King Hereafter (76 page)

Thorfinn said, ‘Should I have warned him?’

‘No,’ said his lady wife. ‘But I shouldn’t give the same advice to Bishop Malduin your cousin.’

‘If you look a little more closely,’ said the King, ‘you will note that the prelate who has just joined Abbot Duftah and is making his way to Isleifr’s is none other than Bishop Malduin my cousin.’

*   *   *

Inside the priest Isleifr’s booth, the bride Finnghuala ceased screaming for a moment when the door opened, and then continued from where she lay on the ground. Far from going to her aid, Lulach her bridegroom of the next day sat weeping and hugging his knees on the far side of the booth. Maelmuire, his fifteen-year-old cousin of the half-blood, lay beside him, beating clenched fists on the ground, while Paul and Erlend, the bride’s young second cousins, were clinging together, the elder attempting to comfort the younger, who, bawling with fear, was sitting shut-eyed on the ground.

The noise, the smoke from the fire, and the astounding aroma of fish at first disguised from both Dubhdaleithe and his fellow churchman the full horror of the occasion. Then the Bishop, leaving the doorway, cried, ‘That is the voice of my niece!’ and rushed through the fog towards the bride.

It was natural that he failed to observe, crawling on all fours in his path, the naked hindquarters of a small yellow man with black hair. And that, falling headlong over this obstacle, Bishop Malduin should only then perceive, hanging before him, the little creature’s discarded clothes, racked on the wet, shining teeth of a white Greenland bear-cub.

In a flurry of red-and-white wool and gold braiding, the Bishop landed full on the bear, and the bear, confused, responded according to the promptings of nature with its teeth, its claws, and its bladder.

The stench of fish sprang freshly thickened into the tainted atmosphere, and the bride, squealing with uncontrollable mirth, sprang to her feet and dashed from the booth, dragging her hooting bridegroom behind her.

The three boys followed, the youngest still tremulous.

The small yellow man stood up yelling. The cub shoved itself free and sat up. The Bishop lay on the ground. The Abbot of Armagh sank on his knees by the Bishop, put out a hand, and drew it back again.

The priest Isleifr, emerging stocky and practical from the obscurity, exclaimed, ‘Dear, dear. What a girl you have there! You’ll have to forgive her. High spirits, no more. She stuffed some fish up his … No harm done, I assure you. Teeth small as a kitten’s. Bites that fade in an evening …’ He came to a halt and looked down. ‘It’s a pity about the robes,’ Isleifr said.

It was a good, hearty wedding, and the marriage feast was without parallel in the experience of any man visiting Alba, as were the guest-gifts each received on departure.

On the second day of the feast, Lulach led his bride from their chamber, kissed his mother, and said, ‘How could I fail with such a pedigree? Lulaig mic Gillacomghain mic Maelbrighde mic Ruaidhrí mic Morgaind mic Domnall mic Cathmail mic Ruaidhrí mic Aircellach mic Ferchair fhoda … My wife was overcome. I could hardly persuade her from her knees.’

‘You are happy,’ said Groa.

‘Finnghuala is happy,’ said Lulach. ‘When this night’s work brings me a son, I think I should call him Snaebjorn.’

It meant Snow-bear.

‘If you wish your uncle by marriage to expel you from his communion,’ Groa said.

‘Then Snaekolf,’ Lulach said. ‘I had a forebear called Snaekolf. Or was it Melsnati?’

Groa was seldom disturbed by her son. She said, ‘Whatever it was, I suggest you borrow some other name from your pedigree until Bishop Malduin is with
his
forebears, white or otherwise.’ And waited, smiling, while the bride laughed and laughed.

On the last day of the feast, Sulien of Llanbadarn walked into the hall, saying, ‘It seems that no marriage feast has taken place in Alba worth mentioning, for all anyone is talking about is some tale to do with a bear. Have you a married son here or not?’

It was nine years since his last, brief visit to Alba, when he had stood beside Thorfinn’s sickbed at St Andrews and his throne on the Moot Hill of Scone. Now he was thirty-eight, but the slight, buoyant carriage was the same as when, a boy fresh from Brittany, he had run on the ship’s oars at Chester, and his tonsured hair was still dark. Only perhaps in the seamed brow and dark-lidded gaze, the eye of a friend could trace the weight of thirteen years of exile and study.

He had made an entrance, and so men looked at him. But all those who knew Thorfinn best looked nowhere after that first glance save at the High Chair.

Aware of it, Thorfinn showed nothing except perhaps by his stillness. Sulien also, though his smiling glance swept the King’s, brought his attention to rest solely on Lulach, the boy of twenty who had been his care and his foster-child, and who now rose, white hair silk above the bright bridal silks, clear face untroubled and empty as the face of the sky, and said, ‘Come and meet my wife, who will tell you.’

In the space made for him between Thorfinn and Lulach at table, Sulien said, ‘I missed the wedding Mass. It was a grief to me.’

‘We all know,’ said Thorfinn, ‘that a sense of direction is not your strongest point.’

Sulien said, ‘You gave me plenty of warning. But to finish the work of so many years in a few weeks is not easy. I could not fail my abbot.’

Thorfinn said, ‘You are not returning to Ireland?’

Sulien’s eyes moved to Groa, which was answer enough, for those who knew him. Then he said, ‘I have been asked by the Bishop of St David’s to come back to Wales to teach. I have accepted.’

‘Your dream?’ said Groa. ‘You will be bishop one day. We are happy for you.’

‘Part of my dream,’ Sulien said. ‘The rest has been realised.’

Thorfinn said, ‘I am sorry for the man who has to deal with your pupils. I have a few of them here already complaining about the lack of equipment.’

‘You will have more,’ Sulien said.

And from that moment, to Finnghuala’s simple pleasure, it became an
occasion of quite singular gaiety: indeed, the most inventive feast day of them all, so that she was almost sorry when day dawned at last and the young prince her husband lifted her up in his arms to carry her to their chamber.

Almost, but not quite. All the girls she knew had told her that Lulach was not like other men.

But he was.

Long before that, Thorfinn had taken Sulien off, and Groa was moved to nothing but thankfulness when the bed beside her stayed empty until long after she woke.

From what she saw of the King during the leave-taking, as the halls and the booths slowly emptied next day, she judged that he had slept not at all and that it had done him no harm. Sulien, accustomed to vigils, was unchanged.

Only later, when she found Sulien packing, did Groa say, ‘But you have only just come! You must not leave us!’

Thorfinn said, ‘He has to go to Rheims. The Pope is holding a Michaelmas synod, and churchmen are flocking. Twenty bishops at least. And Emma is sending a trio from Somerset.’

‘The new Pope? Pope Leo?’ said Groa. ‘I thought they’d only just managed to get him to Rome.’

‘Bruno le Bon, the Emperor’s second cousin. He’s back in Toul again,’ said Thorfinn, ‘after five months in Rome and Apulia and a good read of Peter Damian’s Book of Gomorrha. He’s back, says Sulien here, to reform France and Germany, or to drum up money, or to keep an eye on the Emperor, or because no one came to his Lateran synod, or because he likes Toul and doesn’t like Rome and Apulia. Take your pick.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Sulien. ‘Bishop Bruno was a clever and courageous leader of men. He was also a good man. As Pope Leo, he is still all of those things.’

Groa looked at Thorfinn. She said flatly, ‘You are going to Rheims with him. Or to Wales.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the King. The bar of his brows rose and descended. ‘Why should I do that? Sulien is going to Rheims, and then he is going to bring all his news back to Denmark, where you and I shall be visiting your mother and father.’

No one spoke. Sulien smiled.

‘You mean it,’ said Groa at length.

‘I mean it,’ said Thorfinn.

Slowly, Groa sat down. ‘You can leave the kingdom?’ she said.

‘I can leave it,’ said Thorfinn. ‘I have been working for two years to make it safe for hands other than mine. Norway cannot afford to attack, and England won’t, while Cumbria is mine and Mercia friendly. While the fleet is there, goods and silver will flow and the coast will be defended. Besides, Lulach says that the peace will not break for four years.’

‘Then I am reassured,’ said Groa. Her face was pink.

‘And I shall see you both in Denmark,’ Sulien said. ‘You can guess what it is. I have promised to bring him a copy of Peter Damian’s Book of Gomorrha.’

‘To correct,’ said Thorfinn.

T AALBORG, THE
girls were giving trouble again.

For any King of Denmark, it was sensible to move to Aalborg when caught in a long war with Norway. Aalborg sat on the Limfjord, whose waterway stretched from sea to sea across the north of Jutland. Fleets could sit in the Limfjord, and armies could lie, and did, at Aggersborg on the north shore. From Aalborg, ships could sail west to England and Normandy, or east to Halland and Sweden and Russia beyond.

Finn Arnason and his wife had crossed the eastern sound from his earldom of Halland last week, and today every man who could be spared was busy finishing the new hall that had been built to house this man Thorfinn-Macbeth and his suite. An hour ago, the Jammerbugt bailiff had sent to say that the ships from Alba had arrived in Lokken as directed and were being escorted round to the fjord, having landed their party.

There were horses for fifty people waiting at Borglumkloster, and the ride to Aalborg would take three hours, one could reckon, added to whatever time his bailiff managed to promote for a landing-feast and a rest. Meanwhile, the King of Alba, as was well known, had only one wife and she was an Arnmødling, so that it behoved the King of Denmark to get the girls out of the way, or at least to relegate them to the women’s quarters, where they would be in no danger of pushing themselves into the seats at the feast table beside the legal Lady of Alba and her father and mother.

As soon as Kalv Arnason had been killed and Finn his brother had defected from Norway to the Danish court, it had occurred to his new employer that a message of friendship and goodwill to Alba might have interesting and even profitable results.

He had only half-expected a reply to his invitation to spend the winter in Denmark. An acceptance within the month had given him what might be termed alarmed satisfaction.

Satisfaction because, by bringing his court openly to Denmark, the present opponent of Norway, Thorfinn-Macbeth was certainly making a statement if not actually issuing a challenge to Harald of Norway, to whose forebears Orkney had for so long owed allegiance.

And alarm because, evidently, the King of Alba was strong enough to do so with impunity.

Ragna, the girl he liked best when she wasn’t talking, said, ‘The King will think that he has a child to deal with; or that you smell. If you wish to impress him, why don’t you offer him a trader’s peace and take his wife to your couch, while I show him what Svein of Denmark expects of a woman? He will respect you after that, I assure you.’

He cuffed her then, and had the other two in after his morning-ale instead; but the Irish one sulked and the other spent all her time, when she had the breath, hinting that what he needed was another wife.

King Svein of Denmark had had enough of wives. The German mirror in his chamber showed him at his prime, so far as women were concerned: middle-sized and fair; not so bulky as his uncle Canute had been, but with his uncle’s thin, crooked nose with the high ridge and more than his uncle’s fertility: five sons and two daughters to date, and all healthy, unlike Canute’s clutch of weak, stripling kings.

As he was healthy. He was thirty-one years old and, with any luck, now able to get what he wanted—in every direction—without having to marry for it.

One wondered, therefore, if the tales they told about Thorfinn were true. He knew (everyone did) about the red-haired beauty, Groa his wife. Svein had been in Sweden, in tedious exile with his mother, when Groa made both her marriages. She was about his own age, he had heard. And had been married to Thorfinn for seventeen years.

Of course Thorfinn would hold on to her, an Arnmødling. Anyone would. He, Svein, didn’t need an Arnmødling: he had Finn Arnason himself serving under him. But after seventeen years, a woman might well be bored: a man might have found himself other diversions.

King Svein, touching up his hair with his comb, wondered if, after all, that little horse-fly Ragna had been uttering nonsense. There was sometimes more to an alliance, these days, than the bishops wrote down on their parchments.

‘And what,’ had asked Groa two days before, ‘is the nature of King Svein of Denmark?’

Sailing in
Grágás
and another, larger ship of whose building she had been unaware, she and Thorfinn and their train had broken their journey to Denmark at the only part of the Norwegian coast at which they could be sure of a welcome: at the fjord by Dale in Hordaland where Orm and Sigrid her sister had lands.