King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  If Groa were still alive.

  No man of standing would harm her. Her value, as bride or hostage, was priceless.

  Of the two thousand men Thor of Allerdale had brought against him from Cumbria, it might be that one or two had no particular standing, but had reputations of other kinds to maintain. And for some mistakes there was no remedy other than destroying the evidence. It happened on strand-raids as well. There was really no remedy.

  They had split into groups. Being who he was and what he was, he applied his mind all the time he was riding, marshalling the facts as he knew them, judging as best he could the immediate effects of what had happened, and then those of more lasting potential. Without that, he could hardly counter-plan. And although he might guess Malcolm’s motives, or those of Thor or of Siward, he did not yet know for certain. About escape he did not think at all, for he had already reviewed the possibilities and could do nothing further.

  The observing part of his brain combed the low, tumbling landscape of bog and hill, copse and spinney, for signs of a detachment of riders, or a few riders surrounded by foot. He had sent a small party of mounted to cross back over the river to the rear of the marching troops from Dunkeld, in case the captives were taken down that side. They had been given a trumpet, to use in extremity only, for the horsemen at Scone would be riding this way soon enough, once they knew the King of Alba was here.

  For the same reason, all Thorfinn’s search at the outset was confined to the land stretching between Scone and the riverbank, for at any moment Siward’s horse might arrive. They quartered the ground, keeping just within each other’s view, to render horn-signals unnecessary. Thorfinn himself took the river, from above the crossing up to the grass-grown Roman fort at Cargill. If they came down towards Scone on this bank, any party would expect to cross the Tay hereabouts.

  This, at least, was the way the Cumbrian army had come, clearly marked by the swathe of its trampling. Below Cargill, he saw something dark by the riverbank, and beyond it another: a wooden rectangle half-embedded in reeds. Rafts, hewn upriver and brought here to form a rough bridge. Hewn perhaps from the trees that had already provided the leafy disguises. Lulach, I know; I remember. I pay the lip-twisting eyrir. I blame neither you nor the Norns, but only myself. My life is my own, and I will not surrender.

  Unless he kept a clear head, he would not have a chance to surrender. Thorfinn brought his horse to a halt and studied the river. On the far side, another raft had been left, not this time afloat but conveniently high on the far bank, at a place where the crossing was easiest.

  Waiting for someone?

  He held up his hand, and the twenty men with him slowed and surrounded him. He spoke. One spurred off to talk to the group under Tuathal. Then he and his men cast about and, finding what cover they could, dismounted and lay full length, waiting.

  The horses, led out of sight, walked slouching, like beaten stallions after a horse-fight. Thorfinn lay behind a spread of low gorse and propped his brow on his hand, forbidding his eyes to close. He wondered how many of his men, lying like this, would not wake even if a group of horsemen came over the low ridge on the other side of the river and began to make their way down to the raft. He wondered how, if the waiting lasted too long, he was ever going to rise. With a rustle, Tuathal slid down beside him.

  ‘We can see a party approaching from the other side of the river. I’ve called some men back and put them lining the bank on this side. Do you want us to cross?’

  ‘No,’ said Thorfinn. ‘It might be anyone. If it is the women, the escort might have orders to kill. I want them on this side, and close.’

  He made himself play out the moves like a battle-game on a slab of scratched stone. The sound of hooves in the distance: how many hooves? The rising of a dark, moving body of people against the sinking sun on the low horizon. How many people? How many horses? And as they came closer: twelve footsoldiers, with shield and with spear, surrounding a group of three horses, each doubly laden. And walking beside them and behind them, six horses bearing men in mail shirts, fully armed with swords and with knives …

  Two of the horses spurred ahead and, with the help of some of the footsoldiers, had a raft launched and ready before the laden garrons came up.

  The double burdens were women, their cloak-hoods pulled over their faces and their cloaks pinned beneath. From their skirts below, you could tell they were women, but nothing showed of their age or their quality or their comeliness. If one was Groa, he could not guess which.

  Getting the party across, there was a lot of talk among the men, and a lot of exertion. The horsemen were senior, by the sound of them, and nervous enough to make bad jokes now and then. The footsoldiers were sullen: afraid, perhaps, of missing their share of the pillage.

  On the near bank, a quarrel broke out as the raft came to land, and the two horsemen who had forged over already turned back, speaking sharply to deal with it. The women, unaided, began to scramble ashore, their skirts floating and tugging, while behind them the other riders took to the water, the spare horses with them.

  The first of the women appeared, alone, at the top of the bank.

  Thorfinn waited. He waited until all six prisoners stood on the grass, and the horsemen, and the wrangling footsoldiers.

  Only one man stood near enough to threaten the women. Thorfinn swung his right arm and let fly with his axe.

  It fell, cleaving through helmet and skull, and the dead man was expiring still when arrow and spear struck his fellows. Thorfinn ran forward and snatched his axe as he ran.

  His men sprang for the soldiers still living. He made for the women. For the tallest and slimmest, who, from the way she fled to him, was not anyone’s serving-maid, or Eochaid’s sister, or Ferteth’s widow.

  He slowed and stood, the sobbing tale of relief in his throat, and found dragged ajar the dangerous door that led back to the things that were normal and dear. He realised suddenly how he must look, weary and dirty and covered with blood. And what she would already have endured on his behalf, through the long day of treachery and betrayal.

  So he stood, with, no doubt, ruefulness of a kind on his face, and waited as she came, light as air, to their meeting; and flung back her hood; and, raising her hand, drove the knife in it straight for his throat.

  Even when tired, he was quicker than most men. He took the stroke twisting into his shoulder and killed the soldier in skirts with his own knife, wondering, as the blood flooded warm through his shirt, if it was the last thing he was to do. The other masqueraders, he saw, had already flung off their cloaks. Three of his men fell to their steel, but only three. He killed two of the skirted assassins himself.

  Then the shouting in his ears was overtaken by the shouting further off: a great deal of it. He heard his own name, and his battle-cry rising thin and disorganised into the air from the hilly ground over which all his horsemen were scattered.

  The other noise was quite different, although it came from men’s throats also, to rouse and to rally. A cry that was not scattered at all, but rose from men in their ranks who could now be seen sweeping towards them. Men advancing as this party had done, from over the banks of the river. Men driving down from the north and herding his horsemen before them. And men from the south and the east, from the direction of Scone, who were not on foot at all, but on horseback, and who bore streaming among them the banner of Siward of Northumbria.

  Tuathal said, ‘Here is your horse. Can you? Or with me?’

  A twice-burdened horse would never escape. He said, ‘Get me up.’

  And, once in the saddle, he spoke again. ‘Strathmore. If not, Dunsinane.’ Then his horse was galloping, north and east, and the others coming after him.

  At first, the footsoldiers were the danger, for they threw spears, although there were almost no bowmen. One could do nothing but ride low and slash, like the Normans, in passing. His sword slid from his hand and was lost, which was a pity, but he laid his axe over the pommel and bound it to his wrist wi
th the slack of his rein, over and over. Then he slashed the reins, and his horse, feeling the jerk, tossed its head as it raced. He could control it with his thighs. It was as tired as he was.

  Then his enemies were riding towards him. Men he recognised from half a lifetime ago: from the field by the Forth just that morning, when he had toyed with Siward, setting alight the forest about him; leaving his army, taunting, to cover his retreat.

  He recognised, too, the sturdy horses Osbern of Eu and his friends had ridden north from Ewias castle to Kirkby, where Thor of Allerdale had visited him and been made welcome.

  Like that of his mount, the horses’ heads were lowered with tiredness. As with his men, Siward’s were bloody and blackened. He glimpsed Siward himself in their midst, the helmet deep on his brows and his face leaded black upon red with sunset and weariness.

  Between Siward’s army and the Cumbrian detachment sent to trap them, there was a gap that did not lead to Strathmore. He did not need to call his men, even had he been able. They streamed to him from all over the moors: towards him and the gap.

  Wherever Groa might be, he could not reach her. He could not break through to Scone, or to Perth, or to Dunkeld. He could not take the road through Strathmore to the coast and to freedom. All he could do was cling to his horse and guide it to the gap before it, too, was closed. The gap that led to the nearest hill-fortress, and the only refuge he could reach before his enemies did. The path that led to the hill called Dunsinane.

  He sent no acknowledgements this time to Lulach. He sent no appeals to the Deity of the Pope or the Deity of his axe. He dismissed from his mind all that was irrelevant, including pain, and led the way up the long, rough approach to the hill to the great ditch and the tall, newly rebuilt walls of the ring-fort, whose gates were already opening.

  He had had no idea there would be so many people inside. They laid the timber bridge over the ditch for him, since it was not a jump he cared to make. Tuathal was already within, flinging arrow-bundles into baskets and shouting for archers. By the time the last of the riders was putting horse to the hillside, there were men outside covering their entry, as the foot of the hill grew a dark girdle of footsoldiers and the arrows and throwing-spears started to flash. The gap had closed.

  He waited until they were all in and the gates were shut, and then turned to look round.

  Not the massed populace of the district, as once you would have found. With the advance of armies of thousands, these had dispersed further north, taking their children and livestock along with them.

  But some country people there were: older men and young boys and even women, with bloody bandaging, some of them, to show the wounds taken when fighting beside him along the Tay, and later.

  These and other familiar faces: of men still in leather and mail moving quickly towards him. Wounded men standing in the doorway of the fort’s timber shelters, calling to him. Familiar faces of men—Gillocher, Morgund, Malpedar—whom he had last seen, not by the side of the Tay or the Earn, but early when the day was young and fresh and promising, between the rock-fortress and the forest on the river Forth. The men who had escaped Siward and had escaped, also, Thor of Allerdale’s ambush at Ruthven Water. Some of the fifteen hundred of whose massacre he had heard nearly five hours before.

  He did not dismount as they crowded round him, for he could see them better that way, for one thing. He said, ‘Now let’s show them what we can do. Listen to Prior Tuathal and do what he says. You must be quick.’

  Then Tuathal’s voice broke in immediately, speaking fast, and men dispersed, running. All the way here, Tuathal had planned it, calling to him, in case Allerdale’s men rushed the hill as soon as they entered. It was clear, from the flags, that half the surrounding army at least was Allerdale’s, or Thor commanding Siward’s own advance troops. It didn’t matter.

  He listened to Tuathal shouting and thought that perhaps there wouldn’t be an initial attack at all, until Siward came up. Then he realised that he was still surrounded, and mostly by women who had been speaking to him, although he had not answered. His horse began to move, drawn by the cheekband towards the nearest building, and he saw pallets through the open door, and a man coming out, apparently to greet him.

  His face was familiar, too. Bishop Jon said, ‘D’you know me, now? A Diá, there was an enemy of Patrick was peeled like an onion come every seventh year, and you have the very look of him. I have a legless fellow somewhere called Cormac would like a word in your ear in a moment. Meanwhile … Can ye walk at all?’

  ‘I can even talk,’ said Thorfinn. ‘If you’ll get me down off this animal.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Bishop Jon. The perfect tonsure of the previous night was clouded, Thorfinn observed, with fine bristles. The Bishop said, ‘Should we take that thing out of your hand first?’

  He had forgotten the axe. Bishop Jon unwound the reins and took the haft out of his hand. It had stuck fast with blood and had to be tugged from his palm, which reminded him of something, he couldn’t think what. Then he was down, with the ground under his feet, after a fashion, and his ears assuming the office, it seemed, of his eyes. Bishop Jon said, ‘Have you had a morsel since morning, I wonder? It’s food you need, and a good cup of something, the moment we’ve got you cleaned up. Or else—’

  ‘Or else what?’ said Groa.

  His eyes settled, like muddy water, and allowed his brain through.

  It was Groa. He had never seen so much dirt on her face, or such pallid skin under it. Her unplaited hair, crimson-lit, dangled like hawsers. She made a movement to touch him, and checked it.

  ‘Or else his wife will send him back where he came from. A man who doesn’t know when he is beaten: that I admire,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘A man who doesn’t know when he is killed is another matter entirely, and will need a new page in my psalter. Have I time to shave, or are you going to kiss her?’

  Her tears came during the kiss, and made an island of it. He said, ‘No, beloved? We have a long way to go,’ and watched the control of years coming back.

  He knew no one like her. There had never been anyone like her.

  He spins you as a bubble spins on the water,

  He grinds you as a mill grinds dried malt,

  He pounces on you as a hawk pounces on a titmouse.…

  ‘Sulien,’ said Thorfinn to himself. ‘Sulien, hear me. Sulien, soul-friend. I hate thy God.’

  NINE

  ORD GOD ALMIGHTY,’ said Siward of Northumbria. ‘Lord God Almighty, what are they doing? They’ve let him get to the hill. They had the man twice. They had him trapped twice, and he bested them. Perhaps he didn’t even have to go to the fort. Maybe he found all Strathmore free to escape through.’

  Ligulf said, ‘That he did not. Thor of Allerdale is between him and Strathmore, with the news of Dolphin’s death in his ears. If Thorfinn rose straight in the air, the crows would come down and tear him at Thor’s bidding.… We’re through into Scone, and they’ll have Perth in an hour. My God, did you see the stuff they took at Dunkeld?’

  ‘Never mind about Dunkeld. What about Scone?’ Siward said. ‘I thought I told you to stay in Scone until the treasure was safeguarded?’

  ‘Forne and the princeling are looking after it,’ Ligulf said. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t lose a pearl from the altar-cloth. That was a transformation, wasn’t it? The boy has discovered blood-sports. You should send him to join Allerdale.’

  ‘Which boy?’ said Siward. His bones ached under the mail, and now, due to incompetence, a nightfall of struggle lay before them instead of a clean success with the Orkney King wiped from the accounting for ever. ‘Which boy?’ He was over fifty, and the earth was cluttered with boys.

  ‘Well, not Maelmuire,’ Ligulf said, ‘who has hardly stopped vomiting since he left Dunkeld. I was talking of his brother Malcolm. You may be going to find Malcolm a handful.’

  Siward of Northumbria paid no attention. He disliked Ligulf. He disliked all his brothers-in-law and their kin, with the possible e
xception of Forne.

  Dunsinane. They knew all about that hill-fort from the Angus Mormaer, but hadn’t been able to overrun it in time. He could see the steep face of it now, as he rode between low hills towards it, and steel glittering red, damn them, on the top.

  Like eyebrow over eye, this range they called the Sidlaws lay north of the Tay, beginning behind him at Scone; and Dunsinane rose in the west of it. Not the tallest of mountains: the one they named the Black Hill overtopped it beyond, with only a knife-split between them; and beyond that, there was a higher one still.

  But high enough, at six hundred feet above ground, to warrant the attention, centuries ago, of the old races who built the great circular forts with their concentric ditches and walls. This one, so they said, was over two hundred feet wide. Big enough to take a whole tribe and its beasts in time of danger, and subsequently built into something even safer than that. And on the knob at its summit, another fortification had been made, matching a similar one on the Black Hill.

  A good place to defend. A good place for a signal-fire. A good place for a watch-station, with its northern slopes overlooking the rolling moors of Strathmore, patterned with plough-strips and homesteads and grazings, and dwindling to the line of high hills on the skyline. To the north-west ran the seam of the Tay, with Dunkeld and the mountains beyond it. And to the south, where he was riding, they could see him, as he could see them, together with all the hill approaches, save where on the west the bulk of the Black Hill blocked their vision. And behind him, the low, swelling folds that ran green to the Tay, and the Tay itself, in glimpses, and the hill-ridges lying beyond.