Page 27 of Lady Macbeth

She empties a bucket into the hearth, where the flames sizzle and die. Bits of gray fabric are caught amid the charred wood. But the room only smells of ash now. There is no rust-tinged treachery in the air. In that moment, Roscille slips out of herself and, like a specter, Lady Macbeth slips in.

The household staff is gathered in the main hall; it is the first time Roscille has seen them all together. Messengers, attendants, servants, soldiers. Cooks cringing in their dirty aprons. Stable hands in mud-caked boots, staring at the ground. The guards look most contrite of all. Especially because Evander rages at them for what seems like nearly an hour, face red with lascivious rage.

What is the use of you, if not to keep the king from an enemy’s blade?

Are you deaf and cannot hear screams in the night?

I should take your swords and twist them into your own bellies; then you will know the same pain as my father.

I will execute you all for the crime of incompetence. It is just as great a sin as treachery.

Macbeth allows this. Evander is a prince and, even more important, the matter of succession has not been settled. Duncane is no longer alive to execute his will (whatever it might have been). When a crown falls, many arms reach out to catch it. There will be strife between brothers; there always is. And there will be the vultures like her husband, circling overhead.

The firstborn son watches his brother rage in silence. When it seems he will never exhaust himself, Lisander lays a hand on Evander’s arm and says, “Enough. You have done your job. They are afraid.”

It is true—the messengers and attendants and servants and soldiers, the cooks and stable hands, are all shaking. Evander’s chest rises and falls with great, heavy breaths.

“It will never be enough,” he says.

He is Roscille’s age, or not much older. Seventeen, eighteen. He would be a boy in Glammis, as green as Fléance, without even a near-death wound to display proudly.

“You are muddling your own intention,” Lisander says. “With every moment that passes our father’s body grows colder.”

This pacifies him at last. Evander takes a seat on the dais, head bowed. Roscille thinks she can see him wipe away a tear. With his head bent over like that, he whispers, “Chancellor.”

It is an embarrassing display. Roscille knows her husband is thinking it, too. He has not shown strength but rather ungoverned emotion. How will he rule Alba if he cannot even rule himself? It is what all Evander’s detractors will be coached to say. If there were a tally under each brother’s name, this would be a hard mark against him.

The king’s body has been laid flat on the dais, his hands clasped across his chest. Because Roscille has seen him sleep, it looks almost as though he is sleeping still. Someone has even brushed his eyelids shut. The chancellor, wielding a jewel-encrusted crucifix, kneels before the body.

The dead chamberlains have been brought forward without ceremony, their bodies heaped at the edge of the dais. The chancellor runs his hand over the king’s blood-soaked tunic, murmuring to himself.

“I must be alone for this, with the corpses only,” he says. “If you would like me to find out whether these chamberlains were the ones to make the king’s death wounds.”

“We will test this first,” Lisander says. With his unnatural grace, he steps down from the dais. He wears mourning-black, and his leather coat fits tightly over his gamy muscles. The dark circles under his eyes are more pronounced than ever, but his gaze gleams sharp and green above them. An almost inhuman green, like moss the morning after a storm. A color Roscille has not seen since leaving Breizh for barren, wind-blanched Glammis.

Lisander does meet her eyes, then. Unflinching, unafraid, even defiant. Her stomach clutches with fear. He does not know. He cannot know. All he knows is that two nights ago she stood at the edge of the cliff and contemplated throwing herself off it. He knows that she has the singe of witchery. He knows that her husband treats her meanly (though this is hardly a revelation). He knows the weight of her body in his arms.

He cannot know the way her throat closes when she sees him or the way tension gathers in her lower belly like a taut metal coil, heated on the forge. Roscille’s cheeks burn. She looks away before he does.

Macbeth takes her by the shoulder and leads her from the chamber. His grip is gentler than she expected. Lisander and Evander heave the wooden doors shut.

The chancellor works so quickly there is hardly even time for Roscille to worry. She knows little of cruentation, but apparently it is an easy rite to perform. In minutes, the chancellor is calling out for them, and Evander bursts through the doors.

“What news?” he demands, striding through the hall, overturning a wooden bench in his wake. The scrape of wood against stone makes Roscille flinch.

Yet they need only approach the dais to know. Both of the king’s death wounds are leaking. The old blood is sluggish, more black than red, like mud forced from its banks by the melting of spring. But he is bleeding indeed.

Evander gives a choked cry and drops to his knees. He shields his face, though that cannot disguise the sounds of his weeping. Lisander puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder again. There is even more significance to this gesture now; it speaks so many words while saying none aloud. Roscille has no siblings and cannot understand the special affection which grows between them. But she does understand the message that Lisander means to send. He loves his brother. It will not come to war between them, over their father’s crown. At least not easily.

“These were not men who would turn on the king for nothing,” Lisander says, “and give their own lives for it. There is greater conspiracy at work here. In Glammis.”

He turns to Macbeth and, by extension, Roscille. They have stood together this whole time, husband and wife. The hand and the dagger. Lord and Lady Macbeth.

“As I have told you, there is treachery here,” Macbeth says. “Sowed discontent among my clan. Fléance—come. Tell the prince what you know.”

His voice roughens on that word, prince. Hesitantly, Fléance steps forward. The wound Roscille bore him stands out even in this half-light, still healing, still a bit gruesome. His honor will not be doubted.

“I took the Lady for a ride about the lands,” Fléance says. “She was eager to see more of her new home. There was no reason to think— The Lord is a respected man. He does well for his clan.”