat on the door at his back, where his own hands were spread, keeping him upright.

  ‘Take your shield back tomorrow,’ she said. ‘There is nothing to tell you. There is nothing to ask you. Tonight is for sleep.’

  Thorfinn said, ‘I failed nobody else.’

  ‘Must you be perfect?’ said Groa. After a moment, she said, ‘If you fail, you should fail with your lovers. Findlaech. Thorkel Fóstri. Sulien. Lulach. And me.’

  He turned his face away. ‘And that should be your reward?’

  ‘The gift of your absolute trust? Yes,’ said Groa.

  She released his hands from the door and, bringing them forward, held one on each of her shoulders. ‘I am your crozier. Where shall I take you?’ she said.

  Thorfinn said, ‘To your knee.’

  In the end, she took her seat again under the lamp and sat for a long time, her fingers at ease in the thick of his hair, breathing the scent of bruised spices. After a long time, the lamp flickered, the oil growing low; and he stirred and lifted his head under her hand.

  ‘Your hair,’ he said. It was still pinned in its coils.

  ‘I shall do it,’ she said. There had never been a time when they were together at night and he had not unpinned her hair and let it down, like a robe in his hands.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I have something for you.’

  Something had revived. He rose of his own accord, who so lately had needed her crozier, and, crossing to the first of his boxes, drew from it a casket, and from the casket something burning with green and crimson and gold that he brought, cupped in his hands, to the lamp.

  ‘It was worn,’ he said, ‘by the Empress Irene. But you are not dressed for it.’

  ‘Am I not?’ She looked down.

  ‘No.’

  Carefully, using one of his hands and two of hers, the cords of her night-robe were opened, from her neck to her throat, and the robe sank like a sheath, first from her shoulders and then, as her arms were drawn free, like a calyx framing the stem of her waist, and the white skin above and below, finely marbled with veins.

  ‘That is how she would look,’ Thorfinn said; and did not move for a long time. Then he stepped forward and clasped the necklet high round her throat.

  It was heavy. She stood very straight, cuffed in gold while the fine almond jewels glowed and blazed in their network and trembled among the spurs and fringes of gold that trickled over her breasts and between them.

  Thorfinn drew a long breath.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now the hair should come down.’

  But only half was ever unpinned. It fell sweetly, smothering the gold of the necklace and cradling the sphere of one breast, touched to life by the warmth of its coil. Then the leisurely, unpinning hands were there no longer, or the space between them, or pity, or thought itself. Against his cheek, when her lips were free, she said, ‘If you wish.’

  And from Thorfinn, who never laughed, there came a sound that might have been a laugh.

  Thou gem of valour,’ he said, ‘and princess incomparable. You hold a fool in your hands who has strength for the business of six minutes, or perhaps only for four; and who will do nothing for you, for afterwards sleep will carry him off as if to the grave. And if that is true failure, and it is, I still cannot spare you it.’

  He was right. Of all the vast energy of which for nine months he had been the everlasting torrent and reservoir, there was tonight nothing left but one last golden coin, sent spinning into the air for six minutes, or perhaps only for four. But because she was already attuned to the moment, she, too, caught the flash of the coin at its zenith: the brief explosion of light before darkness came, and peace, with her husband asleep in her arms.

  For six months, this bed had been her own, as had the beds in all her lodgings. The lamps in each were to her liking, and the place where her robes lay, and where her mirror and comb were to hand. The manner in which her girls and Sinna and Unna attended her followed the path that pleased her best, and that everyone knew.

  For six months, lying here unencumbered on the coolness of linen, with the shutters pulled wide to admit the soft airs and noises of night, she had tried to see with Thorfinn’s eyes and think with his brain and share the common experience of his uncommon journey: the daily assault of exchange and confrontation, of decisions to be taken and problems to be passed on or dealt with.

  Then, insensibly, her mind would pass instead to the problems she herself would face with the dawn, and the decisions she would have to make or unmake, and the men whom she must court, or check, or pacify. And she would find in the quiet order of her chamber a solace that itself disturbed her, because one day she must relinquish it.

  Today. And tonight she knew that she would have lain on a moorland, with the wolves at her back, provided only that, of all the souls in the world, one ugly man lay sleeping like this at her shoulder.

  Towards dawn, his breathing quietened and changed. Then, very lightly, for he thought her asleep, his fingers began to trace on her body the subtle pattern, the overture to a journey he had created over the years, drawing on arts that had nothing to do with his Nordic blood, and which was the presage of not four minutes or six, but long, slow combers of joy with only the sun and the moon for their hourglass.

  So, last of the travellers, Thorfinn himself found his release. As a tired blade, tempered over and over, will regain its value and lustre, so, between dawn and rising, he took his refreshment.

  And then, upon rising, he took up the shield of his kingdom.

  TWELVE

  S IN THE time of Hakon of Norway, who came to power at mun banda, with the goodwill and to the pleasure of the gods of his sanctuaries, the Lord of the Apostle Peter was, it seemed, content with his homage, and blessed Alba and Orkney both with peace and with fruitfulness.

  None remembered a year such as followed. Whatever shadows fell on the countries about her, Thorfinn’s land seemed untouched.

  At home, the growing-season was cold. But because of the new tools and the new kilns and the new warehouses, there was food in Alba where corn and milk and fruit were wanting in Ireland.

  Overseas, the great Finn Arnason, the Queen’s father, had proved his loyalty and his worth to King Svein and was favoured above all men; while the King of Denmark himself continued to be neighbourly to the Archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen, as was his wont, but did not delay in sending a ship full of rich gifts to Alba, whose mission to Rome had been attended by so many benefits.

  With the ship, King Svein sent a crop-headed young woman called Ragna, who the previous month had been delivered of a large purple infant with a shock of black hair. It proved to be a daughter, so King Svein sent the baby as well, assigned to the King of Alba’s personal cook.

  In Norway, Harald the King spent part of his time with his Norwegian wife Groa’s cousin and part with his Russian wife, the sister of the Queens of France and of Hungary. The rest of his energy he deployed in wars against Denmark that left no time or money or men he could trust to enforce his claim to the lordship of Orkney.

  In Ireland, Eachmarcach, King of Dublin, was feeling his age, and sent Thorfinn the tribute owing for the lands he had conquered, without troubling to visit in person, which had a lot to commend it. The islands and Galloway, left to Thorfinn to order, were quiet under his mormaers.

  In England, every man’s eye was turned to Wessex, where the Earl Godwin and his family were improving their stranglehold on the kingdom against the growing ill-will of Leofric of Mercia, of Siward of Northumbria, and of King Edward himself.
Leofric’s noisy son Alfgar, now pushing forty and father of four children ranging in age from fourteen years to six months, dashed into Forteviot and out again, having cast in Thorfinn’s direction his congratulations, a gift from his mother, and the latest rumours from everywhere.

  Thorfinn learned that Bishop Ealdred was back and renewing diplomatic relations with his kingly master and all three competing Earls, as befitted a man whose diocese included Worcester and Bristol.

  Bishop Hermann, it seemed, had also returned, laden with parchment, and had picked up the threads of the various businesses now rolling briskly between Herefordshire, Dorset, and Devon, Normandy and the Breton coast, Flanders and points further south in the Rhineland.

  With a smugness he had noticed elsewhere, Alfgar made pointed mention, Bishop Ulf had made his way from Rome via Besançon, and was now re-ensconced in his splendid diocese of Dorchester. It had, according to opinion, been a near thing, as the synod at Vercelli had been tempted to break his staff for incompetence, until introduced to a greater temptation. (‘By whom?’ said Thorfinn. ‘Ask my father,’ said Alfgar.)

  Personally, Alfgar said, he didn’t enjoy having Godwin’s son Harold so close to his borders, however competent he might be in fighting the Welsh, but at least it occupied the attention of Thorfinn’s old friend Siward of Northumbria and kept his heavy hand out of other people’s affairs. Perhaps Thorfinn had heard that Siward had got another son from his wife at last, although by this time her figure had spread so much giving light to daughters or mishaps that neither she nor anyone else could tell whether she was carrying or not.

  No doubt Thorfinn’s Bishop Malduin, who had been absent sick in York for nearly a year, had been a comfort to them all.

  And of course Thorfinn’s nephew Malcolm was still in the south with Edward’s court, although hardly raising his voice over a whisper in view of all the intrigue with the Godwinsons. Alfgar himself would, however, rely on Bishop Ealdred to keep matters from getting too ugly. It didn’t do to forget that Ealdred had the blood of Aethelred, however emulsified, in his veins, and that the Godwin family knew it. And so what was the news from Germany?

  ‘You mean Hungary?’ said Thorfinn.

  ‘I mean Germany,’ said Alfgar. ‘That’s what I came for. Go on. I’ve paid for it. The two grandsons of the late King of England are in exile, and the wife of one of them is related to both the Pope and the Emperor. If anyone would find out what was happening, you would. You and Ealdred.’

  ‘And Bishop Ulf,’ Thorfinn said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Alfgar thoughtfully. ‘And so?’

  ‘And so one son of Edmund Ironside is dead, and the other suffers from indifferent health and has sired two girls of whom the oldest is five. I should not, I think,’ Thorfinn said, ‘allow that information to filter through to the Godwinsons or Earl Siward. The King, of course, will know.’

  ‘How does it feel,’ said Alfgar, ‘to be God?’

  He had been asked that, or something similar, once before. He refrained, as once before, from replying. The last man to miss silence was Alfgar.

  It remained noisy, not to say clamorous; but every week, it seemed, some new achievement was made and there blew through the kingdom the gaiety that comes with success.

  The mormaers of the regions received back to their hearths, not always with pleasure, the heirs or kinsmen who had represented them in Rome, and endured, not always willingly, long days and long nights of assertive monologues, followed now and then by outright disputes.

  Thorfinn went nowhere near them. When, in due course, it became apparent that his mormaers wished to confer, he called a council at Scone to which he invited them all, from Thorkel Fóstri in Orkney to Thor of Allerdale in the south.

  When they came, as they did, he set them round a table and listened. Then he spoke to them.

  Most of them, now, were acquainted with Saxon. But he spoke in Gaelic, with which every man was familiar, for uniformity was the theme of the meeting.

  Uniformity of justice, with the same rules enforced by the King’s authority through the King’s agents everywhere from Fife to the Hebrides.

  Uniformity of worship, so that men might be baptised and buried and shriven on the same terms in the same way, and be taught the same practices, and have ready to hand a source of aid for the poor and the sick and the traveller; a source of education for new entrants to the church; a source of learning to be drawn upon in matters of record or dispute.

  Uniformity in the way land and rights and property were held and changed hands, so that the rule in Gowrie and the rule in Orkney should for the first time be the same, and both the rights and the duties of a landowner be known; for if the church were to serve, it must be paid its due in rents or labour or offerings, and the king and his law-bands likewise.

  Uniformity of aims and ideals, so that no region should plan independently of its neighbour, but each should look towards the rest, as brother to brother, and to the King as to a father. So, as in Alba of old, men had brought their token of earth to the Moot Hill of Scone to signify unity, so each region would bring its own excellence and bind it into the country that was neither Alba nor Orkney, but men had begun to call Scotia.

  When Thorfinn spoke in that fashion, he was answered with thoughts as well as words, and with deep speech that achieved many things before it ran shallow.

  Halfway through, Thorkel Fóstri took his eyes from the High Chair and said to Tuathal, ‘It sounds well. But if all law is to be uniform, how do we decide which laws are best?’

  ‘It has been decided already,’ Tuathal said. ‘On the road back from Rome.’

  In September, a merchant ship rowed into the mouth of the Tay flying the banner of the Archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen.

  Word had reached Abernethy, where the King was. Before the visitor rounded the bend of the river, Thorfinn was on the jetty below his castle of Perth with Prior Eochaid and his courtmen about him, and the booths at the wharves were being prepared to receive seamen.

  Then the broad, well-kept vessel berthed, to a sequence of quiet Saxon orders, and the gangplank came down, with two oarsmen to hold it steady.

  Of the two men who disembarked, one was clearly the master of the vessel and, very likely, a trading-officer of the Archbishop’s household.

  The other was neither tall enough nor grand enough to be the Archbishop. His thickset form was smothered in a coarse, hooded cloak, and of his face nothing could be seen but a heavy, clean-shaven chin with a glint of gold chain beneath it.

  Then he lifted one hand, and the ring on it flashed as he pushed back his hood, revealing a big, lively face with a nose on it like an elk’s, and above it the ellipse of a pink, marbled tonsure, precise as if drawn with a compass.

  A face one had last seen at Goslar, plunging about the Emperor’s fishpond in its small-clothes.

  ‘Father Sigurd! No, I see …’ said Thorfinn.

  ‘Bishop Jon,’ said the same Irish-Norse priest from Dublin who had poured the wine at his namesake’s little party at Goslar. ‘Newly consecrated by the noble Archbishop himself, who thought a stutter in Gaelic would hardly be noticed, were I to embark on a dictation of The Intoxication of the Men of Ulster in honest cross-vigil outside my cave. So, I am, for want of a better, your Bishop for Orkney.’

  ‘Now, there is a coincidence,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I have a cave handy here, with your name on it. But the question is, can you endure it?’

  ‘I am a great man for co-operation,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘The three hundred swords of the family of Kinvard, the three hundred shields of the family of Kynnwyd, and the three hundred spears of the Coelings: whatever enterprise they undertook together, they never failed in it. They were all my cousins, and that is on my Irish side only.’

  ‘And the Norse side?’ said Thorfinn, leading the way to the hall.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘Likely enough, it would be the Norse side they were fighting.’

  Later, when he had recovered from the experien
ce of meeting Groa and the shipmaster had been taken off, leaving the King and the Irish priest Eochaid, whom he already knew, the new Bishop for Orkney asked sober questions and listened carefully to sober answers.

  Thorfinn was plain. ‘You have been consecrated Bishop for Orkney because Archbishop Adalbert is responsible for the northern isles, and since Norway cut herself off from Bremen, Orkney and the north have been without spiritual aid.

  ‘Orkney, of course, needs attention. But so does all the rest of this country. For many years, there has been only one bishop in Alba, and that bishop has been consecrated at York, and devoted to Northumbrian interests. For the last year, our Bishop Malduin has been sick in York. Perhaps it is a genuine sickness. Perhaps, now he is older, he will feel less impelled to fight for exclusive rights over his territory, or would not at this moment receive support from York if he did. The fact is that for the last year no priests have been ordained, no new churches have been built, and those few that exist have been neglected, despite all that good men like Mael-Isu and the rest have been able to do.

  ‘What I am asking of you, therefore, is that you should be a Bishop for Scotia: for the north and for Alba as well, travelling as you can to every cure in the country. If you agree, I shall take you riding with me as soon as you are rested: I have to talk to my mormaers before winter. Then, also before winter, I shall call a council and you will be introduced.’

  ‘This is what I understood,’ Bishop Jon said. ‘Although not quite perhaps what the Archbishop understood. And if your Bishop Malduin recovers, or receives encouragement from his superiors to return?’

  ‘As I have said, he is older now,’ Thorfinn said. ‘There are regions where he has never troubled to travel and probably never will. It should be possible to keep out of his way. Indeed, I was hoping you would have a companion before long. It is too much for one man.’

  ‘There is a priest called Hrolf,’ Bishop Jon said. ‘We’ve worked together. Archbishop Herimann thought he could reasonably be consecrated for the Sudreyar. No doubt Man and the rest of the islands could benefit from an occasional visit.’