An Ensuing Evil and Others: Fourteen Historical Mysteries (Mysteries of Ancient Ireland) - Softcover

Peter Tremayne is the pseudonym of Peter Berresford Ellis, a well-known historian. As Tremayne, he is the author of fourteen widely acclaimed historical mysteries, most recently The Leper's Bell. He lives in London.

Chapter OneNight’s Black Agents

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse

---Macbeth, Act III, Scene ii.

"It is plainly murder, my lord," the elderly steward announced unnecessarily.

What else could a stab wound in the back mean but murder? It would hardly be self-inflicted. The fact that Malcolm, the son of Bodhe, prince of the House of Moray, lay stretched on the floor of his bedchamber with the blood still seeping across his white linen nightshirt did not need a fertile imagination to conjure an explanation of what had befallen the young man.

The corpse lay facedown on the wooden floorboards, clad in nothing else but the shirt, which meant that he had just left his bed to greet his killer. A bloodstained knife had fallen nearby, apparently dropped by the assassin in his haste to be gone.

MacBeth, son of Findlay, the M˜r-mhaor or petty king of Moray, which was one of the seven great provincial kingdoms of Alba, answering to no man except the High King, whose capital was south in Sgˆin, stared down with a grim face. Indeed, this was his castle, and the dead man was his wife’s brother. He stood with a cloak wrapped around his shoulders to protect him from the night chill. It had been but only a few minutes ago when he had been roused from his sleep by his anxious steward and requested to come quickly to the bedchamber of Malcolm.

It certainly needed no servant or seer or prophet to tell MacBeth that someone had entered this chamber and brutally struck down the young prince and then discarded the weapon.

"Is the castle gate still secured?" he demanded, his voice raised as if in irritation and glancing into the corridor, where a warrior of his personal bodyguard stood impassively.

"Aye, noble lord," replied his steward, an elderly man named Garban. "As custom decrees, the gate was secured at nightfall and will not be opened before dawn. Your warriors still stand sentinel at the gate and walk the ramparts."

"So the culprit may yet be within these walls?"

"Unless he has wings to fly or be a mole that can burrow under the walls," agreed the old servant.

MacBeth nodded in grim satisfaction. "Let it continue to be so, for we many yet snare this evildoer. Now where is Prince Malcolm’s servant? Why is he not here?"

"He was injured, noble lord. He now is being attended to, for in truth, he received a blow to the head, which caused it to bleed. He it was who discovered the body of his master."

"Then send for him straightaway, Garban. And send for my brehon to oversee these matters, according to the law. There is little time to delay in our pursuit of this assassin."

While a king or even a chief could be a judge and arbitrator in the law courts, it was, by law, known that a professional and qualified lawyer, a brehon, had to sit with the king to ensure the letter of the law was obeyed and a fair judgment delivered.

The old steward was turning toward the door when there was a cry at the portal, and MacBeth turned to see his newly wed wife, the Lady Gruoch, standing there, a hand to her mouth. Garban, the steward, jerked his head to her in nervous obeisance before he hurried forward to carry out MacBeth’s instructions.

MacBeth turned to his wife. He had thought her still sleeping when he had left the bedchamber to follow Garban. "Madam, I am afraid your brother is dead," he greeted her quietly, not knowing what else to say but the blunt truth.

Lady Gruoch had seen much violence in her five and twenty years. It had been only one year ago that her first husband, Gillecomgˆin, the previous petty king of Moray, had been slaughtered in his castle near Inverness with fifty of his warriors. The castle, with its occupants, had been razed to the ground with fire. No one was caught, but whisper had it that the man who ordered the deed was none other than the man whose bed she now shared and who had been acclaimed with the mantle of M˜r-mhaor to replace her dead husband. Yet the Lady Gruoch had long been persuaded to discount such a notion, and she had come to love the young red-haired monarch who offered her and her baby, the young Prince Lulach, his protection.

Gruoch had not been in the castle of Gillecomgˆin at the time of the attack but away visiting with her newly born son. The people of Moray, bereft of their ruler, turned to MacBeth, whose father Findlay had been king before Gillecomgˆin. For kingship, like chieftainship, descended by the rule of the ancient laws of the brehons and not by the inheritance of the firstborn male. A king, or chief, had to be of the blood, but they were elected to their office by their derbhfine, four male generations from a common great-grandfather. The law of succession had always been thus so that the most worthy and able should succeed.

No one questioned that MacBeth was worthy or that he was able. Indeed, he was also of the blood royal, for he was grandson of the High King, Malcolm, the second of his name to sit on the throne at Sgˆin. Thus the red-haired young noble had been duly installed as the petty king of the province.

Within the year, MacBeth had convinced the Lady Gruoch that he had not been responsible for her husband’s death and had won her love. Scarcely a month had passed since their marriage, at which he had even adopted her son, the baby Lulach, as his own. Yet the evil whispers still remained, and some said that he was ambitious and was only reinforcing his claims to the High Kingship because Gruoch, too, had been the grandchild of a High King, Kenneth III, who had died some thirty years ago. Only in these lands, which comprised the former ancient kingdoms of the Cruithne, was a succession through the female allowed by Brehon Law, but the Pictish custom, as it was called, had not been claimed since Drust Mac Ferat ruled over two hundred years before. So the gossip did not hold water.

More logical tongues pointed out that the Lady Gruoch’s brother, Malcolm Mac Bodhe, as grandson to Kenneth III, had a more popular claim to the throne as next High King. Even if he had not, it was well known that Malcolm II, who had sired only daughters, did not favor his grandson MacBeth, or, indeed, any member of the Moray House. The old king favored his grandson, Duncan Mac Crinan, the son of the Abbot of Dunkeld, and son of his eldest daughter.

The old king and his grandson, Duncan, were of the House of Atholl, and they maintained they had a superior right to the High Kingship at Sgˆin than the House of Moray, even though his second daughter, the Lady Doada, had married Findlay of Moray and was MacBeth’s mother. The death of Gillecomgˆin in the previous year was attributed by many of the House of Moray as being a deed carried out at the whispered order of Malcolm II to ensure that Duncan was placed on the throne. Gillecomgˆin alive had been a threat to Atholl’s claims. Gillecomgˆin had been slaughtered. But Malcolm Mac Bodhe, grandson of Kenneth III, had become the next challenger to the continued Atholl dominance at Sgˆin. Some were already acclaiming him as successor to Malcolm II.

But now Malcolm Mac Bodhe, too, was dead; lying on the floor of his bedchamber in MacBeth’s castle. Murdered.

The young king appeared troubled as he stood regarding his tearful wife, who stood, leaning against the doorjamb, her breast heaving, a hand across her trembling mouth.

"There will be many who will blame me for this death, my lady," MacBeth addressed the grief-stricken young woman quietly. He held