Macbeth the King (4 page)

The sanctuary MacBeth
provided for the Lady Gruoch and her son, for the next few months, was in fact the hall-house of Rosemarkyn itself. It is to be feared that he did not very seriously search for some hidden and remote refuge such as she had suggested. He himself returned to his principal dun and headquarters at Inverpeffery, partly for her reputation's sake and partly the better to deal with the situation that developed out of the changed conditions in the neighbouring Mormaordom of Moray. But he kept an eye on the young woman and her child, saw her fairly frequently, and made sure that Malduin, his seneschal, respected her needs and privacy. She asked more than once when he was going to find her a place of her own, but always he put her off.

She represented a problem, to be sure, and a major unsettlement. Even if he could keep her safe, there was no means by which he could enforce secrecy or prevent talk. All Scotland knew that the Mormaor of Ross held the Lady Gruoch. And all would draw their own conclusions.

On two more occasions he suggested marriage—and with a little more enthusiasm than before, although it had not really been he who had made the suggestion previously, but she who had forestalled it. The forbidden has its own desirability, especially when physically within one's grasp; and she was a highly attractive woman in more than just her beauty of person. So that he began to have a preoccupation with her—which was notably unlike MacBeth.

She did not spurn his tentative advances unkindly. Indeed, she was quietly friendly when they met, acknowledging her indebtedness. But ever with her guard up, as it were. Perhaps her guard was permanently in position.

Less personal but as persistent a preoccupation over these months of the year of Our Lord 1032 was that of the province and mortuath of Moray. He desired it also, inevitably. Not only because it would greatly enhance his power and status, but because it was the fairest and largest province in all Alba, his family heritage and where he had been reared, his childhood's home, the rambling island palace of Spynie in the Laigh. As a youth, twelve years before when his father Finlay the Mormaor had been slain by his own cousins Malcolm mac Maelbride and Gillacomgain, he had sworn that one day he would avenge his sire and regain Moray. The vengeance had been taken by others, and both the brothers were dead. But now Moray lay awaiting him.

He could have simply mustered his fighting-men and marched in—as undoubtedly Thorfinn would have done and as Neil Nathrach and many another advised. But this would mean war. And although MacBeth did not shrink from bloodshed, where necessary, he did not wish to impose the inevitable battle, sack and rapine on his beloved Moray.

He could, and did, make all arrangements for a swift assembly of his Ross forces, however, so that he could have 1200 men on the march, if need be, at two days' notice.

MacBeth was, in the event, called upon to put his assembling procedures into practice unexpectedly and at sufficiently short notice, in the Ides of April, the call coming from an unlikely source. It emanated from Scone indeed, in Fortrenn, and from Malcolm the Second, King of Scots, in the form of a royal command of the Ard Righ to one of his lesser kings of the ancient Pictish realm, to march southwards in fullest strength and with all speed, to help counter the invasion of the kingdom by Knut the Dane, King of the English, known to the Sassunach as Canute.

This summons, needless to say, put MacBeth into a major quandary. His first thought was that it was a trap to lure him into Malcolm's clutches. But, in that case, would the Destroyer have invented so tremendous a threat as the invasion of the mighty Canute the Great, Emperor of the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians, as he called himself these days? Or urged him, MacBeth, to come with all possible strength? Surely the armed strength of Ross would be the last thing that was desired, in any such trap?

On the other hand, Canute had been long making threatenings towards Scotland. Inheriting Denmark from his father Sven Forkbeard, he had conquered all England, some of Ireland, Norway, the south of Sweden and many of the Baltic lands. He was now claiming overlordship of Cumbria and Strathclyde, Teviotdale and the Merse, and likewise Lothian, all fairly recently incorporated into Malcolm's kingdom—although Lothian had been a Pictish province for centuries. So invasion was not improbable. But this was very sudden. Not that Canute was one to send out heralds before he acted. If it was true, the threat was dire, and MacBeth's duty clear. He put the mustering system into immediate operation, and sent his fastest birlinn northwards up the coast to Duncansby in Caithness, to enquire of Thorfinn—who, hopefully, had not yet set off on his hosting.

Two days later the birlinn was back. The Earl Thorfinn had gone to Orkney, assembling longships. But his sword-father, Thorkell Fosterer, was still in Caithness, the messenger reported. And there was no question about the English invasion. The Norsemen, indeed, had known it was to take place for many days before the King's summons to the Mormaor of Caithness arrived—they had their own links with Canute the Dane, of course. To MacBeth's demand as to what Thorfinn was doing about it, his informant could only shrug. Thorkell Fosterer had been less than explicit.

At any rate, MacBeth's own course was now clear. He would march the next morning. Meanwhile, he took time to pay a fleeting visit to Rosemarkyn.

He found Gruoch and the boy at the boat-stand, preparing to go fishing for flounders in a coracle. She was sufficiently relaxed with him now to invite him to accompany them.

"I thank you, no," he answered. "I have little time. We march at dawn."

"March...?" Her lovely eyes widened. "March where? And why? To Moray?"

"No. Much further. To the south. Canute the Dane invades. From England. All must rally to the defence of the land."

"Canute!"

"Yes. It is what we have long feared. All must rally. I came but to say goodbye."

She searched his face. "So it is goodbye? So soon. This, this could be no light matter. Canute is powerful, fierce, with great armies."

"That is truth. But Malcolm, whatever else he is, is also powerful and fierce. As able a general."

"It may be so. But against the might of the English, Northumbria and the Danelaw, possibly even the Norsemen..." He could see the thought strike her, then. "MacBeth—what of Thorfinn?"

"I do not know," he said, at his flattest.

"He may side with Canute. They are of a kind. Almost kin, Vikings both."

He shrugged. "None ever knows what Thorfinn will do, save Thorfinn! All I know is that he is in Orkney, gathering longships. And has also received Malcolm's summons. For Caithness and Sutherland. But
...
he knew of the invasion earlier."

"So!" She shook her head. "You could be in great danger, I think—whatever Thorfinn does. Must you go? Could you not send another? Even in this peril, I do not trust Malcolm Foiranach. Nor Duncan. Send one of your thanes, with your force."

"I am Mormaor of Ross," he pointed out, simply.

"You may never come back to Ross!"

"You are too fearful, Daughter of Warriors!"

"I am fearful
because
I am a daughter of warriors—too many of whom have not returned to their places. I fear, yes—I fear evil for you in this."

He smiled a little. "You are not as was my mother, Donada nic Malcolm, burdened with the sight?"

She waved that aside. "Of such I know naught. But I see grievous danger in this. Evil for you."

'Take comfort from my mother's seeing, then. She dreamed that I would not fall by the hand of man until a forest itself rose up and walked! Birnam Wood, in Atholl. Until Birnam Wood marched to Dunsinane in Gowrie. So, perhaps I am safe enough!"

"Do not mock," she said. "You will take care?"

*1 take too much care, Thorfinn says."

"I care not what Thorfinn says. It is you that matters, not that loud-of-mouth."

"I esteem your concern for me, Princess. Although I fear that it is concern for your future care and the safety of Lulach, which moves you."

"Think that if you wish, MacBeth."

"I have left orders, not only with my seneschal here but with the Thane of Affric, whom I leave behind, that you are to be cherished and given what you ask. If so be it that I do not come back, you will be safe. A secure house found for you. So fear nothing."

"My fears are...otherwise, I tell you. But, I thank you."

He eyed her levelly for moments on end, there beside the bobbing coracle. Then he nodded abruptly. "I go now. There is much to be done. God be with you."

"God speed," she said quietly. And added, "My friend."

* * *

They marched southwards, 1200 armed men on the shaggy garrons of the Highland hills, under the great red-and-white banner of Ross, crossing the Glass River at Kilmorack and into Moray. At Inverness the folk hid, and peeped and watched from doorways and corners, for fear that this might be the men of Ross coming against them now that their own men were away—for the Moray contingents under Crinan had marched off three days before. But MacBeth pressed on, at the heavy lumbering garrons' trot—which, although it appeared slow, was remarkably deceptive and could cover sixty miles in a day. They climbed the long ascent of Drummossie Moor to the Passes of Moy and the Slochd and into Strathspey. Then on through Badenoch and over the great and grim Pass of Drumochdar, out of Moray and into Atholl. At Dunkeld they were at Crinan's chief seat—for as well as being Mormaor of Atholl he was hereditary Abbot of Dunkeld which, in the Celtic Church, carried with it the Primacy of All Scotland. He was absent, of course, being on ahead with his own levies; but his wife the Lady Bethoc nic Malcolm was in residence in the large rath above the Tay, and MacBeth felt bound to call upon his aunt. She was a tall, angular, stern woman, unbending, very different from her late sister, the gentle and other-worldly Donada, and she greeted her nephew without enthusiasm. The call was brief. But she was able to tell him that the King, her father, had moved on with his army from Scone, his capital, to Stirling, to halt Canute at the crossing of Forth. Which meant that he had meantime abandoned not only Teviotdale and the Merse to the invader, but Lothian also, even part of Lennox.

It took the Rossmen another day and a half, through Fortrenn, Gowrie, Strathearn and Monteith, to reach Stirling, where the Forth narrowed sufficiently to be bridged. Or not exactly Stirling but the Haugh of Kildean and the causeway-head across the marshes, on the north side of the river, where the royal army waited. It was a bare mile but a barely passable mile, from the towering mighty rock on the other side of the flood-plain, crowned by the ancient Pictish fort of the Snow Dun, with its township of Stirling clustering round its flanks.

The Forth and Teith Rivers, the dividing line between the Northern and Southern Picts, between Alba and Lothian, between Highlands and Lowlands, made the greatest flood-plain in Scotland, possibly in all the Isles of Britain, their meanderings forming a watery, swampy barrier five miles wide by over twenty miles long, a wilderness of mosses and meres, of lochans and bogs and scrub forest, all the way from the fierce mountains of the Lennox and Loch Lomondside to the Scottish

Sea, impassable for man and beast save by one or two secret, tortuous routes known only to a few. Except here at Stirling, just before the combined rivers opened out to the estuary and salt water. Here the bog was but a mile wide, protruding rocky hills narrowing it, the soft ground being on the north side only. The Romans, it was said, had bridged the river at Kildean and built the mile-long narrow causeway of timber and stone across the moss beyond, to firm ground, for their legions to cross, in their fruitless attempts to dominate the Caledonians, as they called the Northern Picts. That it had been a sorry business was evidenced by their name for the Snow Dun hill,
Mons Dolorum.
Eastwards from it was the widening estuary, westwards stretched the endless swamp. Here, then, Malcolm the Destroyer awaited Canute Svenson the Mighty, in the most strategically significant location in the land. The attacker could only do so by first crossing that bridge and causeway.

The Scots army had encamped in a vast crescent on the slightly higher ground above the marsh at the causeway-head, lapping up the skirts of the long rocky whaleback, sentinel, on the north side, known as Craig Kenneth—for the great King Kenneth MacAlpin had likewise fought a battle here a century and a half before. On the crest of this, the King and his commanders had formed their present headquarters, with a far-flung prospect all around save to the north, where the green Ochil Hills rose steeply. Only, today, the view southwards was less fair and distant than usual, obscured by great drifting palls of smoke.

MacBeth, used to assessing numbers, reckoned that there might be some 8000 to 9000 men gathered there, a great host, but none too many if Canute brought anything like his full strength against them. He saw the banners of Fife, Strathearn, Lennox, Angus, Mar, Atholl and Moray amongst them.

With some difficulty finding sufficient space for his men to encamp, MacBeth left them under Neil Nathrach, and with his thanes and lieutenants threaded his way through the lines and the evening cooking-fires and rode up the steep of Craig Kenneth by a twisting path. The higher they climbed, the more obvious was that great pall of smoke to the south.

There was a clump of trees on the grassy summit ridge, and there the High King's Boar banner flew in the westerly breeze. A rough table had been contrived, and round this sat a group of men, about a dozen, while others stood around respectfully. All watched the newcomers' approach, and as they came up, all the sitters save two rose to their feet. Remaining sitting were an old man at one end and a young at the other.

MacBeth and his party dismounted and strode forward to the table. He bowed to his grandfather.

"Sire!" he said. And to the others, "My lords." That was all.

The King was old, but only in years and wickedness. His person could have been that of a man thirty years his junior, upright, heavily-built and broad-shouldered, but without fat or flabbiness. His hair and beard were grey, but not sparse, his features handsome if long, his carriage carelessly proud. But it was his eyes that took and held the attention, hooded eyes but lively, strange, glittering, the most alive eyes MacBeth for one had ever seen in a man, with a life almost of their own. He was dressed unexceptionally, for war, in leather and scaled mail, with saffron kilt and shoulder-plaid, much less richly than many of his mormaors and thanes—but in that man's presence none would ever consider clothing of any importance. His great crested and crowned helmet was laid aside, but he wore a simple narrow circlet of gold around brows and hair.