Hence the disbelief with which he had heard his cousin Thorfinn’s ultimatum. Persuade Earl Siward to allot you the living of all the St Cuthbert churches in Lothian as well as your charges in Alba, or I will make life in Alba so unbearable for you that you will have to retire.
In effect, that was what Thorfinn had threatened, and that was what the Bishop had told Earl Siward and his wife. He had dreaded his wife’s response even more than that of Earl Siward, and with reason. His wife had had time to make her attitude very clear in the weeks of waiting that followed his report to Earl Siward.
The weeks of waiting, he now believed, had a lot to do with the progress of Earl Godwin’s bid to return to power after his exile. The subsequent delay was due, he knew very well, to the extraordinary, the outrageous news that had arrived from Cumbria.
Thorfinn of Alba had given shelter to a troop of powerful Normans escaping from the authority of the Godwin family in the south. And was proposing to settle them, among other places, in the lands south of the river Forth. In Lothian.
The thought of it made his mouth dry, but he sipped very carefully. He was not a big man, and he made it a rule never to appear unsteady or dishevelled. Every detail of his appearance should be correct and was, from his clean-shaven chin to his pointed slippers, with his immaculate robe tailored smoothly over the little pot-belly kept firm by hunting. He hardly noticed how Thorfinn’s wife looked when he finally entered her chamber: he was wondering at the time whether she knew enough to put a proper value on his fur trim, and had noticed the new ring Earl Siward had sent him as a little present on leaving.
The Lady rose, as she should, and said, ‘Oh, dear, you have some beef on your squirrel. Anghared will bring a cloth while you sit down. So tell me your news. Your wife has chosen her convent?’
You forgot what these people were like. The blood pumped through his head as he compressed his chins, hunting for the invisible stain. He came up for air and met an invitation to suicide. He said, smiling, his hands poised in mid-air, ‘You are mistaken, my lady. My wife is not entering a religious house.’
The woman attendant came back with a cloth and a bowl, and began to dab at a bit of sleeve that the woman Groa … the Queen pointed out to her. He was not quite in time, himself, to inspect it. The Queen said, ‘But of course that is good news. She is coming back with you, then, to my husband’s court? He will be delighted.’
He smiled again, deprecatingly. His right arm, obeying the jerks on its sleeve, wagged steadily up and down. He said, ‘That is a matter for negotiation, my lady. It had better await the King your husband’s arrival.’
‘What a pity,’ the Lady said. ‘Don’t you have a friend who would negotiate for you? I would do it myself, but I don’t know your wife very well.’
They seemed, irritatingly, to be at cross-purposes. He said, ‘It is not a matter of negotiation between my wife and myself, my lady. It is a question of whether my lord Macbeth will accept what is best for the church as a whole.’
‘You mean,’ said the Queen, ‘that it might be best for the church as a whole if you did not come back? Surely not.’
Bishop Malduin, finding that he had recovered sole ownership of his arm, took it down and gave an irritable smile and a nod of thanks to the woman Anghared as she took her bowl and departed. He said, ‘The Pope will have to be advised, my lady, that my cousin your husband in his search for political leverage has importuned the Holy See for the appointment of two bishops whom he cannot support unless I, the present incumbent, am asked to run about in attendance as his household priest.’
‘I thought,’ said the Lady Groa, ‘that the bishopric was to be supported by the dues from the churches of Lothian?’
Bishop Malduin did not like argumentative women and, outside his home, dealt with them firmly. ‘Unhappily,’ he said without undue regret, ‘the Archbishop cannot see his way to allowing the lands and dues of St Cuthbert to be alienated from the shrine of St Cuthbert.’
‘The Archbishop?’ said the Queen with interest. ‘I thought the Archbishop was outlawed. By Earl Godwin.’
‘The Archbishop of York,’ said the Bishop. He removed the sharpness from his voice. ‘The Bishops of Durham are the concern of the Archbishops of York. There is a new one. Cynsige.’
‘I see,’ said the Lady Groa. He doubted if she did. She said, ‘Then I suppose what you are suggesting is that Bishop Jon or Bishop Hrolf join the King’s household, and you go to Man or to Orkney?’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Really, I think we had better leave these things until your husband arrives.’ He repaired his vehemence with a laugh. ‘Indeed, that would be a matter for negotiation between myself and my wife.’
‘I thought your mother came from Orkney,’ said the Queen. ‘But you surprise me. In fact, I think it’s shameful. After all the help you have given him, and the position of your wife as one of his tenants, Earl Siward won’t let you enjoy the church dues of Lothian? They’re not even his to withhold, are they? I thought old King Malcolm fought the Bernicians for his rights in Lothian thirty years ago, and got them.’
‘And lost them again, as any right-thinking person would realise, through his and his grandson’s insane attacks against Durham,’ said Bishop Malduin shortly. ‘I have, of course, been honoured by Earl Siward’s offer of the cure of the churches of Lothian. But under the tutelage, as it should be, of Durham and the archbishopric of York, to whom the churchlands and the rest of the dues rightly belong.’
‘I haven’t offered you any wine,’ said the Queen thoughtfully. She rose herself and walked to the chest upon which lay the cups and a pitcher and poured with a capable hand. She said, ‘Of course, it would make a good living. The dues from the Kinrimund lands under the King of Alba, and the dues from the Lothian churches under the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumbria. Where would you live?’ She returned and handed him a cup.
He took it. ‘Oh, in Durham,’ said the Bishop. ‘My wife likes it. It’s within reach of York on one side and the Lothian lands on the other. A competent steward could look after Kinrimund. I have a good one there now. It was always out of the way.’ He sipped and smiled up at her. ‘You come from Norway and you look surprised? Half the people of Scandinavia are looked after by missionary churchmen. Grimkell doesn’t forget Norway when he comes back to be Abbot of Abingdon. Siward was joint Bishop of Uppsala at the same time as he was Archbishop of Canterbury. Alwyn, my predecessor, was a Saxon and was consecrated, as I was, by the Archbishop of York. I can look after Thorfinn’s good people from Durham.’
The Lady took her cup and sat down briskly, holding it with both hands. ‘That,’ she said, ‘should certainly restore Christian life to the churches of Lothian, with Thorfinn’s Norman friends all about them, to garrison and protect them.’ She lifted her cup in salute. ‘A compromise, but a good one. Let us drink to it.’
The Bishop did not drink. Through the food, through the warmth, the wryness of his stomach made itself felt. He said, ‘Thorfinn’s friends have no place in these churches. These churches are English.’
‘Oh, come,’ the Queen said. ‘Did the Archbishop of Canterbury man the churches of Uppsala, or a King of Ireland send armed troops to Bobbio? Earl Siward cannot expect to keep troops in Lothian unless he claims Lothian. So far, you have mentioned only his rights to the churches of St Cuthbert.’
The Bishop was silent.
‘Does he claim Lothian?’ said the Queen. ‘Or do you need time to think about it before my husband arrives?’
‘Of course he claims Lothian,’ said Bishop Malduin. He set down his wine, and some of it jumped on to the table, and the cloth of his sleeve. He was marked: defiled by manipulation and aggression. He said, ‘Show me the parchment that says it is not his. Does your husband dare to dispute it?’
‘Candidly,’ the Lady said, ‘I don’t think he needs to, while Earl Godwin is taking up so much of everyone’s time and Mercia is being so sensible. It’s well known that Thorfinn is no friend to Norway, and I can
see that it might be quite to England’s advantage to have a string of church-forts across the Lothian neck in the hands of someone who won’t be tempted to lease them to an enemy.’
‘And your Norman friends?’ said Bishop Malduin. ‘They, I suppose, are comrades of England as well?’
‘At the moment,’ said the Lady, ‘they seem to be about half in favour of Duke William and half against him, so that I don’t suppose they seem much of a threat even to Earl Godwin, so long as they don’t interfere with the running of England. I don’t suppose Earl Godwin worries much about the running of Northumbria, except when he looks at the number of sons he has to provide for.
‘I can’t, of course, speak for my husband,’ said the Lady, ‘but I’m sure, whatever the outcome of this little quarrel, he wouldn’t wish a bishop to suffer. If Earl Siward won’t change his mind over the Lothian churches, we shall always welcome you and your wife back to Kinrimund. It isn’t, I’m afraid, quite as attractive as Durham, but the hunting is good.’
He had lost the Lothian churches. He had lost Lothian, not that he had had any hopes of that particular embassy. He had been ground between magnates, as he had dreaded, and there might well be no place for him in the end but Kinrimund, for the Earl, in conveying his magnificent ring, had made it jocularly clear that he could expect to live idle on the charges of Durham no longer.
The woman and her husband his cousin Thorfinn had prepared for this: had planned to belittle him. When Thorfinn arrived, he would hear the same story, but openly offensive this time, without the woman’s pagan cunning. His own wife at least was predictable.
His own gown smelt repulsively—unnecessarily?—of wet squirrel. Bishop Malduin got to his feet, his lips tightened, just as the door opened without so much as a knock and a man came in.
The Queen, who had been rising as well, became suddenly much more serious, and her light, foreign eyes under the black brows stayed wide open, like those of a kestrel wondering if it has seen a vole, or a stone.
The newcomer was the cousin his King, muddy from travelling but lacking, it must be said, the traveller’s usual aura of wind-blown dampness and cold.
Thorfinn of Scotia smiled at the Bishop, and then at his wife.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘Had I known you were coming, I could have stayed to welcome you, or even forestalled your visit, for you must know from my wife by now that I could never countenance the right of Earl Siward and the Archbishop of York to defend and garrison the Lothian churches, and Earl Siward, I am sure, has reached a similar conclusion about our new friends the Normans. Am I right?’
‘You are correct, my lord,’ said Bishop Malduin. ‘That is the sum of our conclusions. I am gravely disturbed about it.’
‘No need,’ said Thorfinn. ‘You will report to Earl Siward—or, if you prefer, I can dispatch a reply for you. And then what? Can we persuade you to return to your see here in Alba? Kinrimund is not such a bad place.’
‘Just what I was saying,’ said Groa. Her voice cracked.
‘You are persuasive,’ said Bishop Malduin austerely. His legs quivered with tiredness. He said, ‘I have had a long day, as no doubt have you, my lord. If you would excuse me, I should prefer to discuss final conclusions in the morning, when we are both fresher.’
‘Why, of course,’ said Thorfinn. ‘Let me take you across to your quarters. And how is your lady wife …?’
When, for the second time that evening, the door opened and closed behind her husband, Groa was alone. Thorfinn said, ‘Now he’ll allow himself a little drink, and sleep like a log.’
‘Where were you listening?’ said Groa.
‘In the next room. I was just riding in at the gate as Lulach rode out to find me. He told me you were worried about the Normans,’ Thorfinn said.
‘And you still let me talk to the Bishop alone?’
Thorfinn said, ‘It was one way to make you think it all through. I knew that, once you had, you would agree with me.’ He had flung down his stained cloak, which was dry, and was looking round for some means of taking his boots off.
Groa said, ‘I’m not sure that I do, but I am a good deal less in accord with Earl Siward and your dear cousin Malduin. How did your father come to have a nephew like that?’
‘It was his sister,’ said Thorfinn. ‘She had no initiative either. Didn’t even know when to help her husband off with his boots.’
Groa walked to her seat and sat down gently, crossing her ankles and folding her hands on her lap. She smiled at him. ‘Tonight, I did the King’s work,’ she said. ‘Now you do the Queen’s.’
‘Well, I’ll try,’ said Thorfinn. ‘But with my boots on, it isn’t going to be comfortable. You may wish you had nothing to worry about but the Normans. Don’t be disturbed by what Lulach tells you. He can’t always be certain.’
‘Do you suppose I listen to him? When you talk all the time?’ she was saying; when his embrace, unexpectedly harsh, extinguished both her lies and her laughter.
TWO
HEN, IN THE way women will, Groa railed against the Fates that had allowed them to live all this time in golden security and now seemed to have left them, Thorfinn was amused, but not sympathetic.
Looked at sensibly, what he said was quite true. Nothing stood still. In the affairs of all the powers on whom their own welfare depended, there were tides and currents as well, sometimes colliding with theirs, sometimes making for peace. They still exchanged gifts and trade with the Emperor; they still had the interest and friendship of Pope Leo, even though for a year the Pope had been not in Rome but in Germany, caught by the cry for a mediator between attacking Germany and defending Hungary; pressed by the fighting in Italy to beg help against the triumphant Normans.
Still, the Emperor and the Pope were the two greatest forces in the west, and because of them and Thorfinn’s comradely relations with Svein of Denmark, because of England’s weakness at sea and because of her terror of Norway, neither King Edward nor the House of Godwin was likely that winter (said Thorfinn, with justice) to trouble Scotia.
And without the backing of Wessex, Earl Siward wouldn’t now move. For a vacant Northumbria was not only prey for the sons of Godwin and for Mercia. There were those among the remaining husbands of the five daughters of Ealdred who would like nothing better than to see Siward perish in an effort to plant a few Anglian soldiers and a bishop in some crumbling old forts in the Lothians.
A message, therefore, of patient good sense had been sent by Thorfinn to Earl Siward, and a request that Bishop Malduin’s wife and household should be sent to join the Bishop at Kinrimund, where the King would be pleased to defray their expenses pending an agreement on the sponsorship of the Lothian churches.
As for the Lothian lands in lay possession, Thorfinn’s message explained, there certainly seemed to be some confusion as to where the frontiers lay, and to which overlord, if any, the present owners should pay service and dues. He proposed to draw up what could be learned of the history of this area, and hoped that the Earl of Northumbria would ask his old men to do the same, when a meeting might be called to their mutual benefit.
In the meantime, said Thorfinn, since the western portion of Lothian adhering to the lands of Strathclyde and Cumbria and the old see of Glasgow had never, as he understood it, been in dispute, he intended to dispose of the land there as he thought best, with such fortifications as he considered necessary to preserve order.
To which effusion Earl Siward of Northumbria made no response whatever, although he must have received it, since Bishop Malduin’s wife was with her husband in less than two weeks. Their words on greeting each other were not recorded.
By then, in any case, Thorfinn was in Scone with Osbern of Eu, drawing maps and discussing strategy. War-talk for night after night as the lamps burned in the hall, after days spent in sport and hunting and exercise. War-talk or defence-talk. It was the same thing. The young men about Thorfinn were learning Norman-French and listened, their eyes shining, to what Duke William did, an
d Humphrey, Tancred’s son in Apulia, and Count Geoffrey in Anjou. It was a surprise when, just short of Christmas, Thorfinn decided the weather was good enough to take his wife and personal household north to join his two sons in Orkney.
‘And leave the Normans and their disciples?’ said Groa. ‘You’ll never get back. They’ll install King Osbern in Scone come the spring-time.’
‘You can’t trust anyone, can you?’ Thorfinn said. ‘There they are in Jerusalem with armed deacons round the True Cross, they say, to stop pilgrims biting bits off when they kiss it.’
He was not disturbed. He knew, of course, his own power over his men. And now the Normans would know it.
In a sense, they did not leave the newcomers behind. There was only one topic, it would seem, in the staging-posts they passed on their way, in the halls of Kineth of Angus and Gillocher of Mar, of Malpedar of Buchan and of Morgund of Moray, before the fires of Hlodver at Dingwall and Odalric of Caithness, and finally at Birsay in their own hall on the shore, with Otkel leaning forward asking questions, and Thorkel Fóstri and Killer-Bardi and the rest sitting silent, listening, with the Earl’s sons and his wife.
One topic: William of Normandy. Because fighting-men are always eager for details about a new fighting-leader, the questions began, and continued. And Thorfinn gave to them his considered answers, as ever.
Listening to him, Thorkel Fóstri wondered, as he had at Scone, what Thorfinn thought of this, the first of the next generation of rulers. Norway, Denmark, the Empire were in the hands of men of Thorfinn’s own age, at the height of their vigour. Such also were most of his friends: Sulien and Alfgar of Mercia, for example. And Siward of Northumbria, whether counted as kinsman or enemy, must be nearly ten years Thorfinn’s senior.
But the sons of Earl Godwin and the sons of Thorfinn’s brother Duncan and this young great-nephew of Emma’s were the men who would see Europe and perhaps guide it, some of them, through the second half of the century. William of Normandy, in his mid-twenties, was already married to Matilda, the daughter of Baldwin of Flanders, flouting Pope Leo’s injunction, linking him not only to Lille and Bruges and Ghent, but to Tostig, the son of Earl Godwin who had married Judith of Flanders, Matilda’s aunt.