Macbeth the King (12 page)

"Come you, come you, MacBeth mac Louse!" he cried, to his half-brother who stood on the island shore watching. "You have married a wife, I hear. Come, meet mine! A plague on you, man—must you stand there? Fearing to wet your feet! Come meet your good-sister, Mormaor of Moray-land. Where have you hidden that Black Gruoch?"

MacBeth stayed where he was, wordless, astonished. Thorfinn married would be something for the sennachies and saga-mongers to rhapsodise over.

She was a big blonde woman, tall, large-breasted, splendidly made, with long plaited yellow hair, round laughing features and notably blue eyes, comely rather than beautiful—and strong-thighed and calved, for she had her skirts kilted high, although her splashing was soaking her just the same. The Vikings who came behind were loud and basic in their praise, comment and advice.

Thorfinn climbed out on to dry land and shook himself like a dog, before coming on to grasp and pummel his brother—without troubling to turn and assist the lady.

"Son of Life—at his most lively!" he exclaimed. "Are you a man again? After your sickness? Smile, man—laugh! At the sight of this great heifer of a woman! And Thorfinn Sigurdson wedded! Look at her—Ingebiorg Finnsdotter, from Zetland. Where they mate with whales! Is she not an armful?"

MacBeth pushed past him, to meet the flushed, breathless, soaked but entirely cheerful young woman. "Lady—welcome to my house, to Spynie, to Moray, to my family. You are very fair—wasted, I think, on this bear, Thorfinn. But here, at least, you will find us better!"

"Devil roast you—who has been teaching you that sort of talk?" Thorfinn growled. "That Gruoch? Perhaps I should never have brought her to you! Or taken her myself. Then this one would not be so pleased with herself!"

"Lord MacBeth," the young woman panted. "I have heard much of you. And nothing ill. Although this Orkney bull bellows ill of all others! How did the same mother bear you both?"

"She was mild and gentle, lady—like my own self! I think that the Earl Sigurd the Stout must have been a terrible man."

"So! That will be it. Perhaps when he breeds on
me,
Orkney will do better?"

MacBeth smiled. Clearly this woman would be able to look after herself.

Thorkell Fosterer came up. "What think you, MacBeth, of the Countess Inge?" he demanded. "I chose her for him. Not many would have had him, you see. But I did my best...!"

Gruoch arrived, a basket of fruit on her arm. The contrast with the other young woman was remarkable, dramatic. They sized each other, amidst the comments and witticisms of the Vikings—but it was noticeable that these were a deal less outspoken and scurrilous towards Gruoch, a little wary even.

The two women, after a moment or two, embraced, seeming to accept each other. The earl might almost have shown traces of relief.

They trooped into the hall-house for refreshment.

They had to hear, of course, a quite unbelievable version of how Thorfinn had won the hand of Ingebiorg, daughter of Finn Arnison of Zetland, a Norse noble and formerly of Galloway. What had made him fall at last into the trap and trammels of matrimony, he admitted that he did not know—he must have been drunk, presumably. It was indeed really ThorkelFs fault—which he would not forget! But soon he would have her whipped into shape. Although she was shapely in a lumpish fashion already, was she not?

Ingebiorg hooted laughter.

It was the quite irrepressible Thorkell Fosterer who broached the subject of Moray. "We heard that the great MacBeth had won over the whole of Morayland by smooth words and cunning talk. Not a sword drawn, not an axe raised! Is this truth? Or some dastard's tale!"

"How think you, Pirate?" his host answered. "Is only bloodshed how you measure success?"

"Success will call for more than words, I say. You may have
got
Moray so, but to hold it you will need swords!"

"Perhaps. And am I not the fortunate one, then, in having Thorfinn Raven Feeder and his sworders to help me hold it? I made great use of that fact in my much talking."

"Ha!" Thorfinn said.

"Yes. Words, used needfully, can effect as much as swords, on occasion. Even silence may work wonders. As
you
proved, off Culross in the Scots Sea. When you drew no sword, raised no axe. Yet caused both Malcolm and Canute to think again." He had not seen his brother since then.

"The swords were there. To be used if required," Thorfinn pointed out.

"To be sure. And I had Neil Nathrach and 2000 men waiting behind the Glass River, when I went into Moray. Had they been required."

"You took a chance, man. You could have been set on and slain long before your Viper could have reached you. I risked nothing."

"Save offending both kings."

"For kings I care that!" Thorfinn snapped his fingers. "Great and small, they suffer from the same disease—self-importance."

"Unlike earls and mormaors!" the Countess of Orkney commented.

Gruoch smiled, and replenished drinking-horns.

"Why are you here?" MacBeth asked.

"Why but to come see my new good-sister. And let Ingebiorg meet the Scots."

"You did not come all the way south to Moray for that, Brother."

"Also I wanted to find out what you had been doing here in Moray. And what were your plans."

"Plans? What plans should I have? Save to rule my two mortuaths in peace. And...and cherish my wife."

"Tcha! See you, man—you now control Moray and Ross. With Lochaber. I control Sutherland, Caithness, Orkney and most of the Hebrides. Dalar and Argyll are more like to heed you and me than, say, Malcolm Foiranach. Finn Arnison, in Zetland, and kin in Galloway, is now my good sire. See you what this means?
We
rule all the North, not Malcolm. Once there were two kingdoms. Of the Northern and Southern Cruithne, or Picts. There could be again."

"Who is scorning self-important kings now!"

"I care nothing for kings. But kingdoms are different. A Northern kingdom. Do you not see it?"

"I see trouble in that kind of thinking, Brother. I say forget it." MacBeth looked over at his wife.

She changed the subject, easily. "Tomorrow you men should go hunting. We shall require a full larder to feed so many large Vikings. Ingebiorg and I shall talk women's talk."

"And from all such preserve us!" Thorfinn prayed.

"Yes. We shall hunt the woods of Findrassie and Ardgilzean," MacBeth agreed. "And see what you Orkneymen can do lacking a hatchet...!"

Autumn was turning
to winter and the mountains which rimmed the Laigh on all but the seaward side, near and far, were already white with the first snows, above the deep brown of the faded heather. Thorfinn, his bride and his Vikings, had long since sailed back to Brough in the Orkneys, to feast and drink and sing and procreate and sleep the winter away. So far there had been no really hard weather in this favoured Garden of Alba, although elsewhere there had been snow and ice. Life at Spynie was pleasantly full, with the last of the honey-running, fruit-preserving, fish-smoking and the like filling the shortening days. This, when the news reached them—Malcolm the Destroyer was dead. Slain, by treachery, at Glamis, it was said.

At first none could quite believe it. The old King had been a dark shadow, yet also a shield, over the land for so long, reigning for thirty-one years, no less. It was almost inconceivable that the shadow and the shield should be no more. Although a new shadow was there to take its place—but no shield.

If the news, which came via the Keledei at Rose Isle—who seemed to have their own sources of information, like all churchmen—was received with incredulity, it was not long in being confirmed. A royal messenger arrived at Forres and was sent on to Spynie, from Duncan mac Crinan. Malcolm mac Kenneth was dead, and the Mormaor MacBeth mac Finlay was requested to attend the obsequies at the Abbey of Columcille at Iona on the Ides of December.

This was normal practice—although December was a bad month to get corpse and mourners to a Hebridean island. But the body would scarcely keep until spring. All the Kings of Scots were taken on this last journey to the most sacred spot in the kingdom, in many kingdoms, for burial; and it was traditional that the Ard Righ should be accompanied by his lesser kings, the mormaors. Only thereafter would the new King be proclaimed, and taken back for enthronement on the Stone of Destiny at Scone.

MacBeth, then, was part-prepared for the summons; and although Gruoch was uneasy and full of warnings, there was no question but that he must go. This was the first major parting from Gruoch since their wedding, and a sore business. She was pregnant.

With the Thanes of Brodie and Darnaway—Cawdor claiming indisposition—he rode off westwards two days later, all wrapped tightly in their plaids against the chill December rain, which would be snow on the high ground. And they had much high ground to cover, however carefully they picked their route, across wide Drumalbyn, the lofty and fierce roof of Scotland. They had five days to reach Iona, and in these conditions it would take them all of that.

It took them five days exactly to reach, not Iona but Nether Lorn, and the rendezvous for the funeral crossing. There was a recognised procedure and itinerary for these royal progresses. The dead monarch was always brought to Kilninver, at the foot of the Braes of Lorn near the mouth of Loch Feochan, to commence the seaward passage to the Isle of Mull. Often there was a considerable wait here, for suitable weather conditions on a notoriously storm-prone seaboard, and a chapel had been built on a green hillock, where the mummified corpse might lie, watched over by relays of mormaors and thanes, until the voyage could be started. The hillock was known as
Carraig nan Marbh,
the Rock of the Dead.

MacBeth and his little party arrived at Kilninver in the early dusk of the 13th, or Ides of December, to find the cortege already there, with quite a large number of men encamped in what shelter they could find, against a blustery, north-westerly half-gale, lords in a barn and the coffin in the chapel. Searching around, MacBeth quickly came to the conclusion that the weather had delayed more than himself, for he could perceive very few of the faces he expected to see. At length he found the Thane of Glamis huddled over one of the many fires.

"So MacBeth at least has come!" that tough campaigner commented, mouth full. "I feared that you would be like the rest."

"Many will be delayed. Snow and flooding. It is ill weather for travel!"

"Oh, yes. Indeed, yes. So—many do not travel! What more simple? But it is ill done.
He
would not have done it, for all his sins!" And he jerked his grizzled head towards the chapel.

"You mean...?"

"I mean that it is not delay, my lord. Snow and flood and ill travel. They are not coming, that is all. Lennox is the only mormaor here—save for yourself."

MacBeth stared at him. "But—Duncan? His father? MacDuff? Mar? Angus? The others?"

"They bide at home!"

"God's Grace! Duncan—his favoured one! He sent
me
word to come...!"

"No doubt. That is the style of him! You should know him by now." Glamis recollected. "Yourself, my lord—you are well recovered? Of your sickness."

"Yes. But this, this is beyond belief! Not to come to the King's entombment. Did he tell you why—Duncan?"

"No. He came to Glamis. Saw the King dead—the body. Told me to have the corpse embalmed and coffined. Then to escort it to Iona. Lennox would come. He mislikes Lennox. Then he left, without saying more. After but an hour or so."

MacBeth shook his head. "How did the King die?" he asked.

"Well may you say it! He died at my dun. Suddenly and strangely. He came to Glamis in the evening. From Kincardine in the Mearns. With a small company. Within the hour he was rolling on my floor. In direst pain. Two hours more and he was dead. That was Saint Katherine's Day."

"Dear God! The, the same as...!" He paused. "You think—poison?"

"What else? An old man, he could not fight it. Like some!"

"Who...?"

"In the stir, four men who had come with him rode off. From Glamis. Nameless men that I knew not. When I heard of it, I sent after them. Fast. But my men did not catch them. Seeing that they were pursued, they thought to take the shortest, most level, route. They were strangers, to be sure, to Angus. They did not know that Forfar Loch was there. Frozen over, with a covering of snow. They rode hard across—until the ice cracked! We shall never know who they were, I think. Forfar Loch is deep, deep!"

For a little there was silence between them. Then MacBeth said, "You said that Duncan came, thereafter. From where?"

"From Kincardine, also. Next Day. From Malcolm's summer palace."

"And these men, who failed to cross Forfar Loch—they could have been heading back to Kincardine?"

"I think it likely." They exchanged glances.

"I should go see him. My grandsire," MacBeth said heavily. "Where is Lennox?"

"I will take you..."

That night MacBeth took his turn at the vigil beside the King's bier in the little draughty chapel, a chilly, eerie business, with the wind howling and whistling and the single lamp flickering and casting weird shadows. One noble must always stand at the head, and a common soldier at the foot, while a priest muttered endless prayers at the altar. Because so few nobles were present, MacBeth had to stand three hours before handing over to Brodie. The King, although he might have died in agony, showed no signs of this on his carven features. He looked, indeed, almost nobly sardonic, as though the final victory, amusingly, was with him, the wavering lamplight seeming to give life to his expression. He had been an evil man, an object of terror for most of his long reign. Yet he had been a strong king, and his realm had known that it could rely on him to protect it from all but himself. Standing looking down at the dread face, his mother's father, MacBeth was aware of much trouble in his mind, confusion of spirit. What was the meaning of it all? What of all the untimely deaths this man had caused? In order that a treacherous weakling should inherit his throne—Duncan, who had not even troubled to come to his interment. What of all those who had paid the price of this folly? And yet, Malcolm Foiranach had been no fool. What had driven him on? In his twisted way he must have loved Scotland. What of his Scotland now...?