Page 31 of Lady Macbeth

“You are,” says Lisander. “You are what they say, Roscille of Breizh. Witch.”

He uses the Brezhoneg word, not the Scots. Roscille grasps at his wrist with both of her hands, trying to pry herself loose, but her efforts are fruitless; he is too strong. Tears come to the corners of her vision. She squeezes her eyes shut and says, “I am nothing but the dagger in my husband’s hand.”

The words are empty; they have no echo. Lisander lets out another half-amused breath.

“You may succeed in convincing others of this, others who luxuriate in the idea that women have no power except that which men grant them.” With his free hand, he reaches down and smooths her skirts back over her thighs: an absurd gesture, almost chivalrous, as if to help her regain her lost modesty. “You may not have driven the blade yourself, but I know those men died at your orchestration.”

Roscille is now aware she will not win by playing at innocence, so she tries anger, which only ends up sounding petulant. “And how do you know that? The chancellor performed the cruentation himself.”

“The chancellor has no wisdom, only dry ritual.”

“It is bold of you to dishonor your father’s favorite adviser.”

“Not so bold as murdering my father in his bed.”

Roscille has no response to this. She presses her lips shut.

Unexpectedly, Lisander loosens his grip, just enough for Roscille to shove his hands away and push herself to a sitting position. Her eyes are hot. She tries to spy, over his shoulder, the knife glinting on the floor, but she cannot find it. And Lisander and his lithe, strong body are between her and the door.

“Do not try to run,” he says.

“I was not planning to.”

A series of incredulous events unfold: Lisander reties the laces of his jacket, where Roscille wrested them open. He fishes for the ruby necklace among the sheets and holds it out to her. It is coiled in his palm like a cold snake. She snatches it back, face burning.

“Thank you,” she bites out.

Lisander nods.

Roscille is suddenly overcome by a novel humiliation. The last moments play over in her mind: her falling wantonly into his arms, him pressing her into the bed and kissing her breathless, all while she believed he was under her lustful spell. He had not truly been ensorcelled, and those passionate words that had so enflamed her were spoken under false pretense. He had been concerned only with the knife in her bodice and how to take it from her.

“Did you mean none of it, then?” The words come out before she can stop them. The question of a vain, frivolous little girl.

“Should I not ask you the same?” Lisander’s sharp gaze meets hers. “All your desire feigned, the means to an end—a way to maneuver the dagger to my throat?”

She feels almost numb with embarrassment. “Witch, you name me. Such creatures have no sentiments.”

“I do not believe that.”

He says it without hesitation, and with such conviction that it surprises her. She regards him, skin still prickling with heat. His hair is mussed from their exertions, but still it shines, like the ocean under moonlight. His narrow nose, carved as if by a sculptor’s chisel; his cheekbones high ledges below the dark, sleepless shadows. A purple bruise blooms on his throat. Roscille feels an odd, debauched sense of satisfaction, knowing she has marked him, too.

“What will you do with me?” she asks at last. “Slit my throat in your bed?”

Lisander’s gaze darts to the corner, where finally Roscille spots the knife, its blade glinting in the hearth’s soft firelight. It will take him two strides to reach it. Another two strides, the thrust of his sword-arm, to pare away her flesh with it. She can do nothing to beat back her death. Her eyes do not ensorcell him; she has no more protection than the flimsy necklace. She feels even more humiliated now, to have called this stupid bauble armor.

“No,” he says.

Here, though, he does hesitate. Can she truly blame him? She came to his chamber with a knife; she orchestrated his father’s death. And she gave him a witch’s death, at that, the swords only reaching King Duncane’s heart thanks to her powers of compulsion. There could not be any greater disgrace upon his father’s name.

Further still, she has thrown all of Alba into chaos. Made him reach for a crown he does not even want. As much as she tries, she cannot think of a reason why he would spare her, now.

Roscille tilts up her chin. “Why not?”

“You are of no use to me dead,” Lisander says. “If I am to bargain with your husband, it would not do to start negotiations by presenting his wife’s corpse.” He pauses. “But I suppose it is perhaps too hopeful of me, to believe he may allow words to pass between us before he reaches for his sword.”

Roscille thinks of Macbeth, his horrifying largeness. It has become ordinary to her, and therefore less horrifying, but whenever Roscille is outside of herself, mind untethered from her body, he is a mountain again, a great rock creature, fed and formed by the soil of Glammis. Lisander is strong, and sleek like a water spirit, but she cannot imagine he could match her husband, Bellona’s bridegroom.

She should not grieve this. It should relieve her. Moments ago, she thought she would die with Lisander’s fingers around her neck. Suddenly her own hand leaps up to her throat, where the bruises made by his mouth are pulsing. Fear pools in her stomach.