Macbeth the King (8 page)

They rode on, with further supplies of the salted water, Neil close at his brother's side. When, presently, he heard MacBeth all but choking, his heart lifted. He halted the garrons and raised his brother to a sitting position, and praised his Maker and all saints as the bile oozed and belched out. It was likely to be a long way from any real cure, but it must surely help. Whatever evil thing was in MacBeth's stomach and bowels must be got out somehow. He would give him more salt water in a mile or two.

The sunrise began to glow above the mountain ridges to their right as they trotted steadily on up the long rise to the pass of Drumochdar, at the garrons' mile-eating pace. Ninety miles to go.

MacBeth was swimming
, gasping, struggling for air, in a heavy, surging sea of vivid, clashing colour, jetty black, flame-red, violent green, orange-yellow. He was tired, tired, for he had been fighting those dire waves for long, and he doubted whether he could keep it up for much longer. Yet he knew that if he gave in, even for a moment, that foul sea would overwhelm him and he would sink down, down—but not into mindless oblivion to be welcomed but into eternal torture and pain. He
had
to stay afloat somehow, anyhow.

Despite the terror of the red waves and the green, the black ones were the worst. They were
heaviest.
They weighed him down. They choked him. And they spoke not so much of pain and death as of evil, the nameless evil of the ancient ones. Each wave was whispering at him as he fought it past, whispering a message, always the same message, as they swirled by. "Birnam Wood!" they hissed. "Birnam Wood!" The black waves were certainly the worst.

The hand, white but strong, when it reached for him was the most lovely thing that he had ever seen. If only he could grasp it
...
Once he touched those fingers, cool, firm—but could not hold them. He went down and down again, but fighting now, furiously, angrily. To have been so near to salvation—for he knew that if he could but grip that hand he would win out of this savage sea.

He was coming up again, up through the black and the red and the green, up, up—and there, praise God, was the hand, still outstretched for him. With the supreme summoning of his all but expended residue of strength, he reached out and still out, and grabbed. And his clawing, burning fingers closed on that cool strong firmness, and held, held. Safe, secure at last. In a surge of sheerest thankfulness he let all else go but that white hand, and sank away this time into blessed peace and unknowing.

When next MacBeth opened his eyes, it was to see, instead of heaving, menacing waves of colour and darkness, the timbers of a ceiling painted with Pictish beasts and symbols, strange of design but familiar all his life. Then a face swam into his vision between him and the symbols, a face pale but lovely, close to his own, the eyes kind, kind.

"Gru...och!" he whispered.

"Hush, you," she murmured. "Hush you, my dear. All is well." She pressed his head back, gently, wiping his brow with a cloth. "No words, MacBeth,
a ghraidh.
Gather your strength."

He closed his eyes—for the effort to speak had taxed him greatly. But he opened them again when he felt a stirring at his fingers. He found that she was seeking to release her hand from his grip.

"Let it go,
a ghraidh"
she said, smiling. "You do not need it now. It is numb."

He relinquished his grasp only reluctantly—for somehow he knew that hand had meant the difference between life and death to him. She wriggled her fingers painfully.

"You have a fierce grip for a sick man!" she said. "You have clutched it tightly for hours."

"It
...
it saved me," he got out.

He must have drifted over to sleep after that—without wishing to—for when next he was aware of his surroundings, it was his half-brother Neil who sat beside the bed.

"Och, Beda!" Neil said, brokenly. "Beda, lad!" It was his childhood name for his brother.

"Where is she?" MacBeth strove to sit up, urgently. "Where is she, Neil?"

"Quietly, man—quietly! She has not gone far, never fear." 

"Where? Where is she...?"

"She has the chamber above. That was Morag's. She has dwelt here since she heard that I had brought you home. Scarcely left your side, day or night. She is tired."

MacBeth stared at him.

"It has been...a close thing, Beda. Many times we feared for your life. Praise God you have come through it." 

"She...held out
...
her hand." 

"Eh?"

"She held out her hand. To me. Saved me."

"Aye. No doubt. See, now—you must try to eat."

The next sleep was a long one, for when he awoke it was the middle of the night. A single candle flickered in the drift of air. The darkness and the flame was too reminiscent of past horrors and MacBeth started up, alarmed. But a hand touched his bare shoulder and he sank back.

"Gruoch!" he said, with a sigh of thankfulness.

"All is well," she assured.

"Yes," he agreed. But he held out his hand. She took it and clasped it and he was content.

But not for long. "Why are you so good to me?" he asked, presently.

"Can you call it that?" she wondered. "I have sat by your bed. To relieve Neil Nathrach. That is all."

"You have cherished me. For long. Neil told me. And you saved me. Your hand. I could not have lived else. Your hand..."

"You talked much of a hand, yes. In your fever. To be sure, you gripped mine sufficiently hard! If it was my hand that helped you, I am glad, glad. A very ordinary and weak woman's hand."

"Sufficiently strong to save me."

"You must not say that. It was Neil who saved you. He ministered to you, brought you home in a litter all the way from Atholl, as fast as beasts could run, day and night, never halting. Bursting the hearts of eight garrons, they say. Since when he has bled you, physicked you and watched over you. I have but aided him. Sat here, and prayed. Prayed for you, and for God's vengeance on Duncan mac Crinan!" That came out almost on a hiss.

He began to shake his head, but desisted from dizziness. "I do not love Duncan," he said. "But he scarce deserves that, I think..."

"You were poisoned. And he is a poisoner. You had just left his house, had you not?"

"Yes. But I cannot believe this."

"He has poisoned others. Gillacomgain often spoke of it. With the deadly meiklewort. It is said that he poisoned two Danes with meiklewort. Neil says this was poison. With you."

MacBeth was silent.

"He besought you to enter his house, Neil says. After showing you no love. And soon thereafter you fell sick. Would have died, 
had it not been for Neil. It was the wine that was poisoned." 

"We cannot be sure..."

"We can. I
know
it! They desire your death, Duncan and his grandsire. As they desire mine. As they have slain many. Tell me of this wine. Did it taste nothing amiss? Did any other drink it?"

"Duncan himself had some. Not the others. It seemed good wine."

"He would drink from his own cup, not yours?"

"Yes. He brought me a large bull's horn. But I did not drink much of it. The child was there—Duncan's son, Malcolm. I was talking to the child. I did not drink much of it."

"Did he urge you to do so?"

"Ye-e-es. But only as any man would."

"If you had drunk more, then I say that you would have been dead now, MacBeth. Oh, thank God!" She clutched his hand.

"Thank Neil also! And thank
you!
You came from Rosemarkyn. Did Neil send for you?"

"No. I think that he resented my coming, at first. When I came unbidden. He loves you, that one. But he came to accept me, when I would not go away."

"You would not go away? Why, Gruoch?"

"I could not leave you in dire need. I could offer a woman's care. You were good to me, took me in when I needed help, cherished me and Lulach. Think you that means naught to me? I could do no other." She sat up ."But, see you—this will not do. All this talk. Neil was very strong on this. You are not to talk much. You are to rest. Sleep. Regain your strength. Only that. Sleep again now,
a ghraidh."

"You say
a ghraidh—
my dear!"

"It, it slipped out. I meant
...
my friend. Shut your eyes. No more talk meantime." 

"You will not go away, Gruoch?" 

"No. I shall bide here."

"Give me your hand. I mislike the darkness. Voices. Birnam Wood. Ill voices. Your hand..."

He drifted off, and she settled herself back in her chair, her hand gripped still.

Presently, she leaned over and lit a new candle from the old.

At some unspecified time later she opened her eyes. MacBeth was sitting straight up, staring in front of him.

"...three," he was saying. "Three of them. Women. Hags. Strange women. They pointed at me..."

"Hush you—it was but a dream. Nothing to fear."

"They pointed, I tell you. All pointed. One said, 'I see the Mormaor of Ross.' One said, 'I see the Mormaor of Moray.' The last said, 'I see the King!'."

She eyed him, silent.

"You hear, Gruoch? That is what they said."

"It was a dream. You are not yourself. Still the poison works within you." She pressed him back. "Sleep again."

"No. I want no more of that. If these are dreams, I want none of them. The other I have often. Of the moving forest. Birnam Wood..."

"Yes. You have said that. It was but another dream. Of your mother's."

"She had the sight. Perhaps I have, also?"

"Do not distress yourself. It is the poison in you. Setting up these humours."

"Perhaps. But it is no evil thought to be Mormaor of Moray, at least. If you will but wed me...?"

"I told you—you can be Mormaor of Moray now, if you so wish. With my blessing."

"It is more than your blessing I want. It is
you.
Your hand in marriage." He was sitting up again, eagerly.

"But
..."
She shook her head. "Lie back now, my dear. It is no time to be speaking of such things."

* * *

Neil Nathrach was a stern physician, and it was days before he would permit his patient to leave his bed and venture out into the blossom-time orchard on the terrace, above the marshland between the estuaries of the rivers of Peffery and Conon. Here MacBeth was allowed to sit, sheltered from the breeze, watching the first martins and swallows and listening to the cuckoos calling endlessly from the stunted thorn-trees of the peat-bog and salt-marsh. It was a strange place for a dun, but the site was strong nevertheless, protected by water and marsh as effectively as though on any crag or ridge. The orchard was a familiar place indeed for MacBeth, for to this house he had been brought as a boy on his father's death.

Now, although he saw much of his brother, many of his thanes and chiefs came to visit him, and even young Lulach played on the grass beside his hammock, the one he wanted to see, Gruoch, seemed to avoid him—or at least to avoid being alone with him. He was not yet dining in the hall, with all the dun's company, and she usually ate with him either outdoors or in his room; but never, it seemed, alone. He fretted over it, in his still-weak state. It seemed evident that she did not wish to be questioned further on the subject of marriage.

There were, to be sure, other questions and problems exercising his own mind and those of his friends. In especial the possibility of his poisoning—although all others seemed to take it as a certainty and no question. And if it was so, what was to be done about it? The accepted opinion was that Duncan had deliberately coaxed MacBeth into his father's house to poison him with the wine; but that he had been put up to it by King Malcolm—whom Neil and the thanes remembered as having insisted that Duncan accompany him northwards, despite reluctance. It was just one more murder-plot by the old devil, to clear the way for Duncan's eventual accession. But as such it could not be forgotten any more than forgiven. Nor, as it were, shrugged off. Vengeance, retribution, battle—these were the demands being made, the courses being urged.

The victim reserved judgment meantime. Not that he lacked spirit or his due measure of human resentment. But he preferred to make his major decisions on proven information, or if that was not possible, at least on sound reasoning. Not on hearsay, prejudice and conjecture. He and Thorfinn had often found cause for disagreement on this score; now he was equally at odds with his other half-brother.

Besides, his physical weakness still affected his mind and will. And he had more than sufficient for his somewhat overstretched emotions and attentions to cope with meantime—for he found himself to be most directly and totally enamoured of Gruoch nic Bodhe, in a fashion he had not thought possible and to the exclusion of almost all other considerations.

So, since she would not come to him, alone, he must go to her. He climbed the winding stair to her room, which was directly above his own in the main tower of the dun, the third evening of his release from bed, and knocked at her door.

She came to open, needlework in her hand, a tapestry of vivid Pictish designs. Clearly she was distinctly put cut to see him there.

"My lord!" she said. "You, it is. I, I
...
you should not have climbed the stairs."

"I needs must, if I am to see you, Gruoch. And you named me my dear, before, not my lord!"

"A slip, my lord. I talk much with Lulach, and so call him. I would have come had you sent for me."

"I would not
send
for you, for what I have to say. May I enter?"

"It is your house. But—we would be better below, I think, in the hall. Lulach sleeps..."

"What I have to say, Princess, is scarcely for the hall either! And I shall not shout, to awake the child!" He pushed past her into the room.

It was not large, and simply furnished, as was his own, with a great bed, in one corner of which the boy slept, arms wide, two or three chests, a bench and a stool, sheepskin and deerskin rugs on the floor and coloured hangings to cover the bare stone walls. She had been sitting in the window-seat, where were the wools and shears for her work.