Queen Hereafter (32 page)

“The chests are not all stuffed with coins and jewels, if you think so,” Malcolm said, as if he knew her thoughts. “They hold other items—vessels and dishes, relics of ancient kings, some swords and daggers. And hundreds of documents—deeds, writs, lists, in rolls or as books.”

She looked about. The walls were hung with embroidered panels, the floor covered in a thick woven tapestry, so that the room seemed hushed, dark, cushioned, protecting its secrets. “Nonetheless, the King of Scots appears to be wealthier than some would think,” she said.

“There is wealth here, I grant. Not so much as once was, but less than in the future, if we are fortunate. Did you come here to tell me something?”

She folded her hands. Seeing proof of his wealth excited her suddenly, gave her a sense of hope as the idea dawned. For weeks, she had
been thinking about ways to do more charitable acts, partly because it was expected of her rank and position, and partly to lighten her own sins.

“Dear husband,” she said with careful flattery, “I think often of the poor and suffering. Do you?” She did not let her gaze wander toward the gold and silver. Though she had immediately decided some of it must be shared, she dared not be too obvious.

“If this is one of your frequent confessions, not that you have much wickedness in you,” he said, “I am not a priest. Or is it the woebegone mood of a woman with child?”

“It is only a thought. Daily we hear of stragglers and survivors coming out of England. Some have found safety in Scottish households, but others still need our help.”

“Then pray for them. It is the best you can do. Or does your tender heart long to spend the crown’s gold on more than silver spoons and curtain cloth?” He perused his account rolls.

“Some of this treasure is mine, too, from my dowry,” she reminded him, indicating the chests. “And what I speak of is not tenderheartedness but simple strategy, sire. We must show Scotland’s charitable throne. Almsgiving will help make good your name in places far flung from Scotland. Our generosity would be smiled upon in heaven, too, on Judgment Day.”

Malcolm cocked a brow. “I suspect you would give all we have to the poor, just to earn that.”

She ignored that. “We could do even more if the court was in Dun Edin,” she said.

“You, my dear, are safer in Dunfermline.”

“I have been here ever since my family and I arrived, while you travel about place to place. I hear that many Saxon fugitives go to the town of Dun Edin. Most do not come this far north. We have been protected from the war here in Dunfermline.”

“For good reason,” he said. “King William may yet bring Normans into Scotland, and he still demands your return to England, even now.”

“I thought the threat of invasion was gone. We heard he went back to France, leaving his generals in charge in England.”

“Lessened but not gone. He is in France for now but will return, and he may yet try to come into Scotland with his swords and fire arrows. I will not endanger you or our children.”

“Dun Edin is one of the strongest fortresses in all Britain, I hear, and you are improving it further with stone walls and additions. It is secure. How can I be an effective queen if I am restricted to one place?”

He paused. “I did plan to go to Dun Edin for a while, but first I mean to visit Saint Andrews to confer with Bishop Fothad and tour some of my northern properties. I might take you with me,” he said, glancing up from his columns of items and numbers, “when you are unburdened of your child.”

“Soon enough,” she said, resting a hand on her high, rounded abdomen. “The babe kicks freely but no longer turns. The time is approaching. Take me on progress once he or she is born.”

“I suppose you could sail to Saint Andrews with me. We could go from there to Dun Edin. Perhaps you are right. It is time the Scots saw more of their queen.”

“Sail?” Suddenly the plan was much less appealing. She had taken ferries here and there for necessary local travel, but she held firm to her vow not to sail in a longship on the sea—besides, her stomach quailed at the very thought. Beyond the window, a hearty boom of thunder reminded her of storms and sinking ships. “But I do not want to sail.”

“It is the fastest way to travel from here to Saint Andrews, and from there to Dun Edin.”

“Surely there is a landward way.”

“There is, if you go on pilgrimage, but that takes time, which I do not have.”

Or patience, she thought. “I do not want to travel to Saint Andrews by ship.”

“Margaret, it takes too long to cross the whole length of Fife on land, with a full entourage.”

“When I arrived in Scotland, I vowed that if God brought us safe through those storms and to land, then I would keep away from the sea, and aid others in their own sea journeys.”

“Woman,” he said, “that is a foolish vow. We must often travel by water in Scotland.”

“I did not think of that at the time,” she admitted. “Still, I made the vow and will keep it.”

“Stubborn!” He turned another page in the accounts. “At least you will not be sailing back to Hungary.” He seemed amused. “The faster route to Dun Edin is also by ship. What of that? Will you stay away?”

Margaret shook her head, always serious; truly she did not know how to be otherwise. “But Scotland has a pilgrim’s route available to all. Saint Andrews houses the relics of the very first apostle. I must go on foot out of respect and devotion.”

“If a queen walks a long pilgrimage, she will be said to be burdened by sin and guilt. Do you want that rumored of you?”

“Piety is admirable. I will walk the last miles only.”

“I suppose that will suffice.”

“And I will only travel over land to Dun Edin,” she added, suspecting she had lost ground.

He made an impatient gesture and she knew that he was done listening to her, intent on his documents, peering at a list of taxes recently paid. “After you are lighter of the child and recovered, we will make the journey. Margaret,” he added as she turned for the door. “Order spare cloaks and shoes made, in case you feel a need to give them away on your travels. And do not think about my treasure chests,” he warned, as she glanced at those again.

“Of course not, sire,” she said, smiling.

WITHIN THREE WEEKS
, Margaret rose from her bed at the sound of bells, before it was light, to kneel at a little altar set in a corner of the bedchamber for her use. But her back ached as she prayed, and had ached all night. She had gone up and down stairs too much lately, she
thought. But soon she felt the undeniable constriction of her womb, again and again within several minutes. Her time had come, and would soon be in earnest.

Hearing that word, Malcolm left to dispatch a rider to fetch Mother Annot, who had been the midwife for the last babe and had been granted a cottage and plot of land closer to Dunfermline, giving her comfortable quarters while she waited out the weeks with the queen. Margaret sent Finola to wake her ladies and her kinswomen, but their chatter and company soon tired her and she sent some of them away, allowing her mother and Eva to remain, asking the latter to fetch her harp. If she could hear the music of sleeping, the soft melodies she loved best, Margaret reasoned that the birth might go easier.

The waters burst just after Mother Annot arrived. Eva kept to a stool in the corner, playing, and Margaret labored quietly, intensely. At times she felt as if she floated on the delicate, soothing sounds, as if the harp strings were plucked by the angels of heaven itself, and as the pressures in her body grew more insistent, stranding Margaret in a storm she could not escape, she clung to the music as if to prayer.

Hours passed, deep into the day, while she fought, surrendered, lost to all but the grinding demands of her body, the only relief the airy music lifting around her. Pushing, and pushing again, she threw herself fiercely into it by late afternoon, and finally felt the deep release as the child was born, but twelve hours from when she had first felt the twinges.

“A beautiful boy,” Kata said, taking the bundle from the midwife. “Another fine prince!”

Laughing, exhausted, Margaret took the new little one into her arms to gaze at his tiny face—flushed deep pink, eyes squinting and mouth already pursing, he had a wizened yet familiar look. He was fair and delicate—and she realized that he looked like her, as if she gazed into a tiny mirror and saw herself, years ago. Her heart nearly burst with the expanse of love she felt in that moment, for him and for herself, small like this once. She nuzzled him against her bare breast, holding up a hand to Lady Agatha when she began to protest, still believing that caution and fear were better than risk and love.

“Tell Malcolm,” Margaret said, though someone had already been sent to find him in the great hall or in the bailey—he had sworn not to go far. “Tell him that his Edward must soon give up his cradle for a new brother.” Tears sprang to her eyes then, for she thought, too, of Edward, growing too fast from babe to child—but she would never say that aloud, or risk her mother’s snappish disapproval, even now, for being too attached to her children.

Eva came forward, smiling as she looked at the babe. “He is a very pretty babe, and strong,” she added as his tiny fingers curled around her thumb. “What will you call him?”

“Edmund,” Margaret said decisively. “I decided that if it was a boy, he would be Edmund for my grandfather, who was called Edmund Ironside. He was a king and a warrior.”

“But Edward has a Saxon name. Should not this one be named for his Scots lineage?”

“They are sons of a Saxon princess, descended of West Saxon kings, as well as of a Scottish king,” Margaret said, and looked up as Malcolm entered the room. “Come see our new prince, sire.”

As he came forward gingerly, the child set up a lusty squalling. “Ah, this one is a warrior,” Malcolm said, smiling. “Were you just talking of a name to suit him?”

“Edmund.” Margaret drew back the swaddling to better show his face.

“Crinan is a proud name,” he suggested. “My grandfather was called so. I wanted it for our first son.”

“Prince Edmund,” she said firmly, “will benefit from carrying the name of his Saxon great-grandfather, who was known to the wider world for his courage. Ironside, they called him. Our new son must be Edmund. I will not be gainsaid on this.”

“Aye then,” Malcolm murmured. “The mother of such lusty princes shall have whatever she likes of me.”

“Gold?” she asked eagerly. “A special almsgiving in honor of the new prince?”

“I will think about it,” he said, and kissed her hand.

T
wo healthy sons!” Gruadh walked with Drostan and Ruari, gesturing, the March winds sweeping at her linen veils, whipping at her dark green gown and her cloak of pale plaid wool. Together with the men, she crossed a sloping meadow toward Elgin, having walked to chapel that morning and now back again. Whenever Drostan came to Elgin, which was not often, Gruadh made an effort to show pious ways—sincere enough, though there would be no competing with the southern queen. “How soon before she breeds another son? Fertile as a hare, she is, though she acts all but a saint. And her Scottish princes have Saxon names! Where is Malcolm in this?”

“According to Eva’s latest note, which came last week with a messenger, the babes are healthy and Malcolm is improving into a fine Saxon king,” Drostan said.

“As for the sons, if the queen’s babes are thriving, we can only be glad of it,” Ruari said.

“I do not begrudge any woman joy in her sons,” Gruadh said. “But I am weary of reports of her beauty and intelligence, her charity and mercy. She gives away her own cloaks and shoes. She prays like a nun. Her hospitality is a marvel, with foreign foods on golden plates, foreign wines in precious goblets. She dresses Malcolm like a French king and teaches him courteous ways. He is content with pretty, praying Margaret and the wee Margaretsons, as Eva says the princes are called by some.”

“When they are grown warriors, they will be the sons of Malcolm.” Ruari was pragmatic.

“She has no Scots blood in her, this queen, and dilutes the royal Gaelic line in her sons. Drostan, you say she wishes to change the Celtic church, and has invited Benedictines north. The black-robes will reform us all, quick-like. Bless Eva for sending news at last,” she said, patting the leather purse at her belt, where she had tucked the parchment Drostan had delivered that day. “For all it is a catalog of praises. I want truth.”

“There is much to praise in Margaret, and that is truth,” Drostan said calmly.

“Even Eva hints at the queen’s perfection and saintliness. It is much to bear,” Gruadh said.

“She has shaped the court to be more English, I vow, or French,” Ruari admitted, “but it is good for the Scottish court to learn the ways of the larger world. More ambassadors will be willing to visit. We will have more allies—and more support, should we need it against William one day.”

“And we will be less Gaelic.” Gruadh had seen something of that in her visions, but she would not say it aloud. Drostan did not want to hear of the old methods, and Ruari paid them no mind.