King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  As Morgund came over, Thorfinn said, ‘All right. Here are your orders. This time we spit on them.’

  The planes of Morgund’s face, dim in the torchlight, looked puzzled. Thorfinn said, ‘No. But I don’t think boiling water will do much good this time. Leave the vats full, that’s all. They’ll fire the palisades.’

  Bishop Jon’s voice, from somewhere on the ground, said, continuing a suspended discussion, ‘And the holy nuns there, tending the heavenly fire at Kildare: what would they say now, to hear you miscall our sweet Brigit like that?’

  ‘Very well. In time of trouble, where was she?’ said Thorfinn. Trumpet-calls how, and orders; and a movement in towards the foot of the hill, hidden even in daylight by the fall of the ground, and now quite invisible. Somewhere above, there should be a moon. At present, there were not even stars. After the clear July day, clouds had come in from the sea, and the breeze had stiffened and turned away the lingering heat of the ground. Now the heat of the fire, too, was dying, and there was no part of his body with warmth in it.

  Bishop Jon said, ‘Are ye dead or alive?’

  ‘Let me think,’ Thorfinn said. He saw Groa come up, and greeted her with his eyes.

  ‘Alive,’ said Bishop Jon crossly. ‘Thanks to the Blessed Brigit. And am I dead or alive? Alive, I say; and let him deny it with an oath of three twelves who says otherwise. As to Tuathal here, I cannot tell.’

  ‘I prayed to the Trinity,’ said Tuathal. He sounded drowsy.

  ‘Traitor!’ said Bishop Jon. ‘Are they coming yet? Ah, the music and harmony of the belly-darts, and the sighing and the winging of the spears and the lances. What about the Brecbennoch?’

  ‘Keep it,’ said Thorfinn. Lines of torches moving towards the foot of the hill. Other brands, higher up, held by horsemen. Of the lighted snippets that were tents, groups had darkened.

  Morgund said, ‘They won’t harm the Lady.’

  In the darkness, you could hear Tuathal’s smile in his voice. ‘A woman hung with a relic of the saint who would not so much as acknowledge a dairymaid? Where there is a cow, there will be a woman, and where there is a woman, there will be trouble, said St Columba. I keep to the Trinity, myself.’

  The moon came out, and Thorfinn could see the look on Groa’s face, and then one by one the others, lying in their shadows against the wall. She said, ‘I have another cloak,’ and knelt, letting the weight of it fall to the ground before she drew it over him. He did not ask who had died.

  Eochaid’s sister said, ‘My lady,’ and Groa touched his hand and rose quickly and went.

  Then Gillocher said, ‘My lord?’

  ‘Yes?’ said Thorfinn. The foot of the hill was still hidden, but in the new silver light he could see that files of men were indeed marching out of the tumble of moor they had occupied. And the tents had not merely darkened. Half of them had disappeared.

  Unbrushed since morning, Gillocher’s moustaches stuck up like tightly curled wool. His eyes were round. He said, ‘The ladies are right. The Tay is full of longships. And men are marching.’

  ‘I see them,’ said Thorfinn.

  ‘You see them on this side,’ said Gillocher. ‘But, my lord, they are on the other side of Dunsinane as well. Marching southwards.’

  Thorfinn said nothing. Bishop Jon, his voice nearer and stronger, said, ‘Did I hear you aright? Earl Siward’s men are marching round the foot of this hill and off southwards?’

  ‘Towards the ships?’ Thorfinn said. He spoke softly, not to disturb the sweet idea that had entered what was left of his mind. He said, ‘What other banners do you see?’

  Gillocher’s head moved backwards and forwards between them. He would never lead an army to glory or out of it, but he made a good job of ruling Mar. And who else did he, Thorfinn, know who had led an army to glory? Or out of it?

  Gillocher said, ‘My lord Siward’s flag was in the van. And then the flag of Bamburgh. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘But not Thor of Allerdale, or Malcolm,’ said Thorfinn, his eyes on the glinting shadows below. ‘For there they are, I think. Moving round to take up Siward’s positions, but more thinly spread. And there’s a new tent with someone’s flag going up. Whose? Morgund? Anyone?’

  ‘It’s Malcolm’s,’ said Groa. ‘Thorfinn?’

  They were all looking at him. He had nothing to give them but hope, and conjecture.

  ‘Suppose,’ said Thorfinn, ‘that there is trouble down south and Earl Siward has had to withdraw his forces to deal with it. They seem to be withdrawing. And there are the ships. And I’m willing to believe it’s not an elaborate trick. They don’t need one.

  ‘Suppose that, the ships having gone, my nephew Malcolm and my third cousin Thor remain behind, no doubt in outrage, to deal with us. Will they deal with us tonight?’

  ‘With all that confusion below?’ Groa said. ‘And with the wounded they’ll have? Unless he’s more irresistible than he seems, I doubt if Malcolm would get Allerdale’s forces to follow him. I think he’ll wait now for morning.’

  ‘I think so, too,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Which means, if all our guesses are right, we ought to try to get off this hill before daylight.’

  ‘Now, then,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘Why did we not think to do that before?’

  Tuathal, it seemed, had grasped it. ‘Because Allerdale and Siward between them had us surrounded,’ he said. ‘But look. Allerdale’s men have only got round to the north and the east, where they’ve always been. They don’t have the Black Hill, although they think they do. They don’t have the cleft between the Black Hill and the knoll here, although they think they do. We can’t get up Strathmore, because they’re guarding that. We can’t cross the Black Hill and get down the east of the range, because we know they’re there as well. But the south is open. It’s full of Siward’s men on their way to the river, but there’s no cordon resettled there as yet. In the dark?’

  ‘In the dark, we could climb down the steep side and mingle with them,’ said Thorfinn. ‘If we could walk. If we could pass as Northumbrian soldiers. If my understanding of what is happening is not wholly and extravagantly baseless.’

  He paused. They all watched him: the dying, the disabled, the exhausted.

  He smiled. ‘I don’t think it is. Let’s do it.’

  He saw their faces warm in return; and then the moon vanished.

  ‘A Brigit bennach ar sêtt. I told you so,’ said Bishop Jon.

  The sound of his voice, talking, was the chief recollection most people there brought away from their last moments on the hill as the numbers dwindled and dwindled, and the fit men and the women, bundled in tunic and trousers, made their way down the precipitous slopes and set off through the crowds in the dark.

  The theory, it seemed, had been correct, and the slim hope had been realised. Whether through the offices of the Blessed Brigit or not, the moon stayed under cover. Those who were disabled or too ill to walk were left to the last, Thorfinn himself being of that number; and Tuathal and Bishop Jon remained with him.

  Soon after the first women left, Cormac died, and Thorfinn sent Groa off with his staunch little widow. She went swiftly and without demur. The task of taking the sick down the hill would be heavy and specialised work. She could only hinder.

  There was a wait, at the end, while they tried to improvise something on horseback. By then, it was later than it should be; nearer the hour when the sky would start to lighten. Already the bustle below them was lessening. Consciousness came and went, escorted by Bishop Jon’s voice.

  ‘Plague, tempest, and death, and men languid. Well, what saved us this day we shall never know,’ said Bishop Jon. ‘For, as you are aware, the Pope that blessed the banner is dead, and St Columba and St Brigit and even the Holy Trinity may have their prejudices; especially when faced by a man who has runes on his axe. If we owe this deliverance to the Aesir, all I ask is that you never inform me.’

  ‘Who are the Aesir?’ said Thorfinn, blandly.

  ‘You don’t know. Naturally,’
said Bishop Jon. ‘The whole army leaps into battle thundering Albanaid! save for the howl of the King hooting Knyja’s.’

  ‘An invitation to move on,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Memorise it.’

  Tuathal said, ‘If you had allowed yourself to surrender when that fleet sailed into the Forth, this would never have happened.’

  ‘If Bishop Jon had allowed himself to surrender at St Cathán’s, this would never have happened,’ Thorfinn said.

  ‘Then there was the fleet in the Tay,’ Tuathal said. ‘And the Cumbrian army from Dunkeld. Do you never feel you’ve wasted a day?’

  They were resting quite close to one another, but he was too cold to answer. Tuathal’s fingers, a little warmer than his own, touched his wrist and then closed on his hand. Bishop Jon said, ‘The jokes you are listening to, such as they are, arise, you should know, from a profound sense of inadequacy, and even of awe. I have seen men overcome obstacles such as these out of pride, and out of greed, and even, be it whispered, from belief in the power of the Almighty. But what brought you to this place, from sunrise this morning? Apart from a most God-given valour?’

  A leaf. A twig. A rose. A rod. A prophecy.

  TEN

  LL THAT AUTUMN, while Thorfinn slept, the red-haired lady of Alba and Lulach her son ruled with the voice of the King, moving from hall to hall in Mar and Moray and Buchan as she had done when Gillacomghain had been Mormaer there, and Thorfinn after him, and sometimes into Cromarty and Caithness, as she had done also in the years before King Duncan died.

  The place to which she always returned, however hard the journey, was the monastery in whose care the King lay, and those others who had also failed to recognise when to surrender.

  Monymusk had been Lulach’s choice, and she thought Thorfinn would have approved it. Its little stone church and the hall and hospice and cabins on the banks of the Don stood buttressed by the low hills of Mar, safely north of the borders of Angus, whose loyalty was as yet unknown, and south of both Deer and Mortlach, whose doors stood open to receive him if danger returned.

  During the weeks when Thorfinn did not open his eyes, or did not know her when he did, no danger stirred. From Dunkeld to Stow, the country lay in its blood also, emptied of life.

  Siward and his Northumbrians had gone, and the overseas mercenaries along with him. If Malcolm or Thor of Allerdale, finding themselves tricked, had attempted to drive their Cumbrians north, that bruised army, already far from home and glutted with booty, must have baulked. The first sure news of the Cumbrians was that they were marching off west, where their ships were waiting.

  Leaving Malcolm stranded, naturally, in his tents beside Scone, protected only by the ranks of the disaffected: Ghilander and Kineth and Colban, Cathail and Fothaid, their friends and their kinsmen. And, of course, Bishop Malduin.

  Thorkel Fóstri, the first of the northmen to arrive, with Paul and Erlend galloping behind him, was also the first to invoke the peculiar powers of the northern gods against Malduin of Alba, against Thor of Allerdale, and against King Svein of Denmark and all their lovers and kindred.

  She had prepared the boys for what they would see in Thorfinn’s chamber. They came out silent, Paul with his hand at the neck of his young brother, and she spoke to them, and then let Sinna take them to the little hall outside the monastery, where Lulach and Morgund were, and her women.

  Then Thorkel Fóstri came out, and paid no attention to the men in the four occupied beds, or to the brother moving about them, or to herself in her plain lay-helper’s robe, but sank down on a stool in the doorway and, dropping his head in his hands, burst into curses.

  Groa said, ‘The monks are fasting. For him, and for the others.’ After a bit, she said, ‘We may all feel like that, but you know that he doesn’t. He accepts that people alter their plans all the time, and believes the art lies in being prepared for it. He will take all the blame for this upon himself. Cursing his kinsmen won’t help anybody.’

  Thorkel Fóstri flung his hands down and glared at her. His eyes were wet, but he paid no attention to them, fanning his anger. He said, ‘Svein of Denmark isn’t his kinsman. I thought your father was his war-leader in Halland? It was a waste of time, wasn’t it, the months he spent with the foreigners, courting Svein and Adalbert and the Emperor, cajoling the Pope? The Pope’s banner and the Pope’s bishops did nothing to save him. And Svein took his silver and then resold all his ships to his enemy.’

  It might have occurred to him, you would think: the agony she had gone through, trying to divine what had happened in Denmark, and her father’s share in it.

  It had occurred to him. He was only, in his misery, pulling her down beside him. Because, perhaps, she seemed composed. Because she had been there when it happened, and he had not. Groa said, ‘I’m sure my father didn’t know what was happening. I can only think that someone persuaded King Svein that Thorfinn was planning a secret alliance with Norway. Someone like Harold of Wessex. He’s King Svein’s first cousin.’

  ‘So’s his brother Tostig the Frog,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘But why strengthen Siward, if Wessex wants into Northumbria?’

  ‘It would get rid of Thorfinn,’ Groa said. ‘Without the extra power, I don’t think Siward would have risked leaving York. And once he left York, he might not have got back, even if he lived to get out of Alba.’

  Thorkel Fóstri’s eyes were drying. He said, ‘I heard there was a rising and Siward had to return. So Wessex fomented it?’

  ‘They meant to,’ Groa said. ‘They probably tried to. But someone else got in before them. There are a lot of dissatisfied merchants in York.’

  Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘You speak as if you knew who it was.’

  ‘Is it likely?’ said Groa. ‘Three hundred miles north of Siward’s capital? It failed, anyway. Earl Alfgar was telling me. He was here two days ago, hoping to talk to Thorfinn.’

  ‘To talk to him?’ said Thorkel Fóstri.

  Groa said, ‘I gather that, in Mercia, wounds however dangerous would by now be invisible and a magical spring of new blood have restored what is deficient.’

  She was being unfair. At that bedside, even Alfgar had been silent, looking down at the closed eyes and the brown, naked body, dressed only in wood and pulped herbage and bandages. That humming centre of energy, suspended on eider-feathers, blank and pliant as wax in its mould.

  She wondered if Thorkel Fóstri understood what she was saying.

  It seemed that he had. He said, ‘You spoke of alliance with Norway. Was that Alf gar’s idea?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Groa said. ‘He didn’t say. Chiefly, he came to see how Thorfinn did. I thought it best to tell him that there was no chance of an alliance between Alba and Norway so long as Thorfinn was alive. He said he would come back.’

  ‘None?’ said Thorkel Fóstri. His eyes scanned her face, as if reading the weather. In Thorfinn, unless you knew him, the dense brown eyes gave nothing away.

  She said, ‘For the same reason that he would not let the north fight for him. You know that.’

  ‘The north fought for him,’ Thorkel Fóstri said. ‘Killer-Bardi is dead, and the men from eight ships along with him. They tell me you lost six mormaers.’

  Mael-Isu and Gillecrist. Ferteth and Malpedar. Cormac and Eochaid. Lorcáin the Bard and Klakkr the young body-servant. Hugh de Riveire dead, and Osbern Pentecost and all his men slain or taken prisoner. Missing: one hard-working, exuberant bishop called Hrolf: And killed in the field, three thousand men who had fought for Thorfinn of Alba.

  She said, ‘We have you and Lulach. And Gillocher and Morgund. And Odalric and the rest in the north. That is why it was wise not to allow them to fight.’

  She did not mention Prior Tuathal or Bishop Jon because they lay before him, in two of the beds in this room, with the same chance of life that Thorfinn had.

  Alfgar had been brisk, bending over them. Alfgar had said that never, in his long acquaintance with hard men, had he ever come across such a stiff-necked trio as her husband and
these two, and if it so happened that they did not intend to leave their beds for a bier, he did not see who was going to succeed in making them.

  He had also said something about being inclined to have a short discussion with Thor of Allerdale, except that he owed him some money.

  When, now, Thorkel Fóstri said, ‘What can I do?’ she gave him the answer she had given Alfgar. ‘I have spoken to Lulach and all the people who know Alba best. Winter is coming. There seems no immediate danger. The way we are, to think of revenge or retribution would be crazy. And, in any case, it is for Thorfinn to do what he thinks necessary, not anyone else. His reputation is not so weak, nor is ours, that we have to rush to prove anything. We shall all know, soon enough, what he wants to do.’

  ‘Shall we?’ he said.

  ‘Lulach says so,’ said Groa.

  He stayed for some days, talking to the others, until he satisfied himself that what she had told him was true.

  Earl Siward was not going to return: had not even shown any wish to resurrect the forts of the Lothians and stamp with ownership of a sort the smoking desert he had made of most of it.

  The broken buildings, the burned and trampled crops of Fife and Strathearn presented Malcolm likewise with a problem in Scone. As the days grew cold, it became clear that there was insufficient food and shelter for the numbers that alone would guarantee him some kind of safety.

  The men of Angus who had followed Kineth and Ghilander and Colban, and the men of Fife who had followed Bishop Malduin and the new young lords Fothaid and Cathail had families in Bernicia to think of, and hearths of a soldier’s kind, and only temporary, but at least better than this, with the cold river overflowing its banks and nothing to eat but salt stores and what you could slaughter. And even that was sometimes suspect; tainted with the murrain that afflicted the cattle that autumn, so that any beasts they had found, that Siward’s army or Allerdale’s had not eaten or driven away, or that the owners had not herded up to their invisible grounds in the mountains, were half carcass already, and were for burning, not eating, half of them.