‘All that will be done with as little disturbance as possible, and with the advice of the leaders of every community. I am also proposing,’ said the even, formidable voice, ‘to make available to some of our friends lands in the valleys south of the Forth and the Clyde that are at present under the supervision of no one and have been neglected since the time of Malcolm my grandfather. In this way, our guests may be supported without depriving any existing household of its livelihood. They have agreed to this. They have also agreed that, for the length of their stay, they will put themselves under the law and the leadership of this land, and will accept and subject themselves to our justice.’
He ended, and surveyed them all. Because of the height of the dais, he had remained seated, as had his companions, and, like them, he wore only the heavy tunic and wool cloak of riding-length, not the long robes of ceremony. He said, ‘I accept their word, and am satisfied with this arrangement. But I will not impose it against strong views to the contrary. Is there any disagreement?’
No one stood up and said, as Killer-Bardi had when the idea was first mooted, ‘I don’t know what you want to bring in strangers for. We’ve always been able to defend ourselves without any trouble.’
Bishop Jon had scotched that, in his odd Scandinavian with the strong Irish accent. ‘True enough,’ had said Bishop Jon, ‘when there were twenty sons to a family, and all a ruler required was enough land to feed himself and his concubines. But Christian observance, I would remind you, is putting a stop to that, and the practice of lifting someone else’s cattle whenever it’s mealtime.’
And Thorfinn himself had made the other half of the point. Alba had always had to call in mercenaries. And would have to get help where she could, until she could grow enough and earn enough to keep her own sons to fight for her.
So, although a few people cleared their throats, it was only Leofwine of Cumbria who finally stood up and said, ‘My lord King … I mean no disrespect, but over a matter of land, all of us want to be careful. In Alba and Strathclyde and Cumbria, there’s waste land, and undrained land and uncleared land enough to feed any number of families; but to reclaim them needs time and labour. Meantime, when their resources are done, these men will have to live off something, and if they’re fighting, they’ll have no time for harvest or sowing. So, at the best, they’ll have to be helped from ready-made land.’
He paused. ‘There are ways round that,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And in good years, they can be paid in food anyway. But, of course, care will have to be taken. Was that all your point?’
‘Well,’ said Leofwine, and hesitated under a row of blue Norman eyes. He said, ‘My lord, they have land, surely, in their own country, and battles enough to satisfy any man, whether for Duke William or against him. What’s to prevent them taking a man’s land here and then putting it under a caretaker while they rush back to Normandy when their own property is under attack or they see a prospect of extending it?
‘We may get nothing out of this bargain. We may even lose our young men, if they get tired of clearing woodland and fancy going back, instead, to fight with Viscount Nigel in another Val-ès-Dunes, or with my lord fitzOsbern in another Domfront, or with Anjou in Maine, for that matter. Then you lose everything.’
‘I will answer that,’ Thorfinn said, ‘and then, if they wish, our guests may have more to say. Firstly, the men you see here who are landowners in Normandy and also head of their houses will remain here for only one winter. While they enjoy our hospitality, we shall have, I hope, an exchange of mutual profit, and in the spring they will return home. The Normans who remain in England and the Normans who remain here must be drawn from those who have forfeited their land overseas, or who are of a cadet line and have none. As long as the House of Godwin is in power, it is hardly feasible for a man to own land and manage it on both sides of the water.’
‘But they will go back in your ships,’ Leofwine said. Discomfort had turned his face scarlet, but he spoke up loudly none the less. ‘And I can think of a few younger sons who may go back with them.’
‘So can I,’ Thorfinn said. ‘And our Norman friends in their turn have already told me of kinsmen of theirs who want to come here and join us. There is always a traffic in young fighting-men. You cannot halt it. And, provided they come back—and I think they will—I don’t object to seeing the Alba of my sons in the hands of experienced men who have learned leadership at the flank of an expert. I think it worth trying. Is there anyone who still does not?’
Because the smell of food seeping into the hall was growing stronger, and because Bishop Malduin had not yet heard the news and been dispatched on his furious mission from York, no one had anything of moment to add, beyond a disarming speech of thanks delivered by Osbern of Eu. Thus ended the second stage of the planned Norman influx, without causing grievous offence to any one of Thorfinn’s present subjects barring the one he had omitted to tell in the first place, which was Groa his wife.
She did not tax him with it. The thing was too trivial, and he was too busy.
So was she. She had taken upon herself the settling of the womenfolk of the Norman castlemen, who included cheerful Welsh bedfellows as well as resentful if legitimate Norman ones. Flodwig, the only son of the last Archbishop of Dol, who seemed to have been their principal interpreter in Herefordshire, performed the same office now, and the transition from Cumbric to Gaelic she herself could now manage with small trouble.
It seemed a long time since, a girl of seventeen, she had run Gillacomghain’s household and then Thorfinn’s with the aid of one steward, who would handle the stores and the incoming tributes and oversee the managers of the land that was farmed, while she saw that the cloth was woven and bought, and that the sewing and shoemaking were done, and the supply of men and girls and skilled women was always enough for the household’s needs in cooked food and service. If no one else was there to do it, she bought new oxen herself and hired smiths or leatherworkers, and herself settled a case of wife-stealing or theft, or herself complained to the miller about badly ground bere.
Now it was all too large, and growing larger. The changing group of mormaers and men-at-arms who advised and attended the King had to be fed, and his churchmen and scribes as well as his household, quite apart from the special councils and feasts. There were always envoys or other visitors.
To accommodate all that, the lands held directly under the King, providing for his sheep and corn and swine and cattle and horse-breeding, his hunting and his fisheries, had had to grow also, for the ownerless lands of Fife that had come to him after Duncan’s death had not proved enough. Now, if a holding fell vacant through death or misdemeanour, Thorfinn would often choose a man of his own to run it under the Crown.
All that was beyond the scope of one steward now. Every aspect of daily life, from the upkeep of buildings to the itinerary of the household, from the maintenance and making of arms and of tools to the building of ships, the felling of timber, the care of the horses, had to be in someone’s hands, usually those of a man who was either a mormaer or a kinsman of one. Men who already had land, or access to it, and who, so far, could be rewarded with excitement, with companionship, and with silver.
So far. But Thorfinn must remember how, once in Orkney at least, once in Alba at least, rulers had bought the swords of their subjects in time of crisis by offering them in free gift the lands they had hitherto maintained as tenants. And how, later, necessity had forced the ruler or his descendants in every case to take back the gift.
In allotting more land to these Normans, Thorfinn was offering a hostage to fortune. For his own men in time to come would look for advancement; and to provide it, the food-barns would have to be full, and the chests of silver, locked in Dunkeld there.
On the other hand, if she had thought of it, then Thorfinn undoubtedly had also. And, despite everything, had gone ahead.
To Lulach, who had stayed at Perth for several weeks after the council meeting, Groa one day broached the subject obliquely. The
y were alone in Thorfinn’s quarters in Abernethy, between the hills and the broad water-meadows of the Tay, and Thorfinn himself was absent in Angus.
Once, he was never absent, for wherever he was, there was the kingdom, and herself at his side. But for years there had been no methodical progress from region to region of the kingdom, hearing complaints, meting out justice, consuming tributes in kind.
Or no, that was wrong. Of course the household had travelled, incessantly. But the moves were not so frequent. Instead, Thorfinn himself made of each resting-place a base from which, day by day and week by week, he rode from place to place, wherever there were people, with a band of picked helpers. Fast and tirelessly mobile, he went where the household was too cumbersome to go, and where his presence was demanded. Between one move of the household and the next, he could be in Orkney and back.
She did not ask to go with him, and he did not invite her. The reasons were obvious. She was no more than in her mid-thirties and could ride as long as he did. But the household needed her presence, and the kind of business he was transacting, the kind of relationships he was establishing with these his subjects, did not.
He needed her to help him rule the kingdom. But it was a long time since he had needed her personally, as on the day he had come back from Rome, strained beyond his resources by months of meticulous work with the powerful men he was wooing, with the young courtiers he was training. Since that occasion, he had not turned to her for help or understanding. And even then the comfort she had given him had been of limited duration. The open air and the sea had been his real need, and his salvation.
So to her son Lulach, who had spent a serene morning hawking and seemed to miss neither his wife nor his new-born daughter in Moray, Groa said, ‘I wonder what sort of court King Malcolm kept in his day? Full, I’m told, of Norse-Irish women and no wives. And yet he could hold off the Vikings and defeat the English in pitched battle.’
‘I don’t think Thorfinn has any Norse-Irish girls,’ said Lulach dreamily. ‘In fact, I’m sure he hasn’t.’ Steam rose gently from all his clothing, and a strong smell of horseflesh. His hair, against the wood of the settle, was pink as dawn snow in the firelight.
‘Well, that’s good,’ said Groa with some irritation. ‘Don’t you know how Malcolm ruled?’
Lulach tasted the mead in his cup, drank from it, and set it down once again on the floor. He said, ‘He didn’t have Normans, if that’s what you mean. He had his daughter’s husband to call on whenever Vikings were needed, and his mother’s people in Ireland whenever Vikings ran short. His household, I suppose, was like that of any Irish king of his day with no sons. He fought for his people in return for his keep. You don’t have to run a very big household for that.… Didn’t Thorfinn tell you the Normans were coming?’
He always got to the root of the trouble, and it was always painful. You had to be very even-tempered to live with Lulach. Groa said, ‘I think it’s a little dangerous.’
‘But at first,’ Lulach said, ‘weren’t you surprised by his cleverness? I think he wanted you to be surprised by his cleverness. You are the only person whose opinion really matters to him.’
Her eyes flickered, and she bent to pick up the gold spool she was working with, turning away from the heat of the fire. The linen cord in her lap was half-covered with bullion already, with a speck of blood on it where the fine wire had opened her thumb. Lulach said, ‘Do you want me to speak to him?’
Her eyes cleared. ‘No,’ said Groa. She looked up. ‘So long as nothing is wrong. You didn’t tell him anything new?’
‘He doesn’t want to know, any more,’ Lulach said. ‘And it wouldn’t make any difference. Don’t grieve because he isn’t brought low with doubt, or with pain, or despair. When he does call on you, it will be for something even you will find almost impossible to give. Save your strength for that day.’
The wire fell from her lap and leap-frogged in thin golden coils over the flags and into the glowing red core of the fire. ‘Because of the Normans?’ she said. ‘Lulach, I think I want to know.’
Lulach’s perfect teeth showed in his slow, charming smile. ‘Then you should have read my account of the Normans,’ he said. ‘Hugh and his friend Osbern Pentecost flying north from their castles to take refuge with King Macbeth. Pentecost, someone said, was God’s answer to Babel, but we seem to have more languages now, don’t we, than ever we had? … I wish you wouldn’t cry. It doesn’t change anything.’
‘Next time I say I want to know, don’t tell me anything,’ Groa said. ‘And meantime, whom do you know who would like gilded firewood? The ultimate decadence. As we sink into financial chaos, men will look down on our ruins and murmur: Like Egypt, like Rome, like Byzantium, these men of Scotia went down in their glory. Yes, what is it?’
She wondered if she had been overheard. But the man of her chamber who entered was much too engaged with his own news.
‘My lady, a harbinger has arrived. The Bishop of Alba is on his way here, hoping for an audience with the King.’
Before she had drawn breath, Lulach was on his feet beside her. ‘The King is on his way back from Angus. I’ll meet him. My lady will be happy to see the Bishop and entertain him until the King comes.’ He turned to Groa. ‘If that is right?’
He could change so quickly. It was perfectly right, and the course of action that, given time, she would have propounded. Lulach left while she was still giving orders for the guest-quarters to be made ready, and the Prior sent for.
It was some time later, when changing her robe in the hands of her women, that she realised to the full her position. Whatever she thought of the Normans, she now faced the prospect of excusing their presence to the man whose superior in York had just abetted the return of Earl Godwin, the Normans’ chief enemy.
It appeared that there were ways in which she could help her husband the King after all. She let them pleat her hair and knot pearls into it, and then selected with care the objects to hang at her girdle: enough to outmatch York but not enough to make her walk like a draw-bullock.
Then, having delegated the Prior to offer the Bishop an opportunity for rest and refreshment, Groa sat back with her ladies and waited, thoughtfully, for the Bishop to present himself after his supper. After (she had impressed on the Prior) his excellent but somewhat lingering supper, with no lack of generosity in the matter of wine.
Bishop Malduin was aware, flushed in the heat, that the table of the pure and humble brethren of Abernethy had undergone a transformation since his last truncated visit, and put it down, with accuracy, to the presence of a royal hall and a greater sophistication in the matter of how to handle a bishop.
And the King Thorfinn, or Macbeth, was not present.
The Bishop’s stomach, wizened with the burning tokens of apprehension, began to whine and cluck its way into neutrality, and then on to appetite. Instead of water, to which, facing the King, he would have confined himself, he allowed himself a little wine.
Not too much. He had the Lady to see, and no doubt she would find some way of summoning up a new, tough mormaer or even a usurping bishop to try and shake his confidence before the King arrived.
A little wine, however, would do no harm. He had never been better prepared for any encounter with this upstart kinsman and his acolytes who had turned his comfortable bishopric into a badgersett. Forne and Gamel, Ligulf and Orm, Earl Siward himself, over and over again, had discussed the matter with him, so that he fully understood everything that was at stake.
His wife had understood, too, when he told her. His wife who had inherited a nice bit of land about York, and who had married him because he was once a nephew by marriage of the heiress of Scotland and had been promised a bishopric.
He was not, like some other men, in danger of killing himself with his own cunning, or a hulking bully fit only for the battle-field. He was not, he admitted, a man of his unsavoury times. But it had seemed then that he could not fail. If King Malcolm or his grandson Duncan took Durham, then
the Bishop of Alba their kinsman would surely become Bishop of Alba and Durham as well, with the lands and the tributes of the whole of the church of St Cuthbert in his keeping.
Or if, as the cynicism of King Malcolm and the quality of his grandson King Duncan emerged, the dice fell in the opposite direction, the Bishop of Alba was still there, discreet, well trained, helpful to his superiors, to enable an Earl of Northumbria to add the lands of Cumbria and Lothian to the lands of St Cuthbert he already held and appoint the Bishop of Alba over them all.
In all the years of their association, Siward had never in so many words promised Bishop Malduin the bishopric of St Cuthbert’s town of Durham, but he had taken it for granted that, sooner or later, it would fall into his obedient lap. The present Bishop was in trouble over money matters: everyone knew that; and the one before that had bought his cross and his ring quite openly from King Hardecanute; while Bishop Aldhun had become richer and more powerful than anybody by marrying his daughter to Earl Uhtred, who had been killed by Carl Thorbrandsson’s father, and whose granddaughter Earl Siward had married.
None of these attractive things had so far happened to Bishop Malduin, and, while waiting, his daughter had been forced to make a marriage of only modest prospects, and his stepson Colban, whose clerical failings still marred the book-rolls in York and in Durham, was now spreading equal despair from the desk of Ghilander, his own half-brother in Angus.
None the less, he had never given up hope. He could never make a friend of Siward, this fur-trader’s bullying son from the mountains of Norway. The Orkney strain in the Bishop’s blood, tamed and muted by years of study and civilised living, recognised nothing familiar there. But Siward, year by year, was growing stronger and richer, and the new Archbishop of York, they said, was as eager to get his hands on the northern diocese as Siward was.
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