FIFTEEN

O THE DISAPPOINTMENT of some of his vassals, the new ruler Duncan neither ate, mated with, nor took a bath ritually in horse-flesh.

He did however, fill the riverside haugh by the Moot Hill with newly built halls and service-huts to supplement the old booths and pavilions that men used when they met to pay tribute or argue for justice. The first thing that everyone saw, sailing up the wide river Tay, or travelling overland from the north or the south, was the little monastery by the ford in the distance, dwarved by the new buildings and the hosts of brilliant banners. Flags flew also from the fortress of Perth on the other side of the river, where the new King was staying with his Northumbrian wife and her babies.

The Earl of Orkney and Caithness had brought his own canvas, above which fluttered the banner of Moray, alone. He and his household were barely installed when a message crossed the water from Perth, inviting the lord Macbeth and his lady to sup with his half-brother Duncan.

Notified, the lord Macbeth’s wife dressed accordingly and was interested to see, when she presented herself to her husband, that he, too, had adopted Saxon attire. His eyebrows rose. ‘Did you wear that thing when you came with Gillacomghain?’ he said.

It had caused Sinna some trouble to keep the fine linen uncrushed on the journey so that the veil flowed down her back and swathed her cheeks and neck without blemish. Groa said, ‘I shall do better than you with your tunic. The hall at Perth is famous for draughts. If you are Macbeth, what am I? Margaret?’

‘Silent, if possible,’ he said. If he thought it dangerous to trust himself unsupported in the stronghold, he said nothing of it. But Thorkel was left behind, and he took to serve them only house-slaves and Sinna, with a few of the well-born of Moray as escort and attendants.

The King’s lodging at Perth was well built, as was that of Forteviot, a short ride to the south. Passing the confluence of the Tay and the Almond, one could see from the boat the height of the split-trunk stockade, and the thickness of the gatehouse, and the cone helms of men on the wall-walk. A smell of food and the crying of children drifted over the water.

The presence of old men and of children were the mark of any event of importance to a nation, for they were the memory-stream. But where were the old men of this nation? The last monarch had died in November, and gathered here now were the young contenders, with their brides swiftly married and swiftly made pregnant, and the children who would vie with each other in turn. In two or three days, Duncan would be consecrated as King of Alba because for twenty years his grandfather had proclaimed him as such, and for ten had made sure, by dint of his sword and his silver, that no rival lived who could challenge him.

Until the young men, like Groa’s husband, grew rich. Until the children, like her two sons, grew up.

At the gatehouse, Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld and father of the King-elect, waited to conduct them inside, and trumpets blew as they met. ‘To warn them to get out their knives?’ Groa said.

‘To warn us to keep our mouths shut,’ the Earl said; and, walking forward, greeted with apparent cheerfulness the lord Abbot with the soft brown beard skeined now with grey whose coins, they said, financed every war in England and Denmark and lined purses from Cologne to Pisa.

‘And here is a change!’ the lord Crinan said. ‘I bear greetings from Canute to his housecarl, but am afraid to deliver them, so splendid have you become. The Lady of Moray is, of course, more beautiful than before, despite her company. You have a son, lady. May he be blessed.’

She inclined her head and smiled into the lord Abbot’s eyes. From this man’s schemes had come the fire that had killed her husband Gillacomghain. Through the kinsmen of his son, this man had tried to claim Caithness and had failed. Beside her, Earl Thorfinn said, ‘We thank you. He has no teeth as yet, but they will grow.’

‘Then when he is old enough, tell him to eschew bad advice,’ my lord Crinan said. ‘Or walrus-fangs will hardly avail him. Edith is here with her sons. And Wulfflaed my daughter, who has borne a son of my name. I have become a patriarch.’

‘I hear my lord Duncan is also a father,’ Groa said. It did not do to appear entirely dumb.

‘Two sons,’ said the lord Crinan, smiling. ‘The elder named Malcolm after his dead grandfather. And his sweet wife is already near her time with a third. Dear Alba! Your air is sweet with the laughter of children.’

The hall door had opened, and the uproar within signified neither sweetness nor laughter. ‘That is,’ said the lord Abbot amiably, ‘at times they also behave like their elders. My son, here is your fellow, the other fruit of your mother Bethoc, of blessed memory.’

Perhaps because of his round, russet cheeks: perhaps because of his lack of height: perhaps because of the smooth-bedded eyes, his youthfulness was always the first of the prince Duncan’s characteristics. Even now, it came to mind first as he turned, despite the pale tunic deep-banded with gold and silver embroidery, and the gold glittering on his knife-sheath and buckle, and at the neck of his tunic, and from all the rings on his short hands as he closed them on the upper arms of his brother and then folded them tightly over the white veil of his brother’s new wife while he kissed her full on the mouth.

It was an objectionable kiss, from which Groa did not draw back, although when he released her, she saw from the watching eyes about her that it had been marked and even anticipated. One of the observers, naturally, was Duncan’s wife Ailid, whose condition perhaps accounted for a few things other than her expression of muted dislike. Beside her was a three-year-old boy with red cheeks.

At her side, Groa’s husband had shown no concern while Duncan embraced her, and she had not sought to catch his attention. But now, presenting himself to Duncan’s lady, the Earl neither gave her his hand nor saluted her, but merely bowed and remarked, ‘And this is your young pjokk? He looks healthy.’

She was short, like Duncan, and had to look up a long way. ‘I fear I do not know your language,’ she said. This is my son Malcolm, the prince of Cumbria.’

The Earl studied her. He remarked, ‘You might enjoy learning Norse. Malcolm will have to speak it in Cumbria. In Cumbria, they will call him lang hals, long-throat, because they think that is what Moel col means.’

‘I am told,’ said my lord Duncan’s wife, ‘that you have another name also when you are in the north. Do you worship Thor, that you are named after him?’

Black as a cockchafer, the brows of Earl Thorfinn were bent on her. ‘When I am in the north,’ the Earl said, ‘there is an old polar bear whose health I am particular about, like Eirik the Red. When I come south, I tend to worship anything. There is a lady over there who could be your very twin. Is she your sister?’

‘I have three sisters here,’ said my lord Duncan’s wife. ‘One of them is married to a kinsman of your lady wife’s. You will see him there, too. Siward, son of Thore Hund.’

Her uncle Kalv’s nephew. Across the hall, Groa could see him now, a heavily built young man, with his head flung back, laughing. The last time she had seen him was at Tullich, when Duncan and Siward and Forne had come to one of her bride-feasts. Where she had heard the indiscreet words of young Alfgar the Mercian: It’s better than war, isn’t it? An empire trussed up in marriage-ties, from the west sea to the east across all northern England. I wonder who is the architect? And she remembered what, obliquely, Earl Thorfinn had answered.

It seemed likely, therefore, that Earl Thorfinn himself would not want to ask the next question, since it was important. So she asked it herself, with a degree of silliness she could see fulfilled all Ailid’s expectations of her. ‘Four sisters!’ said Groa. ‘Now, I know one of them is married to Forne’s nephew, isn’t she? Do I remember aright? But who has married the fourth?’

Behind her, penetrating the cloth over her ears was the loudest laugh she ever remembered. The owner’s hand closed on her shoulder, and his other arm went round her husband’s neck. ‘Guess who?’ said Alfgar of Mercia.

Beside her, Earl Thorfinn spun round with his hands up, and Alfgar’s fingers slid from her shoulder as he jumped back, squaring up. There was an exchange of buffets, after which Alfgar, still laughing, dropped to a stool and lay back, his hands trailing the floor. ‘You’ve grown another three feet. What’s all this about siring a son?’

He was twenty-three, and had filled out in the three years since Tullich. Well-muscled and compact, with rough, fair hair and a young, uncut beard, he had the air, now, of an only son of a royal Mercian house. Eight years ago, someone had told her, Duncan’s grandfather had seen fit to make Alfgar his hostage, and Earl Thorfinn had rescued him. If it was true, they must both have been children. Earl Thorfinn said, ‘What’s all this about marrying a wife?’

‘That’s her,’ said Alfgar, pointing negligently. ‘She’s pregnant. They’re all pregnant. That is, Siward’s wife had her son a month ago: name of Osbern. There’s another sister as well, wife of Ligulf, and she’s pregnant, too.’

‘It’s well seen,’ Earl Thorfinn remarked, ‘that the Earl of Northumbria knows what to do with his daughters. He is, I hope, a generous grandfather.’

‘After paying five dowries?’ said Alfgar. ‘In any case, I would have you know that we all married for love. All that the Earl leaves will go to his brother Eadulf. Including the earldom. Thorfinn, my father and mother are here. Will you go and see them before the enthronement?’

People were coming towards them. ‘Godiva?’ the Earl enquired. ‘For Godiva, I could be ordered out of Paradise to the Pit Bottomless and never notice it. May I bring Sulien?’

‘Never mind Sulien,’ said Alfgar, rising slowly. ‘It has just come to me, looking about, that I have not yet renewed my early acquaintance with the goddess, your countess. You wouldn’t consider an exchange? Mine has many powerful sisters.’

‘Mine has many powerful uncles,’ said Earl Thorfinn, ‘who think that boundary folk don’t always know their own limitations. I shall bring her with me. Look, they are calling us to table.’

‘They are calling you,’ Alfgar said. ‘Will you do homage for Caithness? That is all he wants to find out.’

‘And so he will,’ the Earl Thorfinn said. ‘On the day of his consecration.’

The rest of that day had no particular pleasure about it, unless it were a pleasure to break bread with three plain women when you were less so. There was a hearty-spoken man with a beard called Dubhdaleithe, whom Groa fell into conversation with because he was Abbot of Deer, the Buchan monastery that one day soon, she knew, would supply Lulach with his first teachers.

Against her will, she found the big Irishman did not displease her. Born of a line of abbots of the monastery of Armagh in Ireland; great-nephew of an abbot of Armagh and Kells, he possessed a fund of harmless gossip about most of the churchmen present and some who had not yet arrived, such as the present Abbot of Raphoe and Kells, who was to preside at the enthronement. He then moved on to her husband’s relatives.

‘You’ll have met the Bishop Malduin. That’s him over there, the pink fellow, with his feathers ruffled because you’ve picked myself, an abbot only, to honour with that lovely face you have. Trained in Ireland and consecrated seven long years ago in York to look after the souls and ordain the new priests in Alba, but you’d be lucky, were you a would-be priest, to find him in daylight anywhere north of Northumbria. He’s for civilised living these days, and not anxious to recall that he was brought up in the Western Isles, and his mother an Orkney earl’s sister. He’s your husband’s full cousin.’

‘I’ve never met him,’ Groa said.

‘Ah, he’d be worried what York and Duncan would say. You’ll be all right now,’ said Abbot Dubhdaleithe cheerfully. ‘You’ll be sitting next to him, I shouldn’t wonder, for all the good it may do you. What is it they say? These are the three that are hardest to talk to: a king bent on conquest; a Viking in his armour; and a low-horn man protected by patronage.’

‘I see,’ Groa said. ‘And what are you waiting for me to say? That I have the knack of dealing with all of them?’

‘The thing that is giving me joy,’ said the Abbot Dubhdaleithe of Deer, ‘is that I have no idea what you are going to say next. You’ll set Bishop Malduin to gnawing the fork of his fist out of fear for you.’

She was too wise to answer with more than a smile, but what he said helped when she found herself sitting at table between that same Malduin, Bishop of Alba, and a man with a mild, noble face: the abbot mint-master who was King Duncan’s father.

Terror, naturally, did not manifest itself in the neatly manicured person of her husband’s cousin the Bishop, who appeared to have no more in common with her husband than a robin might have with a hen-harrier. Chatting of minor Irish-born clergy who lived and served the Celtic church throughout Alba, the Bishop’s manner was a model of the kindliest tolerance. From time to time, speaking as man to man, he invited the opinion of my lord Crinan, across her. Later, as they took her measure, they each asked her the same questions, and she parried them, thoughtfully, in different ways.

Several places along the table, she could hear the Earl her husband doing the same, but more skilfully. She was getting used to the sound of his voice: half an octave lower than most men’s, unmistakable whether speaking in Norse or Gaelic or Saxon, and inflected naturally for each. His face, she had learned, never changed either. All you could do was listen to what he said and apply your mind to it. She knew that an alliance between Mercia and Northumbria was a prospect no one in Moray had ever contemplated. Yet he had treated Alfgar like a brother.

To the King his brother at that moment he was saying, ‘… Why not leave serious affairs for serious occasions? When do you mount the Moot Hill?’

‘When Kells and Raphoe condescends to arrive,’ Duncan said splashily, and then repeated the sentence carefully. ‘I told him to stay on in November, but no, he had to set sail. And look what happened.’

‘What happened?’ said Earl Thorfinn obediently. On her other side, Bishop Malduin asked Groa an encouraging question and she delivered the right answer, listening.

‘What happened? Macnia’s boat overturned. The Lector. The Abbot’s brother. Drowned on the spot, and thirty men from Kells with him. Worse, they lost half the relics. They lost Saint Columba’s book, and the canopy, and three of the swearing-relics of Saint Patrick. Grandfather was all right,’ said Duncan bitterly. ‘They let out the two girls who were keeping him warm and put the book on his chest, and he died shriven whiter than snow. But what am I to use for swearing-relics?’

‘The two girls?’ said Earl Thorfinn. ‘Did they all drown, or did the Coarb of Columba struggle back to Raphoe and Kells?’

‘I told you,’ Duncan said pettishly. ‘Maelmuire’s boat got there safely. He was told when to come back. He should have come back days ago. If he’s drowned, I shan’t wait. Malduin can do it alone.’

Bishop Malduin, next to Groa, looked up at the sound of his name. ‘It’s all right,’ Groa said. ‘You have just been nominated to conduct the service of consecration if the Abbot of Kells has been shipwrecked. What relics do you use?’

There was a pause. ‘We have St Fergus’s head,’ Bishop Malduin said. ‘At least … Unless King Malcolm sold it.’

‘Send to Emma,’ said Alfgar cheerfully. ‘Winchester is a charnel-house for Emma’s relics: she has one for every day of the week. Who but Emma could cheat the Ascension and show you the milk-tooth of Christ?’

‘Would a milk-tooth do?’ said the Earl Thorfinn, turning to Duncan. ‘It might produce some very small oaths.’

‘What?’ said Duncan.

Later, in their pavilion, the Earl spoke to his wife. ‘Are you tired? It was hard work.’

‘A little,’ said Groa. Her women were waiting to put her to bed, and her body ached.

He said, ‘Crinan talked a great deal. What questions did he ask?’

She found the end of her headdress and began to unwind it. Strands of red hair, in rat’s tails, emerged from underneath. ‘Was Lulach a healthy child, and did you propose to foster him,’ she said. ‘Did I think you would do homage for Caithness. Was the new child a healthy one, and did you propose to foster him. Did I think you would do homage for Caithness. Did my father in Norway favour the marriage, and what was his standing now that King Olaf was canonised. Did I—’

‘—think that I would do homage for Caithness,’ he finished. ‘What did you answer?’

‘I told them the truth,’ Groa said. ‘That I knew nothing of your affairs and, so far as I could see, was going to be blessed with such ignorance to the end of my days. Of my father, I said I had no news to give them, since I had seen none of my people for three years or more. When they asked me if you had other wives, I said I was sure of it.’

‘Did you? Why?’ said the Earl. Her women had come to help with the headdress, and he watched them.

‘It is your children they are afraid of,’ said Groa.

‘Indeed?’ he said.

Her headdress came off, and she jerked her hair free. Her cheeks tingled with risen blood, and then cooled. She said, ‘Who is Godiva?’

‘The Lady of Mercia? She is Alf gar’s mother, the wife of Earl Leofric. Think of every woman you have ever admired.’

‘No. You think of them,’ said Groa. ‘I am tired.’

The thirty-eighth Coarb of Columba and Adamnan, Maelmuire Uah Uchtain, Abbot of Kells and Raphoe, arrived next day, travel-stained and in no very good temper, with a retinue of forty laymen and monks, a book-shrine, and a casket of different relics. The chests of altar-silver and vestments filled a cart drawn by eight oxen and had their own guard of mail-shirted spearmen with crosses marked on all their weapons. It was easy to see how Macnia’s boatload had sunk like a stone.

The ceremony was announced for the following day, and the Earl Thorfinn directed his wife to dress and accompany Sulien and himself to the tent of Earl Leofric of Mercia. She refused.

‘Very well. I am taking Lulach,’ he said. ‘In ten minutes.’

In ten minutes, she was standing, dressed, by the pavilion door. A few minutes later her husband arrived with the boy and Sulien. ‘You will need a child-minder,’ Groa said, ‘while your mind is on other things. What lies do you want me to tell for you today?’

‘Ones that Lulach can’t contradict,’ the Earl said. ‘Lulach?’

The white head came up. ‘I don’t know of this meeting,’ Lulach said.

‘You see? Perfect discretion,’ said Earl Thorfinn to his wife. ‘Now come and help me control Alfgar. And ask him, if you have the chance, why he’s married Duncan’s wife’s sister.’

The white head came up.

‘I know,’ said Earl Thorfinn to his stepson. ‘You don’t know about that.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said the child. ‘Although it’s very likely.’

‘I’m glad,’ said the Earl. ‘So, I’m sure, is Alfgar, considering his wife is about to give birth. Lulach? The Chester sign is a boar. You will see it better if you sit on my shoulders. Now. Show us.’ And so, white hair above black, they found the Mercian hall and were led inside to meet the Earl Leofric and his lady.

They were not there for long, and Groa did not even see her hosts at first, because Alfgar rushed at Sulien and knocked him to the floor, and they rolled over, shouting, while her husband in front of her swung her son to the ground. Then she heard a voice speaking Saxon, and saw an erect man in his early forties, in a furred coat, rise from a bench and come forward. Behind him came a lady who was clearly his wife Godiva.

She was everything that Earl Thorfinn had implied. Stately and slender, with a large-boned face of perfect proportions and yellow hair drawn back and knotted under a light coif of muslin. Her neck, bare like Groa’s own, was a column of marble.

Lulach ran to her. She smiled down at him, ruffling his hair, and then stood him facing outwards, her hands on his shoulders. ‘Now,’ she said to Groa, ‘I am jealous. What fool is telling the world that he married you for your province?’

‘Not this fool,’ said Alfgar from the floor. ‘There, as the saying goes, stands a merry man as he twirls the ladle round in the bowl. He has a son, born within these three weeks.’

‘And of course you are allowing his mother to stand,’ said the Lady Godiva. ‘Get off my adored Sulien and find servants to bring us some cakes and some wine, and then tell them to go. Thorfinn … What do I call you?’

‘Perhaps … Macbeth,’ he said. ‘My wife’s name in Gaelic is Gruoch.’

‘My lord and lady of Moray and Orkney, you are welcome. Come to table. There are two men here for you to meet. Sulien, you as well.’

Gruoch. It was what they called her in Moray. She did not know that he knew it. She followed the rest to the table. Two men rose behind it: one strongly built in his thirties with a white scar of some kind on his clean-shaven jaw. The other was younger and bearded, with bright, narrow eyes and a heavy nose flattened from some early breaking.

‘My lord Crinan brought them,’ said Lady Godiva, ‘from Brittany on some affair to do with Shrewsbury and the Marches, and had them accompany him north. I know their families. Perhaps you met them when you were with the Lady?’

It seemed unlikely. Then Groa recalled the years at Canute’s court, and the time her husband had spent as Emma’s man at Exeter and elsewhere, and the errands he had run, they said, over the sea to her homeland.

He did know one of them at least. Going forward, the Earl of Orkney said, ‘Juhel de Fougères. Indeed, we met at Combour. But your friend from Normandy is a stranger.’

The scarred man smiled. ‘A good guess,’ he said. ‘And half right. My name is Osbern de Eu. I am Norman-born. But Alan of Brittany is my cousin.’

‘He has another cousin,’ said Lady Godiva. ‘In Normandy.’

‘It is a great thing,’ said the scarred man, ‘to be able to boast of a kinsman called William the Bastard. What feat of arms could bring me more fame than my cousinship? Who am I? Cousin to William the Bastard, the eight-year-old lord Duke of Normandy.’

‘I would rather say, nephew to the Lady Emma,’ Earl Thorfinn observed. ‘Even the fort of Eu was built—wasn’t it?—by the Lady Emma’s great-grandfather, who was an ancestor of mine, I might mention. So in a sense we are cousins as well. May we sit and investigate?’

‘That is why you are here,’ Godiva said. ‘The Lady of Moray and I will sit and investigate by ourselves, on the other side of the room. Come, my dear.’

Groa followed. A seat was forthcoming, and some wine, both of which she required. She prepared to answer questions on the theme of maternity. The Lady Godiva said, ‘Leofric has brought your husband here to give him some news. King Canute is ill, and may die before the end of the year. That is the reason for Alfgar’s marriage.’

Groa looked at the open, intelligent eyes, and her brain cleared. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for telling me.’ A further thought struck her. She took a breath, and released it.

‘You should not tell me too much,’ the Lady said. ‘It is for your husband to do that. But I know a mission has gone to fetch King Olaf’s young son back to Norway. I would expect the same reason prompted it. If the mission delays, it will be because it is waiting for Canute to die.’

Kalv. Kalv nobly struggling to Russia to bring back the rightful heir, with, as he would point out, all the risks that entailed. Kalv, staying all winter in Novgorod arguing, putting off time, hoping that news would come soon: Canute the overlord of Norway is dead. It is safe to go back now with our child-king. Groa said, ‘Whatever Canute was as a youth, he has been a strong ruler, and not a bad one. I think I prefer what we have to what may come after. What will happen to Mercia?’

The Lady Godiva looked across the room to where her husband sat, wine in hand, busy in talk with the three Bretons and her son and Thorfinn of Orkney. ‘We are not as large as we were,’ she said. ‘But powerful enough, as Northumbria is, to use our weight and play tactics. Sometimes we help to fight off the Welsh, and sometimes we league with them. Sometimes we encourage the Irish who come to trade with us, and at other times we warn them away. We have only one son, as against the host of young men struggling for power in Northumbria, and in some ways that is good, although a great deal depends on Alfgar.… I expect your husband needs a large family, soon, to hold all the land he has inherited?’

‘It is necessary,’ Groa said.

‘It may be necessary, but it is not easy to be his wife in other things with dignity, as you are doing,’ Godiva said. ‘Even if you have nothing else, you have a partnership.’

Groa looked, in her turn, across the room. Thorfinn her husband was speaking, his black hair obscuring half his face. The deep voice, indecipherable, went on, mixed with comments from Alfgar and Sulien. She said, ‘He must have been quite young when he came first to Chester.’

‘He ran a race on the oars as my husband’s boat passed down the river. Yes, young. Perhaps nineteen,’ said Lady Godiva. ‘But he knew what he wanted then, and he got it. I have often wondered if he thought it worth while.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘Am I insulting you?’

‘No,’ said Groa. ‘I understand you. I don’t know what he thinks. And that is the truth.’

‘Perhaps that is safest,’ the Lady said. The men were rising. She rose as well, and held out her hand to Lulach, who was crossing the room led by one of her slaves. Godiva said, ‘He is a beautiful child. You didn’t hear, by any chance, the discussion over my hair?’

Groa sighed and put her arm round the boy. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Lulach, what did you say about the Lady Godiva?’

The clear eyes looked up. ‘When I was Roger, I wrote about it,’ Lulach said. ‘Her long hair and white legs. Is your husband cruel to the people of Coventry?’

The Lady laughed. ‘No, he isn’t,’ she said. ‘And thank you for the compliments, even if they are only guesswork.’ Earl Thorfinn had arrived. The Lady Godiva looked at him over the boy’s head and said, ‘Does he speak like this to you?’

‘Yes,’ said the Earl. ‘He says you are a fertility goddess. I believe him.’

When they got back to their pavilions, Groa saw there was a man in spurs waiting outside the tent her husband used, with his men. She recognised him as one of the Amundasons from Helmsdale. He was covered with mud. When he saw Earl Thorfinn was approaching, he went inside the tent.

She knew Earl Thorfinn had seen him, but he said nothing of it, and left her at the entrance to her own quarters. After that, she did not see him for the rest of that day.

He had, of course, some acquaintances among the toisechs and mormaers and churchmen gathered here for the king-making, and doubtless there were many more whom he wished to meet. She had observed him already that morning, moving between one building and another, always with a group of men about him, talking.

There were some women she knew there also, from the days of Gillacomghain, and it would only be civil to seek them out again. She called Sinna and gave her instructions and proceeded to fill the rest of her own day, as it turned out, to her entire satisfaction.

Next day, standing in sunshine round the Mód or Moot Hill, the men of Mercia and of Cumbria and of Lothian and of a few places much further south watched the toisechs of Alba, from the Forth to the Spey, receive their new monarch.

Above the high cross: above the gold-fringed banners of Kells, fluttering before the porch of the little stone church of the monastery, rose the strains of the antique liturgy of the Gallician church of the Celts.

The threefold cry of the tersanctus, the Canticle, the Collect, and all the Eastern rituals, mixed with plainsong and organum and the long, unwinding scroll of the Alleluias, floated up and over the sky with the incense and ended. The banners jolted while the tonsured heads eddied, like floats round a rock, and the other heads, bare, mitred, or capped, worked through the crowd and settled, at length, into a slow-moving stream which made its way from the church and across and up to the Moot Hill.

‘Credentia,’ the Breton from Fougères said, ‘is the other name, I am told, for this hill. How many hills of Credon do you know? I suppose it is practical. The hill where rights of credit are exercised by the seigneur; where tribute is brought at the correct seasons.’

‘Some of them claim it means Hill of Belief,’ said Osbern of Eu. ‘It is part of the king-making. You must be practical in all directions. And it is a long time since the churchmen have had to present to the people a king. He cannot be known to them: the men of this country live in their pockets of rock as do seabirds and are hardly aware one colony of another, except to make war from time to time. So the king must be a symbol. So you see the sitting upon the stone, now, and the giving of the cloak and the wand. Then they will recite the names of his fathers, and he will take the oath of kingship, to protect and father his peoples. My lord Crinan explained it.’

‘I heard him,’ said Juhel de Fougères. ‘What is important to you and to me is what follows.’

Among the royal kindred, like a pine tree over juniper scrub, the King’s half-brother stood, his hands clasped behind him, his cloak pinned to one shoulder. The Breton said, ‘There he is. A lapis-dyed velvet, you will note. How could the grandfather have been such a fool as to marry his daughter to Orkney?’

‘Was he a fool?’ said the other man. ‘To his deathbed, he claimed overlordship of Caithness, and of Sigurd’s other conquests as well. He could no longer hold them but he could claim them.’

‘Then let us see,’ said the Breton, ‘what stuff his grandsons are made of, and who will claim, and who will refuse.’

From her place beside the Earl her husband, with the sun hot on her long, woven robe and her veil and her train, Groa saw the two men conversing. Beside her, Lulach was silent, as he had been through all the service: watching Duncan; watching equally his stepfather Thorfinn of Orkney with those clear, pale eyes as he moved without speaking through the ritual. Now, as the singing cut through the air and the robed figures clustered close about the short figure, square in its great chair under the canopy, she said in a low voice, ‘When? When is the homage paid?’

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Or soon. My cousin the Bishop will be first.’

‘And then you?’ she said. He spoke with absolute calm. A month ago, a week ago, she would have thought nothing of it.

‘Probably,’ he said. He was looking not at the ceremony in front or at the crowds down below, all around them, but beyond, as if searching for something. ‘And then the feast?’ she said. ‘Lulach, you will enjoy that.’

‘No. I have made my excuses to Duncan. After this we must leave,’ said the Earl.

‘Leave?’ said Groa. Heads were turning, and she lowered her voice still further. ‘But why? The messenger last night? Is there news? What is it?’

‘Nothing troublesome,’ he said. ‘But there is really no reason to linger. And there is the baby. Thorkel, as you know, is not far away.’

If you need help, go to Thorkel, was what he was saying. Because if a crisis was coming, it would not save him to leave before the feast. This was one of Duncan’s homes: here were his people: there, massed behind, were the men paid to defend him and his family. Here, Duncan could strike as he pleased, and vengeance, Thorkel’s or anyone else’s, would not raise the dead. She said, and did not realise how far her thoughts had carried her, ‘And whom shall I marry then?’

‘Duncan,’ her husband said. ‘Eventually. I imagine Raphoe and Kells would frown on a second wife, but the first one might always perish in childbirth. What do you wager that they’ll call the new child Maelmuire? They won’t let the Abbot over to Kells till he’s baptised it, that’s certain.’

The singing faded. The monks moved back. The steps cut into the grass of the Moot Hill were cleared, and the Abbot of Kells, bowing, came and removed from Duncan’s hands the golden wand of his kingship. From two different parts of the mound, trumpets blared. Her husband said, ‘I must tell you something.’

She had been scanning the meadow. It was true. Their pavilions had been struck. The flag of Moray was flying nowhere except here, behind the Earl’s head. Then his words reached her, and she looked up into his direct gaze. ‘What?’ she said.

‘Look,’ said Lulach.

Children spoke, and one did not need to listen. Her eyes on Earl Thorfinn’s, Groa said again, ‘What?’

‘Look,’ said Lulach. ‘A rider. A man speaking to the King’s men.’

Earl Thorfinn turned, and did not turn back.

She therefore watched, too, as Lulach’s rider dismounted and spoke: an envoy as bemired as her husband’s man of the previous night, and as weary. Watched as the message went from one mouth to a second and then was carried under the canopy, to be slipped with discretion into the new monarch’s ear.

Duncan listened, and turned red, and then pale. Her husband said, ‘Lulach? Why don’t I listen to you? You couldn’t carry me yet.’

He looked different. Groa said, ‘Is this solely between you and Lulach, or might I know what is happening?’

‘Of course,’ said the Earl Thorfinn. ‘I am about to kneel to my brother in homage. There goes the Bishop. The hands. The promise. The kiss. Ah, well. Ni heuir ni fedir, as Sulien would say. No sowing, no harvest.’ And as the Abbot of Kells stood before him, he gave him his hand and allowed himself to be led to the chair in the midst of the Moot Hill.

And in the event it was Sulien, whom he had invoked, who stood closest to the King’s brother when he came to kneel, his cloak spread on the ground, before the High Chair; and Sulien’s gaze, steady and searching, that rested on him throughout.

The Earl Thorfinn knelt, and Duncan looked down on him, his russet cheeks yellowed.

Silence fell. On the mound, those near to the chair could hear the King breathing. Then, slowly, the Earl lifted both hands, closed them palm to palm, and offered them as in prayer to his brother.

On the chair-arms, the short, ringed hands curled and uncurled as the two men remained, their gaze locked. Then, lifting his hands in turn, Duncan covered the passive fingers of vassaldom with the hands of the King. ‘Make your oath. I will hear it,’ he said.

From whatever caverns it: came, the rich voice carried with ease: to the King’s father and his wife and all her kindred; to the churchmen of Alba and Ireland; to the men who held their lands of the King and who would come in their turn to kneel and to submit. Her hands on Lulach’s shoulders, Groa listened.

‘I, Macbeth stepson of Findlaech son of Ruaidhrí, Mormaer of Moray, do accept thee Duncan son of Bethoc son of Malcolm as overlord for my lands in that province, and swear to defend them as the King would defend them from the enemies of Alba, and to pay what the King is due, as Findlaech my stepfather paid it. Further, my lord—’

He paused. Watching, Sulien saw that Duncan’s grip on the closed hands had slackened, as his face had slackened. A little rustle ran over the mound and was gone. Everyone waited.

‘—Further,’ said the profound voice, ‘I, Macbeth stepfather of Luloecen son of Gillacomghain son of Maelbrighde son of Ruaidhrí beg my lord King’s permission to name my stepson Luloecen this day as my successor, to be Mormaer of Moray and its lands in Mar after me, and to become your man in his turn for these lands.’

‘You have leave,’ Duncan said. He dropped his hands.

Thorfinn of Orkney lowered his gently and, rising, drew something from under his cloak. ‘This belonged to his great-uncle. It would do the boy great honour, sire, if the King’s highness were to invest him with it now, in earnest of his forthcoming succession?’

Before Duncan had nodded, it seemed, Lulach was walking buoyantly up to the High Chair and was looking from his King to his stepfather. ‘The ring?’ he said, ‘It’s the ring, isn’t it?’

Sulien didn’t know what he meant. But Groa did, even before she saw the gold glimmer in Earl Thorfinn’s hands, and then in Duncan’s, and heard Lulach laugh because the big band would stay neither on his wrist nor above his elbow, but had to be held. Then the Bishop’s voice quelled the rustle of comment and someone else was moving to kneel at the chair. Lulach dashed up beside her and, smiling, she put her hand over his mouth and then removed it to run her fingers admiringly over his ring. Then she removed them because they were shaking, and summoned her courage, and turned to her husband, returned to her side.

‘You didn’t tell me,’ she said. ‘About Lulach.’

‘It was a surprise,’ said the Earl. His face was impassive as ever, but his eyes seemed to have become a shade lighter. He said, ‘It all depended on how Duncan felt.’

‘And you didn’t do homage for Caithness,’ Groa said. ‘Was that a surprise, too?’

‘It was, to Duncan,’ said Earl Thorfinn.

With difficulty, she weathered a reverent silence, then burst into whispers once more. ‘Then why didn’t he demand Caithness tribute? What made you think he’d grant favours?’

‘Because he’s just had some news and doesn’t know what to do about it,’ the Earl said. ‘And my hope is that by the time he’s made up his mind we’ll be on shipboard.’

‘News?’ said Groa.

‘Sad news. Remember all those Norse-Irish colonies I cleared out of the south-west for him? Perhaps you don’t, but I did.’

‘More fool you,’ said Groa boldly.

‘That’s Thorkel’s favourite comment. You must judge by results.’

‘They came back?’

‘They couldn’t come back. They were dead. No. It’s worse than that. A different lot of Irish-Norse have moved in and occupied all their lands.’

‘So he wants you to clear them out all over again? I don’t think you should,’ Groa said.

‘I don’t think I should either,’ said the Earl. ‘In fact, I don’t think even Duncan expects me to.’

At last, she became suspicious. ‘Why? Wait a moment. Who are the new Irish-Norse? Who is their leader?’

‘Eachmarcach,’ said her husband simply. ‘He’s just used all Duncan’s good bases to make himself King of Dublin.’

There was a long, long silence, during which twenty people offered to be liegemen to King Duncan and Groa heard none of them. At the end—

‘You are clever, aren’t you?’ she said flatly.

‘I married you. Otherwise—yes, I am certainly clever,’ said Earl Thorfinn agreeably. ‘It comes from living in Orkney. You will see when you get there.’