When I heard about Valerie Nieman’s new novel Upon the Corner of the Moon, which is a retelling of the Macbeth story, I immediately thought you readers would be intrigued. So I invited her to provide some details of the story behind the story. Over to you, Val.
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Shakespeare was a creator, an innovator, an impresario, a genius.
And as accomplished at “scraping” as any modern-day AI.
Scrambling to create fresh new plays for his troupe and his theater, he was always on the lookout for stories to reshape, and found his ideas in chronicles, other plays, traveler’s accounts, histories true and fictional.
The Bard of Avon was a popular writer of his day, turning out crowd-pleasing romances, histories, thrillers, and crime stories — think of the blindings, child killings, stabbings, tortures, and poisonings — but perhaps his best-known account of “true crime” is one that never happened, the murder of the “aged” King Duncan in his bed by the ambitious Macbeths.
I first came across the historical facts about Macbeth when I was researching an earlier novel. How did a king who ruled for 17 years and was called by contemporaries “The Righteous” and “the ruddy king of plenty” become a heinous villain? Shakespeare drew on chronicles that had reshaped him after the fact into a murderous usurper in order to plump up the bona fides of the Canmore and Stuart dynasties. Gruach or “Lady Macbeth” was tainted by the eons-old suspicion of powerful women, who became madwomen and witches.
My research began in the days of interlibrary loan books, continued through the arrival of the Internet, and included time in National Library of Scotland, National Museum of Scotland, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. I made two month-long hiking trips during which I visited the few remaining sites from early medieval times and absorbed all I could of the landscapes of Scotland. Among my most vivid memories are Neolithic monuments on the wind-swept islands of Orkney, fallen fortifications at Burghead and Dunottar, and the burial mound on Iona where Macbeth was laid to rest among dozens of Scottish and Norse kings. Immersive world-building is very important — the Alba of a thousand years ago was very different from today, and different from popular images of Scotland.
This material helped me shape the people and places of Upon the Corner of the Moon, which tells the story of Macbeth and Gruach from imperiled childhoods until their marriage in the aftermath of a fiery battle. I chose to begin with their younger years because of the strong antipathy we hold for these (Shakespearean) figures. Like any writer, I had to create credible and sympathetic characters, which was more of a struggle because we already think we “know” these people.
I learned that King Macbeth donated to abbeys, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and scattered money “like seed” to the poor in the Holy City — noteworthy because nobles would usually endow a church or abbey that could bear their name into perpetuity. From those fragments, I decided that he would have been raised in Christian and classical traditions, would have been literate, and likely conflicted by his role in the bloody struggles of 11th century Europe. Among the dozens of books that helped me shape this character and his times were Macbeth Before Shakespeare, The King in the North: The Pictish Realms of Fortriu and Ce, and Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000-1306.
Gruach was more of a mystery. Sources are scant and in disagreement. I’ve chosen the thread in which her father Boidh was brother to King Malcolm II as well as his heir apparent, and postulated that that he sent Gruach and her brother into hiding to protect them from the king’s paranoia—wisely, as he was later killed. But where did they go? I’ve long been interested in ancient female spirituality, so when I studied the enigmatic Picts with their intriguing symbol stones and the Neolithic peoples who raised stone circles in the far north, I tended my story in that direction. Gruach was raised, in my invention, in a cultus of the ancient Triple Goddess. The White Goddess was a deeply influential work, as was The Serpent and the Goddess, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe, and When God Was a Woman.
History had already placed these two people on converging paths, but I arranged an abiding conflict around their religious beliefs. Then I threw in a non-historical figure, the poet-seer Lapwing conniving to see the Celtic pantheon restored, to create a three-way struggle over faith, with saints and divinities meddling in the affairs of their respective devotees.
Like Shakespeare, I found a story I liked and then embroidered upon it.
So did Macbeth really kill Duncan, and why? It all came down to the succession.
In the Celtic tradition of tanistry, the king named a preferred heir, but the kingship was debated and voted on by the “men of the blood.” Duncan was, like Macbeth, a grandson of Malcolm II by a different mother. Malcolm chose him as tanist and Duncan was elected upon the old king’s death. He was only a little older than Macbeth and no more entitled to the throne. His short (four years) and unsuccessful reign ended when he invaded his cousin’s territory and was killed in battle.
But that’s for another book.
Primogeniture had not reached early medieval Alba, but it was on its way, and Duncan’s son Malcolm Canmore would claim the throne through that process. Later writers were puzzled by the archaic tradition of tanistry and labeled Macbeth a usurper. Other legends were grafted onto his story, over hundreds of years, until Shakespeare found the tale in Holinshed’s Chronicles and made it his own.
Shakespeare was a writer, and I imagine he struggled like writers of any time to bring an idea to life. Facts were of less concern to him than the arc of the tale. As a writer of historical fiction, I’ve striven to maintain the integrity of recorded events, while weaving a fascinating webwork of human passions across that frame.
Well, I’m intrigued, aren’t you? Not only with the story Valerie Nieman has created but by the challenge of going back so far in time. Plus, hiking in Scotland – now that’s a great idea.
Upon the Corner of the Moon by Valerie Nieman
At the dawn of the second millennium, two royal Scottish children are swept away from their families—Macbeth to the perilous royal court of his grandfather, and Gruach to the remnants of the goddess-worshiping Picts. Macbeth learns that blood bonds are easily severed while Gruach finds her path only to lose it when she’s summoned back to the patriarchal world. Each struggle with gaining and losing power, guided and misguided by prophecy and politics as their paths converge in a fiery bid for royal succession. Upon the Corner of the Moon separates literary legend from reality, immersing readers in a story about the real rulers who changed the face of Scotland. Some legends are true, and the truth sometimes becomes a legend—or a lie. This novel masterfully dovetails the Macbeth legend and the truth without sacrificing either.
Valerie Nieman is the author of Upon the Corner of the Moon and six other novels. The second Book of Alba, The Last Highland King, will appear in 2027. Her novel In the Lonely Backwater won the 2022 Sir Walter Raleigh Award and was also a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year finalist. She has several other novels to her credit.
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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.
