Queen Macbeth, page 3
Time to be the devoted wife.
Brendan’s snoring is more subdued, thankfully. Against the background rumble, Aife prepares dinner. We dare not light the cooking fire; this barn is supposed not to be occupied, and we will take no chances of telltale smoke while there are strangers on the isle. But there are the remains of a ham and some lentil pottage which is as tasty cold. We have vegetables pickled by Aife last summer, and oatcakes. We will not go hungry.
Whether we will feel like eating is another matter. We are all taut as bowstrings primed to loose our arrows into the hearts of our enemies. Ligach paces the floor, tablet-weaving a belt, its pattern a sequence of perfect chevrons in shades of cream and brown. When the world ends and we are all made perfect, Ligach will still be weaving, only with gold and silver threads.
Eithne sits cross-legged, obsessively shuffling and rolling her runes. What she sees there she does not share. I’m glad she’s keeping her own counsel, though I fear it’s because all she can see is bad news. At last, she sits back on her heels and replaces her runes in their soft calfskin pouch. Her face gives nothing away.
We pick at our food, ears alert for any sound. Brendan drones on, now muttering softly every few minutes.
‘Is he waking?’ I ask.
Eithne shakes her head. ‘Dreaming. He’s lost in his past, dredging up old loves and losses. The poppy works on us like that – it takes us to a healing place where we can mend the old wounds that still trouble us. That’s why it’s so seductive, so addictive. Why I am careful not to give too much too often.’
There have been times when I would have loved that sweet release from pain, but I’m grateful she never led me down that path. In the torture grip of childbirth, I screamed for its release, and she refused, though I could see even at the time it was a hard choice for her. But her refusal also scares me – it means she believes there are worse pains that may yet come to afflict me. I did not think there could be worse griefs to bear than losing Macbeth.
After Aife decides that we’ve all given up on eating, she clears the food away and we retreat to the main bedchamber. It has no windows, so we can have some light without betraying our presence. Together, we snuggle like puppies, a bumpy tumulus of furs that always brings us comfort when we need it. We’re all tired after the heart-stopping moments of the day, but none of us is ready for sleep. The presentiment of worse to come keeps us all sharply awake.
‘I feel a tingling in my thumbs,’ Eithne says. ‘Like when you touch the hairs on a nettle leaf. It’s a warning that something bad is on its way.’
Ligach gives an exasperated sigh. ‘That’s not helpful, Eithne. We all know the men in the boat are not messengers of joy. A small child could tell that from the slump of their shoulders and the heaviness of their steps. Vague hints about wickedness only make me more anxious.’
‘Don’t.’ Aife leaps to the defence of her love, ever loyal. ‘She tells us what she senses, she doesn’t choose it. You welcome it when it’s news that suits you, but we don’t get to pick and choose. We want the good, we have to live with the bad.’
Ligach harrumphs and shifts away from Aife and towards me.
‘This isn’t the time for squabbling like chickens in the yard,’ I tell them. ‘Whatever is coming for us, we need to face it with a solid front. I am your queen, and you are my shield in battle. We may not always agree, but we are as one. We stand together, rise or fall.’
Grunts of agreement from all three. We can’t help feeling fear, but we can take strength from each other. After the battle at Lumphanen, when I lost Macbeth and we all lost so much of our lives, it was my women who stood at my side and my back, not armed warriors. When my beloved’s regent arrived hotfoot from the battle with the news and the instruction that I must escape into exile, I wanted instead to rage at the heavens and run to kill Malcolm with my own hands. But my faithful trio wrapped me in their stalwart courage and bore me away here, where they knew I would find protection.
I remember that now, and know that however tightly wound fear has made us, we can still survive. We are like the screw on the arbalest, our courage wound to the sticking place, refusing to bend or break.
The sound of the latch is barely loud enough to be heard above Brendan’s noises and through the wooden walls of our chamber, but we are all so familiar with it that we identify it at once. I scramble to my feet, Aife to my left, Eithne to my right, as Ligach strides for the inner door.
If this is the end, we will face it together.
I’m told some men are so drained by the act of houghmagandie that they fall fast asleep as soon as they’ve spilled their seed, sometimes while their exhausted pintle is still inside their woman. Not so Gille Coemgáin. For him, a fuck always acted as an alarum. No sooner had he grunted his way to the end of his efforts than he’d leap to his feet as sudden as if he’d been stabbed in the buttocks by a ram’s horn. Maybe that’s why he never managed to plant a bairn in my womb – men are supposed to be emptied out by a fuck, but Gille reacted like a man whose energy had been filled to the brim.
There were never words of tenderness or even thanks for me. I might as well have been a whore for all the closeness we shared in the bedroom. He’d spread my legs and plunge in like a beast. I learned to use my own fingers to ease his passage after the first few times when he left me sore and bruised. A welcome lesson from Aife, who knows better than most what spares a woman from the worst.
At least our morning-after fuck took his mind off whatever Eithne might have seen in the runes. He pulled off his nightshirt without a word, wiped himself on its tail, and dressed for the hunt in his finest leather jerkin and breeches of warm woollen cloth Ligach had woven.
‘Where will you take Macbeth today?’ I asked.
‘Braga tells me there are deer to be had in the river wood. Better on the north bank than on this side, but I’m not going to let him at the best of our hunting on the first day.’ He gave a cunning smile. ‘Let him work for it.’
‘Work for it how?’
He cinched his belt over his generous belly. ‘He needs to show me he’s worthy of the best chase. I want to see whether he’s got fire in his belly or just in his legs. Otherwise he can fuck off back to Mull with his troop of jessies.’ He paused on his way out, eyeing me from head to foot. ‘Still a fine pair of dugs on you, Gruoch. About time they were put in the service of my bairn.’
He’d started making comments like this more often. It was unsettling. I know too many stories of infertile wives cast aside – or worse. And there were no secrets in our hall. Men had begun to snigger behind his back, women to raise their eyebrows at my monthly courses. Sooner or later some child would repeat a bawdy couplet without understanding its meaning and his humiliation would put a number on my days.
I watched from his window as they rode out to the hunt, Macbeth and Gille at the head. The blaze of red a contrast to the midnight black. Slowly, I dressed and walked back across the yard to my room, head held high. Aife looked up from kneading bread as I entered. It’s not really something she should have been undertaking; we had cooks and bakers for such mundane tasks. But there was no denying her bread tasted lighter and fresher than anybody else’s. So she supplied our top table in spite of the master baker’s muttering that there must be witchcraft involved. Thankfully, he was known as a girnie auld fool, so nobody paid attention.
But if I were to lose my place . . . Eithne would be open to allegations of dealing with dark forces. She and Aife would be accused of unnatural practices. And Ligach? She has a way with animals. The hounds love her; when the ewes are screaming with a difficult delivery, she calms them and births the lambs. Neither the huntsman nor the shepherds appreciated her skills. They’d happily have taken the losses of a few extra lambs to avoid being shown up.
Living with such anxiety was draining us. Something had to change.
The next thing we hear is the unmistakable call of a tawny owl – or rather Angus’s version of it. He uses it to identify himself or to warn us of danger. We exchange looks of uncertainty. Which is it?
Ligach inches the door open just as Angus reaches it, almost knocking her off her feet as he breenges in. She gives him a light punch on the shoulder. ‘Fool, you nearly stopped my heart.’
He raises his hands, pretending to stave off an attack. ‘How else was I to warn you it was me and not somebody you’d be a lot less pleased to see?’
‘What have you learned?’ I demand. ‘Come, sit with us and tell everything.’
He does as he is told, settling cross-legged and solemn-faced at the end of the bed. Ligach leans into him, head against his arm. ‘My lady, my queen. The news . . . the news is as bad as it could be. Malcolm marched his army north and met with King Lulach and his men at Strathbogie.’
‘That’s a long march,’ Aife mutters. ‘Malcolm wasn’t giving up.’
Angus takes a deep breath. ‘Lulach fought hard but the numbers were against him. My queen, his men were routed and the king . . . the king is dead.’
His words strike like an arrow of ice in my chest. I thought I had prepared myself for this. But nothing prepares a mother for the death of her child. It runs counter to the natural order; why should I be alive when my son is food for the crows on some distant battlefield? I was already mourning one king; now I must shed tears over a second. Was it not enough that Lulach’s father had died defending our land? How much of our blood did Malcolm crave? It stabbed me to the very heart.
When Eithne had warned me that Malcolm intended to prevent my son’s coronation, I understood her to mean the wider sense of his kingship. I refused to believe it although a deeper part of me understood he might yet lose his throne and his life. Now that I must face it, I feel a strange calm. The worst has happened. Nothing can hurt me more than this, and yet I am still alive, still breathing.
Still able to speak. ‘So these men – they’re not from Lulach’s army? They’re from Malcolm?’
Angus swallows hard and nods. ‘Aye, my lady.’
‘Are they searching for me?’
He looks ready to burst into tears. ‘Malcolm knows Moray would rally behind you if you sent out the call—’
‘There’s damn all left to rally now.’ Aife utters the bitter truth we all know.
Angus glowers at her but continues. ‘He’s sent out scouts across Moray and into Alba and Dál Riata with a price on your head. The two who arrived here today – they’re one of those search parties.’
‘Are they here out of obligation or do they really think we might be here?’
Angus shrugs. ‘They know of the long-standing connection between you and Macbeth and the abbey here. The granting of the land. That’s why they were sent here first. But they’re not acting as if they expect to find you here. More that they’re doing what they’ve been ordered. They told the abbot they will continue to Abernethy tomorrow if he can give them horses.’
I sense a collective breathing out. All we have to do now is be still and wait till morning. Aife and Eithne embrace, Angus puts an arm round Ligach, and I am the only one with both hands free when the door swings open.
The hunting party were gone for most of the day. It was impossible to tell from that alone whether it had been a good day or a bad; we were all four of us on edge,
bad-tempered with each other, glum and restless. Dusk had almost faded into darkness when we heard the soft thud of hooves on the hard-packed earth inside the palisade. I left my quarters to greet them, my women at my back.
As soon as they reached the glow of the courtyard, we saw we could all relax. They were obviously in high spirits, Macbeth and Gille at the head of the unruly troop, all grinning satisfaction and comradeship. Behind them, bumping along in the wake of their dray horses, came the slipes carrying their spoils. As they drew level with us, we could see a pile of stags and hinds. Nothing unusual there. But pride of place went to a pair of wild boars, one massive and bloodied from the hunt, the other trimmer and likely younger. Its meat would be tender enough to roast directly on the fire; the other would require Eithne’s skill with her herbs and the brewer’s finest cider to bring it to its best.
A significant part of the larder that Gille had ordered for the feast had been replenished in a single day. Meat would be gorged on over the next few days, then dried, cured and salted for the leaner days when the hunting brought only rabbits, grouse and ptarmigan. I couldn’t recall a day in the field as successful as this.
The two leaders dismounted, Macbeth still with a spring in his legs, Gille more laboured. They clapped their arms round each other’s shoulders and stumbled towards us. I could smell the sweat and the ale while they were still a few strides from us. ‘Our cousin is quite the hunter,’ Gille shouted, a slur in his voice. ‘A mad, reckless fool, but a lucky one too.’ He prodded Macbeth in the ribs. ‘I was sure that big bastard boar would have you on its tusks.’ Back to me. ‘But our fancy-dancer cousin skipped away and sliced the life from it as it bolted past.’
Macbeth grinned like a small boy who’s caught the biggest pike in the pond. ‘Not lucky, Gille. Possessed of perfect judgement.’
Gille snorted. ‘Aye, you keep thinking that, Deircc. We’ll see who survives longest, the lucky or the canny.’ He reached for me and crushed me to his chest, planting a slobbery kiss on my cheek.
I thought I was the only one who heard the threat lying under those words till I caught a sudden wariness in Macbeth’s eyes.
Gille let me go and turned to face our people, who had swiftly materialised from homes and workplaces at the arrival of the hunters. ‘You are the fortunate ones,’ he declaimed. ‘You’re the clan of Gille Coemgáin, the well-bred and the well-fed of Moray. Tonight, we will eat well, thanks to my prowess in the hunt.’
They cheered. Of course, they did. They knew only too well which side of the bed was the comfortable one. The hunters dispersed, their arms around each other, Macbeth’s men already best of friends with the Mormaer’s boys. They’d be drinking horn for horn as soon as they’d stripped off their hunting leathers. By the time the food arrived, they’d stuff themselves without tasting a morsel. But they’d be happy, satisfied with their manly accomplishments. I turned to Ligach and said softly, ‘Tell our women to keep their distance. I don’t want the visitors thinking they can help themselves to everything under the Mormaer’s wing.’
She nodded and moved away on her mission.
‘Eithne, talk to the cooks, see what they need from you to prepare and preserve this mountain of meat. Aife, with me.’ I led the way back to our quarters. I wanted it noted where I went and with whom.
‘What is it you need from me?’ Aife asked as soon as we were alone.
‘I need to meet with Macbeth. In secret. Nobody must know. I mean that, Aife. Our lives depend on it.’
Her smile was knowing. ‘You have a plan.’
‘The very bare beginnings of a plan.’
‘Eithne swears she has a love potion.’
‘She only swears that to fools who have coin in their purse. I have no need of Eithne here. I know well enough how to make a man loose his restraints and beg, against all his judgement. So where is the place for such a meeting?’
She sat down and cupped her chin in her hands. She spoke slowly, thinking out loud. I did not interrupt. ‘It must be within the palisade. Darkling, out of the glow of the torches . . . Behind the stables, where Beorth keeps the horses’ saddles and bridles? Not before the meal, though; Beorth will still be busy after the hunt. Not during the meal either, for Gille will keep a close watch on Macbeth. And he always keeps a watch on you . . .’ She frowned and sighed. ‘He never wants you after feasting, does he?’
I shook my head. ‘No. The one time he did, his prick lay shrivelled like a pickled carrot. I tried. All the tricks I’ve heard the women blether about. But nothing worked. He raged at me, called me every kind of beldam under the moon. He blamed me to my face, but since that time, he’s never ordered me to him after feasting.’
‘So he has no eyes on you after the feasting is over and we retire to our rooms?’
I nodded. ‘But his men watch me.’
Aife closed her eyes and considered. She thinks like a hawk; when she considers a place, it’s as if she can see it mapped out before her as a bird of prey would. Every dwelling, every workshop, the great hall, the passages that run among them, every way in and out of the courtyard. Macbeth’s men are camped between the palisade and the backside of the great hall, that much I did know. But the details were a mystery to me.
At length she opened her eyes and fixed her steady grey gaze on mine. ‘Macbeth is lodged on the opposite side of the great hall to Gille?’
I nodded. ‘Where all honoured guests lie.’
‘But there would be nothing suspicious if he went among his own men after the feasting?’
I shrugged. ‘It would be natural enough.’
‘If he walked out wearing a bunnet over his hair and a cloak . . .’ Thinking out loud. ‘And if a man wearing the cloak and bunnet returned to his lodging a few minutes later, the watchers would believe it was Macbeth returning?’
‘I suppose so . . .’ I began to grasp where Aife was heading.
‘Macbeth could cut through his men’s tents, round behind the stables and make his way to Beorth’s tack room.’
‘So he could. But Aife, how am I supposed to get there?’
A deep sigh. ‘You think Gille’s men still watch our door after we have come to bed?’
‘I know they do. Gille is a man steeped in suspicion, you know that.’
Aife growls in the back of her throat, then gets up and goes to the window at the rear of our outer chamber. It’s too high for her to see out of, but she pulls a stool towards her, brushes the curtain to one side and peers out into the darkness. There are no buildings between us and the palisade; we are at the rear of the compound, and to get behind us an enemy would have to fight their way past everyone else. ‘So he comes to you,’ she said without a quaver in her voice. ‘We drop a stool down to him and he climbs in.’ She turned back and stepped lightly down. ‘That would work.’
