Page 7 of Lady Macbeth

Roscille sits beside her husband and folds her hands in her lap. Fléance hovers in the threshold but does not sit. There is no place for him, not even beside his father. Banquho hardly looks up at his own son. This causes a strange churning in Roscille’s stomach.

“We are making plans for our assault on Cawder,” says Macbeth. His callused fingers spread across the map. His thumb brushes the red flag that marks the seat of the Thane of Cawder. “It will be simple enough; my armies are larger.”

He is really going to do it; he will invade Cawder. Many people will die—soldiers, yes, but also peasants whose villages are sacked and burned, even goats and sheep, so that those who survive are left with nothing but ash and gored livestock—all of this because she does not want to lie with her lord husband. All because she will not fulfill the duty that a thousand, thousand women have fulfilled before.

There was a nobleman in Rome who fed his slow or displeasing slaves to a pool of eels: lampreys. It was a death of hours, of needle-thin teeth. This nobleman was rebuked for doing so in the presence of the emperor. One slave threw himself at the emperor’s feet and begged for a different death. What a display of barbarity! In disgust, the emperor ordered the lampreys killed and their pool filled. Roscille feels like the nobleman, and the slave, and the lampreys, all at once. All she knows for certain is that she is not the emperor.

Bellona’s bridegroom, they call Macbeth; Bellona, a Roman war goddess. He does not know how to sheathe his blade, even when he comes to her bedside. He will damp the sheets with blood the same way he wets the earth in Cawder.

Roscille consoles herself that most of those who will die are men—and how many of them have their own unwilling, unloved wives at home? How many of them have forced servant girls, even their own daughters? But one campaign will not end these abuses; the world will always birth more men, and more women for them to claim. It would take power beyond which any human might possess to rearrange the natural order of the world.

“His castle is ringed with mining villages,” Banquho says, pointing. “I have heard that the thane demands exorbitant tithes. They will surrender easily to a more merciful lord.”

That depends on whether or not Macbeth can stand to portray himself as merciful. Her husband clenches and unclenches his fist.

“We will have to observe the rite of first blood,” he says. “They will not respect my power, otherwise.”

Roscille read about this in the monk’s books. It is a custom among the clans, when warring, to kill the first man they see, dip their swords in his blood, and then taste it. Roscille considers this: In order to be seen as merciful, one must first be seen as powerful. There is no mercy that a sheep can show a wolf.

“We must think of this, too,” Weasel-cloak says. He reaches across the table and prods at the flag that marks the castle of the king. “Duncane.”

His words cast the room in silence. All that can be heard is the sea, unremitting, beneath the gray stones.

“Yes,” Macbeth replies after a moment. “If I take Cawder, he will wonder whether I plan to take more.”

Of course. Appetites cannot be sated by blood; they can only be whetted. Before Roscille even realizes it, she is speaking.

“Then accuse the enemy of that which you may be suspected,” she says. “Forge a letter that suggests the Thane of Cawder harbors plans to revolt.”

Five men’s faces turn toward her. Fléance’s, too, from the doorway. Their eyes shift with unease, with shock. Women are not meant to speak at war councils. But perhaps it can be forgiven, since Roscille is so young, a foreign bride, unaccustomed to the ways of the Scots.

“Consider,” she goes on in a rush, “you will not only be free of suspicion, but you will look all the more loyal to Duncane, for snuffing out Cawder’s rebellion before it starts.”

Mountain Goat scoffs, but Macbeth holds up a hand to silence him.

“My wife makes a clever suggestion,” he says. “We will do this—she will do this. Duncane will recognize my hand, but not hers. The Lady will pen the letter herself.”

Mountain Goat slides down in his seat. Winter Fox thins his lips. Weasel-cloak’s vision fixes on her, his eyes two deadly points. But Banquho’s face is open with interest. He can allow this, because he is more beloved by Macbeth than the rest. He does not have to fear that his Lord’s new wife may slip between them. He is his Lord’s right hand.

“I will rally my men,” Banquho says. “The rest of you, the same.”

“Good,” says Macbeth. “Go to it. I will speak to my wife alone now.”

But he does not speak to her. He rises in silence and beckons her to follow. Roscille keeps her eyes mainly on the ground, but occasionally she looks up and sneaks glances at him, her husband. There is a scar lacing his throat, white and rigid, like a worm in an apple. It is not a clumsy by-blow. It cannot be anything but death, beaten back.

He takes her down another narrow hallway, in the opposite direction of her chamber, then down a set of crumbling stairs to an even narrower corridor. The sound of the sea rises, and so does the sound of their footsteps, as if the floor is growing thinner. At the end of this hallway is a door. Its iron grate withers with rust.

“A husband and wife should have no secrets from each other,” Macbeth says. “And they should keep each other’s secrets from the world.”

Before Roscille can think of how to reply, he removes a key, tied to a leather thong around his neck. He fits it into the lock. The sea roars up at them, and then is curiously silent. Wood scrapes stone as he pushes the door open.

Behind the door, blackness stretches out in all directions. It is not the barbarian blackness she first witnessed upon arriving in Glammis, the bleak edge of civilization. This is an unnatural darkness, such that would confound the pope himself. The air blowing toward them is damp and cold, and although light slides through the threshold behind them, it halts very suddenly, the darkness a wall it cannot breach.

Macbeth takes a step forward and there is a splashing sound. Water, he has stepped into water. Roscille blinks and blinks, but staring into the unchanging black makes her eyes gummy, as if with sleep. Is she supposed to follow? The air has a terrible weight, like the pressure at the deepest chasm of the ocean.

And then: light. Filmy and indistinct, a single torches flares in the center of her vision. The reflection of the flame races along the dark water, in clever beams and quick flashes. The water has a serpent’s iridescent sheen.

Her husband stands in the center of the room, which is really a cave, rock formations jutting outward from the walls at strange angles. He is as silent and still as the rock itself.