Page 54 of Lady Macbeth

“This face could be the death of you.” Roscille steps closer to the cell, until her hands touch the iron bars. “It would take only a moment. Avoid my gaze like the coward you are, or look into my eyes, and I will compel you to claw open your own throat. To dash your own head against the wall until your brain is pulp. So many agonizing deaths I could give you. My husband will perhaps offer you a painless demise. But I do not think you deserve to be shown such mercy.”

Before she can react, Fléance’s hands dart through the bars and grasp her by the front of her dress. Roscille fumbles for her veil, but even imprisoned, he is stronger and quicker: He catches her wrists and pins her arms against his chest. His collar and chains rattle.

“Say it again,” he snarls. “Tell me you are the maker of my death.”

With his grip so tight, this is the first time he has seemed to her like a man. Roscille lifts her veil far enough to spit in his face.

“Kill me if you like,” she says, “but I will be the maker of your own death still, for Macbeth will slaughter you even more savagely.”

“He will slaughter me anyway.” Fléance blinks her spittle from his lashes. He pulls her closer, until her whole body is pressed against the cold, rust-gritted bars, and she feels the heat of him, the pulsing of hate and anger and perverse desire. “I should have raped you.”

Such bald, ugly words make her stomach boil. She does not care if she crushes her own bones to dust, if they push up through her skin and burst through with blood—Roscille wrenches herself free of him. She shoves him backward, hard, and he stumbles against the wall. With satisfaction she notices that, thanks to his fruitless struggling, the collar has badly bruised his throat.

“You men have no imagination,” she says.

Incredibly, Fléance schools his face into an expression of cold contempt. Perhaps it is the collar and chains, smothering the flames of rage, but she has never seen him like this before, composed and sneering.

“Perhaps you would not even protest it,” he says. “You open your legs eagerly. I do not forget how you took the whipping in the prince’s place. This is not something you would have done for a stranger. Does Macbeth know his wife has dishonored him in his own castle?”

Roscille stills. Her blood is cold.

“Adulteress,” Fléance adds, as if she is too stupid to understand. “Whore.”

But she is stupid indeed, not to have considered it. She is no selfless martyr, not pious enough to protest torture for its own sake. She has never pretended godliness. She has never knelt in this castle, not since the first night when the Druide tied her wrist to Macbeth’s. Suddenly all her blood runs hot again and flushes her cheeks a furious red.

“Call me what names you will,” she says, “but my husband will not believe them.” Roscille does not even know if this is true. Clearing her throat, she goes on, “And you will be dead soon anyway.”

“And perhaps you will follow me soon after. There is no dishonor in slitting a whore’s throat.”

Clever as she has always imagined herself to be, Roscille finds her mind cannot accept this. She must not torment herself thinking of it. The fear will murder reason, wisdom. And then she will fall into the black pit of madness, alongside Adelaide and all the other women who have looked up, like a fish through the surface of the water, and no matter how they flailed, could not stop the thrust of the spear through their bellies.

She rejects this terror. She flees from it.

“Enjoy this posthumous existence of yours,” she spits at Fléance. And then she stumbles back up the stairs, nearly falling flat into the filthy puddles, and clinging desperately to the slick wall even when her fingers find no purchase against it.

When she reaches the top of the stairs, Macbeth is waiting for her.

The fear that Roscille only just evicted emerges again with the force of a river at melt. The sudden deluge makes her knees almost crumple beneath her.

“I am sorry, my Lord—” she starts, but Macbeth holds up a hand.

“You will not speak now,” he says, and his voice is so gentle that it petrifies her. It is the way one speaks to a lame horse, to calm it before its slaughter. “You will listen.”

Roscille drops her head and looks down at the floor.

“No,” says Macbeth. “Look at me.”

The veil is such a thin barrier between them, as frail as an infant’s skin. Roscille lifts her gaze.

“I see now that this treachery in Glammis was following closely behind me, like a shadow. My own right hand, plotting my downfall in secret. I aimed my blade at a target, only to watch it vanish like smoke, all while my enemy’s machinations turned on behind my back.”

“My Lord—”

But then he reaches up to touch her face and the hardness of his palm, the heat of him, stuns her into muteness. He presses his thumb against her temple.

“This old wound of yours. I do not forget it. Were these masked men real at all?”

Her mind scrambles. She can play the guileless girl, swept up in schemes beyond her understanding, forced at blade-point into silence and obedience. But her husband knows her; at least, he knows Lady Macbeth. She cannot hide within this white cloak of innocence. He has seen the black heart of her. He has stoked this darkness, molded it, used it to his own advantage.