by Lisa Klein
Luoch’s eyes are as round as berries. Rhuven also listens, holding her breath.
“At last they chose a single heaving mast and settled there. Within minutes the galley and all her crew sank beneath the waves.” Macbeth looks at me, traces of fear still in his eyes. “It was no usual storm, I tell you, but some unnatural evil that wrought their doom.”
“Don’t frighten the boy with superstitious nonsense,” I say, suppressing a shiver myself.
The babe kicks my womb with such vigor that I know it must be a boy. Macbeth agrees that we will name him Kenneth, for all of Scotland will esteem a man named for such a worthy king. He boasts to his warriors of the lusty boy he will train in the arts of combat. Every important thane has at least one son. Banquo has a boy, Fleance. King Duncan has two sons, the princes Malcolm and Donalbain.
One day I realize that my womb is quiet. I prod my belly, but when my son does not stir, I begin to panic. My stomach feels ill and my bowels contract sharply. I should not worry, Rhuven says. She makes me lie down and drink sweet wine. But nothing calms me. The stabbing pains will not stop. The room whirls about me like a falling spindle.
Then blood begins to seep from between my legs. The drops become a stream. It does not cease, though I press my legs together. Like a wounded animal, I cry out as I feel the child slip from my womb. I hear Rhuven whisper, “No, no!” and look down to see, cradled in her bloody hands, a baby boy, perfectly formed but still and silent as Death.
My heart is a stone lodged behind my ribs. I am hard all over, as the looking glass shows me. My cheeks are flat, my bones sharp. Strands of silver glisten in my hair, though I am only twenty-three. My eyes are pale and hard, like an ice-covered loch.
I refuse to lay him in the kirkyard, because God and the saints ignored my prayers. We bury him near the castle. Rhuven weeps. The green turf at my feet is beaded with dew as if the earth is weeping. We pile stones atop the grave. My husband shakes with grief.
I remember his cruelty toward our innocent daughter, now long dead. Did he shed a single tear for her? Yet now he mourns a son who never opened his eyes.
“Be a man. Cease your fit of tears,” I say, full of resentment.
“I am a man. May not a man show sorrow?” he pleads.
My own despair spills forth in cruel words. “You are no man, for you cannot even beget a living child upon your wife.”
“And you are no proper woman! Why do you not weep for our son?”
“I am used to such loss,” I say bitterly. “Three times my body has quickened with your sons, and three times it has expelled them before their time—”
I bite my tongue. I meant never to reveal this to him.
“Three times?” he exclaims. “When were the other two?” Now he is angry, and I feel as if a storm is about to break, blow me down, and dash me on the rocks below. “Why did you not tell me?” He clenches his hands and steps toward me.
“Because, my lord, I was afraid!” I reach out to touch his cheek slick with rain and tears. I am afraid still—that he will cast me away because I am childless.
Macbeth does not react to my touch. He looks beyond me, frowning so deeply I cannot see his eyes. “Three times,” he repeats. “That signifies evil luck.”
“But surely I will conceive again. The fourth time always brings good fortune,” I say. “Come, let us go inside. Rhuven, prepare my chamber and bring wine.” I take Macbeth’s arm, but he will not move. His fierce gaze shifts to the grave.
“Was the woman a fiend, who said I would bear sons?” he demands of the mound of rocks. “I must find her again and learn the truth.”
Chapter 4
Wychelm Wood and Wanluck Mhor
Albia
Sometimes when Mother and Helwain are both asleep, I slip out into the darkness by myself. I should be afraid, but the moon forbids me. Her white light makes the night almost as bright as the day, so that I cannot lose my way. Helwain goes out at night because she says that plants are more powerful when gathered under the full moon. But I think it is the night itself that draws her out. At night the forest is alive with sounds: the sweet call of the nightingale, the mournful hooting of the owlet, and the croaking of frogs from the riverbank. Sometimes a mist rolls along the ground, envelops the trees, and all around me I hear the patter of dripping water, as if faeries are tapping their tiny feet on the leaves. The faraway howling of a wolf on the moor tells me that some small creature has met its doom. Sometimes I walk as far as Stravenock Henge to see the stone giants hunched in a circle. Nearby, the twisted branches of the great oak tree look like the limbs of a bogle crawling from the earth. I relish the shudder this gives me, then I run back to the safety of the roundhouse.
Now that I live like the owl, I am awake when Rhuven arrives late one night. I hear her tell Mother that the thane and his wife have buried a son who was born too soon. Helwain questions her about her thane. They talk of war. I strain my ears to listen.
“Macbeth and his soldiers have been summoned to battle by King Duncan,” Rhuven reports. “The rebel Macdonwald, with his Irish footsoldiers and horsemen armed with axes, marches through the Spey valley toward Duncan’s castle.”
“A rebellion!” my mother says.
“And where does Macbeth’s loyalty lie?” asks Helwain.
“With King Duncan, of course!” says Rhuven in haste. “As he was leaving, he said to my lady that he would bring home the victory and lay it at her feet.”
“That may have a double meaning,” Helwain muses. “Are you sure he has no greater ambition?”
“He seems content,” says Rhuven. “The old thane of Glamis has died, and my lord expects Duncan to grant him Glamis’s lands and title. But something else worries me.” Rhuven pauses. “The loss of his stillborn son disturbs him deeply. Helwain, Macbeth believes you lied to him. He has vowed to seek you out.”
“He will ask in the village, and they will tell him where we live,” says my mother, her voice rising. “But he must not come here.”
However hard I listen, I do not understand all these matters.
“Nay, we will go to him,” says Helwain. “Next week, when the moon is full, we three will meet at Wanluck Mhor, and in that wasteland of ill fortune, waylay him.”
“What will you tell him, Helwain? You must not promise him any more sons,” Rhuven warns.
Helwain shrugs. “I will know by then what to say to him.”
All week Helwain is busy with her powders and potions. She casts bones on the hearth and prods the dust for signs. She searches the skies at night. Mother is silent and tense. On the day they are to leave for the moor, she tries to send me to stay with Murdo and Colum. But I want to see Helwain do her dark mischief, so I cry and beg and cling to Mother until she relents.
We set out for Wanluck Mhor early in the day, with Mother pulling the small sledge laden with blankets, food, and Helwain’s kettle. It may take several days to find this lord, she says. Rhuven, coming from Dun Inverness, meets us at the edge of the woods. She frowns when she sees me.
“Why have you brought her?” she says in dismay.
“She is afraid to be left behind. You can understand why,” Mother says, putting her arms around me. “Don’t worry. She will stay hidden.”
But I am not afraid, and I don’t understand why I must hide. I am simply excited to be going on a journey and curious about what I will see on the moor.
We climb up and down steep braes where the deer drink from the rivulets running down the rocks. The rising sun in our eyes makes us blink. Dew lifts from the ground and the long purple shadows fade. The sun is overhead, then at our backs. Gradually we descend to soft earth covered with bearberry bushes, dwarf birches, and heather with white and pink flowers. Helwain prods the ground with her staff to feel where the soft, peaty ground gives way to a sucking bog. We are on Wanluck Mhor. When I ask Mother how the place got its name, she says that no one knows. But I think it must have been a great flood, for I see ruined dwellings covered in lichens a
nd brambles, islands in a shallow, grassy sea.
In the distance, too, there is movement. “Something is coming, Mother!” The sound of hooves thudding on the soft ground grows louder.
Helwain heads for a nearby boulder. Mother drags the sledge off the path and into the bracken. We crouch behind the rock. Now we can hear the jingling of harnesses and war-mail as horsemen converge on the path.
“We hail from the king!” shouts one of the men. “What news from the battlefield?”
“Take this message to Duncan,” comes the reply. “Brave Macbeth with his smoking sword has slain the traitor Macdonwald.”
A deep-throated shout rises from the first party.
“And you spread this word,” orders the king’s messenger. “The thane of Cawdor has confessed to aiding the king of Norway, and to punish this treason, Duncan has confiscated all his lands and cut off his head.”
My mouth falls open to hear about such killing. Mother puts her fingers against my lips.
“Cursed be Cawdor’s soul!” growls the man from the battlefield. “Tell the king how the loyal Macbeth fought. He doubled strokes upon our foes as if he meant to bathe in their blood.”
“Be assured Duncan will show his gratitude. Where is Macbeth now?”
“Not far behind us, making his way to the king’s castle at Forres.”
As the men spur their horses and part company, Helwain rubs her hands together.
“So the war-goddess favors Macbeth. And she leads him into our path. We must hurry!”
Helwain leads the way across the rough moor to a hillock high enough to be seen from all directions. Atop the hill are crumbling rocks, the remains of a half-buried dwelling. Rhuven unloads the sledge and covers it with ferns while Helwain makes a small fire. I watch the sisters put on gray-green robes the color of the lichens that grow on old stones and trees. Rhuven and my mother rub their faces and hands with ashes. Helwain does not wear a disguise. She already looks frightful, with her wild gray hair, her bristly chin, and the shadows under her eyes.
“He must be able to recognize who I am,” she says.
Mother leads me down some crumbled steps into the ground, where the last light of day shines a little way into the sunken rooms. Brown grass grows between the collapsed stones. I am too excited to be afraid.
“What is going to happen tonight?” I ask. “What magic will Helwain do?”
“I don’t know. But you must stay down here and not make a sound. Try to sleep.”
When she leaves I stand on a rock and peer between the stones. I am consumed with curiosity. But my leg aches from the long journey and my eyes grow heavy. I lie down to rest only for a moment. Instead I dream something terrible: a man’s head dripping with blood and gore. There is no body, only a head with a mouth gaping in a horrible grin. With a cry, I start up from my sleep. It must be Cawdor, the headless traitor, beside me in this tomb! My heart pounding with panic, I crawl up the steps and emerge on all fours like an animal, looking around for my mother.
In the light of the moon, round and full, I see Helwain, Rhuven, and my mother around the fire. Helwain stirs her kettle while my mother and Rhuven dance. Their shadows waver and leap. The wind whips their robes about them. Mist rises from hidden pools and blows like clouds across the moor.
From somewhere in the fog comes a man’s voice: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen!”
Two men on horseback emerge from the fog. One has thick red hair. In the crook of his arm he carries a helmet and the moonlight glints on his sleeveless tunic made from links of metal. His arms, thick as trees, are painted from the shoulder to the wrist with circles and curious markings like those on the Skelpie Stone. His horse, spattered with mud, heaves under him. White foam drips from its mouth.
The sisters stop their dancing, link hands, and face the men.
“What are these withered and wild creatures?” the red-haired man says to his companion. Then to the sisters he shouts, “Speak! Who are you?”
Rhuven calls out in a voice unlike her own, “All hail Macbeth, thane of Moray!”
“All hail Macbeth, thane of Glamis and of Cawdor!” cries my mother.
So this is Rhuven’s master, the man we have come to meet! I creep forward to get a closer look, ducking behind a gorse bush.
Helwain throws back her hood.
I hear Macbeth’s sharp intake of breath. “Banquo, see, it is the very oracle I seek! The old woman.”
Then Helwain speaks, her voice like the grating of stones against each other. “All hail Macbeth, that shall be king hereafter!”
Macbeth starts in his saddle. His horse shies as if struck by an arrow.
“My lord, why do you seem to fear things that sound so fair?” asks his companion, coming forward. “You fantastical creatures, now speak to me!” He laughs, as if this is some jest. “Look into the seeds of time and tell me which grain will grow and which will not.”
“Hail Banquo!” Helwain greets him. “Lesser than Macbeth and greater. Not so happy yet much happier. You shall beget kings though you will be none.”
Banquo makes a scornful sound in his throat. “They contradict themselves, the old women!” he says.
On a cue from Helwain, Mother and Rhuven begin to back away.
“Stay, you fateful sisters, tell me more!” demands Macbeth. “I know I will be thane of Glamis, for he is dead, but how of Cawdor? The thane of Cawdor lives. And to be king is beyond belief. How do you know this? Speak!”
He tries to spur his horse forward, but the creature will not budge. He curses. I am afraid of being seen. I feel like the little brown rabbit in the open field, sensing the boy with his slingshot.
Now Helwain lifts her hood over her face and turns away. A gust of wind blows a cloud of heavy mist around Macbeth and Banquo. Seizing my chance, I scurry for the hole and retreat into the dark earth. Just behind me Rhuven, Helwain, and my mother stumble down the steps, breathing hard.
Faintly I hear Macbeth shout, “They have melted, Banquo, and vanished like spirits into the air!”
Helwain laughs. “Ha! We gulled the powerful Macbeth.”
Rhuven is not so pleased. “Why did we hail him with such lofty titles? If these don’t come to pass, he will know that we lie. We were to prophesy strife and trouble, for those are certainties.”
“You heard the messengers. Because of his exploits in battle, he is certain to become thane of Glamis and Cawdor, too,” explains Helwain. “Then what is left for him but to become king? We merely put his own desires into words.”
“As you did when you prophesied sons? Yet that did not come to pass.”
“So, perhaps this time he will not believe me. What harm is done?” Helwain says, sounding careless.
“I saw him start, like a guilty man, when you hailed him as king,” says Rhuven. She sounds worried.
Helwain snorts. “Do you think he will go to Forres tonight and slay Duncan? He is not a fool.”
Now my mother speaks. “Even if he wanted to, he would not find the opportunity, for the king will be surrounded by his loyal warriors.”
“Then why feed Macbeth with vain promises and lying prophecies?” Rhuven persists.
“I am an old woman without any power. This gives me some sport.”
“Helwain, this is no game!” Rhuven’s voice rises with distress. “If my lord commits treason against his king, he will be killed and my lady banished, and I will also be ruined.”
“By Morrigan and all the gods!” Helwain bursts out. “We are already lost, because of Macbeth. Have you forgotten that he slew Gillam and drove us from our home? I will play foul with his fate!”
“And with Banquo’s, too?” asks Rhuven. “He is an honorable man. Lesser than Macbeth and greater—what does that mean?”
“Banquo is not superstitious,” Helwain replies. “My double-talk is meant to twist Macbeth’s reason. And how easy that is!”
“Do not overlook my Albia,” my mother interjects. “What will be her fate, when Macbeth f
ulfills his?”
I hear my name mentioned, but I do not understand how I have any connection to the weird events of this night. Nor do I understand why my mother and her sisters have waited for the painted warrior and taunted him with great titles. Perhaps they have eaten some mixture of Helwain’s that makes them act so strangely.
In the morning Rhuven is already gone. Helwain and Mother are silent on the way home. I follow them, biting my lip. I know that I am somehow to blame for what happened. They didn’t want to bring me. Even Rhuven was not happy to see me. Now they have quarreled and Rhuven has gone away angry. If she never visits again, there will be no more gifts for me, and it will be the punishment I deserve.
I forget to look where my feet are taking me and stumble against a hawthorn tree. A long, sharp thorn breaks off and sticks in my hand. For a moment my mind is somewhere else. A slow, fearful wail rises from my throat. The sound surprises me.
“Be quiet, my head hurts,” complains Helwain.
“You hush, Helwain. She has cut herself, my poor child.” Mother pulls out the thorn and dabs at the blood welling from my palm.
But it is not the pain or the blood that made me cry out. It was the brief sight of three bodies and a man holding a dagger with blood on its blade. I shake my head to dispel the scene, but when I close my eyes it is still there. I rub my hands together, but it only spreads the blood.
“What are you doing, Albia?” asks Mother.
“She has a strange look,” says Helwain excitedly. “What do you see? Tell me.” Her face is so close to mine that her features blur, except for the gleam in her eyes that frightens me. “Speak up, girl!”
But I press my lips tightly together and close my eyes. I will not let Helwain see inside me.
Chapter 5
Wychelm Woods
Albia
After that night on Wanluck Mhor, I stay away from Helwain. Mother puts a salve on my cut until it heals, leaving only a tiny scar on my palm. She keeps me close to her. I know she regrets allowing me to go to the moor. I don’t think she even suspects that I saw the painted warrior and heard every word that was spoken. But I often catch her gazing at me with a sad and worried expression.
