Chapter Fourteen

Fourteen

In Roscille's short and mostly sheltered seventeen years, war had never come to Naoned. She always believed it was because the Duke is clever—the ermine knows how to hide himself from hawks and preys only on soft-toothed rabbits and mice. War is for arrogant men like the Parisian prince, or weak men who cannot dissuade their enemies. Here Roscille cannot think of an example because the names of weak men are like charcoal to be dusted off your boot.

Now she thinks war is as inevitable as weather. It has seasons, some redder than others. War came to the other counties and duchies of France with the riotous color of changing leaves. Little wars like saplings, easily struck down before they could flower. Great wars that covered Blois and Chartres in a hoarfrost of corpses. The pope and the House of Capet promise a green and eternal summer: peace, so long as they rule this fractious land.

Wrybeard and the other dukes and counts snort into their goblets. But the ermine is a hibernating creature. He grows white fur against the winter; he will stay fat in his den until the air is warm again and hunting is easy. Naoned, a thicket of safety, insulated by her father's wiles.

Here, in Glammis—where Roscille is Lady, even Queen—safety is the bleak and barren landscape. The soldiers which will be spotted from the castle's battlements and then slain with arrows before their war cries even reach Roscille's ears. The rocky hill littered with dashed-open skulls; the yellow grass smeared with brains. And she will be safe in her cloak and her blood-colored necklace and her blindfold, which she must now wear always in the company of men.

She stands on the parapet that faces down the hill, imagining this. Senga is at her side. The slope before her is sheer, dangerous. Beyond it, the copse of fairy trees, protecting that silver pool inside. It is tiny against the vast emptiness of the landscape. A copse. She would not call it a wood.

Until the wood comes high upon the hill.

Roscille looks at Senga. "Is your village down there?"

Her village, where her children live still, their love mingling with shame. Old enough to work means old enough to fight.

Senga nods. "It is the last village that ?thelstan's army will loot and burn. Then they will reach the castle."

They will not reach the castle. Because there is no wood and trees cannot uproot themselves and walk in rows like soldiers. Roscille blinks wetness from her lashes. It is starting to rain.

"What do ladies do, in war?"

Senga says, "You tell me. You are the Lady."

"But I have never been in a war."

There is the little furrow between Senga's brows that Roscille has come to recognize. It is familiar, from the first day she came to the castle. All the rest has changed: Her circles and lines have vanished with nights spent on a down mattress instead of straw; she wears slippers now instead of clogs; her hair is combed neatly and tied back in a plait. She raises a newly smoothed hand and touches Roscille's cheek.

"We will both learn together," she says.

The rain falls in heavy gouts that turn the window glass marbled and milky. The dirt of the courtyard becomes mud. Tartans grow so wet that their colors and patterns cannot be distinguished from each other. When men stomp into the castle, they shake the water out of their hair and beards like dogs. There are many men now, faces Roscille is not permitted to see, names she cannot connect with those faces. Once upon a time—or if she were Roscille of Breizh, still—she would have memorized them all in an hour, and something about them too, a bit of their soul that shines from them like a slant of light through a crumbling wall.

Now. She sits in her husband's council meetings, blindfolded. The voices run over her like water. ?thelstan's army has taken twelve border towns and burned them to cinders. Pillaged the grain stores and butchered the cows. Raped the women and enslaved the men. The soldiers eat themselves strong on stolen food and stolen wine, and with each passing day, the army grows larger and closer.

Unexpectedly, many Scotsmen have defected to ?thelstan, rex Anglorum, king of the English. Perhaps this is because the army is led by one of their own, the late Duncane's son Evander, and they knew Duncane as a fair and honest king, and though he was sickly, their harvests were good under his rule and their land prospered. The same cannot be said for this new Macbeth.

Macbeth, who sequesters himself in this remote castle. Macbeth, who wed a fairy maiden from Breizh, and all the good this alliance has done him, for the Duke sees the largeness of the English army and sends letters to Glammis saying, It is treacherous to cross the channel now. But my ships will come soon to your aid.

When Roscille hears this letter read aloud, she curls her fingernails into her palm until small gashes form. She tries to imagine herself in her father's place. The ermine knows when it is time to grow his white winter coat and hide away while the skinny, hungry animals tear the forest apart. But Wrybeard also knows that an alliance cannot be so easily broken. Even if he does not count the loss of Macbeth's army, even if he does not fear Macbeth's retribution, the world still must see that the Duke of Breizh is, mostly, an honest and honorable man. Otherwise, he will never earn the faith of another lord again.

She does not know what would be worse: dying under ?thelstan's blade or her father rescuing her. She envisions Wrybeard climbing down from his carriage, her hurrying to greet him in the courtyard, wearing her garish cloak and her flimsy necklace.

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 ?thelstan'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 ?thelstan 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.

"What makes you cringe from me now?" Macbeth demands. "Do you not want to play a part in killing this man who is your enemy? Perhaps you have some clever ideas of how to defile his corpse."

Her heartbeat slows, but only just. He does not mean to punish her, at least not now. He has already gotten his fill of violence somewhere else.

"I have no ideas, my Lord," she manages.

Macbeth regards her in a strange way, his face showing both satisfaction and disgust. "Are you not your father's daughter?"

She does not know how to answer that.

Instead, she replies, carefully, "You should ask Fléance himself, instead. Pretend you are his friend still. Tell him you will be punishing someone else in his stead. Ask him what their punishment should be. He will devise a method of execution that is most abhorrent to him. And that will be your best vengeance."

Macbeth rests a hand against the wall to steady himself, to take the weight off his left leg. After a long beat, he says, "My clever wife."

"A wife is only as clever as her husband permits her to be."

She hates herself for saying this. But every moment she is sitting here, in a chair, with embroidery in her lap, is a moment she is not being whipped or forced or made to kneel. Her life has been cleaved into two simple halves: the time when there is pain, and the time when there is not.

The corner of Macbeth's mouth lifts in a smile. He approaches her, and Roscille holds herself rigid in her chair. He takes her face into one of his hands and leans down and kisses her forehead. He gives a little huff of pain as he does. It sounds just like the way he breathes when he works himself over on top of her. She sits there, turning to stone, until Macbeth rises and leaves her.

The next day, Roscille smells smoke from down the hillside. It is distant, but when she walks onto the parapet, she can see filthy gray clouds blooming just above the line of the horizon. There are many things which could be burning: Grain stores. Houses. Stables. Sheep, cows, horses, women, men. Children made orphans with the wink of a blade. ?thelstan's army is so close.

From the parapet, she also observes the conversations in the courtyard. Men are gathered, but fewer and wearier with each passing day. Their beards are sticky with blood. Their tartans are ragged. Their shoulders are stooped. The rain has come and it has gone, so their horses are ornery and tired looking. Macbeth remains on horseback when he does his rallying. It does not show his limp quite so badly.

Mountain Goat has died in the fighting. His men are jostling with anger over it. Macbeth says, "Are you all chickens? Can you not survive without a head?"

He is not quite making sense. Ripples of discontent pass through the crowd. But no individual man dares to speak against him—not after that first time. Macbeth kicks his horse and urges it to Winter Fox's side. A few inaudible words pass between them. Winter Fox hangs his head. Then Macbeth's horse trots away.

Winter Fox: I will lead today's showing against ?thelstan. Our King has business here at the castle.

The men cannot stifle their murmurs of protest now. Scathing sounds drawn from the backs of their throats. This is not the behavior of a king. Not the behavior of a righteous man. Bellona's bridegroom, who will hide himself in his castle walls while his soldiers die for him? Reith, who will keep his sword and beard unbloodied?

Macbeth says, "I promise all who fight today will be honored forever in history. Your sons and grandsons and great-grandsons will remember the nobility of this fight. How you drove the insatiable lion from the unicorn's land. And whoever brings back that green prince Iomhar's head will have a place of honor at my table, at my side, always. I am in search of a new right hand."

The wind howls through the courtyard. It scatters the men like birds.

Roscille sits while Senga braids her hair. They are both on the floor, kneeling, cushioned by the bear-rug. Its fur is still thick and vital, even in death. Its yellowed teeth show no cracks.

Senga says, "I will braid your hair in the style of Alba. Yes?"

"If you like," says Roscille, listless.

"So you will seem more a queen."

Queen Hereafter. King Hereafter. All these prophecies have come true, save for the false ones she stuck into the witches' mouths. Now she thinks of these final auguries: No man of woman born. Until the wood comes high upon the hill. She picks the words apart. Perhaps they are like glyphs or pictographs, disguising a code within. The Duke had spymasters who invented such ciphers for him, so that he could hide treacheries beneath pleasantries. These men were always light-footed as mice and spoke in whispers. Narrow men, their shoulders held high and tight. Roscille admired them. They saw what lay beneath the world everyone knew.

She had even entertained the thought of becoming a spy, as a child, but of course there are no lady spymasters. Roscille looks in the bucket of water she is using a mirror, watches Senga plait her hair. Her skin grows cold when it is lifted from her neck. With its pale color, it looks like she is wearing a coronet of bone.

Beautiful. Lisander's words return to her.

Unnatural, she protested. Strange.

No. You have been made to fit a shape that confines you.

Roscille shoves the bucket of water away until she can no longer see. The last person to style her hair was Hawise.

Abruptly, she looks up, jostling Senga's hands. "I will not let harm come to you," Roscille says.

Senga frowns. "What do you mean, Lady?"

"There is no safety here," she says. "Not while Macbeth lives and breathes. And he will always live and breathe."

"How do you know?"

Because the wood will never ascend the hill. Because there is no man who is not born of woman. But Roscille does not say this. Instead, she says, "I will give you what coin I can gather, and disguise you well. In the night, you will slip out of the castle. You will have what clothes and supplies you need. You must find your children before ?thelstan's army arrives at your village, and take them with you. The coin will get you far enough."

Senga drops her hands, and Roscille's hair falls back down upon her shoulders. She is silent for a long moment. "And what about you, Lady?"

Roscille draws a breath. "A queen does not forsake her people," she replies bleakly.

Another long moment passes. Very gently, Senga holds Roscille's chin and turns her gaze toward her. With a half smile, she says, "And a handmaiden does not forsake her Lady."

Roscille breaks Senga's grip on her face and turns away again. If she looks too long at Senga, she will weep. And she cannot risk her husband seeing tears on her cheeks. He does not wish her to feel any emotion he himself did not engender in her.

As if summoned by thought alone, the door is then forced open. Senga quickly slips the veil back over Roscille's face. Macbeth stands in the threshold, so broad that he blocks the torchlight from the corridor.

"My Lord," Roscille says, and dips her head.

"Lady Macbeth." There is something in his voice. She cannot say what it is, but all the small hairs on her arms stand up, as if prickled with cold. "I have just finished with Fléance."

"Oh." Her cheeks heat. "And did he tell you what you wished to know?"

Senga's hand rests on her shoulder. Her handmaiden's fingernails curl, digging just slightly into her skin. She shifts, an infinitesimal movement, barely detected, the muscles rolling in her shoulders—almost as though she plans to throw herself between Macbeth and her Lady. But Macbeth's stare keeps them both pinned into place.

"He told me very interesting things," Macbeth says. "Come, wife. Let us go."

He leads her down the twisting labyrinth of corridors, which Roscille now knows even blind. But he does not force her to wear the cloth over her eyes—why? If once she believed she understood her husband, and his wiles, she now feels as adrift as she did her first day in Glammis, shivering in the heathen cold.

Macbeth limps in front of her; Roscille trails behind.From this vantage point, she can see his wound well: the way itsucks at the wool of his tights, pulling the fabric into the wet, open gash. It seems impossible that he can still support his own enormous body. Sometimes the kitchen boys in Naoned would cruelly tie up a dog's front leg and laugh while it hobbled around, whining at this confusing loss of function. When Roscille saw this it made her angry enough to wish herself a man, so she could enact violence upon them.

The corridor narrows, and the torches on the wall grow dim, showing only black scorch-marks instead of light. At the end, the wood-rotted door with its rusted iron grate. The ocean's gnashing teeth behind it. Did the last prophecy not satisfy Macbeth? What more could he want than the total assurance the witches offered him?

Roscille risks this question: "Has something happened to displease you?"

It could be many things. The seething men in the courtyard. The nearness of ?thelstan's army. The lingering hurt of Banquho's betrayal. But Macbeth scarcely looks at her as he says, "Yes. But it will be righted now."

Then he turns the key in the lock and the coldness captures them both, as though they have been snatched up into the claws of the cruel old goddess of winter. Beira, that is her name here, in Alba. They also call her caillech, divine hag. Half woman she is, and half horned beast.

Now les Lavandières shuffle forward, dragging their chains through the water. Gruoch is in the center, holding her laundry, stretching like spider silk between her hands. Their wet white hair clings to their scrawny necks. Roscille cannotimagine what new prophecy her husband wishes to beg off them. What fear does he want them to assuage?

Macbeth stands on the steps; he does not drop downinto the water, does not move toward the torch. And, morestrangely, he does not say a word. He merely waits until the witches have reached him there, closer to the door than Roscille has ever seen them. The light that leaks in from the corridor shines on their faces, their knobbed fingers. If they lived in the upper world, they would be midwives, wet nurses, widows who bathe the feet of brides.

They stand there waiting, rocking slightly back and forth, as if buffeted by wind. There is no wind, of course, and without their washing, the cave is silent and still. Roscille tries to meet Gruoch's gaze, but she cannot pierce through the milky mortal blindness.

" Buidseach, " Macbeth says. The word curves out, cold, in the black air. Gruoch opens her mouth, but Macbeth holds up a hand. "No, do not speak. I do not come asking for counsel or prophecy."

Gruoch's mouth snaps shut. A dog, commanded: Quiet!

Roscille looks at her husband. A slow dread unfolds within her.

Very slowly, Macbeth reaches for her. His hands find hershoulders first, and then run down her torso, grazing her breasts, coming to settle at her waist. She is wearing a cloth belt, but this will not stop him. Will he really take her here, in the damp darkness, with les Lavandières as witness? Is this her punishment for Wrybeard's apathy? He does not need to provehis power in front of the witches; already they are shackled and chained, and surely he has already had Gruoch this way, the First Wife. Roscille despises her own cowardice, but she cannot help drawing in a sharp little breath.

"Ah," says Macbeth. "You think me unworthy of your affections?"

"No, my Lord. It is not—it is cold here." Pitiful reasoning. Behind her, the black water bunches and then flattens, like fabric.

"I spoke to the traitor's traitorous son," Macbeth says."Of course I asked him what you proposed I ask. I said I was seeking to punish another, and what should this manner of torture be? I did not speak of you, Lady Macbeth—no, Roscilla—no, Roscille of Breizh—yet somehow your name was in his mouth. He believed I sought to punish you instead. Why, I asked him. He looked at me almost pityingly, as if I were a miserable fool. To be pitied by a man in chains, with a sword dangling over his head. Why did he speak of you, Roscilla? Why did he look at me this way?"

The question is not a question. It is a snare laid under the false cover of leaves. One incautious step and she will be strung up. "I—I do not know, my Lord."

"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 somethingthat 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.