Macbeth the King

NIGEL TRANTER

Copyright © 1978 by Nigel Tranter

Published by Coronet Books, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

First published in Great Britain 1978 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

Coronet edition 1994

Printed in Great Britain

ISBN-10: 0340265442

ISBN-13: 978-0340265444

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening

To
write any
historical novel about actual personages, against the background of their deeds and times, with any integrity, demands not only much research but considerable deduction, assumption and sheer informed invention, since so much is never recorded. To write a novel on the life of MacBeth, set in the mists of eleventh-century Celtic Scotland, demands much more than the normal. Especially when so much has to be "unlearned" on account of Shakespeare's tremendous play, brilliant drama but a travesty of history and of MacBeth's and his wife's characters and careers. Few historical royal couples, surely, have been so grievously traduced.

Much that follows has to be personal interpretation and guesswork, for in the main only the major features and details have survived the nine centuries and the deliberate destruction of records, by the Romish churchmen, Edward the Hammer of the Scots, the Reformation upheavals, and so on. Nevertheless, enough remains to reveal a strange and exciting story of strong characters in a period of drastic change, and a notable man-and-wife partnership. Where our own chroniclers fail us, or have been silenced, those of Ireland and the makers of the Norse, Orkney and Icelandic sagas, sometimes come to the rescue.

There remain strange lacunae and questions, to which no certain answer can be given. For instance, was Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, MacBeth's half-brother (as I have made him) or only his cousin? If Malcolm the Second had only two daughters, as is generally accepted, then these two men
must
have been half-brothers. Again, when did Gruoch, Queen of Scots, die? No amount of research has uncovered this date. Yet, despite Shakespeare's "Lady MacBeth", she was a figure of great importance and refining influence in Scotland for seventeen years.

It all makes the unravelling of the story the more intriguing, to myself at least.

Nigel Tranter

Aberlady, 1977

In Order of Appearance

MacBeth mac Finlay
: Mormaor of Ross, son of Finlay,

Mormaor of Moray.

Neil (Nathrach) mac Finlay
: Illegitimate half-brother.

Thorfinn Sigurdson, Earl of Orkney
: Son of the Princess

Donada, MacBeth's mother, by an earlier husband.

Thorkell Fosterer
: Viking foster-father of Thorfinn, and warrior.

Gruoch Nic Bodhe
: Princess. Widow of Gillacomgain, Mormaor of Moray, granddaughter of Kenneth the Third.

Lulach mac Gillacomgain
: Son of above, truest heir to the Scots throne.

Bethoc nic Malcolm
: Princess. Wife of Crinan, Mormaor of Atholl and Abbot of Dunkeld.

Malcolm the Second
: High King of Scots, by-named Foiranach, or the Destroyer.

Echmarcach, King of Dublin and Man
: A vassal prince of Malcolm's.

Duncan mac Crinan
: Prince of Strathclyde and Cumbria. Favourite grandson of the King. Later King Duncan the First.

Duncan Macduff, Mormaor of Fife
: Premier Scottish noble, Chief of Clan Duff.
Cormac, Thane of Glamis
: Important noble and veteran soldier.

Malduin, Bishop of St. Andrews
: Ard Episcop, or senior bishop of the Celtic Church. Chancellor of the realm.

King Canute
, or
Knut
: Self-styled Emperor of the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians, King of England and Denmark.

Malcolm mac Duncan
: Illegitimate son of the Prince of Strathclyde by the miller's daughter of Forteviot. Later Malcolm the Third (Canmore).

Gunnar Hound Tooth
: Viking captain.

Ingebiorg Finnsdotter
: Wife of Earl Thorfinn.

Malmore, Abbot of Iona
: Co-Arb. Head of the Celtic Church.

Macdowall, Lord of galloway:

Cathail, Abbot of Scone
: Keeper of the Stone of Destiny.

Farquhar O'Beolain
: Hereditary Abbot of Applecross and progenitor of Clan Ross.

Lachlan, Thane of Buchan:

Martacus, Mormaor of Mar:

Harald Cleft Chin
: Viking captain.

Robartach, Abbot of Iona
: Malmore's successor.

Ewan, Abbot of Abernethy
: High Judex or Justiciar.

Crinan, Mormaor of Atholl
: Father of King Duncan.

Paul Thorfinnson
: Later Earl of Orkney.

Edmond, Bishop of Durham
: Saxon prelate of the Church of Rome.

Sven Estridson, King of Denmark
: Canute's nephew.

Estrid Svensdotter
: Mother of above and sister of Canute.

Pope Leo the Ninth:

Donald mac Duncan:
Elder legitimate son of King Duncan. Later King Donald Ban.

'MacBeth the King!' they shouted. 'Hail the King! Hail the King I Long live MacBeth!' and drank deep, each to empty his cup to the dregs. MacBeth alone remained seated. When at length the hubbub subsided, he rose slowly. 'My friends, I thank you all,' he said husky-voiced. 'You do me too much honour. I accept your naming. I shall seek to be a true and good King, honest, just, a protector of the weak, and as strong as God in His wisdom allows. But—I am not the King until I am crowned at Scone. Then will be time enough to hail me...'

The tall, fair-haired
man stood on the high cliff-top amongst the wheeling gulls, grey eyes narrowed against the glitter of the sun on the wrinkled sea as he gazed south-eastwards.

"I count twenty-eight sail," he said, in the soft, lilting Gaelic, which might have seemed to come oddly from so strong-featured a young man, so deep of voice and of such strange, quiet but withheld inner force. "His full strength, I think. Which must mean...retiral."

"Retiral, yes. Retiral, to be sure!" his companion agreed, without agreement. "With lesser men it might be called flight. But the Raven Feeder never flees. He but retires to Cromarty to rest himself!"

"You have an over-sharp tongue, Neil Nathrach. Hold it."

"Yes, my lord Mormaor." The speaker, holding the two shaggy Highland garrons, grinned wickedly. He was an extraordinarily different-seeming man to be so closely related to the other, slight, dark, wiry, quick and flashing-eyed, the dark Celt indeed, as against the fair.
Nathrach
meant serpent. Yet they had had the same father.

His half-brother stared out to sea wordless, assessing, deducing. He had a great gift for silence. But at length he spoke again.

"I see no pursuit. So the King bides at Inverness. Meantime. We need not sound the call-to-arms yet, I think. How say you?" Neil Nathrach made no answer. "You think otherwise?"

"I am holding my tongue, MacBeth mac Finlay."

"Watch, then—or one day I shall cut it out." That was said as softly as the rest, but flatly also. And the dark man's mobile features tensed suddenly. He knew that the other was capable of doing it.

He swallowed, and found the horses in need of attention.

They stood on the summit of the South Sutor of Cromarty, the taller of the two towering rock bastions which guarded the narrow entrance to the Cromarty Firth, lofty, windswept, spectacular. Southwards, across the wide Moray Firth, the great land of Moray stretched from green plain to blue mountains, a noble prospect; eastward only the Norwegian Sea. And behind them their own firth opened to what was really a vast landlocked bay, at the head of which stood Inverpeffery, that the Vikings called Dingwall, capital of the mormaorship and province of Ross, one of the seven lesser kingdoms of Alba, or Scotland.

MacBeth—more properly
Mac Beatha,
Son of Life—was calculating again. He reckoned, at the pace Thorfinn was apt to drive his longships' oarsmen, that they would make their landfall in well under the hour.

"Back to Rosemarkyn, Neil," he said. "Tell Malduin mac Nechtan to stand down his companies, meantime. And to send word to Inverpeffery. A guard of five score at the boat-strand. To greet our guests. Take both horses. I shall not need mine."

"Yes, lord."

MacBeth looked after the other as he mounted and rode off, and a faint smile played about his firm mouth.

Soon he set off downhill, long-strided, the two miles to the small haven of Cromarty, or Sikkersand as the Norse, had it, in the jaws of the firth-mouth.

He had not long to wait before the first of the fleet of long-ships, the dreaded Viking host, appeared round the headland, driven fiercely by all but naked oarsmen, four to an oar, twenty-benched, the great single square sails above painted with the black raven symbol of Orkney, the high-beaked prows open-mouthed in savage menace. The first and largest vessel turned landwards, more a galley than a simple longship, with forty double-banked oars. It flew at its single, central masthead a great white banner bearing the spread-winged raven of the Earl Thorfinn Sigurdson, the Raven Feeder, of Orkney and Caithness, the most dreaded emblem but one in a score of kingdoms.

Only this one long, low vicious-looking craft turned into Cromarty's haven, where MacBeth stood alone on the strand, backed at a respectful distance by a cluster of watchful and none too happy fishermen, whose every instinct was to flee from that raven symbol, rather than trust their lord.

The galley's snarling-dragon prow had barely made contact with the shingle when an enormous man leapt down from between the ranked, colourful shields, into the shallows, and came striding ashore. The quiet waiting man was tall and well-built!, but this newcomer made him seem of very modest size, the great golden helmet with the flaring black wings adding to the impression. Whereas MacBeth was dressed simply in a belted tunic of saffron linen, its lower half forming a knee-length kilt above bare legs and sandals, his only sign of rank a dirk-belt of solid gold, this other was in the full panoply of war, in the Norse fashion, black leather long tunic studded with metal scales as armour, breeches bound to the knee with leather strapping, golden earl's shoulder-belt supporting a huge wide-bladed sword, bare hairy arms hung with bracelets of gold and bronze, the medals of his kind, white bearskin cloak hanging from one shoulder by a great jewelled clasp. This man, unlike most of his race, was dark-haired, black as one of his own ravens, with forked beard, down-turning moustaches and the hottest of pale-blue eyes.

"The Son of Life himself—looking still as death! As ever!" this apparition cried, in a voice to match his appearance, mighty, harsh, yet in as good Gaelic as MacBeth's own. "Smile, man—laugh, at sight of me!"

"May any man smile at sight of Thorfinn Raven Feeder?"