Page 17 of Lady Macbeth

“Seek out treason,” murmurs one.

“I do,” says Macbeth. “But so far I have failed in finding it. What counsel will you give me?”

The witches murmur unintelligibly among themselves. Roscille wonders if they even know she is here. They have never given any evidence of it. Is her presence nothing, not even a shift in the currents of stale air?

“No counsel,” the center one says at last. “Prophecy, again. Would you like to hear it?”

Macbeth’s face is damp, icy condensation gathering on his beard. “Always.”

“All hail Macbeth,” the leftmost one says. “Thane of Glammis.”

“All hail Macbeth,” the rightmost one says. “Thane of Cawder.”

There is a pause. Water drips somewhere in the silence.

“All hail Macbeth,” the center one says. She raises her head to the ceiling, to the jutting rocks that pierce the air like daggers, to the water that falls like sand through the siphon of an hourglass. “King Hereafter.”

And then they are slapping the water and shouting, in their unrestrained, freakish joy, as a stone hardens in Roscille’s throat and drops down into her stomach, as Macbeth turns to her, a look of disbelief on his face, which soon molds to pleasure.

“All hail Macbeth!”

“All hail Macbeth!”

“All hail Macbeth!”

“You have heard it,” Macbeth says, in breathy awe. “King Hereafter. Once told, the prophecy cannot be undone.”

He returns to her, trudging through the water. The witches scream behind him, so loud that Roscille cannot believe it is not heard beyond these rooms, that it does not echo through the halls, their sound and fury signifying what carnage is to come.

Macbeth nearly slips on the steps, and thrusts his arm out to catch himself. Roscille does not know what possesses her to do this, but she reaches for him in turn, catching his arm, steadying him. The smile on her husband’s face is almost innocent. But this innocence looks deranged in the darkness, with the witches howling, with their words turning the air smog-choked and filthy.

“Do you understand?” Macbeth asks, when he has righted himself. He holds both of her wrists in one hand, dragging her until their faces are close.

Roscille’s heart flutters. “I am only a woman—”

“No,” he says. His grasp on her is tight enough to bruise. “You are Lady Macbeth. Queen Hereafter.”

Five

Roscille slides her hand through the bars of the kennel and the dogs all press toward her, yipping and sniffing, rasping their rough tongues across her palm. A dozen mouths are snapping and sinewy with spittle. Pink tongues loll over curved yellow teeth.

She has always liked animals. They do not cringe from her, unlike men. Also, they are uncomplicated. Amoral. They are concerned with merely their own survival and the idlest of pleasures. Even if it means bringing misery—a rabbit’s neck snapped in those powerful jaws, a rival male turned on his belly and made to whimper.

Roscille consoles herself that she is doing the same thing, surviving. Her fingers grow damp with the dogs’ licking. They must be tasting the oil of the morning’s meal on her skin. Yet the more she tells herself she is not terrible, the less she believes it. A dog is always terrible to the stag it has cornered or the fox it has treed. She removes her hand.

At least the steady flow of peasants to the castle has ceased. The prophecy has overtaken her husband’s mind, made his fear of treason small by comparison. But what blood has been stemmed for now will be compensated soon; Roscille knows that.

King Hereafter. The dogs whine, pushing their muzzles against the bars.

As if her thoughts have summoned him, Macbeth enters the kennel. The wooden doors are barely parted, just wide enough for Roscille to slip through slantways, and he does not pause to push them open farther with his hands; he lets his large, puffed-out chest split them apart. Light falls in a single beam, striping the dirt.

She has been crouched and now rises to her feet. “My Lord.”

He does not ask why his wife has been kneeling among the dogs. “Lady,” he says. “Fléance tells me you have the letter.”

A cold feeling spreads in her stomach. “Yes,” she says. “Here.”

Roscille reaches into the folds of her skirt and removes the sealed parchment. She has kept it on her person since the moment she first stamped the wax. She gives it to Macbeth and says, “Fléance helped me to compose it.” Another thread tying them together.