Ten
"There was once a king in Alba. A virtuous, noble king, who sought always to do what was right, and was praised handsomely for it. He wed a worthy woman, fair in looks and well-bred. They loved each other as a fish loves water—a love so deep that the absence of one from the world was inconceivable to the other. So, by the purity of their love, the queen fell pregnant with a son.
"In the flower of his fame, buoyed by such good fortune, the king went hunting in the forest. It was dawn, and his knights and huntsmen were eager, joyful in their intent. They were after a mighty stag, one worthy of being mounted with pride in the king's great hall. The king rode ahead, with the dogs and huntsmen at his heels, and a squire at his side bearing his hunting bow, quiver, and spear.
"But the king was led astray by his horse, wandering from his war party. Beneath a spreading tree, he saw a doe with her fawn in company. The creature was the purest white—a doe, yet oddly, it bore horns.
"'Its fur will be a lovely prize,' the king thought, 'in which to robe my wife.' He drew his bow and let his arrow fly. The arrow struck her hoof, and she fell to the ground at once. Yet the arrow turned back in flight and struck the king on the thigh, so violently that he was filled with a sudden and overwhelming rage.
"The deer lay upon the grass. She sighed in anguish, and then, astonishingly, her form began to change. She assumed the shape of a woman, beautiful beyond all conception, naked, with hair the color of moonbeams.
"The king loved his wife dearly, and he had wished to honor her with the creature's pelt. But the nature of man is not such that it can be undone entirely by simple affection. The king still had a man's desires, his hungers, and his vices. And so when he thrust into the bleeding woman, it was not with the point of his sword.
"When he had finished, her blood had soaked the grass. She raised her head with great effort, and then she gave forth speech:
"'I die here, alas, slain by covetous mortal hands. Sorceress you shall call me, witch; for centuries to come, the birth of your line's firstborn sons will all bear the mark of my vengeful magic. As you have stolen from me my natural form, so too will my power steal the forms of your sons.'
"Then the woman—the witch—laid her head back upon the grass and died. The earth ate up her body, so that by the time the king's squire arrived, there was only the fawn, shivering and bleating for its mother. The squire bore the injured king back to the castle, where his wound was bound and treated. And when he saw his wife with her swollen belly, he fell to his knees before her and confessed all.
"The king had never been an especially pious man. Yet as his son grew in his mother's womb, he prayed and prayed, hoping that he might be released from the witch's curse. He summoned priests, clad them in gold, and kept a dozen at his side always, to pray for absolution.
"Never did he receive God's answer. His son was born in blood and sweat and darkness, and he feared the curse might take his wife from him, too. But she did not die, though the son she gave forth was a strange child, dark of hair where both parents were fair, pale of skin where his mother and father were lively and red.
"For days, the child did not sleep. He wept through all hours of the night, writhing every moment as if in secret agony. The queen could not settle him. He did not wish to feed. And then, at last, when he slipped into a troubled slumber, the king saw the fruit of the witch's curse: In his crib, while sleeping, his son became a monster.
"In these early days, it was easy to contain him. The creature had a child's body and a child's strength. He could be strapped down in his bed. But as the boy grew, his monstrous sleep-demon grew as well. A separate chamber was built for him, with no windows and only a small iron door, too narrow for the beast to slip through. All the servants in the castle were sworn to secrecy, forced never to speak of the roaring they heard through the halls, on pain of death.
"The queen bore another son, this one taking after his parents in appearance and manner, fully mortal, untainted by the witch's curse. But this birth weakened the queen, and soon after she died. In the absence of his beloved, the king sickened, too, though he was not mercifully relieved of his prolonged existence. He aged, every day in diminished agony. His firstborn son aged, too, and with him, the monster.
"In his grief and fury, the king sought out all witches and enchantresses in his kingdom, any woman who showed a strangeness. Yet when he questioned them, they all said the same: that the curse of a witch cannot be undone by any except the witch herself. And the witch who cursed his son was dead.
"And that is how the crown of Alba came to be worn by a withering king, and promised by inheritance to a monster."
Lisander's voice grew lower and lower, until it could scarcely be heard at all. As he spoke, his hand gripped Roscille's tightly. She lifted her gaze, her unguarded gaze, and met his eyes. They gleamed as if lit from behind by torches. His pupils were so black that she could see herself reflected within them. Her face, revealed at last: bloodless skin, pointed chin, and something strange, something wrong, that she could not name. An aberration that ran through her like a crack in the earth itself.
"So now you have heard it all." His voice was strained, as if something pressed down on his throat. "I am Alba's curse, and my father's shame. Any affection he had for me was born of guilt, nothing more. He wished to name me king only because he thought it might absolve him. But he would set loose upon Scotland the cruelest, vilest creature. The beast I am cares nothing for crowns or rites or innocent lives."
With great difficulty, Roscille raised her head. "Do you think this frightens me?"
He did not reply. His eyelids were growing heavy.
"So you are no mortal man. I have seen what mortal men can do. I prefer a monster that shows itself openly."
Her legs felt so stiff she feared she might never move them again. The blood was drying now, sticking her to the floor.
"The bars are flimsy," he whispered. "They will not hold me. I do not know what it will do. What I will do."
Roscille turned up her hand, palm to palm, and laced their fingers together. She said, "Stay. Stay here until you cannot any longer. Please."
"I will." His voice was hoarse. Dim.
Roscille thought she could prepare herself for what she would see, but her mind had not fully returned to her. It was trapped in the animal of her body, still feeling the sting of every lash. And there was no preparing, anyway. In the half-light, she saw Lisander's clothes rip. His bones pressed up through his skin. There was the wet sound of tearing flesh—she knew this sound well now—and where he was once pale and unblemished, his chest now rippled with scales. They were the same green color as his eyes, iridescent in the glow of the torch.
It was horrible, beautiful, horrible, then perversely beautiful again. She saw how even his mortal form was made for this, a chrysalis that held the monster lovingly within it. His face vanished from the light, and when it emerged again, it was the head of a dragon. She had examined its poor reproduction a thousand times on tapestries, on the proud pennants of the kingdom of Wales, and now it lived and breathed before her. Scales and crescent-shaped teeth, each as long as a dagger.
Its body coiled like the serpent it was, and then stretched outward, wings unfolding from its back. They seemed papery, oddly frail, as if hesitant about flight. The last to change was his hand, still gripped in hers. His fingers tore open with the same violence, showing the claws beneath.
Lisander was right: The cell could not hold him. The dragon's teeth easily rent the metal apart, breaking the bars like twigs. And then he was free, long body unwinding, scales shimmering. She was amazed by the strength of its body, the thick muscularity of it as it curled over her, almost protective. Perhaps possessive. Dragons were jealous creatures, devoted to their hoards.
Roscille lifted a hand and ran it across the dragon's chest, down the long line of its belly. The scales were rough and smooth at once, like stones in the riverbed, and she was not afraid. If this was her different death, she would beg for it. She would sooner be consumed than taken apart, piece by fragile piece.
She had been turned on her back and the dragon was upon her. Her thighs burned. Despite being a cold-blooded creature, the nearness of its body, the pressure, filled her with warmth. She opened her mouth to speak, but all she could do was moan, half pained, half something more.
And then the dragon lifted off her, and with the beat of wings, it was up the stairs and crashing through the door. There were screams that echoed all the way down into the dungeon, the clanging of steel. The smell of fire and ash. It felt as if these sounds passed within seconds, but they must have gone on for longer, and when it was all quiet, and she knew the creature was gone, Roscille closed her eyes and let her cheeks run with stinging water.
The irony would have maddened her, if she let it: Banquho sent Senga to treat her wounds. So he had decided that this was women's work, that it was a good thing there was a woman here after all.
First Senga lifted her off the floor and dragged her up the stairs, to her bedchamber. The pain had become a familiar friend. Roscille did not make a sound until she was dropped with little ceremony onto the bed, and then it was only a huff of air, part relief, part expulsion of this overloyal agony.
"Was this because of me?" Senga asked. "Or because of the prince who escaped?"
Roscille pressed her face into the mattress. She could not think of a reply. The question was simple, why, but the answer was depthless. For the first time since arriving in Glammis, her mind did not twist inside a narrowing chasm, trying slowly to release itself. Now she was just meat, wrapped in twine. That was what it felt like, as Senga's tough hands rubbed cold water and peasant healing salves on her thighs.
They had not sent a Druid or a doctor to do this work because they did not want her to speak with a man whom she might enchant. Women could not be ensorcelled; Wrybeard had declared so long ago, and she had never covered her face in the presence of Hawise. But never mind that Roscille could barely concentrate on not becoming a corpse. Her breasts ached from being pressed first against the floor, and now against the mattress.
So much time passed before the pain withered into something bearable. In aching increments, her mind returned to her. Roscille considered what had gone wrong. She had overestimated her own cleverness. Underestimated the anger of men when their power was taken from them. She had let her heart move her. If she had said nothing while Lisander was on the wheel—if she had held the whip herself—she would be a porcelain queen still, no cracks in her face, no lampreys mouthing her bare ankles and feet. But her greatest failure, perhaps, was believing she might be more: more than her father's ermine, with its pitiless teeth, more than Lady Macbeth, tugged along by her husband's will like a dog on its leash. The arrogance of hope.
She slept at strange hours, each sleep threaded through with strange dreams. At first Roscille feared the pain would appear in these dreams, but no—they were mostly scales and teeth. The warmth and strength of the dragon's body over her own. She did not tell Senga, or anyone, this. She did not even articulate the images into words. Did not know how.
In the meantime, Senga brought her food and news from the castle. The food: hard bread, Scottish mutton. She would have committed sin for a piece of fruit, fresh with juice, soft enough to split down its center with her thumb. But nothing grew in Glammis. The news: Banquho had taken over the daily affairs of the keep. He had stopped sending the Druids to the villages, but he had let Senga stay, for now.
Macbeth was returning soon.
Fléance came to visit her, once. He wore a scarf over his own eyes; he was taking no chances. The part of her that was still a seventeen-year-old girl, an animal licking its wounds, wanted to insult him—to tell him he looked a foolish woman, shrinking and cringing from her. It was almost worth the promise of more pain, imagining the way his face would curdle with these words.
In the end, she merely said, "What is the state of your honor now?"
He drew a breath, puffing his chest. "You have no leave to speak to me of honor."
"Why not?" Roscille sat up, wincing. The pain still waited inside her like a coiled snake, ready at any moment to strike. "So you have beaten me, like a thousand women have been beaten before. There is no honor in that. And you will tell my husband I begged for it? To be flagellated for my failure? He will not blame me, for to blame me will dishonor him—he is the one who left Glammis in my hands. My failures are his failures. So stick stalwartly to your lies, but they will not save you. If you say I have no honor, I have no honor left to lose."
Fléance was silent. The wound on his neck and shoulder looked glossy, well healed, unobtrusive. It must embarrass him as much as the older wound on his ear. A child's scar. A boy playing at being a man. That was all he was, all he would ever be. Even Roscille could not make him into something more.
"You are a witch," he said at last.
"And yet you played so nicely with me, witch that I am. Eagerly succoring my schemes. That shame will not fade, Fléance, son of Banquho. Whatever lies you tell in this life, poison seeps through the generations. Get out. Let me see no more of you."
Soon Macbeth did return. Roscille did not go out to greet him in the courtyard, but she heard the barbican grind open, and hundreds of hooves beat against the dirt. Her room was windowless so she could not see him, could not see whether or not he came back grinning, proudly waving the flag of his clan, dust-caulked and bloodstained but joyous with violent triumph. This was the best she could hope for.
She had had a long time to consider what she would say to him. But the correct answer was: nothing. This was what men wanted most of all to hear from women. He would arrange his world, and she would slide wordlessly into the place he had made for her. She felt new to Glammis again, a wide-eyed foreign bride, halting in her Scottish and cowering under her veil. Her thighs were still so raw she could not bear to sleep on her back. She lay on her belly, gown drawn up over her hips, holding the pain at a slender distance.
Rough bootsteps on the floor jolted her from the bed. They were her husband's footsteps, the treading of a warrior, uncompromising and unfaltering. Softer, more hesitant footsteps followed his.
Macbeth pushed through the door, two attendants at his heels. She raised her gaze slowly, beneath the veil, taking in all of him. There was no blood in his beard, but he was dewed with the sweat of a long journey, his face red and wind-chapped. There were lines etched on his brow that Roscille did not remember being there when he left. As he walked toward her, Roscille realized, astonishingly, that those arrogant footsteps were not his at all. Her husband was limping.
The shock of this anger made her forget her previous plan to be silent.
"My Lord," she said in alarm. "You are injured."
"It is nothing," he said.
The attendants were carrying a large trunk between the two of them. By the way their arms trembled, Roscille could tell it was heavy, full. At Macbeth's direction, they set it down on the floor in front of him. Then he banished them from the room.
"Shall I see to your wound?" Roscille asked meekly. This was a stupid thing to say; she was no Druid, no handmaid either. But she was unmoored. She had never been able to envision her husband as fallible. Always he had seemed as impenetrable as stone.
"Forget the wound," he said. "Banquho has told me what transpired here while I was gone."
Her stomach pooled with dread. And then she did the second-best thing any woman could do. She clasped her hands over her chest and said, "My Lord, I am so sorry. I have failed you, dishonored you; there is no punishment I do not deserve."
But Macbeth was not happy with her pleading. She should have known; he may be mortal, but her husband was no ordinary man. He sought out witches as wives. He wanted women with teeth. Not too sharp, of course.
"Forget the honor, too," he said. "I have heard enough of this word from Banquho, honor and honor and honor. Enough. I am weary of it. Honor is an imagined thing, the refuge of weak men. Only power is real. So listen now, Lady Macbeth. I have taken Moray. It is mine. I have cast Duncane's crown into the fire and with its melted remains forged one of my own."
Roscille looked up at him and fashioned her face into a mask of admiration. "King Hereafter."
"And many of Duncane's allies have abandoned their own vows and fallen into line. The thanes who have not will be destroyed quickly, for Æthelstan will not have them, either. These dumb beasts forget how much the English loathe Alba. The lion and the unicorn will never make peace."
His words rumbled like thunder. The hatred between the English and the Scots was as old as the world itself. And with every passing year, more bloodshed watered the roots and made the animus grow new again.
"That is good," Roscille said hesitantly. "All of Alba will kneel to Macbeth."
He gave a single nod. "That is why I say forget honor. Forget these little wounds. The prince's flight is the greatest boon I could have hoped for. Now the whole island will know that Duncane's line breeds monsters. I have sent messengers in all directions to spread this news. Bards will sing songs of it in every noble's court. Criers will cry it in the street. And the man who brings me the head of the dragon will be rewarded so handsomely that the sons of his sons will want for nothing in their lives."
For a moment, all words were lost to her.
"But how," she managed at last, in a weak voice, "will any man slay such a beast?"
"All beasts may be slain." His eyes fixed on hers. "Open the trunk."
She had to kneel in order to open it. Bending her legs like this was agony, but she bit her lip against the protest that rose in her throat. Her fingers fumbled with the latches. They were trembling, diminished with so many days of disuse where she could not even bring herself to hold a quill. With great difficulty, she unclasped the latch and lifted open the lid.
Inside was a nest of white fur, pale and pure as snow. Roscille blinked in disbelief. Very slowly, she reached down into the trunk and drew it out: the cloak.
She was holding this dead thing in her hands. Turning it over, she saw the soft pelt of a rabbit, even its small paws intact. Then there was the fox, with its long bushy tail. A bird, a swan, its feathers as sleek as fletching. The shaggy fur of a mountain goat, brushed uncommonly neat. The ermine, the creature from Alan Varvek's coat of arms.
The cloak had a hood, as women's cloaks ordinarily did not. A horse's mane ran up the back, like a spine. She ran her fingers through it, disbelieving, her mind supplying only a single word over and over again: no and no and no and no. At the peak of the hood there were two ears, flattened, as if the creature was fearful even in death. And then there was the horn, spiraling, iridescent and conch-like, to its gleaming point.
He had really done it. Fulfilled the condition she thought was impossible, for there were only six white animals that lived on the soil of Scotland, and one of them was the unicorn. She did not believe he would dare, that the King of Alba would brazenly slay the symbol of Alba itself. But Macbeth dared anything.
"Blasted creature gored two hounds," Macbeth was saying. "Never hunt with another man's hounds, with dogs you have not fed from your own hand—that was my mistake, which I will not again make. And then with men who are not from your own clan, another mistake. This one was clumsy in his sprinting. Slipped his spear against my leg. I had him stuck in the pillory for two and a half days." He snorted. "Another king might have broken him on the wheel. Let them know Macbeth is a righteous man and capable of mercy."
As he spoke, he began stripping off his tartan. Roscille was too shocked to move, and his voice passed over her like water. He tossed the filthy plaid aside. Underneath, there was a stain spreading slowly across his wool stockings, blue-black. A wound, unhealed. She could see the spear sliding against the tender skin at the back of his knee—imagine any part of Macbeth being tender—the horrified look on the other man's face, the knowledge of his unforgivable error. Her husband, spitting venom and rage.
Ignorant to her horror—perhaps uncaring—Macbeth said, "Put it on."
The cloak. He meant the cloak. Roscille slowly drew the six deaths over her shoulder. There was a clasp at the front, where the ermine's mouth joined its tail in a perfect circle around her throat. Above it, the blood-colored ruby gleamed.
Macbeth regarded her for a long moment. Then he reached out and grasped her face in his hand. He held her chin between two fingers and turned her face this way and that, as if she was a piece of pottery he was examining for cracks.
"Beautiful," he declared at last. The pride in his voice—as if he was the first to utter this word, as if the word was a flag he was planting upon her. He had never reminded her of Wrybeard until this moment. But he spoke in the same tone her father did when he proclaimed, Perhaps you were cursed by a witch.
"Thank you, my Lord," she said quietly. "You honor me with this gift."
Too late, she realized she had made a mistake. Storm clouds rolled over Macbeth's face. "I told you I no longer care to hear this word. It is a virtue that is below me."
"I'm sorry." Roscille looked at the ground.
Or at least, she tried. Macbeth jerked her chin back up so she was forced to look into his eyes again. He tipped his own head, as if in consideration. Then he said, "Show me."
Her mind scrambled. "What?"
"Banquho told me what occurred, in my absence. I should like to see the state of my wife's body."
Briefly, Roscille became stone. Her thoughts all turned to nothing, and left her like smoke. The pressure of Macbeth's fingers on her chin brought her back to herself, enough that she could follow this rote command. With slow, halting movements, she unfastened the cloak. It slipped to the floor and piled there, an embankment of snow around her feet. Her feet were bare, had been bare for days, the days in which she had only slept and lived with the pain in her bed like a lover.
Macbeth let her go and she turned her back to him. Roscille drew her hands to her hips. She was wearing one of the dresses Senga had embroidered for her in the style of Alba. A muted, simple pattern that would be regarded as ugly in her father's court. Her fingers shook as she lifted her skirts, baring to Macbeth the backs of her thighs.
She heard the breath he let out. She heard him shift closer, lowering himself to examine her. She knew he would touch her, but when he did, she had to bite down on her lip to keep from making a sound. He pried at the skin of her thighs, kneading it with a removed scrutiny. Tears gathered in her eyes. He must know that it hurt but he did not care.
Macbeth rose again, with another quick breath that this time exposed his own pain, spiraling outward from the wound in his knee.
"Look at me," he said.
Roscille dropped her skirts and turned around.
"You should not have allowed this."
Her heart skipped its beats. "Why?"
"Lord Varvek swore that the daughter he offered was the most beautiful maiden in the world. You have disgraced your own form, and lessened the value of our marriage alliance."
Roscille's throat closed. She could barely choke out the words, "I am sorry."
"Do not be sorry," he said. "You are a queen."
And then Macbeth closed the space between them and pressed their mouths together. He kissed her, through the veil. The lace rubbed her lips to rawness. His arms circled her waist, pulling her against him, and she felt as small as a child, a doll. She managed to twist herself free, breaking his forceful kiss.
"There is one more condition—" she started. But Macbeth's eyes were black.
"Enough now, Roscille," he said. "I have indulged this custom and your frivolous wants for long enough. You are my wife and this is your duty. I am your husband and this is my right."
She reached for her veil, to tear it off, but he had her hands trapped at her sides. It only required one of his arms to do this. With his other arm, he reached out and extinguished the candles between his finger and thumb. The room plunged into darkness.
He shifted her onto the bed and removed the dress from her back. Cold air crackled on her skin. His heavy body arced over hers. And then Macbeth, Thane of Glammis, Thane of Cawder, King of Alba, the righteous man, took what was owed to him.
She was so angry at herself for this: her silence.
The abbey at Naoned had a book of saints in which all their various martyrdoms were accounted. Roscille remembered reading of one woman who was put to death for refusing to renounce her faith in God. She was burned alive at the stake. The book stated that she did not protest, did not even scream as the flames ate at her flesh. Roscille stole this book from the monks' library and brought it to her father. She was still foolish enough, then, to believe Wrybeard had any interest in cultivating the mind of his bastard daughter.
"What is the point of being martyred if you do not scream?" she asked. "Wouldn't it be thought that you do not care enough about your life to protest its end?"
The Duke looked at her with tepid interest.
"No worldly agony is greater than what our imaginations can conjure," he said. "There was no need for this girl to scream. Everyone who looked on could imagine her pain. The pain is the protest."