Page 49 of Lady Macbeth

She prepares herself for a new punishment. She wonders if she will be struck, if he will parade her around to his men with a freshly pulsing bruise on her face, proof that Macbeth can indeed keep his wife in line, that he has corrected the error in himself which placed her in charge of the castle to begin with.

But he merely says, “She may have this chamber, then. And she will attend to your bathing and dressing.”

She is surprised by this, but perhaps she should not be. Macbeth is King now; he has forgotten these small indignities, he has stamped upon the virtue of honor, snuffing out its noble flame. Some minute defiance of custom on the part of his wife is not enough to chip the great shining armor of his power. And Roscille must not remark upon it, must not call it kindness nor mercy, because such things are below him, too.

So she replies only, “I will tell her.”

“It may vex Banquho,” says Macbeth. “Perhaps the other men. But that is below my regard.”

Macbeth throws off the covers, and Roscille turns away, so she will not have to see the nakedness of his body. She has already felt its strength in the dark. Let it stay there, she thinks. Let the dark swallow it whole.

She hears the grunt of pain as he shifts the heavy weight of his body onto his injured leg. He robes himself in a new shirt and a clean tartan and says to Roscille, “Come. There is a war council waiting.”

That she has been invited to the council table is a surprise, as well. Yet this time she does not sit at the table. She is instructed to take a seat several paces away, a chair shoved flush against the wall. What purpose does this serve? Surely Macbeth benefits more from hiding her away. Surely Scotland will only allow him so many errant witch-wives. But this, too, she realizes, is another brusque show of his new kingly force. Her presence announces to his men: I will marry whom I choose. To you, perhaps, she is a witch, but to me she is a wife. Whatever little power she might have is extinguished within the sheets of our marriage bed.

Roscille feels, somehow, that they can tell, that Winter Fox and Weasel-cloak and Mountain Goat all can tell that her thighs have been newly bloodied. Perhaps it is the way that she sits so shrunken in her seat, more emptiness than form, like a white gash in the world. He has succeeded at last, her lord husband, in misusing her the way a thousand, thousand women have been misused before. He crushed her in his fist, squeezing out all the witchcraft that was valuable to him, and then left her, a husk.

It is the cloak which proves this. Roscille might as well be invisible within its folds. She is Lady Macbeth, and finally she understands what that means: a rung upon which to hang her husband’s virtue. The cloak says, I have conquered Alba; I wear its skin as proudly as my crown. It is my trophy, my treasure, mine, mine, mine.

“I have left an army in charge of Moray, to quell any potential uprisings,” Macbeth is saying. “But I do not think they will uprise. I have slaughtered all of Duncane’s most loyal allies—that dumb dog Macduff, his body has been strung up outside the castle walls. Any remaining loyalists will see it and choke on their noble treacheries.”

If he has killed Macduff then he has also killed Macduff’s wife and sons, so there is no one who remains to someday take vengeance upon him. She imagines her husband tasting this man’s blood. She wonders if, after the unicorn was skinned, he butchered the animal and ate it? She finds she can envision this easily.

“Your power has been proven, my Lord,” Banquho says. “No one in Alba will challenge you.”

Banquho has not looked at her at all. It is Fléance who steals glances, again and again. There is such shame, on his still-boyish face. His shame does not fill her as she expected it to. It is a tasteless meal, like water without wine. Fear is what she seeks from him. And she will not be sated until she gets it.

There is some shuffling of maps and papers, which Roscille cannot see, tokens moving across the table. The low, rough voices of men who all have something to prove to one another. Macbeth murmurs something she cannot hear. The next words that reach her ears are Banquho’s, again.

“Now there is the matter of merging households.”

“Merging, why?” Her husband’s voice. “I do not want Duncane’s servants here. Let them grovel and burn in Moray.”

“It would be a gesture of goodwill,” says Banquho. “To prove you will be King of all Scotland, not merely King of Glammis.”

Silence, as Macbeth considers this. Mountain Goat suppresses a cough.

“Fine,” says Macbeth at last. “I will take a portion of his household staff, but only those whom I have looked in the eye, who kneel and swear their loyalty to me. There is enough reason to fear treachery already.”

“Yes,” Banquho agrees. “Which is why you must prove you can do more for these men than any other lord could. That their lives will be better beneath the rule of Macbeth than they were under Duncane, than they would be under Æthelstan or one of those half-Saxon brats.”

Roscille’s heart stutters.

“On the subject of these brats,” says Weasel-cloak, “we have had no success in finding Duncane’s monstrous spawn.”

A sort of relief fills her, but it is half pleasure, half poison. She hopes he is far away now, safe on English soil. And yet she knows she will dream of him every night, and wake in the cold sweat of a fever.

“That should not be our greatest concern now,” says Banquho. “War is coming. Æthelstan’s armies will breach the border soon.”

“As soon as Æthelstan’s army is in tatters and that arrogant rex Anglorum is kneeling at my feet, I will slay the dragon myself,” Macbeth says. “Until then, let each man of Scotland hope he will be the one to find and kill it, and earn the prize of my unending favor.”

It is like the myth of the sunken city, Ys: Give the people something to believe in, no matter if it is impossible. Let anyone with a sword and stupid courage think he may have a chance at slaying the beast. Hope is enough to keep a man clambering up the long dingy rope of his life.

The men all give wordless grunts of agreement. Barbarous as they seem, they are not wholly without reason.

“I return to Moray soon,” says Macbeth. “I must be certain no disloyalty lurks there. Æthelstan will try to seize the castle first. He is wise enough to know that Glammis is a fortress which cannot be trespassed. He will think to beat me back to my home and then lay siege there, to starve us to surrender. I will not give him the chance. I will defeat him at Moray.”

More nods from his men. Banquho says, “I will be at your side, my Lord.”