Lady Macbeth's Daughter

by Lisa Klein

  Rhuven comes for me the very next day, like one of the priest’s angels who save those who are about to lose their souls. My pulse is still racing from kissing Fleance. How could Rhuven have known what happened between us?

  Of course she does not know. The reason she has come, she says, is that the pestilence infecting Scotland has reached the Wychelm Wood. My mother is very ill. In fact, she is dying.

  We leave Dunbeag at once. Even on Rhuven’s palfrey, we cannot travel fast enough to satisfy me. I yearn to see my mother. But my thoughts are also full of guilty desire for Fleance. When I fall asleep sitting up, I feel his hands on me and with a start realize that it is Rhuven holding me up as we ride.

  We stop for the night and I have a dream about Banquo. His face is pale beneath his beard, like a ghost’s. His look reproaches me as he whispers through bloodless lips, “Avenge me, daughter of evil!” The dream frightens me. It makes no sense. I ask Rhuven if Banquo is my father.

  “What gives you that idea?” she asks, looking at me as if I am crazy.

  “Never mind.” I decide to wait and ask Mother who my father is. But she is dying. What if we are too late?

  When we come to the edge of the wood, I leave Rhuven and run ahead. The spreading branches of the wychelms reach out to welcome me home, but they are leafless. The burn rushes along as always, but there are no flowers blooming on its banks, and the birds sing plaintive notes as if protesting the loss. The roundhouse looks darker and more ancient than before, as if it conceals an entrance to the Under-world. Helwain stands in the low doorway, her eyes sunken and her hands twitching. She says nothing, yet her eyes speak of the fear that her sister will die.

  Inside Mother lies, too weak to rise from her bed, yet glowing with gladness to see me. If she can smile so warmly, perhaps she is not dying after all! I kneel down and take her hand, and then I see that her skin is as thin and white as the bark of a birch tree.

  “Mother, I am sorry that I left you last time, without even a kiss!” The words tumble out of me. “But why did you send me away? You must have been sick even then. I should not have left you. Will you forgive me?”

  “There is nothing to forgive, daughter,” she says, shaking her head. “Tell me, are you happy at Dunbeag?”

  Like a child I am eager to tell her everything.

  “It is never dull there. I have learned to read and write. I can even fight with a sword. Don’t look surprised, it is more for the sport. The lady Breda dislikes me, but the lord Banquo is most kind and fatherly to me, and Fleance—” Here I blush. “He is … as rough as one would expect of a brother.”

  Mother smiles. “They are good people and will see that you are married well.” She closes her eyes.

  “Married? Mother, I have no wish to marry. I only want you to be well!” The tears fill my eyes, leaving her face a blur. “Helwain, can you cure her?”

  Helwain pays no attention to me. She is plying Rhuven for news of the king.

  “My lady suffers terrible dreams and wakes nightly, her clothes as wet as if she had fallen in the well,” says Rhuven, her face creased with distress. “She cries over and over, ‘What’s done is done and cannot be undone.’ Your potion of poppy did nothing to calm her.”

  “I will make a stronger elixir with nightshade and belladonna,” says Helwain. “Better yet, something that would hold a child within her loins. What of the rue that was meant to strengthen the king’s seed?”

  “He tasted its bitterness in his wine and demanded to know who poisoned him,” says Rhuven. “I think he suspected me and my lady. I was as afraid of him as on that terrible night!”

  I listen in disbelief. How can they fret over King Macbeth and his queen at a time like this?

  “Then what poison shall I concoct for His Majesty?” Helwain’s voice drips with malice. “The deadly nightshade, ground with the bones of night-flying bats. That is the way to end a tyrant’s life. It does its deadly work inside, where the evil dwells.”

  “Nay, you shall do no such thing, nor shall you even think it,” says Rhuven fearfully.

  Finally I can bear it no longer. I stand up to Helwain, inches from her hairy chin. My hands shake and the words seethe from me. “Enough! How are the troubles of the king and queen any business of yours? My mother is dying. Why don’t you heal her!”

  “I have tried and it is beyond my powers,” says Helwain in anguish.

  “O peace. Between you two, peace,” pleads my mother.

  Helwain sinks down on the hearthstones and begins rattling bones in her hands. The sound irks me as always, but at least she is no longer ranting.

  I take a deep breath. If I do not ask Mother about my father now, I will never again have the opportunity. I kneel down beside her again and smoothe her thin hair. I am loath to displease her while she lies at the brink of her death. But I must learn a simple truth.

  “Mother, tell me please, who was my father?”

  The soft hiss of the peat fire answers me. The rattling of bones stops.

  “Please. I am old enough to know whose name I bear.”

  From the corner of my eye, I see Rhuven stiffen. In the silence and the swirl of smoke, I hear the intake of my mother’s breath. She exhales without speaking.

  “It is time for her to know the truth,” says Helwain.

  After a long pause, my mother speaks. Her voice is barely above a whisper, and I must strain to hear.

  “Macbeth, Scotland’s king, is your father.”

  I sigh and turn to Helwain. “Does her mind often wander so?”

  The old woman shakes her head.

  “I am dying, Albia, I cannot lie.” My mother’s voice is stronger. She lays a hand on my arm.

  I suppress my tears and decide to humor her. “How did you come to bear Macbeth’s child? It would have been long before he became king. Tell me, it must be quite a story.”

  My mother shakes her head. Then she confesses, with the little breath remaining in her, that she is not my mother at all.

  “You were born of Grelach, Macbeth’s lady. Though I have loved you all these years as truly as any mother.”

  I stare at her, openmouthed. Then I turn to Rhuven. “Your mistress?”

  Rhuven nods. Her face is twisted with sorrow.

  “No. That can’t be! You’re both lying.”

  I see my mother—no, not my mother, simply Geillis—wince with pain.

  “Then explain why I grew up here,” I demand. “Did the faeries steal me from this Grelach and leave me … in this pitiful house?” My voice is full of scorn.

  Rhuven says, “In a manner of speaking, yes—”

  “Don’t lie to her!” thunders Helwain. “She is no child. She must know the truth, black as it is!”

  “What truth? That I am kin to that painted warrior you conned on the moor? The tyrant who seizes land and lets his subjects starve? That is madness! The king is not my father.”

  “Your hair is exactly the color of his,” says Rhuven, reaching out to me. “And you have his temper.”

  I push her arm away. “How should that make me his daughter?”

  “Albia, you are Scotland’s daughter, and here is proof,” says Helwain darkly. She holds out a gold armlet set with a large gem the color of thickened blood. I gaze upon it in fascination but recoil from touching it.

  “What is this bauble?” I demand.

  “It belonged to your mother,” Rhuven says. “My lord gave it to her when they were wed. Now it is yours.”

  “That proves nothing. For all I know, you stole it last week.”

  Rhuven is on the verge of tears. “Do you think we would make all this up? We would never torment you so.”

  “Then let me take this gem to Dun Forres and see if I am welcomed as the long-lost daughter of the king and queen.” I try to sound defiant as I thrust out my hand for the armlet, but my voice wavers.

  “Foolish girl,” says Helwain, snatching it away. “Do you want to be killed?”

  Her words, like a wintry blas
t, pierce to my very bones. Clearly there is more to this matter than learning who gave me birth.

  “Tell me everything,” I say in a small, tight voice. “Tell me who I am and how I came here.”

  Throughout the remaining hours of that long night, Geillis, Rhuven, and Helwain unfold the long and complicated tale. From hand to hand they pass the thread of my life, until I am dizzied by the whirling, falling spindle and vexed by the tangled strands they weave. I hear how the lady Grelach bore me and tried to hide my lame foot from her husband; how Macbeth, believing me cursed, seized me from her arms and put me out as food for the wolves; how Rhuven saved me and brought me to Geillis, who raised me as the child of her own, never-filled womb.

  “Do they even know I am alive?” I ask, my voice rising as if it would leave my throat altogether.

  “No, and they must never find out,” says Rhuven.

  “You are not to seek out Macbeth and his lady,” Helwain orders.

  “Why not?” I ask, lifting my chin. The time when I let Helwain tell me what to do is long past.

  Rhuven shakes her head at Helwain. There is something else she does not want spoken. But Helwain says that I must know, despite the risk.

  So I hear the dark and terrible secret that Rhuven has shared with no one but her sisters: that Macbeth and his wife, whetting their ambition until it was sharper than a steel blade, slew King Duncan as he slept under their very roof, innocent and unsuspecting.

  Thus I learn that I am the daughter of a murderer and his wife, Macbeth and Grelach—my father and mother? No, monsters who did not scruple to kill their very own flesh and blood, and hardened by that first crime, boldly took the life of a king and his harmless servants. How can I live with this terrible truth? It shakes me to the marrow of my bones. I no longer know myself. Why did I not leave the past buried?

  I hurl bitter words at the sisters, charging them with malice against Macbeth for slaying Gillam and making them homeless. I accuse them of raising me in hopes of restoring me to the queen for reward. But my ranting subsides when I see the grief in Geillis’s eyes, Rhuven’s fear, and Helwain’s pain. They have done me no wrong. They are also victims. Now I understand that it is because of Macbeth and his wife that all of Scotland suffers.

  “I hate them! Not you,” I cry. “And I am their fruit. I fell from that rotten tree.” My voice rises to a wail. “Oh, I hate myself, too!”

  “Nay, Albia, their crimes cannot stain you,” says Geillis with earnest feeling in her failing voice. “You have none of their wickedness in you.”

  I think of my quick temper with Colum, my hatred of Helwain, the times I struck Fleance, and my sudden passion for him.

  “Aye, I do have a violent nature,” I whisper.

  The peat fire has died down to embers. A few birds begin to twitter. Soon it will be the morning of another sunless day. Geillis’s breath grows ragged.

  “Come here, Albia,” says Helwain.

  I get up and obey her. She puts my hand through the armlet with the red stones. The chill of the metal goes through me like a knife blade.

  “I don’t want it, if it was hers.”

  “You cannot refuse it. Wear it,” she orders. “Your mother is descended of a just king. Macbeth has corrupted her. But you can remedy their evil.” Her eyes are shining with conviction. “Albia, you have been chosen!”

  A harsh laugh escapes me. “What shall I do? Ride up to Dun Forres and kill Macbeth for you?”

  “This is no matter for jesting,” Helwain says sharply.

  Rhuven adds her own rebuke. “Albia, never speak of what you have learned. It is dangerous—for all of us.”

  “I didn’t ask for this,” I say, shaking my head.

  “Leave her be, sisters,” Geillis pleads. “It is too much for her. Dearest Albia, give me your hand.”

  I kneel down and put my fingers in her dry palm. The red gem in the armlet gleams like an eye between us.

  “Forgive me, daughter. Forgive us. All that we did, was done to save your life.”

  I fall asleep from exhaustion and wake up to the sound of Rhuven and Helwain weeping. Geillis no longer breathes. I am holding her lifeless hand and lying beside her like a newborn. She is my mother in the truest sense. As are Rhuven and Helwain, for all three of them gave me life again after Macbeth and Grelach took it away.

  Helwain and Rhuven wash Geillis’s body with fragrant herbs and wrap it in a cloth. They place her on the sledge and hitch it to the horse. I follow them, my limbs heavy as iron, to a grassy verge near the ancient oak tree, Pitdarroch. Murdo is there, digging a hole. It is late spring and Colum must be on the shieling already. I want him to be here! We place my mother gently in the earth, then use the sledge and Murdo’s cart to gather rocks. Wordlessly we pile them on the grave, making a cairn. Each stone seems to weigh as much as the world. Helwain and Rhuven are weeping still. I wonder dully where my tears have gone. Have I, the daughter of evil, no tender feeling left for this good woman who mothered me?

  When Rhuven and Helwain leave, I do not go with them. I stay at the cairn, fighting off sleep. The nightingale sings and the owl sends out its quavering cry. Beneath my sleeve, the gold and ruby armlet holds me in its cold grip. My mind turns over and over the history of Macbeth and Grelach and dwells on the awful image of a red-haired man, his dagger poised over the king’s breast. Though I try to banish the image, my mind’s eye gazes fixedly at the hand and the dagger. Slowly a memory surfaces of a long-forgotten dream that came to me on Wanluck Mhor when the thorn drew blood from my palm. Did I not see a bloody dagger in a man’s hand then? Could it have been the very hand and the very dagger that would slay Duncan?

  A cry escapes me at the sudden awareness that I do have the Sight, as Helwain suspected. I can deny it no longer. On the moor, I glimpsed the Asyetworld where Macbeth would murder the king and his servants. What other bloody deeds have I foreseen? Just now I cannot bear remembering. I realize I have not slept in two days or more. But I am afraid to sleep, afraid of what I might unwittingly dream.

  “O Mother, what shall I do with this unwelcome knowledge?” I call out in the darkness.

  The moon has risen, wrapped in clouds. A sudden silvery gleam, like light glancing off the water, makes me blink. It illumines the mist before me and I rise to follow it, stumbling on the rough ground. The feathers of an owl’s wing whisper through the air, a flash of white.

  Come back! Don’t leave me!

  The moon shrugs aside its clouds and shines upon the tangled branches of the ancient oak. The owl settles among its leaves and becomes invisible. I kneel down at the base of the tree, where the thick trunk casts a deep black shadow as if the earth gaped open there. And like a cloak snatched from my body, I feel Geillis leave me and know that she has entered the Other-world.

  Finally my tears come, and afterward a sleep so profound that nothing can be dreamt there.

  When I open my eyes, Colum’s face is before me with its nimbus of curly hair. His hands cradle my head in his lap.

  “I’m sorry for you,” he says. His thumbs brush the corners of my eyes, where the tears have started up again. I close my eyes and open them and he is still there. This is no dream.

  “How did you know … I wanted you to come?” I say, still half-asleep. His arms around me are a comfort. “You know about my mother. But how?”

  “I didn’t know. Caora only said that you needed me,” he admits. “So we came at once. And when I saw the cairn, I knew why.”

  Caora’s face appears beside Colum’s. Her gold eyes sparkle, and her long, fine hair blows across her cheeks. She puts her hands on Colum’s shoulders, and he stops moving his thumbs against my temples.

  So Colum is in love with Caora! I sit up and slide away from him.

  “How did you know about Geillis?” I ask Caora.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Let me get you some water.”

  Caora leaves and I gaze at Colum, his familiar face a welcome sight.

  “Why didn’t
you visit me at Dunbeag? I hoped you would.” I take his hand to soften the reproach.

  “I thought about it. Then I decided that in a new place you would forget me and make new friends.”

  I feel myself redden, thinking of Fleance. “Why would I forget you?”

  Colum searches my face and sighs. “Have you found a fellow, then?”

  I ignore the question. “I missed going to the shieling this year.”

  Colum frowns. “Be glad you were not there. The thane’s warband torched my bothy and stole half the flock. Caora and I were lucky to escape unharmed.”

  Anger stirs in me. “It is King Macbeth’s fault!” How strange to speak his name now, knowing that he is my father. “He claims the land that should be free to everyone.”

  “He is the king, so all of Scotland belongs to him,” Colum says with a shrug. “We will find a more remote pasture next year.”

  “The king is a tyrant!” I cry. “You have no idea how terrible he is. He doesn’t deserve to live.”

  Colum looks astonished. “Albia, you must never say such things. It is as much a crime to denounce the king as it is to blaspheme against God. The priest says so.”

  “The priest does not know what I know. I will tell you something, Colum, but you must keep it a secret.”

  As soon as I speak, I remember Rhuven’s warning. The knowledge I have is dangerous. But Colum is my dearest friend. What harm could come of telling him?

  “I can keep the greatest secret for your sake,” he says solemnly.

  “I trust you, Colum, so listen. Macbeth is the worst sinner among men.” My voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. “He did much more than speak against the king. He murdered him with a dagger, then slew his two groomsmen and made it look like their deed. All so that he could become king.”

  Colum draws back, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I have the Sight, Colum. Long ago I saw the murder in a waking dream.”

  “Albia, you’re full of grief now, and what you say—is madness!”

  “No, I am as clear-headed as you. Duncan’s murder happened just as I dreamt it. Rhuven was there and the queen confessed to her. Colum, as I am your friend, you must believe me. What I say is the truth.”