by David Hewson
Here...
The dim light of the candle revealed a shape before him. Macbeth halted by the bed. The man beneath the heavy winter coverlet coughed in his sleep and turned his silver-haired head from right to left. He was approaching sixty, thinner than a few years ago, perhaps consumed by an interior sickness that might take him in a year, a month, a day, even.
And then...Malcolm. His heir, not by the choice of the thanes, but through nothing more than blood.
The constant, historic struggle for power and supremacy that had come to define the free and valiant nature of Scotland would be swept aside to make way for the progeny of one man’s efforts in the bedchamber, with a miller’s daughter, rumor had it, not even the queen.
“You argue this for yourself,” Macbeth murmured, by way of self-reproach, moving forward to stand close by the coverlet, the dagger now within reach of the wrinkled, whiskery neck beneath him. “You try to make murder a virtue.”
I want this for my own ambition, he thought. For us. Because I will be a better king than he or his foul offspring.
As quietly as he could, he placed the candleholder on a stand by the pillow. The sound of his movement made Duncan stir. Macbeth shrank back a step, his will failing.
Even if the greater part were true, he told himself, could there be virtue in the murder of an old, defenseless man asleep in the dark in his host’s castle? What might be righteous slaughter on the battlefield was cowardly assassination off it. Yet if one man’s death, however heinous, brought peace and fortitude to an entire nation...?
He felt lost, confused, even frightened, standing there, blade in hand, close over the shape beneath the sheets.
The body before him shifted, roused from slumber.
Macbeth glanced back to the door and the drugged guards. There was still time to flee.
Then a voice—familiar, tetchy, magisterial—barked, “Who in God’s name is this? Who dares disturb the king?”
The choice of Duncan’s bedroom was no accident. Set alone, at the summit of the keep, reachable only by that single set of stone stairs, it was a prison of a kind, easily controlled, simple to monitor.
Now she waited one floor below, in an antechamber at the foot of the staircase, along the corridor that led to her own quarters. She’d not been there since watching Ewan leave to take the drugged wine to the guards.
The castle was quiet, swamped by the inky night. She’d walked its many floors in subtle silence, candle in hand. Earlier there had been feeble wanderers, most of them drunk, looking for a place to sleep for the night or to find some dancing girl still willing for a partner, but they were gone now. None would stir until the alarm was raised. The gloom seemed so intense she wondered if they knew who or what they’d partnered in the dark.
Above her, the owl in the roof shrieked and squealed once more. Small sounds of its feasting drifted down from the eaves.
Macbeth is about his business. Let the drugged guards not wake and disturb him, she prayed. Let this dread business be done with.
There’d been no sign of Ewan in the kitchen when she’d visited on one last circuit of the castle before hiding in the antechamber. This was curious. He was in the habit of sleeping on blankets near the fire.
No matter. He was a small man in the making, as he himself had made clear. What business the boy had found in Inverness this raw night was his and his alone.
She had walked the length of the kitchen, listening to the castle dogs outside feasting on the leftovers cast onto the garbage heap. It was lit by nothing more than the embers of the cook’s fire. The dying orange from beneath the ashes reflected in the silver jugs and pans on hooks against the wall and the line of implements—knives and cleavers and saws—that lay ranged along the bowed oak lintel that ran ten feet or more from side to side. It was a place of deep shadows and stank of rich meat and animal blood. Shivering, she’d unlocked the door to the cellar, checked in there for intruders, found none, and out of fear herself, uncorked a bottle of the bold French wine they’d bought in honor of Duncan’s visit—and poisoned for his guards.
Not a drop had passed her lips that night. But then...
With trembling fingers, she swilled it from the neck, like a hovel drunk from down the port, thinking all the while of the two unconscious guards above her, waiting on their deaths.
What makes you drunk makes me bold, she thought. What quenches your life gives mine fresh fire and sets the world ablaze.
The owl shrieked again. There would be no bell until daylight, no means, crouched hidden in this bare corner of the castle, to measure the time.
Yet Macbeth was gone too long. She knew it, felt it, as cold in her bones as the night.
The king glared at him in the faint, smoky light, his teeth yellow, set in a baffled snarl. The jeweled dagger slipped from Macbeth’s fingers and fell rattling to the floor—through fear or cunning, he’d no idea.
“I didn’t know you were awake, sire,” he mumbled.
“Macbeth?”
“My lord.”
“I wasn’t,” Duncan replied, sitting up in bed, shaking himself. A slender shaft of moonlight from an opening in the wall caught his face, the only illumination in the room save for Macbeth’s candle. “Not till you barged bumbling in here. Is there trouble? Where are the guards? I...”
He looked befuddled for a moment, no monarch, just an old man trying to find his reason.
“I remember a pretty child from the west,” Duncan said, not looking at him. “A fetching young thing. Do not let her leave before me. I may take the girl for myself.” Then, shaking his gray locks, “Age. God, I hate it. What is this?”
“I was concerned,” Macbeth said in a quiet, humble voice. “I wished to make sure you were safe.”
“I’m in the castle of a man I trust. If I’m not safe here...” A sly look crossed Duncan’s gaunt features. “Unless there’s something I don’t know.”
Macbeth stood there, saying nothing, holding out his hands, fingers spread, palms open.
“Why do that?” the king asked.
“A gesture. Nothing more.”
“A gesture of what?”
“Of...friendship, sire.”
Duncan sighed and said, “You have a guileless, open face, Macbeth, incapable of pretense. More’s the pity for you. A king must learn to read his subjects. Sometimes I think it the most important talent we possess.” He shrugged and reached beneath the pillow. “It failed me with Cawdor, I’m ashamed to say. Yet you rescued me from his clutches. And here you are...”
He smiled and withdrew from beneath the bolster a long and slender blade.
“With mischief written across your face in letters so bright and bold they might have been drawn by one of those clever English monks from Lindisfarne.”
He held the knife before him, its steel as cold and hard as his eyes.
“Glamis and Cawdor. Was I not generous enough?”
“Sire, sire...you make no sense.”
“A man who thought he might be gifted the throne himself enters my bedroom at midnight, stands trembling by my sheets. How much sense do I need?”
“You mistake me...”
The knife stabbed once toward him.
“Quiet, fool! I have no wish to hear. The torturers can drag it out of you, and then I’ll send you to the ax.”
Macbeth shuffled backward.
“Do not move, man,” Duncan barked. “Guards! Guards!”
The king’s voice echoed round the empty chamber.
“I’ve faced off better enemies than you,” he spat. “I’ve—”
Macbeth reached out and pinched the candle flame between finger and thumb. The glow of light around them disappeared, leaving only the faint shaft of silver from the sky, which fell on one of them alone—Duncan. The king let loose a frightened, high-pitched shriek. Macbeth took one step forward through the darkness that hid him, snatching through the air with his right hand. His huge fist closed round Duncan’s skinny hand. The dagger shook in the
king’s grip. Macbeth squeezed hard, a terrifying grip, and felt no great pleasure when he heard the cracking of bones and the pained, faint sigh of a soft, agonized scream rise from the throat of the king of Scotland.
“You do not own the nation,” Macbeth said, “to pass on to your bastards as if we were some trophy.”
The king’s knife fell upon the sheets. Macbeth punched the old man hard in the face, then as he fell back moaning, seized the weapon and stabbed down once, deep beneath the bed shirt, into the scrawny breast below him. The knife stuck there, trapped between his ribs, and Duncan’s skinny fingers fell to the hilt, struggling to drag the blade from his flesh.
His lips opened and closed like those of a beached and dying fish. A thin and fragile voice murmured once again, “Was...I...ungenerous?”
Macbeth said nothing.
He seized him by the gown, seized the blade from his bony chest, stabbed upward again, boldly, desperately, and finally held the man to him as he thrust the point as far beyond the ribs as he could.
This position—an embrace, almost—he held for one long, still moment, until he thought he heard a grim rattle work its way from the mouth that fell warm and moist against his neck. Then silence. Macbeth let go and allowed the bloody mess in his arms to fall back on the sheets.
There was a moment when he felt his own heart stop, as if its witness of this scene removed from it the will to beat again. Never had he seen so mournful a sight, an old man stabbed savagely in his bed at the hands of one he thought a loyal servant.
I did this, he told himself. I had no choice.
He strode to the door, checked that the guards slumbered on, returned with the brand, lit the candle by the bed, looked at his handiwork: Duncan stiff and still, chest welling blood, no sign of movement.
A bridge crossed, a moment passed.
He waited, thinking of what might happen after. The questions, the process, the sly and curious interrogations that would follow.
But first, there would be alarums.
They must talk and plan.
He stumbled down the stone steps, bloodied, mind racing, the brand flickering in the drafty gloom. Her hand reached for him at the foot of the staircase, and the two of them hid, whispering in the antechamber, eyes bright and fearful in the yellow cast of the torch.
“It’s done,” he said. “Did you hear nothing?”
“From here...only the owls and my own heart. You’re sure he’s...?”
“I told you. It’s done,” he repeated. “You heard nothing?”
“No.”
He loathed the way she stared at him, as if something of his person disgusted her, and not just the blood and the violence that must have stood upon him.
“Where are the sons?” he asked.
“Malcolm and Donalbain remain on the floor below. No one’s near except us. We may choose when we raise the alarm. A little while yet...”
“Look at me!” He raised his red and sticky hands. “A sorry sight...”
“Take hold of yourself. There’s no murder without blood. Macb—”
“I heard a voice inside my head cry, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth murders sleep.’ I heard...”
She came closer, touched him, her eyes still glazed, and said, “Be strong. Get water and wash this blood from your hands. We must master these next moments and make sure the blame falls on the guards.”
He barely listened. “It said, ‘Glamis has murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.’ We—”
“Husband,” she cried desperately. “Don’t let your mind turn on these waking dreams. Be wise...”
He raised his hands. One weapon there, an ornate, fancy blade. The two guards’ daggers still stood clean in his belt, not a drop of blood upon them.
She took a step back and stared at him. “Whose knife is that?” she demanded.
He sighed. “The king’s. He woke and knew my purpose.”
Her hands flew to her mouth. “You took my dagger,” she said. “Where is it?”
Macbeth groaned. “By the bed. It fell. Duncan spoke to me. He spoke. And did not die easily. I’m not made for this foul subterfuge.”
She took the king’s blade from him and looked up at his face. “You must go back. Smear the guard’s weapons with the king’s blood and leave them there. Get my own blade from that chamber. Or we’re undone...”
“No,” he murmured, shaking his head with a wild violence. “I’ll not enter that room again. The voice I heard...the voice...”
“Was your imagination! The dead are dead. They speak to no one.”
He trembled.
Skena took the bollock daggers from his belt. “I’ll do it, then,” she said. “Wait for me here.”
“I heard...” he whispered.
“Macbeth!”
He looked at her, wondering. Was this the same wife now? The same world?
And the selfsame thought ran through her head, too, at that moment.
“Our lives are suspended here on matters as flimsy as a spider’s thread,” she told him. “Wait on me. We’ll see this through. They’ll blame Malcolm...”
His eyes flashed wide with trepidation. “For God’s sake, why? A son, however much he covets the throne he’s promised—”
“They’ll blame the son!”
The force and conviction stilled him.
From outside came another noise this time. Real and urgent. A loud, persistent knocking at the castle gate.
“That’s a man, not a ghost,” she hissed at him. “Macbeth. Dispose of Duncan’s blade securely. And then you wait on me.”
Like a guilty child, she climbed the steps and crept past the slumbering guards, candle in hand, its flame a tiny beacon in the vast sea of night ahead, steeling herself to enter the cold chamber, the men’s clean weapons in her belt.
It was as Macbeth had said. Her own jeweled blade lay on the stones by the bed. Duncan’s left arm hung limply by it, as if he had struggled to reach the thing and failed.
“Miserable creature,” she whispered as she approached, and wondered why. Then some dim memory returned from childhood. It was the time the English had raided from across the border, seized Glamis briefly, murdered all they could. She’d hidden with her mother in a secret cellar, stayed there for days on end, waiting, praying for relief. It came in the form of a bloody battle that happened over their heads. The marauders were dispatched. The men from the Highlands proved victorious. When she was released, she found her own father there among the dead. A mature man, not as elderly as Duncan, but white-haired, too, with a kindly face, that of a landlord, not a warrior.
He fought among the fiercest clan lords and died bloodily, not knowing whether his wife and children lived or not. A better man than this thing had ever been, more deserving of a noble life.
“You are not my father,” she murmured, looking at the torn, still figure on the bed. “You would vanish in his shadow. You shall not haunt my dreams or those of my beloved.”
Something, the memories, the strong wine from the cellar, stirred inside her. She picked up her own clean dagger and placed it in her belt. Then she placed the candle by the bed and both her hands went to the cheaper blades Macbeth had taken from the men at the door.
She leaned over Duncan, whispering in his gray and whiskery ear, “You hear me, man? You are nothing now and were nothing before...”
His eyelids opened. The icy eyes, full of hatred and violence, came alive and glowered at her. Duncan’s long, bony fingers rose and clawed at her throat, the nails biting deep into her flesh. Words emerged, unintelligible, with blood and saliva from between his purple lips.
Duncan’s grip held her so tightly it seemed impossible, unnatural, beyond all sense. She screeched and screamed and tried to tear his clawlike fingers from her. Then the daggers in her hand found life, stabbed at him, his neck and face, his scrawny arm.
More curses, half heard and foul, spewed with the blood and bile from his throat. The silver knives
rose and fell, stabbing, slashing. With each wound, he cried and shrieked.
Then, at last, she tore his talons free and fell back, staggering, crying, panting.
Dead, she thought. He must be dead.
There were men at the distant gate, noises outside. The castle was waking.
She stumbled back to the bed, stared into his keen eyes, knew he breathed still, like some immortal monster. The dagger in her right hand she plunged deep into the hollow of his wrinkled neck, ripped sinews there and flesh, and watched his face contort with each agonizing turn.
“Live if you wish,” she said. “Like a damned thing from hell. You shall not speak!”
Duncan didn’t move, though, and nor for a moment could she. The man was dead, his throat a bloody, gaping gash. And she was now bound more closely with Macbeth in the deed.
She stumbled out the door, flinging the bloody daggers at the guards.
A hand caught on her ankle, kept her, held her tight. She fell against the wall and cried with pain.
“What game is this, woman?” asked a low, coarse voice from behind, the intonation slurred and hazy. “Are we seeking company?”
She turned and looked. To her horror, the other was waking, too. The first, the closest, let his hand fall from her ankle and clutched instead at her dress.
The dagger in his lap clattered noisily to the floor.
“I smell blood here,” mouthed the other. “I smell—”
“The king,” the second cut in, and dragged himself upright, his hands hard on her gown.
