Queen macbeth, p.10
Queen Macbeth, page 10
Everything changes on a blustery day in the spring of our second year on Caisteal Chiosmuil. The farm lad from Loch Leven arrives on a birlinn from Mull. Malcolm is on the move again, he tells us. He’s determined to become king of all Scotland. Word is he even thinks he can drive the Vikings out.
‘Nobody believes he can do that. But you have friends on Mull and in Glencoe. They should be warned to be vigilant,’ he tells us.
Eithne is stricken by his news. She hurries from our cottage to take refuge in her room of herbs. Aife watches her go, her sorrow evident in her face. ‘She takes things so personally,’ she sighs. ‘It’s as if by seeing it in her head, she blames herself when it happens.’
I should have paid more attention to Aife’s words. The morning tide washes Eithne’s body up by the pier. Her gathering bag is strapped across her body, and it’s filled with stones.
Aife is inconsolable. ‘I couldn’t reach her,’ she mumbles into my breast as I hold her close as once I used to hold Lulach. ‘She was lost in her own world. She kept coming back to her part in the death of Gille Coemgáin and his men. “Everything bad came from that,” she said. And now they’re all dead – Ligach, Angus, Lulach, all the battlefield dead.’
‘She didn’t make it happen,’ I tell her.
She pulls away, face wet with tears. ‘You think I don’t know that? You think I didn’t tell her that every day?’ Grief has sharpened her tone. ‘You think I don’t carry the guilt? Imagine for a moment that Macbeth understood the burden of his actions, really grasped what he put you through. How would you feel if that was his body washed up on the shore?’
I’m no stranger to thoughts like these, but I’ve always kept them locked away. I am a queen; they have to be able to look to me for guidance. A queen has to stand strong, above the devastation. A queen has to be the future, not the past. I draw Aife close again, but I know it means little to her. That fire that warmed and lit up all of us has gone out. Once we were four; now we are two, and the glue that held us fast has crumbled. Aife is not the only one whose tattered heart hurts.
Later, I turn to Macbeth as we wait for sleep. I tempt fate one last time. ‘I have a plan,’ I say
We woke one morning to the news that Siward and Malcolm had marched north with a sizeable army. Our outriders told us that his endeavours in the south had not brought him the successes he craved and the English king had warned him off. So he’d decided Scotland was an easier plum to pick.
Macbeth rode out with his strongest war band; every man who could wield a sword, a bow or a spear rallied to his call. Under cover of darkness, the forward party arrived on horseback outside Siward’s camp at the Seven Sleepers by Dunsinane and attacked. It was a fierce battle, no quarter asked or given. Siward suffered the worst personal losses early in the fighting. Not only did his son Osbjorn die; so did his heir, his sister’s son Sigurd. His grief acted as a spur to his own battle rage, and although we managed to hold our kingdom that day, we had lost many of our best warriors.
We knew Siward would return. Our outriders reported that he was making further alliances. Malcolm, of course, was still his lapdog. But MacDuff had also joined Siward’s cause. Macbeth knew we were outnumbered but he was determined not to yield.
Our entire kingdom lived on the edge of alert for months, waiting for Siward’s grief to manifest itself as battlefield fury.
It happened on Saturday, 15 August, a date I will never forget. The two sides clashed in a wood at Lumphanen; it was little more than a skirmish, with both main armies some distance away. But it was enough for Siward to strike what he thought was a fatal blow to my beloved husband.
Macbeth’s men formed a phalanx round his body, bravely fighting off the enemy. They used the cover of the woodland to escape with his body and spread the word that he was dead. Siward had triumphed and Malcolm was hailed King of Scotland, third of that name.
The MacNeil rode personally to my side to break the news that Macbeth had been mortally wounded on the battlefield. I was mad with grief, but the ever-practical Ligach took note of my husband’s final instructions, that I should flee with my women and Angus to the Chaldeans at St Serf’s and demand sanctuary. It was a plan we’d made after Dunsinane, not really believing we would need it.
We were good at plans; but this was one I never wanted to execute.
I’m looking out across the water. I sometimes think if I added up the hours I’ve spent gazing across water I’d have a whole second life. My childhood, staring down the Moray Firth, learning to tell one dolphin from another. The river that ran past Gille Coemgáin’s palisade. The lochan next to our stronghold as Mormaer of Moray then King and Queen of Scotland. Loch Leven, my place of exile with my women. And now the harbour of Barra. Beyond it, to the west, the mighty ocean leading to the edge of the world and Tír na hÓige, the mythical land of eternal youth and beauty where I like to imagine Eithne dwells.
Macbeth touches my shoulder. I hadn’t been aware of his approach, which is strange because I usually sense it. I lean back against him. ‘Are you ready?’
‘I’ve made my farewells.’ I turn to face the shore, where a birlinn is casting off and making towards us. A dozen volunteers at the oars, each a seasoned warrior, all of them young strong and single. It’s too late now for any of us to change our minds.
The boat draws alongside, and we board. I check that the furs and supplies are loaded; Macbeth checks the weapons and the gold. At the last possible minute, Aife comes trotting down the path and leaps aboard. She is to travel with us as far as Malin Head, the very tip of Ireland. From there she will find a convent. I was taken aback at this proposal; I had never considered Aife a candidate for a life of contemplation.
‘I’ve come to understand that it’s all that’s left to me without Eithne,’ she says. ‘I’ll pray for the pair of you counterfeit Christians.’ Her smile takes any harshness from the words.
We set sail at the turning of the tide. I take a last look at the familiar contours and colours of my native land, then I turn my face to the open seas.
We are bound south, for Rome, for warm winters and sweet wine. We have letters from the Bishops of the Isles and Aberdeen, commending our generosity to the church and our humble piety. The bishops remind His Holiness of our previous pilgrimage and ask him to assume the role of our protector in Rome.
We will be safe there, I believe. I know I have thought myself safe before, but even if our enemies discover where we are, they must realise we offer no threat. A pair of deposed monarchs in exile with no army at our back; Siward and Malcolm will have enough to occupy them in their unruly realms to bother with vengeance. Theirs is the power now, but ours is the glory.
We were born into a land riven with petty feuds and ambition, and we united it under one banner and called it Scotland. And by the end, we’d created an object of envy that we couldn’t hold on to. So we say farewell to the beloved country; we can be proud that we leave it stronger and richer than we found it. Who can say whether it was worth the cost?
Later, once we settle, we’ll entrust Macbeth’s closest attendant with one final task. When Macbeth dies, his heart should be removed and returned to Mull for burial in his own lands. I care not where I am buried; my divided heart will always lie with Macbeth, with Lulach and with my women. And with poor faithful Angus, whose unfailing loyalty set our story in motion and whose blood paid our ransom. For blood will have blood.
Glossary
auld
old
bannock
a round flatbread made from oatmeal, flour and buttermilk, cooked on a griddle or a cast-iron pan. Usually cut into quarters, split and spread with butter.
barley bree
a primitive form of whisky
beldam
an assertive older woman
besom
an assertive younger woman
bide, biding
to reside or remain
birlinn
a small galley or longboat with a single sail and oars
bleezing
bragging, showing off
bonnie, bonny
beautiful, attractive
braies
breeches
bunnet
flat cap, Tam O’Shanter
cac-shiubhal
diarrhoea (Gaelic)
canny
careful, considered
chaps
knocks
drop spindle
a simple and portable method of spinning yarn
druimean
Mid-Perthshire Gaelic for hill ridge, the source of the place name Drymen
dugs
breasts
fechter
fighter, warrior (bonnie fechter: admirable fighter)
fidchell
chess
filidh
bard
girnie
peevish, complaining
houghmagandie
sexual intercourse
jessies
weak or cowardly males
lèine
linen tunic
machair
low-lying grassland
madder
a herbaceous plant that produces a red dye
merrels
a board game also known as Nine Men’s Morris
milk gowans
dandelions
Moravian
a person from Moray
Mormaer
leader, ruler
pee-the-bed
dandelion
pile wort
lesser celandine
pintle
penis
pottage
thick soup or stew of meat/fish/vegetables/legumes
ramsons
wild garlic
siller
money (from ‘silver’)
Slàinte mhath
‘Good health’ – a traditional Gaelic toast, to which the reply is ‘Slàinte mhor’, meaning ‘Great health’
slipe
sledge or a drag
smirr
a fine, penetrating rain
zibeline
the fur of the sable
Acknowledgements
I’m grateful to Jamie Crawford and his colleagues at Birlinn for giving me the opportunity for such a fascinating gig. So much of Scottish history has been twisted into narratives that bear little relationship to the truth, and the story of Lady Macbeth and her husband is one of the more egregious examples of that. I hope this little book gives a more authentic picture of one of the most stable reigns of medieval Scotland.
Thanks are due to my in-laws, Mary and Paul Willcock, who lent us their apartment in southern Spain while I immersed myself in the past. It was certainly the warmest writing room I’ve ever had, and a view of the sea is always a fillip to my process!
Thanks also to Jo Sharp and Nicola Sturgeon whose animated dinner conversation resolved an awkward plot point for me. It’s amazing how a few glasses of red wine release the imagination . . .
I’m grateful to Matt Lewis’s endlessly informative podcast, Gone Medieval, which sent me down an entire warren of rabbit holes. And to Janina Ramirez’s encyclopaedic Femina, a fascinating journey into the lives of women in the Middle Ages.
Thanks to the team at Birlinn for all their hard work to make this happen. And thanks too to Anne O’Brien, whose copy-editing I have learned to lean on over many years!
I owe much more than that to Jo. Her belief in me is what keeps me going over the next hurdle. She picks me up when I fall down and always encourages me onwards. More than that, she makes me laugh – at myself, and at the rest of the world.
‘One of the most interesting developments
in Scottish publishing’
The Scotsman
In Darkland Tales, the best modern Scottish authors offer dramatic retellings of stories from the nation’s history, myth and legend. These are landmark moments from the past, viewed through a modern lens and alive to modern sensibilities. Each Darkland Tale is sharp, provocative and darkly comic, mining that seam of sedition and psychological drama that has always featured in the best of Scottish literature.
Rizzio Denise Mina
Hex Jenni Fagan
Nothing Left to Fear from Hell Alan Warner
Columba’s Bones David Greig
Queen Macbeth Val McDermid
Val McDermid, Queen Macbeth
