I turn my gaze to the crouching figure on the floor, this foreign princess he had the audacity to bring to our home. Her auburn hair is limp, her gown bloodstained. Cassandra is nothing more than spoils of war; a pretty toy Agamemnon meant to play with under my roof, proof of his perceived omnipotence.
But I’m the victor of this final battlefield. Her life is mine to take, as was his.
I take a step and then another, my naked feet charting a crimson path of ill intention. Yet her conviction gives me pause. Her words are calm, as if she has made friends with Fate. No pleading; no abject terror in those cerulean eyes of hers. Only a sour kind of sadness, the kind that knows how lives like hers must end in blood, has known for quite some time now, and is exhausted to be proven right. A bitterness not unlike bravery. I can relate to that. Perhaps …
But no. I shake away the summer flies of sudden kindness before they get into my eyes, darken my purpose. Knee-deep in treason as I am, I have no room for kindness. For mercy. The trip from Troy was long – and Agamemnon’s patience never was. For all I know, underthat slender frame of hers, this princess may be carrying his seed. Sparing her now might mean my future doom.
There can be only one Anassa of Mycenae.
My blade flickers in the candlelight, cracking Cassandra’s brave facade. She flinches, whimpers, but does not run. Better this way. If she tried to leave these halls without my say-so, my guards posted outside would gut her. They have their orders; and enough coin to ensure that no aid is coming to their late king’s rescue. There is no way out for her that does not result in steel. Had I been given such a choice, I would also rather die by a queen’s own hand.
‘Hush now,’ I tell her. I’d like to think my tone is motherly, not harsh. ‘It will all be over soon.’ I raise my knife.
The world explodes in pinpricks of gold.
I blink, my eyes adjusting to the eerie light, my bloodied hair whipping in a wind that wasn’t there before. Yet, what has changed? I am not unmade. No god’s wrath has struck me down for slaughtering a king. My feet are still planted on the tile floor, my arm still poised to strike. But Cassandra …
Cassandra stares at something other than the spectre of her looming death. Her gaze is right above my left shoulder, pupils wide in bewilderment. ‘Goddess,’ she whispers.
Trying not to let a sudden terror grab me, I turn around.
The light subsides just barely, enough for me to see. There is a door carved on the wall behind Agamemnon’s bath; a door that wasn’t there before. And through that door, like a curious crow crashing my coronation, an intruder on my triumph, steps a pale woman clad in black.
‘Claret,’ she rasps.
3. Lady Macbeth
I did what any queen would do.
I drank the witches’ poison before bed – and now the forest comes to claim us all.
When I wake up in the early hours of the night, I know nothing is all right. The wrongness is palpable and growing. The tangy remnants of the brew still smear my mouth, but when I try to raise my hand to wipe my lips, I find it trapped in something cold. Gritty.
Dirt! Who dares soil the Queen of Scotland’s bed –
But the feeble moonlight streaking through my chamber’s window reveals a scene too uncanny to have been a human’s work. I’m buried in my bed from the neck down, packed earth where my soft sheets should be, insects unseen crawling up my calves. A lesser person surely would scream; they’d call for help. But I have seen my husband grasp for things that weren’t there, grapple with ghostly visions in our banquets past. This must be the witches’ meddling, to test us, humble us. Determined, I turn to my side, shaking dry leaves and branches off me –the indignity. I try to grasp my bedpost, but find wet, silky moss in its stead, coating a porous surface. The canopy of decay continues when I rise from my bed, feet searching for my slippers but finding mushroom caps instead.
The forest has swallowed our castle whole.
Enough of this nonsense! I make my way from my chambers to the corridor, sagging under ceilings half-devoured by dense foliage. My naked feet stumble through thick roots. Some of my maids are gathered there, holding on to the mossy walls, exchanging worried glances by candlelight. Do they also see what’s happening, worry that they’re turning into trees themselves? They should be. The shadows they cast are long and thin, no longer resemblant of human limbs so much as the famous towering canopies of Dughall Mor.
I try to tell the maids about this witchcraft – but my tongue fails me. My words come out erratic, senseless. I bite my lips, trying to stop the salty tide of vowels and consonants. I have worried these poor women further, I can see that. Not that it matters much now, when our whole world is being engulfed by an advancing woodland. But losing control of my speech scares me. Must be that brew the witches gave me. I should have known better than to trust their malevolent ministrations. What havoc has it wrought on my body? Will my mind be next?
And where, pray tell, is my husband, the King? ‘My dearest partner of greatness,’ he called me, back when our plans were still as young as the first swallows of spring. Back when our hands were clean. I scrub my offending palm now, coated in old blood and fresh dirt, finding some solace in the pain’s quick sharpness as my nails scrape the skin. The smell of blood still stifles my breath; no matter what I do, I can’t get rid of it. My once so white hand, forever branded with a claret streak.
‘Thunder met and thrice a threat, yours is the path of claret,’ the witches had said.
They should have said something about this invading forest; about burying me alive. They will regret their half-truths, when I get to them.
If this forest of a castle lets me.
Making my way through creaking branches and needle-like leaves, I reach the upper west turret, the one that overlooks the Glamis Burn. Here my husband’s chamber remains empty, as he’s off to wage his war – empty, but equally conquered by the snaking branches, the creeping moss. I cast a glance at his dirt-laden bed, so reminiscent of mine, before I turn to the big balcony doors. The night is thick with fog, yet I can still make out the fires of the witches’ cauldron through the glass, near the silver river’s end. It burns like treason; both theirs and mine. What further horrors have I brought into our home, in my eagerness to give our stubborn fate the push it needs? What wicked trap have I laid for my lord?
My outrage fizzles out. Like a puppet whose strings have been severed, I feel the lead of tiredness sinking on my shoulders, on my knees. My hand, my bloody hand, grabs the iron handle of the balcony doors. Perhaps the foggy night air will wrap my soul in cotton. Perhaps it will grant me some reprieve from this infernal forest.
The doors burst open.
White light attacks my eyelids. The last thing I hear is the three witches singing somewhere far away; the last thing I feel is tree roots reaching for me as I fall.
