King Hereafter (6 page)

In the town of Chester everything had come to a standstill ever since the King of England’s army had marched up and camped itself a few days before on the opposite side of the river. From their homes of log and planking and wattle, and quite a few of cut stone, the citizens of Chester had watched King Canute of England and his household officers climb the mound to their Earl’s timber palace and feast themselves at Earl Leofric’s table while those talks went on which would end, you could be sure, in bringing no profit to Mercia.

And so, of course, it turned out. The first thing anyone knew, young Alfgar was on his way north to be held a hostage in Cumbria, and next the old King of the north had appeared at the gates, with ten unarmed men as he had promised, and had been led down to the riverside, where floated the canopied ship, with King Canute on board, upon which the two Kings were to hold their encounter.

Canute, of course, had his ten unarmed men also with him, but the oarsmen were Mercians and Earl Leofric was in attendance, as if he were the host and not obeying King Canute because there was no alternative. It was by no wish of Leofric’s, you could be sure, that young Alfgar was now in Cumbria. A wild youth, some might say, and that corncrake of a laugh was a terror. But he was the Mercian heir; the only son of Earl Leofric and the Lady of Mercia.

The Lady might look placid enough, pacing down to the Dee with King Malcolm and waiting there on the bank with her women while the old King was helped into a boat and ferried into midstream for his meeting. Between
the guards lining the river, you could see her chat to the King’s grandson Duncan as if one youth were the same as another. But when the prince Duncan had followed his grandfather, it was to another boy that she turned, her son’s best friend, the lad who was training in Wales for the priesthood. The gentle lad Sulien.

Striding up from the bank, the Lady was too smart to look anxious. But the boy Sulien did. You could see it as he hurried beside her. Learning to be a priest, he was, and Alfgar’s very best friend. It showed you. There wasn’t much wrong with young Alfgar.

‘Slow down,’ said the boy Sulien. ‘My lady. Slow down. You would think the river Dee was on fire behind you.’

‘Isn’t it?’ said Godiva, Lady of Mercia. ‘It would seem no more than an appropriate judgement, when you consider the pack of designing men meeting there. Apart from Leofric, you understand. Not that Leofric doesn’t design. But when he does, it’s always for Mercia.’

As people did when with Sulien, she spoke as if to an equal, and not to a youth just a year older than her only son Alfgar. At the same time she slackened both her pace and her grip of her skirts, and the sunlit webs of her hair-veil hovered and sank to rest at her cheek and her shoulder as if to a dovecote. She was a very beautiful woman. Sulien said, ‘Alfgar is security for the old King of Alba’s life. Nothing will happen to him.’

Walking up to the fine, painted hall Earl Leofric had built for his Lady, with their attendants straggling behind them, Sulien of Llanbadarn had no sense of impending change, any more than had touched Thorkel Amundason in Norway six years before. His only concern at the time was for the Lady Godiva, whose house had been a second home to him from earliest childhood, long before her husband inherited one of the three big English earldoms.

Godiva had Breton blood, but Sulien was pure-bred from the duchy of Brittany, that part of the old Frankish continent that shouldered out into the Atlantic, divided only by the Narrow Seas from the south shore of England.

It was fashionable nowadays to speak of Brittany as a primitive place, full of unlettered savages. Its only fault that Sulien could see was that, in common with Wales and Alba and Ireland, it had fought too hard for its freedom. In resisting Roman conquest, it had forgone Roman civilization. Pushed to the western fringes of their land by invader after invader, pride as well as circumstance had seen to it that they spoke today the Celtic tongue of their forefathers and kept their customs.

Now, between Wales and Brittany and the north-west of England there existed a kinship, strengthened by cross-migration, by trade, by a common language, by a common church, that made it no more than natural that a branch of his own family should for two generations have been settled here in the north, between Cumbria and the land on the east. Or that when, among all his brothers and sisters, it had been a matter of choosing which should inherit the rule of their land and which the power of the church, he, already at
home on both sides of the Narrow Seas, should be sent for his training to a Welsh monastery.

There had been three to choose from, all five hundred years old, but there had never been any doubt which his father would select. St David’s might be the most famous, but Llanbadarn owed its name to St David’s friend St Paternus, by tradition the first bishop of his father’s own province of Vannes.

In the little time he had been there, Sulien had taken to the monastery on the river Rheidoe, although it was no longer the great teaching-house it had once been. That didn’t matter. He knew what it was to be beaten to the book by the child-master in Brittany. He had learned church practice in the service of his own kinsman the Bishop of Vannes. He had learned good manners here, in the household of the Lady of Mercia. Free of childish matters, there stretched before him now the
cursus ordinum
, the long training, possibly somewhere in Ireland, that would return him to Llanbadarn as a man proceeding to Holy Orders.

It was an end he wished to attain, although the path that led to it was not entirely as he would have chosen. There were some games he was going to miss.

Meanwhile, he was only sixteen, and released for two days from the tyranny of the Office as temporary clericellus to one of the bishops down on the boat there. He talked to the Lady, seeking to cheer her as they came near her threshold, and hardly noticed until she stopped that her way was blocked by one of her own officers, newly emerged from the hall, who bowed, addressing her.

‘Lady: another party has arrived to join the Kings on the ship. Led by the King of Alba’s second grandson.’

The King of Alba was not at that moment a favourite of the Lady of Mercia. ‘Who?’ she said.

The house-steward glanced over his shoulder. ‘If I have it right, the Earl of Orkney and Caithness, my lady. The prince Duncan, who is already on board, is the Earl’s half-brother.’

‘By his mother’s first marriage. I remember,’ said the Lady. She was watching the doorway, looking thoughtful. She added, ‘I gather neither boy saw anything much of the mother. Her third marriage, to the man who was burned, ended in making her something of a recluse. I don’t even know—’

She broke off as there was a movement in the doorway of the hall and a youth stepped out into the sunlight. Sulien said, ‘What is his name? Do you know enough Norse to understand him?’ They were speaking in Breton, one tongue the young Earl of Orkney would assuredly not possess.

‘Norse and Saxon are not so unlike. His name is Thorfinn,’ said the Lady of Mercia, and fell silent, watching the young man approach. Sulien followed her eyes.

If some men had a gift for seemly relations with space, and the ability to move gracefully through it, this was not one of them. The Earl of Orkney, little older than Sulien himself, was thin and tall as a ladder, and moved as if by external agency. His wind-burnished face was a structure of sinews and
hollows in which eyes and brows were fierce accents above the shining, honed scythe of his nose. His hair, thick and tangled with salt, was of that black verging on brown that distinguishes the ruddy-skinned Pict from the swarthy blue-black of the Iberian.

Whatever looks could do for a man, he had missed, Sulien thought. He had neither the power to charm on first sight nor to horrify. He looked tiresome. He stopped and addressed his hostess.

‘The Lady of Mercia?’ The voice was an octave lower than Sulien had expected. Also, he had used
Domina
, which was clever. Of course, he could not be sure what language to speak.

Beside him, the Lady of Mercia inclined her head and assented. ‘Godiva.’ Her feelings towards any member of the King of Alba’s family were not of the kind to encourage communication. As if he had been told, the Earl of Orkney studied her face and then turned and looked at Sulien. Since Godiva said nothing, Sulien resolved the matter by introducing himself. He chose Irish Gaelic, a Celtic language near enough to his own to allow him some fluency, which the other surely would have heard spoken at home in Caithness and in the house of his mother’s third husband.

‘I am Sulien of Vannes, studying at the monastery of Llanbadarn. The Lady has Breton and Saxon, and can understand Irish Gaelic. You are the Earl Thorfinn of Orkney, and you wish a boat to take you out to the meeting-place?’

Lashless brown eyes considered him. ‘Not really,’ said the Earl Thorfinn of Orkney. ‘I’ve sent my cousin down to the water’s edge to blow on his horn, and I imagine my grandfather will have a boat over quite quickly. I only—’

It was not in Godiva’s nature, as her friends were aware, to be discourteous for long. Choosing the kind of slow Saxon a Norse-speaker might understand, she said, ‘It would be quicker still if I arranged for you to take one of mine. Let me send a man with you.’

The Earl looked at her. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘But Skeggi will manage. I’m not in a hurry.’

Mild understanding appeared on the Lady’s face and, blending evidently with her conscience, produced—wrongly, Sulien thought—an invitation. She said, ‘Perhaps then, if you come back indoors, I can offer you a refreshment. If you have time. Your grandfather was asking most anxiously for you.’

Disappointingly, she appeared to be right, and Sulien to be wrong. The Earl of Orkney showed no reluctance to turn and make his way back to the hall for a refreshment. He entered after the Lady and sat on a stool next to Sulien’s, as she indicated. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter about the refreshments. I wanted to speak to you.’

‘Oh,’ said Godiva. Outside, Sulien could hear voices. Either cousin Skeggi had come back from the waterside or the rest of the Earl’s party was arriving. It occurred to Sulien, and also possibly to the Lady, that not all of them might spurn her ale-barrels. She said, ‘Of course we must have a talk. But should you stay now? We really don’t want to upset your grandfather.’

Standing straight-boned and still, with a print of worry between her fair
brows, she had never looked to better advantage. The Earl of Orkney returned her gaze tranquilly. ‘Since we don’t know one another,’ he said, ‘I can’t tell whether you’d prefer truth to compliments. I’m in no hurry, because I don’t like my grandfather. You may not want to upset him, but I do.’

The Lady drew a deep breath, but Sulien forestalled her. He said, ‘At home, that’s your affair. But you’re in Chester now, and the Lady can’t afford to provoke trouble. You may not know, but King Malcolm took hostages.’

‘Well, of course,’ said the Earl of Orkney, with an edge of impatience. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’ He turned to Godiva. ‘I came to say I’ve brought your son with me.’

She opened her mouth so suddenly that the linen creaked over her ears. ‘
Alfgar?
’ said Godiva.

‘Yes. We found him in my grandfather’s camp. He said he wanted to leave.’

The Lady stared at him, and so did Sulien. Outside, as the disturbance came nearer, he could now distinguish Alfgar’s voice shouting in Gaelic. The Lady said, ‘You do dislike your grandfather, don’t you?’ She sounded breathless. Then the door was flung open and her son bounded in, followed by a stocky fellow with a grin and tightly curled ginger hair.

Sulien got to his feet. The Orkney Earl was standing already. Alfgar landed between them and hung there, an elbow on Sulien’s shoulder and a wrist by the Orkney Earl’s neck. ‘Thorfinn of Orkney! Has he told you what he did? Eachmarcach of Dublin as well. King Malcolm will kill him! They walked in and …’

In the distance, a horn blew from the riverside. ‘Ah,’ said the Earl Thorfinn of Orkney.

The Lady of Mercia rose also and held out her hand to her son, who belatedly unhooked himself and bobbed his yellow head to kiss his mother’s fingers and cheek. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘I understand. I am quite overwhelmed by it all. Now stand still and stop talking while we think.’

From pale, her cheeks now were like carnations. To Thorfinn of Orkney she said, ‘I am sorry. It was because of Alfgar.’

‘Well, of course,’ said the Earl. ‘I think that was the horn.’

‘But you won’t go?’ Godiva said. The smile had left her face. ‘You won’t cross to your grandfather now?’

‘Why not?’ Earl Thorfinn said.

The Lady of Mercia stared at him. ‘You mean to cross to that ship and tell King Malcolm that you’ve disposed of the security that he arranged for his life?’

His hands dangling, the Earl Thorfinn gazed down at her, not unkindly. He said, ‘What can he do? Underline his distrust of King Canute at the moment he is signing a pact with him? Offer the north as a prize for his friendship and demonstrate at the very same moment that he has no control of the north? Get rid of me and leave the north vacant for Norway?’

‘… I see,’ said the Lady of Mercia. ‘But afterwards you and your friend might be well advised to leave before King Malcolm and your half-brother catch you?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Thorfinn mildly. His face was straight, but that of the Dublin man beside him bore a wide grin, and one could tell from Alfgar’s chest that one of his laughs wasn’t far away. Then Alfgar said, ‘Why don’t we all go on board? Father’s there. Sulien’s supposed to be with the old man from Llandaff. Thorfinn’s entitled to at least one attendant: it’s not everyone who can produce a Dublin king’s heir for a friend. Canute won’t complain, even if Malcolm does.’

‘Why not?’ said Earl Thorfinn. The mildness in the subterranean voice was still there. Here was a youth, it seemed to indicate, ready to fall in with the wishes of others. Sulien could not tell why, therefore, he became seized with the certainty that this proposal of Alfgar’s was what Thorfinn had intended to do all along.

The Lady protested, of course, but to very little avail, although she took the trouble to walk down through the courtyard with them herself and, separating the young man Thorfinn, to give him, one supposed, a further piece of her mind. Sulien said as much to her when she turned to leave them.