Queen Hereafter (34 page)

“He cannot see this. Only his toenails are in that church,” Malcolm said, as Margaret gasped. “I am done with girlish oaths said in haste. We must reach Leith harbor and Dun Edin today.”

Within the quarter hour, they sailed, and though Margaret refused to speak to her husband, she was soon too ill to speak at all, for her stomach plagued her. By turns, Eva helped to hold her head and her hand and wipe her brow.

“Leave me be,” Margaret said, wan and slumped on a bench, the sea air whipping at her veils and cloak. “I told the king I must not sail. See, it is punishment for breaking a holy vow. And it is the child.”

“The what!” Malcolm said, turning around, for he stood nearby.

“The child,” Margaret said, and leaned over to retch into the bucket Eva held for her.

“
Jesu.
” Malcolm smiled. “That is a remarkable woman. I never thought to have so many sons to carry my name.”

“The people are calling your princes the Margaretsons,” Eva said, unable to resist. He grunted at that.

Later, as the longboat sheared across the water with Leith harbor in sight, Malcolm approached Eva where she stood by the prow, the wind heavy in her face, blowing her unbound black hair as free and loose as whips. She tamed it back with a hand as he stood beside her.

“How does Margaret fare now?” he asked.

“She will recover once we are on land.”

“This is my doing,” he said, looking at the shoreline crowded with docks and ships, and buildings higher on the hill. “I insisted on tricking her into the boat, and now she is ill. Is there any danger to the child? It is early days yet.”

“I am sure all will be well.” Eva spoke carefully, flatly.

“Margaret takes her oaths, her prayers and penances, all to heart,” he muttered. “She rises in the middle of the night to pray like a nun, fasts even while carrying a child, though she has a dispensation for that. She gives away her clothing and thinks only of the poor, the suffering, as if she were somehow at fault for what is wrong in the world.”

“She is a good and kind soul, though demanding of herself.”

“Aye,” he said quickly. “And too many around her agree with her, pander to her, let her do these things to herself. Her own mother and sister complain that nothing is good enough and induce her to more prayers and confessions, as if she were doing them wrong.” He frowned deep, looking down at her. “But you, Aeife—you are her friend.”

“I am a king’s hostage,” she reminded him. “But I love your queen well.”

“I will not forget this.” He turned and walked away.

TWILIGHT SHONE PURPLE
over the rippled water of Leith port, where dozens of vessels moored at a large stone quay. Merchant knorrs,
the great wide, low ships loaded with goods, floated on the waves farther out in the bay. Above the harbor, Margaret could see the high crested rock and fortress of Dun Edin just a league away. She gasped at the majestic sight, and felt almost as impatient as Malcolm to be gathered and going, though she felt nervous, too, about to enter the king’s largest royal center.

Housecarls from Dun Edin came to meet them with extra horses and carts, but Margaret insisted on riding a horse into the city. She did concede to using a small saddle so that she could hook a knee over the low pommel, a gentler way to ride preferred by some ladies.

Wearing a clean white veil and a gown of pale blue, she draped a lightweight cream-colored cloak elegantly over her shoulders, and sat tall. Feeling dizzy and weak after a half day’s sickness on the water, she was determined to enter Dun Edin—which Malcolm sometimes called Edinburgh in the Saxon manner—in a dignified way as the newly arrived queen.

As they left the harbor, she noticed a cluster of people walking away from the shore toward the road that curved north and east around the firth. Seeing their walking sticks and telltale scallops and badges, she recognized them as pilgrims. Twisting in the saddle to watch them, she saw one of the Dun Edin housecarls riding beside her.

“Pilgrims, Lady,” the young man said. “They must have been turned away from the ferry boat that crosses between here and Fife. They will walk instead, and sleep along the road. We see it often here. Few can afford the ferry passage or the price of an inn.”

Margaret listened, watching the people trudge onward. She saw two women helping an older man who was hunched over, progressing slowly with the use of a stick. She turned to the Dun Edin guard and drew out her purse to hand him a few coins.

“Here, sir. Go to those people and give them the fee for the ferry. And give them enough for a meal and a night in an inn as well, as it is already evening.” Smiling, accepting the silver, he rode off. Margaret turned to find Malcolm watching.

“We will run out of coins at the rate you give them out, Lady,” he said.

“Aye, but we will garner a wealth of good will,” she answered.

“I have married me a wise queen,” Malcolm remarked to De Lauder, who laughed.

T
he cliff-sided hill on which the citadel stood overlooked the sea in one direction, hills to the other. Dun Edin itself, a stone and timber fortress, was sometimes called by its older name, Castellum Puellarum or the Castle of the Maidens; legend claimed that some ancient Pictish king had kept his several daughters guarded there, Malcolm told Margaret.

The place looked formidable on its high perch, with an outer palisade of stone and one side melded with the massive rock into a sheer drop. Inside, Margaret saw scaffolding in places where Malcolm had ordered wooden buildings rebuilt with stone. She had seen the stone castles built by Normans, and she felt proud that the King of Scots was learning from the enemy to transform his own fortress into an impregnable stone castellum.

As the royal escort advanced slowly up the long hill that fronted the castle, Margaret saw crowds of people gathering to cheer and shout, and she lifted a hand to wave tentatively. Even in the growing darkness, she could see that many of them wore tattered clothing and were barefoot and unwashed, and some held out their hands to beg. Children and adults clustered along the sloped street where a straggling chain of houses, shops, and vendor stalls leaned. The street ran muddy with rain and sewage. Some of the people slept in the streets, for she saw pallets, blankets, and sagging tentlike shelters in corners and side lanes. Dogs wandered the streets, and children walked with them. The stench in the air was so strong that she wrinkled her nose against it.

A few people ran forward to tug at the hem of her cloak and gown, frightening her and startling the horse, and the housecarls chased them off. Suddenly the crowd looked more like souls of hell begging for succor and release than happy people welcoming their queen. She realized then that most of them implored her in English rather than Gaelic or the Scots tongue.

Margaret turned to Wilfrid, now riding at her left side. “These are not Scots—but Saxons!”

“Aye, fugitives who have nowhere to go,” he said. “Thousands of Saxon slaves were taken into Scottish homes over the last two years. Countless more have come north since, looking for hospitality … and for hope as well.”

“Hope?” Margaret looked at him.

“They know that the royal Saxon family fled north and found welcome in Scotland and that many fugitives have found homes here, mostly as slaves and servants, but it is a life. Now other refugees pray that the royal Saxons in Scotland will make sure their people are cared for, especially with you as queen here. Who else do they have now?”

STANDING BY THE WINDOW
in the great hall of the keep that thrust high on the rock of Dun Edin, Margaret leaned against the frame, shuttered open, to gaze out over the town. The hour was well past
matins and gone so dark that she saw torches and bonfires flare here and there in the town, beneath a sky sparkling with stars. Beyond she could see the black gleam of the port.

“Come to bed,” Malcolm said gruffly from there. “The hour is late.”

Margaret sighed and drew her indoor cloak closer over a loose shift. She had rested a little and had risen for midnight prayers, asking for help for all the troubled souls who lived in the king’s town without shelter, food, or necessities. Unable to sleep now, she rested her hands on the slight swell of her belly. Only recently she had known that she had conceived again, and after her arrival in the town, the thought of her own little ones kept her awake.

“I keep thinking of the children,” she said. “So many small ones in need, though my own sons sleep content in their cradles and the newest one is safe in my womb. Too many have no cradle, or even a mother, to hold them while they sleep at night. Too many will lack food when they wake in the morning.”

Malcolm sighed and sat up in the bed. “Margaret, we cannot feed them all.”

She turned. “Can we not?”

“It is too much for anyone to undertake. Pray for them. It is all you can do. It is enough.”

“I suppose so. I am tired, and will take to bed. The bells will ring out soon enough—I heard them from some church nearby—and the next hour of prayer will come all too soon.”

“You have the ears of a hound, to hear the bells so far. Sleep through next time,” he said. “We have been journeying for days, and your health is more important than prayers. Have you eaten this evening?” he added.

“Of course,” she said, having only tasted her supper. “I cannot sleep through and miss a prayer appointment. Nor can I ignore the plight of so many outside our gates. I want a place in God’s good heaven one day, my lord.”

“Huh,” the king replied. “We see the poor at our gates nearly every day here, with the crowds in the streets of this town and
nearby areas. My steward sees that they are given the scraps that we have to spare.”

“Almsgiving with scraps of food?”

“Aye. So we can sleep soundly at night. Do not fret over it.”

Nodding in silence, she went to the bed and slid in between the bed linens. Malcolm, weary, rolled over and soon began to snore. The bed was unfamiliar and larger than theirs at Dunfermline, but its deep, comfortable feather mattress lured her quickly to sleep.

Before she drifted off, she reminded herself that a queen must look after the people in her husband’s kingdom as if they were guests in her own house. And, remembering Wilfrid’s remark, she felt responsible, as a Saxon, for refugees from her outlawed brother’s kingdom, too. But she ached deepest of all for the children in need of even the simplest comforts.

Indeed, she would do something, but she was not certain what.

THE TALL, GRACEFUL QUEEN
led the rest of her ladies like a pale swan with cygnets following. Eva walked behind Margaret through the darkest hour before dawn as they all headed down the wooden steps of the timber-built tower that crowned the rock on its northernmost side. Ahead of Eva and the others, Margaret went steadily downward, her long, loose hair rippling like golden mist down her back under a veil of translucent silk, her gown a creamy glow in the light of oil lamps carried by Wynne and Matilda.