He returned with his friend to Scotland, where, the next year, his beautiful sister Margaret consented to become the wife of their host, the King Malcolm; but Christina, the other sister, preferred a conventual life, though she seems for the present to have continued with Margaret at Dumfermline.
Gentle Margaret, bred in some quiet English convent; taught by her mother to remember the Greek cultivation and holy learning of good King Stephen’s court; perhaps blessed by the tender hand of pious Edward the Confessor, and trained by the sweet rose, Edith, sprung from the thorn, Godwin; she must have felt desolate and astray among the rude, savage Scots, wild chiefs of clans, owning no law, full of brawling crime and violence, too strong to be kept in order by force, and their wives almost as untamed and rude as themselves. Her husband was a rough, untutored warrior, ruling by the main force of a strong hand, and asking counsel of his own honest heart and ready wit, but perfectly ignorant, and probably uncouth in his appearance, as his appellation of Cean Mohr means Great-head.
But Margaret was a true daughter of Alfred, and the traditions of the Alfred of Hungary were fresh upon her, and, instead of sitting down to cower alarmed amid the turmoils round her, she set herself to conquer the evils in her own feminine way, by her performance of her queenly duties. She was happy in her husband: Malcolm revered her saintly purity even more than he loved her sweet, sunny, cheerful manner, or admired her surpassing loveliness of person. He looked on her as something too precious and tender for his wild, rugged court, and attended to her slightest bidding with reverence, kissing her holy books which he could not read, and interpreting her Saxon-spoken advice to his rude Celts. She even made him help her to wash the feet of the poor, and aid her in disgusting offices to the diseased, and his royal treasury was open to her to take all that she desired for alms. Sometimes she would pretend to take it by stealth, and Malcolm would catch her by the wrists and carry her to her confessor, to ask if she was not a little thief who deserved to be well punished. In his turn he would steal away her books, and bring them back after a time, gilt and adorned with beautiful illuminations.