The bereaved mother never forgave the outrage, and the scene of Kenneth’s death, Fettercairn in Kincardineshire, where he is said to have perished through the treachery of his immediate attendants, favours the tradition connecting the catastrophe with the vengeance of Finella. If any credit can be attached to the accounts of authorities who wrote four centuries after the occurrence, policy induced her to wear the appearance of forgetfulness until she had succeeded in persuading the king to entrust himself within the walls of her “castle of Fettercairn,” where he lost his life by a curious and complicated machine, most ingeniously contrived for the fatal deed! [Sidenote: A. D. 995.] Be this as it may, Kenneth was assassinated after a reign of twenty-four years, and if Finella, as is not improbable, was the author of his death, it is likely that her purpose was accomplished without the aid of any very elaborate mechanical contrivance, and scarcely within the walls of a feudal castle.[106] Fordun has attributed to this king the idea of limiting the succession to his immediate family, gravely adding, that the example of the German empire exercised much influence in deciding Kenneth to adopt this line of policy.[107] The fate of Olave MacIndulf, at the commencement of this reign, lends some degree of probability to the suggestion of the historian, though the king was hardly successful in his supposed policy, as the usual order of succession was preserved, and two princes intervened before the accession of his son Malcolm. More than one fabrication has been palmed upon this reign, and the memory of the king has been needlessly blackened by the assumed murder of Malcolm MacDuff, a personage of more than questionable reality, for whose existence Fordun is the earliest authority; though it is possible that some confusion may have arisen between the imaginary king of the Cumbrians and the real Olave, whose death is noticed by Tighernach the Irish annalist, a few years after the accession of Kenneth to the throne.[108] Hector Boece is the first writer who places the victory of Loncarty in this reign, for Fordun makes no allusion to it, though his continuator Walter Bowyer mentions “the wonderful battle of Loncarty,” fought at a time when a Norwegian army, after ravaging the country in every direction, had shut up a Pictish king within the ancient city of Perth. The provisions of the besieged were upon the point of failing, when the wily Pict, by a judicious present of his two last casks of wine, reduced his enemies to a state that ensured him an easy victory. A successful sortie was directed against the invaders’ camp, their ships were burnt and sunk at the mouth of the Tay, obstructing the river, and originating the sandbanks of Drumlay, and every subsequent invasion of the northern foe, down to the expedition of Haco, in the reign of Alexander the Third, was supposed to have been undertaken in revenge for this fatal disaster.[109]