Sam didn’t respond.
‘Answer me! I’m not a kid any more!’ shouted Luke.
‘Aren’t you? Then act like it.’ Sam stood up. ‘I’m going for a walk before dinner.’
‘The exam?’ said Luke suddenly. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it? St Ilf’s?’
‘Yes,’ said Sam reluctantly. ‘Look, mate,’ he added hurriedly, ‘it’s not what you’re thinking.’
‘Did you pay someone?’
‘Of course I didn’t pay anyone. I just rang up one of the masters there, a bloke I was at school with. I mentioned you’d had a hard time, lost a lot of school when your dad was sick—’
‘You leave my dad out of it!’
‘I just said you might need some help and could they give you some idea of what you might need to study for the exam.’
‘So they sent me the exam paper to get Sam Mackenzie’s stepson into St Ilf’s?’
Sam stared. ‘You mean they sent you the whole exam paper? I just thought…I meant just a question or two, to help you along…’
‘You made me a cheat,’ said Luke hoarsely. ‘Just like you.’
‘Luke, I didn’t mean…’ began Sam.
Did Luke believe him? Had Sam arranged for him to see the whole exam paper or just a few questions?
It didn’t matter. Luke stumbled to his room.
Chapter 8
Luke
Son: What is a traitor?
Lady Macduff: Why, one that swears and lies.
(Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 2, lines 46–47)
Dinner was quiet. Luke avoided looking at Sam as he carved the roast beef, or even at Mum.
‘How many potatoes?’ asked Mum.
‘Two,’ said Luke. Did she know? Had Sam said to her, ‘Hey, don’t worry about dumb old Luke, I can get him into St Ilf’s, no worries’?
No, he thought. Mum wouldn’t have gone along with something like that. All her delight when he’d won that scholarship had been real. And if Luke told her now she’d be doubly hurt. She’d find out she had a cheat for a husband as well as for a son…
‘I was just explaining to Luke,’ said Sam heavily, ‘why I can’t put the Fishers on the show.’
‘Advertisers,’ said Mum.
Luke looked at her, shocked. ‘You knew? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Mum looked startled at the anger in his voice. ‘I thought Sam might still be able to do something.’
‘Well, I can’t,’ said Sam shortly.
Mum glanced at him, then at Luke. ‘Well, there are still lots of other things we can do,’ she said a bit too brightly. ‘Write to the paper…and the councillors. Maybe a letter to each one of them.’
Small stuff compared with what Sam could do, thought Luke. But there was no way he was going to attack Mum too.
How could she stand up for Sam like that?
‘I’ll get the chocolate mousse,’ said Mum, looking from one to the other. She was beginning to sound worried.
Luke stood up. ‘I’m not hungry. I’ve got homework to do.’
‘One of the joys of being an adult,’ said Mum, trying to stay cheerful, ‘is never having to do homework again.’
Luke didn’t reply.
The homework wasn’t just an excuse. He did have homework: he still had to try and get through Macbeth. Maybe for once he wouldn’t leave it all till Sunday night.
It was even sort of good to get away from real life into homework. To have something else to think about instead of Mum and Sam and St Ilf’s…
How would Mum feel if she knew Sam had thought that Luke was such a loser he’d never get into St Ilf’s by himself? If she knew Sam and Luke were cheats…because he was a cheat now, he realised. He’d been a cheat ever since he got the scholarship and said nothing about the exam.
Would Sam really tell people Luke had cheated if Luke spread it around that he was a fraud who wouldn’t speak out about something his sponsors were doing? It would hurt Sam too, wouldn’t it?
Or maybe he wouldn’t have to tell them right out. Maybe he’d just hint. He’d say, ‘Luke had a bit of help, you know’, with a wink and a certain look on his face, and people would go, ‘Oh yes, dumb old Luke. We always knew he couldn’t have got a scholarship by himself.’
Luke shivered. He had to think about something else for a while. At least Macbeth was another world, four hundred years away from his problems of lies and cheats.
Luke picked up his copy of the play. It was getting easier to understand the language now. Maybe he was finally getting the hang of it. Some bits were almost pretty good. Like when Lady Macbeth was trying to get up enough courage to kill the King.
Come, you Spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up th’access and passage to remorse…
Okay, people today didn’t talk like that. Luke supposed they never had talked like that really. But it still sounded…well, almost real, in spite of the weird way they spoke.
Maybe that’s what makes it a great play, he thought suddenly. It feels like real life, even if it isn’t.
He read for another fifteen minutes, slowly getting into the story. Macbeth, convinced by the witches that he will be king, will now do anything so he is king, even kill good King Duncan. But he’s scared by the monstrous thing he’s going to do. ‘Is this a dagger, which I see before me…?’ he cries. ‘Come, let me clutch thee…’ After he kills the King he’s in shock, so Lady Macbeth has to grab the dagger and smear the blood over the drunk grooms who are sleeping in the King’s room, so it will look like they’re the guilty ones.
Luke sat back. So that was what Mrs Easson had meant when she gave him ‘Macbeth’s Progress into Villainy’ as a topic for his talk. Macbeth was an okay guy to begin with. But he didn’t have the guts to do what he thought was right. Every evil thing he did led to another one…
He put the book down, changed into his pyjamas and put a DVD in the machine. It was a new one that Mum had brought back from Sydney. She always brought him something when she came back and left it on his bed—a new shirt, maybe (the last one was two sizes too small), or that goat’s-wool beanie that stank of billy goat as soon as it got wet. It was like she was saying, ‘See? I was thinking of you while I was away’ without having to use the words.
He got into bed and switched the DVD on using the remote. But he couldn’t concentrate. The DVD was…empty somehow. Everything that had happened today overshadowed it. Even Macbeth was more vivid. And last night’s dream…
Luke turned off the TV and lay back in bed.
That dream world was the place to live. A place where things were clear. Where enemies wore helmets and carried swords instead of exam papers. Okay, people were hungry and life was hard in some ways. But things were simple too.
He wished there were some way he could dream it all again. You couldn’t choose your dreams, could you? But that’s what he needed to dream of. Courage, like that of the Mormaer. A stepfather you could trust. A simple world…
He shut his eyes.
Sleep…
Chapter 9
Lulach
What! can the Devil speak true?
(Macbeth, Act I, Scene 3, line 107)
And suddenly he dreamed.
It’s too sudden, thought Luke vaguely. Dreams don’t start like this. You drift into dreams.
This felt as if he’d been dropped into a bucket of water. The whole world changed, and so did he.
I’m Lulach again, thought Luke. Him…me…it’s all mixed up. But what he sees, I see as well.
He was asleep in this dream too. But the bed was different—warmer, fluffier. It crackled as he rolled. Somehow he knew the mattress was filled with goose feathers. He could remember the old women plucking the dead birds out in the courtyard, his mother hanging the feathers in linen bags in the chimney so the smoke would kill any lice.
The sheets felt sof
t against his skin. They were linen sheets, from Ireland. The people of Alba had been colonists from Ireland hundreds of years ago, but the sheets weren’t as old as that. They were his grandmother’s sheets, and had come with his mother when she married his father.
How can I possibly know all this? thought Luke vaguely. But he wasn’t Luke. He was Lulach, asleep between sheets that had been washed on the rocks by the river, and left to dry and soften in the sun.
Lulach…Lulach…
‘No, not Lulach!’ The cry came from the room next door. It was his mother’s voice.
‘I have no choice. I have to take him.’ The Mormaer spoke quietly, but the words came through the wooden walls nonetheless. ‘Thorfinn demands to see him. If I don’t bring him the meeting’s off.’
Was Lulach dreaming or was he awake? Thorfinn, who’d killed his father…For a moment the dream wavered into his old nightmare: his father’s body, all black skin and grinning skull.
‘Why does Thorfinn want to see him?’
There was no answer, or none that Lulach heard.
‘Thorfinn wants to take him hostage! Please, for pity’s sake! You can’t take Lulach! I can’t lose him too!’
‘No one mentioned a hostage.’
‘But if he asks—or demands—what will you do?’
‘Trust me,’ said the Mormaer gently.
Lulach woke up properly. The room was dark, the moon outside hidden by the clouds. The rath was silent; even the voices from next door were quiet now. There was just the noise of a rat in the roof, and an almost-cough from the next room, like the sound of someone crying.
But that’s silly, thought Lulach, rolling over in bed. Mother sleeps next door. And mothers don’t cry.
He slept again. Suddenly a hand shook him. ‘Lulach! Lulach, wake up!’
‘What is it?’
‘Shh.’ His mother held a candle. The dawn was a grey light through the window. There were grey smudges under her eyes too, as though she hadn’t slept. ‘You must get dressed. Quietly.’
She handed him his clothes. They were his best ones: the new léine Meröe’s girls had woven for him, the deerhide cloak with the sheepskin collar.
Lulach began to struggle into his stockings. They were his best ones too, of red wool with yellow stripes. ‘Why?’
‘You have to go on a journey with the Mormaer.’ Lulach noticed she didn’t call him his stepfather. ‘A secret journey. No, don’t ask questions. Hurry.’
‘Have the Norsemen landed again?’ He tried to wake up properly. Someone had been talking about Thorfinn, hadn’t they? Or had that been a dream? Maybe he and the Mormaer had to go and fight the Norsemen again, just like they had last month, he thought hopefully. The Mormaer would do another trick and they’d be heroes.
‘No, nothing like that. Here, let me help you with your boots.’
‘I can do them. Will you come too?’ he added.
‘No. I wish I could, but I need to stay here. Someone needs to take charge with the Mormaer and Kenneth gone.’
‘Is Kenneth coming too?’
‘Yes. Lulach…’
Lulach looked up from tugging on his boots. ‘What?’
His mother hesitated, then bit her lip. ‘Nothing. Just…do what your stepfather tells you to. Understand? No matter what he tells you to do. You have to trust him.’ She said the words almost like a prayer.
Lulach nodded. He wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to. Trust his stepfather? He did already. The Mormaer was a hero. He’d taken Lulach hunting twice last month, high on his big horse, and let him hold his deer spears. Now the whole of Moray knew that Lulach would be his tanist, as soon as he was fourteen and a man.
The Hall was quiet as they crept down the stairs. The rath’s unmarried men snored on their pallets by the fire; someone coughed from one of the bedrooms on either side. A dog got to its feet and looked hopeful, but sat again at the Lady Gruoch’s silent signal.
It wasn’t as dark outside. The sky was an arc of pewter-grey.
Three horses were stamping their feet outside the door, their breath white in the cold air. One was Lulach’s pony, and the Mormaer and Kenneth were already on the other two. Lulach grinned. So he was to have his own horse today!
Lulach’s mother tied the strings of his cloak more tightly, then pinned something at his collar. It was his father’s gold brooch. It gleamed in the light of the candle. The Mormaer glanced down at it, but said nothing.
Lulach’s mother hugged him hard and adjusted the collar of his cloak. ‘God speed,’ she said quietly.
Lulach waited for her to kiss his stepfather goodbye too. But she didn’t. She just said, ‘Look after him.’
The Mormaer nodded. He spurred his horse. The others followed.
The sea and the fishermen’s cottages were at their backs. They were heading inland. There was no track to follow here, just the river. Mist rose from it as the daylight grew, and a thin veil of white covered the hills as well. In a land with few roads, burns and rivers were the real highways. It felt grand to be riding his own horse with the two men, as though he were an adult too.
Where are we going? Lulach wondered. But if his mother wouldn’t tell him, he guessed there was no point in asking the Mormaer either.
Gradually the sun rose: a thin slip of gold at first, then larger and larger, dragging the day’s light with it. The hills turned green instead of grey, patched with bracken’s gold and heather’s purple. Bent trees shivered silver in the early sunlight, and ale-coloured streams crept between the hills.
At last they left the river and followed a smaller one, heading north. The air smelled of distant sleet.
‘There’s food in your saddle bag!’ called the Mormaer. They’d been riding for hours now and Lulach realised he was starving. He reached down with one hand and fished inside the leather bag. There was a piece of oatcake, wrapped inside a scrap of linen, and a hunk of cheese leaking its grease into the cloth. He nibbled on the cheese as they rode, but left the oatcake. His mouth felt too dry to eat it. But he didn’t like to suggest they stop for a drink.
The sun crept higher. Clouds gathered over the hills, then sped across the sky. It began to rain: sun showers that lasted for less time than you could sing a chorus, here then gone again.
Lulach pulled the hood of his deerhide cloak over his head.
The Mormaer glanced back at him. ‘Not long now!’
The stream they’d been following was even smaller now. The Mormaer stopped at a burn that ran down from the hills, as though to check the way. Then he gestured to Kenneth. They headed off up the hill, leaving the river behind. Lulach spurred his pony to follow, weaving in and out of the heather. He hoped the pony wouldn’t stumble on this rough ground. But they reached the top of the hill in safety.
A glen was spread out below them. Groves of trees grew in its shelter, a small loch edged with reeds and moss gleamed, shaggy cattle grazed on the hills. A field of barley glowed green behind a two-storey building, with a cattle byre behind.
It must be a guesthouse, Lulach realised. Every clan kept guesthouses throughout their territory, to give travellers free food and a bed for the night.
Lulach glanced up at the sky. The sun wasn’t even at midday yet. Surely it was too early to stop for the night!
The three horses cantered down the slope. They stopped at the front door of the guesthouse and their riders dismounted. Lulach felt his knees tremble after so long in the saddle. His tummy growled too. It had been a long time since the piece of cheese.
The Mormaer smiled. ‘Time to eat,’ he said, ringing the guesthouse bell.
‘Yes, yes, I’m coming!’ An old woman shuffled out of the door then stared. She was Meröe’s age, though there were more teeth in her wrinkled face. ‘My Lord!’ she gasped, as she recognised the Mormaer. ‘Please…please enter. It’s an honour…you’ll want rooms, the bedding is all aired…’
‘Just food, if you will.’
‘Anything! My husband says I’m the best cook in the
glen!’ boasted the woman, standing back to let them pass.
Lulach glanced at the countryside around them. As far as he could see she was the only cook in the glen too.
The Mormaer bent his head under the lintel. Suddenly Lulach remembered his father telling him why doors were always low. ‘That way you can chop off an enemy’s head before he lifts it again,’ his father had said. He’d laughed, but Lulach could tell that he was serious.
Why had he thought of his father now? Was it because he had heard the name Thorfinn last night?
Had he heard it? Or had it been a dream?
It was cool inside the guesthouse, despite the fire at the end of the long room. The Mormaer and Kenneth made their way towards it.
What were they all doing here? Lulach sat on the bench by the fire and watched Kenneth and his stepfather, trying to find a clue. The Mormaer was sitting on one of the benches too, looking as relaxed as if he were in his own Hall. But Kenneth was restless, pacing back and forth by the fire.
‘You stay here with the boy,’ said Kenneth abruptly. ‘I’ll scout around.’
‘Thorfinn said midday,’ said the Mormaer mildly. ‘There’ll be nothing to see yet.’
Thorfinn! Lulach started. So he hadn’t been dreaming!
‘If he keeps his word,’ said Kenneth grimly.
‘He will. He has as much to lose as we have.’
‘Except the boy.’
Lulach started again. Did Kenneth mean him? What were they talking about?
The Mormaer shook his head. ‘Lulach is no use to Thorfinn.’
‘Then why does he demand to see him?’
‘Who knows? But go if you like.’
Kenneth nodded. He strode out the door.
Lulach couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer. ‘My Lord…what’s happening?’
‘It’s a meeting,’ said the Mormaer. ‘Thorfinn and—’
There were footsteps outside the door. Lulach glanced up. But it was just the hostel-keeper’s wife hurrying in with more wood for the fire.
‘There,’ she panted, as the flames flared higher. ‘Now, I’ll just milk the cow. I’ve been leaving the calf to suck, but the cow’s a grand milker. And there are chickens…’
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