Tim Severin - King's Man

This time it was I who fell silent.

The Royal Chamberlain found a place for me to sleep, a small alcove scarcely more than a cupboard, close to the king's apartments, and left me to eat my midday meal with the garrison of the fortress. Listening to their conversation, I gathered that they were all members of Mac Bethad's personal retinue and that they had a high opinion of their leader's generalship. The only time I heard any doubt expressed was in reference to the queen. One veteran complained that Mac Bethad was so distracted by the queen's illness that he was paying insufficient attention to preparing his defence against the expected invasion. The Earl of Northumbria, Siward, had given sanctuary to two sons of the previous Scottish king, the man Mac Bethad had killed, and was using their claim to the throne to justify his attack.

When the chamberlain fetched me that evening and brought me to the king's private apartments, I was shown into a small room furnished only with a table and several plain wooden chairs. The light came from a single candle on the table, positioned well away from the woman in a long dark cloak seated at the far end of the room. She sat in the shadows, her hands in her lap, and she was twisting her fingers together nervously. The only other person in the room was Mac Bethad, and he was looking troubled.

'You must excuse the darkness,' he began, after the chamberlain had withdrawn and closed the door behind him. 'The queen finds too much light to be painful.'

I glanced towards the woman. Her cloak had a hood which she had drawn up over her head, almost concealing her face. Just at that moment the candle flared briefly, and I caught a glimpse of a taut, strained face, dark-rimmed eyes peering out, a pale skin and high cheek bones. Even in that brief instant the cheek nearest to me gave a small, distinct twitch. Simultaneously I felt a tingling shock as though I had accidentally knocked the point of my elbow against a rock, the sort of impact that leaves the arm numb. But the shock was not to my arm, it was to my mind. I knew that I was in the presence of someone with otherworldly powers.

It was a familiar sensation. I had experienced it whenever I encountered men and women skilled in seidr, the art of magic. Usually I reacted strongly, because there were times when I too was gifted with what the Norse call ofreskir, second sight. But this occasion was different. The power emanating from the woman in the cloak was unmistakably that of a volva, a woman with seidr ability, but it was disturbed and irregular. It came at me in waves in the same way that a distant horizon shimmers on a summer's evening with lightning. Not the harsh and shattering flash when Thor hurls his hammer Mjollnir, but the insistent and irregular flicker that country folk who live far inland say is the silver reflection of great shoals of fish in the ocean rising to the surface and reflecting off the belly of the clouds.

Again I noticed the woman's hands. She was twisting and rubbing them together as if she was washing them in water, not the empty air.

'People here know them as the three Wyrds,' Mac Bethad suddenly blurted out. There was anguish in his voice. 'As a Christian I thought it was just a heathen belief, a superstition. Until I met the three of them, dressed in their rags. It was in Moray, when I was still the Mormaer there, not yet king.'

The king was speaking of the Norns, launching directly upon the subject without any introduction. Obviously the topic had been preying on his mind.

'They appeared as three hags, clustered by the roadside. I would have ridden on if they had not called out for my attention. Perhaps if I had not stopped to listen, my wife would have been spared.'

'You saw the Norns in Moray?' I asked, filling the awkward

gap. 'They were seen nearby, in Caithness, at the time of Clontarf. Weaving a shroud and using the entrails of men as the threads. They were celebrating the battle's slaughter. When you saw them, what did they say?'

'Their words were garbled and indistinct. They were short of teeth and mumbled. But one of them was prophesying. Said I would become the king of the Scots, and warned me of treachery among my nobles. At the time I thought it was all nonsense. Trite stuff that any fool would dream up.'

'If they were indeed the Norns, that would be Verdhandi who spoke to you. She is that-which-is-becoming. Her two sisters, Urhr and Skuld, concern themselves with what is and what should be.'

'As a Christian I know nothing of their names or attributes. Indeed I would have paid no heed to their words, if Gruoch had not encouraged me.'

I looked again towards the hooded woman. Now she was rocking back and forth in her seat, her hands still twisting together ceaselessly. She must have heard everything we had said, but she had not uttered a word since I had entered the room.

'Gruoch is as good a Christian as I am,' Mac Bethad went on, speaking more gently. 'A better one, in fact. She is charitable and kind. No one could ask for a better consort.'

I realised, a little belatedly, that Mac Bethad truly loved his queen. It was an unexpected revelation, and it explained his present concern for her, even as his next words revealed how his love for his wife had ensnared them both.

'When I told Gruoch what the Wyrds had said, she too dismissed their prophecies as heathen babbling. But she did point out that I had a better right to the throne of Scotland than the weakling who held it - I mean my cousin, Duncan. She left unsaid that she herself is equally well born. Maybe that was not what she was thinking, but I imagined it was so. Her words made me determined to overthrow the king. Not for my own sake, though everyone knows that the stronger the king, the happier will be his realm. That's "the king's truth". For the sake of my wife I made up my mind that one day I would be seated on the sacred stone and acclaimed as the King of Scots. Then Gruoch would be a queen. It was her birthright, which was to be my gift to her.'

'And did it turn out as the Norns predicted?'

'I challenged King Duncan and defeated him in open battle. I was not alone in wanting him gone. More than half the other Mormaers and thegns supported me.'

'I have heard it said that the king was murdered while he was your guest.'

Mac Bethad grimaced. 'That's a well-rehearsed tale, a black rumour spread by those who would like to see one of Duncan's sons on the throne. They would be puppets of the Northumbrians, of course. Duncan was not murdered. He died because he was a poor tactician and a careless commander. He led his men into Moray to attack me, and his scouts were incompetent. They failed to detect the ambush we had set. After the battle I had the scouts executed for failing in their duty. If anyone was responsible for Duncan's death it was them.'

'And was it then that your wife fell ill?'

Mac Bethad shook his head. 'No. She is a king's granddaughter, and she knows the price that must be paid for gaining or maintaining power. Her sickness began less than three years ago. But it is getting worse, slowly and inexorably, and that is what I hope you may be able to explain, for I fear it has something to do with your Elder Ways.'

He turned to face his wife. She had raised her head, and the look which passed between them made it clear that Gruoch loved her husband as much as he loved her.

'I was too occupied with my duties as king to appreciate what was happening,' explained Mac Bethad slowly. 'After I gained the throne, she began to question why the Wyrds had appeared, and if they were no more than a heathen superstition, how it was that what they said had come true. The doubts preyed on her mind.

Our Christian priests told us that it was the work of the devil. They persuaded her that she had unknowingly become an agent of the dark one. She began to think of herself as unclean. That is why she constantly washes her hands, as you must have noted.'