Margaret the Queen

by Nigel Tranter

  "The Keledei at Culross are the best beekeepers in the land," he told her. "They keep the Queen's bees for her. And make the palace candles with their wax. Her Highness requires a new supply of candles. I go for them, rather than a servant, for my younger brother, Kerald, is training there to be a monk. Or, at least, one day to be abbot." He grinned. "He should be more learned in matters of the Church than I am. Perhaps he can convince ' you that we are not such pagan idolators as you think!"

  "I did not say that, Maldred," she reproved. "Only that that ritual we saw back there had its roots in sun-worship." She shook her lovely head. "These candles — are they required for worship? Do you light candles? To the Blessed Virgin and other saints?"

  "Why should any do that? The saints have no need for lights in heaven, have they? No, they are for the house. You, here, need more . . ."

  "Then surely they should not be fetched on the Lord's Day?" she said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because it is a day for rest. For worship and meditation only. When no work should be done, no travel undertaken, no ventures started. The candles should have been fetched yesterday, surely. Or await the morrow."

  "Lord — what harm in carrying a few candles? Or in riding to see my own brother?"

  "No harm on any other day. But on Sunday, yes — when it is not necessary. Is that not so, Brother Oswald?"

  "Indeed yes, Princess," the Benedictine agreed. "God's holy day is not to be defiled."'

  "But — where is the defilement? Sunday is a day for joy, not gloom, is it not? Always the Church teaches that — our Church. God is worshipped by all, at the beginning, to start His day well. Then folk may do as best pleases them. So long as there is no ill in it. . ."

  "Young man, you know not what you say," Oswald told him sternly. "Holy Scripture speaks positively, clearly on this. The sainted Augustine had to reprove and instruct the Church, grown lax in this very issue. Benedict likewise..."

  "I have had my day's sermon, I thank you!" Maldred interrupted, and nodding only briefly to the ladies, left the chamber.

  He rode to Culross with his pannier-ponies alone, distinctly at odds with holiness.

  IN THE DAYS that followed, Maldred discovered that he was not purged of his admiration for Margaret Atheling by his lack of appreciation of her piety. For otherwise she proved to be a lively and spirited young woman, far from prudish or stiff, not obviously concerned with rank and station, friendly, energetic, with an innate dignity and never the tomboyishness which her attendant Magdalen could display on occasion. She was interested in what went on around her, glad to take part in most activities, only moralising when she conceived a religious aspect to be involved — which certainly was apt to happen rather more frequently than occurred to some of her Scots hosts. Yet even then her attitude was not really so much holier-than-thou as one of urgent awareness of the dangers of sin and of a spirited antagonism to it. That she found some things sinful which others did not was most of the trouble. And compared with the others of her family, she was much more likeable, not the least in that she was endowed with a sense of humour.

  Maldred saw a lot of her — and therefore of Magdalen, since they were not to be left alone, of course. She enjoyed being out-of-doors, even in a Scots November, seeing places and people, unlike her mother and sister. And the Queen, who clearly limited her relationship with the Athelings to mere civilities, more or less made them Maldred's responsibility, since he had brought them. Edgar was, understandably, in a low state, having made his bid for a kingdom and failed, and did not show himself much. But despite indifferent weather, Margaret filled her days. She did not like hunting and hawking, since these meant killing God's creatures; but went riding for long distances, walked happily enough, made expeditions to places of beauty, interest and antiquity, most certainly not brooding on her fate.

  Maldred found her company stimulating, challenging and only now and again exasperating. Had he not had other responsibilities, in the matter of the assembling of

  the reinforcements for the King's army, he might have made something of a fool of himself over this princess, for he was not good at disguising his feelings. But in this Magdalen helped him to keep his feet reasonably firmly on the ground. She was anything but a cipher in their relationship.

  So ten days passed, with, the next Sunday, confrontation carefully avoided. Then, towards dusk one late afternoon, the King arrived home unexpectedly, ahead of his forces, with only a handful of his nobles. And the entire atmosphere and circumstance at Dunfermline was changed dramatically from the moment he rode clattering into the palace courtyard. Everyone was affected, and in major degree, from the Queen down to the lowliest servitor, however differently they showed their reaction. Malcolm mac Duncan was apt to have an impact like that of a mailed fist slammed down on a table.

  Maldred and the two young women had been on a visit to Loch Leven, some fifteen miles to the north, to inspect the vast flocks of waterfowl which wintered there, rowing around the loch in a boat supplied by the Keledei of the cashel of St. Serf on the largest of the islands. The King was already returned when they got back. They found him pacing the hall floor, still clad in his metal-scaled leather tunic and long riding-boots, a beaker of ale in one hand and a leg of cold mutton in the other, jerking out mouthful questions, comments and disapproval as he paced, clearly in no good humour. The Queen sat, stiffly, frozen-faced, at the table, half-turned away from him. Edgar stood nearby looking uneasy and depressed; whilst his mother and sister all but cringed beyond the central fireplace, as though to keep its protection between them and their host. The Earls of Angus and Strathearn waited, to the side, travel-stained, watchful.

  "... I tell you no single Saxon was raising a hand against him," he was almost snarling. "What are your devil-damned people? Mice, slugs or men? This William has all cowering before him, stricken as though with the palsy. And you, you cower here!"

  "What else could I have done . . . ?" Edgar protested.

  "You sent the prince and his ladies here, husband," the Queen said, coldly. "Now do you blame them for coming?"

  "If you have not better to say than that, keep silence!" the King snapped. "You could have sent on forces to my aid. Spurred on that idle oaf MacDuff! I was faced with William's full strength. In Cumbria. With a bare two thousand men..."

  "Highness," Maldred put in, from the doorway. "You ordered me to tell my lord of Fife to muster men, but to hold them here until you sent for them. They are at Forteviot and Scone. Another two thousand and more ..."

  "Silence, fool! Speak when you are spoken to!" Malcolm snouted. But he paused, as his pale angry eyes went past Maldred to Margaret Atheling, and for a moment he faltered both in his denunciation and his pacing. "I sent messengers, whenever I heard of the Norman's march into Cumbria," he ended shortly.

  "No messenger came here," Ingebiorg said. "And if one had reached MacDuff he would have acted. Your messengers must have failed you, or been intercepted."

  "As to that, we shall see." Malcolm Canmore bit into his mutton, and spat some of the skin into the fire. He swung on Angus. "Get you to Forteviot and have MacDuff march for Tweed forthwith," he commanded. "With all his strength. We shall hold Tweed and Esk, if the Norman seeks to drive north into Galloway or the Merse or Lothian. Then on with you to your Angus and the Mearns, aye and on to Mar and Buchan also. To muster more men. Every man capable of bearing arms, I want. Horses too. And quickly. Hang such as will not aid you. You, Strathearn — to your own parts, then to the Lennox and Monteith and Alclyde. Raise me a sufficiency of men — or suffer for it! The Duke William has had to see my back — a thousand curses on him and on all who forced it on me! But he shall see my face and my fist if he seeks to step a yard over my border, I swear by Christ God!"

  "Husband," the Queen declared evenly, "if this is to be a council-of-war, I pray that you hold it elsewhere than in my hall. You have guests, ladies, whom you sent here. Have you forgot?"

  Maldred for one held his breath at that, in
fear for the outburst that Ingebiorg would bring down on her head. She was not normally thus bold. But before the King opened his chewing mouth, a new voice spoke, Margaret Atheling's, quiet, firm, yet soothing.

  "The lord King must not allow us weak women to incommode him, Highness. We rejoice to see him safe returned, whatever trials he has had to bear and dangers to overcome. But we should relieve him of our presence meantime, when he has much on his mind. Do not you agree, Mother? If His Highness will permit our retiral?"

  "Yes. Yes, indeed," the Princess Agatha said eagerly, at once beginning to edge towards the stairway, Christina with her.

  Malcolm commenced to speak, then closed his lips again, staring at Margaret, head thrust forward. She met his glare fearlessly although not defiantly, indeed managing to smile slightly, whilst the Queen looked from one to the other of them.

  There was a tense hush until, at length, the monarch nodded. "So be it," he said. "Off with you. I will speak with you later." It was only at Margaret that he gazed.

  Thankfully the ladies departed, save for Ingebiorg who sat still. On her, her husband turned.

  "And you!" he jerked. "You will have to learn your place. I would have thought that you would have known it, by now!"

  She rose. "My place, Malcolm, is sure, secure, and known to all. I am the crowned Queen of this realm. And sister to the Earl of Orkney and Zetland and Lord of the Hebrides and Galloway. I urge that you do not forget it."

  "What mean you by that, woman?"

  "I mean that I have borne much from you in the past, of ill-usage and disrespect. I do not intend that I shall bear more."

  "And . . . ?"

  "And I remind Your Scots Highness that I have brothers! That I am Thorfinn Raven Feeder's daughter — in case you have forgot. Brothers who could set all your north and west alight and take Moray and Galloway from you, if so they desired . . ."

  "If so I let them! Your brothers, woman, are weaklings. Made of different stuff from your pirate father! Think you that I care for their puny threat? If they ever mustered the courage to move against me."

  "You cared for their threat sufficiently to wed me, in order to counter it, did you not? Eleven sorry years ago, and I little more than a child. Or why else the marriage? When you had not so much as seen me. It was scarce for love and yearning!"

  "No, by God! I . . . I . . ." The King seemed to realise belatedly that they were not alone in the hall, and pausing, turned to glare around him. "Enough of this. I have work to do. Maldred — have the Chancellor sent for. Have him here from St. Andrews at the earliest, even if the old fool has to ride all night! Aye, and the Treasurer also. I need money, as well as men. . ."

  The Queen swept from the chamber, and thankfully Maldred escaped.

  * * *

  The meal that night was scarcely a happy occasion. Not unnaturally the Athelings elected to eat in their own rooms upstairs; and the Queen sat as far away from her husband, at the long table in the hall, as was possible. This produced an awkward dilemma for their attendants, nobles and courtiers, as to where they should seat themselves. Most, for obvious reasons, decided to sit near Malcolm, however bad his mood; and only a small group took their places at the foot of the table beside the Queen, so that there was a major and most evident gap. Maldred, despite being the King's standard-bearer or esquire, to use the new Norman term, chose a place close to Ingebiorg. Being cousin to them both, he was perhaps in a better position than others to take a more independent point of view.

  Malcolm drank steadily, eating little, morose, mainly silent, so there was little conversation at his end. The Queen, on the other hand, was much more forthcoming than normally, evidently determined to sustain her access of spirit and to underline her husband's boorishness. Her companions, however, found themselves unable to back up her efforts adequately, especially in view of the scowls from the head of the table, and Ingebiorg's talk took on a somewhat feverish note. Maldred did his best for her, and often the only talk in the hall was in the nature of a dialogue between the two of them, an uncomfortable proceeding.

  Eventually Malcolm had had enough of this — if not of his liquor — and smashed down his hand on the table-top, to make the beakers, flagons and platters jump, and most of the diners with them.

  "You, Maldred — still your lack-wit chatter and fetch me the Atheling," he commanded. "Yes, Highness. Bring him. . . here?" "Did I say otherwhere, dolt?"

  The Queen rose as Maldred did. "If it is to be more of fighting and war, husband, then I shall retire," she announced. "I bid you, and all, a good night!"

  The King snorted but did not otherwise comment.

  Maldred was thankful once more to hurry to open the door for the Queen, behind whom he himself made an exit. He climbed the stairs to inform the prince that his presence was requested in the hall.

  Edgar came down in evident alarm. And with reason, for whenever he appeared he was subjected to abuse. Malcolm, presumably because he was humiliated by having had to turn and flee before the unexpected eruption of King William — whom he preferred still to refer to as Duke William of Normandy, or the Bastard — into Cumbria, was much more critical of the English prince and Saxons in general than he had been previously over their major collapse in the rising against the usurper — in which, of course, he had not been involved personally. He was angry that William could make a forced march northwards through Deira or Yorkshire, Durham, South Northumbria and into his own Cumbria, without apparently an English sword being raised against him; and no single message or warning sent to the Scots King as to his enemy's approach, while he had been hunting down the side-changing Cospatrick. Malcolm, suddenly faced by greatly larger numbers of the puissant Normans and sundry of their Saxon underlings, had been forced into ignominious and headlong retiral for Scotland — and he had to vent his wrath on someone. The fact that, as it transpired, William had actually been making his dash north to punish the renegade Cospatrick, unpopular with all, rather than the raiding Scots, did little to appease Malcolm's ire. His reputation as a warrior-king had taken a body-blow.

  So Edgar had to bear the brunt of it, as representing the wretched Saxons — and was in a poor position to defend himself. Wilting, he just had to stand and take it. Malcolm was three-parts drunk, and tired, so that, indeed, the diatribe was more incoherent and less devastating than it might have been — for this man's anger could be deadly, murderous. Presently the spate of it flagged, and the King came to the real reason for Edgar's summons. Were there any Saxon lords or thanes remaining in the north of England with a spark of spirit in them who could be stirred up to rise in arms behind Norman William, and so to cause the usurper to pause in any attempt to cross the Scots border? Only a mere gesture might serve. The Athelings had brought a number of Saxon notables here to Scotland with them — Merleswegen, Archill, Siward Barn, Alfwin, Maurice and the rest. Was there anywhere these might be sent, secretly but in haste, to arouse trouble behind William, in this pass?

  Unhappily Edgar had to admit that he knew of no such opportunity, of no such paladins. All who had been disposed to rise against the Normans had already done so. Now that the rising was put down and William triumphant, who was going to put his neck into a noose by making gestures of this sort? He, unfortunately, because of his upbringing in Hungary, did not know many of his Saxon lords personally. . .

  Disgustedly Malcolm waved him away, and rose, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet. "Useless!" he snarled. "Vain, posturing daw! I will see some of your miserable Saxons in the morning. Some may have more of wit and spirit than have you — although I doubt it. Now — fetch me that sister of yours."

  "Sister?" The prince stared. "What. . . what. . . ?"

  "Sister, yes. The fair one. Think you I would prefer your mother?"

  "But, Sire — now? She will be retired ..."

  "Then arouse her. I ride in the morning. I shall have no time to await women's hours. I shall see her now."

  "Highness — not so, I pray you. It, it is not suitable. At this h
our of night. She, a young woman of royal blood . . ."

  "God's Blood, man — I shall not rape her. Or... I think not! See her I shall. Go fetch her — if from her naked bed, so much the better!"

  "Sire — my regrets. But that I cannot, will not, do! In all respect. Her own brother ..." He drew a deep breath. "I may be a posturing daw — but I will not aid in my sister's dishonour."

  "Dishonour is it, fool? To deal with the King of Scots!" Malcolm swung around. "You, Maldred — go you.

  Request the princess's presence. Not here. In the tower. Bring her to my chamber."

  "The saints forbid!" Edgar exclaimed.

  "Not them! Go, boy." That to Maldred, pointing.

  "Then I shall accompany her," the prince declared. "If she goes, I go . . ."

  Maldred hurried off, mind in a turmoil.

  Upstairs, doubtfully, he knocked at the door of the Atheling women's room. At first there was no response. His second knock brought a stirring within, and presently the door opened partially, and Magdalen's face appeared at the crack, enquiringly.

  "You!" she said, surprised. "What seek you? At this hour. Is it refuge that you seek? From that monster of a King. . . ?"

  "No. It is the Lady Margaret. I am sorry. But will you ask her to come?"

  "Lord — will you never learn? Have you taken leave of your wits, Maldred?"