King Hereafter

by Dorothy Dunnett

  But even the fretting was better than the news, thought Groa, when it came.

  First, an indication that, at last, Thor of Allerdale was settling the areas he had conquered. And that, like Malcolm, he had contented himself so far with the southernmost lands, and had brought no more men-at-arms than might be needed to protect a new colony. Certainly not enough to constitute an invasion, or to indicate that he meant, in the near future, to move further north.

  ‘What is happening?’ Thorfinn had complained. ‘What is happening in Northumbria?’

  Then next day, he knew.

  He had chosen to go hawking, with a company of about a dozen, Groa among them. It was his fourth day on horseback. His second and his third had been spent riding slowly through the camps and farmsteads about Monymusk, talking to whomever he could find, from the saddle. Close to Monymusk and within daily report of him, they felt themselves his friends and showed it. What he wanted to know for himself was the mood of the people further off, Groa well knew, and would test it as soon as he was able, however accurate the reports she and Lulach had already given him. But, meantime, an appearance spread confidence. The King is well and with us again.

  So, also, today he was hunting because now he could balance his falcon and cast her. With Anghared and Maire, Groa rode a little apart so that she need not watch him. Lulach, braver than she was, watched him all the time, and would turn for home before the King ordered it.

  It was a mettle that neither Paul nor Erlend had. Thorfinn, much though he loved them, had always seen them quite clearly. ‘Paulatim, or little by little,’ he had once called his elder son, with rancourless affection. It was perhaps as well. There could only be one man in that mould.

  He was fresh, though, when the messenger cantered up, for they had not been out long, and his falcon had made her first kill, which pleased him. Because he was a little apart, he heard what the message was first, and, seeing his face, the others kept back until the interview ended.

  Then Bishop Jon said, ‘News, my lord?’

  ‘Belatedly,’ Thorfinn said. The bird shook her head, attracting his attention. He hooded her and gave her to someone else to hold. He said, ‘Who said that Alfgar would never be so foolish as to risk losing the favour of Wessex? You, Hrolf? After Earl Siward died?’

  ‘What has he done?’ said Bishop Hrolf. His voice was louder than Thorfinn’s had been.

  ‘Poor Alfgar,’ Thorfinn said. ‘He tried to seize Northumbria, it would appear. Relying on the bribes he had placed out in Ireland.

  ‘He failed. He was taken before the council in London. They stripped Alfgar of his earldom and outlawed him as a traitor to the King and the nation. He fled the country, taking the troops of his household along with him, and is in Ireland now, raising an army.’

  His horse, feeling the pressure removed, began to fidget and sidle, and Groa saw him command her, hard, by the flank. The mare stood silent, nostrils wide with indignation. Tuathal said, ‘Then who has been given Northumbria?’

  ‘The man meant, I suppose, to have it all along,’ Thorfinn said. ‘The King has offered the earldom of Northumbria, Huntingdon, and Northamptonshire to Tostig, Earl Harold’s younger brother. And Tostig, of course, has accepted.’

  Bishop Hrolf said, ‘Hence the odd conduct of the two bodies of settlers.’

  ‘Yes,’ Thorfinn said. ‘My lord Malcolm, I suspect, skipped north as soon as he could, before he became embroiled in any unpleasantness. Allerdale’s coast lies towards Ireland. He may have had to await Tostig’s leave before he could expand his territory.’

  ‘They say Tostig is greedy for land,’ Groa said.

  ‘But Earl Harold is still afraid of Norway,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I don’t think Malcolm will find himself marching north in the van of a mighty army of Northumbrians under Tostig’s banner. I think, for one thing, that Tostig will find quite enough on his hands for a while in reconciling the disappointed kindred of the late Siward’s wife. But we should talk about it.’

  He turned his horse and set it into a trot, back the way they had come. Bishop Jon, jogging alongside, said, ‘Again, ’tis not all bad news. A pity for the Earl Alfgar’s sake. He would have been a good neighbour, and we’ll lose a friend for our shipping in Anglia. What other harm has it done?’

  In the open air, one could not say Be quiet! unnoticed. Uttering the words in her heart, Groa stayed in the rear, while Thorfinn rode on in silence. Then he said, ‘It has locked Malcolm out of Northumbria. I don’t think it matters, so long as he continues to sit on the doorstep doing nothing.’

  Bishop Jon said, ‘He’ll have to do more than that if he wants to win a good following.’

  ‘Well,’ said Thorfinn, ‘we shall just have to see that he doesn’t win any more following than he already has. Do you suppose it will be difficult?’

  The tone invited no answer, and, in fact, a moment later the King touched his heels to the horse and rode on a good deal more roughly than his powers would warrant.

  After a bit, Lulach spurred also and caught him. What did Lulach know about Thorfinn and Alf gar and boyhood?

  Enough, it seemed. Groa swallowed and rode on sedately. Recognise it; assimilate it; put it behind you. The pattern has changed again, and you must change accordingly.

  April came, and then May, and the seas opened, but there was no further word of what Alf gar of Mercia might be doing in Ireland, and no threatening move came from the English settled in Lothian or the Cumbrians to their west. Malcolm, it was said, had sat down beside the church of St Cuthbert next to the rock of Dunedin, with one or two ships always prudently beached in the estuary.

  Thorfinn, too, had brought his ships back from the Western Isles and some from Orkney as well, although he had to leave them a few to protect themselves with. No trading-vessels went out from Orkney or Alba that year, although he needed the silver. The ships they had built in the winter hardly compensated for those he had lost in July.

  Instead, the trade came to him, with the news from the Continent. The ships that brought it sailed from Dol round the Pentland Firth to the river Findhorn, where he presently was, and aboard them were two familiar figures.

  Thorfinn had been in his hall of Forres only a few hours when word was brought that ships had arrived and were enquiring as to his whereabouts. The day’s ride was the longest he had made yet, but, without waiting, he strode down to the wharf, as he had done at the time of his wedding, with Lulach and some of the young captains following.

  Coming ashore was not Juhel of Dol, despite the Archbishop’s flag at the masthead, but one of the many he had thought to have forfeited life next the burning forest by the Forth crossing. Flodwig the Breton said, ‘My lord King? We thought you dead, and perhaps you thought the same of us. I have orders to buy from you, but the chief cargo I am to bear each way is tidings.’

  There was no surliness in his face or his voice, and no false lightness either. Thorfinn said, ‘I was told you had all died or been captured. I have had no messages since.’

  ‘You were ill. They told me at Inverness. No. I had a leg-wound—it’s healed—and Siward’s men took me halfway to Durham after I’d told them how wealthy my family was. But then I escaped and got a ship. There is someone else here who knows you. We called at Wareham and the Sheriff insisted on coming aboard. He says you’ll recall him from Rome.’

  Even had there been no business between them, he would not have forgotten Alfred of Lincoln and the impertinent tilt of the eyebrows that recalled the English hostel, and the polite boredom of Bishop Hermann, and the vast, effortless diplomacy of Bishop Ealdred. They, too, had been looking for the Archbishop of Dol, whom he himself had removed from the wrath of the church. Bishop Ealdred and his party had no grudge against Dol. Only, when petitioning the Pontiff on behalf of one’s royal master, it is not wise to be seen openly favouring an excommunié.

  The Alfred he remembered had not been as sober as this. Recalling what else had changed, Thorfinn spoke with impatience. ‘I should real
ly prefer cries of alarm to a stricken silence. The wound is healed, and I can walk and talk and even offer you hospitality.’ Then the irritation went and he said, There are few things I could have wanted more than this meeting.’

  Afterwards, he wondered whose prayers had been listened to, for it seemed impossible that two people could have presented him with the answers to so much that he wanted to know.

  First, that although Viger and Alberic as well as Hugh de Riveire had been killed, Ansfred of Eu had escaped, and his father Osbern himself had been ransomed and was with Duke William in Normandy now.

  ‘Most of them are,’ said Alfred sagaciously. ‘There’s plenty of fighting left to do in Anjou, but it begins to look as if Duke William will end up on top. I can tell you, no one bears you a grudge for ending the contract when you did, whether an act of fate was to blame, or whether you had started a war you never had any prospect of winning.

  ‘That is, they would have preferred easier odds, but you fought fairly yourselves, and put the Normans to no risk that Osbern hadn’t already agreed to. As it is, those that survived are going to be with Duke William, with any luck, when his great moment arrives. And I don’t think you’ll see Dol far from his side either, with Flodwig here. At least, that’s my view as an outsider.’

  ‘So far as I remember,’ Thorfinn said, ‘although allegedly reared on English soil, there is hardly a party you have mentioned with whom you are not interbred, myself apart. Without the help of your Norman friends, none of us would be living. If, however, you do happen to hear what began the hostilities in the first place, I should be glad if you would make a note of it.’

  ‘And tell you?’ said Alfred, who had not yet quite got his bearings.

  Beside him, Flodwig caught Alfred’s eye and pulled a face of exaggerated abasement. ‘No. What he means, although he is too polite to say so, is tell Osbern of Eu,’ he said. ‘If you have no value for your skin, that is.’ He turned to Thorfinn. ‘My lord, Duke William has heard of you.’

  ‘And dislikes the waste of his stock?’ Thorfinn said.

  ‘And wishes the land and sea between you allowed of a meeting. I was to tell you from the Archbishop,’ said Flodwig, ‘that the Duke bears no ill-will against men who go to seek their fortune in Spain or Alba or Italy, since, when they are tired, they will bring back their skills and their fortune to the land he will have made ready for them. I am to tell you, my lord, from the Archbishop that the Duke is aware of the long association between yourself and his great-aunt the Lady Emma, to your mutual profit. And says that, since you and he have common ancestors, he hopes the custom of friendship may continue.’

  It was all he said, and Alfred did not add to it. So it was all he had been told to say. And Alfred, with his endless kinship with the rich and the famous, had been sent to reinforce its validity. Which meant…

  Lulach said, ‘I have poured wine. Will you have some, my lord?’ Lulach, smoothing over the abyss, or the sorcerer’s cave that had opened before him. Thorfinn said, ‘Thank you. Now tell me, how are the rest of my old friends from Rome? How is Bishop Ealdred? And how is Bishop Hermann?’

  And Alfred, settled now, with obvious pleasure, into the tenor of things, smiled mischievously and began to tell him.

  They stayed a week only, while Lulach had gathered from all their storehouses the hides and the furs that were wanted, and two cages that had not been asked for and for which Thorfinn would accept no payment, one destined for Rouen and the other for Dol. Of the dangers of this, the slightest of gestures, he was aware. But the borderline of danger had already been crossed when he invited Osbern to come north from Castle Ewias.

  The silver he received for the hides was worth several times their value, and Thorfinn accepted it without demur, for the service he had performed for Juhel had been a considerable one. He waited only to see the ships off, and then rode for Deer, where his household awaited him.

  His mind was so engaged, arriving, that the presence of Groa was a shock of delight. Surprise, at the start of a long-planned reunion was hardly a compliment, so he did not betray it, so far as he knew. Most of the best men he had were there as well, and in less than an hour he had them at board with him, listening.

  There was no need to take all day about it, and it was over in another hour, after he had told them all they needed to know.

  ‘There is a new Pope: another reformer. In the long run, there is reason to believe that both he and the Emperor will listen to any petition we make. But, first, they have to put their own house in order. There would be no point in looking to either for six months at least. So much for that.

  ‘What this means to the Athelings, the Saxon heirs, wherever they are, no one knows yet. It is said, however, that the male child of that family has survived and is flourishing, although the father is not. They did not appear at Cologne, and they have not been heard of in England. Indeed, the moment the Pope was enthroned, Bishop Ealdred and the good Abbot of Ramsay, his companion, declared their intention of returning home.’

  ‘If I were to make an inspired guess,’ said Bishop Hrolf, I’d say that the Athelings, consuetudonis peregrinandi, were still safely somewhere just inside the German border, saying their prayers in Greek until the Emperor decides what best to do with them.’

  ‘And I should agree with you,’ Thorfinn said. ‘I imagine Bishop Ealdred reached the same conclusion about eleven months ago, as well. While he was abroad, by the way, our old friend Bishop Hermann has not been wasting his talents. His diocese is being enlarged to include Malmesbury.’

  ‘Do you say?’ said Bishop Jon. ‘Well, that’s a blow for the absent Alfgar and his father, and the good church appointments that have been flowing into that family.’

  ‘As you say,’ said Thorfinn. ‘I don’t know how he and Ealdred see themselves. But it looks to me as if the Godwin family are grooming them as a bulwark round the Severn against Mercia. Two things more.’

  He could see in their eyes that they hoped he’d forgotten, so he came to it right away.

  ‘It seems that Archbishop Adalbert has been growing in power during the interregnum, and he and King Svein frequently feast one another and exchange vows and gifts. Svein is still at war with Norway, with no great losses or gains either way. There is nothing to show that the double sale of my ships was anything more than a stroke of malice to earn him some silver. It is time, I think, we asked him for our payment back, with proper interest. After all, we have both a stick and a carrot. We need an ally, and we might well unite with Norway. We have a bishop to consecrate, and we might well think to favour Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg and Bremen, whose goodwill means so very much to King Svein.’

  As the Bishop-elect, Tuathal’s mottled face did not change, but the sharp eyes were watching his King. Tuathal said, ‘I thought you had decided on Archbishop Herimann of Cologne.’

  ‘I had,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But he died in February. His successor is Anno of Bamberg. Do you remember? The somewhat acid Provost of Goslar. I am told that he would be unlikely to be either protective or tender.

  ‘The Pontiff cannot be much of a shield until he is established. Of the other archbishops who have a kindness for us, Dol of course is ideal, save that he has been excommunicated. To keep Kinrimund out of English hands is what this is all about, so we can’t ask the Archbishop of York, and Canterbury, of course, is another gentleman who has been excommunicated. There is Humbert of Sicily, but his power died with Pope Leo. And there are really not many left, except strangers—Magdeburg, Capua, Besančon, Trèves, Rheims, Colocza—who would have even less power than Humbert.’

  He waited.

  Lulach said, ‘What about Maurilius of Rouen? You haven’t told them Alfred’s Normandy gossip yet.’

  He realised he was holding Lulach’s eyes, and that Groa had noticed. He said, ‘I was keeping the good news for after. But you may as well hear now.’ And told them, quickly, the fate, so far as he knew it, of all Osbern’s band they had worked with.

  L
ulach said nothing more, even to remind him of what he had left out. So, to end the debate, Thorfinn called in his arbitrators. ‘Bishop Jon? Bishop Hrolf? Who consecrates the Bishop of Alba?’

  Bishop Hrolf said, ‘May I make a suggestion?’

  Thorfinn knew what was coming, and he knew he was going to have to agree to it.

  Bishop Hrolf said, ‘It is nearly full summer, and no sign that my lord Malcolm or anyone else intends to move into Fife. You’ve taken the precaution of resettling Prior Tuathal’s Culdees from Loch Leven in Kinrimund. They’re holy; they ought to be safe.

  ‘Why not allow me to visit King Svein before you decide which metropolitan to patronise? In the Celtic church, archbishops were never thought to be needed if competent bishops were present. You have such bishops. We here, if need be, could consecrate Prior Tuathal, and the people within his ministry’ will ask no more meantime, I can assure you.’

  No one spoke aloud the names of the counters they were playing with. Svein of Denmark. William of Normandy. Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen with behind him the shadows of all Scandinavia. And the Emperor.

  The King said, ‘A good suggestion. I agree,’ and drew the meeting, as soon as he could, to a close.

  To Lulach he said, ‘I thought you never meddled.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Lulach, ‘when it makes any difference.’

  Because he was going to Groa, he cleared his mind of that cloud; and his body, so far as he could, of the dragging insistence of his physical longing that, without the harshest of masters, would long ago have destroyed the other harmony they had, that was equal and sometimes could be better.

  He had seen often enough the men who, strung up by business or war, would go straight to take their relief like a horn of ale tossed back in the saddle, and follow it by a little banter to keep matters easy.

  In all the time he and Groa had known each other, he had never imposed himself on her for that kind of indulgence.

  So ran the theory.

  He did not know, therefore, how, whenever he came thus determined to listen, she would take him in her arms on the threshold and seduce him.