Macbeth and Son (16 page)

Lulach turned his back on the grey sky showing through the window. ‘Do you ever dream?’ he asked his companion suddenly.

Kenneth looked startled. ‘Of course.’

‘Sometimes I have strange dreams,’ said Lulach hesitantly. ‘I’m in a foreign land. A dry land, with trees like ghosts rising from the grass…There are machines too. Powerful, almost like magic…’

‘It sounds like a nightmare,’ said Kenneth.

‘No. It’s a safe land. No armies. No clash of swords. No one looks hungry. No one is in rags. For a while I
thought I’d made myself a dream world where I could escape from being the King’s son.’

Kenneth’s half face smiled. ‘I can understand that.’

‘But I was wrong,’ said Lulach. ‘There were battles to be fought there too. Last night—in my dream—I was a boy again. And I promised…’

‘What?’

‘I promised I’d tell the truth. And I did. I got up before my friends and I told the truth. It doesn’t seem like much of a battle, does it? Not as glorious as fighting the English. But just as hard. Because there was only me to fight it. Just one boy. I didn’t have an army on my side.’

‘Dreams,’ said Kenneth dismissively. ‘What use are dreams?’

‘Who knows?’ said Lulach softly. ‘Nonetheless, today I’ll tell the chiefs the truth.’

‘Lulach MacGillecomgain Macbeth, Mormaer of Moray.’ The herald’s call echoed down the corridor.

Lulach stood up. Kenneth stood up too. Lulach embraced him.

‘God go with you, lad,’ said Kenneth.

Lulach stepped out into the corridor. No candidate could bring his men beyond this point. He was to be judged on his own merits.

A young man walked down the corridor towards him. He wore silk and velvet, not the wool cloth of a Scottish lord. His hair was cut in the English fashion.

Malcolm MacDuncan, thought Lulach.

This was the second time he had met the person who killed his father, he realised. Once he had met Thorfinn, the man who had sent his father home a
twisted and blackened corpse. Now here was the man who had sent the assassin who killed his stepfather—though to Lulach, Macbeth would always be hisfather too.

Thorfinn had slain an enemy in battle, but Malcolm had struck like a cattle thief in the night. He hadn’t even had the courage to do the deed himself.

What did you say to your father’s murderer?

But there was no proof. There never would be, not for a thousand years.

‘We meet again, Lulach MacGillecomgain,’ said Malcolm. His voice was hoarse—a battle leader’s voice, rough from shouting orders in the field. He spoke with a strong English accent.

‘Your pardon. We’ve never spoken,’ returned Lulach. But they’d met on the battlefield, hadn’t they? he realised. And in its way, this was a battle too.

Malcolm looked at him appraisingly. When I’m king, he seemed to say, will you be loyal?

Because of course the chiefs would elect Malcolm. If they didn’t, Malcolm would keep fighting with the power of England behind him, till he took the kingdom.

‘Your pardon,’ Lulach said again. The lords were waiting for him. Malcolm smiled slightly as Lulach left him.

It was a big room, and dark despite the torches on the walls. The windows were too narrow, the stone walls too thick, for the misty daylight to penetrate.

Lulach looked around him. For a moment the faces blurred. What were the chiefs thinking? That he was too young? That he was nothing like his
stepfather? How could such a young man possibly rule Alba, much less lead it to war?

And then his vision cleared. He knew them all now: MacKinnon and MacPherson, Dunegal’s son and Morgan the Red and all the others. He had known them all on the battlefield. He’d fought side by side with some of them. Others had been with Malcolm.

What could he say?

My stepfather would know how to move them, thought Lulach.

Macbeth would have told the truth.

He’d have used it like a weapon. And that weapon, at least, he had passed down to his stepson. The weapon that boy had used in his dream last night…

Lulach took a deep breath and faced the men before him.

‘My lords,’ he began, ‘you gave my father a starving, wartorn country. He gave you back a golden age. We are a small nation. But my father made alliances with Thorfinn, with France, even with Rome. He was able to do that because men trusted him. All Macbeth had to give was his word. But it was enough.

‘Today Malcolm promised you peace. He promised to keep the law of Scotland. But can you trust him to keep his word?

‘How many times has Malcolm lied?’

There were murmurings in the crowd at that. They want me to say I’ll lead them to victory, thought Lulach. Then they can cheer and pretend for a while that we’ll win.

‘I can’t tell you that we’ll win,’ said Lulach softly. ‘I wish I could. All I have to give you is my word. I
promise that no matter what, I will tell you the truth. I promise to keep the laws of Alba. I promise that while my body still has blood and breath I’ll do my best.’

There was silence for a moment.

And then the cheering started.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be king, thought Lulach. ‘Win or lose,’ he whispered to his stepfather, ‘I’ll be an honest one. Rest in peace, my lord.’

Lulach MacGillecomgain was elected king after the death of his stepfather Macbeth in 1057. He successfully held off the English (the histories don’t agree on how long) until he, too, was murdered by Malcolm’s men. King Lulach was buried with full honours on the island of Iona, as all Alba’s kings had been before him.

Malcolm ‘Big Head’, who had murdered two elected Scottish kings to gain his throne, took over the land at Lulach’s death and ruled until 1093, when, like his father, he was killed in one of the many wars he had started, this time against England.

From Malcolm’s time onwards Scottish kings inherited their throne and weren’t elected. The laws of Scotland that gave equal rights to women, that protected the poor, and many other laws that we think of as ‘modern’, were abandoned. Malcolm was buried at Dunfermline—the first king of Scotland not to be taken to the sacred island.

And sevyntene wyntyr full rygnand

As king he wes than in till Scotland

All hys tyme wes grete plente

Abowndand bath in land and se

He wes in justice rycht lawchtfull

And till hys legis all awful

And for seventeen winters he
[Macbeth]
reigned

As king, till Scotland

Had great plenty both in land and sea

All through his reign.

He kept to righteousness and the law

And his men loved and respected him.

From Andrew of Wyntoun,
The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland
, written some time between 1395 and 1424. Author’s own translation.

Macbeth was High King of Alba, or ancient Scotland, from 1040 to 1057. It’s difficult to trace his true story. Most of the information that has come down to us was written by his enemies, and no two histories agree on what happened or when. (We don’t even know if his hair was red or yellow.) I’ve chosen the most likely bits of several of them, but there are many possible interpretations of the patchy records.

All the histories make it clear, however, that Shakespeare’s play was more fiction than fact. Much of it was based on the
Chronicles of Scotland
of Raphael Holinshed, who didn’t understand ancient Scottish laws, and wanted to please those in power. Holinshed definitely made Macbeth a villain. But Shakespeare’s Macbeth was far worse even than Holinshed’s. Given that King James, the English king at the time of the play, was descended from Banquo and King Duncan, and had a particular hatred of witches, it’s likely that Shakespeare deliberately
changed history to please the King, just as he had changed historical details in earlier plays to gain favour from Queen Elizabeth I.

Even today, many history books are based on the English historian Holinshed, not the earlier histories. You’ll read how Malcolm won the second battle against Macbeth—which doesn’t make sense. If Malcolm won, Lulach couldn’t have been elected king and crowned at Scone. Even a recent TV documentary about Macbeth didn’t mention the Celtic laws, the fact that Alban kings were elected, or even that Malcolm only became king after the death of Lulach.

(The ancient Celtic laws are fascinating, and well worth studying. They also show the sophisticated ancient Scottish and Irish societies that were destroyed by war and invasion.)

Like Luke in this book, I think we owe a duty to the past. Which is more easily remembered: a historical story, play or film; or the words of a history book?

Historical fiction is a window to the past. But it has to be as true as you can make it—not a historical lie. When you write historical fiction, you have a responsibility to slip your fiction into the cracks in the historical record, not change history for your own ends, unless you make it clear that this is what you’re doing.

This is what I’ve tried to do with this book, and my others. And where I’ve failed, well, like Macbeth MacFindlaech and his stepson Lulach MacGillecomgain, I’ve done my best.

Abbey gong:
In a land with no watches and few clocks, one of the abbeys’ many roles was keeping the time in their districts.

Arrows:
Arrows were valuable. Only an expert ‘fletcher’ could make an arrow that went straight. An arrow fired by an expert bowman could reach about a hundred metres.

Bagpipes:
The Scots first used bagpipes in battle in 1314, long after Macbeth’s battles, but Irish mercenaries were using them around Macbeth’s time.

Boot Hill:
Called that because the chiefs carried the soil of their lands in their foot bindings up the hill, and so brought some of their homeland with them. They emptied the soil from their binding onto the Hill at coronations as an act of allegiance as they swore loyalty to the new king.

Clans:
Alba was divided into six provinces, made up of different clans, or tribes. These weren’t
the same as today’s Scottish clans, with their tartan kilts. The modern clan system evolved in Victorian times.

Claymore:
A large sword, with an edge on both sides. It could be swung in one hand, while the other held a pointed shield that could be used as a weapon too.

Clothes:
Men and women wore much the same clothes: smocks, or léines. Women’s were longer; men’s were shorter and worn over woollen stockings. Most léines were made from linen (imported from Ireland) rather than wool. Macbeth and Lulach may have worn silk léines, with red or gold embroidery. Usually only rich people wore bright colours, as it took a lot of work to dye cloth and most dyes soon faded, so clothes had to be dyed over and over again to keep their colours bright. Both men and women also wore cloaks, or brats, held in place with a pin or brooch.

Neither Macbeth nor Lulach would have worn a kilt. The first real evidence of kilts is in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when long ‘belted plaids’ (blankets, or pleated garments) were worn over the shoulder, like a cloak, or belted at the waist.

Dirk:
A long thin dagger.

The death of King Duncan:
There are two main stories about the death of King Duncan. The later, English one is that Macbeth treacherously killed Duncan when Duncan was in Moray territory. The other (the version used here) is that the army of Macbeth and his Norse allies fought Duncan’s army, made up mostly of his Atholl clansmen and Irish mercenaries. Macbeth won and Duncan was killed
in the battle. I have assumed that the council of chiefs had already asked Duncan to step down, and that he had refused. If the council hadn’t agreed with Macbeth’s actions, they would never have elected him.

Fire:
In a world without matches, wealthy people carried a ‘tinderbox’. It held a flint, a bit of iron, and ‘tinder’ (wood shavings or dry grass). You struck a spark with the iron and flint and hoped the ‘tinder’ caught alight. But most homes kept a fire smouldering all the time, rather than keep trying to light one.

Ingeborg:
Thorfinn’s wife Ingeborg may have married Malcolm after Thorfinn’s death. As Thorfinn was so much older than Malcolm, his first wife would also have been much older than Malcolm, so in my story I’ve made Ingeborg (or Ingibjorg) Thorfinn’s much younger, second wife.

Language:
The people in this book spoke Gaelic. I’ve had them talk modern English, as though I had translated directly from the Gaelic, rather than sprinkle modern Scottish words throughout the book.

A length:
Distances were measured in lengths. A ‘length’ was the length of a horse.

Lulach:
There is no record of who Lulach married, but it was probably an alliance with someone like Thorfinn’s daughter. Lulach had one or two sons and a daughter. His son Melsnectai became Mormaer of Moray, but was banished by Malcolm and later became an abbot. The other son may also have been mormaer at one time, and Lulach’s daughter’s son, Angus, became mormaer as well.

Macbeth:
Macbeth’s real name was probably MacBheatha. ‘Mac’ means son, though we know
Macbeth’s father was called Findlaech, so by then ‘MacBheatha’ was possibly a name in its own right. Findlaech had been Mormaer of Moray before Lulach’s father, Gillecomgain, was elected. Macbeth’s mother, Doada, was probably the daughter of King Malcolm II.

Marriage by proxy:
Often royal couples who lived far apart were married with someone else standing in for the bride or groom. That way they didn’t have to risk having their bride or groom die or change their mind while they were on their journey, leaving them without any status in their new country.

Moray:
Moray, or Moireabh, meant ‘seaboard settlement’. It was the largest province in Alba, and was much bigger than the modern county of Moray.

Mormaer:
A mormaer was a chief, elected by the people of a clan to rule them. (Even ancient Scottish fishing crews elected their captain, then agreed to obey him totally as long as he
was
captain.) Anyone who was related to the previous mormaer could stand for election, even a distant cousin. Women could be elected too, though this was rare. The chiefs in turn elected the king. By Macbeth’s time kings were usually elected from Atholl or Moray, the two most powerful clans.