Page 26 of Lady Macbeth

Act III

King

Hereafter

Seven

She wakes. In the same spot where she fell asleep, naked on the bear-rug, still-damp hair clinging to her like a caul. She sits up, unfolds her limbs. The strange thing is that she does not cry. Does not even want to. She digs through the linens in her trunk until she finds a gown and gets dressed. She puts on her most gossamer veil.

Should she appear frozen with shock, expressionless, only cold bewilderment in her eyes? Should she weep like a confused, panicked child? Should she keep her gaze to the ground, as if deaf and mute? Roscille of Breizh would choose this last option. Do not give them anything which they may in the future use against you. That reasoning feels overly simple now. It is better to be one thing on the surface, and another beneath it. Perhaps she should mourn openly. Perhaps it would not be the falsest thing. When she brushes her hands together, she swears she can still feel the faint stickiness of the king’s blood.

What will Lady Macbeth do? She does not have time to decide. From down the twisting corridors, someone is shouting.

She arrives last at the scene: Every man who matters is already here. Her husband, standing with his arms crossed, his face unreadable. He has chosen murk and depths. Banquho beside him is flint-eyed, but his chest is puffed out, secretly luxuriating in being so close to his Lord again, no wife to slip between them. Fléance presses close to his father, unable to hide his face: horror and nausea, a greenish tint to his skin.

Roscille pushes farther into the room. She is still below the men’s attention, every man but Macbeth. He sees her and beckons her toward him.

Blood reaches all corners of the room. The chamber is a living thing now, with a spreading nexus of veins, flowing outward from its heart, the three piled bodies. Roscille cannot bear more than a glance. She sees the inside of one man’s wrist, a marbled white, somehow unspoiled by the carnage around it. That tenderness, curiously protected, in the center of this slaughter, restores her memory. This is a man. Was a man. A mother once held him at her breast. A lover once clung to him in sweat-damp sheets.

Evander has dragged the king’s body out of his bed, and now he holds his father’s limbs to his chest. Tears wet his lashes and he sobs openly, guttural sounds of fury, of sorrow. This is one of the only occasions when a man can weep without being shamed for it—when his crying is threaded with the promise of vengeance.

Lisander kneels in silence. It might be taken as a posture of penitence, with the chancellor standing over him, but there is no expression on his face. She is glad for his impassiveness, because this is the one thing that might break her, to see his grief.

He reaches forward, into the mess of bodies and blood, and touches the throat of one of the chamberlains. Two fingers pressed, as if searching for a pulse.

“The bodies are hours old,” he says, rising. “All the blood is dry, and the rictus has set in.”

The chancellor’s voice is grave. “We will perform the cruentation at once.”

“They will pay,” Evander rasps. Still clutching his father’s body to his chest, he looks up, with his fierce, damp eyes. “Whatever traitor has done this—I will string him up and tear out his bowels; I will gorge them with milk and honey and let the insects feast on their fattened flesh. I will—”

“The traitors are already dead,” Lisander says.

Evander shucks his anger for surprise, redness painting his cheeks. “What? How?”

“Our father has two wounds,” he says. “And the swords of his men are soiled with his blood. He is dead by his chamberlains’ hands.”

Roscille, at last, reaches her husband’s side. She watches as understanding slowly overtakes his expression. There is a certain gentleness she has never seen on him before, one that seems to soften his edges. Without warning, he grasps her by the shoulders and pulls her into his chest.

It shocks her so much she is glad her face is hidden against his jerkin, so that no one can hear her quick inhale. Macbeth holds on to her tightly, one arm braced across her back, the other hand pressing her head to his front, large fingers spanning the entire breadth of her skull. He holds on to her as if she were the buoy, and he the drowning man. This gesture of affection between husband and wife—there is nothing he could have done to surprise her more.

From between Macbeth’s fingers, she sees Lisander’s gaze cut to her. It is not angry, exactly, but it is probing. He seeks the secret pain on her face, the evidence of her husband’s abuse. She wishes he would not. She fears he will see her poisonous betrayal instead.

“No,” Evander says. “These men were loyal and served our clan for years. There is nothing that would provoke them to betrayal. To this.” His voice grows strangled. “Our father was loved by all his attendants. I do not believe it.”

“The rite of cruentation will reveal all,” the chancellor says. “And then, my Lord, you will have your vengeance.”

It is time for Macbeth to speak.

“There is treachery in Glammis,” he says. “My own wife was attacked not long ago, by masked men. These same men may be your murderers. I will do everything in my power to discover them. And then I will have the vengeance that is owed to me, too.”

Clever. He and the prince are now joined in their purpose. Roscille steals a glance at Fléance, to see if he is solid enough to have no reaction to Macbeth’s words. The greenish hue has faded from his cheeks; he now looks as pale as the corpses. But this is merely residual horror, she thinks, not genuine fear that they will be discovered. She thinks.

Evander nods slowly, and inhales in a very tremulous way that makes him sound far younger than his years. Grief turning him into a child again. Lisander reaches over and lays a hand on his brother’s shoulder, squeezing once. It is this gesture of tenderness that nearly undoes her. How easy these metamorphoses are: men crawling backward to their boyhoods, cold masks slipping to reveal the stricken faces beneath. Roscille knows the secret of how gentle Lisander’s hands can be.

So many secrets, she thinks, so many lies, reaching out in all directions, tying her to one man or another. She once feared she would have no allies in Glammis, no confidence. Now she is a creature in a conch shell, everything spiraling out from around her.

If this were Naoned, there would be a seamstress kneeling at Roscille’s feet and fitting her for a black dress and a black mourning veil. But this is Glammis, so Roscille—who is now accustomed to it—clothes herself. Because she has burned the pewter dress, she has no choice but to wear one that is pearly blue, its neckline far too low to intimate mourning. She does not think the men will take any special note of it, though. The promise of vengeance enacted, blood spilled, and, of course, a crown claimed, obliterates all else.