Page 6 of Lady Macbeth

Roscille wakes with sleep still webbing her eyes. A second webbing, underneath the first, her bridal veil, which she has not removed. She fell asleep on the bear-rug, and the fur is damp where her face pressed against it. She rubs at the spot and the wetness vanishes, blends with the pelt. Bears have good fur that dries quickly.

She stands up and stumbles. Her bedchamber has no window, but she guesses that it is morning: There are cracks in the stone wall and thin shafts of light come through. She runs her fingers along the crumbling stone, not checking the soundness of her new home, nor testing the toughness of her new prison, but rather judging the age of her new domain. It is all new to her, though to the world it is very old. This castle has seen a hundred men who have called themselves Lord or Thane or Mormaer or Yarl or even King. How many Ladies have preceded her?

Roscille is wondering this when the door opens behind her, and she jumps. Wedged in the threshold is a fair-haired man, not much her senior. It is a moment before she recognizes him. He was the one who splashed water on her feet last night, the one who scowled as he took the last sip from the quaich.

Staring at him more intently now, she realizes he must be Banquho’s son. He has the same wide-boned face, though fresher with youth, and he wears the same pattern of tartan.

“Lady Macbeth,” he says.

Her skin rises with gooseflesh. The new name is like a ghost that has suddenly inhabited her body. “Yes—good morning—heir of Lochquhaber?”

“Fléance.” He frowns. “Am I that much the portrait of my father?”

“The Duke has many bastards,” Roscille replies. “Living among them nurtures a talent for matching features and faces.”

They are brusque words and—she cannot help it—laced through with venom for her father. This venom nourishes her, in a sick sort of way, like overripe fruit that tastes sweet on the tongue but will turn to bile in your stomach. It is petty cruelty, with no strategy behind it, but she cannot imagine it will offend Fléance. Surely he has no love for the Duke.

Yet Fléance keeps frowning. Perhaps she should not have used the word talent. Let them never think of her as boastful of her own abilities. She should brag of nothing that does not enhance her husband’s pride.

“It is well past dawn,” Banquho’s son says. “The Thane likes for his wife to rise when he does. Even if you do not share a chamber.” His ear tips turn pink when he says this. She supposes that a court so absent of women would make even a man her own age prudish. “You are wanted in his hall.”

“I shall join him there,” Roscille says. “Please, will you bring me Hawise? My handmaiden?”

“I cannot. She has been sent away.”

Her vision wavers, narrows, then widens again, until she is dizzy. “Why?”

“Handmaidens are not used in Alba,” he says. “Women must care for themselves, see to their own needs. It is our custom. We do not use wet nurses, either, as you do in Breizh. To let your child suckle from another’s breast—there is something foul about it. When your child comes—”

“I understand,” says Roscille. “I will dress and join him.”

Fléance nods. His frown recedes tentatively. He has only one scar of battle that Roscille can see: The top of his blushing left ear is an inch shorter than it should be, mangled like something—someone—has taken a bite from it. She would not put such a thing past these Scotsmen.

But the scar does not make him look hardened. He seems in fact more boyish for it: It is not the sort of wound that suggests a brush with death, a sword slipping too close to the throat, an axe landing inches from his head. It is too clumsy for that. It looks like an accident of battle, not a deftly dodged killing blow. She understands his stubborn somberness now. He has not yet proven himself, and cannot afford to look uncertain for a moment, even when he is only speaking to a woman.

“Good,” he says. Relief in his pale-gray eyes. “Come out when you are ready.”

Roscille tries to be practical. She can dress and mourn Hawise at the same time. Instead of crying, she scrapes the bridal veil off her face and rolls it up until it is small enough to fit in the very corner of her trunk. She tries to wriggle free from the gown but one arm gets tangled around her back and the other gets crushed against her chest. A small sob comes through her teeth, more like a whimper. She cannot remember the last time she has dressed or undressed herself.

She bites down on her tongue so that Fléance cannot hear the confused, mewling sounds that are coming out of her mouth. He said that Hawise has been sent away, but to where? Not back to Hastein and the other Northmen; her father would not take a girl so spoiled by the luxury of Wrybeard’s court, so dishonored by her servitude to a delicate little maiden of Breizh (a witch-marked girl, at that). Sent back to Naoned? She would not survive there. It is only her proximity to Roscille that has saved her from the abuses suffered by other servants and handmaidens: pregnancy by some brusque, ugly means, and then kicked hard enough in the stomach to make the inconvenience of an infant go away. Roscille has seen it before, so many times, the same story playing out before her eyes with the relentless rhythm of needlework.

But the Norsemen are so loathed in Alba—and would it not be quicker, easier, sparing the expense of a carriage and a driver and two horses, and then a ship to meet them at the channel—the image flickers across Roscille’s vision like a bird scuffling dazedly against a window. One quick, sharp shove, Hawise’s mouth widened to a black circle as she goes tumbling limply down the sheer face of the cliff. Her body creates a narrow gash in the water, a single streak of foam, and then it is gone.

Roscille vomits into her hand and then wipes her palm clean on the bear-rug. Enough. Enough. She escapes from the bridal gown and lets out a shuddery breath.

She pretends she has done this a hundred times before. She takes her plainest gray dress from her trunk. It ties in the back, no buttons, easy for her to put on herself. It has short, tight sleeves, and the stitching in the bodice presses so hard against her ribs that it feels like there is no skin in between, just knotty thread grinding at her bones. And then the veil. Always the veil.

In Breizh a married woman is expected to cover her hair, but Roscille will not even attempt to put on the complicated wimple and cornette herself, especially without a mirror, and besides, she does not know the customs of Alba in this respect. If women are meant to see to their own needs, surely they cannot be expected to attire themselves so elaborately. No handmaidens, no wet nurses. No whores, even, as far as Roscille can tell. She leaves the white cloth of wifely chastity and opens the door.

If she has done something wrong in her dressing, she trusts that Fléance will correct her. But he says nothing, only nods and leads her back through the narrow corridors, toward the hall where they feasted the night before. There are windows tucked high into the ceiling, crammed into odd corners of stone, and the sunlight strains through them jaggedly. Now, again, Roscille hears the sea shushing beneath her feet.

All traces of finery from the wedding banquet have been put away, not that there were many to begin with, and the hall is bleak and gray. There are five men huddled around the table on the dais, the same ones she recognizes from last night but cannot name. One is Banquho. Macbeth sits at the head. She did not notice before, but his chair seems too small for him; his cloak drapes over the arms and the wood strains against the bulk of his shoulders.

“The Lady Macbeth,” Fléance says. He does not bow, as one would to the Duke. No such stiff rituals here.

“Good,” Macbeth says. “Come here, wife.”

On numb legs, she obeys. As she passes the men, she makes an archive of each one in her mind. Here is the one who wears the blanched weasel cloak, this one the winter fox, this one the shaggy mountain goat. All different shades of white, some yellowed at the edges with age, others splattered with the rusty hue of dried blood. Weasel-cloak, Winter Fox, Mountain Goat, she calls them in her mind.