Queen Hereafter (24 page)

A
utumn overtook summer’s bloom, and Malcolm’s sons stayed on. Donal Ban rode off before harvest time after a dispute so loud, with fists pounding tables, that Margaret winced as she heard it above stairs. She breathed a sigh of relief to see Donal gone, and though Malcolm stormed about, he calmed after a few days, saying that the boys would remain with him until the new one was born at year’s end. The uncle wanted the oldest, Duncan, returned to him sooner. Malcolm had refused. Mar, who kept small Donald, waited amiably on the king’s will.

Malcolm took time to visit many of his properties, including the grand fortress at Dun Edin across the wide firth, as well as his other royal properties throughout Scotland. But Margaret could not travel and felt disappointed, for she was impatient to see more of the land and to meet Scots beyond Dunfermline and Fife.

“After the child is born,” Malcolm promised, “we will go on progress for you to see our other residences and the whole of the land. I want the Scots to meet their new queen.”

She felt tired but well, and kept pace with prayers and household duties. As chatelaine of the king’s households, she had much to do. But one day she felt such a headache upon standing that she collapsed to the floor. A day’s rest cured it, and she resumed her routines, reassuring others that she was strong, and telling herself that she must keep to her prayers and duties equally.

Malcolm went south and returned with a physician, a surly Saxon who thought much of his abilities. He had been ousted from Northumbria with thousands of others, and hoped for a place in the royal household. But when Master Bartholomew questioned Margaret closely in private and asked to see a cup of her urine, she refused. When he informed her that her strict habits would harm her babe, she was both offended and alarmed. She would never compromise her child’s welfare, but feared slacking off of her obligations and the regular penances and light fasts that kept her, so she hoped, cleansed in soul and body.

“I will not see him again,” she told Malcolm. “I have no need. I have my women, and I have my priests.” Within days, she learned that the physician had boarded a knorr for Flanders, with a note of praise from Malcolm and a bag of coins on his belt.

“No physicians, then,” Malcolm told her, “but you must give up fasts. Even Brother Micheil and Father Otto have mentioned this to me. You are too thin for a woman bearing a child.”

“I eat sparingly but well,” she said in defense. “And I tend to my prayers and fasts as I see fit.”

But she noticed that Malcolm sometimes served her with his own hand an extra portion or a sweetmeat at the table. She could never bring herself to taste another sweetmeat after her father’s passing, but she nibbled other foods to please Malcolm. Her stomach had always been a little finicky and discontented after eating certain foods. But sometimes she simply felt the need for more penance—her temper had grown short of late and she could not tolerate that, even in herself—and so
she sometimes fed the dogs under the table rather than eat the food herself.

Eva, seeing this, whispered to her to stop. “The dogs have had enough,” she said. “You have not.”

“A little edge of hunger keeps me vigilant,” Margaret confided. “It reminds me that some do not eat as well as we do here. Besides, my figure is too full, too lush and earthy of late.”

“It is as it should be,” Eva said. “Take care.”

But Margaret felt compelled—she could not eat more, could not indulge herself, and needed to keep to her strict regimen. Something within her demanded it.

With her kinswomen and her ladies, she left Dunfermline now and then to visit nearby sites, agreeing to travel by cart just to get beyond the confines of fortress and glen. Accompanied by Brother Micheil or Malcolm’s housecarls, she visited chapels and hilltop crosses and sites that boasted of long-ago saints. With or without their holy history, the places were remarkable to her for their natural beauty, and she looked forward to seeing more of what had become her adopted homeland, though her advancing pregnancy curtailed her travel soon enough.

Yet she felt in good health, and gradually tried to eat more, certainly sleeping more than was her habit. Carrying a child suited her, made her calmer; even her mother commented kindly on it. When she developed a taste for hot, crisp oatcakes and cooked carrots, the increased appetite embarrassed her.

“Wanting carrots means you are carrying a boy, and the reason is obvious,” Dame Agnes said one day, grinning while Margaret blushed.

By late autumn, her girth was awkward, and by Advent she and her women were completing the little garments and linens they had been stitching for months. Over Yuletide, she began to meet potential wet nurses invited by Dame Agnes and a very helpful Wilfrid. After speaking to a few local women whose infants were nearly due or whose babes had recently died, Margaret decided on a granddaughter
of Mother Annot, Mirren, whose daughter had died unexpectedly in her cradle. Margaret empathized with the young woman’s heartbreak and liked her quiet grace, a good quality to pass on to her own infant through a nurse’s milk. She asked Mirren to keep her milk full for the royal infant to come.

Old Annot offered to act as midwife, having delivered many babes in more than fifty years, and Margaret granted her a generous fee, glad to have a familiar attendant for the birth. In her spare English, Annot said it was an honor. She and Mirren moved to a room in the tower, and the wait went on.

ON THE EVE
of the Epiphany, at the end of Christmastide, her labor began. Margaret felt heavy, dull aches of such pressure that she could not always catch her breath. Pacing the room, she anticipated the birth, relishing it as one of the real tests of courage and power she could face as a woman. She knew the great risks, yet felt strangely unafraid, even excited. Heaven and hell would both challenge her that day, and she wanted to triumph, wanted to tap the stronger spirit that she knew resided within her.

So she welcomed the struggle, endured it in silence but for murmured prayers. She obeyed Annot’s advice, translated deftly by Eva, who remained calm and by her side throughout. Margaret fell to her hands and knees on the bed as an unyielding power ripped through her body like a gale through a glen. When Annot and Kata pulled her upward to sit, squatting and striving, she pushed until she felt the child slip slick from her, and gasped. Annot caught it, wiped the squalling and red-faced little thing quickly, and held it up as Kata held out the swaddling.

“A son, a fine little son,” Kata said in German, then English. “Listen to his strong cry!”

Margaret sat up, exhausted and exhilarated, while her mother wiped her face, smoothed back her damp hair. Kata held a cup to her lips, filled with a cool, sweet drink of herbs and water that Annot had prepared for her. “Your labor was very quick, only a few hours. It was easy!”

Margaret laughed; the storm in her body had more than tested her, and had not seemed so easy. She reached for the child, then cradled him close. Eva was there, speaking quietly in Gaelic with Annot, Mirren, and Finola, whose eyes had been wide and frightened through the labor. After a moment, Eva came forward to admire the child.

“Mother Annot says you may have many babes,” Eva said. “She says it was indeed easy for you, and each labor may be quicker than the last. Remember that for your next one.”

“Next one!” Margaret said. Eva turned as the midwife spoke again.

“Aye, she says you and the king make strong, beautiful children together. There will be more,” Eva said. While the other women in the room laughed, Margaret held her little son close, carefully, the fragile, warm bundle suddenly dearer to her than anything on earth or in heaven.

“Malcolm,” she said then. “Is he here?”

“Returning soon,” Eva said. “Two housecarls rode out to fetch him from the hunt. He has been gone two days, but promised he would cut it short for this occasion.”

Margaret leaned back against a slope of pillows and gazed at her son in candlelight. The hour was late, not yet dawn on the day of the Epiphany, and here he was like a miracle, her firstborn, quickly born and healthy. He quavered a thin cry, stretched, and opened his little mouth like a bird, and she fell completely in love in that instant. She kissed his brow and let him nuzzle her breast.

Lady Agatha came toward her, shaking her head. “Let the wet nurse take him if he is hungry,” she said. “You must not suckle. You will become overly fond of the babe.”

“There is nothing wrong in that,” Margaret said.

“Babes die,” her mother said bluntly. “They sicken and die. A good mother cannot become too fond of the little creatures God puts into her hands. Let the nurse see to his welfare.”

“Mama,” Margaret said then. “Did you … lose a babe of your own? You have never said.”

Lady Agatha sighed. “Two others. One was a boy, pretty as Edgar,
the other a girl, dark as Cristina. But it is past and forgotten. I did not give them my heart. Nor should you give this one your heart until he is much older and you know he can survive.”

“But I love him already,” Margaret said, pressing him close to her.

“Babes are fragile creatures. This one seems vigorous, but wait to be sure. If he thrives, your obligation is to teach him courtesy, prayers, and other lessons. His father will train him to be a warrior, and his tutors will tend to his princely education. But while he is small, let his nurses care for him—let them bear the sorrow if he does not survive.”

Shocked, Margaret stared at her mother and cuddled her son. Finally, quickly, she understood why Lady Agatha had been so distant with her children. Yet Margaret could never imagine withholding love from her own child, even to spare herself grief if he did not thrive.

“He is a healthy babe,” she said. “And his birth on the holy feast day of the Epiphany, which is the true birthdate of Christ in our own Hungary, gives him even more protection.” The holy day had been a favorite in her childhood, celebrated with gifts of gold and pungent frankincense, and by the chalking of the names of the magi over the doors of homes for protection.

“
Christus mansionem benedicat
,” Margaret said, uttering a traditional Epiphany blessing. “May Christ bless this house. He will be fine, Mama,” she told her mother. Lady Agatha sighed.

Margaret kissed the baby’s warm little head. For the first time since she had come to Scotland, she felt at home, truly blessed.

MALCOLM ARRIVED THAT EVENING
, bringing Duncan and Donald with him into the room. Margaret sat with her child in her arms, letting his tiny fingers curl around her thumb. She stroked his soft cheek and smiled up at Malcolm.

“He is blond like his mother,” Malcolm said. “He is healthy, and his lungs seem to be strong, after all that wailing we heard as we came in here. Good.”

“What is his name?” Duncan asked in English. Margaret smiled at
him in quick approval, for she had asked the boys to speak English as often as they could.

“He has none yet. What shall we call him?” Malcolm asked the boys. “You are Duncan for my father—and you are Donald for my brother. My grandfather was called Crinan. Should we name your brother for him?”

“Oh, not that,” Margaret said quickly, determined to avoid such a foreign name for her child. “I have been thinking about names for weeks now. I would like to call him Edward for my father.”

“A Saxon name?” Malcolm frowned. “But he is a prince of Scotland.”

“He has royal Saxon blood, too,” she reminded him. “The name also belonged to my uncle and my great-grandfather. Such a strong name would be recognized by the Saxons, the French, and many others. What would best serve a Scottish prince in future—a good Saxon name, or a Gaelic one, however old and proud, that foreign leaders simply cannot pronounce or remember?”

Malcolm seemed thoughtful, then nodded. “I suppose there is wisdom in that.”

“And it would mean a good deal to me,” she whispered, looking down at her little son.

“Aye then. For you,” Malcolm said. “He will be christened Edward mac Malcolm.”

Margaret smiled and propped the babe higher in her arms. “He looks a bit like you,” she said.

“No shame in that.” Malcolm reached out to touch the child’s rounded head. “But he is fair beautiful like his Saxon kin, and that is good. Edward,” he said. “He is the first Scottish prince to carry such a name.”

“No shame in that,” she said softly.

WHEN SHE HEARD
from Finola that Edgar had returned without notice one afternoon, Margaret left her reading and hurried down the turning steps with several of her ladies, including Eva and Juliana. A
maidservant had told them that Edgar and his companions—he had brought strangers and priests, the girl said—had gone to the great hall for refreshment. Margaret found them seated at a long trestle table as she entered the hall.

A servant was ladling soup into bowls, and the men had cups of new ale, so strong that most jugs had to be liberally diluted with water as they sat quietly talking. She did not recognize all of them, but Edgar often brought men to Dunfermline on business with the king. Wilfrid was there, too, and when he saw the queen and her ladies enter, he murmured to Edgar. They stood.

The hem of her gown swept over fresh rushes as she hurried across the room. One of the king’s gray hounds loped to its feet and came to her, and Eva stooped to pat the dog’s head, holding back, for Edgar and his men were not well known to her. Lady Juliana hurried, too, no doubt hoping to hear some news of her father, Cospatric. Moments later, Cristina entered the room as well, looking for her brother.

Immediately Margaret noticed two newcomers with the men. Both were Benedictine monks, judging by their black hooded robes, hempen belts, and tonsured heads, and likely Saxon. One seemed familiar, a long and lanky man with flaxen hair, though she could not recall who he was. The other was a stranger, stocky and dark. Both stopped their conversation and stood.