Page 44 of Lady Macbeth

“I’m sorry.” Roscille looks at the ground.

Or at least, she tries. Macbeth jerks her chin back up so she is forced to look into his eyes again. He tips his own head, as if in consideration. Then he says, “Show me.”

Her mind scrambles. “What?”

“Banquho told me what occurred, in my absence. I should like to see the state of my wife’s body.”

Briefly, Roscille becomes stone. Her thoughts all turn to nothing, and leave her like smoke. The pressure of Macbeth’s fingers on her chin brings her back to herself, enough that she can follow this rote command. With slow, halting movements, she unfastens the cloak. It slips to the floor and piles there, an embankment of snow around her feet. Her feet are bare, have been bare for days, the days in which she has only slept and lived with the pain in her bed like a lover.

Macbeth lets her go and she turns her back to him. Roscille draws her hands to her hips. She is wearing one of the dresses Senga embroidered for her in the style of Alba. A muted, simple pattern that would be regarded as ugly in her father’s court. Her fingers shake as she lifts her skirts, baring to Macbeth the backs of her thighs.

She hears the breath he lets out. She hears him shift closer, lowering himself to examine her. She knows he will touch her, but when he does, she has to bite down on her lip to keep from making a sound. He pries at the skin of her thighs, kneading it with a removed scrutiny. Tears gather in her eyes. He must know that it hurts but he does not care.

Macbeth rises again, with another quick breath that this time exposes his own pain, spiraling outward from the wound in his knee.

“Look at me,” he says.

Roscille drops her skirts and turns around.

“You should not have allowed this.”

Her heart skips its beats. “Why?”

“Lord Varvek swore that the daughter he offered was the most beautiful maiden in the world. You have disgraced your own form, and lessened the value of our marriage alliance.”

Roscille’s throat closes. She can barely choke out the words, “I am sorry.”

“Do not be sorry,” he says. “You are a queen.”

And then Macbeth closes the space between them and presses their mouths together. He kisses her, through the veil. The lace rubs her lips to rawness. His arms circle her waist, pulling her against him, and she feels as small as a child, a doll. She manages to twist herself free, breaking his forceful kiss.

“There is one more condition—” she starts. But Macbeth’s eyes are black.

“Enough now, Roscilla,” he says. “I have indulged this custom and your frivolous wants for long enough. You are my wife and this is your duty. I am your husband and this is my right.”

She reaches for her veil, to tear it off, but he has her hands trapped at her sides. It only requires one of his arms to do this. With his other arm, he reaches out and extinguishes the candles between his finger and thumb. The room plunges into darkness.

He shifts her onto the bed and removes the dress from her back. Cold air crackles on her skin. His heavy body arcs over hers. And then Macbeth, Thane of Glammis, Thane of Cawder, King of Alba, the righteous man, takes what is owed to him.

She is so angry at herself for this: her silence.

The abbey at Naoned had a book of saints in which all their various martyrdoms were accounted. Roscille remembers reading of one woman who was put to death for refusing to renounce her faith in God. She was burned alive at the stake. The book stated that she did not protest, did not even scream as the flames ate at her flesh. Roscille stole this book from the monks’ library and brought it to her father. She was still foolish enough, then, to believe Wrybeard had any interest in cultivating the mind of his bastard daughter.

“What is the point of being martyred if you do not scream?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it be thought that you do not care enough about your life to protest its end?”

The Duke looked at her with tepid interest.

“No worldly agony is greater than what our imaginations can conjure,” he said. “There was no need for this girl to scream. Everyone who looked on could imagine her pain. The pain is the protest.”

Eleven

Dawn slips in through the narrow cracks in the wall. That quiet, gray light. Roscille lies on her side under the covers, palms pressed together under her cheek. Beside her, Macbeth’s body protrudes from the sheets. His naked shoulders rise and fall with the long, deep breaths of sleep.

She has had hours now, hours that she could not fill with sleep of her own. Time passed through her like air through an empty shell. Passes, still. Strangely, she finds she is afraid of nothing, not even the pain of moving her limbs. They do not feel like her limbs, after all. She does it in small, stiff increments: Sliding her arms out from under her. Pushing herself up onto her elbows. Then onto her knees. The covers fall off her body. She looks over at Macbeth, to make sure he has not been disturbed. His breaths are steady.

Roscille takes in the room, now filled with light. Her dress on the floor, Senga’s careful stitching torn open. The white sheets curving up and down, showing blood in various states of age. The older blood, dried and gritty, like rust. Newer blood, garish and bright, and still wet enough that her finger will turn red if she touches it. When she brushes her hand against the back of her legs, only hard black bits of blood come off. Between her thighs it is newer, still slick.

The cloak is puddled on the floor where she left it. She kneels down—a shock of pain—and gathers it to her chest. It is astonishingly soft and she could spend hours feeling all these various degrees of softness, feathers versus fur, the gloss of the unicorn’s horn. The rest of her dresses are in the trunk at the foot of the bed. She is afraid that if she opens it, Macbeth will wake. So she slips the cloak over her shoulders, fastens it at the hollow of her collarbones, and folds her arms across her chest to cover her naked body.