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.