Page 37 of Lady Macbeth

A jolt in her stomach. “Why would I not?”

“Because these matters are below the concern of a queen.”

“You are mocking me.”

Lisander scoffs, and then he emerges from the darkness of the cell. His face is paler than she has ever seen it, the circles under his eyes deeper and more garish, but his eyes are still sharp and overly green. Even his slow footsteps are graceful; he does not slouch and slog as a prisoner would. It will take longer than a day for a prince to shed his poise.

“What is there to mock? Duncane is dead, at your husband’s hand. Macbeth names himself King, and his lady wife Queen.”

“He is barely a king,” says Roscille, “and I am a queen even less.”

Surprise flashes on his face, then amusement. “I see you have lived among the barbarous Scots long enough to understand.”

“I do not need to live among barbarians to understand that the greater one’s rise, the farther his fall. The higher the tower is built, the more precarious it becomes. Even children with their building blocks comprehend this.”

“Now you are mocking me.”

“No,” says Roscille. “I am not. I do not—I have never wanted this, to be Queen. I am as dull as a dog; I am only trying to survive in this pitiless world.”

This confession should be shameful, but Lisander does not look at her with disdain or revulsion. Instead, he approaches her slowly. He lifts his hands and his fingers circle the bars, a mere inch above where she is gripping them.

“All your life you have been muzzled,” he says. “So as not to disturb the architecture of the world. But a muzzled dog thinks only of its misery and its shackles. They may rob your body of its power, but they cannot take your mind.”

Yet can they not? Roscille thinks of Adelaide, her mind its own tyrant, making her body betray itself, to lust for pain instead of pleasure. This is her deepest fear, beyond the terror of bloodstained thighs and bloodstained sheets, beyond a long fall into the cold sea. Madness. If she cannot think, she will be nothing.

“How do you know this?” she asks in a whisper.

“Because,” Lisander says, “I have looked into your eyes.”

A stone forms in her throat. She has to swallow hard to keep it from choking her.

“They will come,” she manages to say. “Banquho and Fléance. I have been given orders to have you tortured for your knowledge. They will use every tool at their disposal to get you to speak.”

“They will not succeed.” His voice is flat. A fact, not a boast.

“But—” she begins. And then she stops. What can she say? That she owes him a debt twice over, once for not letting her die, and then again for not killing her? This thing that binds them does not feel like a debt; there is no ledger, no ink. They are two fish in a pool, circling each other, trapped by the same arrangement of stones. Their rhythms are identical, as they push their silver bodies through the water, in and out, like needles through black cloth. He is the only one who may see her truly. And she does not know why, not yet, but her eyes are two mirrors, throwing his own reflection back at him.

She remembers seeing the notches of Lisander’s spine push outward from his skin when he bent over. His flesh, so thin, only narrowly protecting the spreading of veins within; the heart and lungs, so poorly insulated. She wants to retch, perhaps to scream.

“I do not feel pain as other men do,” Lisander says, as if he can read her thoughts. “You will have heard that Duncane’s line is cursed.”

She opens her mouth to reply, but then there is the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She jumps, seized with panic.

“They must not know that I am here,” she says, lowering her voice. “They will wonder why I have not ordered the torture to begin already.”

Lisander nods. “Go,” he says.

So she does, but she cannot help looking back. Roscille imagined she would see him recede again into the shadows of the cell, but even from a distance, his eyes are gleaming in the darkness, two beacons of unnatural green light.

Roscille has the adulterous woman, Senga, brought to the castle. She is five, ten years Roscille’s senior, not old enough to be her mother, but old enough to have fine, delicate worry lines etched across her forehead. These wrinkles emerge more easily on the foreheads of peasants than the foreheads of noble ladies. Roscille is pleased to see that Senga resembles Hawise greatly. Broad-shouldered, with long yellow hair, a serious face that does not show fear. When she stands in front of Roscille, her eyes do not waver, even though Fléance had her dragged through the courtyard by her braid.

Senga does not even flinch while Roscille repeats the rumors she has heard about her, all the lascivious, un-Christian things she has done. She asks if they are true. Senga merely nods.

“Your fellow villagers want you sent away to learn chastity,” Roscille says.

Senga’s accent is so coarse and provincial that Roscille has a difficult time understanding her as she replies, “If it is the nunnery for me, I will go without trouble.”

“No,” Roscille says. “You are to be my handmaiden. Do you understand?”