Page 46 of Lady Macbeth

Lisander does not speak. He only swallows again, hard, throat bobbing. And then without a word he kneels.

His hands venture hesitantly, gently over the backs of her thighs, feeling the uneven landscape of scars. For a moment they were gone, the water paring away her ugly flesh and making it new. But that moment was a blink, and they are here again. She is so afraid he will now only see her as this broken, pitied thing. That, she cannot bear.

Roscille kneels beside him in the water. She touches her forehead to his.

Then she kisses him. It is a remorseless kiss. But still she feels his hesitation, the way his lips fumble to open under hers, and he pulls away and says, “Do not make me the monster now, in this human body.”

She shakes her head fiercely. “I have vanished from myself. Please help me return.”

So when she kisses him again, he does not pull back; without contrition, he obeys her. Their bodies join, knitted at the hips, beneath the surface of the water. It is so easy, the way he slides between her thighs, the way he slips into her: almost formless, a spiritual possession. Any pain that comes is invited. It is her pain, an ache she has welcomed; it belongs to no other creature, no other man. And there is the pleasure to match it, ecstasy running alongside the agony, two parallel cords that knot together in the throbbing place at the bottom of her belly.

When the knot unfurls, it sends tremors through her own body, to the tips of her fingers and toes. Lisander shudders. Below their joined waists, the water blooms pink, like the opening of a rose.

They lie there in the grass, like an oyster shell split open, facing each other as mirrored halves: their noses the point of fastening. Morning light is leaking through the leaves. Soon the castle will be awake, the husband will be awake, searching for her. Roscille closes her eyes and breathes.

“What am I to do?” she whispers, when she opens them again. “I have nothing to return to but chains.”

Lisander’s lashes flutter. She can see his weariness, how sleep will take him at any moment. Roscille wants to hear him say: Stay, then. But even he cannot stay. The creature is a fire, licking at him from the inside out. He says, in a voice thick with exhaustion, “I will be here, as long as I can be myself.”

“No,” she says, with a bolt of panic. “Macbeth is hunting you. He has spread news of the dragon from the peak of the island to its pit. He is offering untold fortune to the man who brings him your head.”

At this, Lisander stirs. Blinking, he says, “Evander will never meet him at the bargaining table then.”

“Macbeth does not care about that anymore. He says all of Alba will kneel to him, and then he will beat back Æthelstan without difficulty.”

“He will not. Æthelstan’s army is larger than anything Macbeth can scrounge together, if he does not die of a blade to the back first.”

Roscille is not so certain. Banquho is back at his side, his Lord’s right hand. Fléance has escaped the fetters she tried to set upon him. All the machinations she thought so clever have amounted to nothing in the end. Her father sold her as a pleasure slave, and now that is indeed all she is, no canny ermine disguised in bridal lace. How long until she falls pregnant, and Roscille is stamped out beneath the feet of Lady Macbeth?

“This will be the last you see of me.” Roscille gathers her cloak to her chest, holds it tightly, though it contains no warmth. “I will follow the fate of his first wife. I know it now.”

Lisander sits up, brow furrowed. “How do you know the fate of his first wife?”

“She was a witch-marked woman, too. It is not hard to guess.”

Lisander frowns. She is in love with the way he looks almost boyish in these moments, when he confers with himself in his own mind.

“Macbeth was once a forgettable lord,” he says. “His father was Thane of Glammis, yes, but he was a second son, unexpected to inherit the title. His elder brother was a warrior, such a one that the Scots respect above all others, battle-scarred and battle-ready. So Macbeth was likely to be passed over, as most second sons are.

“Since he had no status to be envious of, he chose a wife without the king’s consultation. This woman was herself a widow—odd, to be a widow so young, and without children from her first marriage, to some other lord of Scotland. She had no particular beauty, nor charm. Her house was not a great house. It confounded many when Macbeth chose her. Even then, though he was to inherit nothing, he was known for being adept in his dealings. The Scots do not respect this virtue so much as Lord Varvek does, of course. Still. It appeared to all to be strange.

“So this woman—she was not well liked, even in Macbeth’s own household. She was cruel to her servants; she did not entertain visitors. Macbeth was curiously unperturbed by all of this. He insisted it was a marriage for love. A foreign thing, for Scots. But my father was moved by this sentiment. His marriage, too, had been for love.” Lisander smiles crookedly, humorlessly.

Roscille listens, feeling her heartbeat thrum in her chest. “Go on.”

“So this woman, this Lady Macbeth, decided to host a banquet for her husband’s family, whom she had shown little regard up until then. Macbeth’s father came, and of course his elder brother. Wives and children. There was nothing unusual about it, until the food was served. It is said that the stew had an odd taste, but there are few who can even remember such a thing. For anyone who touched that food with their tongue was suddenly overcome with great, heaving coughs. Their faces turned blue; their throats squeezed shut. Lady Macbeth had fed them all poison. The rest of Macbeth’s clan, slaughtered. The women and children, too.”

Her blood goes cold.

“How?” she manages. “How was Macbeth not executed for this crime? Patricide, filicide. His soul is damned forever. Nothing can wash it clean.”

“Because he said it was his wife’s doing, his wife’s ambition for him to become Thane of Glammis.” Lisander pauses. “The king came, and the chancellor. They found poison berries in Lady Macbeth’s chamber—how easily she could have snuck them into the food.”

Men love nothing more than to be proven right. This strange wife. They were right to suspect her all along. So clever! So perceptive! They must have thought themselves thus, preening in their unstained clothes.

“She was executed for this, of course.” Roscille closes her eyes. The darkness of her vision is pricked with red.

“No,” Lisander says. “There was a trial organized. My father, in those days, still aping the civilized ways of England and Rome. Lady Macbeth was to be kept in chains until she was summoned before judge and jury. That same old cell, in the dungeon.” His gaze travels past her, remembering. “I was a boy then. I saw her only once, a brief passing in the corridor. She was already in her chains. There was little to remark about her, save this—her eyes were very pale. Almost like water.”