Upon the Corner of the Moon by Valerie Nieman

Author:Valerie Nieman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2025-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

16

MACBETH

Kilrymont, 1019

The ancient monastery of Kilrymont was at first sight a smaller place than desire made it, there on the peninsula once called the Boar’s Head, caught like a pebble between the working jaws of the gray sea and the gray sky promising more snow. Clouds appeared to touch the square tower as they were driven by the sea-wind.

Macbeth heard Oswald chant a psalm of praise, each word taken on the gale. Otherwise, the little company was silent, intent on the end of the journey. They passed the cross marking the outer boundary of the monastery. Oswald signed the same. It was the morning of Christ’s Birth. They were late arriving—a tribe of horses scattered out on the snow-streaked grazing showed how many were celebrating the feast with the king.

They rode among the buildings just as the bell was struck for Mass. Monks surrounded them, moving with unhurried haste to the church. Their fresh garments shone white as the robes of the blessed in Heaven. Each monk touched the great cross in the courtyard, the signum salutare to ward off the constant presence of the enemy.

Some of the familia took the horses away, and Macbeth and Oswald followed the monks to the new church of St. Regulus.

They pushed through the courtyard throng of layfolk. The king’s retinue, along with the abbot and dignitaries of the monastery, occupied the middle of the oratory, with the brethren to right and left. A penitent, unwashed, his hair snarled with dirt and straw, lay flat on the stone floor with hands outstretched toward the altar. His bare back showed lash-marks self-inflicted for his sin.

The church breathed light and heat, candles lavishly spent in praise of the Incarnation, the heat of so many bodies. There shone Malcolm’s white hair and beard. There, Macbeth saw his brother’s broad shoulders and golden head, king beside king. It had been many months since he had seen Duncan.

As the festal service rolled forward, familiar, and the chill of the morning went out of him, Macbeth found it difficult to stay awake. He occupied himself in reciting psalms in his thoughts, until he began to nod, then in numbering the ornaments of the church. Crucifixes, candelabra, reliquaries. Gold and silver and jewels, all freshly polished for the great Feast. The frontal of the altar shone. The relics of St. Andrew the Apostle, carried from Patras to Constantinople and then to these shores by St. Regulus, rested in their casket. He imagined the bones softly glowing in response to the praise elevated all around. The bishop’s vestments were embroidered with bright colors and golden thread by the exceptional skill of Anglish women. Candle flames fell and lifted in the swell of air as the monks bowed after each psalm. A seething shore, flame-washed.

Macbeth jerked his attention back to the litany. The voices of the oblati, boys given to the church, were light but sure among the deeper voices of the monks. At least one of them, he judged, was of an age with him.

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