They rode in silence, over the hill and into the stair country, where soon, against a low swell of hill, the Ring of Brodgar showed pale.
One of the monoliths had dropped in the gale. The rest still stood, some fifteen feet high; some brown and stooped, and weathered like rotten silk. He chose to ride past them, between the two lochs that had only once frozen, in his experience, and a swan rose in a flurry and, neck and body undulating, flew slowly round in a white, loosened coil. ‘The swans of Urd?’ he said to Sulien.
The spring of Urd, which also nourished its swans, was the spring of Destiny, and to it each day came the Norns to draw water. Urr, Verandi, and Skuld. Past, Present, and Future.
‘Lulach is helpless,’ said Sulien. ‘Give him love. He doesn’t deserve anything else. If you shut your mind to everything that has been said, it cannot hurt you.’
‘You mean it cannot alter things,’ Thorfinn said. A white hare, that had forgotten the end of winter had come, looked at them with polished eyes and fled over the brown heath that it knew was hiding it.
‘I mean I can’t talk when I am riding,’ Sulien said. ‘But it might occur to you that you have always assumed that you had the power to alter things, and you have always been proved right. No one is going to take that power from you, unless you run away from it yourself.’
It was a ride of three hours to his new hall at Birsay, for they stopped now and then, for one reason and another, although they talked of nothing that mattered when they did. Marriage, thought Thorfinn, suited Sulien. He did not speak of his wife, but there were four children growing up near the monastery: Rhygyfarch, Daniel, Jevan, and Arthgen. Love for them all warmed Sulien’s voice when he spoke of them, but of the first, most of all.
He was a famous teacher now, the boy who had defied his own teachers to spend five years in Alba before reaching his intended training in Ireland. A great scholar; a composer of Latin verse. A man who divided his time, it would seem, between St David’s and Llanbadarn and any other group of pupils who needed him, and for whom the ring of a bishop was something not to be sought, but to be avoided.
It was not hard, when you had been his first pupil, to see why.
They reached the bay opposite the Brough about midday and had something to eat and drink in his mainland hall, along with the manager of the farms and his family. Then, without waiting for the causeway to dry out, he and Sulien took boat across the short distance from the mainland shore to the long slipway that led up through the cliff-rocks to the settlement and his new hall and church.
Once, before the ocean broke through the neck of it, the island of Birsay had been the north horn of this wide bay where the new boats lay trim in their nousts. Like Deerness, it had been a place of safety sought by many peoples. There was a broch still on its far tip, and there had been a Christian church and a Christian cemetery where now stood his new church.
He took Sulien there when he had greeted those people he should, and visited the hall and the house used by the priest when he came there. Outside the church was a grave-marker from the old cemetery, with the spider-drawings you saw by Forres and Glamis, and the disdainful eagle, and three stalking figures in Assyrian robes with their square shields and their spears. If any Pope-Emperor had ordered the implantment of that little church, it was more likely to be the lord of Greekdom than the lord of Rome.
Thorfinn said, ‘We built in the same place, since it was holy. As you see, the church is small.’
There were only fifty-five feet of it, in squared stones, carefully mortared. A rectangular nave, and a narrow choir, with an apse on the east side. Since the gale, the tower had never been rebuilt. Inside, it was sweet and clean, with fresh rushes in the nave and the smell of new carpentering. A plain cloth lay on the stone altar, for the gold easily dulled in the sea-air, and the most precious things were in the hall or the priest’s house. But those necessary for the Mass were in their places, and within the altar, in the box made to fit it, the first banner Thorfinn had brought back, blessed by the Pope and sanctified at the tomb of St Peter.
‘Bishop Jon dedicated the church for us,’ he said. ‘To Christ and St Peter. The flag lies with others, which we use when they, too, have become potent by contact. A wise precaution, as it turned out. I wonder what happened to the first one? Somewhere a wound has miraculously healed, or a nest is breaking from the weight of eggs in it, or a murderer in his shroud is being admitted to Paradise.’
There was a bench along one wall, with straw matting on it. Sulien sat down and crossed his strong, bare feet in their sandals while the brown wool of his robe fell to the rushes. Except that he was beardless and had no shield and spear, he could have passed for one of the three calm, fierce warriors on the gravestone outside. He said, ‘I was foolish, seven years ago. I should never have talked to you of my disappointment at Rheims.’
Thorfinn sat himself on the edge of the choir flagstones and leaned back on his hands. ‘It would have made no difference. Pope Leo wanted to make the church stronger and purer, but he knew as well as anybody that he had no power at all unless he helped the Emperor hold down Lombardy and the old duchies and his more boisterous neighbours. And to keep the papal office in being, never mind get rid of the Normans encroaching on it, he needed to get money in every way possible, and especially by pleasing his wealthiest relatives. Then, in turn, his family will supply advisors and lords of the church to the Empire, and Popes to Rome; and very good, too, if the Pope is of the quality of Leo and the Emperor is of the quality of Henry. But it can’t always be so.’
‘You don’t hear me quarrel with you,’ said Sulien. ‘Although you have done the same here. Three good bishops, chosen by a good king. But it can’t always be so.’
Thorfinn said, ‘I thought once that the Celtic church could mould itself to the new needs and let us keep the best of the old style of worship. So did Juhel of Dol, I know. But there is too much against it. Even in Ireland …’
‘Even in Ireland, the Celtic church is failing,’ Sulien took his words. ‘Because the abbot-families are war-like, and it suits the kings to make them their allies. Your great Duftah of Armagh himself has just fought a pitched battle over relics with the Coarb of Kells and St Finnian. You can’t look to Ireland for aid. Nor to the Culdees. They will save your soul, but they won’t help you to rule. And you need a church that will do both, as the Emperor does. Even if when you die, as when an Emperor dies, the church holds your people to ransom. Am I right?’
‘I wish,’ said Thorfinn, ‘there was another way. Isleifr is lucky in Iceland. The great priest-families merely send their sons abroad to be trained, and when they return with good alliances, the old ways go on barely modified.… No. I am not serious. We are a land of many and disparate peoples. Iceland is not. It will take longer, that’s all, to find our solution.’
Silence fell. The smell and the sound of the sea came through the little window behind him, and a drift of incense, very faintly, from the new altar.
Sulien said, ‘They say Holy Church always limits the time men stay when they come to the Pontiff, for before very long the marble wearies them, and the gold and the fountains, and they long for their cabins at home.’
Thorfinn said, ‘You are asking if I lean towards Rome for other reasons? I suppose that is what is wrong with Bishop Ealdred and Geoffrey of Coutances, with their dreams of gold-laden cathedrals. But if you went to Norway, I don’t think you’d find King Harald trying to re-create the splendours of Constantinople.’
Sulien said nothing.
Thorfinn said, ‘I am no different. Harald went east to win gold and, when he came back, bought his power with it. I went to Rome to buy, too, what would keep me in power. I even had money. Perhaps I should have built a copy of the Lateran Palace by the sands at the mouth of the Lossie; or another St Mary of the Snows in the bracken by Essie, or even an octagonal baptistry somewhere. I thought it would be foolish.’
Sulien said, ‘Why didn’t you use the men of the north against Siward
?’
Thorfinn got up and wandered through to the apse. Then, returning, he stopped at the window. So far, generalities. Afterwards, this was the part that was going to hurt. He said, ‘They might not have come. They might have lost their heads if they did. The division would have been worse afterwards than before.’
‘Did your friends in Alba appreciate that?’ Sulien said.
‘Some of them. For the rest, it worked well enough. I even had some taunts about northmen being afraid to do any fighting.’
‘And that was good?’ Sulien said.
‘No one likes being despised. But it means that they were not thought of as foreign aggressors. And that is something new. Time is all it needs,’ Thorfinn said. ‘Time to make the joins firm. The north, the northwest, and Moray fixed firmly and easily to Alba. And Cumbria and Strathclyde restored the way my grandfather had it, whether under nominal rule from England or not. Three languages, I know. Three cultures, I know. But it can be done.’
‘Yet Duncan gave you the country in two pieces, and now it has fallen in three. Do you regret taking the kingship?’ Sulien said.
Thorfinn turned from the window. He leaned on the wall and folded his arms. ‘Every year, I might have given you a different answer,’ he said. ‘I was fairly sure that if I didn’t take it, I should lose Moray. It seemed possible that I could refuse, however, and hope to live out my life here and in Caithness, and perhaps in Ireland and the west, in the way I had always done, and with Groa. Although my frontier with Alba would always have been at risk, and I should have had a lifetime of sparring with Norway.’
‘You have had that anyway,’ Sulien said.
‘But mostly from a position of strength. As it was, I should have had exactly the life that my father had.’
‘But, instead, you wanted the life of your grandfather?’ Sulien said.
‘I expect so,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Although, at the time, I don’t suppose I should have said so. I think I thought of it as a challenge of a kind I hadn’t yet faced. Like one of Tuathal’s cryptograms, to which there was an answer, if I thought hard enough.’
‘I remember the mood,’ Sulien said.
‘And you didn’t like it. I remember, as well. But do I regret it now? I don’t know. For a while,’ Thorfinn said, ‘it seemed a good game. Skill against skill, and skill against luck. But with my grandfather, it was mostly mercenaries who were killed.’
‘Luck?’ Sulien said.
‘Or chance. Or the three ladies at the spring of Urd, if you like,’ Thorfinn said. ‘If they choose to be unkind now, there are not so many moves I can make in return.’
‘Your divided country may be an asset there,’ Sulien said. ‘If there is trouble in Alba, you can deal with it, knowing the north lies safe behind you, with two grown heirs and Thorkel Fóstri to guide them, and the fleet nearly restored. Is it Alba where you expect your war to be?’
‘There is war in Alba already,’ he said. ‘War among the people, against themselves. It can’t go on, and I can’t keep the peace with what I have left.’ He paused, and reached a decision. ‘I have asked William of Normandy to hire me an army, and he has agreed.’
No riposte in answer to that, in the lilting Breton voice. It was a relief to have said it aloud. Moving to the nave, Thorfinn opened the heavy door a little, so that warm air drifted in, and he could see the graveyard, rising to the scatter of longhouses further up, and the green hill against the western sky. The unseen sun on his left struck the grave-marker, picking out the brick plumage and the powerful claws of the eagle. Behind him, Sulien said, ‘You think you can control them?’
He shut the door and turned back. ‘I did it with a smaller group,’ he said. ‘Very few of these will want to linger in Alba. Duke William made a pact with the King of France at the end of the year. If Anjou settles, Normandy will be a rich duchy, and it will suit these men to go back and be part of it. All I want are enough men to clear Alba of rebels.’
‘You mean kill them,’ said Sulien. ‘Otherwise, they would come back, once the Normans had gone.’
‘Yes. I mean kill them,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Because of them, the people loyal to me are dying every day and the country is falling to waste.’
‘You have another choice,’ Sulien said. ‘You could reverse your decision of seventeen years ago and be content with your earldom of Orkney and Caithness.’
Thorfinn said, ‘It is not quite the same choice. This time, no King of Alba could afford to let me live.’
Sulien did not speak. No enemy he had ever faced had been as hard as Sulien could be. Thorfinn said, ‘Do you imagine I think about nothing but games?’
Sulien said, ‘You sometimes give that impression.’ He was not smiling. He said, ‘You didn’t ask me why Earl Alfgar asked me to come and see you.’
‘No,’ Thorfinn said. Sitting below him, Sulien had changed his position. Looking down on him, he could see nothing but the shaved top of his head, and his down-bent fair lashes, and two long-fingered hands encircling one knee. He had wondered why Alfgar should have done such a thing, but had said nothing. If the matter was urgent, Sulien would tell him. When he did not, he had assumed that there was an embarrassment somewhere. Alfgar—or Godiva—had thought him in need of help, temporal or spiritual, and had sent for Sulien. Or Alfgar had intended to lay on Sulien an embassy he did not care for, such as persuading himself towards an alliance with Norway and Mercia, to lend power to King Gruffydd in driving the Saxons out of Wales.
He had not forgotten that once he himself had allied with King Gruffydd, to their mutual advantage, and then shortly afterwards Gruffydd had sacked Llanbadarn. The last thing Sulien would help sponsor was an invasion. Sulien knew what greed could do. He had said almost nothing about the Norman mercenaries, but his opinions were none the less plain. Thorfinn knew, who had had to weigh the risk over and over before sending to Normandy. In Italy, the Normans had conquered and stayed, and every footmark had become a ladder-rung to the next conquest.
So now he said, ‘No,’ wondering what Sulien was going to say that could not be said at the beginning but had to be presented to him like canon tables, arcaded about with all the other considerations they had discussed.
And Sulien said, ‘Earl Alfgar wanted me to give you a warning. He said that he thought Denmark and Norway were by way of making some temporary peace. And that if that were so, Norway might send much more than a token fleet next time when they wanted to damage Earl Harold on the Welsh border. He said that you had already refused once to league with Norway, and to allow them the supply-base they needed. Earl Alfgar said that he was in no doubt that when and if the King of Norway’s fleet came to the firth, he would attack you here in Orkney. That was why I said you were fortunate. Even if you find Alba and the Normans have all your attention in the south, yet you have two good sons and all your powerful leaders to look after the north for you.’
It took Thorfinn’s breath, but he would not show it. This had always been one of the risks. He knew what Sulien intended him to feel, and he felt it. But, at the same time, you could say that his invitation to Duke William had been vindicated. Whoever was locked up here, doing battle with Norway, at least Alba would not lie helpless to any invader. He said, ‘Did Alfgar know when?’
‘No. But he thought it might take King Harald a little time to get his ships back north and in order. Perhaps midsummer or later. You will see why there was no need to tell you earlier. Will you stay in Orkney?’ Sulien said. ‘When do your men-at-arms come from Normandy?’
‘In a month, perhaps. It may be that I have Alba settled before King Harald’s fleet comes to the north,’ Thorfinn said. ‘If it comes. Perhaps I could even sell my used Normans to King Harald to employ against Wessex. After all, they are Wessex’s natural enemies. Do you think a new game is about to start? Front to front, shall eagles claw each other?’
Sulien had looked up. ‘You mean it,’ he said.
‘Does it matter?’ said Thorfinn. He touched Sulien lightly on the
shoulder and then, impatient at the disparity in their heights, dropped to the rushes at his feet and sat cross-legged, looking up at him.
Thorfinn said, ‘I am not very good at making promises, and I don’t know why you take this trouble with me. But although, yes, I mean it, I also understand what you are saying to me, and I agree with it. Only my opponents and the three ladies do not always let me take the course I should prefer. And in this case I am led to believe that all decisions are out of my hands, whatever I do. So when I say does it matter, that is all I mean.’
Sulien said slowly, ‘It is easy to excuse yourself because of a shadow.’
‘Then I don’t. My fate is in my own hands,’ Thorfinn said.
There was another silence. Then Sulien said, ‘If you had faith of any kind, I could get rid of this for you.’ Then the note of bitterness went, and he said in his musical Breton, ‘I think the time has come to say what you fear and see if we can talk about it. If you had no Celtic blood, I suppose you would never have heard the legend of Luloecen the Fool. That is it, isn’t it?’
Long ago, Thorfinn had realised that Sulien had read the histories of the man whose name Lulach bore. The Luloecen of centuries past, of whom, to the superstitious, this Lulach might seem a re-embodiment. Only to the superstitious.
Tuathal also knew. Thorfinn had never discussed it with either. To bring it into the open was like laying bare not a scar but a wound. He kept his voice even.
‘For a legend, or course, it has turned out remarkably apt. Five hundred years ago, the seer called Luloecen lived at the court of King Ryderch of Strathclyde, and prophesied the death of the King, and of St Kentigern, and of Morcant, St Kentigern’s enemy. Both names, Ruaidhri and Morgan, are in Lulach’s family.’
‘And in the family of Findlaech your stepfather,’ Sulien said. ‘What other tales have you heard?’
Suddenly, it was too much. Thorfinn twisted and got to his feet. ‘No. This is foolish. We are grown men, if nothing else.’
‘Then behave like one,’ said Sulien. ‘What other versions have you been told?’ He paused and said, ‘You may be discussing fantasies, but witchcraft is my business.’
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