Macbeth's Niece

by Peg Herring

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  At breakfast in the morning, Tessa and Lady Miriam talked of many things until Ayla came in white-faced and tense. “I am sorry to intrude,” she said, her dark eyes troubled. “There are visitors, men who demand to see you immediately in the name of Malcolm, King of Scotland.”

  To Tessa the name felt like a blow, and at the same time she heard the older woman gasp. Miriam spoke urgently. “Quickly! Hide yourself in there.” She pointed at a tapestry. Tessa did not at first understand, but Ayla hurried to the wall hanging and pulled it aside to reveal a small door. Without hesitation Tessa opened it and found herself in a small room stacked with linens and blankets. Leaving the door ajar, Ayla dropped the hanging back into place as the sound of heavy steps told Tessa that someone had entered the hall.

  “My lady,” said a man’s voice. “I greet you in the name of Malcolm, King of the Scots, and bring you the joyous news that the tyrant Macbeth is dead.”

  Tessa had known it was coming, but she almost sobbed aloud. Miriam, however, seemed unaffected as she answered, “When a tyrant rules, then news of his death must indeed be joyous. May I ask your name, sir?”

  “I am Thomas Perth, my lady. My thane is Ian Hawick, newly made laird of Glames.” So the man was one of Hawick’s louts, the haughty seneschal, by his voice, and Hawick had ingratiated himself with the new king already. Things grew worse and worse for Tessa. Had she mentioned Hawick to Miriam last night? Would she recognize this was Tessa’s worst enemy?

  The man came quickly to the point of his visit. “I seek three criminals who escaped the king’s justice, an old man and two young ones. One is a servant boy who saw his chance to pilfer items before fleeing the castle. He is not important, but he guides the other two. The third looks like a boy but is in truth a woman, and a most wicked one at that. This woman is responsible for crimes against my master, King Malcolm, and even the erstwhile king, Macbeth. She stole a large sum of gold from him that will belong to the person who turns her over to me. However, anyone who is caught concealing the girl will be branded traitor to the new king and suffer the consequences.”

  Tessa shivered in her hiding spot. The carrot and the stick had been cleverly offered. If the lady surrendered her guests, she would have gold and the gratitude of the new king. If not she could lose everything.

  Miriam never even thought about it, from the readiness of her response. “I am willing to help you, Sir Thomas.” She flattered him, for he was no knight. And I will watch for the three you describe. However, my captain has brought no word of anyone’s passing. We are vigilant, but seldom see anyone in this backward place. If Hamish had seen them, he would have told me.”

  “This man of yours is reliable?”

  Miriam sensed Perth’s doubt. “Would you like to ask him yourself?”

  “I would, in case he neglected to mention it.” The man’s tone hinted that in Hamish’s place he would not feel compelled to keep this wreck of a woman informed of current events.

  Miriam made no comment, and there was a period of silence during which Tessa assumed Ayla went to fetch Hamish. Soon the sounds of his approach could be heard, and he was introduced to the newcomer.

  “Hamish,” Miriam said in a calm voice, “this gentleman seeks three criminals who might have passed by on the tarn. Two boys and an old man, you said?” Perth must have nodded. “Have these people—or any others, for that matter—passed this place in the last day or so?”

  “No, milady. No one has passed this place at all.” Hamish’s voice was clear and convincing though Tessa would not have thought the stiff young man capable of a lie. Then it came to her. Hamish sounded truthful because he was. Miriam had phrased the question carefully. They had not passed by due to Hamish himself.

  Perth was reluctant to let it go. “And these people did not stop here to ask for your help?” he tried.

  “They did not,” Hamish replied, again completely truthfully. Tessa prayed Perth would drop it, for if he asked if those he sought were within the walls of the place right now, how would Hamish react?

  Perth, however, was no student of human nature. He chose to proceed to the method he knew best. “We will search the place.”

  Tessa heard Miriam’s voice rise, but there was no real fear in it. “I protest. Arleigh has always cooperated with those who seek justice, and I would not hide criminals in my home. However, if you insist upon searching, do so quickly. I dislike having my routine disturbed.”

  Tessa heard heavy feet moving through the place, and there followed a long time of anxious waiting. It was hours later when the curtain was pulled back and Ayla peered in. “They have gone.”

  Miriam sat in her chair, looking weary. Hamish stood beside her, his hand on her arm as if to lend her some of his strength. Behind him, Jamie and Banaugh entered the room, and Tessa ran to them, hugging both at once. “They hid us i’ th’ space twixt the water an’ th’ floor,” Banaugh told her with some delight. “We culd see Hawick’s slime as they left, bu’ they saw nothing o’ us.”

  Tessa turned to Miriam. “How can we ever thank you? You have put yourselves in danger for us. If they discover we were here—”

  “My people are completely loyal,” the lady responded with conviction. “No one will say a word. Only if you are caught will your pursuers know where you have been.”

  Hamish entered and whispered a few words in the lady’s ear, at which she smiled ironically. “I did not think they believed we had not seen you. Hamish had a man skirt the edge of the tarn, following the direction Perth took. They have set themselves at the mouth of the river, hoping to catch you when you leave.”

  Tessa’s mouth set in a grim line. They could not go back, and if Perth was watching the tarn…

  “You must leave at night, when darkness hides your escape,” Miriam concluded Tessa’s thought, as if having read her mind.

  “But the moon is full. They will see us coming.”

  “They will see what they see,” the older woman replied cryptically. Then she told them her idea.

  Just after dark, a small boat left the water entrance of the crannog, its oars dipping quietly. Three figures inside were illuminated faintly in the moonlight. The craft skimmed the calm water, heading toward the spot where the river flowed into the tarn from the west.

  As the oarsman maneuvered into the river’s mouth, there was commotion in the shallows. Several men appeared from either bank. One grabbed the prow, two others seized an oar each, and among them they pulled boat and its passengers to the shore. Thomas Perth looked smugly satisfied with his prediction of events. As the boat was hauled up on the sand, one of the figures broke and ran along the lake edge. It was no man, Perth guessed with satisfaction, nor boy either, despite the clothing.

  “Bring her back,” he told his men, and three of them took off down the beach. In minutes, he heard a scream, and shortly they returned with their quarry. Perth, having ordered a torch lit in the meantime, found himself face to face with a girl, but his grin faded at the sight of her.

  “This isn’t macFindlaech’s kinswoman!” he snarled. “It’s the cripple’s daughter.”

  “How dare you attack me?” Ayla spat at him.

  “What are you doing on the lake at this hour?” Perth demanded. “And where is the girl I seek?”

  Ayla’s usually sweet face contorted with disdain. “My mother told you no such girl passed by our home or sought our help. I have every right to fish on my own lake, and you have no right to frighten me as you did. Thinking you brigands, I ran for my life!”

  Perth was at a loss, but it did not matter, for Ayla seemed determined to give him a long lecture on her rights and his sins. By the time she was finished, all he could do was stammer a cold apology and order his men to ready her boat for her departure. Ayla and the two young servants who accompanied her set off for the crannog while Perth faced the grins of his companions at the abuse he had taken. What none of them knew was that the three they truly sought had skirted the edg
e of the tarn, portaged their boat along the opposite bank while Ayla provided a diversion, and were now above them on the river, heading upstream as fast as they could row.

  Once again dressed as a boy, Tessa had hugged Ayla warmly before leaving, then taken Miriam’s twisted hands in hers. “I have much to thank you for, and if all goes well tonight there will be even more,” she remembered saying as she bent to kiss the older woman’s cheek. “I hope someday to repay at least a part of it.”

  “Nonsense, girl,” the lady chided. “Kindness is not to be repaid but to be passed on. Seek not to balance the acts of others but to do as many good things as ever you can.” And with that she had bade them goodbye.

  The boat moved slowly up the river but eventually, at dusk of the next day, they arrived at the hamlet of Dunangus. There they were accepted stoically by Jamie’s parents, an old couple who had served at the king’s castle until the year before. The man was sinewy and gnarled as an old tree, the woman rosy-cheeked and softly rounded. They let Tessa know that whatever his faults, Macbeth had treated them with generosity, and they were willing to repay him by hiding her. It warmed the girl’s heart to find a second place where there was no hatred of her uncle. The parents clucked and shook their heads at the tale Jamie told, saddened to hear of the King’s death.

  “Ye shall bide wi’ us,” the woman told Tessa. “A band of Malcolm’s men ha’ already been here. I doot they will return. When i’ is safe, ye can decide what ye will do.”

  To herself Tessa wondered what that might be. Where did she belong? She could return to her sisters and live quietly if only Hawick would forget about her. Did he still believe they were married? Did it matter? She wished she knew the answers.

  The people of the hamlet seemed only mildly concerned with events at Scone. A new king was not such a novelty in Scotland, even one steeped in blood. Their lives were taken up with preparing for winter, gathering crops, repairing homes and byres, and seeing to the provision of food and clothing necessary for the months of cold.

  For a week Tessa and Banaugh lived among the villagers of Dunangus. When Jamie admitted rather shamefacedly he had indeed ransacked Gruoch’s things before leaving the castle, Tessa assured him it had been reasonable to take things no longer useful to the dead queen but valuable to his people.

  He offered Tessa the parcel, which he had stuffed under the prow of the boat. She was pleased to find there was one fairly plain dress she could use, several combs of which she took one, and other small things that made her feel less like a pauper. Most of the dresses she gave to the old woman. Although she had no use for such finery, she could sell or trade them to make life easier. Tessa told Jamie to spread the rest among the villagers after she was gone. Maybe they would think well of the macFindlaechs that way.

  After a week Tessa and Banaugh decided Malcolm no longer had time to pursue Macbeth’s niece. His way to the throne was clear. Macbeth had no male kin to avenge his death or lead people to rebellion. Stories of the final battle reached them by way of a passing soldier loyal to Macbeth who had been knocked unconscious in the fray and woke afterward to find himself surrounded by corpses. The man told his story around the firelight, still shaken from the experience.

  “I lay on the battlefield when I came to myself, but it was over by then. There was blood in my eyes from this gash on my head, and those who sort things out took me for dead.” Groups of soldiers checked the field after a battle, rescuing their own men and often as not putting an end to the enemy’s wounded. It was not an altogether unkind thing to do.

  The man went on, fingering the cut on his scalp that had been stitched together by a village woman. “I thought to myself perhaps I was dead and in hell, it was that bad. All my comrades lay dead around me, and the king’s head—” He stopped, unwilling to put words to the memory. Tessa, whose identity was unknown to most of those around, bit her lip to keep from sobbing.

  “I crawled ever so slowly into the wood, afraid every moment Malcolm’s troops would find me and finish me off. But they paid little attention by then, for they celebrated their victory. Once I was hidden, I rested and watched for a while. Young Malcolm took two swords, his own and one he’d taken from a man he killed, and crossed them on the ground. With pipers playing, he danced in celebration of his victory over the two swords, with his men cheering him on and the English watching coldly like the curs they are. I didna stay long, but crept away in the dark and began my way upriver.” He rubbed a beefy hand over several day’s growth of beard. “My home is in Glencoe. They will take me in there, and I will be safe.”

  The soldier feared Malcolm’s revenge, even on lowly troopers, but word reached them a few days later he would take a middle road, dealing fairly with those who had served Macbeth. The image of boyish enthusiasm created by Malcolm’s “sword dance” had pleased many among the Scots, causing them to whisper that this young man would be a welcome change from the dour Macbeth.

  Word also came that a coronation ceremony would be held soon. Tessa hoped she could quietly travel north to her home and take up life in the Cairngorms again. Hawick would be too busy trying to curry favor with Malcolm to worry about her whereabouts.