Queen Hereafter (28 page)

“Lulach the Fool!” he shouted. “
Baobach
, the dimwitted—hah! He made a monk’s decision—peace over revenge. I grant he was young, but he was a fool to meet me thinking of peace—” He stopped when Margaret laid a hand on his sleeve and murmured.

Eva played on as if she had not noticed. But she had her grandmother’s temper. If her father had plotted like a monk, she would plot like a Viking, with thoughts of revenge. What she could say, what she should do, whirled in her head.

A moment later Edgar came toward her with a cup of wine in his hand. “Pay the king no mind,” he said. “It is just warrior boasting, and nothing to worry over.”

“I know what is worth my worry, what to let pass, and what to keep in mind,” Eva said tersely.

“Be careful. That spark in your eyes is neither worry nor peace.” He tilted his head as he regarded her. Then he set the cup on the floor for her and returned to the table.

“Lady Eva, give us another song,” Malcolm called out.

She settled the harp against her shoulder anew, lifted her hands to the strings, then paused deliberately. Not many there knew her
parentage, or that the king had just dealt her and hers a direct slight. Most knew only that she was one of the queen’s women, with a talent for music and a face worth gazing upon, so only a few would understand the song she was about to give the king. But Malcolm would comprehend it—that was what mattered.

She plucked the path of strings. Had her harp been a weapon, it could not have fit the grip of her anger any better. Lifting her head, she began to sing in Gaelic.

Silence filled the room when she finished. Then Malcolm pounded his fist on the table and roared like a boar’s bluster. “Her father was a fool! More fool the daughter for this. Get her out of here!” He gestured to two housecarls, who stepped forward.

Eva stood, tilting her harp to rest on its base, then turned to Edgar, who was now striding toward her. “Look after my harp,” she said quickly. “I must leave it here. Likely he will forbid me to play.”

“What did you do?” he asked. “I did not understand your song, though clearly Malcolm did. He is furious.”

“I sang of my father, King Lulach.”

“Ah. That would rile him. Is it so, what they say of Lulach? Aye, then. Perhaps the king feels guilt over it.”

“I hope so,” she said curtly.

“Your temper will not serve you well here, though I cannot blame you. Leave her be,” he added as the guards took Eva’s arms. But Edgar was not their lord and they were obliged to follow the king’s orders, though they seemed uneasy with it. Allowing them to guide her forward, Eva glanced back at the prince, who rested a hand on her harp and watched her go.

Chatter buzzed through the hall. The king looked like thunder, and Margaret looked puzzled, questioning her husband. Eva realized that the queen had not understood the Gaelic either, and would be bewildered, as were others from the Saxon court. A few there would recognize Eva’s reference to her father’s death—the rest would see only her defiance.

“Hold!” The man’s voice was loud enough for most to hear, and Eva turned as her uncle, Kenneth Macduff, entered the room. “Hold, I say!”

Eva caught her breath as he approached the dais, shaking the snow from his cloak. She wondered if he had heard enough of her song to know what had transpired. Macduff walked past her to stand before Malcolm.

“Let the girl go,” he said. “She is hot-tempered. That song was just the mewling of a kitten.”

“Raised by a lioness,” Malcolm returned.

“Declawed,” her uncle said dismissively of Gruadh. “As for Lady Eva, the best bards have fire in the soul. For her music alone she should be forgiven.”

“For her kinfolk she should be condemned,” Malcolm said.

“She is kin to me,” Macduff pointed out, tapping his chest.

“Then get her out of my hall,” Malcolm barked.

Macduff went toward Eva. “Girl, could you not have played a pretty song?”

“If you heard the song, did you hear the king’s remarks before that?”

“I did. But what you did was dangerous.”

“I sang in honor of my father.”

“And now your king may decide that you never sing again.” He indicated the dais, where Malcolm spoke with Hector. “Be wary, girl. Damn that weasel,” he said in Gaelic, taking her arm and turning. “What right does the Sassenach bard have to speak in this matter?”

“Sire, certain punishments are reserved just for bards,” Hector was saying to Malcolm. “If this girl is well trained, she will know that.”

Malcolm nodded. “True, I could require that she clip her pretty fingernails.”

Eva caught her breath. An old punishment recorded in Irish law was the cutting of a bard’s nails so that a wire-strung harp could not be played for weeks, but she had not known the sentence to be invoked outside of the old tales. She moved toward the king, past her uncle and the guards.

“Sire, you may choose to punish me by tradition,” Eva said, facing Malcolm. “But I can play a gut-strung harp regardless of my nails.” She held up her hands, palms flat. “I would have to lose my very fingers to keep from playing the harp. In fact, tales tell of a harper without arms, who played with his feet.” Spiteful and angry, she tread even closer to danger if Malcolm was furious enough to follow through.

“You have your grandmother’s manners, I see. Remove her from here,” Malcolm told her uncle, who walked toward her. “She is forbidden to play music in this hall until I say otherwise.”

Relieved then to be excused, Eva went with her uncle, joined by the two housecarls that Malcolm motioned toward them. Voices murmured all around, and when her guards stopped at the door, bowing their heads deferentially, Eva turned to see Margaret walking toward them.

“Lady Eva will come with me,” the queen said. A mere look from her and the guards stepped back. “Eva, I wish to retire to my room,” she said. “I told the king that you may come with me. I do not understand
why he is so insulted, but I know you can explain it to me. Sir Kenneth, thank you,” she told Macduff. “It was kindly done to defend Eva as you did.”

“Lady,” Macduff said. “I give my wayward niece into your custody. Eva, take care.”

As her uncle returned to speak with the king, Eva walked beside Margaret. “Thank you,” she said as a few of the ladies who had attended supper joined them a few steps behind.

“Why is Malcolm so upset? I did not understand the Gaelic,” Margaret reminded her.

“I sang a song of praise for my father.”

“What is wrong in that? Even if it was a hymn in the Scottish tongue rather Latin, the king would not be so bothered. Was it blasphemous?”

Eva laughed. “Not that Father! My own father—King Lulach. Malcolm did not like it.”

“Ah,” Margaret said. “I heard what he said about your father. Responding to that was bravely done in a way, but foolish, too.”

“I could not remain silent when my father’s memory was insulted by the one who saw to his murder—so it is said, though never proven. If my rudeness shocks you, Lady, perhaps you will not wish me to serve you. I should be sent home to Moray,” she said quickly.

“I want you to stay with me. And Malcolm will not release you yet. Eva,” she said thoughtfully, “I do understand how you feel about your father. My own was unfairly killed when I was a girl.”

“Oh my dear,” Eva said impulsively. “I did not know.”

Margaret shook her head. “Tell me this. The king threatened to have your fingernails trimmed in punishment, and forbade you to play—but why?”

“The Gaelic verses told the truth of my father’s death.”

“Ah. I know so little of the language. I have been thinking—Eva, you must teach me more Gaelic.”

“I am happy to do that.” And it might keep her out of a dungeon, she quickly realized.

“If I could converse a little with the Celtic priests, I could better convince them to respect Rome. Please come inside,” she said as they reached the door of her solar.

Once seated, Margaret took up a piece of embroidery, and Eva did the same. Lady Juliana and her stepmother entered the room after them, and a few minutes later, Eva looked up with surprise to see Edgar standing in the threshold. He held Eva’s harp in his hands, having carried it up the stairs. Margaret beckoned him inside, and he set the instrument on a table.

As Eva thanked him, he smiled. “Malcolm suggested that I toss the harp out a window,” he said, as Eva gasped. “But the harp did nothing to deserve it.”

Eva laughed a little. “The king would rather toss me from a window.”

“That may be. But I would have stopped him. I would have caught you,” he added in a low tone, a little shyly. Then he looked around with reluctance, as if newly aware that they were not alone. The other women smiled with amusement, though Margaret frowned without comment. Edgar inclined his head in polite farewell and departed, cheeks showing pink through his light golden beard.

Drawing the needle through the cloth in the silence that followed, Eva felt at odds, sewing while her harp sat by, and she forbidden to play it.

“Eva, please, a little music.” Margaret spoke as if she knew her thoughts.

“I am not permitted.”

“The king need not know what he need not know.” Margaret smiled quickly and impishly, as if enjoying her rare defiance. “Malcolm said do not play in the hall, but this is my solar. Music will relax us after such a trying evening. We retire to bed so early in the winter, and a harp melody before sleep would be soothing.”

Eva moved another stool beside the low one that held the harp, and lifted her hands to the strings to begin a tune that was gentle but
uplifting, and then went seamlessly on to another. Juliana and Edith began to yawn as Eva played a tune of the sort called the music of sleeping. The queen sent them on, and they bade good night, leaving Eva with Margaret.

She glided her fingers into another melody, while Margaret sat reading her Gospel in silence. The leather covers flopped open, worn at the edges from years of handling, and the queen traced graceful fingers over text and images that she knew well. After a while, the door of the solar opened and Mirren entered, carrying Margaret’s little son wrapped in trailing swaddling clothes. Taking the child on her shoulder with kind words of affection, Margaret dismissed Mirren and began to walk holding Edward, soon humming softly to the music as she patted his back.

Plucking the strings together as the song ended, Eva lifted her hands. Margaret turned.

“Play the song about your father for me, in English.”

Eva nodded and closed her eyes to think through the translation, knowing that her bardic training would help her as she sang. The words tumbled forth, the greater challenge in finding the rhythm. Margaret listened, swaying gently as she held her son. Her translucent veil cast a shadow over her pensive features in the candlelight.

When Eva finished, the queen’s eyes glistened with tears. “You loved your father very much. I, too, loved and respected my father.”

Eva had met Lulach but once and so had not truly known him, but she was deeply proud of him even so. And she envied, a little, Margaret’s affection for her own father. “Lulach was a good king, unfairly slain,” she said.

“My father would have been king of England, and a strong ruler. But he was … poisoned one night. I—I had a hand in it,” she said in a rush. “Oh—forgive me, I did not mean to say it …” Margaret looked pale, stricken.

“A hand in that? You could never do anyone harm,” Eva reassured her. “I heard of your father, the heir to King Edward, when I was
a girl. I remember my grandmother speaking of him at supper one night. She said he was a good man who had been killed due to others’ ambitions.”

“His enemies were ready when we arrived in England. I was eleven, and I made a terrible error that night. My father might be alive now if not for what I did. All our lives would have been different. William might never have won England.”

Leaning the harp away, Eva stood. “A child’s deed did not cause the war. It is not possible.”

Margaret lifted a shoulder. “What if it were so?”

“Your memory is that of a child, Lady,” Eva said. “You cannot be to blame for his death.”

“No matter,” Margaret said quickly. “I spoke too freely. We will not discuss it again. But your music was calming, and you … have proven a friend.”

“I am honored, Lady,” Eva responded, drawing her brows together as she wondered at Margaret’s revelation. The queen held herself accountable for some sin; that was clear from her constant praying, and perhaps this supposed deed was it. Eva sighed, aware that if she had blamed herself for Lulach’s death a fortnight after he risked visiting her in Fife, that burden would have been unbearable. She felt a little frisson of sympathy for Margaret, who must have tormented herself for years with inner accusations. Eva wanted to offer comfort, touch the woman’s shoulder or embrace her. Instead she traced her fingers over the harp strings, releasing soothing whispers of sound.

“I admired you so much tonight, Eva,” Margaret said. “Your song about your father took courage. I do not have such bold spirit in me. But now I know that you think of your murdered father as I do mine. In a way, that makes us sisters.” She kissed her infant’s head. “The little one needs to go to sleep now, and his nurse waits outside. And I need to go to the house chapel again before I retire tonight. Good night, Eva.”

She went to the door to pull it open, supporting her infant in one arm. The nurse was there, reaching out for the child. As Margaret
descended the steps toward the chapel, the sound of her footsteps cascaded as if she ran.

WHEREVER THE QUEEN WENT
, Eva went, too. As the king’s hostage, and still forbidden to play harp for the court, she had little else to do but watch the dynamic, demanding king and his somber, charitable, beautiful wife. She garnered what observations she could to please her grandmother, and yearned to go home, lonely despite the friendships she had made. Margaret was good to her, Juliana was a joy, and Edgar made her heart beat fast and oddly—but he was often away. Even when he was there and greeted her, lingering to chat, his Saxon and Scots comrades would pull him away for debates, chess, or dice.