Page 35 of Lady Macbeth

All hail Macbeth, Thane of Cawder.

All hail Macbeth, King Hereafter.

“I do not know how to keep a castle,” Roscille says at last, weakly.

“You will have help. I am leaving Banquho and Fléance behind.”

Bewilderment shadows her thoughts. Fléance has proven himself, however falsely, an able soldier. Banquho promised him time on the battlefield, swore that he would not be forsaken again. And Banquho himself?

“But my Lord,” she says, true puzzlement in her voice, “Banquho is your right hand.”

Macbeth’s gaze rests upon her for a long moment. She cannot read the emotions behind his eyes. Lisander’s words return to her. Your right hand is clumsy. Perhaps these words, spoken merely to rile and taunt, are truer than she imagined.

“A great warrior can fight just as well with his left,” Macbeth answers finally. “They let the prince escape. I cannot worry that they may falter again.” He pauses. “And I have not forgotten the treachery among my clan. I will not risk you to more of these masked cowards. Banquho and his son will serve and protect you, in my absence.”

Is this attachment? Affection? Surely it is intended mostly as a punishment for Banquho and Fléance, for the extremities that failed him, but it would be punishment enough to be left behind without suffering the ignominy of serving a woman in the place of their Lord. He disgraces his own most loyal men to feed the honor of his wife. Roscille tries harder to read the look on Macbeth’s face.

She tries to see herself, from his eyes. Here is the foreign bride who is learning to speak Scots like a native. Here is the girl asking for a cloak made from the creatures of her new homeland. Here is the Lady who has killed for him three times over, and then washed the blood from her hands and pretended to shrink and simper under her veil. Here is a witch who wears her manacles like bracelets, who calls her shackles armor. Here is the wife who has served him in every manner a wife is meant to serve her husband. Except for one.

She has arranged herself into a shape that pleases him. She sits comfortably in the order of Macbeth’s world. And for this she has earned his prophecy. Queen Hereafter.

A vision spreads out in front of her, a waking dream. The pool of lampreys, bordered neatly by stones, the eels swimming in their unending circles. Their lithe bodies twist in and out of the water, silver spines braiding the blackness. Light and dark and dark and light. Her reflection ripples in the pool’s center.

The lampreys converge on her, blind mouths feeling for flesh. Within moments, Roscille of Breizh has been consumed. Lady Macbeth stands above the water, and the eels resume their circling, waiting for the next creature that will be pushed before their teeth.

“Your faith honors me, my Lord,” Roscille whispers.

He does not know that she once prayed for his death. Tried to push him before the blades of his enemies. He does not know that she needfully opened her legs for another man.

“You have proven yourself worth honoring,” says Macbeth. He takes the rag from her hand, drops it into the bucket. “I know that Glammis will be well kept in your care. And I will expect a messenger soon, bearing the confessions of the prince.”

Roscille swallows.

Macbeth suddenly clasps her by the shoulders and pulls her toward him, crushing her body against his bare chest. His skin is cold, damp. Hard and ridged, practically stone. Roscille feels his stillness spreading to her, like lichen blooming white on deadwood.

Then he leans down and presses one brusque kiss to her forehead, through the fabric of the veil. His lips are rough. The kiss reminds her of a dog’s tongue, rasping her palm. He holds her more tightly after that, for just a moment, and she is seized with terror, wondering if she is meant to return this gesture, somehow.

But then Macbeth lets her go and strides across the room. He approaches the large wardrobe, carved in oak wood. He opens one of the doors, ancient hinges mewling. His hands seek something inside of it.

After several moments pass, he turns to her again. One hand is a closed fist, the other an open palm. Resting on his palm is a rusted key.

“This is under your purview now, too,” Macbeth says. “Should you choose to seek counsel in my absence.”

The rusted key fits a rusted lock. The rusted lock is inside a rusted door. Behind the rusted door is that imperfect darkness, cut through with scythes of light. A single torch, pulsing, making the water crease and pucker.

There is the primal magic upon which Macbeth’s power has grown, swelled like roots in the rain. Roscille remembers another story from antiquity, the story of a nobleman who cut down the trees in a sacred grove. Nestled inside one of these trees was a wood nymph. His axe sliced cleanly through her delicate skin, her slender divinity parting under his blade. When the goddess to whom the grove was dedicated saw her death, she bade the spirit of Famine curse this nobleman, so that he hungered endlessly and would never be sated. He ate up everything within the reach of his hands, and then he ate himself.

This nobleman was a fool. He should have kept the nymph in chains and bound the goddess to his bidding. Roscille takes the key and slips it into her bodice. The cold metal slides neatly against her cold flesh.

The courtyard again, at dusk. Every soldier girded and braced. Horses snorting and kicking up dust. Everything is washed in a dim gray light, wrung through the clouds that stretch over Glammis like wet cloth. Men are jostling one another to fit in this small space, and still there are more soldiers spilling out past the open barbican, trailing down the great hill. Roscille can count half a dozen different war banners rising above the mass of bearded heads. Each one bearing a clan’s sigil, and the clansmen gathered in their matching tartans beneath it.

Winter Fox and Mountain Goat and Weasel-cloak are among them, shouting over all this disjointed noise. Macbeth struts his horse in front of the crowd, back and forth, to swelling cheers.

“All hail Macbeth!” the men cry out. “King of Scotland!” Their swords jab the air.

There are only two men without armor or horses. Banquho and Fléance stand on either side of Roscille, swords at their sides, arms folded across their chests. Neither hides his face: Storm clouds bloom and burst on their brows, and their eyes burn red like embers. Fléance’s scar looks not nearly as garish as he had hoped. In this light, it shrinks into his skin.

Weasel-cloak trots over to Macbeth and presses the flanks of their horses together. He is in his position at Macbeth’s right. This is where Banquho should be.