Page 61 of Lady Macbeth

“You are a liar,” says Macbeth. But his tone is light, each syllable like a stone skimming the water. “He unfolded your tapestry of falsehoods, first how you fabricated this attack by masked men, then how you offered yourself, when the whip was raised against Lisander. Your body, stealing the pain from his. I did not understand the reasoning. I do now.”

“No,” says Roscille. Her heart is beating so fast she thinks it will crack itself open. “He is the liar; he wishes to absolve himself by blaming me—”

“Quiet. You are the Duke’s daughter. You learned such wiles at his feet.”

“I have no wiles,” she whispers. “I am just a lady.”

“You have never been just that,” he says. “Still, I did not easily believe him, Fléance. He has his own motives, even if his devices are clumsy. Perhaps, I thought, he did merely wish to avoid his own execution. One last effort, raving and wild. But he was perfectly calm as he relayed this to me. As he told me: You have been cuckolded in your own house, my Lord. Your loyal wife is not so loyal. She hides her true face and her tawdry secrets beneath her veil. She lay with the prince of Cumberland while your back was turned.”

Every drop of blood in her body turns to flame. The fire rushes to her face, flushes her cheeks.

“No,” she manages. “Fléance means to divert from his own betrayal.”

“This is what I thought at first, too.” Macbeth’s hands tighten on her hips, until his fingers are pressing so hard into her skin through the gown that they will certainly leave bruises. “But then I thought—weeks I have been lying with her, every night, and nothing has taken root in her womb. She is long past her first blood and the fault cannot be with my seed. It can only be that another’s seed has been planted first. You carry the prince’s monstrous spawn.”

The words are stolen from her mouth. She chokes on the rising bile in her throat.

“Please,” she says, when she can speak. “You cannot believe him. It is not true.”

He shoves the flat of his hand against her belly, so rough that it knocks the breath from her. “Do not lie to me.”

Roscille stumbles, and barely manages to catch herself before she topples backward into the water. There is something that sounds like the wind, cutting through the salt air, but it is actually a whisper, which passes among the witches, through them, as if they are hollow. Her name, made into a warning.

All three, together: “Lady Macbeth.”

“No,” her husband snarls. “No Lady Macbeth, never again. And your father will not have you back, defiled by a foreign prince whose body is merely the shell of a monster. You are nothing now. A whore with no name. Nurse your demon child here in the dark.”

He pushes her again, and she realizes he was restraining himself, before. Even as he pried her legs apart, even as he ground himself against her hips, he did not show his full strength. His unshackled cruelty now is breathtaking. Though hobbled, nursing this ugly and incessant wound, his power seems beyond that of a mortal man: a depthless brutality, his eyes aflame with anger and hate.

She falls. Twisting back on herself, gown tangling around her legs. Her face hits the water first and plasters her veil to her cheeks and nose and mouth. For a moment, her sodden clothes prevent her from surfacing, and there is a silver bolt of panic, a flash that whitens her vision like lightning, until she is able to claw herself up and onto her knees, and fumble for her veil.

But she cannot catch Macbeth in the path of her gaze. He is already turning. He limps through the door and then shuts it behind him. All light is thieved from her eyes.

Fifteen

Dark and dark and dark. At first she sinks into it, like a sandpit. The air and water seem to be made out of the same stuff, two miasmas of blackness, only one denser than the other. She paddles through the water and swims through the air. Reaching, stumbling. At last, she feels two hard, bony hands grasp her under her armpits. With surprising strength, she is hauled upward, onto her feet.

Left Witch: There you are.

Roscille: No, please. I cannot be here.

Right Witch: This is what we all said, at first. Your eyes will adjust.

Roscille: But what will I do?

Left Witch: Laundry, of course.

Roscille: What will I eat?

Right Witch: You can break the bones of eels between your teeth. They are softer than you expect them to be. And when you have been long enough here in the dark, you will lose your mortal vision, and you will see only what is to come, not what is or has been. Your mouth will lose its shape and mold to the speaking of prophecy. Have you noticed we no longer have lips? Well, what do we need them for? There is no one to kiss. Ha! Imagine that.

Roscille: Please. I am not like you.

Gruoch: Not now. Not yet. But you will be, if you stay. That is why you must go.

Left Witch: Go? There is nowhere to go! He may not have put you in chains, but you are trapped here, the same as we are.

Right Witch: Fool girl. If we could leave, do you not think we all would have left?