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the rolling ridges, which interested Margaret sufficiently for her to enquire how it had got there, so great a stone by itself. Maldred explained, pointing to humps in the cattle-cropped turf around, that it was all that remained above ground of a stone circle. The Cruithne, who occupied the land before the Scots came from Ireland, were sun worshippers, and these circles, of which there were a great many, were temples of a sort, usually set on high places, the stones aligned most exactly to point to the sunrise position at certain times and seasons.
    "They were great sundials, then?"
    "More than that. It is said that they enshrined much knowledge now lost to us. Of the heavens, of other worlds, of the weather and the seasons. Ancient wisdom . . ."
    "Heathenish superstition!" Oswald amended.
    "Not so. My father says that we have lost much in discarding this knowledge. He says that in some matters their learning and understanding was far above ours. . ."
    "Such talk is foolish and wicked, such knowledge sinful — like that of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Of the Devil. Let us be on our way, princesses — this place is evil!"
    "Who are you to say what knowledge is foolish or sinful?"' Maldred demanded warmly. "An ignorant Englishman from a Northumbrian village! A mere monk — whilst my father, as well as an earl, is an abbot of Holy Church!"
    "You are condemned out of your own mouth, young man — since no true abbot could ever have a son. Holy Church forbids it. . ."
    "Is that your Dunfermline we see ahead?" Margaret asked, moving between them. "Up on the terrace, with the trees? It looks a fair place."
    Maldred swallowed. "That is the cashel of Saint Ternan. He came from Ireland, with Farlane the Strong, long ago.
    Farlane built his dun, or fort, further over, to the west. You cannot see it yet. That is where the King has his tower and palace. At the dun. Dun Farlane — it has become changed to Dunfermline."
    They moved on, while Maldred told them more of the sturdy, fearless and strong-armed missionaries of the Celtic Church, who had brought Christianity to this land in no uncertain fashion, and of the Keledei, or Friends of God, their present-day successors in the cashels and monasteries. Oswald marched along behind, tight-lipped, frowning.
    Prince Edgar, his mother and the others caught up with them as they neared the monastery of St. Ternan. The prince very much took charge now. He had been here two years before, in 1067, after a preparatory expedition to try to establish a base for his attempt on the English throne, in Cospatrick's Northumbria, had suffered defeat at the Norman usurper's hands, and fled to Scotland. He insisted that his sisters be mounted, as befitted their rank, and that they rearrange their clothing and tidy their hair, blown by the breeze. He instructed Maldred to go on ahead and inform the Queen of Scotland of their arrival.
    "The Queen's Highness already knows of your coming," he was told. Maldred did not like Edgar, and it is to be feared that he was not very good at hiding his feelings. "If she is ready to receive you, she will no doubt be waiting."
    Proceeding along one of the many little ridges of that strangely folded land, presently there were sudden gasps from the ladies. They had reached a point where the ground dropped away abruptly, unexpectedly, before them into a deep, winding glen, its sides scattered with thorn-trees. And rising out of the centre of this glen was a narrow, isolated mound, glacial of origin, steep-sided on all flanks save that to the east where a sort of spine rose more gradually. Crowning the summit of this mound, within the green ramparts of an old fort, Farlane's dun, reared a tall square stone tower, almost in the Norman keep fashion, totally unlike any Scots or Celtic hall-house or rath, stark, strong, uncompromising. Stretching eastwards from it, within a high-walled enclosure, was a range of lesser, lower buildings, part stone, part timber coated with clay