Macbeth the King by Nigel Tranter Page B

piping, racing and athletics, in design and stone—and wood-carving, in painting and sculpture. For here were schools of music and the arts, of dance and mime, of weaponry, even of falconry. Here no fewer than three kings had died evilly—Donald the Second, slain; his son Malcolm the First, slain; his son, Duffus murdered, allegedly by witchcraft. Presumably the witches were also responsible for the fact that when this third king's body was hidden under the bridge of Kinloss, the sun did not shine until it was discovered, weeks later. Here Thorfinn's ancestor Earl Rognvald defeated the Mormaor Malbride, and riding into Forres with the dead mormaor's head hanging from his saddle-bow, was scratched by the latter's protruding tusk-like tooth, on the thigh, and died in poisoned agony. Here the present King Malcolm Foiranach had suffered defeat by Sven Forkbeard, Canute's father, and only escaped with his life.
    The Thane of Brodie was the local chieftain and distantly related. But it was important that he should be reliably of MacBeth's persuasion, here at the centre of the mortuath. So MacBeth, Gruoch assisting, made a point of being specially forthcoming, going to the trouble of occupying the dusty and neglected old palace for a couple of days, for appearances' sake, and making much of Brodie. Then, satisfied at last, he sent home all the thanes, chiefs and clerics whom he had collected, including his Ross contingent, with his thanks and general instructions.
    Relieved, he turned back, east by north, with only Gruoch, Lulach and a small group of servants.
    And now he was a different man entirely, sloughing off the stern, watchful, calculating dynast and reverting to his old self of quiet, contained, self-sufficiency, mild of manner, friendly. He was going to show his new wife his favourite place on the face of the earth and, he hoped, her future home.
    * * *
    Spynie was a strange place to find on a seaboard of cliffs and rocks and lofty sand-dunes, a great loch trapped behind the dunes, shallow, irregularly shaped, four miles long by almost three across, flanked by quite steep little oak- and pine-forested hills on the landward side, and dotted with islands, large and small. Once, long before, some north-easterly storm had blasted a gap in the barrier of dunes, and the sea had got into the Laigh, to flood and fill the hollow pastureland and hillocks behind. For a while it had been an almost landlocked tidal bay, with even fishing-havens, rather like the somewhat similar Findhorn Bay some miles to the west, nearer Forres. Then the sand had gradually reasserted itself, and the dunes had built up again and the bay became a loch. For, during the sea's prevalence, it had eaten back and back, to tap the course of the Duffus or Black Water of Spynie, which now flowed in here instead of debouching on the main coast, replacing salt water by fresh, trapped. So here, in the heart of the fair and fertile Laigh of Moray, called the Garden of Alba, where frosts were little known and summer lasted three weeks longer than anywhere else in Scotland, was a great fresh-water loch, where fish abounded, wildfowl flocked and flighted and deer swam out to graze on the islets. It had been a boyhood paradise for the young MacBeth, and would never lose its grip on him. He had been only fourteen when his father was murdered, and his mother had had to flee with him to Ross. It would probably be true to say that the loss of Spynie had taken longer to heal in the boy's subconscious than had that of his father.
    Gruoch was amused but also touched at her husband's eagerness that she should gain the best impression of his beloved Spynie at the first viewing, his almost boyish anxiety that she should like it. And it would have been strange had she not done so. Surmounting the oak-forested Hill of Findrassie, after some miles of woodland, suddenly the loch opened before them, serene, fair, that golden day of early August, the calm water deeply blue, with green