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down at the camp, seeing to my people."
    "I do not mean that viperish one, man! I mean the ravenous—Thorfinn, my Mormaor of Caithness."
    "As to that I know not. I am not that brother's keeper! I have not seen him since the Feast of the Assumption. When you may remember that he came visiting me. And Moray. And you did not!"
    The monarch's glittering eye glared balefully at this grandson for a moment. Then he turned towards the others at the table, and waved a hand. "You will know all here?"
    MacBeth inclined his head. His glance ran over the Mormaors of Lennox, Strathearn, Fife, Angus, Mar and Atholl, and the Thanes of Glamis, Monteith, Gowrie and Breadalbane. And Duncan mac Crinan, now being styled Prince of Strathclyde.
    "I know most, yes, and greet all. Although I do not know the priest. And this lord." he gestured towards a swarthy individual, richly clad.
    "That is Echmarcach mac Ranald mac Firbis, King of Dublin. Claimant of my sub-kingdom of Man. If your Norse friends can be dispossessed! And the good Malduin is the new Bishop of St. Andrews. In whose gentle hands are all our souls!"
    MacBeth was sorry for the new bishop, true primate of the Church, although the title of Primate of All Scotland still went with the hereditary Abbacy of Dunkeld. His predecessor, Alwin, lately dead, had had a sore road to travel with Malcolm Foiranach. He looked a mild and studious man, his Celtic tonsure, of the front part of his head only, adding to an already high and scholarly brow. The other, the swarthy Irish kinglet, was presumably a distant kinsman of Malcolm's—and therefore of his own—the King's mother having been a princess of Leinster. This Echmarcach was one of Thorfinn's most constant targets—as were most others whose lands fronted the Irish Sea. MacBeth bowed to them both, and then turned back to the King.
    "What of Canute?" he asked.
    "Aye, Canute." The royal voice went thinly rasping, like the scrape of steel. "The bold Dane! He...lingers, boy. He burns and slays his way through my Lothian, but does not hasten. His van is already at Stirling, facing us. But Canute delays. And slays."
    "His numbers?"
    "Some say two-score thousand, some more. English, Danes, Norwegians, Northumbrians. A mighty host."
    "So many. So you wait? While Lothian burns. And, no doubt, the Merse and Teviotdale also."
    "Could you do better, stripling? With a foe four times as many, and more. Led by one of the greatest conquerors in Christendom."
    "Hear MacBeth, the Scourge of the North!" Duncan mac Crinan mocked, from the other end of the table. He was a pale, thin, reedy young man of twenty-seven years, the same age as MacBeth, good-looking but not in a strong way, hair so fair as to be almost white, but his skin of an unhealthy-seeming pallor. Indeed his by-name was Duncan Ilgalrach, the Bad-Blooded.
    MacBeth ignored his cousin. "Perhaps not. But I might seek to bring Canute here the sooner. Coax him, that the land might be spared his burning and slaying. Make as though to move to meet him. Attack his van across the river. Not with your full force. How far off is he?"
    "We heard last that he was at the Avon. Linlithgow," Lennox said, whose territory was nearest and who was providing the informants and scouts. "By now he could be at Ecclesbreac, or Falkirk as the Saxons name it." He pointed. "The smokes are sufficiently near for that."
    "It is not too late..."
    "No!" the King said. "Think you I have not considered this? We might not win back to this strong position. Be trapped beyond the bridge and causeway. It is not worth the hazard." That sounded sufficiently final.
    "So you but wait?"
    "We wait, yes. Let the Dane take the hazards. He can achieve nothing against us without crossing that bridge and causeway. When he does so, let him beware! You will perhaps learn, young man, to enlist the land to fight for you, when you lack men. If you live so long!"
    "I but thought to bring some aid to your subjects of Lothian, Sire."
    "If that other