Macbeth the King (20 page)

It was while they were awaiting an answer to this new delaying tactic that an urgent message came from Thorfinn. Duncan, with the battle still undecided though going against him, had fled the scene, leaving most of his force still fighting strongly, and abandoning his shipping, or such of it as survived. He was heading at speed eastwards, with some six or seven hundred of his best men as bodyguard. He could be making for Spynie. Or seeking to join Echmarcach's force. Or both.

MacBeth acted immediately. He dared not take too many men from the Lossie line, outnumbered two to one as they were already. But he might spare, say, 300. Summoning Brodie to take command at the central apex, he left him his banner, so as not to give Echmarcach warning that he had gone, and set off again westwards with his tight company. It was a strange battle—and as yet he had not struck a single blow.

Could Duncan be making for Spynie? Or had Thorfinn suggested that merely to spur him into precipitate action? Was it not much more likely that he was merely seeking the security of his second army? Yet he would know that the island was MacBeth's home. That Gruoch would be there. And Lulach. Important threats to his position, so long as they lived. He had sought to grasp them before. It was the sort of thing that he might do, that man. Use them as hostages, if not worse...

The two companies could scarcely miss each other on that strip of low land between the wooded hills and the loch. But when MacBeth saw the others, expected as it was, he was perturbed. For the King's party—and it could only be that—was halted at the lochside, and at the end of the causeway opposite the Hall Isle, or nearly so. Something seemed to snap in MacBeth's carefully disciplined mind. His enemy was there, within only a matter of yards of Gruoch and their children. King or not, he must be assailed.

Yet, in the event, it was Duncan who actually attacked. When he saw the party advancing from eastwards, half the size of his own, he ordered his people into action forthwith. Whether they had been intending an assault on the island was uncertain; but there was nothing uncertain about their intentions now. Shouting hate, brandishing swords, axes, spears, they hurled themselves forward against the newcomers.

If the entire battle was a strange one, this detached struggle was particularly so. Where the rest had been carefully planned and directed, this had not. Both parties had left their main forces and were presently entirely on their own. Yet they contained two of the three main protagonists, their enmity direly personal. And there was bitterness here, antipathy, fear, elementary emotions. And no generalship at all.

Headlong the two sides clashed, in basic, furious and completely unrefined hand-to-hand fighting, as Thorfinn indeed was wont to do, MacBeth now foremost of his company, shouting for Duncan. His cousin, however, saw his role differently, as no doubt a king should, and remained well within the circle of his warriors, although encouraging them vigorously enough by word of mouth. The noise and shouting, there on the quiet green shore of the loch, was fearsome.

MacBeth, supported as he was by hard-smiting close companions guarding his sides, had only one objective—to hack his way through the infuriating protective cordon to get at Duncan. He fought skilfully enough—for he was no mean swordsman—but almost subconsciously, his mind preoccupied with two concerns, his cousin and his wife. Gruoch would be watching this, there across the water, fearing for her own and her children's safety. For his own too, perhaps.

How many men he slew or grievously wounded in that fierce, single-minded progress, he neither knew nor cared. He was wounded himself slightly, twice, in forearm and shoulder, glancing sword-cuts, but he scarcely realised it.

Duncan sought to keep a good belt of swordsmen and axemen between himself and that savagely determined smiter; but it was not easy, all men not necessarily being concerned with laying down their lives to ensure their liege lord's. Avoiding action was all too apt to be taken—leaving shameful gaps which his fanatical cousin might exploit, and did.

The struggle, as a whole, was a ragged one, with much ebbing and flowing of advantage. Because of MacBeth's own fiercely determined assault at the centre, with its personal support, that sector tended to do better than the rest, pressing much further forward. For the same reason, human nature being as it is, the opposition was less eager to be involved there, and was consequently more aggressive elsewhere. So the affair was uneven, to say the least, with the superior numbers of the royal contingent slowly beginning to tell. Save at the centre, which had become almost a separate conflict.

MacBeth, in fact, was not really leading his company at all. He was concerned with nothing but reaching Duncan. More than once he managed to get so near that only a single line of defenders were between him and his goal—but always some attack, some eddy of the fight, or some expert manoeuvre by Duncan, frustrated him. He was now bleeding from a grazed brow, and somewhat dizzy from the blow, the blood getting into his eyes; but still pressing his attack with little diminished vigour.

Then he saw his chance. Two men were between him and the King. But in avoiding one of MacBeth's figure-of-eight left-right slashes, the one cannoned into the other and both stumbled and fell to their knees. For a moment or two there was a clear gap between the two cousins, only a yard or so apart. MacBeth kicked savagely at the two fallen men, tumbling them right over, and leapt in, sword high.

Duncan had a sword drawn too, although he had used it little. Now he thrust it forward in a jabbing motion, low, foreshortened, for MacBeth's belly. That man brought his own broad blade slashing down just in time to smash the other's steel aside, only brief inches from its mark. Now, close together, staring into each others' eyes, it was a question of which could control his weapon best and fastest, bring it back up to a striking position and then strike. MacBeth, more fit, more active, although wounded, won by split seconds. Recovering balance and purchase of his sword, he drove it down on the other's sword-arm shoulder just as he reached a position to lunge again. With a yell, the King crumpled at that side, dropping the sword from nerveless fingers. In a swift change of stance, MacBeth drew back sufficiently to thrust violently, with all the residue of his failing strength. The other's armour-scales deflected the blow from his heart upwards, but the point penetrated the leathern tunic above, and ran him through below the left shoulder. Mouth wide, Duncan mac Crinan sank to the bloody grass.

MacBeth was reeling, staggering. His men closest to him, perceiving all, and his danger, clustered round him in a tight knot, to part-support him, part-hustle him back from the thick of the fighting. That they were successful in doing so was in no small measure due to the fact that the word of the King's fall was immediately shouted aloud, and everywhere men hesitated, faltered. Some continued to fight as lustily as before, but many did not, on both sides. With MacBeth being led aside, stumbling, the point seemed to go out of the contest for most of them, with little desire for death when the issue seemed to be decided anyway. Quite quickly the fighting tailed off. The sides, by mutual consent, drew apart, taking their wounded with them—including the King. A lot of dead were left lying.

MacBeth, whose blow on the brow had affected him more than he had realised, sought to pull himself together and take charge of the situation once more. But his head was spinning so badly that he required to be held in order to stand up straight. Presently, sitting down heavily on the trampled grass, he relayed jerky orders for his people to cluster in a tight knot by the lochside, at the end of the causeway, in case the enemy rallied and tried to attack the island. They could hold the causeway against all comers.

But it became apparent, even to MacBeth, that Duncan's men, far from thinking of resuming the struggle, were preoccupied with something other, something behind them, westwards. Hastily, in fact they began to stream away and up into the hillside woodlands south-eastwards, carrying the King and most of their other wounded with them. Soon only the dead and mortally injured were left to share the battle-ground with the men of Moray.

It was the first of the Vikings coming from Torfness, sent by Thorfinn to aid his brother. Coincident with their arrival, a coracle was paddled across from the Hall Isle by Gruoch herself. Exclaiming at the sight of her blood-soaked husband, she ran to him. Thereafter there was an interval of considerable confusion, with MacBeth urging the Norsemen on, to go reinforce Brodie at the Lossie, and explaining to Gruoch that he was only scratched and perfectly able to continue in command of his forces—to counter her insistence that he must come back immediately to the
Dorus Neamh
and her nursing—and hearing through it all that the Torfness battle was to all intents over and a complete victory for Thorfinn, although with fairly heavy casualties. Out of all this din of words, some order and decision was at length reached.

The Viking vanguard should go on the mile or two to the Lossie line. Garrons would be brought across from the Horse Isle for MacBeth to ride thither also—with Gruoch, it seemed, since she would by no means leave him now. More Norsemen would be along soon, Thorfinn had promised. Meantime Gruoch alternated between bathing and binding up his wounds with her clothing, making endearing noises, and scolding him heartily.

The horses had come and MacBeth was secretly wondering just how he was going to manage to mount, not to mention stay mounted thereafter, when Thorfinn himself arrived with another large contingent. His shouted triumph was somewhat muted at sight of his bandaged and unsteady brother, his ribaldries dying away.

Sympathetic expressions were brief, however, like his assurances to Gruoch that MacBeth had a head of iron, to match his heart, and would be none the worse after a good meal and a night's sleep. There was no need for him to go on to the Lossie again. He, Thorfinn, would see to that. But—where was Duncan?

"I wounded him," his brother said thickly. "They took him away." And he gestured in a vaguely upward and south-easterly direction.

"You wounded him? Only
wounded!
God's Eyes, man—you did not kill him?"

"He could have been dead. When I struck him down. But
...
he was not."

"And you let him go? You had him—and you let him go!"

"He was wounded also. Can you not see?" Gruoch said, sharply.

"Where did they take him? How long ago?"

MacBeth pointed again. "That way. Through the woods. Over the Hill of Spynie. To join the others, no doubt. Ech-marcach."

"When?"

"I do not know. Sufficiently long. But they have the Lossie to cross..."

Thorfinn wasted no more time, but swept on.

Gruoch took her husband over to the
Dorus Neamh.

His brother was back with the sundown of a long day, satisfied save in the matter of Duncan's escape.

"When he saw who he was facing now, that Irishman drew back," he reoorted. "He has the elements of wisdom in him, that Echmarcach! He left a screen of men to guard the river-crossings. But we will leave that, for tonight. My heroes are weary. And hungry. Tomorrow we shall see. How are you now?"

"Stiff," MacBeth said.

"To be sure. I hope that Duncan is stiffer! Your bed—that is the place for you, Brother."

"Yes, my dear," Gruoch said, pleaded. "Come to bed. Nothing more that you can do tonight..."

* * *

In the morning, aching but clear-headed, with word that Echmarcach's army was still standing by inactive a mile or so. behind the Lossie, MacBeth discussed strategy with Thorfinn over breakfast. Despite Duncan's defeats and losses, he could still muster a large force, its inland section as yet all but unblooded. And now that the King was injured, incapacitated surely, it might well indeed be under wiser and better direction. The Vikings had suffered quite heavy losses—although the Moraymen had not. MacBeth believed that negotiations might now prove more fruitful. His brother, predictably, was contemptuous of negotiations.

It was at this stage that Gruoch came to announce a visitor under a flag-of-truce—Cormac of Glamis.

That grizzled veteran marched into the hall escorted by Darnaway. He raised his hand in salute.

"Greetings!" he jerked. "Duncan mac Crinan is dead." He paused. "Dead," he repeated, deep-voiced. "He died of his wounds. At dawn. At a smith's hut. Bothgowan, near to Pitgavenny. They have taken his body to the abbot at Elgin."

"Dead! He is
dead?
I, I killed him!" That was MacBeth, all but croaking.

"His blood was bad. Always was so. Duncan Ilgalrach, the Bad Blooded. It would not stanch—the blood. So he is dead."

His hand rose again. "Hail MacBeth, High King of Scots."

Eyes widening, MacBeth stared at him, as the others drew long breaths.

Glamis strode forward, to drop on one knee and reach out both hands to take MacBeth's between them, in the traditional gesture of fealty.

"I Cormac mac Eochaid, am the first to give you my allegiance, my lord King!" he said.

MacBeth shook his head, slightly, then desisted at the pain of it. He looked over at Gruoch. "I am not King yet," he said, slowly.

"Who else is there?" Thorfinn asked, rising to come and clasp his brother strongly, producing more pain. "MacBeth the King! Son of Life, by God!"

It was an
extraordinary transformation, by any standards. From organising a battle to organising a state funeral, in the course of mere hours. The fact that MacBeth was suffering from wounds and dizzy spells was immaterial. The first duty of the tanist to the Scots high throne was to arrange the funeral to Iona of the dead King. And whatever Duncan had or had not been, he had been King of Scots.

At least there was no longer a problem of hostilities and armies to complicate proceedings. That was what Glamis had really been sent under the flag-of-truce to say—that, with Duncan dead, there was no longer anything to fight about, any real opposition to MacBeth. The campaign had all been wholly at the King's will. Echmarcach, apparently, had been undecided as to making this move, Fife likewise; but the other mormaors with the inland army had persuaded these that there was no point in remaining in arms against MacBeth—although Thorfinn's position was rather different.