Macbeth

by David Hewson

  “God help you, Gregor MacDuff, when I get my hands around your neck. I’ll tan your arse as raw as meat and send you straight to bed weeping, that I will. Now!”

  The child ran laughing to the door, straight into the open arms of a stranger there. A thin-faced man who wore a mirthless smile. There were shapes behind him, dark and tall.

  On the floor, the blonde-haired girl removed her hands from her ears and placed them firmly over her eyes. For some reason Ailsa MacDuff could not fathom, the baby fell quiet, as if sensing something from within the cradle.

  “Who are you?” she inquired in a soft, weak voice.

  “A messenger, sent from the king. I apologize, you do not know me.”

  “The king?” she murmured.

  “We’ve business with your husband. I’m sorry.” He patted Gregor’s head. “I heard voices from below. We’d no idea there was a...friendly spat among you.”

  The shapes behind him moved and three more men came fully into the light of the brands. The sight of them was unmistakable. The boy knew, too, and ran to her open arms, buried himself in her dress.

  “Where’s your husband?” one of them, a coarse and bearded thug, demanded.

  “In no place so wicked the likes of you may find him,” she replied. “MacDuff fled Crail this morning, and now I begin to understand his reasons. There’s no one here except his wife and bairns, who’ve caused no one any offense. Does the king need our blood, too?”

  The first man—the leader, she thought—not educated, but no fool, paused and put a finger on his chin.

  “You tell the truth, lady?” he asked. “We’re pawns in someone else’s fingers. Hate us for what we are and what we do. But accept that for it’s true. Our argument’s with your husband, not his kin. Tell us where the traitor’s fled and”—he shrugged—“I, for one, will take your word.”

  “Traitor! You’re the traitor!” the boy cried, flying from her arms.

  The knife was in his hand now, and as quick as a wild hound, he was on the biggest of them all, stabbing at the giant’s stomach.

  “Oh, Gregor, love,” she murmured, hands creeping to her mouth, body racked with cold and dread. “I fear you’ve killed us all...”

  The big man screamed and howled as the little dagger reached his guts. She flew to drag the boy away, but before she was there, the villain next to the wounded giant had taken out a short, sharp sword and run it clean across the child’s slender throat.

  The wound there grew like a wicked, gaping smile. Rose never took her hands away but now buried her golden head in her own small lap.

  “My son!” Ailsa cried, hands out before her, weeping, furious, wishing she had some God-given strength to take these men, all four of them, and rip each one to shreds.

  The boy spoke a single, incomprehensible word, and then the murderer upon him let the small body slip loose down to the black, cold floor.

  A strong arm gripped her, pushed her to the wall.

  It was him, the one who led them, sharp-featured, cunning, wily, and cruel. All these things were written in his features. And something else. A hatred for the world and everything that breathed.

  “Now, that was unwise,” he hissed at her, his elbow hard against her throat.

  “Monster, monster,” she murmured.

  “We are instruments of state, love,” he snapped back. “You may as well curse the cold, hard wind that brings the blizzard.”

  “I’ll let a greater power be the judge of that.”

  “So be it,” he barked. “I came here for your husband and that brat of Banquo’s, not for you. Were your son not so hasty with his little dagger...”

  She said nothing.

  “Where did they go?” he asked.

  Her eyes were the color of the Moray Firth in springtime.

  “A handsome woman,” one of the men behind him muttered.

  She heard those words and stared at him.

  “I’m trying to save you,” Fergus told her.

  “No, sir,” she said. “We died the moment you crossed that threshold. Fool yourself, if that’s your wish. You do not fool me. Not for one—”

  The dagger rose beneath her breastbone, fighting upward in a single, furious thrust.

  Her bright blue eyes never left his face. She took a short, quick breath, then spat with all the force left to her. A scarlet cloud of blood and spittle flew across his taut and snarling features.

  One more thrust, another. Her eyes lost their sheen, rolled backward, dull, unfocused. Then he pulled back and let her corpse fall to the floor to lie next to the crumpled form of the child there.

  “Bitch,” he swore, wiping his face with his sleeve. “Bitch!”

  “Macbeth will kill us,” the Irish villain with them said.

  The giant was on the floor, holding his belly. There was more than blood there. He wouldn’t move easily again.

  “Macbeth...” the man began again.

  Fergus was on him in an instant. “Macbeth is mine,” he barked. “I’ll take no blame from him. The man is crippled with his conscience. Were it not for his prevarication, MacDuff would have been dead before the snow melted on those yonder hills. It’s the likes of us that keep him on his throne, and he knows it.”

  “I hope to God you’re right,” the Irishman replied, and stared at the dead woman by his feet.

  “We go to Perth to tell him,” Fergus added.

  “She was a pretty one.”

  “You’ll find another in the whorehouse. Come, boys! You want the men of Crail to find us? I think they feel affection for their thane. We’ll meet a pretty fate if they find us here.”

  The Irishman winked at him and nodded at the giant on the floor. The blood was heavier now, the wound more gaping. From his empty mouth came a series of pained clucking noises. His grim face was racked with pain and fear.

  “Leave him,” Fergus ordered. “He’s got no tale to tell.”

  The girl was rocking now, making a lowing, musical sound. With it, the baby began to bawl again. Fergus nodded at the Irishman.

  “Not me,” the man said, shaking his head. “Not children. For pity’s sake...”

  “Ach,” Fergus grunted, taking his bloody dagger to the bundle on the floor. “This is no world for orphans.”

  Then went to work with the blade.

  On a bright spring day, the royal boat docked in the harbor at Perth. There was a small gathering on the quayside. King and queen came ashore together, hand in hand, false smiles for those around. Couriers soon besieged Macbeth with messages. Skena listened with him to promises of loyalty couched in language that seemed formal and, on occasion, imprecise, a few diplomatic documents, from Norway, Denmark, Ireland, and France.

  Nothing from England. Not a word. Spies from across the border had told of troop movements, though. An army traveling north to camp near Berwick awaiting...what? Not more men, surely. The scouts said the army—English to a man, save for Malcolm and the other puppets—was between five and fifteen thousand strong.

  “They await a purpose,” she said when all had left.

  “What kind?” he asked, puzzled, distant now as always.

  “One that will ease their scruples, let them sleep at night, secure they’ve acted justly.”

  “War’s never about justice,” he said bitterly. “It’s about power and who should wield it. I will raise an army twice that size.”

  Macbeth stared at the silver coronet beside their baggage. Formality demanded he wear it when the foreign messengers visited. At every other time...She thought he’d come to despise the thing.

  “When the forces arrive from Moray through the mountains,” he went on, “nothing will dislodge me from this throne. I did not come so far to be usurped by those cowardly boys of Duncan and his English lackeys.”

  “I would rather stay in Glamis,” she said with the slightest note of hope in her soft voice. “Not Dunsinane. I knew that bleak place when I was a child. The men who slew my father came from there.”

&nb
sp; “Glamis is unsafe, for now. You must be with me.”

  “Husband...” she pleaded. “If your confidence is so well founded, why—”

  “You are the queen and will stay by my side,” he interrupted.

  There was someone at the door. A man who entered without knocking. The onetime porter, now the steward. A loathsome, cruel man with a heartless face. When not on some furtive business, he would hover around Macbeth like an equal, not a servant. Even Cullen, their most loyal and steadfast servant, seemed wary of him.

  “I’ll leave you,” she whispered, and went outside.

  The quay was busy with merchants. Farmers from the hills, fishermen with their catches. Traders bringing goods on small boats from north and south. Ordinary people leading ordinary lives. She envied every one of them.

  There was a commotion by the fence outside their camp. Women’s high voices, men shouting back in return.

  She heard her name, a familiar voice. A memory from childhood.

  Quickly, Skena strode over to the place where soldiers now held back a small party. Three women and their bairns.

  “Lady Queen!” a woman about her age cried in that voice she knew. “Remember me! Speak to me!”

  Skena pushed her way through the guards and saw them, several women, children with them, pushed and jostled by the soldiers.

  “Leave these ladies alone!” she ordered.

  “Madame,” the officer barked back. “They say dreadful things and would cause trouble here. I beg you, do not interfere...”

  “Skena! Skena! Skena!” a burly, red-faced matron at the front cried. “Remember me! Aileen from Glamis. We played together as children. You from the big house. Me from the farm.”

  Aileen. Glamis. The green and lovely summers of childhood.

  “Of course I remember,” she answered with a smile. “Why are you here? Come see us later. Not now...” She turned and gestured at the busy camp. “It’s too hectic...”

  The woman got down on her knees and held her hands together as if in prayer. “For all the love we shared, mistress, tell the king that none here is his enemy! I beg you. Do not exercise his wrath upon us the way he did with that poor lady over in Crail. She was a loving wife and knew nothing of what MacDuff plotted. Nor that he harbored the son of Banquo. Do not punish the women for the sins of their husbands.”

  “MacDuff? Crail?” she asked.

  The crowd was silent and so were the men around her.

  “You do not know?” the woman asked, astonished. “And you the queen of Scotland?”

  “These are riddles,” Skena told her. “What—”

  “Slain!” she roared. “Cut down in her home, alongside her children. A boy of twelve, a girl of four, a babe in its cot—all with their throats cut as if by a common thief.”

  Skena shook her head. “No,” she said.

  He wouldn’t. Not children. Not a bairn in its cot. Not after all they had suffered themselves.

  The ghost of Ewan rose in her memory. An implacable young face. One that sneered at her with hate and disbelief.

  “Yes!” the woman bellowed. “Do not deny it, lady. There’s not a soul here who doesn’t know the truth. Spare us, please. Let them fight it out among each other. Not over the bodies of their wives and babes.”

  The crowd pressed further, hands reached out to her, and she tried to shriek at them, “Lies! Lies! Lies!”

  And then a single silver blade flashed through the air. A dark-haired woman at the back of the pack, throwing herself forward, struggling to do her harm.

  The knife caught the sleeve of her gown. Silk ripped, and through the fine fabric she felt the chill edge of pain as the sharp edge caught and tore her skin. A line of blood was soaking through the sleeve of the regal gown.

  The soldiers pounced then, dragged the culprit out of the crowd, beating the rest back hard with sticks.

  Skena stared at the wound, which was slight, and then at the woman thrown heavily to the ground before her.

  “Why would you do me harm, lady?” she wondered.

  “She was my sister!” the woman in the mud and filth snarled back and spat hard in her face.

  One of the soldiers slapped her round the head with his gauntlet.

  “Do not hurt her,” Skena ordered. “She’s not of sound mind. Take her home.” She waved a hand at the others. “Take them all home. Do not harm them.”

  They grumbled at that and shooed the mob away.

  Clutching her arm, she stood there for a long and painful minute. Then she stormed back to the tent. Macbeth was there alone, head in hands, a solitary figure slumped on a chair.

  She walked over and took his chin in her hand, tried hard to look into his bleak, lost eyes.

  “MacDuff’s wife and family,” she said. “An innocent woman and her three children.”

  “It was a mistake,” he murmured. “I asked for none of that.”

  “Children? A blameless wife? What kind of mistake could justify so rash and bloody a deed?”

  “No more,” he said, and turned away, waving her toward the door. “It was an accident. Had MacDuff been loyal, none of this would have occurred.”

  “And that is explanation enough? What kind of man are you?”

  He rose to his feet, hand drawn back, ready to strike.

  “Hit me, then, husband,” she said, standing her ground. “Why should I be immune from your violence when all of Scotland feels the force of it?”

  The truth struck her like the knife wound in her arm, bright and clear and terrible. There were no more words left, no feelings. What she had done, she had done for him, while he, in turn, had served her the same way. Seeking to put each other first, they had gained the crown and lost the most precious thing of all—each other. They were different people now, and quite alone.

  “Be gone, woman,” he ordered. “Pack for war in Dunsinane. The Confessor’s army marches with Scottish puppets at its head. I will make the sea run red with the blood of these vile traitors. I will scatter their flesh and bones from Forth to Clyde. I am Macbeth and—”

  “None of woman born shall harm you,” she said, finishing his words.

  Those words had become a circular refrain for him. A code, a hymn, to what he supposed was his invulnerability.

  “If that is true,” she said gently, “then you are not a man at all. And I am a widow, my loving husband taken from my arms.”

  He glared at her, and she scarcely knew the man she saw.

  “Is there such a one?” he demanded. “The sisters spoke. I heard them.”

  His mailed hand had lowered, but she sensed it pushed to lash out. Skena stared at it and wondered.

  “Do not blame me, husband. Or yourself. We are man and wife and made this cross for one another. Did you hold the hammer? Or I the nails? Or both, in turn?” Her head felt so light it might drift from her own shoulders. “I no longer know, nor care.”

  “Of woman born,” he snarled, his face suffused with hatred.

  “Then perhaps it was a blessing that our infant perished,” she murmured, watching him, amazed. “For I would not wish more monsters on this world.”

  That same day, by the sparkling waters of the Tweed, two miles from the Scottish border, the flap of Malcolm’s tent opened and MacDuff walked in with Donalbain and another, a lanky youth with a wispy beard.

  “Did you bring troops?” Malcolm demanded of the man who stood before him.

  “I brought Banquo’s son,” said MacDuff. “He has a tale like yours. I listened to him. And now I’ll listen to you.”

  “Fleance?” Malcolm asked, nodding at the young man by the entrance.

  “Sir,” the youth answered.

  “You know what Macbeth is?”

  “I saw my father slaughtered by his men.”

  Donalbain slammed his fist on the table. “Ours, too—the king. And this monster would cast the blame on us.”

  “With no small talent, it would seem,” MacDuff noted. “That army of yours”—he glanced out
side—“is English through and through. And for all of Fleance’s earnest fears, I tell you, man...I see no proof.”

  Malcolm scowled at him. “You’ve come a long way, friend, to sit upon the fence.”

  “The English!” MacDuff bellowed, and pointed toward the open flap. “I am no traitor.”

  “And nor are we,” Donalbain cut in. “Those troops will be gone the moment their job is done. Edward’s old and sick. The day he vanishes into the ground the Normans will come hunting the crown of England.” He nodded at the north. “Scotland is ours when we have our hands on it, and all these foreign scum can scuttle back where they belong.”

  “That’s the way it is,” his brother agreed with a nod.

  MacDuff looked at them and sighed.

  “It seems to me this concerns a throne rather more than it does justice for your father.”

  “They’re one and the same!” Malcolm cried, and rose from the seat to face him. “We all thought Macbeth honest and decent. We loved him well, as did you. As did our father.” He hesitated then, his voice lower, adding, “Perhaps you still feel some affection. He hasn’t touched you yet. Consider yourself fortunate.”

  “War’s a cruel, blind beast,” the thane of Fife retorted. “It sweeps away the innocent as easily as the guilty. Before I watch Scotland bleed again—”

  “I know you will not love me as you love him!” Malcolm retorted. “And perhaps you think me unworthy.” He glanced at the youth. “Or perhaps you wish to start anew.” He grinned. “Put Fleance here, a bright-eyed, blameless child, upon the throne, then pull his strings...”

  The man said nothing.

  “I am an imperfect sinner,” Malcolm said, a little calmer. “But a king at heart.”

  “Others have their doubts,” said MacDuff.

  Donalbain stirred, but Malcolm stilled him with a glance.

  “Indeed?” said Malcolm. “And what do they accuse me of?”

  “Lust,” said MacDuff. “Avarice. Treachery.”

  “These are the slanders of Macbeth’s lackeys. I have none of my father’s appetites. If you have witnesses to the contrary, bring them forth and we will question them together.”