Chapter Two

Two

Roscille wakes with sleep still webbing her eyes. A second webbing, underneath the first, her bridal veil, which she has not removed. She fell asleep on the bear-rug, and the fur is damp where her face pressed against it. She rubs at the spot and the wetness vanishes, blends with the pelt. Bears have good fur that dries quickly.

She stands up and stumbles. Her bedchamber has no window, but she guesses that it is morning: There are cracks in the stone wall and thin shafts of light come through. She runs her fingers along the crumbling stone, not checking the soundness of her new home, nor testing the toughness of her new prison, but rather judging the age of her new domain. It is all new to her, though to the world it is very old. This castle has seen a hundred men who have called themselves Lord or Thane or Mormaer or Yarl or even King. How many Ladies have preceded her?

Roscille is wondering this when the door opens behind her, and she jumps. Wedged in the threshold is a fair-haired man, not much her senior. It is a moment before she recognizes him. He was the one who splashed water on her feet last night, the one who scowled as he took the last sip from the quaich.

Staring at him more intently now, she realizes he must be Banquho's son. He has the same wide-boned face, though fresher with youth, and he wears the same pattern of tartan.

"Lady Macbeth," he says.

Her skin rises with gooseflesh. The new name is like a ghost that has suddenly inhabited her body. "Yes—good morning—heir of Lochquhaber?"

"Fléance." He frowns. "Am I that much the portrait of my father?"

"The Duke has many bastards," Roscille replies. "Living among them nurtures a talent for matching features and faces."

They are brusque words and—she cannot help it—laced through with venom for her father. This venom nourishes her, in a sick sort of way, like overripe fruit that tastes sweet on the tongue but will turn to bile in your stomach. It is petty cruelty, with no strategy behind it, but she cannot imagine it will offend Fléance. Surely he has no love for the Duke.

Yet Fléance keeps frowning. Perhaps she should not have used the word talent. Let them never think of her as boastful of her own abilities. She should brag of nothing that does not enhance her husband's pride.

"It is well past dawn," Banquho's son says. "The Thane likes for his wife to rise when he does. Even if you do not share a chamber." His ear tips turn pink when he says this. She supposes that a court so absent of women would make even a man her own age prudish. "You are wanted in his hall."

"I shall join him there," Roscille says. "Please, will you bring me Hawise? My handmaiden?"

"I cannot. She has been sent away."

Her vision wavers, narrows, then widens again, until she is dizzy. "Why?"

"Handmaidens are not used in Alba," he says. "Women must care for themselves, see to their own needs. It is our custom. We do not use wet nurses, either, as you do in Breizh. To let your child suckle from another's breast—there is something foul about it. When your child comes—"

"I understand," says Roscille. "I will dress and join him."

Fléance nods. His frown recedes tentatively. He has only one scar of battle that Roscille can see: The top of his blushing left ear is an inch shorter than it should be, mangled like something—someone—has taken a bite from it. She would not put such a thing past these Scotsmen.

But the scar does not make him look hardened. He seems in fact more boyish for it: It is not the sort of wound that suggests a brush with death, a sword slipping too close to the throat, an axe landing inches from his head. It is too clumsy for that. It looks like an accident of battle, not a deftly dodged killing blow. She understands his stubborn somberness now. He has not yet proven himself, and cannot afford to look uncertain for a moment, even when he is only speaking to a woman.

"Good," he says. Relief in his pale-gray eyes. "Come out when you are ready."

Roscille tries to be practical. She can dress and mourn Hawise at the same time. Instead of crying, she scrapes the bridal veil off her face and rolls it up until it is small enough to fit in the very corner of her trunk. She tries to wriggle free from the gown but one arm gets tangled around her back and the other gets crushed against her chest. A small sob comes through her teeth, more like a whimper. She cannot remember the last time she has dressed or undressed herself.

She bites down on her tongue so that Fléance cannot hear the confused, mewling sounds that are coming out of her mouth. He said that Hawise has been sent away, but to where? Not back to Hastein and the other Northmen; her father would not take a girl so spoiled by the luxury of Wrybeard's court, so dishonored by her servitude to a delicate little maiden of Breizh (a witch-marked girl, at that). Sent back to Naoned? She would not survive there. It is only her proximity to Roscille that has saved her from the abuses suffered by other servants and handmaidens: pregnancy by some brusque, ugly means, and then kicked hard enough in the stomach to make the inconvenience of an infant go away. Roscille has seen it before, so many times, the same story playing out before her eyes with the relentless rhythm of needlework.

But the Norsemen are so loathed in Alba—and would it not be quicker, easier, sparing the expense of a carriage and a driver and two horses, and then a ship to meet them at the channel—the image flickers across Roscille's vision like a bird scuffling dazedly against a window. One quick, sharp shove, Hawise's mouth widened to a black circle as she goes tumbling limply down the sheer face of the cliff. Her body creates a narrow gash in the water, a single streak of foam, and then it is gone.

Roscille vomits into her hand and then wipes her palm clean on the bear-rug. Enough. Enough. She escapes from the bridal gown and lets out a shuddery breath.

She pretends she has done this a hundred times before. She takes her plainest gray dress from her trunk. It ties in the back, no buttons, easy for her to put on herself. It has short, tight sleeves, and the stitching in the bodice presses so hard against her ribs that it feels like there is no skin in between,just knotty thread grinding at her bones. And then the veil. Always the veil.

In Breizh a married woman is expected to cover her hair, but Roscille will not even attempt to put on the complicated wimple and cornette herself, especially without a mirror, and besides, she does not know the customs of Alba in this respect. If women are meant to see to their own needs, surely they cannot be expected to attire themselves so elaborately. No handmaidens, no wet nurses. No whores, even, as far as Roscille can tell. She leaves the white cloth of wifely chastity and opens the door.

If she has done something wrong in her dressing, she trusts that Fléance will correct her. But he says nothing, only nods and leads her back through the narrow corridors, toward the hall where they feasted the night before. There are windows tucked high into the ceiling, crammed into odd corners of stone, and the sunlight strains through them jaggedly. Now, again, Roscille hears the sea shush ing beneath her feet.

All traces of finery from the wedding banquet have been put away, not that there were many to begin with, and the hall is bleak and gray. There are five men huddled around the table on the dais, the same ones she recognizes from last night but cannot name. One is Banquho. Macbeth sits at the head. She did not notice before, but his chair seems too small for him; his cloak drapes over the arms and the wood strains against the bulk of his shoulders.

"The Lady Macbeth," Fléance says. He does not bow, as one would to the Duke. No such stiff rituals here.

"Good," Macbeth says. "Come here, wife."

On numb legs, she obeys. As she passes the men, she makes an archive of each one in her mind. Here is the one who wears the blanched weasel cloak, this one the winter fox, this one the shaggy mountain goat. All different shades of white, some yellowed at the edges with age, others splattered with the rusty hue of dried blood. Weasel-cloak, Winter Fox, Mountain Goat, she calls them in her mind.

Roscille sits beside her husband and folds her hands in her lap. Fléance hovers in the threshold but does not sit. There is no place for him, not even beside his father. Banquho hardly looks up at his own son. This causes a strange churning in Roscille's stomach.

"We are making plans for our assault on Cawder," says Macbeth. His callused fingers spread across the map. Histhumb brushes the red flag that marks the seat of the Thane of Cawder. "It will be simple enough; my armies are larger."

He is really going to do it; he will invade Cawder. Many people will die—soldiers, yes, but also peasants whose villages are sacked and burned, even goats and sheep, so that those who survive are left with nothing but ash and gored livestock—all of this because she does not want to lie with her lord husband. All because she will not fulfill the duty that a thousand, thousand women have fulfilled before.

There was a nobleman in Rome who fed his slow or displeasing slaves to a pool of eels: lampreys. It was a death of hours, of needle-thin teeth. This nobleman was rebuked for doing so in the presence of the emperor. One slave threw himself at the emperor's feet and begged for a different death. What a display of barbarity! In disgust, the emperor ordered the lampreys killed and their pool filled. Roscille feels like the nobleman, and the slave, and the lampreys, all at once. All she knows for certain is that she is not the emperor.

Bellona's bridegroom, they call Macbeth; Bellona, a Roman war goddess. He does not know how to sheathe his blade, even when he comes to her bedside. He will damp the sheets with blood the same way he wets the earth in Cawder.

Roscille consoles herself that most of those who will die are men—and how many of them have their own unwilling, unloved wives at home? How many of them have forced servant girls, even their own daughters? But one campaign will not end these abuses; the world will always birth more men, and more women for them to claim. It would take power beyond which any human might possess to rearrange the natural order of the world.

"His castle is ringed with mining villages," Banquho says, pointing. "I have heard that the thane demands exorbitant tithes. They will surrender easily to a more merciful lord."

That depends on whether or not Macbeth can stand to portray himself as merciful. Her husband clenches and unclenches his fist.

"We will have to observe the rite of first blood," he says. "They will not respect my power, otherwise."

Roscille read about this in the monk's books. It is a custom among the clans, when warring, to kill the first man they see, dip their swords in his blood, and then taste it. Roscille considers this: In order to be seen as merciful, one must first be seen as powerful. There is no mercy that a sheep can show a wolf.

"We must think of this, too," Weasel-cloak says. He reaches across the table and prods at the flag that marks the castle of the king. "Duncane."

His words cast the room in silence. All that can be heard is the sea, unremitting, beneath the gray stones.

"Yes," Macbeth replies after a moment. "If I take Cawder, he will wonder whether I plan to take more."

Of course. Appetites cannot be sated by blood; they can only be whetted. Before Roscille even realizes it, she is speaking.

"Then accuse the enemy of that which you may be suspected," she says. "Forge a letter that suggests the Thane of Cawder harbors plans to revolt."

Five men's faces turn toward her. Fléance's, too, from the doorway. Their eyes shift with unease, with shock. Women are not meant to speak at war councils. But perhaps it can be forgiven, since Roscille is so young, a foreign bride, unaccustomed to the ways of the Scots.

"Consider," she goes on in a rush, "you will not only be free of suspicion, but you will look all the more loyal to Duncane, for snuffing out Cawder's rebellion before it starts."

Mountain Goat scoffs, but Macbeth holds up a hand to silence him.

"My wife makes a clever suggestion," he says. "We will do this— she will do this. Duncane will recognize my hand, but not hers. The Lady will pen the letter herself."

Mountain Goat slides down in his seat. Winter Fox thins his lips. Weasel-cloak's vision fixes on her, his eyes two deadly points. But Banquho's face is open with interest. He can allow this, because he is more beloved by Macbeth than the rest. He does not have to fear that his Lord's new wife may slip between them. He is his Lord's right hand.

"I will rally my men," Banquho says. "The rest of you, the same."

"Good," says Macbeth. "Go to it. I will speak to my wife alone now."

But he does not speak to her. He rises in silence and beckons her to follow. Roscille keeps her eyes mainly on the ground, but occasionally she looks up and sneaks glances at him, her husband. There is a scar lacing his throat, white and rigid, like a worm in an apple. It is not a clumsy by-blow. It cannot be anything but death, beaten back.

He takes her down another narrow hallway, in the opposite direction of her chamber, then down a set of crumbling stairs to an even narrower corridor. The sound of the sea rises, and so does the sound of their footsteps, as if the floor is growing thinner. At the end of this hallway is a door. Its iron grate withers with rust.

"A husband and wife should have no secrets from each other," Macbeth says. "And they should keep each other's secrets from the world."

Before Roscille can think of how to reply, he removes a key, tied to a leather thong around his neck. He fits it into the lock. The sea roars up at them, and then is curiously silent. Wood scrapes stone as he pushes the door open.

Behind the door, blackness stretches out in all directions. It is not the barbarian blackness she first witnessed upon arriving in Glammis, the bleak edge of civilization. This is an unnatural darkness, such that would confound the pope himself. The air blowing toward them is damp and cold, and although light slides through the threshold behind them, it halts very suddenly, the darkness a wall it cannot breach.

Macbeth takes a step forward and there is a splashing sound. Water, he has stepped into water. Roscille blinks and blinks, but staring into the unchanging black makes her eyes gummy, as if with sleep. Is she supposed to follow? The air has a terrible weight, like the pressure at the deepest chasm of the ocean.

And then: light. Filmy and indistinct, a single torches flares in the center of her vision. The reflection of the flame races along the dark water, in clever beams and quick flashes. The water has a serpent's iridescent sheen.

Her husband stands in the center of the room, which is really a cave, rock formations jutting outward from the walls at strange angles. He is as silent and still as the rock itself.

The current judders around him. Three different currents, all converging, sucking at the hem of his tartan. Three women stand in the water at a distance, backs hunched with age, hair scraggly and silver, each holding a sopping garment in her hands. Each woman slaps the water with her cloth, then wrings it out, then soaks it again. Submerges, lifts, submerges, forming her own tight, snarling whirlpool.

Roscille stumbles backward and falls against the mold-slick wall. She makes a bleating sound of fear, of disbelief, which her husband does not seem to hear. Then she stands and crosses herself.

But the act feels like mockery: She invokes the Holy Trinity, the Father the Son the Holy Spirit, as the three women advance toward her, their faces white as lightning. They are so thin under their own wet garments that each notch of their spines can be clearly seen. Their hair is so long that the ratty ends brush the water.

" Buidseach, " Macbeth breathes. The world is cold smoke in the air. Witch.

It is only then that Roscille sees the shackles around their bony wrists, and the long length of rusty chain that ties them all together. As they move, it drags against the cave floor. If they come any closer, they will strain their binds, and the metal will cut into their soggy flesh, which looks as though it would fall easily off their bones, like rot from a log.

"Macbeth," one of them says. Hisses.

The other two echo her: "Macbeth." "Macbeth."

Roscille read this among the monk's tomes: Duncane has written a treatise on witchcraft in Scotland. Witches exist; he has proven it. They kill swine and perform spells with their entrails. They send storms to chase sailors to their watery graves. They turn men into mice, and women into serpents who swallow them. They can hide in the skin of any woman, but they may be identified by their sharp teeth. Or by their silver hair.

In Breizh, there is no such canonical accounting. The Duke would not waste his efforts on the creatures of hell, just as he does not waste it on the matters of heaven: Only rarely can he be persuaded to attend Mass. In Alba, the punishment for witchcraft is death. What is the punishment for keeping witches as prisoners?

Macbeth casts his torch across the water. "I come to hear your prophecy. Tell me my fate."

Their eyes are milky white, with mortal blindness. Their noses are just notches in their faces. When the light catches them, their skin seems to sizzle, like oil in heat.

"All hail Macbeth," the first one rasps, "Thane of Glammis!"

The other two clap in approval, chains jangling. Their damp, soft flesh slaps together.

"All hail Macbeth," cries the second, "Thane of Cawder!"

And then, together: "All hail Macbeth! All hail Macbeth! All hail Macbeth!" They shout and shout, until their voices pile on top of one another, like heavy gouts of rain into the river, water upon black water. They shout until the words blur, their thin-lipped mouths open in bacchanalian glee, as if they are expecting wine to pour from the very air and down their throats.

Perhaps Roscille should drink from it as well. Her plan, once merely callous, now made blasphemous, vulgar, truly evil, sanctified by these unholiest of creatures.

Macbeth turns to her, his face gleaming in the torchlight.

"You see," he says. "My lust for blood will be rewarded. We leave for Cawder at dawn."