Fourteen
In Roscille's seventeen short, sheltered years, war had never come to Naoned. She had always believed it was because the Duke was clever—the ermine knew how to hide himself from hawks, preying only on soft-toothed rabbits and mice. War was for arrogant men like the Prince of Paris, or weak men who could not dissuade their enemies. Here, Roscille could think of no example, because the names of weak men were like charcoal dusted off a boot.
Now she thought war was as inevitable as weather. It had seasons, some redder than others. War came to the other counties and duchies of France with the riotous color of changing leaves. Little wars like saplings, easily struck down before they could flower. Great wars that covered Blois and Chartres in a hoarfrost of corpses. The Pope and the House of Capet promised a green and eternal summer: peace, so long as they ruled this fractious land.
Wrybeard and the other dukes and counts snorted into their goblets. But the ermine was a hibernating creature. He grew white fur against the winter; he would stay fat in his den until the air was warm again and hunting was easy. Naoned was a thicket of safety, insulated by her father's wiles.
Here, in Glammis—where Roscille was Lady, even Queen—safety was a bleak and barren landscape. Soldiers spotted from the castle's battlements were slain with arrows before their war cries even reached Roscille's ears. The rocky hill was littered with dashed-open skulls; the yellow grass smeared with brains. And she would be safe in her cloak and her blood-colored necklace and her blindfold, which she must now wear always in the company of men.
She stood on the parapet that faced down the hill, imagining this. Senga was at her side. The slope before her was sheer, dangerous. Beyond it, the copse of fairy trees, protecting that silver pool inside. It was tiny against the vast emptiness of the landscape. A copse. She would not call it a wood.
Until the wood came high upon the hill.
Roscille looked at Senga. "Is your village down there?"
Her village, where her children lived still, their love mingling with shame. Old enough to work meant old enough to fight.
Senga nodded. "It is the last village Æthelstan's army will loot and burn. Then they will reach the castle."
They would not reach the castle. Because there was no wood, and trees could not uproot themselves and walk in rows like soldiers. Roscille blinked wetness from her lashes. It was starting to rain.
"What do ladies do, in war?"
Senga said, "You tell me. You are the Lady."
"But I have never been in a war."
There was the little furrow between Senga's brows that Roscille had come to recognize. It was familiar, from the first day she came to the castle. All the rest had changed: Her circles and lines had vanished with nights spent on a down mattress instead of straw; she wore slippers now instead of clogs; her hair was combed neatly and tied back in a plait. She raised a newly smoothed hand and touched Roscille's cheek.
"We will both learn together," she said.
The rain fell in heavy sheets that turned the window glass marbled and milky. The dirt of the courtyard became mud. Tartans grew so wet that their colors and patterns could not be distinguished from one another. When men stomped into the castle, they shook the water out of their hair and beards like dogs. There were many men now, faces Roscille was not permitted to see, names she could not connect with those faces. Once upon a time—or if she were still Roscille of Breizh—she would have memorized them all in an hour, and something about them too, a bit of their soul that shone from them like a slant of light through a crumbling wall.
Now, she sat in her husband's council meetings, blindfolded. The voices washed over her like water. Æthelstan's army had taken twelve border towns and burned them to cinders. They had pillaged the grain stores and butchered the cows. Raped the women and enslaved the men. The soldiers ate themselves strong on stolen food and stolen wine, and with each passing day, the army grew larger and closer.
Unexpectedly, many Scotsmen had defected to Æthelstan, *rex Anglorum*, King of the English. Perhaps this was because the army was led by one of their own, the late Duncane's son Evander. They knew Duncane as a fair and honest king, and though he was sickly, their harvests were good under his rule and their land prospered. The same could not be said for this new Macbeth.
Macbeth, who sequestered himself in this remote castle. Macbeth, who wed a fairy maiden from Breizh, and all the good this alliance had done him, for the Duke saw the largeness of the English army and sent letters to Glammis saying, *It is treacherous to cross the channel now. But my ships will come soon to your aid.*
When Roscille heard this letter read aloud, she curled her fingernails into her palm until small gashes formed. She tried to imagine herself in her father's place. The ermine knew when it was time to grow his white winter coat and hide away while the skinny, hungry animals tore the forest apart. But Wrybeard also knew that an alliance could not be so easily broken. Even if he did not count the loss of Macbeth's army, even if he did not fear Macbeth's retribution, the world still must see that the Duke of Breizh was, mostly, an honest and honorable man. Otherwise, he would never earn the faith of another lord again.
She did not know what would be worse: dying under Æthelstan's blade or her father rescuing her. She envisioned Wrybeard climbing down from his carriage, her hurrying to greet him in the courtyard, wearing her garish cloak and her flimsy necklace.
*I am Queen now,* she imagined saying, chin raised in defiance.
Her father looked down on her, an indulgent contempt on his face. *You are whatever creature I make you.*
Yet still some nights Roscille prayed he would come. She prayed he would take her away from this gray, evil place where witches lived in chains beneath the floor. She wanted to ride through the damp green forests of Breizh and cool her feet in the ice-white waters of the Loire. But then when she stood and brushed off her knees she was angry at herself, for missing the home she was banished from, for mourning the father who tossed her away. Nothing more than a lovely face.
A lovely face, and a body that shrank into the mattress while her husband pried her legs apart and grunted into her ear, *This one will be a boy, an heir.* He would be wiser to father a son on Senga. At least then his line would not be tainted by her Brezhon blood. But Roscille would not wish this fate on anyone, especially not Senga, whom she had sworn to herself she would protect at any cost, who would not be like Hawise—*I promise this.* Senga came to her in the morning with hard bread and cold milk.
"It will be over soon," Senga said, stroking her forehead. "Your husband does not have the vices like some other men. Once you have fathered him a son, he will stop."
*It will never be over,* she thought. Even when he was finished, he remained inside her, her brain streaked through with purple and black vapors, the color of the blood on his knee. The wound that would not close. The wound that stained the sheets so badly that Senga must wash them every day. Roscille wanted to tell her to bring them downstairs to the basement. The laundresses would take care of it. They were good for nothing else.
The only way to exorcise her husband's foul spirit was this: Every day, when she sat in the room with the war council, blind, she listened for news of the beast. She almost could not breathe the whole time, fearing that the doors would slam open, and someone would drag its enormous head inside, leaving a path of blood and entrails. But there was no word of the dragon, and she thanked God—if God could ever be disposed to protect such an appalling creature. And when her husband's body arched over hers at night, sweat from his brow dripping onto her impassive face, she imagined it was Lisander, instead, fierce in his passions, yet less a monster than this man Macbeth.
The war still felt hazy and unreal until one morning Roscille awoke to the sound of clanging blades. Her husband had long left the bed. She stood and walked over to the window. The clanging sound was coming from the courtyard, where there were easily a hundred men gathered, more than she imagined the space could hold.
They were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, most of them on foot, only the leaders on horseback: Winter Fox and Mountain Goat and Weasel-cloak. Macbeth was there, shouting, waving his arms. He was giving instructions, but if Roscille could not make out the words, she would think him a lunatic, the kind that stood outside of taverns and nursed the old wound on his head that struck him simple. It did not help that he limped. He had refused every Druide twice, three times over.
It was almost too far away to see the men's expressions—almost. But their rugged Scottish faces were crimped and twisted into unhappy scowls. Bewildered lines on their brows. Each one of them had knelt and sworn his loyalty to Macbeth, Macbethad, Macbheatha, Thane of Glammis, Thane of Cawder, King Hereafter, yet now many looked as though they regretted it. The old king was infirm of body. This new King seemed infirm of mind. Madness is not a place, Roscille thought. It is a long way down a winding corridor.
One man stepped out from his line. He wore a gray-blue tartan, not clan Findlaích. He was the son or grandson of some man who promised loyalty to Macbeth, but this promise had worn thin with the generations. Roscille moved closer to the window, curling her fingers around the bars.
"We will lose our homes and families to Æthelstan's army if we do not even attempt to make peace," the man said. "A summit. There must be some effort—already hundreds are dead. How many Scots will you accept slain before you meet Æthelstan at the table? These are not the actions of a king."
Macbeth paused and his arms dropped to his sides. The corner of his lip twitched—Roscille only knew this because she had seen the expression on his face many times; she was very distant from him now, and could not recognize it otherwise.
He approached the man. He asked, "What is your name?"
The man told him. Roscille could not hear it.
Macbeth said, "And what were you promised by that dead, disloyal Banquho to foment strife here?"
"Nothing. I have never spoken to Banquho in my life. I protest this for the sake of my children and my wife. My village is next for the slaughter."
A beat of silence. Even the wind quieted itself.
"You do not deserve to wear that battle tartan," Macbeth said, "or carry that sword. Leave this place. Flee like the traitorous coward you are. You know nothing of Macbeth. I am King Hereafter. Defeat is impossible—as impossible as the forest rising and marching upon the hill. No man of woman born can slay me."
"This is madness you speak. It is no wonder your own right hand turned on you."
Roscille knew what would happen next. She almost did not want to watch, but she found she could not turn her head away, could not close her eyes. Macbeth drew his sword, and despite his wound, despite the madness that made the edges of him turn fuzzy and strange, the movement was swift. Skilled. Bellona's bridegroom was not an epithet given without cause. The death blow he delivered was as practiced and inevitable as a needle working through embroidery. Blade jabbed in. Blade drawn out. Blood spurted from the wound and from the man's mouth.
He choked and fell to the ground, where he writhed for a moment and then went still. The other men did not move as the wind ruffled their hair and beards, their tattered flags, their mismatched tartans. Macbeth raised his sword and licked the end of the blade. Blood glistened on his lips.
"This is the fate that awaits any man who questions my power," he said. "Take this body and cast it into the sea. Let the fish feast on his flesh."
"There must be an execution."
At the sound of her husband's voice Roscille looked up from her sewing. She had been embroidering a pattern of moonflowers onto a bolt of fabric that would someday be a gown. It was difficult to imitate the tiny, trumpeted petals. She stitched vines that twisted and tangled along the border of the frock, serpent-like. She had been hours at this mindless toil. When Macbeth entered, Senga immediately rose and saw herself out, though she cast a worrying glance at Roscille.
Roscille put down her needle and hoop. "Why an execution?"
"The traitor son of a traitor has been rotting in the dungeon for weeks," Macbeth said. "It would be wise to make an example of him. The other men question my strategies and doubt my power."
Roscille wondered why he was telling her this. Although she had sat in his war rooms, bound and silent, he had not asked her counsel in a long time. Perhaps he merely thought she would be happy to know how and when Fléance would die. In this, at least, he was right.
"I thought you might help devise a punishment," Macbeth said. "Your father is well known for his prudent violence."
He was going to punish her for Wrybeard's inaction. Maybe that would hurry along the Duke's ships: a blackened eye on his beautiful daughter's face, a bruise pulsing on her cheekbone, a wound that could not be hidden under her skirts, that would make all men gawk and stare. Or perhaps he had already given up on the alliance and would merely sate his anger on Roscille instead of on her faraway father. She thought of Agasia, that rudely forced wife, passed between her husband's men like a quaich, a sip for each one. Panic stopped her breath.
"What makes you cringe from me now?" Macbeth demanded. "Do you not want to play a part in killing this man who is your enemy? Perhaps you have some clever ideas of how to defile his corpse."
Her heartbeat slowed, but only just. He did not mean to punish her, at least not now. He had already gotten his fill of violence somewhere else.
"I have no ideas, my Lord," she managed.
Macbeth regarded her in a strange way, his face showing both satisfaction and disgust. "Are you not your father's daughter?"
She did not know how to answer that.
Instead, she replied, carefully, "You should ask Fléance himself, instead. Pretend you are his friend still. Tell him you will be punishing someone else in his stead. Ask him what their punishment should be. He will devise a method of execution that is most abhorrent to him. And that will be your best vengeance."
Macbeth rested a hand against the wall to steady himself, to take the weight off his left leg. After a long beat, he said, "My clever wife."
"A wife is only as clever as her husband permits her to be."
She hated herself for saying this. But every moment she was sitting here, in a chair, with embroidery in her lap, was a moment she was not being whipped or forced or made to kneel. Her life had been cleaved into two simple halves: the time when there was pain, and the time when there was not.
The corner of Macbeth's mouth lifted in a smile. He approached her, and Roscille held herself rigid in her chair. He took her face into one of his hands and leaned down and kissed her forehead. He gave a little huff of pain as he did. It sounded just like the way he breathed when he worked himself over on top of her. She sat there, turning to stone, until Macbeth rose and left her.
The next day, Roscille smelled smoke from down the hillside. It was distant, but when she walked onto the parapet, she could see filthy gray clouds blooming just above the line of the horizon. There were many things which could be burning: Grain stores. Houses. Stables. Sheep, cows, horses, women, men. Children made orphans with the wink of a blade. Æthelstan's army was so close.
From the parapet, she also observed the conversations in the courtyard. Men were gathered, but fewer and wearier with each passing day. Their beards were sticky with blood. Their tartans were ragged. Their shoulders were stooped. The rain had come and it had gone, so their horses were ornery and tired looking. Macbeth remained on horseback when he did his rallying. It did not show his limp quite so badly.
Mountain Goat had died in the fighting. His men were jostling with anger over it. Macbeth said, "Are you all chickens? Can you not survive without a head?"
He was not quite making sense. Ripples of discontent passed through the crowd. But no individual man dared to speak against him—not after that first time. Macbeth kicked his horse and urged it to Winter Fox's side. A few inaudible words passed between them. Winter Fox hung his head. Then Macbeth's horse trotted away.
"I will lead today's showing against Æthelstan," Winter Fox said. "Our King has business here at the castle."
The men could not stifle their murmurs of protest now. Scathing sounds drawn from the backs of their throats. This was not the behavior of a king. Not the behavior of a righteous man. Bellona's bridegroom, who would hide himself in his castle walls while his soldiers died for him? Reith, who would keep his sword and beard unbloodied?
Macbeth said, "I promise all who fight today will be honored forever in history. Your sons and grandsons and great-grandsons will remember the nobility of this fight. How you drove the insatiable lion from the unicorn's land. And whoever brings back that green prince Iomhar's head will have a place of honor at my table, at my side, always. I am in search of a new right hand."
The wind howled through the courtyard. It scattered the men like birds.
Roscille sat while Senga braided her hair. They were both on the floor, kneeling, cushioned by the bear-rug. Its fur was still thick and vital, even in death. Its yellowed teeth showed no cracks.
Senga said, "I will braid your hair in the style of Alba. Yes?"
"If you like," said Roscille, listless.
"So you will seem more a queen."
Queen Hereafter. King Hereafter. All these prophecies had come true, save for the false ones she stuck into the witches' mouths. Now she thought of these final auguries: *No man of woman born. Until the wood comes high upon the hill.* She picked the words apart. Perhaps they were like glyphs or pictographs, disguising a code within. The Duke had spymasters who invented such ciphers for him, so that he could hide treacheries beneath pleasantries. These men were always light-footed as mice and spoke in whispers. Narrow men, their shoulders held high and tight. Roscille admired them. They saw what lay beneath the world everyone knew.
She had even entertained the thought of becoming a spy, as a child, but of course there were no lady spymasters. Roscille looked in the bucket of water she was using as a mirror, watched Senga plait her hair. Her skin grew cold when it was lifted from her neck. With its pale color, it looked like she was wearing a coronet of bone.
*Beautiful.* Lisander's words returned to her.
*Unnatural,* she protested. *Strange.*
*No. You have been made to fit a shape that confines you.*
Roscille shoved the bucket of water away until she could no longer see. The last person to style her hair was Hawise.
Abruptly, she looked up, jostling Senga's hands. "I will not let harm come to you," Roscille said.
Senga frowned. "What do you mean, Lady?"
"There is no safety here," she said. "Not while Macbeth lives and breathes. And he will always live and breathe."
"How do you know?"
Because the wood would never ascend the hill. Because there was no man who was not born of woman. But Roscille did not say this. Instead, she said, "I will give you what coin I can gather, and disguise you well. In the night, you will slip out of the castle. You will have what clothes and supplies you need. You must find your children before Æthelstan's army arrives at your village, and take them with you. The coin will get you far enough."
Senga dropped her hands, and Roscille's hair fell back down upon her shoulders. She was silent for a long moment. "And what about you, Lady?"
Roscille drew a breath. "A queen does not forsake her people," she replied bleakly.
Another long moment passed. Very gently, Senga held Roscille's chin and turned her gaze toward her. With a half smile, she said, "And a handmaiden does not forsake her Lady."
Roscille broke Senga's grip on her face and turned away again. If she looked too long at Senga, she would weep. And she could not risk her husband seeing tears on her cheeks. He did not wish her to feel any emotion he himself did not engender in her.
As if summoned by thought alone, the door was then forced open. Senga quickly slipped the veil back over Roscille's face. Macbeth stood in the threshold, so broad that he blocked the torchlight from the corridor.
"My Lord," Roscille said, and dipped her head.
"Lady Macbeth." There was something in his voice. She could not say what it was, but all the small hairs on her arms stood up, as if prickled with cold. "I have just finished with Fléance."
"Oh." Her cheeks heated. "And did he tell you what you wished to know?"
Senga's hand rested on her shoulder. Her handmaiden's fingernails curled, digging just slightly into her skin. She shifted, an infinitesimal movement, barely detected, the muscles rolling in her shoulders—almost as though she planned to throw herself between Macbeth and her Lady. But Macbeth's stare kept them both pinned into place.
"He told me very interesting things," Macbeth said. "Come, wife. Let us go."
He led her down the twisting labyrinth of corridors, which Roscille now knew even blind. But he did not force her to wear the cloth over her eyes—why? If once she believed she understood her husband, and his wiles, she now felt as adrift as she did her first day in Glammis, shivering in the heathen cold.
Macbeth limped in front of her; Roscille trailed behind. From this vantage point, she could see his wound well: the way it sucked at the wool of his tights, pulling the fabric into the wet, open gash. It seemed impossible that he could still support his own enormous body. Sometimes the kitchen boys in Naoned would cruelly tie up a dog's front leg and laugh while it hobbled around, whining at this confusing loss of function. When Roscille saw this it made her angry enough to wish herself a man, so she could enact violence upon them.
The corridor narrowed, and the torches on the wall grew dim, showing only black scorch-marks instead of light. At the end, the wood-rotted door with its rusted iron grate. The ocean's gnashing teeth behind it. Did the last prophecy not satisfy Macbeth? What more could he want than the total assurance the witches offered him?
Roscille risked this question: "Has something happened to displease you?"
It could be many things. The seething men in the courtyard. The nearness of Æthelstan's army. The lingering hurt of Banquho's betrayal. But Macbeth scarcely looked at her as he said, "Yes. But it will be righted now."
Then he turned the key in the lock and the coldness captured them both, as though they had been snatched up into the claws of the cruel old goddess of winter. Beira, that was her name here, in Alba. They also called her *cailleach*, divine hag. Half woman she was, and half horned beast.
Now *les Lavandières* shuffled forward, dragging their chains through the water. Gruoch was in the center, holding her laundry, stretching like spider silk between her hands. Their wet white hair clung to their scrawny necks. Roscille could not imagine what new prophecy her husband wished to beg off them. What fear did he want them to assuage?
Macbeth stood on the steps; he did not drop down into the water, did not move toward the torch. And, more strangely, he did not say a word. He merely waited until the witches had reached him there, closer to the door than Roscille had ever seen them. The light that leaked in from the corridor shone on their faces, their knobbed fingers. If they lived in the upper world, they would be midwives, wet nurses, widows who bathed the feet of brides.
They stood there waiting, rocking slightly back and forth, as if buffeted by wind. There was no wind, of course, and without their washing, the cave was silent and still. Roscille tried to meet Gruoch's gaze, but she could not pierce through the milky mortal blindness.
"*Buidseach*," Macbeth said. The word curved out, cold, in the black air. Gruoch opened her mouth, but Macbeth held up a hand. "No, do not speak. I do not come asking for counsel or prophecy."
Gruoch's mouth snapped shut. A dog, commanded: *Quiet!*
Roscille looked at her husband. A slow dread unfolded within her.
Very slowly, Macbeth reached for her. His hands found her shoulders first, and then ran down her torso, grazing her breasts, coming to settle at her waist. She was wearing a cloth belt, but this would not stop him. Would he really take her here, in the damp darkness, with *les Lavandières* as witness? Was this her punishment for Wrybeard's apathy? He did not need to prove his power in front of the witches; already they were shackled and chained, and surely he had already had Gruoch this way, the First Wife. Roscille despised her own cowardice, but she could not help drawing in a sharp little breath.
"Ah," said Macbeth. "You think me unworthy of your affections?"
"No, my Lord. It is not—it is cold here." Pitiful reasoning. Behind her, the black water bunched and then flattened, like fabric.
"I spoke to the traitor's traitorous son," Macbeth said. "Of course I asked him what you proposed I ask. I said I was seeking to punish another, and what should this manner of torture be? I did not speak of you, Lady Macbeth—no, Rosilla—no, Roscille of Breizh—yet somehow your name was in his mouth. He believed I sought to punish you instead. Why, I asked him. He looked at me almost pityingly, as if I were a miserable fool. To be pitied by a man in chains, with a sword dangling over his head. Why did he speak of you, Rosilla? Why did he look at me this way?"
The question was not a question. It was a snare laid under the false cover of leaves. One incautious step and she would be strung up. "I—I do not know, my Lord."
"You are a liar," said Macbeth. But his tone was light, each syllable like a stone skimming the water. "He unfolded your tapestry of falsehoods, first how you fabricated this attack by masked men, then how you offered yourself, when the whip was raised against Lisander. Your body, stealing the pain from his. I did not understand the reasoning. I do now."
"No," said Roscille. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it would crack itself open. "He is the liar; he wishes to absolve himself by blaming me—"
"Quiet. You are the Duke's daughter. You learned such wiles at his feet."
"I have no wiles," she whispered. "I am just a lady."
"You have never been just that," he said. "Still, I did not easily believe him, Fléance. He has his own motives, even if his devices are clumsy. Perhaps, I thought, he did merely wish to avoid his own execution. One last effort, raving and wild. But he was perfectly calm as he relayed this to me. As he told me: *You have been cuckolded in your own house, my Lord. Your loyal wife is not so loyal. She hides her true face and her tawdry secrets beneath her veil. She lay with the prince of Cumberland while your back was turned.*"
Every drop of blood in her body turned to flame. The fire rushed to her face, flushed her cheeks.
"No," she managed. "Fléance means to divert from his own betrayal."
"This is what I thought at first, too." Macbeth's hands tightened on her hips, until his fingers were pressing so hard into her skin through the gown that they would certainly leave bruises. "But then I thought—weeks I have been lying with her, every night, and nothing has taken root in her womb. She is long past her first blood and the fault cannot be with my seed. It can only be that another's seed has been planted first. You carry the prince's monstrous spawn."
The words were stolen from her mouth. She choked on the rising bile in her throat.
"Please," she said, when she could speak. "You cannot believe him. It is not true."
He shoved the flat of his hand against her belly, so rough that it knocked the breath from her. "*Do not lie to me.*"
Roscille stumbled, and barely managed to catch herself before she toppled backward into the water. There was something that sounded like the wind, cutting through the salt air, but it was actually a whisper, which passed among the witches, through them, as if they were hollow. Her name, made into a warning.
All three, together: "*Lady Macbeth.*"
"No," her husband snarled. "No Lady Macbeth, never again. And your father will not have you back, defiled by a foreign prince whose body is merely the shell of a monster. You are nothing now. A whore with no name. Nurse your demon child here in the dark."
He pushed her again, and she realized he was restraining himself, before. Even as he pried her legs apart, even as he ground himself against her hips, he did not show his full strength. His unshackled cruelty now was breathtaking. Though hobbled, nursing this ugly and incessant wound, his power seemed beyond that of a mortal man: a depthless brutality, his eyes aflame with anger and hate.
She fell. Twisting back on herself, gown tangling around her legs. Her face hit the water first and plastered her veil to her cheeks and nose and mouth. For a moment, her sodden clothes prevented her from surfacing, and there was a silver bolt of panic, a flash that whitened her vision like lightning, until she was able to claw herself up and onto her knees, and fumble for her veil.
But she could not catch Macbeth in the path of her gaze. He was already turning. He limped through the door and then shut it behind him. All light was thieved from her eyes.