Macbeth and Son Read online

  ‘Wagyu cattle,’ said Luke automatically.

  ‘Way what? Look, mate, we’ll talk about it tonight, okay? I need to go get changed out of my city clothes.’

  There was a pause, then Sam said, ‘We did good today, didn’t we? You and me?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Luke. ‘We did good. Thanks, Sam.’

  ‘Thank you, mate,’ said Sam. He hesitated, as though he were going to hug Luke too, but didn’t quite know how. He slapped his back instead, and headed off to change his clothes.

  Chapter 30

  Luke

  Peace!—the charm’s wound up.

  (Macbeth, Act I, Scene 3, line 36)

  It was warm on the rock, despite the wind’s cold breath on their cheeks. It was as though the rock had sucked in the summer’s heat and stored it for them till winter.

  Megan’s legs dangled over the edge next to Luke’s. ‘So you’re not going to St Ilf’s?’

  Luke grinned. ‘Nope. The Headmaster wrote a letter back, saying how I’d been so honest that they’d still like to have me. But I want to stay here.’

  ‘For To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,’ quoted Megan. ‘To the last syllable of recorded time…’

  How much of that play has she memorised? thought Luke. He could only remember a few lines.

  Weird chick. But nice weird. At least he understood what she was talking about.

  ‘I’m glad you’re staying,’ said Megan. ‘Really glad, I mean.’ The look in her eyes was one he’d never seen there before.

  ‘I’m glad I’m staying too,’ said Luke.

  How would she react, he thought, if I kissed her? He put his arm around her, felt her lean towards him.

  It didn’t quite work out as he’d expected. Her lips were warm and really soft, but he could have done with an instruction manual—like a tractor manual, but for kissing. How long was it supposed to last?

  But it was still a bit of heaven.

  They said nothing for a while. Who’d have thought it? Luke wondered vaguely. Would those two little kids playing Explorers all those years ago ever have imagined they’d be here one day doing this? He’d never thought he could feel like this…but at the same time it was almost familiar too. I feel like Lulach did when he met Thora, he realised. My heart’s been filled, and I never knew that it was empty.

  What would Lulach have thought of this world? he thought suddenly. Or Shakespeare?

  ‘Life…a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.’ No, thought Luke. Shakespeare’s words were great. But he was wrong. Life was good, very good.

  ‘It’s a great play, though,’ said Megan, as though they’d been talking about it all along. Her arm was around him now too.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Luke, surprised. ‘I was just thinking that.’

  ‘Those lines of Lady Macbeth’s…all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,’ she quoted.

  Megan had nice hands, thought Luke. They’d done things. Pruned trees, turned pages…‘You really like all that stuff, don’t you?’ he asked.

  Megan grinned. It was a bit like Thora’s grin in his dream. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Even though Shakespeare lied?’

  ‘Sure. He was a brown-nose and a great writer.’

  They both laughed.

  Maybe Sam’s like that, thought Luke suddenly. Not good, not bad, but a mix of both.

  ‘You know what?’ said Megan.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to write a play about Macbeth one day. But a true play, not a lie.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah. We need to remember things. Like how a lie can become the truth for four hundred years.’

  An eagle circled down to look at them, wondering if they were small enough to eat, then soared slowly up above the valley.

  Finally Megan asked, ‘Did the St Ilf’s Headmaster say who’d given you the exam paper?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Luke. He shrugged. ‘Maybe it was an accident.’ Or maybe it wasn’t, he thought. But that was the Headmaster’s business.

  Things were okay with Sam now. He made Mum happy—and she liked looking after him. Luke just hadn’t worked out that it was that way around before.

  Sam had bought the land from the resort people too. Luke suspected Sam had wanted to give it to him; he’d heard Mum in the kitchen telling Sam firmly, ‘Not until he’s twenty-one!’

  Sam was up for some award at the Logies this year. Luke and Mum were going down to watch, and Luke would get his first dinner jacket for the night.

  Suddenly he had an idea. ‘Um…’ he said to Megan.

  ‘Um, what?’

  ‘Would you like to come to the Logies? Sam’s up for an award.’ He crossed his fingers, hoping that Sam could get another ticket.

  ‘Hey, really? Cool.’

  Luke supposed she meant yes. Maybe Sam could get two extra tickets, so Patrick could come as well. It was going to be a bit difficult, Luke thought suddenly, going out with the twin sister of your best friend…

  ‘So,’ said Megan at last, ‘do you think the dreams will ever come again?’

  He’d told Megan about the dreams too. It felt good to be able to talk about things like that.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Dunno. I just am.’

  ‘Why did they happen to you, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know that either!’ Luke grinned. ‘I’m glad they did, though. But now it’s the end.’

  Megan smiled as Luke took her hand. ‘Unless,’ she said, ‘it’s the beginning.’

  The dream had gone. The past had vanished. But the future looked very good indeed.

  Epilogue

  Lulach

  …And all our yesterdays…

  (Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5, line 22)

  Two men—one young, one old with a scarred face—stood in a room that smelled of beeswax candles, and beef smoke from the roasting ox outside. In another room down the long corridor, the clan chiefs and churchmen had sat for seven days to elect their king.

  Soon Lulach would address them for the last time before their final decision.

  Lulach turned his back on the grey sky showing through the window. ‘Do you ever dream?’ he asked his companion suddenly.

  Kenneth looked startled. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Sometimes I have strange dreams,’ said Lulach hesitantly. ‘I’m in a foreign land. A dry land, with trees like ghosts rising from the grass…There are machines too. Powerful, almost like magic…’

  ‘It sounds like a nightmare,’ said Kenneth.

  ‘No. It’s a safe land. No armies. No clash of swords. No one looks hungry. No one is in rags. For a while I thought I’d made myself a dream world where I could escape from being the King’s son.’

  Kenneth’s half face smiled. ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘But I was wrong,’ said Lulach. ‘There were battles to be fought there too. Last night—in my dream—I was a boy again. And I promised…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I promised I’d tell the truth. And I did. I got up before my friends and I told the truth. It doesn’t seem like much of a battle, does it? Not as glorious as fighting the English. But just as hard. Because there was only me to fight it. Just one boy. I didn’t have an army on my side.’

  ‘Dreams,’ said Kenneth dismissively. ‘What use are dreams?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Lulach softly. ‘Nonetheless, today I’ll tell the chiefs the truth.’

  ‘Lulach MacGillecomgain Macbeth, Mormaer of Moray.’ The herald’s call echoed down the corridor.

  Lulach stood up. Kenneth stood up too. Lulach embraced him.

  ‘God go with you, lad,’ said Kenneth.

  Lulach stepped out into the corridor. No candidate could bring his men beyond this point. He was to be judged on his own merits.

  A young man walked down the corridor towards him. He wore silk and velvet, not the wool cloth of a Scottish lord. His hair was cut
in the English fashion.

  Malcolm MacDuncan, thought Lulach.

  This was the second time he had met the person who killed his father, he realised. Once he had met Thorfinn, the man who had sent his father home a twisted and blackened corpse. Now here was the man who had sent the assassin who killed his stepfather—though to Lulach, Macbeth would always be hisfather too.

  Thorfinn had slain an enemy in battle, but Malcolm had struck like a cattle thief in the night. He hadn’t even had the courage to do the deed himself.

  What did you say to your father’s murderer?

  But there was no proof. There never would be, not for a thousand years.

  ‘We meet again, Lulach MacGillecomgain,’ said Malcolm. His voice was hoarse—a battle leader’s voice, rough from shouting orders in the field. He spoke with a strong English accent.

  ‘Your pardon. We’ve never spoken,’ returned Lulach. But they’d met on the battlefield, hadn’t they? he realised. And in its way, this was a battle too.

  Malcolm looked at him appraisingly. When I’m king, he seemed to say, will you be loyal?

  Because of course the chiefs would elect Malcolm. If they didn’t, Malcolm would keep fighting with the power of England behind him, till he took the kingdom.

  ‘Your pardon,’ Lulach said again. The lords were waiting for him. Malcolm smiled slightly as Lulach left him.

  It was a big room, and dark despite the torches on the walls. The windows were too narrow, the stone walls too thick, for the misty daylight to penetrate.

  Lulach looked around him. For a moment the faces blurred. What were the chiefs thinking? That he was too young? That he was nothing like his stepfather? How could such a young man possibly rule Alba, much less lead it to war?

  And then his vision cleared. He knew them all now: MacKinnon and MacPherson, Dunegal’s son and Morgan the Red and all the others. He had known them all on the battlefield. He’d fought side by side with some of them. Others had been with Malcolm.

  What could he say?

  My stepfather would know how to move them, thought Lulach.

  Macbeth would have told the truth.

  He’d have used it like a weapon. And that weapon, at least, he had passed down to his stepson. The weapon that boy had used in his dream last night…

  Lulach took a deep breath and faced the men before him.

  ‘My lords,’ he began, ‘you gave my father a starving, wartorn country. He gave you back a golden age. We are a small nation. But my father made alliances with Thorfinn, with France, even with Rome. He was able to do that because men trusted him. All Macbeth had to give was his word. But it was enough.

  ‘Today Malcolm promised you peace. He promised to keep the law of Scotland. But can you trust him to keep his word?

  ‘How many times has Malcolm lied?’

  There were murmurings in the crowd at that. They want me to say I’ll lead them to victory, thought Lulach. Then they can cheer and pretend for a while that we’ll win.

  ‘I can’t tell you that we’ll win,’ said Lulach softly. ‘I wish I could. All I have to give you is my word. I promise that no matter what, I will tell you the truth. I promise to keep the laws of Alba. I promise that while my body still has blood and breath I’ll do my best.’

  There was silence for a moment.

  And then the cheering started.

  Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be king, thought Lulach. ‘Win or lose,’ he whispered to his stepfather, ‘I’ll be an honest one. Rest in peace, my lord.’

  Postscript

  Lulach MacGillecomgain was elected king after the death of his stepfather Macbeth in 1057. He successfully held off the English (the histories don’t agree on how long) until he, too, was murdered by Malcolm’s men. King Lulach was buried with full honours on the island of Iona, as all Alba’s kings had been before him.

  Malcolm ‘Big Head’, who had murdered two elected Scottish kings to gain his throne, took over the land at Lulach’s death and ruled until 1093, when, like his father, he was killed in one of the many wars he had started, this time against England.

  From Malcolm’s time onwards Scottish kings inherited their throne and weren’t elected. The laws of Scotland that gave equal rights to women, that protected the poor, and many other laws that we think of as ‘modern’, were abandoned. Malcolm was buried at Dunfermline—the first king of Scotland not to be taken to the sacred island.

  And sevyntene wyntyr full rygnand

  As king he wes than in till Scotland

  All hys tyme wes grete plente

  Abowndand bath in land and se

  He wes in justice rycht lawchtfull

  And till hys legis all awful

  And for seventeen winters he [Macbeth] reigned

  As king, till Scotland

  Had great plenty both in land and sea

  All through his reign.

  He kept to righteousness and the law

  And his men loved and respected him.

  From Andrew of Wyntoun, The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, written some time between 1395 and 1424. Author’s own translation.

  Author’s Note

  Macbeth was High King of Alba, or ancient Scotland, from 1040 to 1057. It’s difficult to trace his true story. Most of the information that has come down to us was written by his enemies, and no two histories agree on what happened or when. (We don’t even know if his hair was red or yellow.) I’ve chosen the most likely bits of several of them, but there are many possible interpretations of the patchy records.

  All the histories make it clear, however, that Shakespeare’s play was more fiction than fact. Much of it was based on the Chronicles of Scotland of Raphael Holinshed, who didn’t understand ancient Scottish laws, and wanted to please those in power. Holinshed definitely made Macbeth a villain. But Shakespeare’s Macbeth was far worse even than Holinshed’s. Given that King James, the English king at the time of the play, was descended from Banquo and King Duncan, and had a particular hatred of witches, it’s likely that Shakespeare deliberately changed history to please the King, just as he had changed historical details in earlier plays to gain favour from Queen Elizabeth I.

  Even today, many history books are based on the English historian Holinshed, not the earlier histories. You’ll read how Malcolm won the second battle against Macbeth—which doesn’t make sense. If Malcolm won, Lulach couldn’t have been elected king and crowned at Scone. Even a recent TV documentary about Macbeth didn’t mention the Celtic laws, the fact that Alban kings were elected, or even that Malcolm only became king after the death of Lulach.

  (The ancient Celtic laws are fascinating, and well worth studying. They also show the sophisticated ancient Scottish and Irish societies that were destroyed by war and invasion.)

  Like Luke in this book, I think we owe a duty to the past. Which is more easily remembered: a historical story, play or film; or the words of a history book?

  Historical fiction is a window to the past. But it has to be as true as you can make it—not a historical lie. When you write historical fiction, you have a responsibility to slip your fiction into the cracks in the historical record, not change history for your own ends, unless you make it clear that this is what you’re doing.

  This is what I’ve tried to do with this book, and my others. And where I’ve failed, well, like Macbeth MacFindlaech and his stepson Lulach MacGillecomgain, I’ve done my best.

  Notes on the Text

  Abbey gong: In a land with no watches and few clocks, one of the abbeys’ many roles was keeping the time in their districts.

  Arrows: Arrows were valuable. Only an expert ‘fletcher’ could make an arrow that went straight. An arrow fired by an expert bowman could reach about a hundred metres.

  Bagpipes: The Scots first used bagpipes in battle in 1314, long after Macbeth’s battles, but Irish mercenaries were using them around Macbeth’s time.

  Boot Hill: Called that because the chiefs carried the soil of their lands in their foot bindings up the hill, and so b
rought some of their homeland with them. They emptied the soil from their binding onto the Hill at coronations as an act of allegiance as they swore loyalty to the new king.

  Clans: Alba was divided into six provinces, made up of different clans, or tribes. These weren’t the same as today’s Scottish clans, with their tartan kilts. The modern clan system evolved in Victorian times.

  Claymore: A large sword, with an edge on both sides. It could be swung in one hand, while the other held a pointed shield that could be used as a weapon too.

  Clothes: Men and women wore much the same clothes: smocks, or léines. Women’s were longer; men’s were shorter and worn over woollen stockings. Most léines were made from linen (imported from Ireland) rather than wool. Macbeth and Lulach may have worn silk léines, with red or gold embroidery. Usually only rich people wore bright colours, as it took a lot of work to dye cloth and most dyes soon faded, so clothes had to be dyed over and over again to keep their colours bright. Both men and women also wore cloaks, or brats, held in place with a pin or brooch.

  Neither Macbeth nor Lulach would have worn a kilt. The first real evidence of kilts is in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when long ‘belted plaids’ (blankets, or pleated garments) were worn over the shoulder, like a cloak, or belted at the waist.

  Dirk: A long thin dagger.

  The death of King Duncan: There are two main stories about the death of King Duncan. The later, English one is that Macbeth treacherously killed Duncan when Duncan was in Moray territory. The other (the version used here) is that the army of Macbeth and his Norse allies fought Duncan’s army, made up mostly of his Atholl clansmen and Irish mercenaries. Macbeth won and Duncan was killed in the battle. I have assumed that the council of chiefs had already asked Duncan to step down, and that he had refused. If the council hadn’t agreed with Macbeth’s actions, they would never have elected him.

  Fire: In a world without matches, wealthy people carried a ‘tinderbox’. It held a flint, a bit of iron, and ‘tinder’ (wood shavings or dry grass). You struck a spark with the iron and flint and hoped the ‘tinder’ caught alight. But most homes kept a fire smouldering all the time, rather than keep trying to light one.