An Ancient Strife

by Michael Phillips

  The English King then accelerated the policy which would ultimately complete the Normanization of Britain. He began to colonize Cumbria and Northumbria, exactly as his father had the south, by deeding large tracts of land to Anglo-Norman knights and nobles who built great houses and castles, then occupied and defended them in the name of the King. Thus did the feudal system, already so lucrative for landholders in Normandy and newly successful in the south of England, arrive in the north.

  Rufus’s expulsion of Scots from northern England and the restoration of Carlisle into English hands at last brought definition to the Solway-Tweed line (drawn between the Firth of Solway and the mouth of the Tweed River) as the recognized border between the Scottish north and the English south.

  A meeting was scheduled between William Rufus and Malcolm in 1093. They would come together at Gloucester to discuss the yet unfulfilled terms of their agreement of 1091. In exchange for Malcolm’s oaths of loyalty to the English King, restoration had been promised to Malcolm of lands in England that were rightfully considered possessions of the Scots King.

  Before leaving for the south, however, Malcolm ordered a great celebration throughout Scotland. Crops were coming in, the country was at peace, and no English troops were on northern soil. It was Malcolm’s desire to eat, drink, and be merry with his people.

  Sixteen

  The event had been heralded all summer.

  Messengers had ridden to all corners of the land. They were sent to proclaim in every village and croft and in the land, that by royal decree all inhabitants of the kingdom—rich and poor, women and men, Highlanders, Lowlanders, Scots, and English—were invited to be guests of King Malcolm and Queen Margaret on the lawns of Dunfermline Castle during the second week of August, in the year 1093. They might bring tents and wagons, carts and blankets, and sleep in the open air in the fields and hillsides surrounding Dunfermline.

  Feasting and celebration would last the entire week. A great country holiday was organized. Food of every sort would be on hand. Tents and tables were being set up. Carts were already arriving at the castle with pigs and deer and rabbit for roasting, and an unending supply of meat pies and steamed puddings was being prepared.

  And entertainment—there would be music and jugglers, jousting and a variety of tournaments. Margaret would see to the dancing, and there would be all manner of song and merrymaking.

  As the summer advanced and the date drew near, Lothian, Strathclyde, Fife, and Tay were in a state of unprecedented anticipation. Guests were even expected from such distant regions as Moray and Buchan in the north and the Highlands and isles of the west.

  When the people began to arrive, the King and Queen greeted each man and woman as friends and walked daily through the village of tents and carts and wagons. Steadily the countryside around Dunfermline filled.

  What a happy time for the inhabitants of Scotland!

  No one remembered its like before. The sounds and smells of summer floated in the air. Violets abounded, and bees buzzed from the prickly thistle’s hairy purple centers, then flitted toward big yellow dandelions. No heather was yet in bloom, but the hillsides were splotched with the bright gold of broom.

  Down from the mountains came hundreds of Highlanders, and from along the seacoasts arrived the fisherfolk. Crops had been good. People were gay. Priests were again respected, and the church, flourishing under Margaret’s patronage, was more highly regarded than at any time in memory.

  The King gave several speeches throughout the week, congratulating the farmers for their successful harvest and the fishermen for their good season of catches. French wine and local ale flowed abundantly, and the King and Queen, demonstrating to their nobles how royalty could mix with peasantry, at week’s end had more greatly endeared themselves to their subjects than ever.

  Malcolm had set up a race for all willing boys and young men. He would himself start the contestants at the castle gate. Thence they would run along the entry road, up the hill northward to its crest, halfway down the other side, around the great boulder, and then back, a distance in all of some three miles.

  When the twenty or twenty-five athletes—including the royal couple’s own sons—were lined up and had received instructions personally from the King, Malcolm drew a line across the dirt road with his sword. The contestants walked toward it. Malcolm stepped several paces back, then lifted his royal sword high into the air.

  A long pause came while each waited at the line.

  Suddenly the great sword slashed downward. A great shout from the mouth of the King accompanied the motion. Off the young men tore to the enthusiastic cheers of five hundred spectators.

  A broad smile spread across Malcolm’s face as he watched their retreating heels. He turned to Margaret, then impulsively grabbed her hand and pulled her after him.

  “Come!” he cried. “Let’s run to the ridge where we can see Alexander and David on their way back!”

  He grabbed two fruit tarts as they dashed by one of the tables, to the laughter of the servants, who still took delight in the King’s obvious and manifest love for his Queen.

  “What about Edgar, Edmund, and Ethelred?” she asked as she hurried beside him to keep up.

  “They’ll be so far ahead,” Malcolm replied, huffing and chewing together, “they will be back before we get a good look. But the two younger ones—I think we’ll arrive in time to see them.”

  Before they were halfway to the ridge, breathing more heavily than he had in years, Malcolm slowed to a walk.

  “I had been thinking about joining the race myself!” he laughed. “It is a good thing I didn’t. I am too old for this!”

  Seventeen

  They reached the overlook as the lead runner crested the hill and began his return back down to the castle.

  “Who is it—can you tell?” asked Margaret as she tried to catch her breath.

  Malcolm squinted into the distance. “I can’t tell yet,” he replied. “It may be Ethelred.”

  Margaret laughed. “Edgar won’t appreciate being bested by his younger brother.”

  They stood and watched as one by one the rest of the runners spilled over the opposite hill, then trudged on tired legs downhill back toward the line of the King’s sword.

  “Oh, Malcolm,” Margaret sighed, throwing herself onto the ground with a lovely smile of contentment. She was in no hurry to leave this peaceful spot. “This reminds me of the tales my nurse used to tell me of the days of King Arthur, when everything was so peaceful in Camelot. That is how I feel today—as if you will never go to war again, and all the disputes with other kings will disappear, and we will live happily and content in our own little northern kingdom.”

  Malcolm smiled, then sat down beside her. It was a lovely daydream.

  “Maybe it will always be so,” he mused dreamily, though he knew better. “Perhaps Rufus will prove cooperative.”

  Margaret rolled over on the warm grass and bent her face down to the earth, then plucked two or three of the tiniest, most delicate flowers hidden amongst its green blades.

  “Look at the faces of these violets, Malcolm. Aren’t they the most gorgeous you’ve ever seen?”

  Malcolm smiled. He loved his Queen as much now as on the day she had let him help her out of the boat.

  “Was there really a Camelot?” he asked after a moment.

  “Of course,” replied Margaret.

  “And King Arthur?”

  “Malcolm, how can you even ask such a thing? Of course! And his beautiful Queen Guinevere.” Margaret’s face fell. “But it was she who brought the beginning of the end of those happy days,” she added.

  “We Scots have stories of our own,” said Malcolm. “There are some who say Arthur was really a Scot.”

  “I know,” replied Margaret. She paused briefly, then added, “You may become a legend one day yourself, Malcolm.”

  Malcolm laughed. “And perhaps so shall you! But my beautiful Queen will not bring my kingdom to an end.”

 
They chatted another few minutes. When again a brief silence intervened, Malcolm grew pensive.

  “I do not feel that I should go to Gloucester,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “What good can come of it? Maybe you are right, and we ought to let this happy time go on and on. I do not trust the red English King. If I have to pay him homage one more time, I think I shall vomit, then rise up and run him through with my sword.”

  “Malcolm, please don’t talk so . . . not on a happy day like this.”

  Malcolm grew silent, as if at sixty-two he had just been scolded by his forty-seven-year-old mother.

  “I am sorry,” he said after a moment’s reflection, “but you cannot know what it is like for a man to bow the knee before such imbeciles as the English allow to rule them.”

  “I think I may have some idea,” smiled Margaret. “But do not forget, my brother was almost King.”

  “You, Margaret, are cut from a different piece of the human cloth than most English nobility,” replied Malcolm, committing himself in neither direction concerning an opinion of his brother-in-law. To himself, he doubted Edgar would have made any better king than the rest.

  “In any case,” Margaret went on, “I think I know what homage must mean for one such as you. I have been your wife for twenty-three years. I know what kind of man is my husband.”

  “It turns the stomach,” persisted Malcolm. The memory of bowing before the English King made him angry every time he was reminded of it.

  “William did agree to return your English lands.”

  “Which he has not done yet,” rejoined Malcolm.

  “I think you should go to Gloucester,” said Margaret. “Mind your manners, and then insist he honor the terms of the treaty.”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he sighed. “The meeting is arranged. But I don’t know if I can stand the sight of Rufus’s ruddy face again.”

  Margaret laughed.

  “You are man enough to handle even such an ignominy as that,” she said, then jumped up and offered the King her hand.

  “Let us go down and congratulate the racers, especially our five stout sons.”

  “It was a good test of endurance, was it not?” said Malcolm. “Perhaps we shall make it an annual event.”

  “I heartily consent. And now the celebration wants its King!”

  Malcolm allowed Margaret to pull him to his feet. Hand in hand they descended the slope back to the castle.

  Eighteen

  Two and a half weeks later, Malcolm arrived in Gloucester for the meeting with the English King.

  William Rufus, however, refused to see him. He would let his own courts decide, he said by messenger, whatever disputes might exist.

  The legendary rage for which he was known filled Malcolm III, Ceann Mor, at this insult. He stormed home to Scotland, still furious when he arrived.

  Margaret did her best to calm her giant of a husband, who paced their chambers like a caged tiger. She knew of his temper, but only rarely had she seen him like this.

  “Perhaps it is best that the decisions are made without your armies.”

  “He is nothing but a liar! He has no intention of keeping the agreements,” cried Malcolm, pacing about with giant stride. “Bah—the courts, he says! His courts—they will obviously weigh more heavily for English interests than mine!”

  Notwithstanding his wife’s strenuous pleas, Malcolm immediately gathered his army for yet another invasion of Northumbria. By early November he was ready to lead his men south.

  His four oldest sons would now accompany him. Edward, eldest at twenty-two, would ride at his side. That fact alone caused the Queen many sleepless hours during the final week before their departure.

  “I am afraid, Malcolm,” said Margaret as her husband and sons prepared to depart. “I now say to you the words you once spoke to me—do you remember? You asked me if I must return to England. Now I say that to you, my dear husband—must you fight again?”

  “The honor of our nation is at stake,” replied Malcolm. “Rufus has not only broken the terms of the treaty, he has humiliated Scotland. He agreed to the meeting, then refused to see me. So I answer you as you answered me then—yes, I must.”

  “You are not as young as you were,” she reminded him. “And I have heard that Rufus’s forces far outnumber ours. Please, Malcolm—stay with me.”

  The King could not mistake the pleading tone in the Queen’s voice. He glanced away. He could not let her eyes find his just now, otherwise his resolve might be undone. Neither could he mistake the paleness of Margaret’s countenance. She had been feeling unwell ever since his return from Gloucester.

  But he was warrior and King first, husband and lover second. He would take back his lands in England.

  He must. It was the way of kings, the way of the warrior, the way of Scotland. Then he would return and see to Margaret’s comfort.

  “I am sorry,” he said after a moment, turning back toward her but still not quite able to meet her eye. “I would not be a man if I let Rufus humiliate the King of the Scots.”

  He kissed her, then turned and left the room. From a high window she watched him join his mounted men where they waited outside the wall.

  Margaret wept a few dry tears. Dark forebodings filled her heart. She took to her bed that same afternoon.

  Her ladies waited on her with fearfully eager yet helpless hands. They loved her, but none knew what to do for her. She could not eat.

  Nineteen

  Malcolm marched his inadequate force past Berwick and into Northumbria uncontested, arriving at the castle at Alnwick inside English territory on November 13.

  It was rumored that William’s army was two days out and advancing to meet him. The castle, he decided, would give his men a good place to rest and await the battle.

  At the head of his column Malcolm marched toward the gatekeeper’s cottage that sat some hundred yards in front of the castle, then slowed and raised his hand. The column behind him reined in their horses. The keeper came out and eyed him belligerently.

  “In the name of Scotland, I am taking occupation of Alnwick,” said Malcolm from astride his mount. “Open the gate, and hand over the keys to the castle.”

  “And who might you be?” said the man, apparently not cowed in the least by sight of Malcolm’s army. Malcolm did not like the expression in the fellow’s countenance.

  “I am Malcolm III, known as Canmore—King of Scotland!” barked Malcolm. “I order you to surrender the castle.”

  A canny glint flashed from the man’s eye. He turned and walked slowly back inside the cottage. When he returned a moment later, he held a long lance with sharp iron tip.

  Instantly the clatter of thirty swords being unsheathed sounded behind the King.

  “Tell your eager Scotsmen to relax,” growled the man. “I merely bring you the keys as you asked.” Even as he spoke, however, two or three dozen armed men emerged from the castle behind him.

  The gatekeeper walked slowly forward. He stopped, then pointed the spear up in the direction of Malcolm’s face. Dangling from the tip was a small chain which held three large keys.

  The Scottish King bent forward, leaned down from the saddle, and stretched out his hand to take them. . . .

  Twenty

  It was two days later when her second son, Edgar, aged twenty-one, was shown into the ailing Queen Margaret’s chamber.

  He was exhausted, covered with mud and grime from the hard retreat north.

  Margaret greeted him with a wan smile. Even before he stuttered out the message, his mother knew, from his bearing and visible pain to bring such tidings, that her husband was dead.

  “Edward . . . Ed-Ed-Edward himself sl-slew the . . . the k-k-keeper,” Edgar tried to say. “The . . . the instant he had thrust the lance . . . in-in-into F-Father’s eye, Ed-Edward was off his horse and had r-run . . . r-run the m-m-man through.”

  He tried to collect himself with a deep breath and
then managed to spill out the dreadful news that in the skirmish which followed, his eldest brother, Edward, had also been killed.

  The Queen received the news calmly, obviously stricken with anguish but pale and unweeping.

  Later that day, with her remaining five sons and two daughters in her room to join with her in prayer, Margaret thanked God for sending such a bitter grief, in the last hours of her life, with which to purify her soul from remaining worldly concerns.

  Two days later she went to join her earthly and heavenly husbands—both kings, though ruling over vastly different realms—to each of whom she had all her life been so lovingly devoted.

  The beloved body of her whose name in Greek, magaron, meant “pearl” lay in her chapel on the high rock for three days.

  Then Margaret, the Pearl of Scotland, was laid to rest beside her husband Malcolm III, called the Great Head, and their son Edward at Dunfermline. There had the King and Queen met and married, and there had they spent all their happy years at one another’s side.

  At Dunfermline would they thus remain entombed together . . . forever.

  1. Feud—land or property held from a lord in exchange for service or fee rendered.

  2. Ætheling—of royal blood, of noble stock, indicating a potential heir to the throne.

  8

  Another Shake-Up In Westminster

  One

  This is Patricia Rawlings reporting live from outside the Palace of Westminster. . . .”

  The little-known American journalist had finally landed a scoop big enough to justify her being put on live camera before the nation. A cold winter drizzle stung her cheeks but could not dampen her spirits as she looked into the camera and began her report.

  These were the most talked-about stories to break since Kirk Luddington’s reporting of the Queen’s abdication a little more than a year before. And the fact that Rawlings herself had been instrumental in the cracking of the two related cases meant that Pilkington had had little choice.