Page 18 of Lady Macbeth

Macbeth’s fingers crumple the parchment. “You should learn to write in Scots; it is your tongue now. I will have one of the Druides come to teach you.”

“Thank you, my Lord.”

“It is nothing to thank me for. It is your duty.”

Queen Hereafter. Roscille’s throat swells, chafing beneath the gold chain. Her gaze follows the letter as it is placed in the pocket of her husband’s cloak, as it vanishes. She had thought she had created a talisman of protection, something to hold back the spilling of blood on the battlefield or in the sheets of her marriage bed. But she has only created an instrument of violence.

Yet she could not have known that. The world was different, before the witches spoke their prophecy. Now every glance that passes between Macbeth and the king will be singed with smoke, touched with poison.

The lampreys circle and circle their small pool.

“I—I have not yet made my second request,” Roscille stammers out.

Macbeth’s brows arch. For a moment she is afraid she has misjudged her position; perhaps Macbeth is not bound to this ancient custom, as she thought. Or perhaps the prophecy has imbued him with such arrogance that he no longer cares for his shackles.

But he merely replies, “Then make it now.”

This, still, is arrogance. He thinks there is nothing on earth he cannot have. Whatever Roscille says next will be no hurdle; it will only be a way for him to enhance his own status, prove his own strength. But she is not ignorant of these things. She has had many hours to deliberate, to choose her words. Her request is an apple, and the first sweet bite will not reveal its rotted core.

“You have beautiful, exotic creatures in Alba,” she says. “Ones that I have never seen before. It would delight me to have a cloak, stitched from the furs of six different white animals.”

The second request is a natural successor to the first. On the surface it still shows her seventeen-year-old innocence, the enduring indulgences of Wrybeard’s court. Yet it also shows a change in her she thinks will please him. She wants a cloak born from the soil of Scotland. She wants to robe her body in the natural beauties of her new home. If she were a lady of Breizh before, one foot still in the Loire’s ice-white waters, now she has begun to cross over, to set her other foot firmly in the rocky lands of Glammis.

And, too, it will show this: that she is not so eager to keep her husband from her bed. This request will seem simpler than the first, her girlish resistance eroded. Six white hides is a single hunting trip, one blustery foray in the woods and fields, spear-tips flashing, cheeks high in color. This can be accomplished in an afternoon.

Or so Macbeth will think. He smiles, pleased by all the things Roscille has arranged to please him.

“Very well,” he says. “A white fur cloak. It will complement your color beautifully.”

He raises a hand to her cheek. He is wearing gloves today, and the leather is soft as petals. A calf must have been slaughtered, to make leather so soft.

“Thank you,” Roscille says.

Macbeth’s hand slides from her face. Then he says, “Your father told me you had a certain fondness for animals.”

Her skin pulses with heat, a pressure that might grow into panic. Why would the Duke pass along this petty piece of knowledge? Why would he imagine Macbeth might care to hear it? She can only think of that day in the stable. The blood gleaming on her father’s hand; the boy’s invisible death. Has he told this story to Macbeth? How much has her husband been given to learn?

Roscille’s silence lasts long enough that Macbeth narrows his eyes. “Was Wrybeard wrong in his accounting?”

“No,” she manages. “He was not wrong.”

In Macbeth’s presence the dogs have gone quiet, whimpering in the corner of the kennels. They must remember the feeling of his boot against their bellies, his lashes on their haunches. Roscille feels sorry for them.

“Well,” Macbeth says, rolling back his shoulders. “Dress in your finest. The king is coming.”

The king is coming, and the castle is bracing itself for his arrival as a warrior girds his body for battle. The king is coming, and Roscille can do nothing but put on her loveliest gown and softest slippers. She spends a long time deciding whether or not to cover her hair. It is not the tradition, in Glammis, as these last days have taught her. But Duncane is very pious. He is what the Brezhon would consider a righteous man. He keeps the chancellor in gold-limned habits and invites him into his strategy room for counsel, to ensure that each war he fights is a holy one. It would please him to know that Roscille is observing a married woman’s proper Christian modesty, though she fears it will anger her husband if she chooses the king’s preference over his.

Queen Hereafter. Roscille opens the trunk at the foot of her bed and retrieves her gray-blue gown. It is in the style of Wrybeard’s court, but there has not been time to sew her any dresses adhering to the customs of Glammis. Roscille does not even know what such a gown would look like. There are no other ladies here.

Dressing without Hawise is still difficult. In the end, she chooses to leave her hair loose and uncovered, but to reassume the heavier bridal veil. Duncane will surely want another layer of protection against her death-touched stare. He knows the stories. He tracks witchcraft like a hound.

She is still unnerved by Macbeth’s question at the kennel. All this time she has thought no one in Glammis clever; she has thought herself a lonely ermine among grunting boars. Now she is beginning to think her husband has his own wiles, masked by a brutish exterior. And there is nothing more dangerous than a creature who pretends to be one thing and is in truth another.

This time the bridal veil is a reassuring weight. She does not want to see these men, any of them. Roscille feels she can no longer trust her own eyes. There is another world, spreading cold beneath the one she has always known. Dark water and darker words. Bloody auguries. The stones of civilization have been built upon raw, perverse madness.

Roscille does not greet the king in the courtyard; she stands in the castle’s main chamber, with Fléance, as Duncane and his party are led through the twisting halls. Fléance’s scar is turning blue-white, but it is still raised and ugly enough that anyone who looks at him will marvel at how his life was nearly stolen. A falsehood, of course, but what does it matter? Most of the things men care about are their own inventions—titles, honors, crowns—imposed upon the world.

“The chancellor will perform no more cruentation,” Fléance murmurs. “We are safe.”