Macbeth the King (13 page)

The following day the wind still blew strongly, and the boatmen would not hear of risking the passage to Mull. Although it was only seven miles, the Firth of Lorn, which they had to cross, was a most dangerous water.

The Thane of Lochaber, whom MacBeth had sent to summon on his way over, arrived just before noon, in a rain-squall, with sleet behind it.

An hour or so later there was a great outcry and much pointing. Sweeping round the southern headland into Loch Feochan came five low, lean longships, sails furled on account of the gale, oars flailing in clouds of spray. The breathless chanting of their serried rowers came fitfully on the gusting wind.

All were agog at the sight, and in such weather, speculation mixed with alarm. Who travelled the most dangerous seas in the world in winter storm, and why?

The leading vessel drove in to the anchorage and ran its fierce dragon-head prow up on to the weed-strewn strand, men with ropes leaping down into the white-capped breakers of the shallows, cold or none. The craft's great square sail was momentarily unfurled, long enough to display the black spread-winged raven device of Orkney.

"I thought so," MacBeth observed, amidst the exclamation, and went downhill to greet his brother.

They met on the beach, Thorfinn all dripping bearskins and salt-tarnished armour.

"What brought
you
here—to bury the man you so hated?" his brother asked. "You would never come to him while he lived!"

"I am a Mormaor of Scotland, as are you—when it suits me! You would not have me to fail in my duty? Besides, what happens after the burying will signify the more."

"You will find that others have failed in their duty, then! Too many."

"You say so? Who?"

"Duncan, for one."

"Duncan? That rat is not here?"

"No. Nor others..."

Lennox and Glamis came down, somewhat doubtfully. "Who are these?" Thorfinn demanded, at his most arrogant. "Aluin mac Gillachrist, Mormaor of Lennox. And Cormac mac Eochaid, Thane of Glamis."

"Ha—Glamis! Where Malcolm died? Did you slay the old devil, then? Not before time!"

"I did not, my lord earl. But someone did. Evilly."

"Who? Think you he deserves the thanks of us all?"

None answered that, Lennox coughing uncomfortably. "You have come a long way to attend the King's burial nevertheless, my lord," he said.

"So I have, man—so I have. Further than any here, I swear. But then—is it not a cause for celebration? It is not every day that we get rid of such as my grandsire! No?" Undoubtedly he knew that he was embarrassing them, but cared nothing. "But—you said burial. I thought that it was to be at Iona? Or have you put down roots here?"

"The weather, my lord. We are delayed..."

"Weather?" the other demanded. "What is that? What are you? Lily-maids, afraid of a puff of wind? I went to Iona, and found that you had not come. They told me that you would be here, or at Loch Spelve in Mull. So I came to fetch you."

Lennox, a quiet man, swallowed. "You have
come
from Iona? In this, this storm?"

"This is no storm, man, A breeze! How many are you?"

"Over one hundred. The boatmen said that they dared not chance the passage. In this..."

"Boatmen! Are you Scots lords, or mice! To wait on the pleasure of idle boatmen! See you—get your people down here and into my longships. And fetch the body. I will have you in Iona by dark. If you make haste."

No excuses were accepted, of course, and despite manifest reluctance the embarkation commenced. The royal corpse was brought down with more haste than ceremony and lashed down on the stern platform of Thorfinn's own ship—received with less reverence by the crew than some thought suitable. Most of the funeral party however were so concerned about their forthcoming voyage as to fail to notice such minor details.

Thorfinn, now very much in charge, allowed no wastage of time—he had thirty-five sea miles to go before dark, and was shouting to cast off almost before the last of his passengers were aboard.

Thorfinn's shipmaster, Biorn Bow Legs, was a massive, shaven-headed gorilla of a man who appeared to manage his craft with a drawn sword, which he wielded mainly to beat time on a great bronze gong beside the steering-oar. This clanging beat seemed almost to be the motive power of the ship, the timing by which the oarsmen drove their long sweeps, and to which they and the reserve crew sang and gasped their curious chant as they rowed, a fierce stirring refrain, endlessly repeated. Despite the cold, the oarsmen threw off their skin jerkins, to row half-naked.

It was choppy enough even in these sheltered waters; but once they cleared the twin headlands into the open firth, the half-gale hit them like hammer-blows and the waves reared high in hissing menace, the surface all but completely white with spume. Immediately the long low vessels began to toss and twist like live things in a see-sawing motion of major and dizzy proportions—but strangely enough to roll but little. The passengers, clustered together in pretty general misery however, clinging to each other for support in their shivering—for they were all soaked to the skin in moments—little perceived the advantage of this.

The normal procedure for a royal funeral was to sail across the seven miles of the Firth of Lorn from Kilninver to Port nan Marbh, the Haven of the Dead, on the Loch of Spelve on Mull, and thereafter to resume the land journey for some thirty miles, crossing that large island and down its long peninsula of the Ross to Fionnphort, where another ferry took them over the mile-wide Sound of Iona. But Thorfinn rowed directly for Iona, using the long, cliff-girt southern coast of Mull as shield and breakwater.

So they kept as close inshore as the reefs and skerries of that savage coast would allow, thrusting their way through the boiling seas in a fury of spindrift, some of it, alarmingly, now coming from the rocks and even cliff-foots, where the great seas smashed themselves into soaring towers of spray.

Something over two hours of this, and with the light beginning to fail, they reached the end of the Ross of Mull's shelter—if so it could be called—and had to turn northwards round the Isle of Erraid and its multitude of outliers towards the narrow Sound of Iona. For the space of some three hectic miles they were wholly unprotected from the full force of wind and ocean, and the seas they had encountered hitherto were of minor size and virulence, the gale screaming. Fortunately they were now heading directly north-west into it, which made the business less dire for the oarsmen. Biorn Bow Legs banged his gong the harder, the chanting jerked and panted, Thorfinn roared great laughter and the passengers clutched each other, groaned, spewed and suffered.

This last was only a short ordeal, however, and quickly they were into the quieter waters of the Sound. Through the mists of spume they could see the scattered buildings of the Abbey of Columcille, the most sacred site in all Scotland.

The Abbot Malmore mac mhic Baithan, Co-Arb of the Celtic Church and titular Superior of the Abbey of Kells in Ireland, seventy-seventh in descent from Columba himself, a cheerful and vigorous old man with no fewer than five bishops, greeted the newcomers kindly and herded them off to guest-houses, peat-fires and cauldrons of hot water, with plaids to warm them while their clothes dried. Also ample food and drink. Abbot Malmore seemed to be on particularly good terms with Thorfinn—which was strange, considering that the Vikings for centuries had been the plague, almost the end, of the Abbey and monks. Nine times the Norsemen had sacked and burned it. But apparently the earl and the abbot had come to some sort of satisfactory arrangement—although the former was scarcely a religious man. Indeed now Thorfinn was obviously looked upon as in charge of the funeral arrangements and all else, rather than Lennox, Glamis or MacBeth.

The Abbey was a far-flung establishment within a broken rampart of turf, which covered many acres, consisting of innumerable small buildings, some disused and ruinous, no less than seven of which were in fact churches. None of these were large, and the holiest almost the smallest, actually Saint Columba's own cell on the summit of a small eminence called Tor Abb. The sleeping-huts of the brethren or "family" of Iona, some eighty in number, were dotted about haphazard, amongst a great scatter of variously-carved saints' crosses. There was a tall, circular outlook-tower on another rocky eminence, a mill, kiln, barns, cowhouse, guest-houses and the like. All around, where the island soil permitted, were patches of tilth, and sheep and cattle wandered at large. Blown sand from the innumerable cockle-shell white sand bays, mixed with spindrift, filled the air.

It was outside the Tor Abb church next morning, with the wind happily much abated, that Malmore and his bishops held the burial-service for Malcolm the Destroyer. Considering how many hundreds of difficult miles the body had been brought for this, it was a very simple ceremony. But the Celtic Church did not go in for elaborate services any more than elaborate doctrine. Christ's teaching was considered to be sufficient for ordinary men, even kings. There was no sermon, no oratory, no resounding list of the dead monarch's achievements—as well, perhaps; the only item to take up time was the lengthy recital, by the chief sennachie, of the late King's genealogy, on the Scots side seventeen generations to Fergus Mor mac Earc and before that through unnumbered Irish kings to the semi-legendary Fir Bolg royal line, to the Horseman of the Heavens, Eochaid, and the goddess-spirit of the Lightning, Bolg herself; on the Pictish side it went even further, through half-a-dozen Brudes and Nechtans and other practically unpronouncable and almost certainly mythical ancestors. Lesser men shivered and stamped their feet, while Vikings drifted off with unflattering comments. This over at last, Malcolm mac Kenneth mac Malcolm mac Domnell et cetera, was bundled into the cavity awaiting him in the Relig Oran, the crypt where Oran, last of the Druids and first of Columba's converts lay, along with forty-six or so of Malcolm's just enumerated ancestors, and his heavy grave-slab lowered upon him. Then all returned, without delay, to the Abbey eating-hall, where such feast as was available on the island awaited them.

The meeting of mormaors to confirm and appoint the next king should then have been held. But with only three present this was ruled out—although Thorfinn made not so much a speech as a statement that, since Duncan mac Crinan was incompetent and a known poisoner, and he himself had no interest in becoming King, therefore Malcolm's remaining grandson MacBeth mac Finlay was the obvious and only choice for the throne—to the embarrassment of MacBeth but the cheers of most of those present, notably from Glamis and Lennox.

All this having taken up no great time, by noon Thorfinn was fretting to be off. Abbot Malmore had envisaged a much longer stay and made suggestions as to activities—although there was not a great deal to do on so small an island in winter save eat, drink and pray. But the earl declared that he and his were for off. He was prepared to take the other mourners back to their horses at Kilninver if so they desired. If not, they could find their own way. With the sea much moderated, none thought to refuse this offer, and hasty leave-taking ensued. It must have been the most abbreviated royal interment Iona had ever experienced.

Although it was a cold and far from pleasant voyage, there was no comparison with the outward journey. With the sails available to assist the oarsmen, they were back to Loch Feochan in two hours, with still sufficient light left for most of the company to make a start on their homeward roads. The Vikings barely allowed time for orderly disembarkation before they were off again, northwards up the Firth of Lorn, with 250 miles to go.

Thorfinn's farewell to his brother had been eloquent. "We will meet again, Son of Life, shortly, at Scone. And see who will sit on the
Lia Faill,
the Stone of Destiny, next!"

Watching the gong-clanging longships drive out to sea again, Cormac of Glamis summed up the general reaction. "There goes a man that I would sooner have my friend than my enemy!" he growled. "The pity that Malcolm loved the wrong daughter!"

As so often, MacBeth said nothing.

Frost made the journey home to Moray less of an ordeal than the wind and rain, and MacBeth was back at Spynie in time for Yule. Gruoch, after the first joyous reception, greeted him with significant news indeed—again via the Keledei at Rose Isle.

"My dear," she said, "Duncan has deceived and wronged you once more. He held his Council of Mormaors at Scone, whilst you were at Iona. And was appointed and enthroned King of Scots, on the Stone, the next day, MacDuff placing the crown on his head."

He looked away and away. "So-o-o!" he said at length. "I should have guessed. That is Duncan, yes. It was all a ruse. How does one deal with such a man? Ah, well—it settles that problem, at least!"

"That crown should have been yours, my heart."

"Scarcely that. Duncan is son of the elder sister.
Could
have been mine, shall we say? Had I desired it."

"Should
have been," she insisted. "Through me, your wife. I had more right to it than had Malcolm. Certainly more than Duncan. And through me, Lulach. While he is a child, you, my husband, should have the rule. And I should be Queen. Not Queen Consort, but Queen!"

He looked at her searchingly. "And did you want that, my dear?"

She flung herself into his arms. "God knows!" she sobbed. "God knows—for I do not! But, but...that is what should have been. For you. To think of that Duncan, King! Yes—I wish it! I wish it!" She gulped. "Your dream. Do not forget your dream. They said—I see the Mormaor of Moray. I see the King!"

Troubled he smoothed her dark hair. "It
was
but a dream, lass. And we are happy here, are we not? Happier, I swear, than on any throne."

"Perhaps. Yes—we are. But
...
can we deny our blood, our destiny?" He did not answer.

"You will accept it, then? Accept this wickedness? Do nothing?"

"What
could
I do? Even if I desired it? It is too late. He
is
the King now, crowned and seated on the Stone of Destiny. Nothing can change that. The thing is done."