Page 16 of Lady Macbeth

“You must seek out those who truly honor you,” she says, uncertainly. “And keep them close.”

“Yes,” Macbeth says. His fingers curl into the fabric of her dress. “I should hold you close, then—my clever wife, my loyal wife, who keeps my secrets and honors her vows.”

It sounds like a compliment but it is a threat. She will only continue to be his wife if she continues to do these things, to be clever, to be loyal, to keep his secrets, to bow to him always. And if she is not his wife she will be Hawise, rotting at the bottom of the ocean.

Roscille nods.

“Good,” Macbeth says. When he rises, his head nearly brushes the ceiling. “The chancellor’s efforts at cruentation have failed, for now, and Fléance’s memory fails him, too. I shall seek counsel elsewhere. I have no other choice. I must know where the treachery grows, and tear it out by its roots.”

Roscille stays silent, perched on the edge of the bed.

“Come,” says Macbeth.

And then she rises, too.

Roscille knows the path to the basement well, even after only one visit. She could feel her way down these narrow, twisting corridors in the dark. She needs only to listen to the nearing sound of the ocean, louder with every step, as if brushing against the floor that separates her from the sea, like the thin membrane between life and death, the earth and the underworld, as the Romans believed.

In Breizh, there is a story about a drowned city, Ys, which will rise again someday from the waves. Whoever first sees its church’s spire or hears its bells will become king. And then Paris will be swallowed by the water and Ys will surge up to take its place. This story exists beyond the purview of the pope and has outlasted all of Christianity’s civilizing efforts.

Of all the ancient tales, this is the one Roscille has heard the most, for it speaks to man’s basest desire: that his enemies will be destroyed and that he may be the ruler of the world’s new order. It is a very equalizing story, beloved by peasants and nobles both. Any man with the faculty of eyesight has a chance at becoming king.

As she walks, Roscille runs her hand along the wall, feeling the stone. She wonders if it is as old as Fléance claims. Her dress drags on the ground, making a second hushing sound, slightly out of rhythm with the waves beneath the floor. Macbeth walks without looking back. And, with every movement, the necklace rubs a red rash upon her throat.

Macbeth turns the last corner to the wood-rotted door and slips the key into the lock. Before he turns it, Roscille risks a question.

“Do they always speak prophecy to you?”

Macbeth turns, surprised but not displeased. “Sometimes it is prophecy. Sometimes it is counsel. But all counsel is prophecy, I suppose. A warning of what will happen if you do or do not act.”

Perhaps her husband is wiser than the brute she has considered him to be. “Did they speak such to your father, as well?”

Then Macbeth’s face shutters. She has ventured too far.

“You are not given to know this much, Lady Roscilla,” he says. “This power is for the Thane of Glammis alone.”

Yet he has answered her question anyway. The Thane of Glammis was his father, too, and his grandfather—this she learned back in Naoned, before they wed. Such a thing is rare in Alba, and even in Breizh. Titles are slippery things. Sometimes they fall out of a father’s hands before they can be passed to his son. A birthright is never guaranteed. There have been whole generations extinguished in a single battle. Crowns and castles smuggled away, melted in the forge, burned to ash.

There is power in having held the same title for the span of three men’s lives. But there is also danger. Time does not strengthen. It withers.

Macbeth opens the door and the cold salt air blows back her skirts. Her veil pushes itself into her mouth. She coughs and steps through the threshold into the cave’s imperfect, distorted darkness. The torch in the center is still lit, and it casts strange patterns on the ceiling—no, not patterns, nothing that could ever be constellated or mapped or made reasonable. It is obscure. This is all she has been given to know.

The chains sing their inconsonant song, rattling like bells. They emerge from the darkness, pale and sudden as bolts of lightning. In the sallow glow, their white skin turns a nauseous, iridescent color, slick and sickly. The silvering that comes when meat has begun to rot. This time Roscille does not cross herself, even though the instinct rises.

Macbeth wades into the water. In the witches’ hands, the fabric is so wet that it is translucent, showing the knobs of their finger bones. Over and over again, slapping the clothes in the water, lifting them, wringing them out. Letting them fall again. They do not appear to even notice Macbeth until he reaches the torch, and then they look up with their milky, unseeing eyes.

“Macbeth,” the one in the center says. The teeth in her mouth are broken, but sharp.

“Macbeth.”

“Macbeth.”

He acknowledges each one. “Buidseach. Buidseach. Buidseach. The prophecy has been fulfilled. The Thane of Cawder is dead. I wear his mantle now.”

“Then the Thane of Cawder lives,” says the leftmost one. Her rasping voice has a wry amusement in it, as if she is delighting herself in the jest. It is the first time Roscille has thought of them as even remotely human. Serving their own purposes rather than merely acting as an extension of her husband’s will.

“Yes,” says Macbeth. The word curls from his mouth, a cold spiral. “But there is treason in Glammis. Someone in my own clan works against me.”

The torchlight glimmers in the witches’ eyes, like silver fish darting through murky water, showing themselves only in quick, bright bursts.