Unlike Winchester and most Norman-held towns, Edinburgh was not a walled city, and the travellers had no difficulty in entering, even at dusk, nor in making their way up the steep track to the fort. There was a deep ditch, drawbridge and gatehouse there, but the guard was slack and unsuspicious, allowing the riders in without hindrance or much questioning. Hugo and Hervey were censorious.
To David it all brought back a flood of sad memories. When last he had been in this place, in 1093, twelve years before, his beloved mother, already ill, had died on word being brought of the death, in Northumberland, of both the King and their eldest son, By treachery. In one grim day David had lost mother, father and brother. His Uncle Donald had seized the throne and Edgar, who had brought the evil news, had taken his two younger brothers and two sisters, and fled with them to England and into Rufus's clutches. Perhaps they would have been better to have stayed and sought the mercy of their uncle, for Donald Ban was not a savage man . . .
The household in the bare and uninviting buildings of the fortress appeared to be notably small and undistinguished, quite unlike a King's Court. There was certainly no feminine touch here. All present were strangers to David, mainly Normans, and seemed to him at first glance a dispirited lot, with nothing of the illustrious about them. After the Winchester Court it was all shabby, dull and a great surprise. The greater surprise still was that the King was not absent, as they at first assumed, but retired to his bed for the night.
The initial reaction was that perhaps the quest about Edgar's attitude to women was already answered — for it was only dusk, still hours before midnight. But no embarrassment was evinced by the castle steward, only glum looks. So, leaving his friends to refresh themselves at a less than well plenished table, David went off to his brother's bedchamber, the same room in which their mother Queen Margaret had died.
When he saw the King of Scots lying on the great bed, he was shocked. Edgar looked almost like an old man, only thirty years as he was, thin, grey-faced, hollow-eyed, his yellow hair faded, lustreless. When he sat up, staring unbelievingly at the sight of David, his shoulders were seen to be bent, his body wasted, brittle-seeming.
"Davie! Davie?- is it true?" he all but croaked. "Is it in truth yourself, Davie? A man, now. I am not dreaming . . . ?"
"It is myself, yes. But. . . you!" David went forward to the untidy bed, to clasp his brother around the slumped shoulders - and as good as winced at the frail feel of him. "Edgar- are you sick? Ill? You, you do not look well . . ."
"No, I am not well, Davie-not well. But whether I am sick, who knows? God, perhaps — or the Devil!"
"But — Edgar, you are thin, poor-seeming. And, lying here? What is wrong . . . ?"
"I am accursed - that is what is wrong, Davie."
"Accursed? But . . . ?" Helplessly, David looked at his brother.
"Accursed, yes. Rejected of God and His saints. Lost, man-lost!" Edgar gripped the other's arm and shook it. "I tell you, I am forsaken. For my sin."
"What sin? Edgar - what are you saying?"
"I say that I am abandoned to the Evil One. For the great sin I committed. As our mother was abandoned. God is hard, hard
"Lord - what sin did our mother ever commit? She was a saint!"
"She sinned, yes - and grieved for it. But that did not save her from God's wrath. She wed our father, after he had got rid of Ingebiorg, his first wife. And then she allowed the boy Duncan, our half-brother, to be taken as hostage by the Conqueror, in place of one of her sons. She never forgave herself. Nor did Almighty God. She faded away and died, His hand upon her. As do I! There is a curse upon our house, man!"
David shook his head. "This is folly, brother. You are chasing shadows. Our mother scourged herself without mercy, yes. None other did - not God, assuredly. And you - what sin have you committed to deserve this?"
"Sin of the same sort, Davie. Against our own kin. Our Uncle Donald. I, I put out his eyes and sent him to the kitchens as a scullion! Our father's brother. He had been crowned in the Stone, at Scone. Now he has died. I killed him. His blood is required of me."
David was silenced. He had not heard of Donald Ban's death; but he had been deeply shocked those years ago when he had learned what Edgar had done to their uncle, after he had unseated him. He could not deny that.
"He usurped the throne," he said at length, without conviction.
"He had more right to it than had our father - who was born out-of-wedlock. He was younger, but legitimate."
"It may be so . . . but, Edgar - that is an old story. Done with. No cause for this, this despair."
"What do you know of that? Am I not the better judge? I tell you, I know that God has rejected me. I have become an empty husk - no more than that."
"More than that, yes. You are King of Scots, Edgar, with a realm to rule."
His brother turned his back on him, on the bed.
David sat, at a loss, not knowing what to do or think or say. He was tired, with the long journey, and hungry. Perhaps in the morning he would be able to do better.
"Leave me now, Davie," the King muttered. "I am weary”
"Yes. Tomorrow, then ..."
At least, as he went, leaden-hearted, he already had the answer to one part of the quest Henry had laid upon him. Edgar mac Malcolm was not likely to look favourably on any marriage proposal.
* * *
After two depressing days at Edinburgh they rode northwards again, in search of Alexander, Earl of Gowrie. Edgar had proved little or no more encouraging in the interim, a man deeply immersed in his own sorrows and apprehensions, making no more attempt to welcome and entertain his brother and visitors than he apparently did to manage the affairs of his kingdom. David had sought to explain to him Henry's desire further to link their royal houses in marriage; but Edgar had shown no least interest. Indeed his attitude was that he was as good as dead and that Alexander would soon be ruling Scotland anyway. Only the one spasm of anything like animation had come to him during those gloomy days. When, speaking of Alexander, Edgar had declared that he feared for the realm's unity when he was gone. Alex would not hold it together. He was interested only in the North, the old Alba, the ancient Celtic kingdom north of the Scotwater and Forth. For the South, for this Lothian and the Merse, Teviotdale and Strathclyde, he had no concern, never coming near it, the best and civilised part of the whole. So he, Edgar, was going to leave all the South to David. Alexander could keep Alba and be King of Scots; David should be Prince of Strathclyde - the title of the heir to the throne, which he had never given to Alexander - and rule all south of Forth. Uncertain what to make of this, David had let the matter lie, and Edgar had not referred to it again.
If the three young men had felt released on leaving Winchester two weeks before, they felt still more so to get away from the grim and distressing atmosphere of Dunedin, where all was neglect, lethargy, foreboding. Apparently, in so far as Scotland was being governed at all, other than locally by its ri or lesser kings, the mormaors and earls of the great provinces, it was being governed from the old Celtic capital of Scone, in Fortrenn. An able Norman churchman, Robert, was Prior of Scone, and he had been appointed Chancellor or chief minister. There was a certain convenience in this as far as the Celtic part of the kingdom was concerned, for Alexander resided mainly only a few miles to the north, at Malcolm Canmore's former summer palace of the Ward of the Stormounth; their older brother, Ethelred, Abbot of Dunkeld in the Celtic Church and now Earl of Moray, lived at Forteviot to the south a short distance; their cousin Madach, Earl of Atholl, had his seat at Dunkeld, not a great deal further north; and Maldred mac Melmore, Madach's brother and one of the most useful men in the land, lived at Bothar Gask, midway between Dunkeld and the Ward. So there was something of a concentration of authority in Fortrenn, the heart of the Celtic realm; and Edgar's withdrawal and near-abdication at Edinburgh, was the less disastrous - although it was still a sorry situation.
So the travellers journeyed on north by west, crossed saltwater where th
e Scottish Sea became the Firth of Forth, by the ferry established by Queen Margaret. They spent the first night at David's old home of Dunfermline Palace, now in the hands only of a steward, and a sad disappointment to the returned exile who had remembered a place vastly different, all life and stir and even splendour. It was now seen to be little more than a rather bare and overgrown hallhouse attached to a stark stone tower, all echoing with emptiness. The great minster to the Holy Trinity, which Queen Margaret had erected nearby, however, was sufficiently impressive, so that Hervey and Hugo could at least find something to admire there. So far they had found Scotland just what they had expected - backward, unpolished; they did not hesitate to say so.
By riding hard and long next day, they managed to reach the Ward of the Stormounth, on the skirts of the Highland mountains, by evening, only to find that Alexander was absent. Apparently there was a great wedding at Dunkeld, where Madach, Earl of Atholl was belatedly taking a wife, at the age of fifty-five, and the prince was attending.
The Ward was a pleasant place, its memories happy ones for David, of long summer days hunting and hawking in the hills, fishing in the rivers, swimming in Loch Clunie and making great expeditions with his older brothers into the mountains, to climb and clamber and explore. It was certainly a much more desirable place to live than Dunedin's fortress, and the three friends would gladly have lingered. But there was no knowing for how long Alexander might remain away; and Dunkeld was only eight miles to the west. So the following morning they rode on into South Atholl.
Dunkeld, set dramatically within the jaws of a narrow pass where the great River Tay emerged through the Highland Line into the green leafiness of Birnam Wood, was astir with lively activity, the rath on the top of its thrusting pinnacle of rock, the Abbey directly below at the riverside, and the quite large township nearby, all full of visitors and their hangers-on. The actual wedding ceremony had been two days previously, but the festivities were still very much going on, a great many of Celtic Scotland's notables having gathered for this unexpected occasion. Madach was popular, and it was not often that one of the great earls of Scotland waited until his mid-fifties to marry and then to wed a girl exactly forty years his junior — in this case, the Lady Margaret Hakonsdotter of Orkney. Although the celebrations had been going on for days, everybody seemed to be in high good spirits still — including the new fifteen-year-old Countess, a large, flaxen-haired, tomboyish creature of the true Nordic breed, with nothing of the blushing bride about her. Madach of Atholl, it seemed, was likely to pass the evening of his days less than restfully.
When they arrived, sporting contests were in progress in the level haughland of the river, near the Abbey, amidst much hilarity — racing, on horse and afoot, and swimming in the Tay, jumping, vaulting and wrestling, archery, sword-fighting, javelin-throwing, caber-tossing and stone-putting. Pipers strutted and blew, dancers demonstrated, performing bears were paraded, and food and drink was laid out in lavish profusion for all-comers.
In all the crowd and turmoil the newcomers, as well as being unnoticed, were at something of a loss as to whom to present themselves; but presently David saw one familiar face. At least, the features were sufficiently like his own, although much older-seeming, and the gingery-red hair was as he thought to remember it. He led the way over to where this individual, a tall man in his early thirties, dressed in Highland fashion, saffron kilted tunic, belted with a golden earl's belt and wearing a shoulder-plaid of vivid colours, fed lumps of cold meat to a couple of long-legged shaggy deerhounds.
"Eth!" he exclaimed. "It is Eth, is it not? Greetings, brother."
"Eh . . . ?" The other man looked startled, "Do I know you, friend? I am seldom called brother - seldom even called Abbot now. And not Eth but Hugh."
It was David's turn to look perplexed. "Hugh . . . ? But—you are Eth, are you not? Ethelred mac Malcolm?"
"To be sure. But here, in the Highlands, Ethelred is a foreign name. And Eth is Aodh or Hugh. So ... ! But, your face is familiar . . . ?"
"It should be - since we are brothers, my lord! I am David mac Malcolm."
"God in His Heaven!" the other cried, and came forward to clasp the younger man to him. "Davie! By all the powers - Davie! Young Davie - a man grown! Sakes - I have not seen you since you were . . . when would it be? Ten years old? Or more”
"Nine, yes. 1093, when I was taken to England. Twelve years ago, Eth - Hugh. A long time ..."
"But how come you here, lad? Are you released? Come home, at last?"
"Scarce that. I am not a hostage now - at least, I think not! Now that our sister is Queen of England. I am here on a mission for King Henry." He recollected the courtesies. "These, my lord, are my friends - Hugo de Morville and Hervey de Warenne. And this is the Prince Ethelred, Abbot of Dunkeld and Earl of Moray. Although it was Earl of Fife before, was it not?"
"Aye — but young Constantine MacDuff came of age and got his earldom back. So I was given Moray, which had been forfeited by Malsnechtan mac Lulach. I am married to Lulach's daughter, so it was thought apt." He nodded to the two young men. "Both of your names are namely — but sorely Norman!" However, he grinned as he said that. "Friends of David's are friends of mine, forby. What is your mission, lad?"
"Well... it is with Alexander. Henry has word for him. We have been to Dunedin and seen Edgar . . ."
"Ah. I fear that you would have little joy in that. It is a sorry pass."
"Yes. I was grieved, much grieved. He seems to be almost out of his mind. What is to be done?"
"What can be done? We have all tried. But he will hear nothing. He is eaten up with guilt. He has turned his face to the wall."
"He thinks himself accursed. Yet - he is the King . . ."
"He does not act the King. Never has done, in truth. Alex at least will do better, I think."
David considered his brother thoughtfully. But for this Celtic Church abbacy and primacy, which now apparently meant little or nothing, with the Roman Church triumphing, Ethelred would have been the King, not Edgar, for he was the third of the Margaretsons. Edward, Prince of Strathclyde, had been slain with his father. Edmund, the second son and black sheep, had supported their uncle, Donald Ban, paid for it by being condemned to perpetual imprisonment — but this was commuted on his taking holy orders in the Romish Church, which barred him from the succession. Edgar had been only the fourth son, as David was the sixth and youngest.
Perhaps his face showed something of these thoughts, for Ethelred clapped him on the shoulder.
"Our fates are in the hands of the good God, not for curse and evil but for the best, lad," he said. "Doubts and fears and repinings are not for princes. Alex, see you, suffers none of these! He is yonder, at the caber-tossing. Hoping to win, as always - although he will not, for there are better men than he, here. Come."
They crossed to a corner of the haugh where men vied with each other as to who could toss a tall, trimmed tree-trunk the farthest, amidst much grunting and puffing and bulging of biceps. Most of the contestants, mainly stripped to the waist above short kilts, were big burly men; but one most noticeably was not, a fair-headed, well-built but fairly lean individual, seeming almost slight compared with the others, but at second glance his wiry body seen to be toughly muscular and in excellent condition. He had sharp, almost foxy features and a notable air of concentration and determination. He was flexing his arms and knees as he stood watching one giant, who balanced his caber high, preparing to toss.
"Alex," Ethelred called. "A truce to your stick-throwing! See whom we have here."
The other barely glanced in their direction. "Wait," he jerked, and continued with his exercises whilst closely eyeing the competitor with the swaying tree.
With a groan ending in a single explosive snort, the man heaved his enormous burden up and over, and staggered back. The thing did not seem to go very far - but the wonder was that any man could actually lift it up off the ground, much less throw it for even a few feet. The earth shook to its fall.
&nb
sp; "Ha - not so good as your last toss, Fergus," Alexander exclaimed. "I can beat that I swear!"
Another man was already unrolling a string to measure the distance from the tossing-line to the dunt in the grass made by the butt, amongst the number of small pegs which marked the limits of other throws.
Alexander, Earl of Gowrie, turned. "So it is Davie!" he said, without evident surprise or pronounced pleasure. "Grown a man, but still . . . Davie."
"Why, yes. Would you have expected otherwise, Alex? Greetings to you, brother."
"Aye - and to you. What brings you here, so far from your English friends?"
"You do, Alex. I have word for you. But it is my pleasure to see my own kin again, likewise."
"Oh, yes. To be sure." The other looked him up and down. There was some five years' difference in their ages, but the elder seemed much the senior. He nodded briefly. "Aye, then — I shall see you later." And he turned back to the caber-tossing.
"That is Alex!" Ethelred murmured, as he took David's arm and led him away. "He has time only for the business on hand, always. But he is none so ill if you are the business on hand! Come and eat lad. You and your friends will be hungry. And we shall find Madach ..."
The Earl Madach, when he was found and brought, proved to be a solid stocky but amiable man, ageing but strong-bodied, son of their father's uncle. He gave no impression of being a besotted bridegroom, but made a good if undemonstrative host. He was clearly much interested to see David, and when they had eaten, took him in search of his new wife. Before they found her, they encountered his brother Maldred, Lord of Dowally, a quietly competent-seeming man, greying but of a notably alert bearing, who had been an especial friend of Queen Margaret. With him was his handsome wife, the Lady Magda, a Saxon, both of whom David remembered vaguely from childhood.
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