(Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1, lines 133–134)
It was Tuesday night: two days of lying at school. No, not lying, Luke told himself as he lay in bed and watched the moonlight make shadows on the wall. Just not telling all the truth…
Funny, he’d always hated going to bed before. But now sleep was a refuge.
Well, not just sleep. The dream.
It was like having your own virtual-reality machine. Somehow he knew he would vanish back to that world tonight, even though the dream hadn’t come for two nights now.
Lulach’s world was turning out to be more complicated and interesting than he’d thought. If only he had a stepfather like the Mormaer, instead of Sam…
Luke shut his eyes. And waited.
The world changed. The sounds changed. The caw of the rooks in the roof of the Hall, the snick snick snick of sickles slicing through the ripe stalks of barley all around him.
Lulach stretched out his sickle and cut another armful of grain. Normally only women cut the barley. The men would tie it into sheaves and stack them to dry for threshing. The grain was kept for bread and stews, the bran to make sour fermented ale, and the straw for beds.
But once again there were no young men to tie the barley, or to cut the bracken to make beds for the cows in winter, so women had to do their jobs instead. It was only two months after the Mormaer’s meeting with Thorfinn. But already the men had marched away to war again.
Men had marched away to war every summer of Lulach’s life. But this time the men of Moray were fighting against King Duncan, not for him.
The clear sky stretched above him, with not even a bird to break the blue. Up on the hills above the fields the cows chomped and tore at the grass, lifted their tails and left their droppings, nudged their calves then ate some more. A cow’s world never changes, thought Lulach. No matter what happens in the world of men, cows just keep munching grass.
Lulach’s arms ached, and his back and knees as well. He was the youngest child working in the field today. Even Knut was gone now, to study at the monastery.
The women were silent as they swung their sickles. The older women spinning on the doorstep of the Hall had stopped their gossiping. It was as though war had sucked away their songs as well as all their men, and all the women could do was wait till the battle spat them back. Will he return? And how? Blinded? Scarred? His arm hacked off by a broadsword blow?
It would soon be the time of the feast when lots were drawn to see who would farm what bit of land over the next year, and which bits would be farmed communally to help the poor and sick. But no one had the heart for a feast now. What would they feast on, with the men away and no one to hunt or fish?
Something on the horizon caught Lulach’s attention. He straightened and squinted into the distance. The speck on the road grew larger.
A runner, coming this way! In this world of mountains and few roads a man on foot could take a message as fast as one on a horse.
Lulach felt his heart leap like a salmon in the river.
The women had seen the runner too. One gave a cry, then clapped a hand to her mouth, as though the cry might bring bad luck.
A runner meant news. News of the war. News of their men.
Was the battle lost or won? How many would come home this time?
The runner was nearing the field now, his feet and legs bare beneath his smock, loping steadily along the muddy track. As he passed them Lulach thrust his sickle into a sheaf and ran after him.
The runner nodded to Lulach, but didn’t stop. He looked flushed with tiredness, and dust mingled with his sweat. But it took all of Lulach’s strength to keep up with him.
‘What news?’ he panted.
‘My news is for the Lady Gruoch.’ The runner’s voice was almost too soft to hear. He had learned how to keep his breath for the run.
‘I’m her son!’
‘Then you’ll hear the news soon enough—if you don’t make me waste my breath by talking.’
‘But…’ Lulach shut his mouth and tried to keep up as they ran through the courtyard and up to the Hall. But his brain was pounding even faster than his legs.
Was the battle over? Had they won or lost? Was his stepfather all right? Surely nothing could ever happen to a man as brave and strong as he was…
A sudden vision of his father’s blackened skull flashed before him. His father had been strong too…
Women ran towards them from the fields, from the cow yards, the dairy. ‘A runner! A runner’s come!’
The Hall door was open, to let in light. Lulach followed the runner inside as his mother hurried from the storeroom. Her hands were clenched so hard the knuckles were as white as her apron.
‘What news?’
The runner stood panting. ‘Victory, my Lady.’
‘Thank goodness. Oh, thank goodness.’ The Lady Gruoch’s face lost half its tension. ‘And the Mormaer?’
‘Unhurt, my Lady.’
‘Ah.’ It seemed to Lulach that his mother grew softer all at once, as though the strings that had held her taut were suddenly cut. She must really miss him, he realised suddenly. He had always thought that his mother had married again because it was her duty. But no one looking at her face could think that now.
‘My Lady, there is more news. The King…King Duncan is dead.’
Gruoch nodded, as though she had expected the news. ‘How?’
‘In battle, my Lady.’
‘By whose hand?’
‘Thorfinn, Earl of the Orkneys. Thorfinn challenged the King to combat. The King tried to flee, but Thorfinn slew him anyway. Once the King was dead the field was ours.’
‘Duncan fought and fled too often. His men would have had little heart for battle,’ his mother said, seemingly lost in thought. ‘Well said and well run,’ she told him at last. ‘Meröe, get bread and mead for the runner, and whatever else he wants.’ She hesitated, then pulled a bracelet from her wrist. It was twisted silver and had belonged to Lulach’s grandmother. ‘And this is yours, to thank you for the news.’
‘My Lady.’ The runner bowed his head, his hand clutching the bracelet.
Lulach looked around the Hall. Women had crowded all around to hear the news, so many they shut out the light from the door.
Why didn’t they cheer? he wondered, watching their silent faces. Why didn’t the women wave their scarves, as they had when the Mormaer tricked the Norsemen? They had won, hadn’t they? The King was dead!
Now there would be no more wars! The Mormaer had vanquished war, just like he’d vanquished bad King Duncan!
Why were they so still?
He soon found out.
The men began to return three days later. When they left there had been great fanfare—but there were no songs now, no drums or pipers playing as they marched. These men limped, worn and starving. Armies lived off the land. But when they crossed the land too often, the land had no more to give.
Women ran to meet them with tears of joy. Children hid their faces in their mothers’ skirts when their fathers no longer greeted them with laughter, but with blank expressions and hollow eyes.
Other women watched, searching the faces of the men for husbands, sons, brothers, friends. Sometimes they moved among the limping men, asking, ‘Have you seen him?’ ‘Is he hurt—or did he fall?’
But mostly they just waited, wanting to keep their hope alive just a little longer.
Lulach kept his eyes on the road. But there was no sign of the Mormaer riding his horse high above the limping men.
The first to come home were tired, nothing more. They were the ones who could walk.
The next day brought the wounded: men who could still hobble, if their comrades helped them, with wounds that gaped and oozed despite being wrapped in bloody rags, or eyes gouged out by a sword. The women ran for fresh herbs and bandages.
And still the Mormaer didn’t return.
The third day was the worst. Men on stretchers, carried by their friends. Bodies huddled together i
n an ox cart, still and bloody, with flies crawling on their wounds—so impossibly maimed it seemed that they were dead, till one man groaned and you knew that he, at least, still lived.
And then Lulach saw the Mormaer. He rode with his guard, high on their horses. Lulach stared at him. He was unhurt, just as the runner had said, though his face was thinner and there were shadows under his eyes. But there was something more.
The Mormaer led another horse, carrying the body of a man. Lulach stared. Was it a body? How could a corpse sit in the saddle, staring out with…with…
Lulach thought he would be sick. No, it wasn’t a corpse. It was a man with half a face, one eye gone, the skin around it a burned red scar.
His stepfather reined in his horse, dismounted, then helped the wounded man down. The scarred man moved as he was guided, but nothing more.
A woman screamed in the doorway of the Hall. It was Meröe. Lulach had never thought that she could scream like that. Suddenly he realised why. The man was her son.
Kenneth.
How could any man look like that and live? What had Kenneth lived through, that would turn him into that?
Another woman ran from the cheese room, her hand pressed into her mouth to stop her sobs. Kenneth’s wife. She and Meröe took Kenneth’s arms. He stumbled between them to the Hall.
Lulach was dimly aware of his mother greeting her husband, of his stepfather saying something, anything…
And then he ran.
Ran to the hill, to the chomping, normal cows, and lay among the heather and the cattle droppings, surrounded by the familiar smells of dirt and cow. Anything to get away, to wipe out the stench of blood and death.
He lay face down, sobbing, till he heard a sound above him.
He looked up. It was a curlew, high in the sky. How many times had he called to a bird with Kenneth’s pipes?
He sat up and pulled the pipes from his pocket. The bone was shiny now, from years of rubbing by his fingers. He put it to his lips and blew.
High above him the curlew called back, rising higher and higher in the sky.
At last Lulach put the pipes down. Tears still rolled down his cheeks. But they were easier now.
‘Lulach.’
It was his mother. She must have come up the hill behind him.
‘Go away!’
‘Lulach, come back. It’s your duty.’
Lulach shook his head. ‘I don’t care. Kenneth did his duty and look what happened!’ The sobs were shaking him again.
His mother hesitated, then sat on the cow-cropped grass beside him. ‘Your father said it was a sword thrust. It went right though Kenneth’s helmet into his head.’
‘But a sword cut doesn’t look like that.’
‘No. But he was dying. They had to burn the cut with a red-hot iron to stop the bleeding.’
‘And now he has no face!’
‘But he has his life,’ his mother said softly. ‘Your father said Kenneth struggled when they tried to lie him on the cart. He insisted on riding. One day, perhaps, he’ll understand the world again. And Meröe will have her son and his wife her husband.’
Lulach shook his head. ‘It’s the Mormaer’s fault,’ he said hoarsely. ‘He agreed to fight with Thorfinn. He said there’d be no more war! But this war was worse than any of the others!’
‘Was it?’ asked his mother quietly. ‘You’ve seen men come back from war before. Maybe this one seems worse because you’re growing up.’
‘But…but the Mormaer started this war! Duncan started the others, but this one was the Mormaer’s fault!’
‘If your father hadn’t taken our men to war this time, Moray would have had to fight again anyway, with Duncan, against Thorfinn. We’d probably have lost again. Even more men would have died.’
Lulach didn’t reply.
His mother hugged her knees, staring down at the Hall. Lulach suddenly wondered if she had ever sat on a hill like this as a girl, watching the cows, waiting for the news of war. Then, as though she read his mind, his mother said, ‘I was your age when my father died, fighting King Malcolm’s wars. I saw my brothers, then your father, die fighting for King Duncan. Lulach, I could have been mormaer here when your father died. I could even have stood against Duncan when they elected him king. But I knew that I could never send men to war.’
‘Then you should have been mormaer!’ said Lulach fiercely. ‘That way Kenneth would have been safe!’
His mother sighed. ‘No, Lulach. Most times war comes to you. There’s no escape. Sometimes you have to fight. Your stepfather has protected Moray better than anyone else could have. I knew that when I married him.’ She touched his hair lightly. ‘And now perhaps there’ll be no more war for any of us.’
Lulach shrugged. The future was far away. But the man with half a face was here and now.
His mother continued. ‘Do you know who the true heroes are?’ she asked him softly.
Lulach refused to answer.
‘The ones who hate what they have to do, but do it anyway. It’s called duty, Lulach. Duty is watching your husband ride away and wanting to scream at him, “Don’t go!” But you don’t scream at him. You hold the words back. Duty is waiting, smiling so no one sees your terror, making sure the cows are milked, the sheep are shorn, the fish are dried, so that there is something for the men to come back to. And when they do come back…’ She bit her lip. ‘Lulach, do you love Kenneth?’
Lulach look up, surprised. ‘Of course!’
‘If you were Kenneth, what would comfort you the most? A boy who ran away from you? Or one who schooled his face and helped him? That’s duty, Lulach. Doing what you have to do, no matter how hard it is.’
There was silence on the hill for a while. A hare peeped out from a clump of heather, its ears twitching.
‘Did I hurt Kenneth, running away?’ asked Lulach at last.
‘He didn’t notice,’ said his mother gently. ‘Not this time.’
She stood up and held out her hand to him. ‘Come on, Lulach. You’re going to be the Tanist of Moray. The people need to see that you care about them.’
Lulach looked up at her. ‘I don’t want to be tanist. I…I want to study, like Knut. I want to go to the monastery too.’ The idea had just come to him. But it seemed so good suddenly, to live among books, away from all the decisions of the world…
‘No,’ said his mother shortly.
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, Lulach, how can I make you understand? You have no brothers, no cousins or uncles. Anyone else who could stand for election as mormaer is dead. There’s only you. The clan must have a leader. The land must have a chief to tend and guard it.’
‘And there’s only me?’ said Lulach slowly.
‘There’s only you.’
‘Duty,’ said Lulach. It seemed the heaviest word in all the world. ‘If…if you have another son, can I be a monk then?’
‘Perhaps,’ said his mother softly, smiling slightly. ‘If I do.’
Lulach stood up, and followed her down the hill.
Duty, thought Luke, only half awake, a world and an age away from the small boy on the hill. How lucky to have someone to tell you clearly what your duty was.
And now the Mormaer would be king.
Or would he?
Luke rolled over and let the dream claim him again.
Chapter 13
Lulach
All hail, Macbeth!
(Macbeth, Act I, Scene 3, line 48)
The King was dead. It was time to elect another.
Down in England the king’s son became king when his father died, even if he was evil or a fool. But here in Alba the mormaers and the bishops met at Scone to elect one of their number as high king.
The three of them rode along the muddy road into Scone—Lulach, his mother and his stepfather. The men of Moray marched behind them.
Flakes of snow drifted from the low grey clouds and melted on their faces, and the horses’ hot breath turned the cold air into mist.
Lulach stared. He had never dreamed that any town could be so much bigger than the rath at home. There were more houses than you could count! Whole streets of tanners, potters, coopers, cobblers, shield makers…
Out from the houses, down from the hills, people ran towards them—men in ragged leggings, women with tattered skirts, hungry children with fingers blue from the cold and feet bound up in rags, cheering, cheering, cheering…
‘Moray!’ they yelled. ‘Moray! Moray!’
A woman ran up to them, a cloth-wrapped bundle in her hands. It steamed in the frosty air. She thrust it at the Mormaer.
‘For you, my Lord!’ she yelled. ‘Fresh baked!’
It was an oaten bannock, hot from the firestone. The Mormaer broke off a piece and ate it, smiling down his thanks, then passed the rest to Lulach and his wife.
Lulach tasted it. It was gritty and sour. The oat flour must have been old and full of weevils. But it was the best the woman had to give.
Lulach had wondered if King Duncan’s subjects would hiss at them, or hurl the contents of their chamber pots at the man who had killed their king. But these people didn’t mourn for Duncan. Instead they cheered the man they hoped would be their next ruler.
That morning, at the guesthouse where they’d stopped for the night, Lulach had heard his stepfather practising what he’d say to the assembled chiefs.
‘Duncan gave you war and hunger,’ the Mormaer had recited. ‘Black fields, with nothing to harvest but ruined hopes. I will give you peace.’
And he would, thought Lulach, as they rode between the cheering crowds. The Mormaer always kept his word. Surely the Council of Chiefs would see that too?
The chieftains and church leaders argued for three days, while the candidates waited in the monastery guesthouse, carefully polite to each other.
There were many candidates, but only two who really had a chance of being elected: the leaders of the two most powerful clans in Alba. The Mormaer of Moray and the new Mormaer of Atholl, King Duncan’s brother. Thorfinn had been right.
King Duncan’s father, the Abbot of Dunkfield and the former Mormaer of Atholl, had been lobbying the Council to vote for Duncan’s brother. Duncan’s son was too young to stand for election.
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