Queen Macbeth is McDermid's contribution to Darkland Tales, the Polygon series of novellas that includes Denise Mina's Rizzio (also reviewed on this blog), in which leading Scottish writers of today offer a fresh take on Scottish history.
And Macbeth is history, though many people seem to think Shakespeare made him up. And his wife was a significant person, so significant that her name survives a thousand years later. Her name was Gruoch. She was of royal Pictish blood and thus forced into an advantageous marriage to the Mormaer of Moray. Macbeth freed her from that marriage - by burning her husband and his warband in their hall. He then took over, uniting the various sub-kingdoms and formed a version of what is now Scotlnnd. He was a benign ruler, it is said, and even went on pilgrimage to Rome.
McDermid starts with the facts and does a cracking job of bringing us into Gruoch's world. Again wisely and well, she uses the framing device long advocated for novellas. The present is after Macbeth's death in battle; Gruoch and her women have found sanctuary in a remote abbey, but Malcolm Canmore has defeated and killed the new king, Gruoch's son Lulach, and is said to be coming for her; so the women flee for the islands where Macbeth was always strong. The past is how she and Macbeth first met and fell in love; how they plotted together to kill the Mormaer and how they then ruled Scotland together.
All this is first rate stuff, but then comes the twist - and it didn't work at all for me. Goethe, who largely created the novella in its modern form, described it as "one authentic unheard-of event" - but there are limits.
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