Queen Hereafter by Susan Fraser King Read Free Book Online Page B

Scotland.”
    “King Malcolm was raised in England from boyhood,” De Lauder answered. “He enjoys Saxon poetry as much, perhaps more than Scottish.”
    “We have much finer here in Scotland,” Ranald commented. His adequate English was accented with the softening tones of the Gaelic tongue. “Every mormaer’s hall has its
seanchaidh
or bard, for music or stories or both. There is a girl in the north, a harper of uncommon beauty and remarkable talent. Her hands move like a breeze upon the harp strings. It is said that to hear her is to step into heaven.”
    “A female bard?” Margaret asked with interest. “We had female musicians in the English court, too, though they did not play harp.They sang and played drums and some of them danced. It was very entertaining.”
    “I hear it said that the girl-bard of Moray is remarkable.” A tall man now approached the table, his voice a deep rumble, his English sounding Northumbrian more than Scottish. He threw his cloak over the back of the high carved chair at the table and seated himself there.
    King Malcolm, Margaret realized with a start, arrived at his own feast at last. She saw the Scots at the table react, sitting straighter, looking sideways at one another. Edgar blushed bright, waiting for an introduction that did not immediately come.
    “There is no bard like her in all Scotland, so I understand,” the king continued. “But she does not leave the north.”
    As the Saxon guests stood to greet the king, Malcolm dismissed their gesture with a wave. He held out a drinking horn and a servant ran forward to fill it with wine. Malcolm raised the horn high and then took a long swallow.
    The formal duty of serving wine to the king and the sharing of a cup by guests, Margaret noted then, rightfully belonged to the highest ranking lady in the room. Either she or her mother should have been invited to do so—but proper manners were not much in evidence in Scotland.
    “Let us drink to the Saxons, running from the Normans! The enemies of my friends are my enemies, too,” the king added magnanimously, lifting his drinking horn again to gulp from it.
    Edgar cleared his throat and courteously expressed the gratitude of his party, then began to introduce his kinswomen and comrades.
    “Excellent,” Malcolm said, nodding as if barely paying attention. “Hector!” he called to the musician. “Give us something to entertain our guests!”
    Hector strummed the harp and began to speak in a singsong voice. Immediately Margaret recognized the poem he recited in the rich, rolling Anglo-Saxon tongue—a tale of a wandering soul lost and lonely at sea. Now and then the poet threw his arms up and stomped his feet for emphasis as he shouted and thrashed, and banged a drumloudly, as if beating time for the oarsmen. Yet he grew still as he came to the most poignant part of the verses, lines so familiar to the Saxons in particular that they paused to listen as if spellbound:
    Where is the horse, where is the man
,
Where is the treasure-giver?

Where are the joys of the hall?

Alas, the bright cup, the mailed warrior!

Alas, the chieftain’s splendor! Oh how time has passed!
    Rapt silence filled the hall as the poet recited an elegy of sorts for the passing of a bright age of warriors. Their world, too, was changing, Margaret thought as she listened. Proud and ancient ways were lost; new ways were uncertain. Sensing the mournful tone of the poem, she observed King Malcolm’s stormy expression as he spoke with another man, although the poet was still performing the verses. As Hector finished with much flinging about of hands, Margaret heard her brother conversing with the Scots seated nearby.
    “Moray’s lady bard could likely best that fellow,” one of the Scottish lords remarked. He was a burly warrior with a white beard and hair, a worn leather hauberk, and a tunic frayed with age. “Sir, I am Angus, mormaer of Mar,” he told Edgar. “We have not met.”
    “Sir,” Edgar