Queen Hereafter (46 page)

“That concern we all share,” Margaret said, stepping closer. “Regarding theft, sire, I told you at the time that any wrongdoing was mine in taking the gold and releasing the prisoners. Eva tried to stop me but I acted rashly.”

“You would never—” the king began.

“I did. As for the manuscript pages, they fell into the river when my book went into the water, which some now call a miracle. What does it matter about a few pages? Other pieces of Brother Tor’s book were lost that day, and he must remake those, too.”

Malcolm frowned. “It is a setback and a delay. And more cost to me.”

“But he can add the truth that belongs in that history. As Lady Gruadh said, truth is our obligation, is it not?”

Malcolm stared at her as if speechless. Margaret smiled and stepped down from the dais to walk toward Gruadh and Eva. Bending, she picked up the fallen pages and handed them to the older woman, who accepted them. Then Margaret stood between Eva and Gruadh.

“Much of this is my fault, too,” she then said to Malcolm. “Will you accuse me as well?”

“There is no need for this,” he replied sternly.

“I was wrong to mistrust my good friend Eva. And I believe that you yourself misunderstood, sire, and did what you thought was just. Lady Eva is innocent and Lady Gruadh is brave to come here for a reconciliation, considering her grievance with you.”

Malcolm glowered. “Reconciliation!”

“What!” Lady Gruadh said sharply. Eva stared from one to the other, uncertain what might come of this.

Margaret linked arms with Eva and Gruadh. “A little peace between us all is needed. Surely you agree, sire.”

Malcolm narrowed his eyes, displeased, Eva thought—yet he would not gainsay his queen before the court.

“Since Lady Gruadh is here, she and I will talk,” he said. “In private.”

“I want my guard with me if we are to speak,” Gruadh said.

“Best I call my guard, too, if I am to be alone with you,” he returned. “We will talk of Moray and peace in Scotland, with the Normans at our gates.”

“Politics,” she said. “Not forgiveness.”

“As you wish,” the king muttered. “Come to my chamber when you are done coddling your granddaughter. Bring as many guards as you like. Margaret,” he said, turning toward the queen. “The girl-bard is yours to rescue, like your orphans and beggars. She will not be the first prisoner you have set free.”

“Sire,” Margaret said, “it would be a gesture of peace to release her from your custody as a royal hostage. And perhaps you and Lady Gruadh will agree to a truce.”

Eva looked at her grandmother, who remained expressionless. Gruadh was too proud to cave easily to any arrangement with Malcolm, but she would not jeopardize the moment.

“I have said what I will say.” Malcolm turned to stride heavily across the dais, beckoning to his men, many of whom followed. Some remained, including Tor.

Sighing out in relief, her knees near buckling beneath her, Eva leaned against Gruadh, her other arm still linked with the queen’s. They formed a circle for a moment, heads bowed together.

Margaret laughed, a sound of joy and relief. Then she stepped back. “I must go ask Brother Tor to confess me, for I did not tell all the truth about those pages.”

“Nor I—for I did take them,” Eva admitted. “And I am sorry for the trouble it caused.”

Gruadh turned to Margaret. “Lady, you saved Eva out of loyalty and kindness. I think there is much to admire about the foreign queen after all. We are surely in your debt.”

Margaret shook her head, embracing them both, and Eva felt her heart leap when she saw the two queens leaning together, whispering. Then Margaret stepped away and looked toward Brother Tor, who nodded and followed her from the hall.

“She will be up all night in prayer,” Eva said. “She will take herself to task for this.”

“It is not her doing.”

“She will think so nonetheless. Grandmother,” she said, “perhaps I should stay here.”

“In Malcolm’s court, rather than come home? If Malcolm lets me go,” she added.

“He will. He dare not hold you here and risk an uprising in the north. Margaret needs me for now—and I need to make peace with Malcolm myself before I go home.”

Gruadh sighed. “Just so. Eva, girl—a greater, kinder heart than mine showed you that need. Bravery I taught you, and boldness. But Margaret understands giving and compassion. Forgiveness, too. Stay, then, if you wish,” she added. “Will you wait for her brother to return?”

“Edgar will never come back. I feel it so. Not for me, at least.”

Gruadh took her hand. “We cannot know some things until we see them unfold.”

“I had best fetch my harp,” Eva said as she walked with her grandmother from the hall. “I will play for Margaret later. The music soothes her spirit.”

“She searches for peace, that one, yet never finds it, though it flows all around her to others. She cares so much, but must take care of herself as well. Tell her so, Eva,” Gruadh said.

“I am thinking of a praise song,” Eva mused, “just for the young queen, verses to tell of her good soul, with a sweet, quiet melody to suit her. And another song,” she added, “to praise my own heritage. I am the daughter and granddaughter of kings, and granddaughter and friend to the Queens of Scots. What do you think?”

“I am thinking they do need you here in this court. There is an enchantment in your music to soothe them all—though you must not let them know it,” she added.

“And if that fails, I will show them the pride and common sense of the north.”

“Now, that is something we can safely boast! Though I will admit, your foreign queen has a certain magic of her own. She teaches others to be better than they were. Even me, a little.”

“Best keep that to ourselves,” Eva said, as Gruadh smiled. “Do you want me to go with you to face Malcolm?”

“He and I have much to say, but we must say it alone. I do not forgive easily, and I will make that clear. But I will tell him that I am grateful.”

“For what?”

Gruadh did not reply, but tucked her arm in Eva’s to draw her close as they walked.

A medieval fairy tale: a princess, the eldest child of an exiled prince and an exotic noblewoman, raised in a pious royal court, sails with her family to the land of her father’s birth and the throne promised there. The father dies within a week of arriving, possibly poisoned, and his widow raises their children alone—two princesses and a small prince who is to inherit the throne. When the aging king dies a decade later, his enemies invade and the royal family must flee. Sailing over raging seas, they are shipwrecked along a northern coast belonging to a barbarian people.

That king, known to be a brute warrior, offers the fugitives sanctuary; he soon falls in love with the eldest princess, requesting her hand in marriage. Devout, educated, a beautiful young creature of a virtuous
and charitable character, the princess intends to become a nun. But for the good of all she is persuaded to marry the warrior-king.

Their marriage of near opposites produces eight healthy children—six boys and two girls—and the queen works tirelessly to bring charity, refined culture, and religious reform to her adopted nation, earning the love and trust of the people. The king and queen adore each other: she teaches him to read and turns his plain fortress into a palace; he translates for her when she lectures his foreign priests on theology; she feeds orphans with her own golden spoon and establishes a free ferry for pilgrims; she steals the king’s gold to give it to the poor and releases his ransomed prisoners, for which he affectionately calls her a little thief. He orders a cover of precious metal and gems made for her favorite old book; she gives away her garments; he adores her, and she loves him, their children, and her faith more than life. Their enduring affection for each other is widely admired.

Twenty-two years later, the king is killed in battle alongside his eldest son, and the queen dies of heartbreak within days. Their royal dynasty lasts generations, the queen is declared a saint by her descendants, the king is immortalized in literature, and their memory is still revered.

Fairy tales and romance, indeed—yet this is Margaret and Malcolm’s story in a nutshell, handed along by generations of historians and supported by medieval documents. Historians know a good deal about them by now, but their romantic story remains a solid foundation beneath both new and accumulating facts.

Margaret of Scotland has long fascinated historians as one of the most complex women in medieval history. What adds to her uniqueness is a rare detailed biography written by her personal confessor, along with annals and records by other chroniclers and historians both in her lifetime and after. More is known about Margaret than about most medieval queens. Her biographer, confessor, and friend, Bishop Turgot, was an Anglo-Dane who escaped Norman captivity in Lincoln to join the exiled Saxon royals in Scotland; he later became Bishop of Saint Andrews (at the time called Kilrymont or
Cill Rimhinn), and he was also prior of Durham. Margaret regarded Turgot as a close friend, and he was another who adored her. Several years after her death he wrote about her life for her daughter, Edith, known as Queen Matilda after she married Henry I of England.

Despite stilted medieval language and ideals, Turgot’s
Vita S. Margaretae
, which has survived in medieval copies, was based on his personal memories and brings Margaret to life as an intense young woman of piety, conscience, charity, compassion, and intelligence. “There was gravity in her very joy and something stately in her anger,” he wrote. She gave birth to eight healthy babies who thrived to adulthood (Edward, Edmund, Edgar, Aethelred, Alexander, David, Edith, and Mary—four kings of Scots, an abbot, and a queen of England among them) at a time when too many infants were lost early; that Margaret survived eight births was remarkable as well. As a mother, Margaret was attentive and affectionate, teaching her children lessons and manners but recommending that her beloved brood be whipped “when they were naughty, as frolicsome children will be,” Turgot tells us.

And she had a feisty side, pilfering her husband’s treasury and springing his prisoners loose, and disguising herself as a boy to enter a church forbidden to women. After losing her temper, she would ask for more penances, and she pressed Turgot to rebuke her if he saw fault in her behavior. When he said he could find no flaw, she gently chided him for negligence.

A certain mythology has developed around Margaret, in part due to the information gathered for her sainthood 150 years after her death. She kept an altar in a hidden cave near Dunfermline where she prayed and meditated; she fed and clothed the poor and provided for pilgrims; she lost her silver-cased Gospel while crossing a river, but by some miracle its delicate painted pages were unharmed (even more miraculously, the manuscript survived the ages and is now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford).

So much of Margaret’s life is known—almost too much to pack into a novel that covers just a portion of her life—and only some of it
can be real, the rest exaggeration. Certainly her medieval chroniclers applied to her the ideals of perfection that measured most medieval queens and noblewomen, based on the model of the Virgin Mary (the Marian cult was already developing in the eleventh century). Yet any woman with eight young children and several households to run was simply too busy to spend hours praying each day, which may be closer to the truth than some of the tales about her.

Turgot’s Margaret conveys as genuine, her charitable deeds believable, such as giving away the clothing on her back to the poor on outings (her courtiers did the same, embarrassed into it by her example), feeding orphans from her own dish, and creating Scotland’s “queen’s ferry,” free to pilgrims (bishops could pay or walk). She prayed, admonished, and celebrated with fanatical intensity, fasted frequently, and lost sleep to devotions, benefitting her soul and ruining her health.

Modern historians accept that Margaret was that good and more, but they point out her other side, too: a complex, highly educated woman obsessively driven by demanding socioreligious standards, regarding herself as an unworthy sinner (she loved bright colors, fine clothing, fancy tableware). She was proud and determined, elegant and compassionate, but the darker side of her character is seen in the demands she made of herself, including apparent anorexia in excessive response to the tenets of her faith.

Raised in cosmopolitan courts, she knew that her roughshod Scottish husband’s reputation needed polishing. Margaret crafted Malcolm’s transformation from warrior-barbarian to worldly medieval king most deliberately. “By her care and labor the king himself, laying aside the barbarity of his manners, became more gentle and civilized,” wrote Simeon of Durham, a probable acquaintance of Turgot.

Almost singlehandedly, Margaret brought Celtic Scotland into the medieval age—encouraging trade, raising standards in the royal households with fine dress and luxury goods, and bringing Roman rite and Benedictine guidance more cohesively into Scotland, a land previously content with the Celtic church. She argued theology with
Celtic priests—one session lasted three days as she debated Lenten observance and other differences—and she founded Benedictine churches. In a sense, she was a missionary who worried about Scottish souls.

Her increasing physical frailty is mentioned by Turgot, and her death in her mid-forties, said to be from heartbreak after the deaths of Malcolm and their son Edward, may have been due to a heart damaged by habitual fasting; even her priests, said Turgot, would beg her to eat something when she stubbornly deprived herself.

Given all that, I knew that a novel about Margaret could become a doorstop of a thousand pages unless it explored only part of her life. Enchanted by her history and curious to know more, I began the research while I wrote
Lady Macbeth
. For Margaret, I focused the story on her arrival in Scotland, her courtship with Malcolm, and the first few years of their marriage, babies and miracles and all. In the young queen, I wanted to show the elements that would create the mature queen of the historical record.