Macbeth's Niece

by Peg Herring

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next morning Tessa and the king were up and away early, passing through grass so wet that their clothes were soaked within minutes.

  Macbeth didn’t seem to notice, but watched her eagerly for identification of the place he sought. “I must know if I will defeat the English,” he said, absently pulling his tartan closer around him, but it seemed he spoke not to Tessa, but to someone unseen. “If I am to be defeated, there is nothing left for me. The people despise me, my wife is beyond earthly help, and I have done things I am sorry for. All that is left to me is to be king of Scotland.”

  “I’m sure you intended to be a good king, Uncle,” was all Tessa could think of to say. Stories of his misdeeds hinted at how far he had missed the mark.

  His attention returned to Tessa when she spoke, and he seemed surprised at her remark. “I did,” he mused, but his face hardened. “But the wanting to be king was stronger than the wanting to be good. I have made enemies.”

  “Perhaps you could regain the respect of your people. You could—”

  “First I must defeat the English,” he interrupted, and she saw his attention was again fixed beyond her. “They say old Siward comes with Malcolm. He is a fine general, and I have lost many soldiers of late. They join Malcolm’s army. Even Macduff, who once was my friend, has gone to England.” His voice took on a strange quality. “I was most wounded by his treachery.”

  They had come to the spot Tessa sought. “Here it is, Uncle. I sat near that rock, and the three appeared before me. They seem to be clever at hiding and disappearing, like magic.”

  He looked at her strangely. “Yes, like magic.” His manner turned brisk. “Go on. I will bide here a while and hope the weird sisters take note.”

  He seemed unsure of how to take leave of her, probably thinking an embrace was proper between relatives. Tessa took a few steps backward and waved a hand, feeling sorry for him. He was frightening; was that what kingship did to people? She called a goodbye and hurried up the hillside, pulling behind her the pony Macbeth had ordered loaded with provisions for her trip. He was an odd mixture of kindness and ambition, and perhaps that was the problem. As his wife had commented with eerie premonition, he was too full of human kindness to live with the things he’d done to achieve that ambition.

  It was two days later when Tessa began to feel she was home. The woods looked familiar. There was where she had built a tree house to hide from her mother’s anger, and there was a brook she’d waded in, seeking such simple childhood delights as frogs and interesting stones.

  Another hour brought her to the house that now belonged to her sister. Just as Tessa stepped from the wood line into the clearing surrounding it, Meg came out of the doorway, a basket under her arm. She must have suffered sorrows over the last year, losing her mother and her closest sister, yet Tessa’s sister appeared at this time to be content.

  Meg was not as striking as Tessa, her hair less bright, her eyes less expressive, but she had quiet beauty and a serenity about her that was more pronounced as a wife. Perhaps it was the gentle swell of a child in her belly that lent her the added look of contentment. Now she looked at the stranger in a friendly but curious way. It was not often they had unknown guests. Tessa pulled back her hood and let her cropped hair spill out, laughing with delight at seeing her beloved sister.

  “It’s me, Meg, back from the dead!”

  Meg’s reaction was first total surprise and then great joy. Running to Tessa, she hugged her for a long time, as tears streamed down both their faces.

  “They told us you had drowned in the river by mishap.”

  “They were mistaken. I am well, though I have been a great way. Let us go in and I will tell you all of it.”

  That night Tessa met her brother-in-law Donwald. He was a typical Scot, brawny with reddish blond hair. Tessa imagined from his broad shoulders and large arms that on festival days he tossed the caber, a huge wooden pole held upright and thrown end over end. He was probably good at it. Donwald welcomed his sister-in-law to the house, though she knew Meg had given him a slightly edited version of her adventures. They had found proper women’s clothing for her to wear and Meg had pulled Tessa’s butchered hair back into a small knot, managing to make her look feminine once more. She certainly didn’t mention to her husband Tessa’s quest for an Englishman. It had shocked Meg enough when she heard of it.

  “And what would you be doin’ with this Englishman if you find him?” she had asked, making Tessa laugh.

  “Oh, I have no plans to bring him home to meet the clan,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, but her face sobered. “I owe a debt, Meg. This woman befriended me when I was left in England without anyone to care for me. She gave me fine clothes, a roof over my head, and friendship. Her dying wish was that I give this man a small box, which I have with me. I thought him dead and did not know what to do with it, but now I believe he may be a prisoner of one of the outlaw clans. His brother won’t ransom him, being a jealous and miserly sort, and I feel a debt to Eleanor to find him if I can and take word to someone who will help, perhaps his commanders or his friends in the English army.”

  “You would do this for a man who captured you and took you away from home and family?” Meg asked skeptically.

  “I do it for Eleanor,” Tessa responded, but then added, “To be fair to the man, he could have snapped my neck and thrown me into the Firth. It would have been far easier than carrying me to his home. And he did ask Eleanor to treat me as a guest.”

  “Pooh!” was the response. “An Englishman who doesn’t rape and kill young Scotswomen may be unusual, but kidnapping and plotting are no great credit to him, I say.”

  That seemed to end the conversation. Tessa was not going to convince Meg that such a man was worth time and effort.

  One happy moment of the evening was when Tessa was reunited with Banaugh, who looked not a day older than when he’s escorted her to Inverness a year before. He was most joyful to see “his lass” again. Meg told Tessa privately he’d grieved for months when he heard of her disappearance.

  The next day Tessa spent getting reacquainted with her younger sisters. Surprisingly, they were no longer the whiny brats she remembered. Her mother’s disposition had made them all feel miserable. Under Meg’s kind care, the girls had blossomed. They smiled more often and though they had little, they seemed content with their lives.

  Nettie, the one who’d been at Inverness, confided to Tessa her relief to be away from the king’s home. “Uncle was seldom there, and when he was it was all we could do to keep him calm. And his wife—” She paused, there being no loyal way to put into words what she had observed.

  Tessa nodded. “I saw her walking about the castle at night like a ghost.”

  “Aye, but waking she does not remember it. We took turns watching to see she didn’t harm herself, and what she said, Tess! Things about blood and stained hands.”

  “Best forgotten, I think,” Tessa cautioned. “She is the queen, at least for now, and it’s best not to know what such people face in their dreams.”

  The girls were learning to sew and cook and keep a house. “Donwald comes from a large family,” Meg whispered to Tessa. “He has cousins enough for all the girls to get a husband.”

  Tessa sighed. England or Scotland, it seemed getting a husband was all a woman was supposed to think of. Would she ever be happy as a wife? Eleanor had said only two kinds of husbands allowed women the freedom they needed, those who truly loved their wives and those who tired of their company. Would she have been happy with Cedric? She doubted it. Perhaps the old crones were right and her happiness was with the dead, though precisely what that meant she didn’t understand. Had Eleanor’s plotting to get her a husband been her chance for happiness? Or had Jeffrey something to do with it? She shook herself at the thought. There certainly would be no happiness for a woman with a man such as he was. Ruthless, arrogant, and unfaithful as well, since he’d kissed her while Eleanor’s back was turned. St
ill, she’d made a promise to Eleanor, and something inside her wanted to know if Jeffrey Brixton still lived, though she didn’t like to consider why his life was so important to her.

  At dinner Tessa questioned Donwald about captives in the area, saying Macbeth wanted news of possible spies.

  “Nae, I know of none in the Cairngorms,” was his answer. “It sounds more like somethin’ ye’d find Lowlanders at. We ha’ no truck with the English at all, i’ we can manage it. If the king wants tae locate sae as that, he should send word south through Perth an’ then follow th’ coastline. If an Englishman was brough’ t’ Scotland, it’s likely he’s in Fife or Lothian.”

  Though Meg pleaded with her to stay a few more days, Tessa was determined to be off the next morning, promising to return when she could. As she took her leave, Meg kissed her sister with tears in her eyes. “To have you back and then lose you again is hard, but I can see you are decided. I shall say a prayer to Saint Julian for you every day.” Julian was the patron of travelers, and it seemed Tessa might be traveling for some time in this undirected search. Hugging her sisters, she promised to return someday.

  As Tessa readied the pony, Banaugh appeared with a bundle rolled up in his tartan. “I canna let you travel a’ alone int’ the Lowlands,” he announced, his accent as thick as hers had once been. “T’was bad enough when yer mother bade me tak’ ye north to yer uncle, but at least tha’ was still th’ Heelands. Now ye go south, where they ha’ no idea how civilized folk behave. Ye’ll need someone to watch o’er ye, Lass.”

  What could she do? No one had the nerve to tell Banaugh he was too old to go, and truthfully, tears of relief filled her eyes at his offer of help. Up to now Tessa had felt very much alone in her search. Still, she told Banaugh the whole story before leaving, not wanting the gentle old man traveling under any misconceptions.

  “So ye’ll track all over Scotland to find a man for some other woman, then?” he asked ironically.

  “I promised her I’d give him the box,” Tessa repeated.

  “Seems t’ me there’s more to ’t than a promise made to a dead woman,” he said with surprising acumen.

  “I don’t know, Banaugh. I just need to find him. Perhaps I’ll know then why I feel I must.”

  The grizzled face wreathed in a smile. “Och, yer a slow one, then. I know ’t already, and I’ve never clept eyes on the lad.”

  Two months sped away as the Tessa and Banaugh wandered the Lowlands seeking information about captured Englishmen. They made a competent team, both experienced at finding food in the wild, and Tessa took up the trapping and fishing skills she had developed as a young girl. Her boy’s disguise made traveling easier, and no one questioned a man and a boy looking to ransom an English soldier.

  Some of the less honest border lords made money by holding unfortunate men until their families paid for their return. The process was usually discreet, being of course illegal, but the locals knew and even approved, since ransom meant gold to benefit everyone involved. Scotland was a poor country, especially in the hard currency that brought in goods from elsewhere. Any wealth gained tended to trickle down to all levels eventually, so people who knew about such things kept quiet. The travelers heard of one prisoner who turned out to be English but not Jeffrey, and his family had ransomed him by the time they found the castle anyway. At every town they asked about English guests or travelers, sometimes hearing a promising item only to have it lead to nothing.

  It was September before they had their first real news. In an inn south of Edinburgh about thirty miles, they took a room to escape a rattling thunderstorm. It was a tumbledown affair in the Pentland Hills, not overly clean but dry at least. Sitting by the fire as their clothes steamed, Banaugh suggested a game of Nine Man’s Morris, to which the landlord agreed. As Banaugh set board and pegs up, arranging the fox and the thirteen geese it would pursue, he began a running conversation, as he usually did with those they met.

  It was instructive to watch the old man casually bring the talk around to the subject he wanted as they moved the pegs around the board. After discussing the stubborn stupidity of sheep, the best medicines to treat common ailments, and of course the weather, he mentioned the English.

  “They say they are on their way to Inverness and will try Macbeth’s army before winter.”

  “Aye, no’ that it matters much to us down here. If they are in the north, they’ll nae be watching us so close,” grunted the landlord, taking his turn.

  “True, true,” Banaugh agreed. “Of course, there’s always a bit o’ money to be made on a war. The king himself has provided gold for news of the English. He wanted to know of prisoners held for ransom, for fear they’ll be released and tell th’ English what they know.”

  “And what could they know, poor clods? They haven’t a brain to think with!” The landlord laughed loud and long at his own joke, and Banaugh joined in rather lamely.

  “Well, some, you know, might be smarter than they appear, and then where would we Scots be?”

  The man snorted. “We Scots? Since when does a Highlander care what happens down here? The bordermen serve as a buffer, so ye haven’t had to face th’ English, at least until now. Malcolm’s invited them in, for good or evil, but they’ll strike north, at Macbeth’s strongholds, and perhaps leave us alone for once.”

  Banaugh knew when to keep his peace, so he merely nodded. There was a pause in which only the crackling of the fire was heard. The man moved his game-piece, then spoke again. “Ye say the king pays gold for Englishmen? What aboot those that might only point the way?”

  Banaugh appeared to consider. “I could offer this.” From a worn purse he removed one gold coin.

  The landlord considered for a moment. “And when ye find the Englishman?”

  “We are to warn the laird who holds him he is nae t’ be released until th’ English are defeated. Of course,” here he spoke in a conspiratorial tone,” after the fightin’ he micht still be ransomed, no matter who the winner be.”

  This decided the man, who apparently hadn’t wanted to make trouble for his neighbor. “South of here a day or so, outside Jedburgh, lives Ian Hawick. He may have a guest who is English, although I’m sure he’s not held against his will.” The man smiled to signal the lie. He would not accuse Hawick of kidnapping. “Still, Macbeth may have interest in keeping Hawick’s guest where he is till the troubles with the English dogs are over.”

  “Indeed,” Banaugh answered. Tessa sat silent beside him, but her excitement fueled at this news, and Banaugh understood. “I will pay you now for our lodging, for we will leave early, I’m thinking.” He handed over the gold piece, five times the inn’s fee.

  In the room they shared, Banaugh was enthusiastic. “This is yer Englishman, Tess. I feel it i’ ma bones.”

  “I don’t think I shall sleep a wink.”

  “Ye must, lass. It’ll be a long trip for one day, and I know ye won’t want to make it two,” Banaugh teased. So saying, he rolled out his tartan on the floor and turned his back to allow Tessa a measure of privacy and the plank bed. In three minutes he was asleep, while Tessa lay for some time pondering the possibility that she would, in less than a day, see Jeffrey Brixton once more.