Page 11 of Lady Macbeth

“I have to write a letter,” she says. “Will you help me?”

In the castle’s largest chamber, which is both the banquet hall and the war room, Fléance brings her a quill and parchment. He tells her the Thane of Cawder’s name, shows her his sigil. Roscille’s quill tip hovers above the page, hesitant. She has never forged a letter before; she has never tried writing in any hand beside her own.

“Will Duncane know it is a woman’s script?” Roscille wonders aloud.

“He will not suspect it,” says Fléance. “Most women in Alba do not write.”

She should have known. The women in Naoned read only the Bible. Hawise could not read or write until Roscille began to teach her. Thinking of Hawise makes her throat tighten. With some difficulty, Roscille says, “Who are Cawder’s allies?”

Fléance names several lords. Roscille chooses the one whose name will be easiest to spell. Since she does not know how to write in Scots, Fléance leans over her shoulder and places his hand on her hand, guiding the quill. She feels him flinch as he touches her skin. The blue marbling of her veins looks particularly garish against his ruddy flesh, cold where he is warm, lifeless where he is vital. As soon as the words are done, Fléance steps briskly away, red coloring his cheeks.

Even if he has, by some chance, touched a woman before, he has never touched a creature like Roscille—bloodless, as they say, like a trout—and he has certainly never touched the wife of a lord. Roscille wonders if he recognizes the danger in this. He has already seen how easily her fingers can spin lies; can her lips not also fashion falsehoods?

To copy the signature she must carefully layer one parchment over another, and trace the Thane of Cawder’s name. Fléance watches her at a distance, his mouth a thin line. She notices the mangled tip of his ear again, the accidental and inglorious scar.

“The Lord has placed my life in your hands,” she says.

Fléance’s gray eyes flash. When he speaks, his voice cannot hide his anger. “It was my father’s choice, too. He says there will be other wars. Other occasions to wet my sword.”

“The battlefield is not the only place where one may wet their sword.”

“Lady—” His brow furrows.

“Roscilla,” she says. “Please, call me Roscilla.”

“Lady Roscilla,” he says, after a moment. His expression is uneasy, but not uncurious. “What do you suggest?”

“My husband has done you a disservice, I recognize this,” she says. “He is a great warrior, though his judgment was too hasty on this occasion.”

She must be as light-footed as a fawn on frozen water. She must appear hesitant, even if she is not. She must not dishonor her husband with a word or a look.

Fléance’s gaze is still hesitant, but there is a lidded desire in his eyes. She has nearly coaxed it out into the light—the lamprey within him, waiting for flesh to suck.

“And your father,” she goes on, voice lowering, “has been uncivil in this matter as well. To not help grow his own son’s valor, to not wish for him to win acclaim on the field of battle, to enhance his pride…it is a boorish slight.”

His eyes’ desire gleams brighter. The lamprey slinks ever forward.

“But you can mend their mistakes,” Roscille says. “You can illuminate their errors, and show your own strengths.”

Silence seeps between them, cool and clear, like the air at evening’s last hour.

“How,” Fléance says slowly, “do you mean to prove such a thing?”

It is the first time she has been outside the castle in Glammis when it is light. Dawn has come, and gone, and the sun has settled at its highest point, swaddled in fleecy clouds. The wind has the same obliterating rhythm of the ocean, pressing the green-gold grasses flat, making her veil cling tightly to her face, like a caul.

A near-forgotten panic stirs in her. She felt this panic the first time Hawise placed the veil over her eyes. The way it obscured the world, dulled her most important sense, made her feel like an animal, bucking under its yoke. Prey animals have their eyes on the sides of their heads, a blind spot in what should be the center of their vision. It took a long time for Roscille to adjust to the world this way, darkened and muddled, to its dangerous blurry spaces. Glammis makes this old fear feel new again.

But she prods her horse along, so that it follows Fléance’s mount down the hillside. These horses are accustomed to the terrain. Their hoof-steps are sure, no pebbles caught in their shoes, no tripping over the sun-warmed rocks that jut up dangerously from beneath overgrown tufts of grass.

From this distance, with the castle at her back, Roscille can finally see Macbeth’s advantage, the reason Wrybeard thought it worth sending a daughter all this way. Every cluster of trees, every thatched-roof hut, every spire of chimney smoke: all set out before her like trays on a banquet table. Miles and miles and miles. No enemy can so much as flash his sword without giving her husband an hour’s warning, at least. The castle has held Roscille in a stricture of fear, a newt writhing in a cupped hand, but by this measure, Glammis is the safest place she has ever been.

“These villages,” she says, sweeping her arm toward the specks of houses below, “they all pay tribute to Macbeth?”

She has to raise her voice to be heard over the wind. Fléance nods.

“Yes, they are all Findlaích, if not by blood then by allegiance. The clan,” he adds, as though Roscille does not remember her own husband’s status. She is a part of clan Findlaích now.

“Surely,” Roscille says, “there is some discontent among them.”