Macbeth and Son (4 page)

Angus nodded.

‘Good lad. Dugald, can you get to the other side of the cove without them seeing you?’

‘Aye, my Lord. Over the hill, then behind those rocks…’

‘Do it. When you see your brother’s arrow, you fire too. Now, pass me one of your arrows.’

What use is a single arrow? thought Lulach, as the young man handed it over.

The Mormaer tied rags around the arrow head. ‘Lulach, the oil!’ he whispered.

Lulach handed him the oil. His stepfather poured it onto the rags till they were soaked, then pulled a tinderbox from his pouch. He opened the box and picked out some rotten wood and dried fungus, then struck at the flint with the steel. A spark flashed then went out.

The Mormaer struck again. The tinder flared. The Mormaer held the oil-soaked rags against the flames.

Long seconds passed. Nothing happened. Then the rags began to smoulder. Lulach held his breath. Would the Norsemen see the smoke?

The rags burst into flame. Suddenly the smoke was clear, shimmering around the burning arrow.

Kenneth’s expression changed. ‘I see,’ he said softly. ‘This might just work.’

‘It
will
work.’ The Mormaer handed Dugald the burning arrow. ‘Now run, lad! Run!’

Dugald ran, the flaming arrow in his hand. The Mormaer handed another burning arrow to Angus.
The smoke made Lulach cough. He bit his lip to silence it.

‘Good lad,’ whispered the Mormaer. He stared out at the bobbing ships. ‘Now!’ he ordered Angus.

The arrow flew. Its flames flared, then disappeared.

Thunk!
Someone yelled from the one of the ships as the arrow plunged down onto the deck.

Nothing happened.

‘The flame went out!’ Lulach whispered in dismay.

‘Shh,’ returned his stepfather. ‘It’s smouldering. Watch.’

A wisp of smoke, almost too faint to see. Then black smoke, then more…and suddenly the deck was burning. The man on board shouted and grabbed a cloak to beat at the flames.

A bird flew across the cove…but it wasn’t a bird, Lulach realised. It was Dugald’s arrow, flaming across the sky.

Thunk!
The arrow hit the furthest boat. More yells from on board, and from down in the cove.

‘Burn, you Norse scum, burn!’ muttered Kenneth.

Lulach glanced at him, shocked at the hatred in his voice.

‘I heard your father’s death screams,’ explained Kenneth softly. ‘Fifty men trapped in a wooden fort. Let the Norsemen feel the kiss of fire now.’

The first ship was burning fiercely now, its guard trying frantically to scoop up water and put it out.

Lulach shivered. What would happen to the guard on the ship? he wondered suddenly. Would he become burned and twisted too?

He wanted to yell to the guard to jump away from the flames. But the guard was a Norseman, an enemy. He was one of Thorfinn’s men! He deserved to die!

And anyway, if Lulach yelled, the enemy would find them all and they’d die too…

The guard gave a shriek and dived over the side. For a moment Lulach thought he had drowned. Then his head appeared, and his hands, holding an oar to keep himself afloat.

The flames had begun to eat up the second ship as well. Smoke billowed up into the sky.

‘I could get an arrow into another ship if I ran down to the shore,’ offered Angus.

The Mormaer shook his head. ‘Nay, lad, they’d kill you for it. They have four ships left. Better they sail away in those than we have a mob of shipless Norsemen stranded on our beaches.’

Suddenly Norsemen spilled down the track to the beach, wearing round metal helmets, with axes, swords or burning torches in their hands. They milled around, yelling, wondering where the enemy lay.

‘One more arrow,’ said the Mormaer quietly. ‘Not a burning one this time. Angus, can you hit the redhead with the jewelled sword? He seems to be the leader.’

‘Aye, my Lord. I think so.’

‘Do it.’

Thwak!
Suddenly the man crumpled, bright blood spilling from the arrow in his neck.

‘Good shot,’ said the Mormaer calmly.

‘Our father taught us well,’ said Angus.

So did mine, thought Lulach. He was beginning to wonder if this new stepfather might not have lessons for him too.

Thwak!
Another arrow hissed from Dugald’s end of the cove. A second Viking fell, clutching at the arrow through his eye.

The Norsemen on the beach seemed to be arguing. Some pointed to the burning ships, others to the hills behind.

Lulach held his breath. The Vikings would soon find them if they began to hunt. Or could they run away in time?

But warriors didn’t run. Or did they? There was more to the art of warfare, he realised, than holding a broadsword.

Suddenly the Norsemen seemed to come to a decision. Men rushed for the small boats pulled up high on the beach. Hands grabbed oars as they rowed back to the remaining ships. Sails rose towards the sky.

‘They can’t tell how many of us are hidden,’ said the Mormaer with satisfaction. ‘And if just one more boat burns there won’t be room for them all.’

‘My Lord, four more flaming arrows and we could burn the lot of them!’ urged Kenneth.

The Mormaer shook his head. ‘Two lost ships will teach Thorfinn not to attack Moray lands again in a hurry. Six lost ships calls for revenge. No, let them go.’

‘But, my Lord—’

‘I’ve spoken,’ said the Mormaer.

This time Kenneth gave in without further argument. They watched as, one by one, the rowers
grabbed the oars, the sails rose and the Norse ships headed back towards the sea.

‘Well done, men,’ said the Mormaer, speaking normally now.

He sounds like it was nothing, thought Lulach wonderingly. As though six men and a boy beat an invading army every day.

‘Kenneth, order a watch be kept along the cliffs, in case they change their minds.’ The Mormaer smiled down at Lulach. ‘Well, my son? What did you think of your first battle?’

Lulach shook his head in confusion. What had he felt? He didn’t know. Triumph, terror, pity, hatred, horror, joy…no words could describe it. And the Mormaer had called him ‘son’ for the second time that day.

Is that how he thinks of me? Lulach wondered. Am I really a son to him?

This stepfather was looking at him thoughtfully. And then he smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll make a good tanist, lad. The best that I could have.’

They cantered back across the fields. Men ran to meet them, armed with hoes and pitchforks, or hastily grabbed swords. Women stared at them, clutching children on their hips and bundles on their backs, ready to run to the hills.

But there was no need to run now.

The cheers began as Kenneth yelled the news. Women waved their scarves in the air, men brandished pitchforks. The Mormaer waved. He looked…sort of bigger, Lulach thought. As though the love and admiration were food like bread and cheese.

‘They’ll sing of you for a thousand years, my Lord!’ Kenneth shouted above the noise.

A thousand years, thought Lulach. Will our names still be known a thousand years from now?

In front of him his stepfather smelled of smoke and sweat and horse and something else as well.

Glory, thought Lulach, as they rode into the courtyard and his mother’s hands helped him down. I know what glory smells like now.

This is what it’s like, he thought, to have a hero as a stepfather.

Lady Macduff: Sirrah, your father’s dead:

And what will you do now? How will you live?

Son: As birds do, mother.
Lady Macduff: What, with worms and flies?

(
Macbeth
, Act IV, Scene 2, lines 30–32)

That’s what it would be like to have a hero as a stepfather, thought Luke, lying back in bed and staring at the faint light of morning out the window. A real hero, not just one who knew how to make himself look good on TV.

Lulach was a hero too, Luke thought. Not a coward like me.

But it would have been easy to be a hero in those days. You knew who the enemy was, knew what you had to do.

It had been the best dream…

Maybe if he went back to sleep he could go back to it. Today was Saturday, there was no need to get up for school.

He shut his eyes again. But it was no use.

He got out of bed slowly and began to pull on his jeans. Already the TV was muttering in the kitchen, where Mrs T was making breakfast. Sam’s show,
Wake Up Call
, started at eight o’clock, though Saturday’s program was just the repeated highlights of the week’s news. But Mrs T never missed an episode.

Luke hoped Mrs T wasn’t making her corn fritters, with the blob of chutney in the middle like something out of a baby’s nappy. Or the tomatoes stuffed with puke. Mrs T seemed to have spent her life cutting recipes out of magazines, and every one of them involved something stuffed with something else. Luke bet Mrs T’s idea of heaven was being able to find something to stuff into a boiled egg.

What would Lulach have eaten for breakfast? Duh! thought Luke. I’m acting like the dream was real. Real was never as good as that.

Yeah, the people had been hungry—Luke had felt his guts heave at the idea of seaweed stew—and most of the men in the fields had been barefoot despite the chill in the air. But they’d been proud too. No one had been pretending in that world…like Luke pretending to have won that scholarship, like Sam on TV pretending to care about the planet…

Luke wondered what Sam would be yakking on about today. Baby seals in Canada, maybe, being slaughtered for fur coats. Something that would make people go ‘How terrible’ while they ate their toast, so they could feel like good concerned citizens.

Luke thought of the Mormaer in his dream. He didn’t talk about things. He did them. A fighter…

Luke had never had a dream like that before. Mostly dreams started out okay and then got
muddled. But that dream had been like…like something on TV. No, not like TV. You couldn’t feel TV. But he’d felt the warmth of the horse on his legs, the calluses of the Mormaer’s hands. He’d tasted the venison and kale.

The dream had been
real
.

Luke snorted. How soft could he get? Real dreams? No way. He’d been reading
Macbeth
before he went to sleep, that was all. So he’d dreamed of swords and witches and bad guys like…what was the Norseman in his dream? Thorfinn…a villain, like Macbeth…

And heroes like Macduff or the Mormaer, and a time when things were simple…you fought the invaders, you were loyal to your friends. There was no need to lie or cheat…

Luke ran a comb through his hair and headed out to the kitchen.

Mrs T was turning something in the frying pan. Luke felt his stomach clench. But he didn’t want to offend her by refusing it. He wondered what they had for breakfast at St Ilf’s. It couldn’t be any worse than what Mrs T served up.

Mrs T slid a plate of pancakes in front of him.

‘Thanks,’ he muttered.

‘Lemon juice or maple syrup?’ she asked.

‘Syrup, thanks.’ It wasn’t real maple syrup. Maple syrup came from trees; he’d done a project on them in Year Three, the year that Dad got sick. This was artificial stuff. But he supposed it tasted much the same.

He took a bite of pancake. Yuck—what
were
those things? For a moment he thought they might be
rabbit droppings. But then he realised they were blueberries.

He took another bite. The blueberries were tasteless and the pancakes were burned on the bottom, but for once they weren’t that bad.

Luke glanced up at the TV on the bench. There was Sam’s face, with its concerned look and orange make-up.

‘And so we’re left with one question,’ he was saying. ‘Is the Japanese Government sincere when it says the Japanese need to kill whales for scientific purposes? And if it’s lying—why? Coming up next: a terrorist or hero? You decide.’

Mrs T ran the sponge over the bench. ‘He really knows how to say things, doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah,’ said Luke shortly. He wondered what Mrs T would say if she knew other people researched Sam’s scripts, and even wrote them for him.

‘What are you up to today?’

Luke shrugged. ‘Going over to the Fishers’.’

‘Don’t be late for dinner. Your mum said they’d fly in this morning.’

‘I won’t be.’ Luke pushed the plate away.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like another…’ began Mrs T.

‘No, really, that was great, thanks,’ said Luke hurriedly. He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door and galloped outside before she could even think of muffins with mashed banana inside, or her special ‘health’ mixture of orange juice, oatbran and milk.

The world smelled different out of doors. Cold gum leaves, colder soil…Luke bet he could tell what season it was even with his eyes shut. Even barbed wire smelled different in winter, when it was hung with frozen spiders’ webs and frost.

He crossed the gravel courtyard and passed the garage—only the ute and Mr T’s car in there today; Mum had left the four-wheel drive at the airport.

Home looked so different these days. The old weatherboard house that his great-grandparents had built was hidden behind the new verandah and dwarfed by the brick extensions. Even the fences were new.

Luke opened the gate to the house paddock and poked one of the cowpats with his toe. Cowpats were different in winter too, with white frost whiskers and a pond of dew in the middle. In summer they got a crust almost as soon as they’d plopped out, and then the dung beetles got to them.

The cows gazed at him hopefully, then bent their heads again. They were Simmentals, about two months from calving, with soft caramel-brown coats and even browner eyes.

Mum loved cows. She’d started with three of them, when she and Dad took over the three hundred hectares of run-down orchard and scrub from Pop and Nanna, before Luke was born. They’d been Herefords in those days.

The Simmentals were Sam’s idea. More money per unit in good stock, he’d said. Luke bet that Sam liked being able to call the place a stud, not just a farm. But Luke liked the Simmentals too. They were a restful sort of cow, as though they were sure the
world would always be full of lush grass, or at least good hay.

The old orchards were under irrigated lucerne these days, and the paddocks green even in winter from improved pasture and superphosphate. But it’d be good to have more land too, thought Luke.

Sometimes he dreamed about buying a place of his own when he left school. Raising Japanese Wagyu cattle, maybe. There looked to be real opportunities with Wagyu. But land cost so much these days. He’d seen what struggling under a big mortgage had done to Mum and Dad.

The cows had given up hoping he’d brought them some hay and gone back to munching grass. Luke ducked through the barbed-wire fence onto the Fishers’ land and started up the hill. No improved pasture here, just tufts of native grass under the wattle trees, pittosporums in the gullies, then gums as he climbed higher. Sam said they were ‘
Eucalyptus smithii
’, but Dad had called them ‘gully gums’—not much use for fence posts, with too much ash for firewood but good for a chook house in a pinch.

Would there be anywhere to walk like this at St Ilf’s? The grounds looked so small and neat. It’d be weird to have to live with strangers, in a strange country, where everything you saw belonged to someone else…But he wasn’t going to think about that today.

He was at the top of the hill now. He and Pat and Meg used to play Explorers up here when they were little, pretending no one had ever been this way before—carefully ignoring the cows and the fences,
the thin line of the beach twenty ks away, with the smudge of town buildings beside it.

He could see the Fishers’ house from here too, with its haze of smoke above the chimney, packing shed, hay shed, tractor and the orchards straggling down to the creek and part way up the next hill. There were three figures in the far orchard, underneath the leafless peach trees. Patrick and Megan and their dad, pruning.

‘Hoy!’

The distant figures looked up. One waved. Luke grinned and jogged down the hill towards them.