King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  ‘I thought of that,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Siward needs to know what is happening. How annoyed Malduin is going to be. Rival bishops: alienated land and dues. Even priests who, now and then, may know more than he does. His wife will hate it even more.’

  ‘From which I gather that you feel you can handle it,’ Sulien said. ‘I’m glad. The air of gloom, I suppose, was because Alfgar had been discussing money.’

  ‘Conversation with Alfgar always turns on money,’ Thorfinn said. ‘His parents have been endowing churches like jackdaws. I don’t like Llanbadarn in the middle of this. Not with a wife and young family there. Why not bring them north to me in September?’

  ‘Alfgar will look after us,’ Sulien said. ‘He is wise six inches deep, and loyal eight inches.’

  ‘Well, if he becomes dead nine inches, come to me,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And don’t mistake me. I am fond of Alfgar.’

  ‘Did I belittle him?’ Sulien said. ‘I beg your pardon, and his. What is it, Thorfinn?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the King. ‘There is nothing wrong that I can see. Conditions change every day, and I deal with them. I enjoy it.’

  ‘So you have much to lose. It’s a common experience,’ Sulien said.

  Later, he stood in the grounds and watched Thorfinn and his men ride round the curve of the river until the bulk of the town in its loop hid them from him. He wished Bishop Jon were not, to his recollection, quite so business-like; and that Bishop Hrolf, of whom he had heard, were not quite so practised an engineer.

  He wished Bishop Malduin were dead, and enjoined on himself, quickly, an act of contrition.

  Whatever lay ahead for this kingdom, the presence or absence of Sulien was not going to alter it.

  ‘What do you mean,’ Groa said, ‘his laugh isn’t loud any more? Is Alfgar ill?’

  ‘No. Only growing tired of his wife. Don’t you notice,’ Thorfinn said, ‘how soft my laugh has become lately? What do you make of Bishop Hrolf?’

  ‘Large, powerful, and given to practical jokes. He is an expert on drainage,’ Groa said. ‘And he has a loud voice and no wife. Should we do something about it?’

  ‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘He might lose his interest in drainage.’

  The summer waned, profitably.

  The Irish masons, fresh in from Govan, reported that the vineyards of Gaul had suffered in the unfortunate squabble between the seigneurs of Neustrie, and Eachmarcach was importing wine from Cologne and Wissant this year. They began to build a round tower at Abernethy and repair another at Brechin in Angus, and took the ladders inside with them at meal-breaks so that they could give Eachmarcach’s purchase the attention it merited. Then Bishop Hrolf climbed up a rope with his crucifix, and the masons all emerged with the ladders and crept down them, crying.

  An Icelandic vessel trading wool cloaks and pumice and sulphur delivered a smith and three carpenters with their families from Totnes and Guernsey, and reported that you could hardly walk past St Paul’s church in London for the brawl going on between the new Bishop’s men and the men of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but that the Archbishop of Canterbury seemed to be winning. The King, they said, had stalked off to Gloucester.

  The smith set up a furnace and forge next to the blooms of iron Thorfinn had brought back from the Rhine and began to make a number of objects, including plough-shares. The carpenters went further north, smacking their wives’ heads when they complained.

  A man collecting hides and unloading bolts of cloth and holy-water pots at the mouth of the Dee said that all the pigs about Winchester were being killed ahead of time for the feast the Lady Emma was giving for her daughter’s new husband and the army of courtmen and servants he had brought from Boulogne. He rolled down some salt he had forgotten, and remarked that everyone would have square heads and thick accents in England soon at this rate: had they heard that Earl Godwin’s son Tostig had got himself married to the sister of Baldwin of Flanders?

  A clerk from Abingdon, delivering books, gold thread, and a present of two velvet cushions from a heavily armed pack-train, said that the King’s nephew Ralph had taken his stepfather round all the new castles on the Welsh border, and that Count Eustace had been able, so they said, to spare him a few experienced men to add to the excellent officers who had crossed the sea to man them already. Bishop Ealdred, who had failed to drive off that nasty attack by the Welsh only the other day, would no doubt be thankful.

  ‘Will he?’ said Prior Tuathal. ‘He lost a lot of men in that attack and nearly got himself killed. I wonder if Bishop Ealdred is losing his touch?’

  ‘For conciliation or for running?’ Thorfinn said. ‘That’s Harold Godwinsson’s country. The Bishop can’t be nice to the Welsh and stay friendly with Harold. And anyway it’s been a bad summer and the cattle are fatter on the Saxon side of the border. When’s the lead coming?’

  Exactly on time, the lead came in from Cumbria and was unloaded at Scone by men with oyster-catcher beaks fastening their jackets. The shipmaster and his clerk, taking ale at the priory, were unsurprised to find the royal consignee there, as well as Prior Eochaid and the man Cormac of Atholl.

  That was great news, then, said the shipmaster, for those that didn’t like foreigners, although how the fools thought you got in your wine and your pepper and your sword-blades without them was a different matter. A great brawl there had been on the south coast as that fellow Eustace of Boulogne had come to take ship across to his country. Some said it was over the question of where his men should sleep for the night. Some said, since he married the King’s sister, he expected the King to let him take over the castle of Dover. In Earl Godwin’s country! Of course, the men of the town were in arms in a moment, and so were Eustace’s men. Twenty killed on each side, and Eustace back raging to Gloucester to ask the King if this was how he treated his kinsmen.

  Well, that’s been known, said the shipmaster; and everyone knew what kind of answer they’d get from Edward. Or thought they knew. But, Mary, Mother of Christ, not this time. This time, King Edward called Earl Godwin before him and told him straight to his face to go off and harry his townspeople of Dover for the harm they’d done to his sister’s husband.

  Did Godwin agree? Could his lordship see Godwin agreeing? He turned on his heel, said the shipmaster, and went off and collected an army. Held it fifteen miles out of Gloucester, with young Harold and Tostig, and challenged the King to send out Count Eustace and all his men and turn out the foreigners left in the castle.

  ‘I don’t think,’ said the King, ‘that I can bear it. Could you tell me the rest of it quickly?’

  Oh, if there’s that much of a hurry, said the shipmaster, two words will do it. Wessex isn’t England, though some think it is. The King sent horsemen out, and before you’d know it, armies from Mercia and Northumbria and even from young Ralph his nephew in Hereford were there at Gloucester, nose to nose with the Godwinssons.

  Those that don’t like their landlords, said the shipmaster, were all for letting them flatten each other and giving us all a fresh start. But the bishops got preaching, as usual, and the upshot was: hostages taken on both sides, and the Godwinssons to come to London to answer charges in front of the council.

  More than which, said the shipmaster, weighing the bag in his hand, he could not be expected to say, the meeting in London not having been held yet.

  He left.

  ‘Poor Edward of England. He’s bungled it,’ said Cormac of Atholl.

  ‘He thought the south coast would accept Eustace. How unfortunate,’ said Thorfinn.

  ‘They might get rid of the Godwinssons,’ Eochaid offered.

  ‘They might. But without Eustace, they’ll be back. One contender dismissed. When, do you think,’ said Thorfinn, ‘ought we to expect Bishop Malduin to forsake York and be drawn to his needy pastoral cure in Kinrimund?’

  ‘When the Godwins have gone,’ said Cormac of Atholl. ‘Give him a month.’

  FOURTEEN

  ND SO,’ SAID Thorfinn affably t
o Bishop Malduin of Alba, ‘the Godwin family have got themselves outlawed, and you are fit and burning once more to respond to the call of your office. So bad deeds are balanced with good. I hear the Queen of England, Earl Godwin’s daughter, is in a nunnery?’

  ‘That is correct. Earl Godwin himself, with three of his sons, is in Flanders, which is, of course, the home of Tostig’s new bride. And Harold and one of his brothers have, I believe, made their way to Ireland from Bristol.’

  ‘Pursued slowly by Bishop Ealdred, who reached the quay too late to wave. And my lord Siward is pleased?’

  The Bishop said, ‘The King called out all the militia. That of Northumbria formed only part of the force.’

  Whatever his cousin of Orkney said to him, Bishop Malduin was not going to make an issue of it. Talking with Thorfinn always unsettled him.

  Listening to the Archbishop of York and Earl Siward, he found the nature of the King of Scotia simple to understand, if not easy to like.

  Face to face with the man himself, Bishop Malduin was aware, of course, with every word spoken, that here was a smart-witted Viking greedy for riches and power, and to that end equally ready to sue either God or the guts of an animal.

  Such a man, my lord Siward said, would take even the Pope as his spiritual overlord, rather than acknowledge a superior closer at hand. Would the Pope see a tithe of the dues being raised in his name? The produce of his churchlands? The returns for the services of his priests? The offerings brought by the faithful?

  No, said my lord Siward. And neither would Bishop Malduin. Or if any reached pious coffers at all, they would be those belonging to the two Bishops sent by the Pope’s favour so that they might report and keep the King’s face before the eyes of the Pope and the people.

  ‘Go and see what he is doing,’ had said the Earl Siward. ‘And I shall pray in my church of St Olaf’s for guidance as to how I may help you.’

  Face to face with the man, therefore, it should have been simple. But they talked of the flight of Earl Godwin, and, without warning, the King changed the subject and it was not simple at all.

  ‘You are wondering what I am doing,’ said Thorfinn, ‘about the division of our spiritual labours, now I have, as you must know, three bishops in the place of one. I have an idea about that.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Bishop Malduin, ‘I have to congratulate you, my son, on your hazardous voyage to the Tombs of the Apostles and an audience, I hear, with the Holy Father himself. I heard that he had offered two churchmen to sustain you during my illness. They speak, I believe, both Irish and Norse? So gifted?’

  ‘You have been reviving your Norse?’ the King asked.

  ‘What need?’ said Bishop Malduin. ‘Now that Earl Siward, as doubtless you have heard, is to marry his daughter into your wife’s family … or at least,’ said Bishop Malduin with smoothness, ‘that branch which remained loyal to Norway? Norse bishops have always served Orkney, and will be happy to do so again. Your Irishmen may leave their cold northern cabins and retire with a clear conscience to Goslar.’

  ‘I have this difficulty,’ said Thorfinn, ‘with my cook. Do you ever hesitate when taking your broth? Does the smell of a sauce ever disturb you? For five years, I have had the same cook, and no one, to my knowledge, has ever died at his hand. An attack of nausea, yes. But death in agony, no. I should not like to lose him.’

  He had lost Bishop Malduin. Bishop Malduin thought of the lord Siward’s great, lowering bulk and the lord Ligulf’s friendly smile, printed about by the caret of his silken moustaches, and gritted his teeth.

  ‘Your cook, my son?’

  ‘King Svein of Denmark sent my cook his best concubine. My cook likes King Svein of Denmark,’ said the King of Scotia. ‘He doesn’t like King Harald of Norway at all. There is the dilemma.’

  Along the tracks of Bishop Malduin’s mind, obliterating the Latin of Psalm, the Latin of prayer, the Latin of ritual, sprang words of coarse country Gaelic: words from his boyhood in the monastery school in Ireland, used by one crude country boy when another was teasing him.

  Bishop Malduin said, ‘You are pleased, my cousin, to amuse yourself. It is not a pleasant thing, at my age, to find my cure has been usurped by others. It is not pleasing, either, to those who consecrated me as Bishop for Alba. In the past, the whole country served to supply no more than a modest living. What can I expect now?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the King, ‘I should be a poor kinsman had I not already thought of your plight. More than that, as I said to the Holy Father in Rome, have I been concerned with the plight of the poor folk who lie to the south of us, between Fife and Bamburgh, and who have had scant attention from the Bishop of Alba or the Bishop of Durham since the Lothians became a matter of dispute between the Earls of Northumbria and King Malcolm my grandfather. Who, these days, is concerned for the cure of souls in Abercorn and Aberlady, Hailes and Cramond, Coldingham, Melrose and Tyningham? Good provider that he is, Bishop Aethelric does not forget to collect from the lands of St Cuthbert all the tributes due to the shrine of St Cuthbert at Durham, but, in return, what pastoral care do the people on these lands enjoy?

  ‘The Pope himself,’ continued Thorfinn gravely, ‘confessed concern. I reassured him. In the Bishop of Alba, I said, we had a man practised in Saxon as well as Gaelic; a man who understood the Angles south of the Forth from long sojourn with Earl Siward of Northumbria; a man to whom Earl Siward and his friend the Bishop of Durham would without doubt be happy to allot the revenues which at present disappear to the south, in return for his services among the poor and the deprived people of Lothian. The Holy Father’s contentment,’ said Thorfinn, ‘was such as to gladden the heart. He sent you his blessing.’

  Bishop Malduin sat without movement, encased in the stifling mould of his anger.

  The lands of the Bishop of Alba had never been large, and old Malcolm, liberal enough in time of war, had never been slow in time of peace to win back the property he had allotted so freely. Then had come this marauder his cousin Thorfinn, making free with the Fife lands of dead men or the young he had orphaned, and forcing the Bishop to spare from the little he had to enrich the shrines of St Serf and St Drostan.

  Dunkeld and Kinrimund had always worked together in Malcolm’s day, and the lands of Crinan ought by rights to have come to him, but had they? He had claim by descent to the lands of Angus, but who collected the revenues there now? That fool Gillocher and his power-mad cousin Kineth of Brechin, who had come back from Rome with his head turned.

  Rivals stared at Bishop Malduin everywhere. Lulach the royal stepson, ensconced in Moray with his confessors. Eochaid, the new Prior of Scone, who had taken a faster grip on the place than the absent Coarb of St Columba ever had, and who was always in the King’s household. And now the biggest threat of them all, Tuathal of St Serf’s in the middle of Fife, his own precinct.

  You weren’t supposed to run a group of Culdees like a mint-master. You weren’t supposed to run a kingdom like a Cluniac market. Enrich a shrine, yes. From the gold in your coffers and the returns from your lands, you could support the clergy who served the shrine, and the priests who would starve otherwise on the little their flock could afford.

  But to teach men to manage their land; to encourage strangers to trade; to take an interest in shipping: how did that benefit the church, how did it improve the spiritual welfare of a country? Trouble, that was what it brought. The kind of trouble the Earls of Northumbria struck with the foreigners and the kindred who had been allowed to grow too powerful.

  Thorfinn was trying to build York in Alba. He and his minions would fail. Or else the minions would swell and obliterate him. But meantime, was he himself, twenty-three years a bishop and no longer young, to end milled between magnates and living off herbs in the Lothians? He said, ‘My son, what the Holy Father desires must command attention from us all. But if, despite this, the Earl Siward should refuse to allow the revenues from the Lothians to be alienated, how then should I live?’

  ‘Is it p
ossible,’ said the King, ‘that he would refuse? Why, then, you must live as all the Bishops of Alba have done. From your lands of Kinrimund, and upon my expense as an officer in attendance on my household. The other Bishops, being much to the north, cannot do this.’

  The man was wicked. Everyone knew how far the King of Scotia’s household had to ride, and how often. Forty miles a day, every day for a week, was not unknown. Even the favoured Eochaid and Tuathal, he had heard, complained sometimes. Bishop Malduin said, ‘My son, you are speaking to a man who is no longer young.’

  ‘… Or there is retirement,’ said the King. ‘Perhaps you should consider retirement? The Culdees, I am sure, would accept you, and we should find a convent for your wife. I should be disappointed. The deprived people of Lothian will be disappointed. But the decision, my cousin, must lie with you. Tell me when you have made it, and, one way or the other, we shall write to Earl Siward together.’

  ‘So what happened?’ said Lulach.

  ‘To Bishop Malduin? He’s gone south to try and persuade Earl Siward to give up the church-tithes from Lothian. You don’t know about that.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Lulach cheerfully. ‘But I don’t mind conjecturing with you. Isn’t this a bad time to issue a challenge to Siward over Lothian, now the Godwin family are out of his way and he has a new alliance with Norway?’

  ‘It would be if the English succession was settled,’ Thorfinn said. ‘But it isn’t. Eustace is no longer a favourite, and Godwin is banished, but there are still two strong runners left to occupy the attention of both Siward and Norway. I think Siward will agree.’

  ‘Agree to give up his church dues in Lothian? You’re mad. He’s mad,’ said Groa to Prior Tuathal. They were all, for once, on her own lands in Fife south of Loch Leven, and it was dusk, which meant that Tuathal would stay overnight rather than try to get back to the island once the geese had landed. From Iceland they came, the flocks of thick-beaked Vikings, darkening the sky after the first full moon of September, and from dusk to dawn the shores and isles of Loch Leven were theirs, to disturb at one’s risk. The older monks knew them by sight, as each dropped, year by year, to his familiar roosting-place, and some of them came to the hand, as did the priory birds.