King Hereafter (89 page)

The present Leo, minium only in colouring, presided at his table under the mosaic, with his priests and cardinal-bishops seated at the board on his right, and the cardinal-deacons on his left at another. Before him, down the length of the hall, ran the long lines of tables, ribbed with the glowing faces and reaching arms of his princely guests and lesser churchmen. Heads of every shade and fashion of barbering and faces clean-shaven or with beads forked or flowing or close; with moustaches uncut or wholly absent, or trained Saxon-style to droop like parched corn over the dog-teeth.

And tunics and robes, also, from the weaving-sheds and workshops of many lands, in all the colours of the mosaics: oyster white and dull gold and carmine, salt green and earth red, azure and violet, figured with foliage and medallions and writing, flowered with pearls and emeralds, garnets and sapphires, encrusted with gold.

From each of these men, he, Leo, would extract his due, because the society known to the missionary saints no longer existed; and without money the church would collapse, and with it all order.

For himself, little sufficed. To feed and clothe his followers as well as himself, he had kept his bishopric of Toul. The gold chalice on the table before him, with its trumpet foot and gemmed filigree bands, had been made for St Goscelin of Toul, his predecessor, and was here because little else of silver or gold remained in the Lateran treasury.

Of the rest of the plate on the table, most had been given by the Emperor Henry. Like his own, Henry’s faith he believed to be deep. Like himself, the Emperor knew the self-abasement of the whip and would lead armies, weeping. Not for himself the busy halls of Michael Cerularius in Constantinople, inhabited by the dyer, the artificer, the confectioner, the render of spices, filled with the pneumatic melodies of silver blackbirds and golden blackcap warblers. Not for the Emperor the rising throne, the mechanical lions of Constantine VII that roared and beat the ground with their tails. He and his protector lived moderate lives. On days of penance, he slept on the floor, his head on a pillow of stone. He would be surprised if Henry did not do the same.

And yet—that very alliance between Empire and Papacy that the mosaics in this room commemorated was presently his greatest concern.

Humbert, dear Humbert seated there, shining and talkative between the two priests from Alba, had been brought to Rome not for his music but for his Greek. Some day, when diplomacy could do no more, force might have to be used to drive the Normans out of Italy, and he might have to send an envoy to the court of the silver blackbirds to ask the Eastern Emperor to lend the Western his aid.

And because he would depend also—did depend—on the Emperor, he must have regard to the Emperor’s interests in all his dealings: with Baldwin of Flanders and those he was sheltering; with his own family of Lorraine; with the King of France and his enemies and his allies. The sword of anathema, you might say, was in his own hand as often as the sword of physical destruction was in Henry’s.

Simony, heresy, incest. They must all be stamped out, and without such grounds he would never excommunicate. But the truth was that sin was everywhere. If he were not to lay flat the internal structure of the church and render helpless those laymen who supported it, he could only proceed by choosing here and there a churl of substitution, a scapegoat. It was the policy that dictated the choice of scapegoats that he wondered, through the night, if he would be forgiven.

The large, well-dressed Saxon over there, deep in talk with the Bishop of Coutances, would come to his audience tomorrow primed with penitential messages from his master the King of England. But somewhere in the conversation there would emerge a reference to England’s recent support in the Emperor’s wars, and England’s consequent suffering through the excommunication of both her trading-partners in Flanders and Boulogne.

For the irregularity of their unions, Eustace of Boulogne and Ingelram of Ponthieu deserved to be excommunicated. Equally, the Count of Anjou had imprisoned a bishop and could not be forgiven. Brittany and Nantes were a matter of pain, and he did not want to think about them.

Because of a letter that had reached him today, he must call before next week’s synod a man he admired, Lanfranc, the brilliant Prior of Bee in Normandy.

It was, there was no doubt, his very brilliance that had entangled him in religious dialogue with this heretic Bérenger. But it must be stopped. That was what was important, not the fact that Lanfranc’s friend the Bishop of Nantes had been deposed, thus admitting a chain of vacancies which would give Hildebrand there possession of the church of St Paul’s here at Rome.

It was Hildebrand who had suggested the restoration of the traditional Easter synod. Without Hildebrand, he sometimes felt, they would all be lost.

It was Hildebrand who had suggested placing the King of Alba between Prior Lanfranc and Hugh of Semur, the new Abbot of the great Burgundian foundation of Cluny, beloved of Hildebrand and of the Emperor and his lady, and the most energetic centre of reform since St Benedict pointed the way to salvation.

He had asked the King of Alba, on the occasion of his first audience, about the raven on his banner, it being in his mind that the Blessed St Benedict himself had been guided by three such birds to found his monastery, cradle of the faith, at Monte Cassino.

The answer had not been entirely satisfactory, but he had not been displeased by the rest of the discussion. He understood, from his last conversations with the Emperor and Archbishop Adalbert, the importance of the lands this King now ruled over. As his dear Toul,
Leucha civitas
, was the key of Lorraine, so Orkney with its fleet and its boatbuilding peoples, its strategic position in those waters which, they said, congealed in winter into meadows of salt, was the key to the dominion of the north.

To this, the man Macbeth had added Alba. As did Olaf and Harald of Norway, so this seafaring adventurer, it seemed, was now prepared to adopt a pastoral country and accept responsibility for it.

A man who could do such a thing was not without gifts as well as ambition. It was seen that he was acquainted with the world and observed the courtesies! He could exact proper behaviour from his servants and from his noblemen, comporting themselves with decency there at the table.

It did not, of course, alter the understanding that the visit should end very shortly. With the opening of the synod, accommodation, of course, was at a premium. But, more than that, Leo knew how familiarity altered the pagan: how respect lessened as he found his way from the Sacred Highway to those parts within the walls where the buildings had not been restored or the roads cleared of refuse, and where, in winter, the wolves came to howl. When he discovered also the market for women, and drink, and the useful offices of the money-lenders. When, sick of a place where the corn-strips were covered with marble and the rivers with refuse, he assuaged his longing with riot and violence.

The Pope talked, and ate with animation, but those closest to him observed that his eyes, beneath the weight of the tiara, were red-rimmed and damp.

ETWEEN THE
P
OPE’S
banquet and the King of Alba’s, the English Party hardly took respite.

Deploying his mission about their duties in the city and out of it, Bishop Ealdred received their reports and digested, in the efficient curia of his mind, all their implications.

Wherever they went, it seemed, the officers of the King of Alba were already in evidence.

Some of the activity, naturally, had to do with the homeward journey, and with the banquet. It was amazing, however, how often Hermann or Goscelin would return with an account of how they had seen the man Leofwine of Cumbria at this goldsmith or that merchant’s, or the big, fair Norseman Otkel down at the wharves, with the priest Isleifr translating for him; or the little brown-bearded man Hlodver sitting on the edge of a tumbler’s mat, his arms full of cabbage-leaves crowded with dates.

Alfred called on the Bishop of Rennes and found no less than three of the King of Alba’s men with him. The Fougères half of Alfred was related to the Bishop of Rennes. Alfred was related to everybody. Bishop Ealdred, receiving his account, said, ‘And what did you learn?’

‘Well: I asked them how they enjoyed exchanging the smoky roofs of Tours for the gilded roofs of Rome, but they weren’t very amused. It seems everyone says that.’

‘How disappointing for you,’ said Bishop Ealdred. ‘And what else did you gather?’

‘The Irishmen have been up to the Palatine again,’ Alfred said, ‘visiting the grave of Cairbre Ua Coimhghillain, who died twelve years ago. They didn’t find anything.’

‘Except their deceased Irish friend, one would imagine,’ said Bishop Ealdred. ‘What a pity. It seems that they are going to leave Rome with half their mission uncompleted. And nothing else?’

‘No. They were nervous,’ said Alfred.

‘They were probably expecting the Archfiend,’ said Bishop Ealdred.
‘Clearly, you met him on your way out. The continuous aura of sulphur is, I must tell you, a little disturbing. Ah. Hermann.’

The Bishop of Wiltshire moved from the threshold and sat down carefully. ‘It’s the water,’ he said. ‘I don’t blame him. I’ve just come from Lanfranc’s. Thorfinn was there. Macbeth. They’re everywhere, like the mosquitoes. I never saw such energy. Orkney water and Rome water must possess the same properties. You need bronze piping to put up with it.’

‘Indeed,’ said Bishop Ealdred. ‘Well, no doubt, if you try, you will find some on sale in Rome somewhere.’

On the day of the King of Alba’s banquet, his last engagement in Rome, the Pope gave two audiences: one to the English delegation, and one to Thorfinn, attended by Tuathal.

Both took place in the Oratory of St Sylvester, approached through an arch beyond the long council chamber on the Patriarchium first floor.

Profoundly moved by his encounter, as well as rather pleased, Bishop Ealdred rehearsed it immediately afterwards while Goscelin wrote it down, word by melodious word.

Likewise Thorfinn, whose audience had been somewhat longer, returned and conveyed briefly its contents to his assembled company. Nothing untoward had happened: the outcome was as they expected; the farewell gifts proposed by the Pope were of very great value and represented the high opinion the Pontiff held of the conduct of the men of Alba on this, their first visit to Rome.

He then disappeared, to make arrangements for the transport of the Pope’s boxes from the Archarius to the Borgo, taking with him Prior Tuathal, who did not look very well.

By the time his first guests arrived for their repast, Thorfinn was back and ready to greet them.

The meal, served in the large room of the Vatican palace, was satisfactory, and well cooked by men everyone knew they could trust. The Prefect and senators, the cardinals, the bishops with whom the party from Alba had shared the life of the Borgo brought good conduct with them and maintained it. There was music and a little tumbling and sleight of hand, which no one protested against. And through all the talk there was the spectacle, through the sapphire-blue windows of night, of the city of Rome, hung in the darkness over the river like a votive diadem of glimmering light. Rome, the mistress and centre of the world, that tonight was real and tomorrow would be lost in the marshes of memory.

‘And your meeting?’ said Bishop Ealdred to the King. ‘I take it your audience went well? Got all you wanted? The Holy Father was in generous mood?’

‘Indeed,’ said the King of Alba. ‘A happy triumph in Christ, with Satan trodden under the holy feet. We have been overwhelmed with attention. And you?’

‘Naturally,’ said Bishop Ealdred. ‘A privilege. A pleasure, of course. My
King will, I think, have cause to be pleased with the results of my work this morning.’

‘King Edward has been excused his vow of pilgrimage?’ said the King. ‘I trust the cost was not more than will be convenient?’

‘Should absolution be cheap?’ said Bishop Ealdred. ‘I have undertaken, on behalf of my King, that he will dispose of his intended outlay to the needy. He is also to reconstruct and endow a new abbey. On the island of Thorney, on the outskirts of London.’

Bishop Ealdred paused. ‘Perhaps, in the light of your own undertakings, such an exaction may strike you as trivial.’

‘I rather think,’ said the King of Alba, ‘that we have been weighed on the same scale. I, too, have undertaken to build and endow a cathedral. On the island of Birsay.’

‘Indeed,’ said Bishop Ealdred. His eyes flickered. ‘A cathedral?’

‘Should absolution be cheap?’ said the King of Alba.

Later that night, when it was over, Eochaid of Scone found his way to the room he shared with his fellow-priest Tuathal.

‘Do you suppose,’ Eochaid said, ‘that our friend Bishop Ealdred has heard of the island of Birsay?’

‘Does it matter?’ Tuathal said. He threw some footgear into a box and began carefully to wrap up his packet of sand and his whetstone. ‘If the marsh of Thorney serves London, I imagine he thinks Birsay is Thorfinn’s metropolis. Which, I suppose, it is. It’s also an island half a mile long off the west coast of Orkney. It’s just as well the Pope doesn’t know the chin of the world either.’