Page 58 of Lady Macbeth

I am Queen now, she imagines saying, chin raised in defiance.

Her father looks down on her, an indulgent contempt on his face. You are whatever creature I make you.

Yet still some nights Roscille prays he will come. She prays he will take her away from this gray, evil place where witches live in chains beneath the floor. She wants to ride through the damp green forests of Breizh and cool her feet in the ice-white waters of the Loire. But then when she stands and brushes off her knees she is angry at herself, for missing the home she was banished from, for mourning the father who tossed her away. Nothing more than a lovely face.

A lovely face, and a body that shrinks into the mattress while her husband pries her legs apart and grunts into her ear, This one will be a boy, an heir. He would be wiser to father a son on Senga. At least then his line will not be tainted by her Brezhon blood. But Roscille would not wish this fate on anyone, especially not Senga, whom she has sworn to herself she will protect at any cost, who will not be like Hawise—I promise this. Senga comes to her in the morning with hard bread and cold milk.

“It will be over soon,” Senga says, stroking her forehead. “Your husband does not have the vices like some other men. Once you have fathered him a son, he will stop.”

It will never be over, she thinks. Even when he is finished, he remains inside her, her brain streaked through with purple and black vapors, the color of the blood on his knee. The wound that will not close. The wound that stains the sheets so badly that Senga must wash them every day. Roscille wants to tell her to bring them downstairs to the basement. The laundresses will take care of it. They are good for nothing else.

The only way to exorcise her husband’s foul spirit is this: Every day, when she sits in the room with the war council, blind, she listens for news of the beast. She almost cannot breathe the whole time, fearing that the doors will slam open, and someone will drag its enormous head inside, leaving a path of blood and entrails. But there is no word of the dragon, and she thanks God—if God could ever be disposed to protect such an appalling creature. And when her husband’s body arches over hers at night, sweat from his brow dripping onto her impassive face, she imagines it is Lisander, instead, fierce in his passions, yet less a monster than this man Macbeth.

The war still feels hazy and unreal until one morning Roscille awakes to the sound of clanging blades. Her husband has long left the bed. She stands and walks over to the window. The clanging sound is coming from the courtyard, where there are easily a hundred men gathered, more than she imagined the space could hold.

They are pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, most of them on foot, only the leaders on horseback: Winter Fox and Mountain Goat and Weasel-cloak. Macbeth is there, shouting, waving his arms. He is giving instructions, but if Roscille could not make out the words, she would think him a lunatic, the kind that stands outside of taverns and nurses the old wound on his head that struck him simple. It does not help that he limps. He has refused every Druide twice, three times over.

It is almost too far away to see the men’s expressions—almost. But their rugged Scottish faces are crimped and twisted into unhappy scowls. Bewildered lines on their brows. Each one of them has knelt and sworn his loyalty to Macbeth, Macbethad, Macbheatha, Thane of Glammis, Thane of Cawder, King Hereafter, yet now many look as though they regret it. The old king was infirm of body. This new King seems infirm of mind. Madness is not a place, Roscille thinks. It is a long way down a winding corridor.

One man steps out from his line. He wears a gray-blue tartan, not clan Findlaích. He is the son or grandson of some man who promised loyalty to Macbeth, but this promise has worn thin with the generations. Roscille moves closer to the window, curling her fingers around the bars.

Man: We will lose our homes and families to Æthelstan’s army if we do not even attempt to make peace. A summit. There must be some effort—already hundreds are dead. How many Scots will you accept slain before you meet Æthelstan at the table? These are not the actions of a king.

Macbeth pauses and his arms drop to his sides. The corner of his lip twitches—Roscille only knows this because she has seen the expression on his face many times; she is very distant from him now, and could not recognize it otherwise.

He approaches the man. He asks, “What is your name?”

The man tells him. Roscille cannot hear it.

Macbeth says, “And what were you promised by that dead, disloyal Banquho to foment strife here?”

Man: Nothing. I have never spoken to Banquho in my life. I protest this for the sake of my children and my wife. My village is next for the slaughter.

A beat of silence. Even the wind quiets itself.

“You do not deserve to wear that battle tartan,” Macbeth says, “or carry that sword. Leave this place. Flee like the traitorous coward you are. You know nothing of Macbeth. I am King Hereafter. Defeat is impossible—as impossible as the forest rising and marching upon the hill. No man of woman born can slay me.”

Man: This is madness you speak. It is no wonder your own right hand turned on you.

Roscille knows what will happen next. She almost does not want to watch, but she finds she cannot turn her head away, cannot close her eyes. Macbeth draws his sword, and despite his wound, despite the madness that makes the edges of him turn fuzzy and strange, the movement is swift. Skilled. Bellona’s bridegroom was not an epithet given without cause. The death blow he delivers is as practiced and inevitable as a needle working through embroidery. Blade jabbed in. Blade drawn out. Blood spurts from the wound and from the man’s mouth.

He chokes and falls to the ground, where he writhes for a moment and then goes still. The other men do not move as the wind ruffles their hair and beards, their tattered flags, their mismatched tartans. Macbeth raises his sword and licks the end of the blade. Blood glistens on his lips.

“This is the fate that awaits any man who questions my power,” he says. “Take this body and cast it into the sea. Let the fish feast on his flesh.”

“There must be an execution.”

At the sound of her husband’s voice Roscille looks up from her sewing. She has been embroidering a pattern of moonflowers onto a bolt of fabric that will someday be a gown. It is difficult to imitate the tiny, trumpeted petals. She stitches vines that twist and tangle along the border of the frock, serpentlike. She has been hours at this mindless toil. When Macbeth enters, Senga immediately rises and sees herself out, though she casts a worrying glance at Roscille.

Roscille puts down her needle and hoop. “Why an execution?”

“The traitor son of a traitor has been rotting in the dungeon for weeks,” Macbeth says. “It would be wise to make an example of him. The other men question my strategies and doubt my power.”

Roscille wonders why he is telling her this. Although she has sat in his war rooms, bound and silent, he has not asked her counsel in a long time. Perhaps he merely thinks she will be happy to know how and when Fléance will die. In this, at least, he is right.

“I thought you might help devise a punishment,” Macbeth says. “Your father is well known for his prudent violence.”

He is going to punish her for Wrybeard’s inaction. Maybe that will hurry along the Duke’s ships: a blackened eye on his beautiful daughter’s face, a bruise pulsing on her cheekbone, a wound that cannot be hidden under her skirts, that will make all men gawk and stare. Or perhaps he has already given up on the alliance and will merely sate his anger on Roscille instead of on her faraway father. She thinks of Agasia, that rudely forced wife, passed between her husband’s men like a quaich, a sip for each one. Panic stops her breath.