Two
Roscille woke with sleep still gumming her eyes. Beneath that residue lay a second webbing: her bridal veil, which she had not removed. She had fallen asleep on the bear rug, and the fur was damp where her face had pressed against it. She rubbed at the spot; the wetness vanished, blending into the pelt. Bear fur dried quickly.
She stood and stumbled. Her bedchamber had no window, but she guessed it was morning; thin shafts of light pierced the cracks in the stone wall. She ran her fingers along the crumbling masonry, not checking the soundness of her new home, nor testing the toughness of her new prison, but judging the age of her new domain. It was all new to her, though to the world it was ancient. This castle had seen a hundred men who called themselves Lord, Thane, Mormaer, Yarl, or even King. How many Ladies had preceded her?
Roscille was wondering this when the door opened behind her. She jumped. Wedged in the threshold was a fair-haired man, not much her senior. It took a moment to recognize him. He was the one who had 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 realized he must be Banquho's son. He had the same wide-boned face, though fresher with youth, and wore the same pattern of tartan.
"Lady Macbeth," he said.
Gooseflesh rose on her skin. The new name was like a ghost that had suddenly inhabited her body. "Yes—good morning. Heir of Lochquhaber?"
"Fléance." He frowned. "Am I that much the portrait of my father?"
"The Duke has many bastards," Roscille replied. "Living among them nurtures a talent for matching features and faces."
The words were brusque—and she could not help it—laced with venom for her father. This venom nourished her, in a sick sort of way, like overripe fruit that tasted sweet on the tongue but turned to bile in the stomach. It was petty cruelty, with no strategy behind it, but she could not imagine it would offend Fléance. Surely he had no love for the Duke.
Yet Fléance kept 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 did not enhance her husband's pride.
"It is well past dawn," Banquho's son said. "The Thane likes for his wife to rise when he does. Even if you do not share a chamber." His ear tips turned pink when he said this. She supposed 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 said. "Please, will you bring me Hawise? My handmaiden?"
"I cannot. She has been sent away."
Her vision wavered, narrowed, then widened again until she was dizzy. "Why?"
"Handmaidens are not used in Alba," he said. "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," Roscille said. "I will dress and join him."
Fléance nodded. His frown receded tentatively. He had only one scar of battle that Roscille could see: the top of his blushing left ear was an inch shorter than it should be, mangled as if something—someone—had taken a bite from it. She would not put such a thing past these Scotsmen.
But the scar did not make him look hardened. He seemed, in fact, more boyish for it. It was not the sort of wound that suggested a brush with death, a sword slipping too close to the throat, an axe landing inches from his head. It was too clumsy for that. It looked like an accident of battle, not a deftly dodged killing blow. She understood his stubborn somberness now. He had not yet proven himself, and could not afford to look uncertain for a moment, even when speaking only to a woman.
"Good," he said. Relief flickered in his pale-gray eyes. "Come out when you are ready."
Roscille tried to be practical. She could dress and mourn Hawise at the same time. Instead of crying, she scraped the bridal veil off her face and rolled it up until it was small enough to fit in the corner of her trunk. She tried to wriggle free from the gown, but one arm got tangled around her back and the other crushed against her chest. A small sob escaped her teeth, more like a whimper. She could not remember the last time she had dressed or undressed herself.
She bit down on her tongue so that Fléance could not hear the confused, mewling sounds coming from her mouth. He said Hawise had 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 was only her proximity to Roscille that had saved Hawise 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 had seen it before, so many times, the same story playing out before her eyes with the relentless rhythm of needlework.
But the Norsemen were 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 flickered across Roscille's vision like a bird scuffling dazedly against a window. One quick, sharp shove, Hawise's mouth widening to a black circle as she went tumbling limply down the sheer face of the cliff. Her body would create a narrow gash in the water, a single streak of foam, and then it would be gone.
Roscille vomited into her hand and then wiped her palm clean on the bear rug. Enough. Enough. She escaped from the bridal gown and let out a shuddery breath.
She pretended she had done this a hundred times before. She took her plainest gray dress from her trunk. It tied in the back, no buttons, easy for her to put on herself. It had short, tight sleeves, and the stitching in the bodice pressed so hard against her ribs that it felt like there was no skin in between, just knotty thread grinding at her bones. And then the veil. Always the veil.
In Breizh, a married woman was expected to cover her hair, but Roscille would not even attempt to put on the complicated wimple and cornette herself, especially without a mirror, and besides, she did not know the customs of Alba in this respect. If women were meant to see to their own needs, surely they could not be expected to attire themselves so elaborately. No handmaidens, no wet nurses. No whores, even, as far as Roscille could tell. She left the white cloth of wifely chastity and opened the door.
If she had done something wrong in her dressing, she trusted that Fléance would correct her. But he said nothing, only nodded and led her back through the narrow corridors, toward the hall where they had feasted the night before. There were windows tucked high into the ceiling, crammed into odd corners of stone, and the sunlight strained through them jaggedly. Now, again, Roscille heard the sea shushing beneath her feet.
All traces of finery from the wedding banquet had been put away, not that there were many to begin with, and the hall was bleak and gray. There were five men huddled around the table on the dais, the same ones she recognized from last night but could not name. One was Banquho. Macbeth sat at the head. She had not noticed before, but his chair seemed too small for him; his cloak draped over the arms and the wood strained against the bulk of his shoulders.
"The Lady Macbeth," Fléance said. He did not bow, as one would to the Duke. No such stiff rituals here.
"Good," Macbeth said. "Come here, wife."
On numb legs, she obeyed. As she passed the men, she made an archive of each one in her mind. Here was the one who wore 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 called them in her mind.
Roscille sat beside her husband and folded her hands in her lap. Fléance hovered in the threshold but did not sit. There was no place for him, not even beside his father. Banquho hardly looked up at his own son. This caused a strange churning in Roscille's stomach.
"We are making plans for our assault on Cawder," said Macbeth. His callused fingers spread across the map. His thumb brushed the red flag that marked the seat of the Thane of Cawder. "It will be simple enough; my armies are larger."
He was really going to do it; he would invade Cawder. Many people would die—soldiers, yes, but also peasants whose villages were sacked and burned, even goats and sheep, so that those who survived were left with nothing but ash and gored livestock—all of this because she did not want to lie with her lord husband. All because she would not fulfill the duty that a thousand, thousand women had 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 felt like the nobleman, and the slave, and the lampreys, all at once. All she knew for certain was that she was not the emperor.
Bellona's bridegroom, they called Macbeth; Bellona, a Roman war goddess. He did not know how to sheathe his blade, even when he came to her bedside. He would damp the sheets with blood the same way he wetted the earth in Cawder.
Roscille consoled herself that most of those who would die were men—and how many of them had their own unwilling, unloved wives at home? How many of them had forced servant girls, even their own daughters? But one campaign would not end these abuses; the world would 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 said, pointing. "I have heard that the thane demands exorbitant tithes. They will surrender easily to a more merciful lord."
That depended on whether or not Macbeth could stand to portray himself as merciful. Her husband clenched and unclenched his fist.
"We will have to observe the rite of first blood," he said. "They will not respect my power, otherwise."
Roscille had read about this in the monk's books. It was a custom among the clans, when warring, to kill the first man they saw, dip their swords in his blood, and then taste it. Roscille considered this: In order to be seen as merciful, one must first be seen as powerful. There was no mercy that a sheep could show a wolf.
"We must think of this, too," Weasel-cloak said. He reached across the table and prodded the flag that marked the castle of the king. "Duncane."
His words cast the room in silence. All that could be heard was the sea, unremitting, beneath the gray stones.
"Yes," Macbeth replied after a moment. "If I take Cawder, he will wonder whether I plan to take more."
Of course. Appetites could not be sated by blood; they could only be whetted. Before Roscille even realized it, she was speaking.
"Then accuse the enemy of that which you may be suspected," she said. "Forge a letter that suggests the Thane of Cawder harbors plans to revolt."
Five men's faces turned toward her. Fléance's, too, from the doorway. Their eyes shifted with unease, with shock. Women were not meant to speak at war councils. But perhaps it could be forgiven, since Roscille was so young, a foreign bride, unaccustomed to the ways of the Scots.
"Consider," she went 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 scoffed, but Macbeth held up a hand to silence him.
"My wife makes a clever suggestion," he said. "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 slid down in his seat. Winter Fox thinned his lips. Weasel-cloak's vision fixed on her, his eyes two deadly points. But Banquho's face was open with interest. He could allow this, because he was more beloved by Macbeth than the rest. He did not have to fear that his Lord's new wife may slip between them. He was his Lord's right hand.
"I will rally my men," Banquho said. "The rest of you, the same."
"Good," said Macbeth. "Go to it. I will speak to my wife alone now."
But he did not speak to her. He rose in silence and beckoned her to follow. Roscille kept her eyes mainly on the ground, but occasionally she looked up and sneaked glances at him, her husband. There was a scar lacing his throat, white and rigid, like a worm in an apple. It was not a clumsy by-blow. It could not be anything but death, beaten back.
He took 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 rose, and so did the sound of their footsteps, as if the floor was growing thinner. At the end of this hallway was a door. Its iron grate withered with rust.
"A husband and wife should have no secrets from each other," Macbeth said. "And they should keep each other's secrets from the world."
Before Roscille could think of how to reply, he removed a key, tied to a leather thong around his neck. He fit it into the lock. The sea roared up at them, and then was curiously silent. Wood scraped stone as he pushed the door open.
Behind the door, blackness stretched out in all directions. It was not the barbarian blackness she first witnessed upon arriving in Glammis, the bleak edge of civilization. This was an unnatural darkness, such that would confound the pope himself. The air blowing toward them was damp and cold, and although light slid through the threshold behind them, it halted very suddenly, the darkness a wall it could not breach.
Macbeth took a step forward and there was a splashing sound. Water, he had stepped into water. Roscille blinked and blinked, but staring into the unchanging black made her eyes gummy, as if with sleep. Was she supposed to follow? The air had a terrible weight, like the pressure at the deepest chasm of the ocean.
And then: light. Filmy and indistinct, a single torch flared in the center of her vision. The reflection of the flame raced along the dark water, in clever beams and quick flashes. The water had a serpent's iridescent sheen.
Her husband stood in the center of the room, which was really a cave, rock formations jutting outward from the walls at strange angles. He was as silent and still as the rock itself.
The current juddered around him. Three different currents, all converging, sucking at the hem of his tartan. Three women stood in the water at a distance, backs hunched with age, hair scraggly and silver, each holding a sopping garment in her hands. Each woman slapped the water with her cloth, then wrung it out, then soaked it again. Submerged, lifted, submerged, forming her own tight, snarling whirlpool.
Roscille stumbled backward and fell against the mold-slick wall. She made a bleating sound of fear, of disbelief, which her husband did not seem to hear. Then she stood and crossed herself.
But the act felt like mockery: She invoked the Holy Trinity, the Father the Son the Holy Spirit, as the three women advanced toward her, their faces white as lightning. They were so thin under their own wet garments that each notch of their spines could be clearly seen. Their hair was so long that the ratty ends brushed the water.
"Buidseach," Macbeth breathed. The world was cold smoke in the air. Witch.
It was only then that Roscille saw the shackles around their bony wrists, and the long length of rusty chain that tied them all together. As they moved, it dragged against the cave floor. If they came any closer, they would strain their binds, and the metal would cut into their soggy flesh, which looked as though it would fall easily off their bones, like rot from a log.
"Macbeth," one of them said. Hissed.
The other two echoed her: "Macbeth." "Macbeth."
Roscille had read this among the monk's tomes: Duncane had written a treatise on witchcraft in Scotland. Witches existed; he had proven it. They killed swine and performed spells with their entrails. They sent storms to chase sailors to their watery graves. They turned men into mice, and women into serpents who swallowed them. They could hide in the skin of any woman, but they might be identified by their sharp teeth. Or by their silver hair.
In Breizh, there was no such canonical accounting. The Duke would not waste his efforts on the creatures of hell, just as he did not waste it on the matters of heaven: Only rarely could he be persuaded to attend Mass. In Alba, the punishment for witchcraft was death. What was the punishment for keeping witches as prisoners?
Macbeth cast his torch across the water. "I come to hear your prophecy. Tell me my fate."
Their eyes were milky white, with mortal blindness. Their noses were just notches in their faces. When the light caught them, their skin seemed to sizzle, like oil in heat.
"All hail Macbeth," the first one rasped, "Thane of Glammis!"
The other two clapped in approval, chains jangling. Their damp, soft flesh slapped together.
"All hail Macbeth," cried the second, "Thane of Cawder!"
And then, together: "All hail Macbeth! All hail Macbeth! All hail Macbeth!" They shouted and shouted, until their voices piled on top of one another, like heavy gouts of rain into the river, water upon black water. They shouted until the words blurred, their thin-lipped mouths open in bacchanalian glee, as if they were 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 turned to her, his face gleaming in the torchlight.
"You see," he said. "My lust for blood will be rewarded. We leave for Cawder at dawn."