Part 23

But Margaret was a true daughter of Alfred, and the traditions of the Alfred of Hungary were fresh upon her, and, instead of sitting down to cower alarmed amid the turmoils round her, she set herself to conquer the evils in her own feminine way, by her performance of her queenly duties. She was happy in her husband: Malcolm revered her saintly purity even more than he loved her sweet, sunny, cheerful manner, or admired her surpassing loveliness of person. He looked on her as something too precious and tender for his wild, rugged court, and attended to her slightest bidding with reverence, kissing her holy books which he could not read, and interpreting her Saxon-spoken advice to his rude Celts. She even made him help her to wash the feet of the poor, and aid her in disgusting offices to the diseased, and his royal treasury was open to her to take all that she desired for alms. Sometimes she would pretend to take it by stealth, and Malcolm would catch her by the wrists and carry her to her confessor, to ask if she was not a little thief who deserved to be well punished. In his turn he would steal away her books, and bring them back after a time, gilt and adorned with beautiful illuminations.

The love and reverence with which so bold a warrior treated her, together with her own grace and dignity, had its effect on the unruly Scottish chieftains, and not one of them ventured to use a profane word, or make an unseemly jest before her. They had a rude, ungodly practice of starting away from table without waiting for grace, and this the gentle queen reformed by sending, as an especial gift from herself, a cup of wine to all who remained. In after times the last cup was called, after her, St. Margaret’s cup, or the grace-cup.

To improve the manners of the ladies, she gathered round her a number of young girls, whom she brought up under her own eye, and she used to sit in the midst of them, embroidering rich vestments for the service of the Church, and permitting cheerful talk with the nobles whom she admitted--all men of whose character she had a good opinion. She endeavored to reform the Scottish Church which had become very sluggish, and did little to contend with Highland savagery. There were only three Bishops and those not with fixed sees. Margaret and her husband convened a synod, when Margaret herself explained her views, and Malcolm interpreted. It was not a usual order of things, but to themselves quite satisfactory, and thenceforth the Scottish Church became assimilated to the rest of the Western communion. It was a Saxon immigration: the Lowlands became more English than England then was, and Scotch is still more like Saxon than the tongue we speak. But the Celts bitterly hated the change; and thenceforth the land was divided.

She was gay and playful; but her fasts and mortifications in secret were very great. She cut off unnecessary food and sleep, and spent half the night in prayer. She daily washed the feet of six poor people, and washed, clothed, and fed nine orphan babes, besides relieving all who came to ask her bounty, attending to the sick, and sending to ransom captives, especially her own countrymen the English, lodging her rescued prisoners in a hospital which she had founded, till they could be sent to their own homes.

Leading this happy and holy life, Edgar left his sister about two years after her marriage, upon an invitation from Philippe I. of France; but he was shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy, and coming to Rouen, was kindly received by William, and remained with him. A close friendship sprung up between the disinherited Etheling and Robert the heir of Normandy, who was only a year or two older. Both were brave, open-hearted, and generous, and their love for each other endured, on Edgar’s side, through many a trial and trouble. Happy would it have been for Robert had all his friends been like Edgar Adeling, as the Normans called him. A few years more made Edgar a fine young man, expert in the exercises of chivalry, and full of the spirit of enterprise: but he did not join his friend in rebellion against his father; and after Robert had quitted Rouen, never to return thither in his father’s lifetime, he obtained permission from William to go on pilgrimage, gave his pension for a fine horse, and set off for Italy with two hundred knights, fought there, or in Sicily, against the Saracens, for some time, and then continued his pilgrimage.

He returned through Constantinople, where many of the English fugitives were serving in the Varangian guard. The Emperor Alexius Comnenus was much pleased with him, and offered him high preferment if he would remain with him; but Edgar loved his own country too well, and proceeded homeward.

He found a changed state of affairs on his arrival in Normandy. William the Conqueror was dead, and Robert, with the aid of Henry Beauclerc, just preparing to assert his right to the English crown against Red William. Edgar Etheling offered his sword to assist his friend; but he was shamefully treated. William came to Normandy, sought a conference with Robert, cajoled or outwitted him into a treaty in which one of the conditions was that he should withdraw his protection from both Edgar and Henry, and deprive the former of all the lands in Normandy which their father had given him.

Edgar retired to Scotland to his sister Margaret, whom he found the mother of nine children, continuing the same peaceful, active life in which he had left her, and her holy influence telling more and more upon her court. Many Saxons had come to live in the lowlands of Scotland, and the habits and manners of the court of Dumfermline were being fast modelled on those of Westminster in the time of Edward and Edith.

Malcolm and William Rufus were at war, and Edgar accompanied his brother-in-law to the banks of the Tyne, where they were met by William and Robert. No battle took place; but Edgar and Robert, meeting on behalf of the two kings, arranged a treaty of peace. In return for this service, William permitted Edgar to return to England, being perhaps persuaded by Robert and Malcolm that the English prince was a man of his word, though to his own hindrance.

The peace, thus effected did not last long, most unhappily for Scotland. Malcolm, with his two eldest sons, Edward and Edmund, invaded England, and laid siege to Alnwick Castle, leaving the Queen at Edinburgh, seriously ill. At Alnwick the Scottish army was routed, and Malcolm and Edward were slain. The tradition is, that one of the garrison pretended to surrender the castle, by giving the keys, through a window, on the point of a lance; [Footnote: Curiously in accordance with this story we find, in the Bayeux tapestry, the surrender of Dinan represented by the delivery of the keys in this manner to William the Conqueror.] but that he treacherously thrust the weapon into the eye of Malcolm, and thus killed him. The story adds that thus the soldier acquired the name of Pierce-eye, or Percy; which is evidently incorrect, since the Percys of Alnwick trace their origin to William de Albini, who married Henry Beauclerc’s second queen, Alice of Louvain.

An instant disturbance prevailed on the King’s death. His army fled in dismay; his corpse was left on the ground, till a peasant carried it to Tynemouth; his men were dispersed, slain, or drowned in their flight; his young son Edmund, a stripling of eighteen or nineteen, just contrived to escape to Edinburgh Castle. The first tidings that met him there were, that his mother was dying; that she lay on her bed in great anxiety for her husband and sons, and finding no solace except in holding a fragment of the true Cross pressed to her lips, and repeating the fifty-first Psalm.

The poor youth, escaped from a lost battle, and bearing such dreadful tidings, was led to her presence at once.

“How fares it with your father and brother?” said she.

He feared to tell her all, and tried to answer, “Well;” but she perceived how it was too plainly, and holding out the Holy Cross, commanded him to speak the truth. “They are slain, mother--both slain!”

Margaret’s thoughts must have rushed back to the twenty-three years of uninterrupted affection she had enjoyed with her lord, to her gallant son, slain in his first battle, and onward to the unprotected state of the seven orphans she left in the wild kingdom. Agony indeed it was; but she blessed Him who sent it. “All praise be to Thee, everlasting God, who hast made me to suffer such anguish in my death.”

She lingered on a few hours longer, while storms raged around. The wild Celts hated Malcolm’s improvements and Saxon arts of peace, and his brother Donald was placing himself at their head to deprive his lawful brothers of their heritage. A troop of Highlanders were on their way to besiege Edinburgh Castle, even when the holy Queen drew her last breath; and her friends had barely time to admire the sweet peacefulness that had spread over her wasted features, before they were forced to carry her remains away in haste and secrecy, attended by her weeping, trembling children, to Dumfermline Abbey, where she was buried.

Her children, seven in number (for Ethelred, the eldest, had died in infancy), were left unprotected. Edmund was only eighteen, and timid and gentle. Donald seized the crown; and the orphans remained in great danger, till their brave uncle, Edgar Etheling, learnt the fatal tidings, and, coming from England, fetched them all home with him, giving the two girls, Edith and Mary, into the care of their aunt Christina, who was now Abbess of Wilton. It was at some danger to himself that he took the desolate children under his protection. A man named Orgar accused him to William Rufus of intending to raise his nephews to the English crown. A knight, named Goodwin, no doubt of Saxon blood, no sooner heard the aspersion, than he answered by avowing the honor and faithfulness of his Etheling, threw down his glove, and defied Orgar to single combat--“God show the right.” It was shown; Orgar fell, and Saxons and Normans both rejoiced, for the Etheling had made himself much beloved.

The Crusade was preached, and Robert invited Edgar to join in it; but he could not forsake the charge of his sister’s children, and was forced to remain at home. Revolutions, however, continued in Scotland. Donald was overthrown by Duncan, a son of Malcolm, born long before his marriage; and the Lowland Scots were impatient of the return to barbarism. Duncan was killed, and Donald restored. Edgar hoped that his nephews might be restored. Edmund had chosen to renounce the throne and embrace a religious life; but the next in age, Edgar and Alexander, were spirited princes, and eager to assert their right.

The Etheling had never shed blood to regain his own lost kingdom; but he was a true knight-errant and redresser of wrongs. He asked leave from William to raise a Saxon army to restore his nephew to the Scottish throne; and such was the reliance that even the scoffer William had learnt to place on his word, that it was granted. The English flocked with joy round their “darling,” wishing, without doubt, that it was for the restoration of the Saxon, instead of the Scottish Edgar, that they took up arms.

At Durham the monks of St. Cuthbert intrusted to the Etheling their sacred standard--a curious two-winged ensign, with a cross, that was carried on a car. It was believed always to bring victory, and at the first sight of it Donald’s men abandoned him, and went over to Edgar. Donald was made prisoner, and soon after died. Young Edgar assumed the crown, sent for the rest of his family, and had a happy and prosperous reign.

Had Edgar Etheling been selfish and ambitious, he might now, at the head of his victorious Saxons, have had a fair chance of dethroning the tyrant William; but instead of this, his thoughts were fixed on the Holy Land; and embarking with his willing army, he came up with the Crusaders just in time for the siege of Jerusalem, where the English, under “Edgar Adeling,” fought gallantly in the assault in the portion of the army assigned to Robert of Normandy.

Edgar and Robert returned together, and visited the Normans of Apulia, where Edgar had been some years before. Robert here fell in love with Sybilla, the beautiful daughter of the Count of Conversana, and soon after married her. It was in the midst of the wedding festivities that Ralph Flambard, lately the wicked minister of William Rufus, arrived from England, having escaped from prison, bringing the news that his master, the Red King, was slain, and Henry Beauclerc wore the crown. The hasty wrath of Duke Robert was quickly fanned by Ralph Flambard, and he set off at once to attack his brother, and gain the kingdom which Henry had sworn should be his.

However, on his arrival, he at first only amused himself with conducting his bride through his dukedom, and being feasted at every castle. When two knights of Maine came to tell him that Helie de la Flèche was besieging their castles, he carelessly thanked them for their fidelity, but told them he had rather gain a kingdom, than a county, and so that they should make the best terms they could.

Sybilla’s dowry enabled Robert to raise a considerable army, and he had likewise the support of most of the barons whose estates lay both in Normandy and England, and who therefore preferred that the two states should be united; whereas those who had only domains in England held with Henry, wishing to be free from the elder and more powerful nobility of Normandy. The Anglo-Saxons were for Henry, who had relieved them from some of their sufferings, and had won their favor by his marriage, which connected him with the Etheling. Edith, the eldest daughter of the good Queen Margaret, had remained with her aunt Christina in the Abbey of Wilton, after her brother had been made King of Scotland. She was like her mother in many respects; and her aunt wished to devote her to the cloister, and secure her from the cruel sorrows her mother had endured, under the black veil that she already wore, like the professed nuns, to shield her from the insults of the Norman knights, or their attempts to secure a princess as a bride. But Edith remembered that her father had once said that he destined her to be a queen, and not a nun. She recollected how her mother had moulded her court, and been loved and honored there, and her temper rebelled against the secluded life in the convent, so much that, in a girlish fit of impatience, she would, when her aunt was out of sight, tear off her veil and trample upon it.

At length the tidings came that Henry, the new King of England, wooed the Princess of Scotland for his bride.

A marriage of policy it evidently was; for, unlike the generous love that had caused Malcolm to espouse the friendless exile Margaret, Henry was a perjured usurper, and dark stories were told of his conduct in Normandy. Christina strongly and vehemently opposed the marriage, as the greatest calamity that could befall her niece: she predicted that, if Edith persisted in it, only misery could arise from it; and when she found her determined, tried to prove her to be already bound by the promises of a nun.

Here Christina went too far: a court was held by Archbishop Anselm, and it was fully proved that the Lady Edith was under no vows. She was declared free to marry, and in a short time became the wife of Henry, changing her own Saxon name to the Norman Matilda, or Maude. In the first year of her marriage, when Henry was anxious to win the favor of the English, he conformed so much to their ways that the scornful Normans used to call him and his young wife by the Saxon names of Godric and Godiva. The Saxons thus were willing to stand by King Henry, all excepting the sailors, who were won by Robert’s spirit of enterprise, and deserting, with their whole fleet, went to Normandy, and brought Robert and his army safe to Portsmouth.

This happened just as Edith Maude had given birth to her first child, at Winchester. Robert was urged to assault the city; but he refrained, declaring such would be an unknightly action toward his sister-in-law and her babe. Henry soon came up with his forces, the brothers held a conference, and, as usual, Robert was persuaded to give up his rights, and to make peace.