Lady Macbeth's Daughter

by Lisa Klein

  Twice a week the village priest climbs the hill to Dunbeag to teach Fleance and me something called Latin. It twists my tongue into knots. Fleance, who has had lessons for years, calls me a lame-brain. He has taken to staring at my chest as if trying to see my breasts growing beneath my dress. The priest notices my shame and steps between us, his white hair like a cloud encircling his head. With infinite patience he teaches me to recognize the strange marks and the sounds they represent. Using a quill pen I learn to form letters, then words, but none of them make sense. One day at the tiny church at Dunbeag, while Breda and the other worshippers stare blankly at the cross, I realize that I understand the prayers the priest intones. It is as amazing as hearing words in the sighs of the wind and the melodies of birds.

  This priest is a moral man and a lover of learning, with a pretty wife in the village and two children. He loves to tell about the past, when the powerful Picts ruled, battling the Scots, the Romans, and the other barbarians, until Ninian and Columba arrived and vanquished all enemies with their single god. Then they planted stone crosses for the people to worship. After that, the great Kenneth MacAlpin united the Scots and the Picts, and our land became known as the kingdom of Alba.

  “Knowest thou,” the priest adds in his learned manner, “that thy name, Albia, is akin to alba, the Latin word for ‘white,’ and thus signifies goodness and virtue?” Then he murmurs, more to himself than to me, “Though our country’s whiteness is marred by the evil and strife afoot in the land.” He looks at me sharply. “Never let thy goodness be so stained! Ask thou the Lord God’s help.” He touches his forehead, then his chest and each of his shoulders, an odd series of gestures he often makes.

  “I will. I promise,” I whisper, thinking he is warning me about Fleance.

  A cold and sunless summer follows the barren spring. I am sitting outdoors, using small tablets to weave a braid to decorate the hem of a dress. The warp threads attach to my belt, pass through the tablets, and are secured to a timber post. The wind lifts my hair, which has grown long enough to reach my lap as I bend over my work. In the yard beside the fort, Banquo is training his warriors, and I hear shouts and the clash of swords.

  Then Fleance and another fellow stumble into my sight, straining against each other in a contest of might. They wear nothing more than linen clouts over their loins. Their arms and torsos gleam with sweat. Thinking that the priest would not approve of my watching, I peek through the curtain of my hair. With a mighty heave Fleance throws off his opponent, who falls on his back with a grunt of pain. Fleance kneels on his chest and pins his arms against the ground.

  “That’s two out of three for me, and I’m more fit than you for the king’s army,” he says loudly. Then he lets the fellow get up and hobble away.

  Fleance looks over and catches me watching him. I lower my gaze, but it is too late. He saunters over and stands before me.

  “Did you see how I wrestled that carl to the ground? He has ten years on me.”

  I keep my eyes on my weaving. Fleance must not see that his show of strength did impress me. “I think he let you win,” I say with a shrug.

  Fleance scowls. “What makes you think you can disdain me so? I am not ill-favored, am I? Look at me.” He holds out his sinewed arms, then crosses them over his chest. “I am the son of the king’s best general. And who are you? Nobody! You don’t even have a father.”

  Boiling with rage I leap to my feet. “And you don’t deserve yours! Why, you are nothing but a rude braggart. And I should clamor for the attention of one so ignorant? Pah!”

  Fleance steps closer. Heat flows from his body and he smells of sweat. But I cannot move away. I am tethered to the post by my weaving.

  “Rude I may be, for what warrior is not? But I’ll not have you call me ignorant. I have studied Latin longer than you.”

  “I wouldn’t give a piece of tin for your wit.”

  “Try me with a riddle,” he demands. “Make it a good one.”

  I swallow hard. The Latin riddles are still too difficult for me. I will have to make one up.

  While I am thinking, Fleance shifts from one foot to the other as if impatient for another wrestling contest. Finally I have a riddle I think is clever enough.

  “I’ll make you go blind, but without me you cannot see,” I begin. “You may feel me on your skin, but you cannot touch me. I make earth appear and water disappear. All things reach for me, but whatever comes too near me will die.” I look directly at Fleance, challenging him. “What am I?”

  “That is easy,” he says without hesitating. “I am the sun.”

  I feel my confidence wither. I blink and drop my eyes.

  “I have more wit than you know. And I will be paid for it.” Fleance smirks at me and tugs on my weaving, trying to pull me to him.

  Suddenly I am the doe pursued by the hunter, the rabbit before the stone strikes. I turn to run but only succeed in wrapping myself in my weaving. Fleance steps closer, takes me by the waist, and turns me back to face him.

  “I won’t hurt you, sister. If you pay what you owe.”

  His voice is more mocking than threatening, his hands firm but not forceful. This surprises me, but my humilation is even greater. As he draws me nearer, I reach up and strike his face with the back of my hand.

  “Take that for your payment!” I tear myself away and stumble backward, leaving my half-finished weaving dangling from the post.

  Fleance cradles his jaw with his hand, looking stunned.

  “Remember this, Fleance, son of Banquo: I am the sun. Dare to touch me and you will die. I do not jest.”

  For days Fleance and I exchange neither words nor looks. He does not attend our Latin lessons, and I am pleased to think that I have dealt with him for good. But one day I am on my way to the village, carrying wool for the weaver, when he steps from behind a boulder into my path. He wears a sword in his belt and carries another one in a leather scabbard. My first impulse is to throw my basket at him and run, but I hold my ground.

  “Do you mean to cleave me in pieces right here and thus have your revenge?” I ask.

  “Nay, I mean to teach you a different lesson.” He pulls the sword from its scabbard and tosses it at my feet. It clangs on the rocky ground.

  Puzzled, I look from the sword to Fleance, who leans on one leg, his hands resting on his hips. He does not look like a carl about to cause me trouble. His messy brown hair blows back from his face, making him almost handsome. He nods at the sword on the ground.

  “If you can match me in wits, you can match me in arms.”

  “You expect me to fight you?” I say in disbelief.

  “I will teach you.”

  “Why?” I say, full of suspicion.

  “You have a warlike spirit I mean to hone.”

  “But what girl ever uses a sword?”

  “You are no longer a mere girl, as I can see.” His gaze travels from my face down to my waist.

  I feel myself blush. Stupidly, I can think of no rejoinder.

  “Pick it up,” he says, drawing his own sword. The sun catches the long blade, making it gleam.

  I set my basket aside and pick up the sword at my feet. It is not very heavy.

  “ ’Tis the one I learned with when I was a boy.”

  I turn it over carefully, then exclaim in surprise, “I don’t have a chance here. This blade is blunted!”

  Fleance lowers his sword and gives me a hurt look. “Albia, why do you wish me harm?”

  “Well, isn’t that the point of the battle?”

  “Nay, the point is to defend yourself,” he says. A furrow creases his brow. “This is a dangerous world for a woman with a strong will but a weak arm. Now watch, and do as I do.”

  With two hands on the hilt and my feet planted firmly apart, I hold the sword over my head and bring it down as Fleance shows me. I slash from side to side until my shoulders ache. Sweat beads my forehead and prickles between my breasts.

  “I love the sound of the blade cutting the a
ir!” I say, panting with exhilaration. “Do you hear it?”

  “Aye. See that you don’t strike me!” Fleance yells, jumping back with an oath.

  I barely heed him, now imagining myself in combat with the beast Nocklavey, thrusting my sword into his fiery eye, fighting until his black blood empties from his veins.

  “Stop! That is not how to do it,” Fleance cries, interrupting my wild thoughts. Standing behind me, he reaches around and grasps the hilt of my sword, covering my hands. So quickly did he move that I am too startled to protest. His chest presses against my back and his breath tickles my ear.

  “You must learn the proper way to thrust at your opponent without exposing your flanks,” he says. “You’d better have a shield.”

  Are his lips brushing my cheek or do I imagine it? I twist one hand free from beneath his and thrust my arm backward so that my elbow strikes him in the abdomen. The heel of my right foot comes down on his toes. I do this all without thinking.

  Fleance drops my sword and falls back with a cry. I pick up the sword and whirl around to face him.

  “A fine move, sister!” he says, grimacing and holding his stomach.

  “Stay there,” I warn. “This doesn’t have much of a blade, but I can make it hurt anyway. So that’s your plan, is it? Seduce me with swordplay?”

  Fleance looks stricken. “I thought you were enjoying our sport.”

  I say nothing. I have been enjoying myself. Too much.

  “I could not make you admire my strength or my wit, but you turned and hit me,” he complains. “Now I teach you how to use a sword, and you want to kill me. What is a fellow to do?”

  “Oh, you’ll think of another trick, no doubt,” I say, trying with my trembling hands to put the sword back in its scabbard. “But I’ll be ready for it.”

  “I am not the enemy, Albia,” he says in a tone of reproach.

  “And that makes you a friend?” I want to sound outraged but hear my voice quaver instead.

  I slide the sheathed weapon onto my belt and refasten the bronze buckle Banquo gave me. The sword drags my belt down over my hips. I pick up my basket and brush the dirt off its contents. It takes all my self-control to walk away without looking back.

  On the village streets, people give me strange looks, the thane’s foster daughter, armed with a sword and carrying a basket of wool. I ignore them, my thoughts fixed on Fleance. Twice I have struck him, yet he did not seem angry, only disappointed. I leave the wool at the weaver’s and hurry to the mill to buy flour. Remembering Fleance’s arms around me and his breath on my face makes me blush. I hurry back to Dunbeag, up the hill. The unfamiliar sword beats against my leg. Breda will wonder what has taken me so long. I wonder if I have misjudged Fleance. He could easily have overcome me with force, but he did not. Does he want me just to notice him? Wrestling half-naked in front of me and teaching me to fight with a sword are strange ways of getting my attention, but what if the poor fool does not know any other way? I spend hours and days in such speculation. Meanwhile Fleance leaves with his father for Dun Forres, the king’s dwelling.

  Despite my aching arms and shoulders, I want to practice, but my little room is too narrow a place to swing my sword. So I go outside and choose a stone, not too heavy, and lift it over my head and swing it from side to side to increase my strength. I go to the far slope of Dunbeag and throw a shaft as I have seen men do in contests, fetching it and hurling it until it breaks against a rock. I whet the blade of Fleance’s old sword against a hard stone, then swing and stab at a dummy made of straw until it is nothing but a pile of chaff. My blood pounds in every limb of my body, filling me with satisfaction.

  While Fleance and Banquo are away, Breda teaches me to play simple tunes on the lute. I dress my hair in braids and ornaments of bone and wonder if it makes me look more like a lady. I practice my Latin with little interest, weave an entire length of cloth without a single mistake, and think about the unpredictable Fleance. What does he want from me? Something more than what he can take by mere strength.

  After a few weeks, I realize that I miss him.

  So, apparently, does Breda. Although she does not seem to like her husband or her son, she is morose in their absence.

  “What can I do to please you?” I ask dutifully.

  Breda shakes her head and gives me a look that says You are not my daughter.

  “I know I cannot take her place,” I say in a voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t even wish to try.”

  Breda sighs. “She was nothing like you, but had the whitest hair and bluest eyes.”

  “Fleance has such eyes, too.” I bite my tongue, seeing Breda’s sharp look.

  “The boy takes after his father,” she says firmly.

  The silence that follows is weighted with her disappointment in Fleance.

  “A man’s every deed is an act of war,” she says suddenly, stabbing a needle into the cloth she is sewing. “And we women are mere spoils.”

  I do not know what to make of these statements. Is Breda simply lamenting her lot as Banquo’s wife? Or is she warning me against her son?

  “I will be no man’s spoil,” I say, “even if it means I will have no man, ever.”

  I vow to myself that I will learn to fight like a man, so that I will not need one to defend me.

  Chapter 10

  Dunduff

  Albia

  A thick and pestilent air has fallen over Dunbeag. Breda, afraid of becoming ill, is busy preparing for a visit to Fiona Macduff, wife of the powerful thane of Fife. It will be a two-day journey by horseback to Dunduff.

  “I shall keep everything in order while you are away,” I promise her.

  “Nay, you will come with me, for Fiona will expect to meet my fosterling,” says Breda, making me understand that she herself is not keen to have my company.

  Two soldiers accompany us because of the threat of brigands, but we meet with no danger on the road. Macduff ’s stronghold is built on the open heath, for there are no hills around. But it is palisaded around with pointed timbers, and high watchtowers afford views in every direction. No one, friend or enemy, can surprise the Macduffs.

  Fiona is as robust and warm-hearted as Breda is thin and cold. Her children flock around her like ducklings. I count four little ones, then five, and realize that two of the children are exactly alike. The long-limbed girls hold hands as they gaze at me shyly, and I am reminded of a swan and its reflection in the water. The oldest child, a boy, tries his best to stand apart from the others, like a bird eager to be fledged from the nest and find his own food.

  I sit among the children and ask their names, patting their heads in turn. They climb into my lap, play with my hair, and tug on my hands, while I close my eyes and imagine myself among the sheep on the summer shieling. The children tickle me and I laugh. I have not been this happy since I played with Colum. I long for him so intently that tears fill my eyes. It is autumn now, so he has gone home from the shieling. I imagine him in the fields with Murdo, swinging his scythe as the barley falls.

  Fiona’s eldest son, who is called Wee Duff, soon warms to me like the others. He brings me his toys—animals carved from bone, a leather ball, and a wooden sword—and bounces up and down as I admire each one.

  One of the twins taps my shoulder.

  “Are you the queen of Faeryland?” she asks, pointing to my red-gold hair, loose about my shoulders.

  I look into her wide and serious eyes, green pools in her face, and the voices around me seem to fade.

  “I wish I were,” I whisper. Something tugs at my awareness from within, perhaps nothing more than the brief longing to be a child again, with the Other-world as close as the next copse of trees.

  “I believe she is,” says the girl eagerly to her twin sister.

  “We saw the queen—” says the second twin.

  The other girl finishes her sentence. “In the forest at night.”

  “And she had hair like yours—”

  “But you are much pre
ttier in the day.”

  I take the hands of the twins and say, “It was a lovely dream, wasn’t it?”

  They shake their heads stubbornly.

  “It was real,” they insist. “You must come with us next time.”

  Seeing their earnest faces, I remember how I, too, imagined playing with faeries and visiting them in my sleep. Those memories have faded like the dye of a cloth washed a hundred times.

  I hear myself say, “I will meet you there one day, I promise.”

  The girls exchange looks of delight, like a face and a mirror, and dance away.

  In the company of Fiona Macduff, Breda warms up. She smiles at the children and I can believe that she loved her daughter and perhaps Fleance, too, when he was small.

  “Maybe you will beget another bairn,” says Fiona hopefully.

  Breda shakes her head. “My courses do not come as they used to. It is something to do with the moon. Nothing in nature is as it should be.”

  I listen while pretending to play with Wee Duff ’s toy boat.

  “Aye, everything is disordered since Macbeth became king,” says Fiona. “Some say it was he, and not the princes Malcolm and Donalbain, who killed Duncan while he slept.”

  Breda sits forward, her brow contracted. “Since his death, not even the sheep are breeding rightly. And my husband’s best mare bore a creature with two heads! It lived only a week.”

  Fiona rests a hand on her arm. “We should not be overly fearful. Similar times have come and gone with no lasting ill. My own Macduff was born—and almost died—in a cursed year like this one.”

  “What happened?” Breda asks.

  “By some mishap that befell his mother, he was torn before his time from her womb,” Fiona explains.

  Breda looks amazed. “Yet see how he thrives today! He is all goodness and strength.” She looks around her, finding reassurance. “Indeed, all is well here. Look how your children love you. Wee Duff will grow up to be just like his father.”

  “I pray he will!” Fiona says, pride in her voice. “He is a good son, and my lord a generous father.” Her voice descends to a whisper. “Unlike our king, who is worse than the cruelest father. My Macduff has gone to beg him to rescind his unjust laws against the people.”