Page 57 of Lady Macbeth

“Æthelstan and his army come for my head,” Macbeth says into the blackness. “Tell me—do I have to fear my demise?”

Slow, dragging footsteps. The chain clattering. The water forced and churned. Once, Roscille would not have been able to tell apart their voices. But now she knows who speaks and when.

Left Witch: Macbeth, Thane of Glammis. Thane of Cawder. King Hereafter. No man of woman born shall harm Macbeth.

Right Witch: Macbeth, Thane of Glammis. Thane of Cawder. King Hereafter. He shall never be vanquished until the wood comes high upon the hill.

Gruoch says: nothing.

Macbeth turns in the water, and Roscille can see it, even without sight: the torchlight freckling the cave ceiling, the deep rise and fall of her husband’s chest, the resplendent smile drawing wide across his face, the burning triumph in his eyes.

“I will never fail,” her husband says. Awestruck, almost childlike. “These prophecies ensure me. King Hereafter, indeed.” A raucous laugh that is too loud, that breaks like surf upon the rocks.

Roscille can see three pairs of hands outstretched, palms turned up to the heavens. And then three voices rise, mingling in the pitch-dark air, curling wickedly as smoke: “All hail Macbeth! All hail Macbeth! All hail Macbeth!”

Fourteen

In Roscille’s short and mostly sheltered seventeen years, war had never come to Naoned. She always believed it was because the Duke is clever—the ermine knows how to hide himself from hawks and preys only on soft-toothed rabbits and mice. War is for arrogant men like the Parisian prince, or weak men who cannot dissuade their enemies. Here Roscille cannot think of an example because the names of weak men are like charcoal to be dusted off your boot.

Now she thinks war is as inevitable as weather. It has seasons, some redder than others. War came to the other counties and duchies of France with the riotous color of changing leaves. Little wars like saplings, easily struck down before they could flower. Great wars that covered Blois and Chartres in a hoarfrost of corpses. The pope and the House of Capet promise a green and eternal summer: peace, so long as they rule this fractious land.

Wrybeard and the other dukes and counts snort into their goblets. But the ermine is a hibernating creature. He grows white fur against the winter; he will stay fat in his den until the air is warm again and hunting is easy. Naoned, a thicket of safety, insulated by her father’s wiles.

Here, in Glammis—where Roscille is Lady, even Queen—safety is the bleak and barren landscape. The soldiers which will be spotted from the castle’s battlements and then slain with arrows before their war cries even reach Roscille’s ears. The rocky hill littered with dashed-open skulls; the yellow grass smeared with brains. And she will be safe in her cloak and her blood-colored necklace and her blindfold, which she must now wear always in the company of men.

She stands on the parapet that faces down the hill, imagining this. Senga is at her side. The slope before her is sheer, dangerous. Beyond it, the copse of fairy trees, protecting that silver pool inside. It is tiny against the vast emptiness of the landscape. A copse. She would not call it a wood.

Until the wood comes high upon the hill.

Roscille looks at Senga. “Is your village down there?”

Her village, where her children live still, their love mingling with shame. Old enough to work means old enough to fight.

Senga nods. “It is the last village that Æthelstan’s army will loot and burn. Then they will reach the castle.”

They will not reach the castle. Because there is no wood and trees cannot uproot themselves and walk in rows like soldiers. Roscille blinks wetness from her lashes. It is starting to rain.

“What do ladies do, in war?”

Senga says, “You tell me. You are the Lady.”

“But I have never been in a war.”

There is the little furrow between Senga’s brows that Roscille has come to recognize. It is familiar, from the first day she came to the castle. All the rest has changed: Her circles and lines have vanished with nights spent on a down mattress instead of straw; she wears slippers now instead of clogs; her hair is combed neatly and tied back in a plait. She raises a newly smoothed hand and touches Roscille’s cheek.

“We will both learn together,” she says.

The rain falls in heavy gouts that turn the window glass marbled and milky. The dirt of the courtyard becomes mud. Tartans grow so wet that their colors and patterns cannot be distinguished from each other. When men stomp into the castle, they shake the water out of their hair and beards like dogs. There are many men now, faces Roscille is not permitted to see, names she cannot connect with those faces. Once upon a time—or if she were Roscille of Breizh, still—she would have memorized them all in an hour, and something about them too, a bit of their soul that shines from them like a slant of light through a crumbling wall.

Now. She sits in her husband’s council meetings, blindfolded. The voices run over her like water. Æthelstan’s army has taken twelve border towns and burned them to cinders. Pillaged the grain stores and butchered the cows. Raped the women and enslaved the men. The soldiers eat themselves strong on stolen food and stolen wine, and with each passing day, the army grows larger and closer.

Unexpectedly, many Scotsmen have defected to Æthelstan, rex Anglorum, king of the English. Perhaps this is because the army is led by one of their own, the late Duncane’s son Evander, and they knew Duncane as a fair and honest king, and though he was sickly, their harvests were good under his rule and their land prospered. The same cannot be said for this new Macbeth.

Macbeth, who sequesters himself in this remote castle. Macbeth, who wed a fairy maiden from Breizh, and all the good this alliance has done him, for the Duke sees the largeness of the English army and sends letters to Glammis saying, It is treacherous to cross the channel now. But my ships will come soon to your aid.

When Roscille hears this letter read aloud, she curls her fingernails into her palm until small gashes form. She tries to imagine herself in her father’s place. The ermine knows when it is time to grow his white winter coat and hide away while the skinny, hungry animals tear the forest apart. But Wrybeard also knows that an alliance cannot be so easily broken. Even if he does not count the loss of Macbeth’s army, even if he does not fear Macbeth’s retribution, the world still must see that the Duke of Breizh is, mostly, an honest and honorable man. Otherwise, he will never earn the faith of another lord again.

She does not know what would be worse: dying under Æthelstan’s blade or her father rescuing her. She envisions Wrybeard climbing down from his carriage, her hurrying to greet him in the courtyard, wearing her garish cloak and her flimsy necklace.