This is a fascinating city. I expect you knew it was originally two cities, Buda and Pest. The royal palace at Buda is very fine, with over eight hundred rooms (not that I’ve been in them all!). Near by stands the church of
I’m sorry, dear, I’ll have to break this off if I want to catch the post. I’ll be off again in a day or two. Will drop you a line as soon as I can.
In haste, with love,
Stephen
AFFAIRS OF DEATH
To trade and traffic with Macbeth In riddles and affairs of death . . .
– Macbeth, IV v
Leo IX, a native of Alsace, succeeded to the Papacy in AD 1049. Four years later he gathered an army of Italians and German volunteers and led it in person against the Norman invaders who had occupied Sicily and southern Italy. The papal forces were defeated and the Pope captured and imprisoned for some months.
My gaolers released me without notice on the morning of 26th October. They acted without explanation also, merely indicating in their vile French that I was free to go. Their continued and studied lack of respect for my person, however, suggested unwilling compliance with outside pressure, which could have been nothing but the intervention of the Emperor. The prospect of this had been all that sustained me through the tedium and discomfort of my captivity. Henry had held his hand on purpose, of course, partly to emphasize his disapproval of my recent actions, partly without doubt as a reminder that in some sense I owed my enthronement to his good Offices.
My delight at returning to Rome was tempered by apprehension about what might have been in store for me there. But I found the City perfectly quiet and Hildebrand the Benedictine had kept everything safe. I had sent ahead and he was waiting up for me in the yellow saloon, where a cold supper had been laid. He greeted me with a precise blend of reverence and warmth. He was a little thinner since June, I thought, perhaps a little harder too. He had seen much of the world for one who was still barely thirty years old, enough at least to understand Germany, and that was much.
I had not asked for a doctor, but he had caused one to be present, a Greek by the look of him, with a white beard to signify great knowledge. He prodded me, took my pulse, looked at my tongue. When he made to bleed me I threw him out.
‘Let me bring him back tomorrow, Lord,’ said Hildebrand. ‘You are not well. Those Norman pigs have starved you. Was your highness at least dry?’
‘Most of the time. I need rest and good food, fresh food.’
‘Assuredly. Eat now, Lord. You enjoy these little birds.’
‘No, I am too tired. Pour me wine.’
As he handed me the cup, he said quietly, ‘I thought to have no ceremony. It seemed not to be called for.’
‘No indeed. Even these few are too many. Have the goodness to remove them.’
One inclination of his head and it was done.
‘Hildebrand, who would have thought that an uncouth rabble like that could put those brave fellows of mine to rout? The Supreme Pontiff a common prisoner. Arrest them all, my boy, all who are in Rome; hunt down the others and fetch them here. All – Gerard, Frederic, Valerian, Florentinus, Otho, the Spaniard and the one with the stutter. All my captains, all those who robbed me of victory. Confine them here. All of them.’
‘There, be calm, Lord. They shall be fetched, all of them.’
‘See they are.’ I coughed a trifle and took some water, then more wine, with a sparrow’s wing to nibble at. ‘Well, what waits tomorrow?’
‘Many things, great and small. None pressing. Few pleasing. Some plaguing, as Peter Damian rebuking you for usurping the Emperor’s function by your activities as a soldier.’
‘Never mind him.’
‘Perhaps we need not, but your highness had better mind an accusation of heresy from Michael Cerularius.’
‘There must be something in the air of Constantinople that rots the brain. Does Michael, a mere bishop, really know no better than to offer a direct challenge to my authority? I shall have to cut him off altogether.’
‘He will have earned it, Lord. Now one pleasant matter. There is a king in Rome, most eager for an audience with your highness. I think I never saw one more truly eager, high or low.’
‘What king?’
‘Of Scots or Scotland, Macbeth by name. Having quite given you up, as regrettably some few had, he had petitioned the Cardinal Vicar-General for an audience and professed himself overwhelmed to learn he might after all be privileged to be received by your highness. He was most particular that you must consult your own health and comfort in the matter. A touching rogue. It might amuse you, Lord.’
‘Amusing or not, I will see him. Of course I will. I must make any friends I can. If he cares to call on me I will receive the king of Vinland. How is he attended, this Macbeth?’
‘Most suitably, by someone I took for a kind of freebooter. He was here, King Macbeth was in Rome, three years ago on purpose to see your highness, but you were abroad then, peregrinating beyond the Alps.’
‘Yes, yes. Such persistence merits reward. Arrange it.’
‘It is done, Lord. Provisionally. Noon, not tomorrow but the day following. Now your highness must retire,’ said Hildebrand, calling servants. ‘And sleep late.’
When, not much refreshed even by twelve hours in a good bed, I rose the next afternoon, Hildebrand was soon in attendance again with, among much else, information about Scotland. The country, or the territory inhabited by Scots, was confined to that part of the mainland of Britain which lies north of the Firth of Forth. Here and over neighbouring regions from the furthest shores of the Irish Sea to those of the North Sea, there ranged at different times bands of Irish, Picts, Scots, Britons, Angles, Cumbrians, English, Danes, Norwegians contending in prolonged and obscure struggles. That part of northern Europe had been a turbulent place for centuries and seemingly still was.
At first sight Scotland was no concern of mine. The Church was well enough established there, and Macbeth had shown himself well disposed to her in the dozen years of his rule. I had no means of controlling events. There was only one bishop of the Scots, at the unwalled city of St Andrews, and his influence was purely local. What monks there were had no power. Clearly, the key to control of the Scottish Church lay in the sovereign. If I could win some personal regard from Macbeth, I might be laying the foundations of something that might, again, prove useful in any future trouble with England. And that there would be trouble with England sooner or later, perhaps in my time, perhaps after many years, I had not the slightest doubt.
I hardly know what I had expected to encounter the noon following, certainly not the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed figure in his late forties who was presented; I thought he might well have had a Norse ancestor as well as Norse neighbours. His companion, introduced by my usher as Captain Seaton, short, broad, heavily bearded, with a look of stupid ferocity, was much more my idea of a Scotchman. As the two knelt before me I bestowed on each a salutation appropriate to his rank.
So as not to overawe my visitors excessively I had received them in a small throne-room built two centuries before by my predecessor Agapetus II and not two storeys high, none the less worthy of its function with sumptuous new frescoes, sculptures in the round and jewelled appointments. The soldier, if that was what he was, kept his eyes straight in front as though fearful of taking in his surroundings; his master glanced here and there without disrespect, without astonishment either, his attention soon caught by the most unusual piece on view, a grotesque carved-oak Calvary the bishop of Rennes took out of some church there and sent me for my forty-seventh birthday, my first after being consecrated.
The king’s dress gave further mild surprise; not deer-skins and foot-rags but a rich gold-edged surcoat that would not have disgraced the Emperor Henry himself, an inner garment of dark-red silk, high Spanish shoes, a short, stout cross-hilted sword, plain but with some elegance in the workmanship, and below the throat a curiously shaped crucifix, evidently silver but of a pretty bluish tinge, which I promise
d myself I would have off him before he took his leave. What manner of tribal chieftain was it who wore these things?
As was my custom when receiving royalty, I had had my seneschal install near the dais and at right angles to it a heavy chair with a high and elaborately carved back representing scenes of martyrdom. Mounted on a shallow platform, it was in no sense a throne but it did elevate the monarch in occupation a sufficient distance above the commonalty. Here King Macbeth sat, well enough at his ease with his blue eyes reverentially lowered. Without much confidence in being understood I asked in simple Latin a question about his earlier visit to the City.
Unexpectedly once more, he replied in fluent and correct French, the language of my childhood, ‘I was desperately disappointed to be unable to pay my respects to your highness. I had to be content with distributing money to the poor of Rome.’ His accent was no worse than that of my late captors, indeed much resembled theirs.
‘Your majesty’s skill in the tongue is remarkable.’ No more so than his having discovered my own familiarity with it.
‘Thank you, Holy Father. I have been fortunately placed. It so happens that over the past two years or so I have sheltered at my court a number of French-speaking fugitives from England, and I sent myself to school with them. After all, this conversation, however memorable to me, would have been much restricted otherwise. My Latin is rudimentary, and I doubt if your highness’ Gaelic is much better.’
I laughed, partly in unconcealed appreciation of this speech. Those fugitives had of course come in the first place from Normandy, but after my recent experiences it would have been less than tactful to mention even the existence of that place. As for having learned French, he had not done so in order to be able to converse with me, whom he had been prepared to face three years before in ignorance of it and whom he had not expected to see at all this time. No, his conversational target had in the first place been Duke William, universally understood to have been promised the English throne by King Edward as soon as it fell vacant, and therefore a most interesting personage to any king of Scotland. But would William desire such a meeting?
‘Doubtless you made other visits on your journey here, your majesty?’
He was on the defensive at once. ‘Yes, Holy Father, one such, but it was of no importance, not even comparatively so.’
‘Nevertheless I trust enjoyable.’
‘I must ask your highness to pardon me,’ he said, blinking fiercely.
This time I suppressed a smile. It was as clear to me as from a full description that what he had visited or attempted to visit was indeed William’s court, and no less so that he had been rebuffed – unseen, I judged, for it took no more than a glance to show that here was someone to be reckoned with, not the refined soul he took himself for, a barbarian still, but a remarkable barbarian. I said smoothly, ‘We hear pleasing reports of the state of Scotland under your majesty’s stewardship.’
‘Your highness is too gracious. And you bring me to the object of this interview, or the secondary object, the first plainly being to be granted your blessing, Holy Father. For reasons that will appear, I had felt driven most urgently to come to Rome even when I took your highness to be absent. To find you present after all, to reach you, I see as a distinct mark of divine favour.’
An ardent blue-eyed stare went with this. I began to cough for a moment and shifted position on my throne. Talk of such matters has always unsettled me. It might have been a little sharply that I said, ‘Please go on, sir.’
But he hesitated for a moment before continuing, ‘I hope to be forgiven for making what must be an unusual request. It is that a clerk should be sent for to record the substance of what, if permitted, I shall say.’
I gave the necessary directions and waited.
‘I suppose you know little of Scotland, Holy Father. It is a remote and obscure place, its people wild, ignorant, credulous, superstitious, not brutal but childish. They have no notions of probability, of consistency, of what is real and what is fancied. My reign has not been untroubled and some of the events in it, and even more those attending its inception, were violent, confused and ambiguous. Not long after I am dead the generally accepted account of it, of my reign, is likely to deviate absurdly and irrecoverably from historical fact. A like process has already distorted the years of my predecessor’s rule. With your leave, with your help, Holy Father, I intend to set on record the truth of these matters and to have that record lodged in the bosom of the see of St Peter, where it will be safe for ever. This it was that brought me here. What I have to say may also attract your highness’ passing attention, for all Scotland’s distance from the centre of the world.’
That last stroke, accompanied by a different kind of glance, caused me to reflect that such men as this were not very common anywhere, not even in Rome. Just then a clerk appeared, a Benedictine, and on my nod settled himself at Macbeth’s left side. I spread a hand in invitation.
‘Some things are seen, some things are put out of sight. It is seen that old Malcolm II, King of Scots, fortunate, victorious, praised of bards, had no son to follow him, but that he ruled so long that by the time he died his grandsons were grown up. For the succession, it is seen that he favoured the eldest, Duncan. This, when he might have chosen the third in age, myself, or even the fourth and youngest, Thorfinn Sigurdson, son of the Norwegian earl of Orkney. By the ancient custom of our royal house the eldest prince has no firm right to succeed, and I had a better claim, a double claim, a claim not only through my own lineage but also through that of my wife Gruoch, granddaughter of King Kenneth III, whom old Malcolm had deposed and killed. Such a claim as hers is also admitted by our custom.
‘All this is seen. It is further seen, though ill remembered, that old Malcolm made over to Thorfinn, with the title of earl, two fiefs on the mainland, this as a means of restraining him, of placating any ambition he might nourish. The old man had not reckoned that, once on the throne, the foolhardy Duncan would try to recover those places by force of arms. Scotland ran with blood, much of it that of my own people, some of it my own blood; I carried a sword for my king as a commander of his armies. There seemed no end to be hoped for.
‘Then one morning thirteen years ago Thorfinn’s Norwegians burst upon the Scots from the rising sun at Burghead in Moray and cut them to pieces on the beach in ten minutes. Duncan fled and I and a party of my followers fled with him. Moray was my fief; by secret paths I led him to an abandoned fort at a place called Bothnagowan. There, on an August night, we seized our chance, a dozen of us, and surprised him as he lay asleep out on the rampart, and stabbed him to death with our daggers. With no delay I had myself proclaimed king and was crowned at Scone, made peace with my cousin Thorfinn, made him my friend. Indeed, he had been my friend before, he who always does what he has said he will do. And the Scots hung up their arms.
‘This too is seen by some. What is not seen, what is already forgotten, what is put out of sight is Duncan as he was. Comely I grant him, with a bright eye and a curved lip, very like my father-in-law, as my wife often noted; both men were descended from Malcolm I, dead these hundred years. However, in all else Duncan was a wretch, mean of spirit, vengeful, I think a little mad. No one was safe from his sudden rages. Wasteful and indolent. Unclean in his person – he stank under our knives, not only from fear. Not kingly. It is put out of sight that his nickname of the Gracious was a jest, a taunt.
‘Now Scotland is safe and at peace. This has not been customary. So fierce and prolonged have been her inner conflicts that, of her last nine kings, only old Malcolm my grandfather died in his bed. The future holds some hope. Having no issue I have taken as my son the fruit of my wife’s first marriage, young Lulach, a strong, honest boy of twenty-one. I mean him to succeed me. Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donald Bane, whom I generously spared, shelter in the household of Siward, the English earl of Northumberland, a cousin of their mother’s. They show no signs of moving to unseat me, nor can they ever contrive it while my friend and
ally Thorfinn lives. Let them try and welcome. I will defend my country to my last breath.
‘That all this is true I, Macbeth, King of Scots, swear on my honour.’
Indicating to the scribe that his formal statement was finished, he went on in a different tone, ‘There remains the heavy matter of the killing of Duncan. It was done more Scottico, not in malice, it was done for Scotland, not for my advancement, it was done as an execution, not as a wanton slaying, but it was murder. If I am to bear the blame . . .’
In an oddly irritating gesture he fumbled with the crucifix at his breast. I told him briskly.
‘Of that you and I will speak in private, your majesty, at a later hour.’
Macbeth gave a slow nod, his thoughts on old wrongs and enduring hazards. It was more than half to himself that he said, ‘Already they are telling one another that my gentle Gruoch had a hand in Duncan’s death, when in truth she was in my castle at Dunkeld, over sixty miles away. If it were not for this record, who could guess what might be believed of me in centuries to come? That I took innocent lives, that I murdered my friend, murdered children, that I consorted with witches and saw visions, that I – how to put it? – supped full with horrors.’
Here he turned briefly to his man Seaton and in a strange language spoke what I took to be some words of courteous apology for subjecting him to so much incomprehensible talk. The fellow gave a grunt of oafish surprise and faltered out a few harsh, graceless syllables, staring vacantly as he did so. Poor, poor King Macbeth; if that was his chosen associate, what must his daily company at home have been like? I would forgive him his murder; indeed, to have confined oneself to a single such lapse in a country like Scotland, assuming the impression I had formed of it to be even moderately fair, indicated commendable restraint.
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