Miklagard (Constinople), Norway, Denmark, Normandy and England, AD 1025-66
THE PICTS AND THE SCOTS
Lloyd and Jenny Laing
The word 'Pict' is a Roman one and was used from the late third century AD onwards to describe people living north of the Forth-Clyde line. The term, perhaps one of abuse, meant 'the painted people', and was probably an allusion to the designs with which they were said to tattoo their bodies. Whether it was confined to a particular group of northern people, or much more loosely to anyone who lived beyond what had been the Antonine Wall, is not clear, but it seems most likely that it was employed very imprecisely to mean anyone in northern Scotland who was a threat to Roman Britain. This fact alone has caused some obscure reasoning, for it might be expected that such disparate groups would not leave clear and definitive remains in the archaeological record. When we come to look at the finds and settlements it is possible to isolate some which have been claimed as 'Pictish" - metalwork and stones with Pictish symbols for example. It is, however, notable that these Pictish features are almost exclusively high-status. Mundane objects are remarkably uniform across Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde line, and were used and enjoyed by all the people, including the Scots. Therefore the term 'Pict" cannot be assumed to be specifically generic, racial, cultural or national. In our view it should probably be regarded as denoting a horizontal slice across the 'top' of society. The overwhelming evidence suggests that although the Roman authors can be read to refer to the Picts as though they were a tribal group or groups, it makes more sense to read the Pictish archaeological material as indicating a ruling class of certain Celtic tribes rather than of a total society.
When the chamberlain fetched me that evening and brought me to the king's private apartments, I was shown into a small room furnished only with a table and several plain wooden chairs. The light came from a single candle on the table, positioned well away from the woman in a long dark cloak seated at the far end of the room. She sat in the shadows, her hands in her lap, and she was twisting her fingers together nervously. The only other person in the room was Mac Bethad, and he was looking troubled.
'You must excuse the darkness,' he began, aftyer the chamberlain had withdrawn and closed the door behind him. 'The queen finds too much light to be painful.'
I glanced towards the woman. Her cloak had a hood which she had drawn up over her head, almost concealing her face. Just at that moment the candle flared briefly, and I caught a glimpse of a taut, strained face, dark-rimmed eyes peering out, a pale skin and high cheek bones. Even in that brief instant the cheek nearest to me gave a small, distinct twitch. Simultaneously I felt a tingling shock as though I had accidentally knocked the point of my elbow against a rock, the sort of impact that leaves the arm numb. But the shock was not to my arm, it was to my mind. I knew that I was in the presence of someone with otherworldly powers
[Sir Baldwin Furnshill] had been a loyal member of the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, a Knight Templar, until the arrest of the Order on 13 October 1307.
For a long while after that date he had not believed that his friends and comrades would be sent to the stakes. All through the hideous testing of the men, while they were tortured, many to death, threatened, and some summarily executed, Baldwin had believed that the Pope must rescue them. The Pope had to recognise their innocence and proclaim that their arrest was all a hideous mistake. When it didn't happen, he wondered whether there was some vestige of truth in the allegations, and it was only when his Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, denounced his executioners and declared his innocence and the innocence of the Order, that Baldwin realised the truth: the whole matter had been staged in order that the French king and the Pope could grasp the wealth of the Knights Templar for their own advantage. The most noble Order of Knights had been destroyed, the most devout Christians murdered, in order that two implacably avaricious men should satisfy their lust for wealth.
[...]
The injustice and horror of it all had left Baldwin a cynical and caustic man in the years immediately following the destruction of his Order, but that aspect of his character had mellowed; indeed, these days it was all but gone. He still bore the same wrinkles and marks of pain which had grown to decorate his features during that lengthy period of rough living when his life was in perpetual danger, but now they simply looked like the honourable marks of a man who was older than middle age. Since he had been fortunate enough to find and marry Lady Jeanne de Liddinstone, his figure had filled out, and the expression in his eyes had lost some of the introspection of 1315. Today he was as likely to smile and laugh as to snarl.
