Angus’s feet always warn me of his coming. My women move with delicacy, steps barely whispering through the crushed oyster shells that line the path to our fastness. The monks always come in pairs, scuffing noisily to announce their arrival, as if to avoid any hint of impropriety towards us. I remain, in spite of everything, a queen.
But heavy-footed Angus pounds the shells to powder in his eagerness to be with us, to share whatever needs sharing. A successful hunting party on the shores of the loch, a new style of carving freshly arrived from a distant outpost of the Culdees, a far-off battle whose outcome will touch us not at all. It’s all the same to Angus; it breaks the monotony of his days among the women.
He chaps at the door, mindful of his place. Ligach walks across, drop spindle in hand, twisting the fleece without pause. She spins her yarn with no apparent attention, her pattern of movement as regular as a tic, only with a more benevolent result. I have sometimes wondered whether she puts it to one side when she takes Angus to her bed. ‘I think she must,’ Aife says. ‘Not even Ligach can spin on her back.’ I am too fond of Aife to comment on her lack of imagination.
With an easy movement of her wrist, Ligach’s thumb catches the latch and lets the door swing open. Angus’s cheeks are pink above the thick russet of his beard, either from the cold March wind or from his haste to give us news. ‘A boat,’ he says. ‘From the far shore.’
Not the short crossing, that narrow strait between us here on St Serf’s Isle and the sheltered shore by the river mouth. No, Angus means the long way across Loch Leven. It’s not as if nobody ever comes over to the monks from that direction, but it’s not something that happens every day. Or even every week.
‘And yesterday was St Patrick’s Day,’ he says quickly, eager to make his point. It’s a point that eludes us at first. We exchange looks, faces blank.
‘Remember?’ He’s got the wind behind him now, sure that for once he has the higher ground. He moves further into the room, his heavy tread filling the air with puffs of the incense smell of the holy grass, freshly spread only yesterday. ‘Eithne said a holy day would bring danger for the king.’
Eithne’s face clears. ‘Malcolm,’ she says. ‘Remember? His men passed on the far side of the loch on their way north. I told you, he was making for Scone to prevent your son being anointed king.’
Angus nods eagerly.
‘And I told you he was far too late. By more than half a year.’ I generally speak softly to Eithne but there are times when even the generosity of long friendship slips.
‘She did say he wouldn’t succeed,’ Aife reminds me.
‘Not then, not the coronation,’ Eithne continues, serene as she always is when she’s convinced she knows a truth none of the rest of us has access to. ‘But it’s not too late for Malcolm to end your son’s rule. I said Lulach would lose his throne on a holy day.’ Like St Patrick’s Day, the unspoken words hanging heavy between us.
I turn from her and wrap my zybeline stole more closely around me. I step past Angus and through the door. Tears spring from my eye, forced by the bitter wind. It blows from the land where I grew up, where I sat on the throne alongside Macbeth for seventeen years. I have not been back since the day of the battle that robbed me of the love of my life; this is the place where I have spent my sorrow. Today, I expect nothing but more grief from that quarter.
I stare out past the slender pines and the sharp marram grass to the choppy water of the loch. My eyes are not as sharp as they were, but the boat is drawing nearer against the wind and I think I can make out two passengers huddled on the thwart, hunched shoulder to shoulder.
I return to our haven and settle on the tall carved chair the monks made for my husband when he became king, in honour of the support and succour he had always given them. No matter that they had heard the reports that his path to the throne was dappled with blood; they judged him by the actions they saw for themselves. They were as much Macbeth’s men as they were God’s. And still they honour his memory.
Aife crosses to the rear of the room and moves the curtain of beaten deerskin aside. She beckons Eithne to the window. ‘Come here. Tell me what you see.’
When she’s wholly present, Eithne uses her eyes in the same way the rest of us do. It’s likely what saved her from being drowned a witch, that gift of being able to move between vision and reality. She leans into Aife. ‘Aye. A coble with two men not at the oars. Soldiers, I’d say. Heads bowed.’ She swivels round to face me. ‘Gruoch, this will be a sad day.’
I’ve already made that reckoning. ‘Not Malcolm’s men, then.’
‘He’s still ignorant of your whereabouts.’ Never one to hold back, Angus says what we’d all like to believe. ‘Otherwise he’d have stopped on his way north.’ Unspoken, something like, to deal with you. I may only be queen in name, but memories are long in these lands. Mine is still a name men would rally behind; Malcolm is shrewd enough to realise that, and to fear it.
‘Our king knows we’re biding here,’ Aife says, defiant. ‘He would not betray his mother.’
I shake my head. ‘My son is a man like any other. If Lulach thought it was the way to an easier outcome, I would not think less of him if he gave us up. But I think he will not.’
‘He has never been a bonnie fechter.’ Ligach’s tone is tart.
Ever loyal, Angus scoffs. ‘Lulach is a true king.’
‘And I am still a true queen of the royal line, not just the mother of the king,’ I remind him. ‘That is my value to Lulach and to Malcolm. Macbeth taught me a game when he first came from Mull. He called it fidchell. It was a game of capture and conquest. The most powerful piece on the board was the queen. My son learned the game at Macbeth’s knee, its tactics and its ploys. Lulach would never give up his queen.’
*
The first time I set eyes on Macbeth, I knew he was the very pattern of manhood. Not simply that he was well-set and even-featured, though that was no mark against him. But although he was a little lower in rank than the man I was wedded to, he seemed more like a lord than Gille Coemgáin. My husband was Mormaer of Moray, king of the north in all but name, Macbeth merely his cousin, bound to his side by blood and honour. All I knew of him before we came face to face was that his name meant son of life and that his men called him Deircc, the Red One. I assumed it was because his blade was drenched with blood.
I had not considered that it might refer to his fox-red hair. He looked like a man on fire, his eyes blazing blue as the heart of a lump of ice on a high moor. When his eyes settled on me, I knew he saw beyond Gille Coemgáin’s wife to the woman I was meant to be. But when my father had made a trade of me to Gille Coemgáin, I had no choice. They allowed me to keep my three women with me, but only because they believed them to be powerless. That’s a mistake men have made too often around women.
The night Macbeth came among us, Eithne lit the candles in our quarters, then burned sage and bog myrtle and another sweet herb whose name none of us knew. We lay dreamy and drowsing on the furs Gille Coemgáin allowed us as a mark of his power and status, waiting for Eithne to reach the place she speaks from. ‘He will be the one. He will surely plant a king.’
Her words sent a chill through me. It had been seventeen moons since the wedding and still there was no sign of an heir for Gille Coemgáin. Not for want of trying on his part. Aife, always sharp-witted, said my womb likely refused his seed because I had no love for him, and she may have been right. I was not so foolish as to resist his attempts to get a son on me, but it was only ever my body that was present; my mind was elsewhere, in the woods and the shorelines of our land. Never in the bed with him.
And it’s true there was not much to love about Gille. He lived to eat and drink well, and that had coarsened the good looks he’d been blessed with. There was no tenderness in him; he was uncaring and rough, always putting his own needs and desires first. He had a high opinion of his qualities and his standing; he saw in me only a reflection of his own status. He trusted advice from no one, regardless of their experience or proven good sense. Gille always knew best.
And it appeared to have worked to his benefit. After the savage murder of Macbeth’s father, his kingdom had been divided between Malcolm in Alba and Gille Coemgáin in Moray.
Macbeth might have hoped to become Mormaer of Moray, but sons don’t always succeed their fathers if they don’t have an army at their back. Lacking land, lacking support, lacking a wife of the royal blood trumped his place in the line of inheritance.
After the murder of Findlaich, Macbeth’s father, there ran a fleet-footed rumour that Gille and Malcolm were responsible. It was hard not to suspect them of a conspiracy when both benefited so. But my husband had always denied it, and it seemed Macbeth accepted that. Now he had come to pay due respect. To put his small army at our disposal, were the English or the Vikings to visit. So, of course, there was a celebration. Gille had to lay on a feast that Macbeth could never hope to equal if we took it on ourselves to venture across the sea to his hall in Mull.
There was roast lamb, wild boar and venison. Sides of salmon and sea trout, smoked fish and mussels. Porridge sweetened with apples baked in honey and sweet cicely. Bannocks and bread made from the flour of oats and beans. Roasted turnips and onions, tiny sharp radishes and sauces from mustard balls. Stewed plums with crushed roasted hazelnuts. Cheese and curds. Me at his side in my finest robes.
And, of course, strong ale and barley bree to set heads bleezing.
No expense had been spared, no stores left unplundered. Bellies would be grumbling with hunger to pay for this display of wealth. Not my belly, of course, nor my three women. Not Gille’s either. But the others who depended on what came from our kitchen – they’d be going to bed with their stomachs empty for a couple of weeks till the larder was replenished.
Then the filidh took the floor with his usual bardic fervour. A tale of battle, told to the hypnotic rhythm of a tattoo on the bodhran. As the story reached its climax, Macbeth leapt on the table and laid a pair of crossed swords at his feet. ‘Give me music,’ he shouted, and the piper answered with a reel that made my head swirl.
Not Macbeth. He raised his hands above his head, fingers imitating a stag’s antlers, and began to dance. His feet moved among the four quarters made by the blades so nimbly it became impossible to keep track of how he got there and where he would go next. His lèine was dyed madder red and it danced with him, rising above his knees, giving us flashes of his woad-blue braies. And his hair like a flame. I’d never seen a display of colour like it. He danced like a man possessed. Even Aife, who has no interest in men, flushed pink at the excitement of it.
He reached the end with a flourish and made a deep bow to Gille, then to me. He jumped down from the table; his men surrounded him and shouted his name. I saw a brief flash of resentment cross my husband’s face. Clearly Macbeth had not heard how Gille liked to be the name given most praise, especially after a display of luxury such as we’d laid on that night.
Before my husband could glimpse the thoughts Macbeth’s display had set running, I excused myself and slipped out of the hall, Aife and Eithne at my heels. ‘You had better return,’ I said. ‘Don’t give Gille occasion to make you the butt of his anger.’
They understood my reasoning. No matter what I felt towards Gille, I was bound by my father’s insistence. He himself was the son of a king, which made me part of that same royal line. So he could countenance nothing less than the highest rank for me. Mormaer of Moray, king in all but name of the Highland fiefdom, was the perfect match. A marriage with Gille Coemgáin would make stronger my father’s position and do him honour. Never mind that Gille had a bloodstained history and a jealous temper. I was traded for status. Not the first nor the last woman to be treated like a gaming piece.
I placed but one condition on the deal. I insisted that my three women should remain at my side. Eithne, for her understanding of the world we cannot see; Aife, for the support and sustenance she gives Eithne’s gift, and thus to all four of us; and Ligach, ever practical, who never sees a problem, only a challenge. They have been my companions since childhood, and I knew I would struggle at Gille’s court without my three allies at my back.
Of course, Gille distrusted them and missed no opportunity to treat them harshly. He could not attack me directly, for my father’s name still carried weight even in Gille’s territories. So he made them surrogates. If he had noticed me leaving the feast accompanied by Aife and Eithne, he would take out his wounded pride on them.
I watched them return to the hall, arm in arm in the pearly moonlight, then made my way to the physic garden Eithne and Aife had created. It was fragrant and soothing, the night scents different from the day. I breathed deeply and felt my turbulent heart return to its regular beat.
But the turmoil followed me.
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Excerpted from Queen Macbeth © 2024 by Val McDermid. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.
