Page 20 of Lady Macbeth

“Not so rough, no,” Evander says. “We stopped over and took rest at the keep of Macduff. A day’s ride away.”

Roscille does not miss the way Macbeth stiffens at this name. She wonders if there is some private discord between him and this other lord, or if he merely bristles at any man who keeps close company with the king.

“Your chambers have been prepared,” Banquho says. “I hope tonight will prove restful as well.”

Evander then begins to thank his hosts, to speak of stag hunts and suppers, and of course ceremonies, to officially name her husband Thane of Cawder. Lisander is quiet and still. The gulf between the brothers seems vaster now than ever. It should be the elder son making such arrangements, dealing in pleasantries. What strange circumstances have occurred, to reverse their roles in a manner so extreme?

From beneath her veil, Roscille watches Lisander. She thinks she is being furtive, but evidently she is not—his gaze darts to her, as though he can feel her stare. His eyes are as green as a serpent’s tail and, set within his ashen face, curiously gemstone-bright.

It is then that her husband reaches into the pocket of his cloak and retrieves the letter. Her letter. Roscille’s blood grows cold. He passes the parchment to the king, whose hand rises, trembling, fingers carbuncled with gold rings. It is a long time before those thin fingers finally manage to grasp the letter. He stares down at it, blinking, straining to clear the moisture from his eyes but cannot.

“Father,” Lisander says. He steps forward, and without another word the king gives him the letter. The necklace seems to tighten around Roscille’s throat. Lisander breaks the seal and unfurls the paper.

“This was discovered among the Thane of Cawder’s things,” Macbeth says. “For a long time treachery has grown like rot in Cawder. I believe this to be proof.”

Lisander’s eyes skim the page. Roscille’s cheeks are warm. He might as well be staring at her with equal scrutiny; she feels the heat of his gaze as if it were running over her instead of the paper. Fléance directed her, but perhaps there is still something about her penmanship that gives away the ruse. Perhaps there is something irrepressibly womanlike about her hand. Or perhaps it is merely that Lisander’s senses are not dulled like his father’s. No sickness of the body leaves the mind untouched.

Duncane has been living this posthumous existence for years, since at least the births of his sons. There is the mark of a trephine on his forehead: the place where a Druide sliced into his skull to let the evil spirits seep out. It has not worked, and now he will wear this mortifying blemish forever, until his dragging, miserable death. There is no honor in dying of disease.

At last Lisander looks up. “The writer professes displeasure at your rule,” he says. “But only in the vaguest terms—there is no firm plan to unseat the House of Dunkeld.”

Roscille blushes more furiously. She wrote the letter in vagaries on purpose—she feared the minutiae might be her ruin—but now Macbeth’s gaze has snapped to her, just for a moment. The same fear from her wedding night fills her body, cold and familiar, like water flooding its accustomed tributaries.

Duncane stares into the middle distance—stares at nothing, stares at the dust-choked air. He says, “Better to kill the serpent while it is still in its shell.”

A slow, pleased smile overtakes Macbeth’s face.

“I knew I carried out your will,” he says. “If any snakes remain in Cawder, I will snap their spines and break their teeth.”

The king nods. It is a painful gesture to observe, his head bobbing precariously on his scrawny neck.

“That is my will indeed,” he rasps.

Suppers, ceremonies. No stag hunts—yet. Roscille cannot help but wonder when Macbeth will set out to fulfill her second request. She reassures herself that it will not be at least until Duncane is gone. He is otherwise too occupied.

They are sitting in the main hall, which has been reconfigured to accommodate the presence of the king. There is a longer table on the dais, with enough room for Duncane and his sons, and Macbeth, and Roscille, and then Banquho at the very end. Duncane is at the center, but not really. There is an even number of occupants, so there is no true middle—well. The true middle would be somewhere between Macbeth and Duncane. Right now, the center is a blank space, empty of all but breath and air.

Roscille takes decorous bites of her stew, which is difficult from under the thick mesh of the veil. She has not removed it, scarcely even lifted it; she is afraid to, in Duncane’s presence. Yet it allows her to look where she pleases, without drawing another’s notice. She looks down the table at Lisander, who leaves his food mostly untouched. He watched her before—she knows she did not imagine it—but his eyes do not find her now.

She wonders about the dark bruises under those eyes. What keeps the prince of Cumberland awake at night? Is he bookish, pious like his name suggests, hours at some philosophical toil until the candles burn down to their ends? Perhaps. Does he amuse himself, as so many men do, with women—serving girls and pleasure slaves? This is harder to imagine. It would certainly displease his father, Duncane, the righteous man. And for some reason the thought displeases her, too. It winds a strange, deep-green, serpentine feeling through her belly.

He is half English—is he Æthelstan’s lion, noble and preeminent? Perhaps the unicorn of his father’s blood, mystic and pure? The bold stag of Ireland, or the scaled dragon of Wales? All these free, wild creatures, stamped with the virtues of men. From the way his gaze cuts through the room so cleanly, she wonders if he is the ermine of Breizh, canny, a master of disguise. There is something glimmering behind his eyes that she cannot flush out. She watches him until his gaze lands upon her, finally, and then she turns away, her skin prickling.

The endowment of Macbeth’s new title amounts to this: Her husband kneels before the king. The king makes the sign of the cross with his trembling, jewel-thick fingers. His crown, a plain iron circlet, barely disguises the mark of trepanation on his forehead. The contrast between this simple crown and the thick, gleaming rings is poignant, even from a distance. Roscille will later learn these rings are more function than decoration, that they keep the king’s trembling fingers from slipping out of their joints. Weakness, dressing up as strength.

“Thane of Cawder,” he says. “Rise.”

And Macbeth does, his largeness dwarfing the king. It casts a sheen of absurdity upon the ritual, making it perverse. A wolf kneeling to a sheep. He takes his seat, and the meal goes on, mostly in silence. Roscille turns to Lisander again. The prince of Cumberland who dared to speak to her in Brezhoneg.

There is no reason for him to know her language, and yet he does. She imagines Lisander speaking it again: not only what he would say, but the shape his mouth would make when saying it, the flicker of his tongue across his lips, the quick white flash of his teeth. She wants to bathe herself in the clear blue waters of Brezhoneg diphthongs and vowel sounds, cleaning off the grime of Scotland. To do it she would have to strip off all her clothes, the veil, the ruby choker, and reveal her flesh to the air. Thinking of these things while looking at the prince of Cumberland makes her face grow hot. She has to avert her eyes.

When the banquet is done and the servants are carrying away the trays, Evander speaks with Banquho, arranging for tomorrow’s hunt (much wine has been imbibed between them and their voices are loud, syllables scraping the ceiling). The king is helped down from the dais by his two chamberlains, who all this time have kept their swords sheathed at their sides. The king himself is not armed. No one will indulge the fantasy that he is strong enough to wield a blade.

“Are your accommodations satisfactory?” Macbeth asks.

Duncane blinks. “My chambers, yes. But for my son, a room without a window.”

He indicates Lisander, who says nothing to confirm or deny this. A room without a window? Both Roscille and her husband are silenced by such a bizarre request. All of the explanations that her mind supplies are hollow and trivial: that he cannot sleep with the sound of the wind so close, that the salt air makes him sick, that he has a fear of heights and does not want to be reminded of how steep the cliffs are upon which the castle of Glammis sits. Lisander’s expression gives nothing away.