Macbeth's Niece
Authors: Peg Herring
Tags: #romance, #adventure, #scotland, #witches, #sweet, #spy, #medieval, #macbeth, #outlaws, #highlands
Macbeth’s Niece
By Peg Herring
Gwendolyn Press
Macbeth’s Niece
© Peg Herring, 2016
Printed in the USA
Macbeth’s Niece
is a work of fiction.
The names, characters, and incidents are entirely the work of the
author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, or events, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be copied, transmitted, or recorded by any means
whatsoever, including printing, photocopying, file transfer, or any
form of data storage, mechanical or electronic, without the express
written consent of the publisher. In addition, no part of this
publication may be lent, re-sold, hired, or otherwise circulated or
distributed, in any form whatsoever, without the express written
consent of the publisher.
For Kay—first to know, first to
believe
Table of Contents
Prologue
Rain fell, but that was not unusual in the
Highlands, and the three creatures making their way over the hills
paid no heed to the weather. What they did take note of was
unclear, for they seemed to sense things that were not there,
answering voices unheard and peering at sights unseen. They were an
odd trio: women, to be sure, but less and more than the term
implied. Their hair, once different colors and textures, had faded
now to the same matted gray. Clothing hung in tatters, long
unwashed and uncared-for. The three cunning, leering faces seemed
at once knowing and unaware.
The tallest, who led the way, suddenly
stopped and faced the other two, bony face alight with
enthusiasm.
“Shall we tell?” she asked. “What say you
both?”
“Tell!” said the second, and the third
echoed, “Tell!”
“If it be ill?” The crone’s crooked finger
pointed at them and her eyes narrowed.
“Tell!” the two repeated.
The smallest of the three, whose skin was
gray with dirt and scaly from some vile disease, spoke. “They must
make of it what they will. We are not to blame.”
“No, not to blame,” said the third, who
lacked an eye, having only smooth skin over the spot where the
right one should be. “They think themselves better, all of ’em. We
shall tell and then see how it goes for them.”
With nods all around, the three again made
their way across the hillside, sometimes taking a dancing step or
two, sometimes speaking to the air, and, as they melted into the
nearby woods, muttering words that pleased them but would make no
sense to anyone else: “Double, double, toil and trouble...”
Chapter One
“The trouble with
men,” said Lady Macbeth, biting off a thread with small, white
teeth, “is they are too full of the milk of human kindness.” She
smoothed the stitch just completed with a finger and looked at it
critically before continuing, her otherwise perfect face puckered
between the eyebrows as she judged her work. “Oh, a man is brave
when his blood is up, and he can kill in battle well enough, but
ask him to do a task requiring more than brute anger, and he will
disappoint every time.”
She spoke to the group as a whole, but Tessa
noticed that when her aunt looked up, the direct gaze of her gray
eyes fell sharply on her. The others were related to the lady
herself, but Tessa was blood kin to the most likely subject of the
comment, Lord Macbeth. Frustration that the lady could not express
to her husband was diverted to the niece who sat before her, who
was unlikely to argue the point.
Five women sat in the warmest place in
Inverness castle, the fireside, which in fact was not all that
comfortable. The floor was cold, and Tessa’s feet felt as if they
were slowly turning to stone. The smoke curled out of the fireplace
and into the room. Scotland had no chimneys, so a small hole in the
roof allowed the smoke to escape. Periodically, a puff of noxious
gray belched into the room and curled round itself as it drifted
slowly upward. If the inhabitants wanted heat, they had to put up
with the odorous byproduct. Sitting near the fire was both pain and
pleasure. Tessa’s fingers were stiff with chill, but her backside
felt scorched by the blaze. She returned her gaze to her work,
hiding rebellious eyes.
If she could move, do something she wanted
to do, Tessa would not have felt the cold. However, she was being
trained to behave as a lady should and therefore sat working on a
tapestry under her aunt’s watchful eye. Like others of its kind,
the tapestry chronicled an event of interest to family members: a
hunt in which Macbeth and his friend Banquo had distinguished
themselves in the quantity and variety of game provided for the
castle’s use. Tessa was assigned a small piece of sky near the top
while the others worked on the scene itself. The plain blue corner
was simple enough that an amateur could hardly botch it, but the
girl found the work tiresome and very slow, and her fingers hurt
from a dozen pricks she had suffered so far.
Lady Macbeth shifted her stool away from the
fire and rethreaded her needle. Her comely but haughty face twisted
with the effort of seeing the needle’s loop in the gloom, and it
took several tries to succeed. The other three women sewed
diligently, showing no reaction to the harsh comment on men in
general. It was always thus. The dour trio of attendants worked at
whatever was at hand, hardly looking up and seldom speaking. In the
two months she had been at Inverness, Tessa had heard no friendly
word from any of them. In fact, it was a singularly silent
household when only the women were there. This was because Gruoch,
her aunt, inspired respect but not love, obedience but not warmth.
Though she said all the right words and was never overtly cruel or
even unkind, Lady Macbeth was a woman who bent others to her will
with a lifted eyebrow or the tiniest shift of one shoulder.
Whatever was offered or done was never enough, failure somehow
implied.
Tessa considered her aunt’s statement,
sensing it was aimed at the lord of the manor. Macbeth macFindlaech
did not seem a timid man to Tessa. Before his twentieth birthday,
he had taken up the sword in defense of his inheritance. A cousin
had murdered Findlaech, the former laird, and briefly taken control
of the small thanedom of Moray. Macbeth had gathered allies and
regained his father’s territory, burning to death the cousin and
fifty of his men in reprisal. Then he had married the widow of the
rebel, the striking woman who now sat opposite Tessa in the hall of
Inverness Castle. She seemed to have captured his heart with her
gray eyes and her lush figure, though Tessa—and the others, from
their demeanors—found her intimidating. No one dared contradict
Gruoch around the fire as they sewed. Neither did anyone sing,
gossip, or make merry comments. They simply worked on and on, like
mindless drones.
Lady Macbeth watched Tessa now, gauging the
effect of her statement, and the girl felt compelled to defend her
uncle. It would not do to take issue with her aunt’s statement, so
she took a different tack. “Perhaps a man may be both brave and
kind as the need arises, Aunt. Your husband is well-loved by the
people of Moray, and even the king holds him in great esteem.”
The look she received warned she had spoken
unwisely. “The king has no judgment of men!” Gruoch spoke bitterly.
“He uses Macbeth and spreads fair words over his head, but when
matters come to marching, he rewards his own.” The lady stabbed her
embroidery needle into the fabric as if it were Duncan himself who
stood before her and not a stretched tapestry on a frame.
Tessa wished she had merely nodded and
stitched, as the others had. Gruoch obviously disapproved of King
Duncan. How did a body learn to tread carefully in the maze that
was Scotland’s governing class? For the hundredth time since
leaving home, Tessa wondered what her mother would say of her
tendency to blurt out what was on her mind without taking into
account those above her. She wondered as well what an encounter
with three witch women meant for a person, because she was sure
she’d met witches on the way to Macbeth’s castle.
Kenna macFindlaech had sent her second
daughter to Inverness two months ago out of what she termed
desperation. Macbeth was the older brother of Tessa’s father,
Kenneth, who had died a year ago, leaving behind six daughters and
a nearly penniless wife. Tessa was not deemed a good marriage
choice among the practical, rather dour local Scots. Lovely to look
at she might be, but she tended to tomboyish ways. While other
girls studied womanly arts of house-holding and discreet flirting,
Tessa had roamed the Highlands, learning their contours and their
secrets.
Worse, she would not hold her tongue in
company and considered most boys in the area to be idiots. The
sight of her auburn hair, fair skin, lithe body and green eyes
could turn men to idiocy, to be sure. Young Alan of the clan Maura,
visiting with his father, had taken a shine to the girl and tried
to force a kiss when he found himself alone with her in her
father’s byre. A bit over-sure of himself due to his status as the
thane’s only son, he had taken umbrage when Tessa refused him.
They had closed the gate after the last cow
was herded in, and Alan found himself close enough to Tessa that
her tumble of curls actually brushed his cheek as she stood up from
fastening the loop of rope over the gatepost. He could not resist
touching those curls, and then his hand of its own volition
continued to her cheek, smooth as could be. The young man bent his
head toward hers, encircling her tiny waist and pulling her toward
him suddenly. Before his lips reached hers, twin pains shot through
his forearms as Tessa’s elbows came sharply down on them.
The boy involuntarily pulled back, and Tessa
added a push to assure distance between them. “If I want your
attentions, Alan macMaura, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, keep your
hands to yourself!”
Less in pain now than in anger, the boy
growled, “Lassie, think well on your future! I may be the best
chance a poor Highland girl like you will get.”
“You’re no gift to the world or to me!”
Tessa informed him. “I’ll kiss a man when I wish to, not when he
chooses!” With that she turned away toward home, leaving behind one
Scot less sure of his allure for women.
Others had tried to win Tessa’s favor as
well, but when she jeered at their longing gazes and overblown
praise of her eyes, lips, hair, and form, bachelors took hasty
flight. She was beautiful, but who would spend a lifetime listening
to a litany of his faults from those lovely lips when she had not a
penny to her name?
There was also the matter of her size. Tessa
was as dainty as a songbird, and Scottish mothers took one glance
and concluded no strong sons would come from one so tiny, despite
her robust health. Current wisdom recommended tall women with large
hips for healthy babies. Between the mothers’ doubts and the sons’
failure to impress her, the girl was an unlikely candidate for such
marital bliss as the Highlands offered to those of her station.
