his Norse wife, the widow of Duncan's foe, Thorfinn (she left a son,
Duncan), Malcolm allied himself with the English Royal House by marrying
Margaret, sister of Eadgar AEtheling, then engaged in the hopeless effort
to rescue northern England from the Normans. The dates are confused:
Malcolm may have won the beautiful sister of Edgar, rightful king of
England, in 1068, or at the time (1070) of his raid, said to have been of
savage ferocity, into Northumberland, and his yet more cruel reprisals
for Gospatric's harrying of Cumberland. In either case, St Margaret's
biographer, who had lived at her Court, whether or not he was her
Confessor, Turgot, represents the Saint as subduing the savagery of
Malcolm, who passed wakeful nights in weeping for his sins. A lover of
books, which Malcolm could not read, an expert in "the delicate, and
gracious, and bright works of women," Margaret brought her own gentleness
and courtesy among a rude people, built the abbey church of Dunfermline,
and presented the churches with many beautiful golden reliquaries and
fine sacramental plate.

In 1072, to avenge a raid of Malcolm (1070), the Conqueror, with an army
and a fleet, came to Abernethy on Tay, where Malcolm, in exchange for
English manors, "became his man" _for them_, and handed over his son
Duncan as a hostage for peace. The English view is that Malcolm became
William's "man for all that he had"--or for all south of Tay.

After various raidings of northern England, and after the death of the
Conqueror, Malcolm renewed, in Lothian, the treaty of Abernethy, being
secured in his twelve English manors (1091). William Rufus then took and
fortified Carlisle, seized part of Malcolm's lands in Cumberland, and
summoned him to Gloucester, where the two Kings, after all, quarrelled
and did not meet. No sooner had Malcolm returned home than he led an
army into Northumberland, where he was defeated and slain, near Alnwick