"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.
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