Raised in cosmopolitan courts, she knew that her roughshod Scottish husband’s reputation needed polishing. Margaret crafted Malcolm’s transformation from warrior-barbarian to worldly medieval king most deliberately. “By her care and labor the king himself, laying aside the barbarity of his manners, became more gentle and civilized,” wrote Simeon of Durham, a probable acquaintance of Turgot.
Almost singlehandedly, Margaret brought Celtic Scotland into the medieval age—encouraging trade, raising standards in the royal households with fine dress and luxury goods, and bringing Roman rite and Benedictine guidance more cohesively into Scotland, a land previously content with the Celtic church. She argued theology with Celtic priests—one session lasted three days as she debated Lenten observance and other differences—and she founded Benedictine churches. In a sense, she was a missionary who worried about Scottish souls.
Her increasing physical frailty is mentioned by Turgot, and her death in her mid-forties, said to be from heartbreak after the deaths of Malcolm and their son Edward, may have been due to a heart damaged by habitual fasting; even her priests, said Turgot, would beg her to eat something when she stubbornly deprived herself.
Given all that, I knew that a novel about Margaret could become a doorstop of a thousand pages unless it explored only part of her life. Enchanted by her history and curious to know more, I began the research while I wrote Lady Macbeth. For Margaret, I focused the story on her arrival in Scotland, her courtship with Malcolm, and the first few years of their marriage, babies and miracles and all. In the young queen, I wanted to show the elements that would create the mature queen of the historical record.
But a female protagonist who has one pregnancy after another, who fasts despite that and prays intensely, is best seen, at times, from another perspective—so Eva the Bard entered the story. Eva is purely fictional, but her bardic craft and courtly position fit Scottish medieval society. Male bards were certainly more common, but female bards and harpers were recorded consistently in Scottish history—from early myths, to the songwriters and poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and beyond to current Celtic music.
Though it is unknown if King Lulach, son of Lady Macbeth, actually had an illegitimate daughter, it is possible. Neither do we know if Queen Gruadh (Gruoch in the historical record) survived her husband to see the reign of Malcolm and Margaret—but again, anything is possible. By the dates alone, Gruadh had a good chance of still being alive when Margaret was a young queen, and, I think, would have bitterly resented Malcolm Canmore.
Regarding Margaret’s birth family, her father, Edward the Exile, was whisked out of England as a toddler to escape the wrath of Cnut, new to the English throne; harbored in Kiev and later Hungary, he married Agatha, who was perhaps of Hungarian, German, or Russian blood; for the novel, I favored the strong theory of Agatha as a princess of Kievan and Swedish descent. She was indeed widowed suddenly in 1057 when Edward the Exile dropped dead virtually at her feet in London. Stranded with her children in the court of Edward the Confessor, she escaped with them following the Norman Conquest, and all were shipwrecked in Scotland.
Edgar the Aetheling apparently never married (at least a wife is not recorded). King William probably exiled him as a condition of the agreement with Malcolm at Abernethy; Edgar went to Flanders, returned to Scotland two years later, and was offered property and a title in France. Probably eager for his success, Malcolm and Margaret fitted him out with a ship loaded with the finest belongings. It sank. Edgar, who has been described as “hapless,” survived another shipwreck and made his way back to Scotland.
Next he went to England to do homage for William’s forgiveness and was granted modest English properties, providing he gave up his claims. Edgar next went to Italy, perhaps hoping for adventure and profit, but soon he was back in England, losing his lands under rough King William Rufus. He returned to Scotland prior to the deaths of Malcolm and Margaret. Hapless indeed—yet a man of high ideals, if lacking the talent to see them through. In a sense, Edgar was the Bonnie Prince Charlie of his day.
However, he successfully championed the claims of his nephews, the Margaretsons, as they were called, against Malcolm’s eldest, Duncan, for the Scottish throne. Eventually four of Malcolm and Margaret’s sons succeeded to the throne of Scotland, establishing a Canmore dynasty. Traces of their blood continue to this day in British royalty.
Cristina, who was given lands in England by William, became abbess of Romsey Abbey and later oversaw the education of Margaret’s young daughters, Edith and Mary; some accounts have her treating Edith so cruelly that the girl wrote to her father to fetch her home.
King Malcolm Canmore, or Malcolm III of Scotland, will be known to some readers through Shakespeare’s Macbeth or through historical accounts of the Norman era in Britain. He was undoubtedly a rough, cunning warlord of a king who was civilized, in a sense, by his younger, sophisticated, and devout queen. More about Malcolm can be learned through reading my novel Lady Macbeth, as I have in many ways continued a story—that of the tensions between Malcolm, Macbeth, and Macbeth’s wife—that begin there.
Part of the contribution of historical fiction, I think, is the ability to conjure a historical era and bring to life historical persons such as these who otherwise might exist only in dry nonfiction accounts. I hope that Queen Hereafter conjures for you the reputable and sainted Queen Margaret of Scotland as a real, vulnerable, likable young woman, placed—with the help of a lady bard and a trouble-stirring former queen—within the context of the Scottish society that no doubt the actual Margaret must have struggled to comprehend.
For the sake of fiction, I played a little with some dates, folding and tucking here and there so that events would move more quickly and make sense within the plot. Some well-known incidents and threads in Margaret’s life, though integral to the historical queen, hit the cutting room floor in this fictional account for very practical reasons. Other events were altered slightly, such as the existence of Margaret’s chapel in Edinburgh; true, the actual stone chapel was built under her son King David of Scotland, but it is possible that a wooden chapel existed there first. Also, fictional characters were added to support the main players, but the core of the story is, I hope, close to what could have happened in the early years of Margaret’s marriage.
If these two Queens of Scots, Gruadh and Margaret, ever met (we will never know), each might have seen in the other her near opposite: one was the product of an archaic Celtic warrior society more Dark Ages than anything else; the other was a true medieval woman (modern in her own terms), greatly devout with a worldly sophistication.
The story of Margaret and Malcolm is a fairy tale of a beauty and a beast, two people who changed the course of Scottish history. The story is told that centuries after her death, Margaret’s coffin was removed during renovations from its original tomb in the church at Dunfermline to be placed in the new apse. The workers carrying the coffin found it so heavy that they set it down and could not budge it again—then they realized that next to them was the tomb of Malcolm Canmore.
Only when Malcolm’s coffin was moved to the new apse first could the queen’s coffin then be easily lifted and installed in its new position. Legend says that the queen’s spirit, out of love and respect for her husband, prevented her coffin from preceding his into the new space.
Tiny, beautiful lights, it is claimed, sometimes float around her tomb in Dunfermline, proving that she still watches over Scotland. To this day, her presence is recalled in various places—her simple, serene chapel in Edinburgh Castle; St. Margaret’s Loch and St. Margaret’s Well; the water crossing she founded at Queensferry in Fife; the boulder where she sat to rest near Malcolm’s tower in Dunfermline and the little cave tucked under a hill there; and the cove where it is said she first set foot in Scotland, which is called Saint Margaret’s Hope.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful for the encouragement and support of many friends and colleagues, including Julie Boot
h, Joanne Zaslow, Anita Havas, Joanne Szadkowski. And endless thanks are due Mary Jo Putney and Patricia Rice as willing sources of opinion, inspiration, and friendship.
Also, I am very thankful to Benjamin Hudson, Ph.D., who discussed with me the many historical complexities that surround Malcolm and Margaret (and shared his inspiring theory that good girl Margaret and bad boy Malcolm are like the song “Leader of the Pack”). In addition, Malcolm Furgol deserves a nod for his stalwart defense of the merits of Margaret and his namesake, helping to convince me to write the book. Special thanks are due Mary Grady for graciously tutoring me in Celtic harp and sharing her wisdom in lessons that despite our crazy schedules did indeed sink in (I can pluck out some tunes!). I must thank Celtic harper Ann Heymann once again—the conversations we had when I wrote another book about a medieval harper, along with Ann’s dazzling CD recordings, were inspiring for this novel, too. And thanks go to Richard Green for carefully correcting the Latin so that my characters would sound like educated royals rather than idjits playing around with an online translator; and lastly, thanks to Tommy D. for the harp!
My editor, Heather Lazare, has gentle patience and a guiding hand, and my agent, Karen Solem, is always there through thick and thin—and the Crown art department produced a gorgeous cover right out of the gate. Finally, my wonderful guys, David, Josh, Jeremy, and Sean, have put up with a lot, accepting the books as practically family members …
Thank you all.
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