One could live, winter and summer, on a lake such as this, ringed with low, pretty hills; full of life, as were the other small lochs about it. During winters in Orkney, she felt like that. When age blew on one’s cheek instead of winter, life in such a place was not hard to contemplate.
But this debate was not about peace, but about consolidating the southlands of Alba. And her role was not to applaud, but to provoke. ‘He’s mad,’ said Groa again of the King her husband. ‘With the Godwin family exiled, Siward has conquered his greatest rival for power in England. Now all of England outside Wessex is divided between Siward and Mercia.’
‘I suppose you could put it like that,’ Thorfinn said. ‘On the other hand, since Alfgar has been given the Godwinsson lands of East Anglia …’
‘What!’ said Groa.
‘Didn’t I tell you? Alfgar’s an Earl. His wife will love it. And it means that he and his parents now hold the whole of central England from sea to sea, south of Northumbria on the east coast and of Cumbria on the west, leaving Siward with as much as he can retain of Middle Anglia and the eastern lands north of the Humber. I think,’ said Thorfinn, ‘that we might spend Christmas in Cumbria this year. We never have.’
‘We’ve never dared,’ said Tuathal bluntly.
‘I know nothing of it,’ said Lulach cheerfully.
Christmas in Cumbria was hard work.
Advancing in cold and blustery weather from the princely guest-house on Carlisle’s southern outskirts to the royal hall maintained by Thor, the King’s distant cousin in Allerdale, and proceeding eastwards from there to the palace between Penrith and Appleby where, led by Leofwine, the whole of East Cumbria was assembled to welcome them, Bishop Hrolf felt it his duty to instruct, to learn, and to entertain his fellow-travellers.
His fellow-travellers, who were saving their energy for the extremely cautious festivities which were taking place at each halt, were not responsive. Bishop Hrolf, who liked to spice his learning with a little jollity, rallied them out of their apathy by tying their leg-bands together while they were sleeping, or by emptying some ale-horn and refilling it swiftly from a small bag of sawdust. Bishop Hrolf became the largest cross that the King of Alba’s Christmas cavalcade to Cumbria had to bear.
Bishop Hrolf loved the Romans. His Celtic blood, much diluted, did not prevent him from wishing, from time to time, that the Emperors in their day had crossed to Ireland and there established a Bremen, a Goslar, a Cologne: a city of mighty stone churches over which Bishop Hrolf could preside.
Instead, the Romans had reached, here in Cumbria, the northern limit of their English conquest, marked by the line of their Wall. Four hundred years ago, the walls and fountain of Luguvallium had still stood, when Carlisle was given by the King of Northumbria to St Cuthbert and there was a house of nuns at its gates.
The Roman roads were still there. They were riding on one now: the great highway from Carlisle to York. And the settlements they were visiting were still to be found where the Roman engineers first had made their selection: at the great crossroads and the fords, at the points guarding the few awkward highways from this principality ringed with hills and wedged between Alba and Mercia.
Once, this land had been lived in by Romans and by Britons, speaking the language they now spoke in Wales. It was the tongue St Kentigern of blessed memory would use when he came south to preach and establish his church. It would be known to St Cuthbert of (he reminded himself) not quite such blessed memory when the Celtic church was dismissed from Lindisfarne a hundred years later and he found refuge in Carlisle and the Solway.
Then, of course, had come those other refugees when the Viking raids had started. Refugees from the Viking kingdom of York. Refugees from Ireland: Gaels at first, and then those of mixed Norse and Irish descent.
To preach in Cumbria, as to preach in the island of Man, you required four different tongues. It was one of the reasons, they said, why the Bishops of Alba had had little to do with the area. And why the Bishop of Durham, who would ordain a priest or two in an emergency, had shown no interest, either, in rebuilding the churches and monasteries.
Not, of course, that the Bishop of Durham had any rights here, since, a hundred years before, the King of England had ceded to Malcolm of Cumbria all the land from the Firth of Clyde south to the river Duddon and Stainmore.
Or so ran the theory. In practice, Bishop Hrolf gathered, it was not uncommon for a good, Celtic-trained bishop much involved with the Anglian part of his cure to obtain consecration from the Archbishop of York in addition to the simple ceremony required by his native church, to make his teaching more acceptable. And when the Bishop of Alba was called further north, to his flock or to his king, it was natural that his brother of Durham should see to urgent business, such as the examination and ordaining of young men serving God near his area.
Harmless in itself. Dangerous when the Bishop of Durham and his brother, as now, were the friends of a powerful and ambitious Earl Siward at York. For the temporal lords, as well as the lords of the church, had an interest in Cumbria.
The lands of St Cuthbert had once been wide and rich, and nowhere more so than here, long divorced from their parent shrines in the east.
For a hundred years, Cumbria and Northumbria had lain quarrelling side by side, each greedy to swallow the other. Intermarriage had led to claims on each side already: this King’s brother had already tried, as had his grandfather, to take Durham. Any such claim from the east would surely begin with a pious endeavour to revive the claims of St Cuthbert to the wide, scattered lands that had once been the province of the Prince-Bishop of Durham.
To forestall this, Thorfinn had offered Bishop Malduin the care of Lothian. To minimise this threat, he had raised a thicket of other saintly men who now slept in the Lord. Bishop Hrolf had read about St Serf and St Kentigern in the Life of St Serf which this King had commissioned. He had even seen, in some recent epistle, a suggestion that St Kentigern and St Columba had had, on one occasion, a pleasing encounter.
To his recollection, the normal life-span of man made such a meeting unlikely, but he had heard no rebuttals, and Robhartach, the Abbot of Iona, was silent on the subject: that is, he had been absent in Kells on the two occasions on which Bishop Hrolf had called on him.
On the other hand, the Columban church, whatever its past, had no great hold on this district, although one could not say as much for the church of Armagh. Shrines to St Patrick were the first thing one noticed in Allerdale. He and Prior Tuathal, of whom Bishop Hrolf had a high opinion, had had an interesting talk on the subject.
Reminded of his rapport with Prior Tuathal, Bishop Hrolf urged his mare out of the column and began to drop back in the Prior’s direction, while assembling a theory he intended to propound about the monetary policy of the Emperor Hadrian.
When he arrived at the rear of the column, however, it was to find that the Prior Tuathal had seemingly vanished. The Bishop glanced about for a bit, and then, dismissing the matter, set about lecturing two of the men-at-arms in a kindly fashion for their over-indulgence in mead, while contriving to unfasten their girth-buckles during the ensuing approach to a river-ford.
Thus, he told them smiling on the far bank, they had been sobered once and baptised twice, at any rate.
And so, smiling in a less spontaneous way, they agreed with him.
‘On drains,’ said Thorfinn in the guest-hall outside Appleby, ‘on drains he is unparallelled. Why fuss over trifles? Bishop Malduin would be worse.’
‘I know what the Lady means,’ said Tuathal thoughtfully. ‘Bishop Malduin might ill-wish you a colic by demons, but he wouldn’t strap up a pig in your battle-shield. However. God, I feel, is competent to relieve us of this difficulty. Hrolf is a good engineer.’
‘God, I feel, might need a little encouragement,’ Groa said. ‘The priest at Dacre said he could hardly get through the vigil, he had been talked at so much. Which reminds me. For a Christmas feast, I have seen better tables.’
; ‘They will be happy you noticed,’ said Thorfinn. ‘They have got into the habit of paying their taxes in silver, and don’t keep storage-barns as they used to. It’s time they were reminded. A bad harvest can be worse than a royal visitation. At least Leofwine is still friendly.’
They had kept away, this time, from Crinan’s lands about Alston, but the halls they were occupying were served by peoples who remembered the other princes of Cumbria, Thorfinn’s brother and grandfather, and who thought of Thor the merchant-coiner of Allerdale as their immediate protector and leader, rather than as the kinsman and representative of the Orcadian Earl who had fought Duncan of Cumbria and taken his place.
Gillecrist of Strathclyde, an impulsive man who loved fishing and fighting in equal proportions, said, ‘Leofwine hasn’t altered since Rome. But Thor is restless. He was asking me who owned the lands that used to belong to the see of Glasgow, and what your plans were for Lothian.’
Groa looked at the King. ‘Thor helped you in the past. You got your base on the Waver with his men. He didn’t do overmuch to help Duncan at Durham. He kept Malduin on more than one occasion from troubling you. And against Diarmaid mac Mael-na-mbo he has always been your staunchest ally in Galloway and the Sudreyar. He is not of the temper to enjoy having an overlord, but you are his third cousin.’
I am the dog at your heel. Everything I have ever done has been an attempt to be like Thorfinn.
‘It’s fourteen years since I cleared Diarmaid’s fleet from the Sudreyar. But you’re right. If Thor objected to threatening gestures from Northumbria or Ireland then, he is not likely to suffer them now. Which is just as well, with Diarmaid sheltering Harold Godwinsson.’
‘Is that true?’ said Tuathal.
‘So Thor says, and I believe him. While Earl Godwin and the rest went to Bruges, Harold and his younger brother made for the Severn estuary and Ireland. The Severn sees most of the trade in the west—far more now than Chester did. Harold held it, and will want it back, but he will need help against Emma’s nephew and the Norman outposts, not to mention King Gruffydd of Wales. My guess is that Harold went to Ireland to complete a bargain with Diarmaid of Leinster.’
‘What sort of bargain?’ said Groa. ‘Against Eachmarcach?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Eachmarcach is not a young man, and he has been King of Dublin on and off now for seventeen years. What will happen to our interests in Ireland and Man if Dublin falls into unfriendly hands has been something I have been giving a lot of thought to. On the other hand, Diarmaid is fighting-mad and has been ever since he claimed Meath. He wants to make Turlough Ua Brian King of Munster, and the present incumbent is giving him trouble. He may recruit Harold and his men to help him attack Munster instead.’
‘He may recruit Harold and his brother and get them killed, which would be best of all,’ said Prior Tuathal with un-Christian firmness. ‘For, while King Edward won’t mind a west-coast alliance excluding the Godwin family, Harold wouldn’t like it at all, if he ever came back from exile. After all, it was to prevent such an alliance between the Welsh and the Mercians and the Cumbrians, presumably, that the Kings of England farmed out Cumbria in the first place. They couldn’t hold it. Cumbria was self-supporting and too far from Wessex to benefit from Wessex protection. Now it’s different.’
‘They’re still self-supporting,’ said Groa, ‘except at Christmas. And not any nearer to Wessex. What’s the difference? A friendly Mercia to make a bridge between Wales and Cumbria?’
‘That and other things,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Once, the only way you could hold such a country was by clearing it through mass slaughter and planting it with your own people. Unless, that is, you had control of a fleet that could exact regular tributes under threat.’
‘As you did in Ireland. But the productive areas of Cumbria tend to be inland. So they must either ravage the country or what? Ah,’ said Groa, who enjoyed keeping ahead of everybody and always hoped, one day, to find herself ahead of Thorfinn, ‘you’re thinking of the Norman forts. The defence works on the Welsh border. With a few of those, you could hold a country.’
‘Don’t tell Thor,’ said Thorfinn. ‘And it’s a long time since I sailed the Irish coast collecting tributes under threat.’
‘I know. Eachmarcach does it for you. Thorfinn,’ Groa said, ‘If you lose Eachmarcach from Dublin, you may well lose Man and Kintyre, and Galloway and the Cumbrian bases will be none too easy to hold. What will you do?’
‘Put to sea in the spring,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I’ve talked to Thor about it already.’
They all looked at him, their thoughts in their eyes. A show of force. Preventative war. But still war.
Groa said, ‘Diarmaid may go for Munster. The sons of Godwin may decide not to help him, or be killed, or be allowed to return. You don’t know.’
‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But I know someone who probably does.’
He had not unpacked fully, as she had. He had not unpacked at all, nor had his servants. Groa said, ‘Whom are you going to see? Sulien?’
There was a glint in his eye. ‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘This year, I felt I should make a gesture. Such as offering a token payment for Cumbria to the person who would most appreciate it.’
It was Gillecrist, across Tuathal’s silence, who said, ‘My lord King … A state visit to Edward of England?’
‘No, my friend of Strathclyde,’ said Thorfinn. ‘A private visit to the Lady Emma at Winchester.’
FIFTEEN
N HER GREAT, velvet-draped chamber above the stone undercroft, Emma sat erect in a bed built like a coffin, its back carved and gilt like a dragon-ship.
With her were three of her ladies, all of them Norman women married to Saxons, which was her preference. Beside her stood two of her Winchester churchmen: Stigand the Bishop, her ancient crony and ally, and Odo, a sparer, wilier version of Ealdred his brother who had led the English King’s recent mission to Rome.
There were, on the bed and underfoot in the room, seven or eight lapdogs, of which one was dyed blue.
Thorfinn entered the room and stood still as the usher retreated. No one spoke. The door closed behind him. The eyes of the dogs shone; then after a moment their ears dropped and they subsided.
The Old Lady, the Lady-Dowager, the widow of two Kings of England sat and stared at her visitor.
He wondered how clearly she could see. Her eyes, colourless as glass powder, were watering, and a sickle of hair had escaped from her head-veil, still royally pinned by its fillet. Like a tired parchment bag, her face hung from the hook of her nose.
He had seen women of ninety who did not look like that. Emma was old, but not so aged. Emma was ill, and probably dying.
She said, ‘As a trader of furs, you have my safe-conduct to pass from your ship and back to it again, without digressing. Otherwise, you are here at your own risk.’
Her voice crackled from lack of air pressure, but was otherwise firm. No one rushed to correct her. Therefore, she knew who he was.
He said, ‘Thank you, my lady. I know it. I wished to see you without commitment to either of us.’ He did not look at Bishop Stigand, who was a friend of the exiled Godwin family as well as of Emma’s. He had seen one of the women, Thola, once, in the company of Archbishop Juhel. He wished Hermann had been present, instead of Ealdred’s brother.
Part of the parchment bag creased and sank, as if pulled from behind. The air was thick with balsam and heat, overlying the smell of the dogs and a lingering, nursery odour of sour milk and urine. Emma said, ‘How long do you think you would last outside these doors if you and I had this talk unattended? How old are you, Macbeth of Alba?’
Ten years ago, he had attended the crowning of her son here at Winchester, and she had arranged for the child Malcolm his nephew to be removed from the power of Siward and fostered instead here at court.
More than twenty years ago, younger than Malcolm was now, he himself had been brought to the English court, a guest, a nominal housecarl, a hostage, and had lea
rned how kingdoms are run. He said, ‘I am forty-two years old, my lady Dowager, and I have come to see how you fare, and to offer you, if you wish to send for it, some silver from Cumbria.’
Again, her face seamed and shadowed. Her knuckles, joined on the thin quilt before her, were hedged with rings like the shields on a longship. ‘With your homage, of course?’ she said. ‘With your fealty? Now that you have seen how I fare? Or do you expect King Svein of Denmark to be here to receive it by then? I hear you share the same mistresses.’
He knew the games that she played. He said, ‘Judge, then, of my surprise when my lord Eustace arrived from Boulogne. It must have been as great as King Svein’s.’
On the quilt, the row of shields tilted and flashed. She said, ‘A man who cannot match Harald of Norway is no King for England. Eustace will learn.’
‘Who will teach him, I wonder?’ said Thorfinn. ‘Not King Svein, you think. Then King Svein’s cousins, the sons of Earl Godwin? No, no, of course not. It was over my lord Eustace’s visit that Earl Godwin was exiled.’
A miracle happened. The narrow bed became not a coffin but a chair of state. The figure straightened. The rows of shields parted company, and one of them, lifting, effected a bestowal of the stray strand of hair, a straightening of the head-veil. Emma sat up.
‘My good lords,’ she said. ‘Is the King of Alba, is the King of Scotia, to be denied a seat in the house of his overlord? Thola, give him a chair. My good Bishop Stigand, you have business elsewhere, and whatever of note King Macbeth has to tell me, your colleague Odo will apprise you of later. Ladies, you may leave Thola with me. My lord King, stand no longer.’
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