Page 39 of Lady Macbeth

“Fine,” she says. But her voice is trembling, and surely Banquho will not miss that. “Let us go, then.”

Roscille’s mind races as she enters the dungeon, Banquho and Fléance at her heels. The torchlight gathers on all the room’s sharp points and bladed edges. When she descends, she tries to step over the filth-laced puddles, so as not to dirty her slippers, but Banquho and Fléance splash through them carelessly—they wear boots, and the water does not matter to them—so the hem of her skirt is soaked anyway.

She sets the torch into one of the sconces and breathes in the dungeon’s damp, terrible smell. Spreading outward, the torchlight illuminates only part of Lisander’s cell, the other half still cloaked in shadows.

He steps into the light. His bone-pale face shows no sentiment at all. “Lady Roscille.”

Her palms are drenched and her hands are trembling. “Lisander. You know why I come. I must ask you to tell us your brother’s plans. How many men he can rally to his side. The size of Æthelstan’s armies…”

She trails off. Her mouth feels full of cotton.

“And you know I cannot tell you that,” Lisander replies.

“You waste time with words,” Banquho hisses. “Make him scream, and he will speak. Give me leave to do it.”

Roscille’s gaze travels to the instruments on the wall. The bone saw with its rusted handle. She imagines flesh opening up beneath its blade, white parting to reveal vulgar red. And then she thinks of Lisander’s mouth on her mouth, her jaw, her throat. The bruises have faded, but the memory is hot, warming the skin that is normally so cold beneath Macbeth’s necklace. I have hated seeing you wear this.

“No,” she says.

Fléance’s lips part dumbly, opening and closing like a trout’s. Banquho’s gaze clouds and then hardens with anger.

“Macbeth should have known this is no work for a woman,” he growls, shoving past her. “Weak-minded, frail-bodied, like all members of your sex. Perhaps you have worked some common magic with the beauty of your face, but you have no other value or purpose beyond that. Step aside. I will fulfill the wishes of the King.”

He grasps the whip and jerks it from his hook. He turns, the muscles in his arms and shoulders grinding together like rough boulders in an avalanche. But Roscille does not move from her place between him and the cell.

“Woman I may be,” she says, “but I have worked my magic upon you. You have been deceived.”

The look in Banquho’s eyes. Roscille has seen it often, the bewildered fury of a man who has no experience being defied, whose worldview rests on the axis of his own absolute power.

“What did you say?”

“I said you have been deceived, Lord Banquho.” She raises her voice. “There were no masked men. Your son was angry at being left behind, at having no opportunity to prove his worth on the battlefield, so he arranged a plot in which he would play hero.”

She tells the story slightly wrong, not because she thinks she will get away with the lie, but because Fléance will not resist jumping in to correct her, and therefore reveal his true part in it.

“She lies!” Fléance does indeed cry out. “It was her plan, not mine—”

But then he stops. He has dishonored himself so greatly that it is enough to stain his whole line; any sons he bears will feel this shame their entire lives, will know why they are passed over, time after time, with curled lips and rolled eyes. He has confessed not only to treachery but also to being manipulated by a woman, some seventeen-year-old foreign bride hiding behind a veil. The shame will even stretch backward, staining Banquho, too.

So then it makes sense what Banquho says next. He has no other choice except to reply, “Do not protect her honor, Fléance. Obviously she lies. She means to strip your heroism from you. She means to disgrace the name of our family.”

Fléance’s mouth shrinks into his face. He has been dishonored twice over, for not simply denying her tale. One stupidity layered on top of the other. My fool of a son, Banquho must be thinking. If this were a private moment, he would be struck across the face.

But they are not alone, and Fléance merely dips his head, in feigned penitence.

“You are right, Father,” he says. “I should not endeavor to shield the honor of a lady who has nothing but evil and trickery in her heart.”

Roscille is quicker than Fléance to understand what is happening. They are actors, rehearsing their roles. They will repeat these same words to Macbeth when he returns, in the same low, regretful tones, with hanging heads and darkened brows. They will mime grief, shock. Starting at the tips of her fingers and toes, all her blood begins to run cold.

“My husband left me to keep the castle in his absence,” she says, but her voice is rising through its pitches. “He trusts me. He will believe my word over yours.”

Yet she cannot even pretend certainty. She is shaking so fiercely that her teeth have begun to chatter.

“Will he?” Banquho’s grip tightens on the whip. “There are stories about you, Lady Roscilla. How you drive men to madness with your gaze. Perhaps Macbeth has been struck by such madness, or simply moved by the beauty of your face. But when I have his ear in private, he will know the truth.”

Banquho advances. Roscille steps backward, but there is nowhere to go except the cold bars of the cell.

“I offer you this,” Banquho goes on. “You will step aside now, and let me proceed with the torture of the prince, and Macbeth will never know of your treachery.”