Queen Hereafter
Authors: Susan Fraser King
ALSO BY SUSAN FRASER KING
Lady Macbeth
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Susan Fraser King
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
King, Susan
Queen hereafter : a novel / Susan Fraser King.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Queens—Scotland—Fiction. 2. Scotland—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3561.I4833Q44 2010
813′.54—dc22 2010012340
eISBN: 978-0-307-45281-8
Map illustration by Richard Thompson
v3.1
F
OR
S
EAN, SO LIKE A
S
AXON PRINCE
Non Angli sed angeli
I am not what you think I am
but may I be it because you think it.
—
Bishop Turgot to Queen Margaret
,
V
ITA
S. M
ARGARETAE
(L
IFE OF
S
AINT
M
ARGARET
),
EARLY TWELFTH CENTURY
Eva
ANNO DOMINI 1074
Bring to me the harp of my king
That on it I may shed my grief
—I
RISH, THIRTEENTH CENTURY
C
aught between two willful queens, I am, and should have taken more care to tread lightly—like crossing a stream over slippery stones when the current is strong and cold. Now that I have stumbled deep, who can say whether my two queens will forgive me or condemn me for what I did at each one’s bidding. No servant, I am free to do as I please. Margaret and Gruadh disagree.
I am called Eva the Bard, daughter of a short-lived king. I have been a devoted student of Dermot, once chief bard in Macbeth’s court. He trained me in the ways of a
seanchaidh:
a thousand songs, a thousand tales, a thousand heroes keenly remembered through ancient ways of diligence, and more. Though I do not know my fate, I know my calling—to tell the old tales and coax melodies from the harp strings
to soothe or excite the spirit. Some now accuse me of scheming, but my aim has ever been my craft, and honor. So say I.
The king and queen would order some monk with ink-stained fingers to record my betrayal on parchment, which would crumble over time; the lady in the north would order the account destroyed much sooner. Yet I would compose a song-poem to tell it whole, then take up my harp and sing it to some, who would teach it to others, so it would never be lost.
One queen might call it treason, the other tradition. But I might call it vengeance.
