Macbeth and Son (10 page)

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

(
Macbeth
, Act I, Scene 3, line 38)

The ship was a trader working along the coast. This time she carried Lulach and his men instead of dried fish or bales of wool or furs or bolts of linen.

The sea winds blustered across the waves, sending them slapping against the boat. Seagulls circled the ship in hope of fish. Cormorants dived into the waves in its wake.

Lulach stared at the birds. He wondered what would happen if he played Kenneth’s pipe to them. Would the cormorants call back?

The sails flapped and billowed up above. The wind played on the ship’s taut ropes as if they were harp strings, sending them twanging. A sudden harder gust almost seemed to keel them over. Then the ship righted herself and plunged on through the waves.

The Captain laughed. ‘Never fear, my Lord,’ he yelled to Lulach over the wind and waves and sail’s song. ‘There’s quite a gale today, but we’ve weathered worse!’

‘Do you do this run often?’ shouted Knut.

‘Thorfinn’s a good customer.’ The captain’s voice was hoarse from years of yelling above the wind. ‘We take him wheat flour, oil, almonds, raisins, get dried fish and Greenland furs in exchange.’

‘You know Thorfinn’s household well?’ asked Knut, too innocently.

The Captain nodded, rather than shout again.

‘And his daughter?’

‘Knut!’ said Lulach sharply. Whatever the girl was like, she’d be his wife—maybe one day Queen of Alba. It wasn’t right for any man—not even Knut—to gossip about her.

But the Captain just laughed. ‘Oh, yes. The Lady Thora’s well known.’

Well known for what? wondered Lulach. But there was no way he could ask the Captain. He caught Knut’s eye and shook his head.

Besides, he thought, as the island came in view, a glimpse of deeper blue among sleet and the spray, I’ll find out soon enough.

The ‘never-silent’, the great north wind, howled across the island. Sleet stung Lulach’s cheeks as he stared at the pier. It was made of solid stone, with a shingle beach on either side.

The sleet made it hard to see, but as far as he could tell the island was deserted.

The Captain stroked his beard. ‘Can’t hear a thing except the wind. Shouldn’t be quiet like this,’ he said. ‘Last time we were here you couldn’t move for youngsters shouting and yelling. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.’

‘Maybe there’s sickness,’ said Knut.

Lulach shook his head. ‘
Everyone
wouldn’t be sick. There’d be people still about.’ He turned to the Captain. ‘Where’s Thorfinn’s house?’

The Captain pointed. ‘Over there. You’d see it if it weren’t for the sleet. It’s a grand place. Store sheds enough for an army.’

Lulach considered. He wished Kenneth were here, or some other experienced soldier. But the King hadn’t seen any reason to send Kenneth with a marriage party. Lulach would have to take charge himself.

‘Knut, bring five of the men,’ he said at last. ‘No one else is to leave the ship. Keep her ready to sail with the tide,’ he added to the Captain.

There was something wrong here. Very wrong.

The captain threw out the gangway. The seven of them bounded across it to the pier, the wind slashing at their faces. It seemed strange to feel solid land underfoot after two days rolling on the sea. I’d never make a sailor, thought Lulach, or a fisherman either.

Nothing moved. The land was silent. Only the wind screamed about them as they forced their bodies through the sleet.

‘Lulach?’

‘Yes?’

‘The seagulls,’ whispered Knut. ‘Have you noticed?’

Lulach nodded. There were no gulls sheltering by the pier, waiting for fish guts. What could have happened for even gulls to desert the land?

They found the first body behind a clump of bushes by the road. It was a woman’s. Her feet were bare and she wore no cloak—she must have fled in
a hurry. Her throat had been cut from side to side and there was blood on her skirt too. A dog lay by her side, its wet fur slashed across the chest.

‘It tried to save her,’ said Knut quietly.

Lulach nodded. He felt sick. But if Knut, the exmonk, could look at the woman’s body without flinching, so could he.

‘Should we bury her?’ asked Knut.

‘Not yet.’

Lulach sniffed. The wind smelled strange…sweet, but stale as well. Almost like the chimney at home after it had been swept…

Suddenly the curtain of sleet rose.

Lulach stared.

The hills were bare and charred. No trees, no bushes. A few walls showed grey against the darkened earth.

There was no long house, no store sheds. There was no sign of life at all.

Instead the land spread out black, flat and featureless, apart from a few lumps of blackened stone or timber.

And bodies. Not long dead, for they still had their shape—they weren’t bloated. And their eyes hadn’t yet been plucked by the ravens. Men’s bodies, soldiers’ bodies, with old scars on their arms to show the battles they’d survived before.

But this one had killed them.

Lulach walked among them, trying to stop the horror from showing on his face in front of the soldiers. It was like a nightmare, he thought. The howling wind, and numberless bodies tumbled on the ground. It was just like the nightmares after he had
seen the blackened body of his father. Some of the bodies had been burned like his, twisted into strange shapes by the fire but still recognisable as human. Others were untouched, apart from the sword blows that had killed them, as though they had managed to escape from the flames only to meet death by steel instead.

But there were no women’s bodies after the first one. No children’s either. Whoever had done this had killed the men, but taken the women and children prisoner. They’d be in slave chains now. He wondered about the woman they had found. Had she almost escaped? Or fought, as they dragged her to the ships, and then they’d killed her?

And what of Thora, his bride? Had her bones been burned in this inferno? Or was she a slave in chains, on her way to her new master?

Who could have done this to a man as powerful as Thorfinn?

This was what his own land had been spared, he realised. Because of Macbeth’s peace, Lulach had never had to face a battlefield of bodies, or households burned to bones.

He gestured to the guards. ‘Spread out,’ he ordered.

‘What are we looking for?’ asked Knut.

Lulach shrugged. ‘Clues to who did this. Survivors. Anything you can find.’ He looked at the charred ruins of Thorfinn’s hall again. How could anyone have survived a fire like that?

His mind flashed back to his father’s body. Was it some form of justice that Thorfinn had died in flames too?

No, thought Lulach. This wasn’t war. These people were taken by surprise. And innocent people died here with Thorfinn. Including Thora.

He began to walk past the ruins, down towards the water, then noticed Knut was still with him. ‘I don’t need a guard,’ he said shortly.

‘Whoever did this might still be nearby.’

‘We’d have heard them. Captives aren’t quiet.’

He needed some time to himself, he thought suddenly. Time to make sure he showed none of the horror he felt to his men. Time to forget the smell of burned bodies, remembered from his childhood. Time to mourn Thora, a girl he hadn’t even met. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. But she didn’t deserve this. It was all he could do for his bride now, to mourn her for a while.

Knut headed back to the ship. Lulach wandered down to the sea again. There was a beach, a small crescent of pebbles backed by smooth boulders, with thick black drifts of seaweed to show how far the tide had reached. The waves were comforting as they washed back and forth. Waves didn’t care what happened to people. Their world went on, no matter what tragedy happened on land.

The salt wind lashed his face. No wonder the Norsemen cover their roofs with turf, thought Lulach. Otherwise the wind would blow them off. The shingle crunched underfoot.

And then he heard a noise.

Half roar, half scream, followed by mutterings and moans, then it began again.

Lulach stopped in shock. What on earth was it? Perhaps someone had survived the massacre back
there. Someone so badly hurt they could only scream, over and over.

The noise continued, high and wild. Surely, thought Lulach, no human throat could make a sound like that!

He ran across the shingle in the direction of the sound and around a tiny headland. Then he stopped and stared.

The headland opened out onto a tiny beach, hidden from the shore, a semicircle of coarse white sand among the rocks. On the furthest rock sat a girl, her arms wrapped round herself in a vain attempt to stay warm. She was singing. But the noise he had heard hadn’t come from her—her voice was lost in the sound coming from the creature next to her.

Suddenly the girl noticed him. She stopped singing and scrambled to her feet. A second later the creature gave a final hiss and mutter and was silent too.

Lulach stared. It was a seal. A half-grown seal. A whisper of superstitious fear ran through him. Was the girl a silkie, a seal woman, one of those who changed into human form on land, then turned back into a sea creature in the water? Who else would sing with a seal?

The girl gazed at him, poised as though to run. She was tall—nearly as tall as Lulach, although clearly a few years younger—and slim, with wet red hair falling in thick plaits to her waist. She wore a thick gold bracelet on one arm and her dress looked like fine linen. But it was torn and blackened, and there was a red burn mark across her face as well. Underneath the embroidered skirt her feet were bare and sandy, and blue with cold.

There was only one girl in the Orkneys he could think of who would wear clothes as fine as that.

‘Thora?’

The girl stared at him. The seal stared too. Lulach wondered if seals ever attacked humans.

‘Who are you?’ Her voice was clear and firm, though Lulach could still see terror in her eyes and her lips trembled with the cold. She used Norse, but then repeated her words in Gaelic when he didn’t respond. She spoke Gaelic well, with hardly a trace of accent.

‘Lulach MacGillecomgain, Tanist to King Macbeth,’ he said tentatively—and watched her tense body sag in relief.

He took off his cloak and held it out to her.

The girl took it, then stepped back again at once. She wrapped the cloak around herself, luxuriating in its warmth.

‘Welcome to the Orkneys, Lulach MacGillecomgain,’ she whispered through blue lips. She shut her eyes for a moment, as though to stop herself crying, then opened them again and stared at him. ‘Though I’m afraid it’s a poor welcome for a bridegroom.’

‘What…what happened?’ asked Lulach softly. He wanted to comfort her, to help her in some way. But she looked like she’d run if he came any nearer.

‘Norse soldiers. Father had declared independence from the King of Norway, did you know?’

Lulach nodded. ‘They attacked?’

‘Three nights ago. It was midnight,’ said Thora quietly. ‘Father had posted guards about the Hall. But the soldiers didn’t attack. Not then. They spilled whale oil about the Hall—I could smell it later—and then they tossed a torch.

‘There was no time for our guards to fight. No time for anything. I heard Father yelling. It woke me up. He carried my stepmother through the flames…’

‘And then he came back for you?’

‘No,’ said Thora flatly. ‘I saved myself. The other women were screaming, running around in the light of the flames. It was easy for the King’s soldiers to find them, to kill them, to…My nurse, my friends, the slaves…You know what men do to women in war, Lulach MacGillecomgain?’

‘Yes,’ said Lulach quietly.

‘I ran into the dark. I kept on running to the sea. I heard someone behind me. I waited for a sword blow, or hands to grab me. But it was Father, with Ingeborg in his arms.’

‘But why didn’t the soldiers find you?’ Lulach asked.

‘The seals hid me,’ said Thora simply. She stroked the seal’s head. It gazed up at her adoringly. ‘I asked them to hide Father and Ingeborg too. We crouched among them on the rocks, with the waves splashing about us. No one looked for us among the seals. And then…and then the soldiers sailed away. And we stayed here.’

Seals! Lulach stared at her. Maybe she really
was
a silkie! Why else would the seals obey her?

Suddenly Thora sat down again, on her rock. ‘Have…have you any food, Lulach Mac Gillecomgain?’ Her voice was steady, but Lulach could see the effort it took. ‘Darling has been bringing us fish. But…’ She tried to smile. ‘Somehow raw fish doesn’t fill me up like it does Darling.’

‘Darling?’

Thora stroked the seal’s smooth head. It gave a happy hiss. ‘I raised her from a pup,’ she said softly. ‘She was an orphan. I’ve raised other seals too. They all went back to the sea. Seals remember. That’s why the seals hid us. But Darling’s still a baby. She sleeps on my bed.’ Thora’s voice trailed off, as though remembering that she had no bed any more.

‘You mean Darling was with you that night? But how did she escape?’ Lulach could have kicked himself. This was no time to question the poor girl.

But Thora smiled. ‘I had to carry her.’

Lulach stared. She looked so vulnerable, sitting there in her wet dress with the fire scar on her cheek. But she had run through the flames when her father had chosen to save his new wife instead of his daughter. She had escaped the soldiers when every other woman had been caught. She had run through the darkness—and all this carrying a seal! And she had eaten raw fish to survive.

He wondered if there was another girl like this in all the world.

Lulach fumbled in his pouch. He usually kept sweetmeats there—dried apple, or cakes of oats and berries. He held one out to her. She came closer and took it, then stepped back and began to eat it hungrily.

‘Where’s your father?’ Lulach asked quietly.

‘Around the bay. Darling won’t bring fish when he’s near. I…I sing to her. She likes singing. And then she brings the fish and I can share it with her and Father and Ingeborg.’

The men have probably found Thorfinn by now, thought Lulach. Or Thorfinn might have found
them
.
He hoped Thorfinn realised they were friends, not enemies, before anyone was hurt.