Page 9 of Lady Macbeth

And then, the voice of the Druide asserts itself.

Lord Macbeth, son of Findlay, Macbeth macFinlay, Macbethad mac Findlaích, the righteous man.

He does not kiss her, but their lips are close. Even though she does not close her eyes, she is not looking at him, she is outside of herself: a bird scuffling against a windowless wall, a boar with a spear in its side, a hart dogged through the woods. She is nothing but a panicked beating heart.

Then he lets go, paces back toward his horse, and mounts in one fluid motion. His huge body seems to dwarf even the horse. There is an obscenity to it, his largeness. It makes something as ordinary as riding a horse seem brutish. How much weight will the poor animal be forced to bear?

The wind funnels into the courtyard and then flattens, like water filling a trough. Her skirts blow back as the barbican grinds open and the party trots through it. It is a long train and it takes a long time for the last rider to vanish into the mist. The barbican shuts again.

Roscille wonders how many women have stood precisely where she is standing, watching their husbands disappear. Roscille wonders how many of them have imagined the sword-thrust that will make them widows. She wonders how many smiled at the thought.

Without noticing, Fléance has come to her side.

“Inside,” he says. His voice is brusque. “Now.”

The castle is empty of all but servants; there is not another sheathed blade or spear in sight. Fléance’s footsteps ahead of her are rough and hurried.

Fléance’s anger does not scare her. It is the first time, Roscille realizes, since arriving in Glammis, that she has not been afraid. In fact, his anger nourishes her, in a strange way. It is that same sweet-tasting poison, the last overripe fruit plucked from the otherwise empty vine, which will keep her alive but also kill her slowly. She stops walking.

Fléance turns. “What, Lady?”

“How long has this castle stood?”

This question is too innocent to provoke any alarm. He will not see the long strings that connect her words to the room in the basement, to Duncane’s treatise, to sharp teeth and silver hair. She is a young girl from a foreign country, naturally curious about anything that is new (or old). Fléance’s brows come down over his pale eyes.

“Since before the Northmen were raiding. And before the Romans came with their roads. Do they say, in Breizh, that Flatnose built all of the isles?”

Flatnose is a Norse king of many centuries past. He stuck his flag all over the rockiest, bitterest soils of Scotland, grim and savage Glammis among them. In Breizh, it is said that the Scots could build nothing with their two hands except the oak barrels for spirits. It is said that they lapped water straight from the river like dogs. But Roscille shakes her head.

“Your Druides,” she ventures. “They are older than the Northmen and the Romans, too.”

“Of course.”

“So they have seen the native evils of the land.”

Fléance’s gaze flickers. He will not hurt her, Macbeth would kill him for it, but he will tell his father of the Lady’s strange questions and then his father, the Lord’s right hand, will tell the Lord.

Or will he? Roscille remembers the coldness of Banquho’s face in the courtyard. She has seen enough displeased fathers and displeasing children to know when the ice is starting to show its black-veined cracks.

“Yes,” Fléance says slowly. “Every old soil has its evils. But they do not live in Glammis. The clan of Macbeth is powerful and pious enough to expunge them.”

He does not know. Why would he? The basement is Macbeth’s secret, guarded like a hoard of gold. It is safe for her to step farther. The ground will not yet give way.

“But your king, Duncane,” she says, her voice soft and guileless, “has written a treatise on witchcraft in Alba.”

At this, Fléance’s brow darkens. He will not hurt her—but perhaps Roscille has misjudged her position. She is still a foreign bride, her edges singed with the smoke of witchcraft, robed in the ghostly tales of her unnatural eyes, her unpropitious birth. Ill omens are writ on her skin like runes.

“The Lord does not believe the rumors that come from Francia,” Fléance says. “He may be the king’s vassal, but they are not always of like mind.”

Roscille almost laughs in relief. He thinks she worries only for her own stature, her own esteem.

“That is good,” she says. “But others—they might believe such rumors.”

“Perhaps. But they will never speak their suspicions aloud to the Lord.”

“True, men are honest only in whispers.”

Fléance’s mouth twists in a peculiar expression, as if he wants to laugh at her wit but is perplexed by the urge. “You will be safe here,” he says at last. “In Glammis.”