Page 4 of Lady Macbeth

He is handsome, too, though not in the manner of Brezhon men. She had not expected this, yet it does not make anything easier—his features are brusque, rough. His hands are callused and his shoulders huge as rocks. The hair on his arms is tufted and scraggly, like hill grass. He looks like he has been born right from the land of Glammis itself, grown out of the earth; his mother the dirt and his father the rain that waters it.

“My lady wife,” he says, in his Scotsman’s rasp.

“My lord husband,” she replies. Her voice is like wind passing through reeds, almost inaudible.

She is wearing her veil, so it is safe for him to look her in the eyes. Even his stare is heavy, and it weighs upon her. Roscille decides it is wise to shrink from him, for now. He will not tolerate anything less than absolute obedience in the presence of his men. She gathers her arms around her middle. She looks down at the floor.

“Your beauty has not been falsely alleged,” he murmurs. “Come now. Let us begin.”

The next few moments unfold in near silence. They approach the dais, but before she can step upon it, two of the men advance toward her. They wear the same tartan as her Lord, so she suspects they are kin. They seize her under her armpits, and Roscille chokes on her breath, remembering the story of Durstus and Agasia, that unloved, rudely forced wife—but while these two men lift her, another man, beardless, his flaxen hair rumpled with youth, kneels before her and tears off her stockings and slippers. Before she can speak, a pail of cold water is thrown over her bare feet.

This is a ritual in Breizh, too, the washing of the bride’s feet. But there it is performed by older, widowed women, and gently, with warm water and perfumed soap, while handmaidens flutter about like birds and give advice about wifely duties. Roscille gasps as the cold climbs her veins. Not a moment is spared for her shock, her upset. She is set down again, bare-footed, on the dais.

Then the priest comes, the Druide, as they are called here. Unlike the religious men in Breizh and France, with their bald heads like little polished rosary beads, the Druide has a long gray beard that touches the floor. It is held in many places with leather thongs, as a maiden’s hair is sometimes held with fillets. He does not have a Bible; he knows the words by heart. He speaks first in Latin, while Roscille’s teeth are chattering so hard she can barely hear, and makes the sign of the cross over her and then Macbeth.

Her teeth stop chattering long enough that she can listen when he switches to Scots.

“Now is the joining of Lord Macbeth, son of Findlay, Macbeth macFinlay, Macbethad mac Findlaích, the righteous man, Thane of Glammis, and the Lady Roscilla of Breizh,” he says seriously, and his words fill the silent hall.

A length of red rope is procured, and she is yoked to her new husband. His left hand and her right. A Scotsman must keep his right hand to himself, in case he needs to draw a weapon. The hilt of the Lord’s blade pushes out from beneath his cloak.

“The Lord and Lady Macbeth,” says the Druide.

They are both made to turn toward the audience of men. There are scattered grunts of approval, the rapping of palms against the wooden table. Roscille’s feet have gone numb. She cannot find Hawise in the crowd; where has Banquho taken her?

Macbeth sits, tugging Roscille along like a child’s horse-on-a-string. His hand looks enormous beside hers, the knuckles split, his calluses yellow and thick. His nails are bitten to the quick. She cannot imagine the Lord chewing on his own fingernails, an anxious habit, betraying an unsettled mind. Nothing else about him suggests such infirmity.

The men raise their cups, and she follows suit, with some clumsiness. She is right-handed and must hold the heavy mug in her left. They mumble a toast in Old Scots, which Roscille cannot understand, but which has the cadence of a song. Then the meal comes steaming before them. Cubes of meat in a dark stew. Mutton, not beef (as it would have been in Naoned). She was right about the goats and sheep.

Before she is allowed to eat, the quaich must be passed. The double-handed silver bowl is filled with amber liquid, that strong drink of the Scots, which is said to scorch your throat like fire. Macbeth takes one handle, Roscille the other, and together they lift the quaich to their lips. The corner of her mouth brushes his beard. It is a quick swipe of her cheek, like the sting of running through bramble. She barely tastes the spirit; there is no flavor, only the burning pain it leaves behind.

The quaich is then passed through the banquet hall: first to the eldest and most proven warriors, then to the youngest, the not-yet-proven. Some of them are even younger than Roscille, boyish still, and they lap hesitantly from the bowl, like puppies. At last, it arrives in the hands of the flaxen-haired boy, whose cheeks flush angrily as he lifts the quaich. It is bad fortune to be the one who has the last sip, the one who finally drains it.

Roscille takes slow bites with her left hand. As she eats, she observes. The men all wear cloaks and kilts of wool, grays and grayed-out greens, occasionally a slash of red in the tartan. Some of their cloaks have furred collars: a fox here, its bushy tail and black eyes intact, an ermine, showing its winter white. She focuses on the brooch pinned to each man’s chest. Like Banquho’s, they are all made of base metal, iron or something else. No gold or silver, no jeweled inset. In fact, she sees nothing finer in the room than an amber cuff on one of the men, and her own pearls. Even the hilt of Macbeth’s sword is no more than tempered bronze.

A hundred years ago, a king, Reutha, sent for craftsmen and artificers from the continent to come to Scotland, to teach the Scots methods of building and smithing and weaving and dyeing. Macbeth is a lord and should not live so sparsely. He is a warrior, too, so where are his spoils?

Slowly, behind her impassive eyes, Roscille’s mind begins to turn.

A servant enters suddenly from the dark corridor, and Roscille lifts her gaze. She is hopeful that Hawise is being returned. But the man is only carrying a large iron cage, and inside it, a white bird. She has never seen such a bird in Breizh. It does not have the long beak of a waterfowl, nor the faintly iridescent neck of a dove. It is pure white, like the season’s earliest snow, each feather arranged snugly against the next, so that it has a sleek, almost wet look.

“Oh!” she says, in heartfelt surprise. Many of the noblewomen in Wrybeard’s court keep pretty birds like this, to sing pretty songs. Has her lord husband thought to bring some of Naoned’s civility to Glammis? Does he want to please his new wife with a gesture that reminds her of home? “This is a generous gift, my Lord—”

But the servant does not pass her the cage; instead, he flings open the door and the bird flutters out of it, squealing. The men watch it flail around the ceiling, thrashing about the iron chandelier, bouncing from one stone wall to the next, like a bee drunk on pollen. Roscille is too shocked to speak.

Her husband’s hand wrenches from hers. He does not untie the knot; he merely pulls hard enough to tear through the rope entirely, leaving her with a rash of red down her wrist and on her palm, which hurts and makes her gasp. Then he has a bow, drawn out from somewhere behind the table, and he is nocking an arrow, and the bird is flapping and then suddenly it is not.

Its movement ceases instantly, gripped by the sudden rictus of death. It falls through the air and lands on the stone floor, hard enough to snap all its fragile bones, but Roscille cannot hear the breaking over the sound of the men cheering and stamping their feet. One of them sweeps up the bird and jerks the arrow from its breast. It has been so immaculately aimed that there is only the smallest spurt of blood, like the pricking of a thorn against the pad of a thumb.

Animal sacrifice is a barbarian practice, sternly abolished by the pope, but Roscille knows it was hard enough for the civilizing Romans to extinguish the tradition of human sacrifice here in Bretaigne; before Christianity the Druides practiced strange rites, casking some of their offerings inside a large wicker statue and setting it alight; others still were submerged by force into peat bogs, which mummified their bodies. Sometimes these bodies surface from their hundred-year-old graves, and they look as shriveled as unborn children, yanked untimely from the womb, skin dyed charcoal black.

As the bird is brought toward the dais, Roscille realizes that it is a gift, after all, though not as she initially imagined. This is a show of her husband’s strength and skill and virtue, a promise that she will be well protected and well fed and well honored. Not like Agasia.

She reaches down and touches the bird’s breast, which is still warm. Its feathers are as smooth as she thought they would be. She thinks of plucking one to keep as a token, but for some reason the idea makes her sad. Macbeth’s smile is resplendent. Under her veil, Roscille tries to smile back.

When all the cups have been drained, Roscille walks bare-footed to her chamber. The hem of her dress is still damp; the linen is so thick it will take hours and hours to dry. Her lord husband walks beside her. He wears leather boots and his steps are heavy like falling stones.

They reach the door, and Macbeth removes an iron key from his belt. Roscille wants to ask how many keys there are, and who has them, and if she will get one (though she knows she will not), and where Hawise is, please, and a thousand other things, but she must save up her words and only spend them wisely, because she does not know how many she will be allowed.