by David Hewson
“Death comes to all at last,” he went on. “Even to kings. But it need not bring chaos and civil war at its heels. Therefore, after much prayer, to clarify our purposes in the hearts of our people and prevent future strife on the inevitable day we depart this life, we hereby invoke the ancient privilege of Scottish monarchs to name their chosen successor prince of Cumberland.”
Macbeth forced himself to watch the king and ignore the glances straying now his way.
The tall, silver-haired figure at the head of the table paused, smiled again at the room, and—in a booming, level voice that echoed around the chamber—he called, “Arise, Malcolm, my eldest son.”
A deafening silence. Ross’s sister gasped. Menteith’s face split into a broad smile that only caught itself from turning into a laugh at the very last second.
Malcolm?
So it was true.
Macbeth stared at Duncan, his face frozen. The king, oblivious to the shock in the room or resolved to ignore it, removed his chain of office and took two steps over to where his son was now standing stiffly by the table.
Malcolm, it seemed, was the only one not caught off guard. He dropped to one knee, a practiced gesture, and received the chain around his neck, head bowed. The priest moved quickly to his side and pronounced a few bell-like Latin phrases, ending with a theatrical sign of the cross.
“Arise, prince of Cumberland,” Duncan boomed. “The throne of Scotland shall be yours.”
There was a strange, fixed smile on Malcolm’s face. He glanced at the crown on his father’s head and said nothing, not a single word of thanks.
It was Ross who began the applause—and that, slowly. Skena followed suit, rising smoothly to her feet. As if coming out of a trance, the others followed, their chairs clattering back as they rose quickly, their eyes troubled, none daring to glance at his neighbor.
A few looked slyly at Macbeth, frozen to his seat.
“Come, brother,” Banquo whispered, taking his arm. “Don’t look so glum.”
He forced a cup upon him and the two men rose.
“God save the king!” roared Ross. “Hail Malcolm, prince of Cumberland! King to be!”
She found him on the eastern battlements, alone, staring back to the low line of the river and the distant firth, gleaming like streams of molten silver beneath the open sky. There was not a cloud to be seen, only the bright full moon and an endless panorama of stars set like jewels against soft velvet. Frost had turned the fields and paths from Inverness a ghostly white. The earth would freeze tonight, and any straggler left outside would most likely die a cold and lonely death.
The harshness of these beautiful yet barren lands continued to astonish her. In the south, the rolling flat pastures of Strathmore, the verdant, fertile fields produced a landscape made for the needs of man, generous and welcoming. Here was a country created for wild animals, for wolves and eagles, crows and wildcats. And creatures like Macbeth, warriors, hard and cruel. It was his misfortune to possess a shard of conscience inside his Highland breeding, from where she couldn’t guess. This was one more reason why she loved him, but such a trait left her husband disordered, owning the strength and will to overcome his enemies, but hamstrung by his conscience.
“What are they saying about me?” he asked, watching her.
“About you?”
“There’s another subject?”
“Of course. Malcolm. The prince of Cumberland. Heir apparent.”
Macbeth shook his head, then said, “We shall be vigilant. I’ll keep my troops around me, forge alliances. If they come, I’ll be prepared.”
Skena strode over to stand by his side.
“Should it come to that,” she told him. “They’re saying much about Malcolm down there. That he’s ambitious. That this pronouncement of Duncan’s stems as much from the son’s threats as the king’s own will.”
His dark brow furrowed in bafflement. “They say that? Threat? What threat?”
She sighed and gazed at him as if he were a child. “It’s a measure of your humanity, husband, that these intrigues are beyond you. Malcolm is an ambitious fox. Can’t you see it in his face? They say he’s anxious for the crown and half expected Duncan to announce the date for his coronation. An abdication of the throne. A passing of the nation from father to son, as if it were a family bauble.”
“Death makes kings here, nothing else. That and the council.”
She took his hand. It was cold, hard, and calloused. A soldier’s. Still, she wound her fingers lovingly in his. “With a little assistance from the living, sometimes.”
“Malcolm should consider himself lucky. Duncan’s spoken!”
“He’s next in line, not monarch. None trust him, even his own father. Every man in there knows he’s unworthy next to you. If your name were Malcolm now...What would you think?”
The prospect of fresh conflict focused his mind immediately. “That his enemies would rise against him, and I’d be at their head,” Macbeth said.
“Quite,” she agreed. “So perhaps it’s best he steal the crown in haste, or lose it—and his life—in leisure.”
“They think such things?” He pointed back to the hall. “The thanes?”
“They do now.” She smiled at him. “Oh, Macbeth. There’s more than one way to skin a cunning cat like Duncan. Your peers are as easily moved by their mood as a wee girl waiting on her lover. A few canny words may turn an army north to south, make friend enemy, pluck victory from the gaping jaws of catastrophe. Men believe what they wish. What suits them. And at this moment, they wish that wily young thug ill.”
She placed her fingers on the dagger at his belt.
“One swift and well-timed blow and Scotland’s ours. You know that. And...”
“And Malcolm takes the blame,” Macbeth murmured, a finger to his lips.
He turned and took her shoulders.
“I was not made to be a murderer, Skena. I do not have so cold a heart, nor do you.”
Her face hardened and she stared at him. “You feel the temperature in this place as well as I do,” she replied. “You dowsed those embers well, my lord, but still they burn and will one day soon return. Rebellion. Bloody civil war. One blow against the old man and how many women and children out there in the land would thank you, for they will go unwidowed, their bairns still with loving fathers? Peace over war. Justice over this stinking corruption.”
Her blue eyes held him.
“The greater good depends on a single, swift, decisive act, one Duncan would deliver to any of us without a second thought. If you will not think of Scotland, think of me. And if we walk away from this last opportunity? How long, husband, before Malcolm and his friends are outside those walls, howling for our heads? Best die striving for conquest, not scurrying from these mongrels, regretting what we might have been.”
She stared into his calm, decent face, held both his hands, and said, “Together. Always. I will be with you.”
A flicker of hesitation, a moment in the balance.
“I have no talent for this scheming,” he murmured. “In battle I see things, prospects, gains, and openings. In my own home...” He cast a sour glance at the ramparts. “I look for welcome and love and respite from this bloody world.”
“A woman’s place is by the hearth,” she told him, laughing lightly. “Fear not. I am mistress of all arrangements for this day. Return to your guests, as shall I until the later time when the men seek entertainment of your own. Then I depart to go about a good wife’s business.” Her eyes narrowed. “Duncan’s grasping fingers shall not trouble me again. He’ll find other prey, I’m sure. Then later”—she leaned into him, kissed him once quickly on the lips—“find he’s prey himself, and his damned son soon after.”
Macbeth stood there, face turned from her, in shadow.
His resolve might waver, but it would not break. She’d see to it, and more, besides. He was distant from the ways of politics, but not ignorant of them. Their choices now were narrow and none eas
y.
“Our guests are waiting, husband,” she said, and took his hand to lead the way. “Good hosts must never disappoint.”
An hour later and the evening was as she’d forecast—more pleasant, even.
“Which do you like best, Ewan?” she asked.
Skena Macbeth sat on the four-poster bed in the thane’s quarters. The boy knelt in front of her, the wooden platter on his lap, his fingers greasy and smeared with food, a happy smile on his animated face. From the hall below she could hear the rumble of men’s voices, loud and boisterous through drink. She’d left not long after the pretty girls from the west arrived, all scanty dresses and flashing eyes, dancing, playing their fiddles and flutes, crooning ancient Gaelic airs. The performance swiftly became so bold the noble women in the room departed, eyes averted, as was expected of them.
Now any man, single or married, who fancied company would be choosing partners from among those blank and beautiful faces, taking them into the many winding corridors of the castle in search of a bed or a dark corner that might serve as an excuse for privacy. Such was a lord’s hospitality. It was always this way.
She could picture the evening coming to an end. Servants marching along the narrow stone hallways of the castle, ignoring the couples pressed sighing against the walls, extinguishing the brands that lit the winding, freezing passages. Night would enfold Inverness, and sleep and drink and fornication would take its toll on most within its walls. With the midnight peal would come opportunity.
“This is the best!” the boy said, and picked a small -carcass out of the mess of bones in front of him. It was a modest- sized bird, the flesh gone, devoured down to the pink breastbone.
“Black grouse, I think?” she said with a smile. “Ewan, you have refined tastes. Here...”
Skena walked over to the cabinet by the window and drew the long tail feathers, shiny and black, out of the pot that sat on the top. She wore these things in her hair or on a hat sometimes. They were fashionable in the Highlands, a kind of badge, a sign of loyalty to the hard beauty of its glens and fells.
“This is what the cock flourishes when he wants to find himself a fancy lady,” Skena told him, returning to the child and placing the feathers carefully into the soft blond hair that lay thick at the nape of his neck. “They could do the same for you.”
“I hate the lassies!” Ewan cried, snatching the quills from his head and clutching them in his tiny fists. “They boss you and tease you and pinch you and make your life a misery!”
“That we do,” Skena observed, stifling her laughter.
Three pewter flasks—one of wine, one water, one empty—stood by the bed. When Macbeth told her how he’d conquered Sueno’s forces, she knew straightaway this was a stratagem worthy of salvage. That afternoon she’d gathered berries of belladonna from the frosty banks of the River Ness, then crushed them in a small pestle and mortar in their room. When she poured them into the sweet red wine they sank straight to the bottom. This was a powerful drug, one that could kill in excess. Too many berries had gone into the wine, she thought. They needed Duncan’s guards to sleep, not die. She would dilute it and pray the proportions would be right to let the men slumber just enough.
“I didn’t mean you!” the boy cried, suddenly afraid.
“Oh, Ewan,” she said softly, stroking his head, then taking the black grouse feathers from him and placing them on the bed.
The younger castle girls could be vixens. It had never occurred to her they would taunt him remorselessly if they saw those things in his lustrous blond hair. She had so wanted to be a mother, yet at times like this, she asked herself why. It seemed so hard. To be responsible for a small bundle of humanity not yet formed, shapeless, seeking guidance, searching for a shining light to follow through the dark. And from what kind of woman? One with black aspirations in her heart and murder on her mind.
“Truly, lady,” he said, his eyes wide with fear, “I didn’t mean...”
“I know,” she said, and kissed his forehead, which was warm and clean. The boy was an orphan, taken in from one of the bawdy houses down by the port. The kitchen maids adored his cheerful, guileless nature and kept him clean and fetching, always in the best clothes they could afford. They showed him real kindness, Skena thought, a generous, selfless form of care. Hers was the easy sort, a pleasant word, a gesture, a brief caress when she happened to see him. A plate of fine food ordered up from the kitchen, spare pickings from a banquet meant for none but those drunken lords in the hall below. “You meant nothing at all. And besides, not all girls are the same, now, are they? Cook gave you that rich food for the king...”
“Only because you told her.”
Her fingers caressed his soft, warm cheek. “You should have seen the smile on her face when I asked her to do so. And I think those lassies in the kitchen—Maira and Elspeth and Subhan—they love you like one of their own. Now, don’t they?”
“Aye,” he murmured, his eyes downcast. “Maira is one of my own. My sister. They pulled her out of the same whorehouse down the port when they took me. She says our mam was a—”
“No, no,” Skena said, and placed a slender finger to his lips. “What’s gone is gone. Your family’s here now. Ordinary bairns just have the one mother, the one father. You’ve got a castle full of them, high and low, all of who love you like a son. Count your blessings.”
“I do,” he whispered, staring at the stone floor.
She put her hand beneath his chin and raised his face to hers. “Now, young man. Will you do me a favor in return? A secret one? You mustn’t tell a soul. Not even Maira.”
“A secret’s a secret,” he murmured, still looking a little afraid.
“It’s more than that,” she added. “It’s a bond. A contract. Like a promise between friends. You’re my friend, Ewan. I’m yours. Friends keep promises to one another, always. Don’t they?”
“I s’pose...”
She poured half the tainted wine into the empty flask, then filled it to the brim with water.
God make this right, she thought. Send them to sleep for a little while, no more.
“Lord Macbeth has been given a great gift by the king today,” Skena told him, holding out the pewter vessel.
“I know,” he said brightly. “Glamis and Cawdor...”
“A great gift. It’s only right that all should share his joy. Not just thanes and their knights. Servants.” She stroked his cheek. “Wee boys, too.”
He held up the carcass. “I had my grouse!” he said. “It’s only fair.”
“Quite.” She patted the tankard with the tainted wine. “This is not for young laddies. It’s wine from abroad.”
“Where’s that?”
“Somewhere warm. A place the flowers bloom all year long and apples and pears and grapes grow on trees everywhere so you may pick them when you walk through the fields. And all that sun and warmth goes in here”—she tapped the flask—“to make a drink that’s got the breath of summer and fruit and those fragrant foreign lands all trapped inside it.”
His eyes were as wide and bright as the loch at full moon.
“This is the wine of kings,” she went on. “Special and so costly none but the greatest should ever drink it. But tonight—”
“Is that why you watered it down?” he asked, sharp as ever.
“That’s one reason,” she said, amused by his quickness. “There’s another, mind. I want you to take it to Duncan’s guards. Those two soldiers outside his bedroom. They protect the king of Scotland. They deserve our thanks, too. But with water in their wine, don’t you think?”
He nodded.
“Don’t want them going to sleep,” Ewan said.
“Certainly not.”
“I’ll be a soldier when I grow up.” He threw the wooden platter onto the bed, leapt to his feet, and made the stance of a man with a sword, feinting, stabbing. “I’ll kill Vikings and the Irish and the English...and...and...anyone the king tells me. Like this...”
His fa
ce wasn’t handsome anymore. It was distorted by hatred and violence. They pick this up, she thought, so easily it might be an invisible disease floating in the air.
She placed her hand on his arm and he became calm again, looking a little guilty for his outburst.
“There’s no hurry,” she told him, trying to imagine the boy eight, ten years hence, out on the battlefield, blade in hand, fighting for whosoever gave the orders. “You could be a farmer. A priest. A clerk. A bright boy like you would make a fine lawyer.”
“Me?” he laughed. “I’m the wee bastard turning the kitchen spit. That’s what they call me.”
“None of us chooses the nature of our birth.”
“Or the day we die, either, cook says.” He glanced at the pewter flask with the wine in it. “I’ll be a soldier and get to see the world. Somewhere warm and sunny where you can take apples straight off the tree.”
“Will you pick one for me?” she murmured, suddenly dismayed.
The question puzzled him. He was a precocious child, but a child all the same. “If that’s what you want, lady. I’m a servant. You do the asking.”
“Then take this,” she ordered, handing him the flask and the two leather cups. “Tell those two guards it’s a present from Macbeth. A thankful reward for their dutiful care of the king.”
“Aye,” he said. “And I’ll tell them to keep their big gobs shut, too.”
“Do that.”
“And then?” he asked.
“Then...” She found herself wanting to touch his gentle head again and remember the child like this, before the coarseness came. “I think it’s time for small boys to go to bed. Don’t you?”
He stared at his empty plate and said, half meekly, “I’m still hungry...”
“You’ve had enough rich food for one night, boy. I have to meet Macbeth,” she said. “Downstairs. We must discuss arrangements for tomorrow. See that things are in order for the king’s departure. Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, away with you!” She reached forward and squeezed his lips together. “And you keep your little gob shut, too. Secrets between friends...”
