by David Hewson
“To the south side!” roared MacDuff from the back of his horse. The breach there had opened up, and one catapult shot had torn a gash along the wall so deep that it ripped a tower away and reduced the rampart to smoldering cinders. The opening was forty feet across, turning wider as the battlements burned.
“Wait!” called Lennox. “We need time to order the troops. The companies on that side are our greenest men. They’re not ready to storm a castle.”
“This is no castle,” said MacDuff. “At best, it was a fortified hill. Now it’s little more than an oven.”
“Macbeth’s army is retreating through the back and into the woods. Malcolm says we must pursue and run them down...”
“Let Malcolm massacre his fleeing countrymen if he wishes,” said MacDuff, turning his horse. “I came for one thing only—a monster’s head.”
Then he spurred his mount around the burning walls, scattering soldiers as he rode.
Malcolm took a bite of his mealy apple and scowled. It was so difficult to get decent food away from the palace. When this is over, he thought, watching Dunsinane burn, I will spend a month in Forres doing nothing but take my idle leisure. The battle was won. The peace, such as it was, would be his to relish.
“My lord!”
It was Ross.
“What is it?”
“Word from the front, sir,” said the thane.
“Sire,” Malcolm corrected him.
“Sir?” said Ross, baffled.
“You call a king ‘sire,’ idiot,” said Malcolm.
“But sir—sire—you have not yet...”
Malcolm took a menacing stride toward him and Ross bowed low.
“What did you come to say?” growled Malcolm.
“MacDuff is leading an assault to the south side, sire,” Ross said carefully. “The breach to the north is too narrow and well defended.”
“Very well,” Malcolm shrugged. “Send enough after him to give his attack support. But make sure,” he added, “that the north side—and the area behind the army—is secure.”
Ross looked up at him, his eyes frank and his lip curling slightly. “We will ensure,” he said, “your highness comes to no harm.”
Even the keep was burning now. Macbeth could see the smoke rising from the summit. All around him, the perimeter wall was fractured and crumbling. A dwindling band of troops remained to fight on; though, in his heart, he knew there was nothing now left to defend.
He turned toward this last stronghold, the tip of his sword trailing in the dust and ash as he climbed the ramp. This was no impregnable stone mansion like the place he’d cornered MacDonwald in Lochaber. Just a squat wooden tower on the highest part of the hill, the upper stories reachable only by ladder.
Macbeth sheathed his sword and began to climb.
For all the noise of battle outside and the steady crackle of flame, it was eerily quiet within. No one was fool enough to take shelter here. They had all gone out to fight or flee. The air was hot and thick with smoke and sparks, the timber old and fragile.
Somewhere below, he heard a crash. The tower itself seemed to shudder, and as he paused to listen, he caught an angry, fearsome shout on the scorching air.
“Macbeth!”
He knew that voice of old.
Turning on the ladder, he caught a glimpse of the chaos around him. Burning wood, screaming men, horses slain in the yard below. And a man in armor staring up at him, visor raised on his helmet, eyes black with fury.
MacDuff.
He held his sword aloft—in threat or greeting, he knew not which. Then, shutting his eyes against the smoke, Macbeth gripped the rungs of the ladder and began to climb again.
MacDuff found no opposition in the tower base and, slowly, doggedly, began to take the rough stairs, then the ladder to the topmost levels. Halfway up, he caught the sound of someone walking on the wooden floor above him, a measured, purposeful stride.
He’d no need to know who this was; though, again, he called the name. This would be no pursuit in stealth. He wanted Macbeth to know he was hunted and by whom. On the last of the tower’s indoor floors, he paused to catch his breath and look about him. The trapdoor in the ceiling was left open, as if inviting him to enter. Sword in hand, MacDuff made his awkward ascent up the last few rungs, bracing himself for a hacking attack as soon as his head came out into the air.
It never materialized. He clambered out into the crude open cabin, where the wind blew the smoke and fragments of burning tinder around in a swirling cloud. A single man was there, seated on a rough watchman’s chair as if it were the throne of Scotland itself.
Macbeth’s sword was across his knees. He was cradling his shallow battle crown in his hands, considering it.
“I imagined it would be you,” he said, not looking up as MacDuff strode toward him. “Go back. Rejoin your men. I have too much blood of yours upon me already.”
“You think I will let you live?” MacDuff demanded.
“Unless you were not born of woman, you shall not have the choice. Go. Survive. I stay here. This tower will not last much longer.”
“I am owed more than that!” MacDuff bellowed. “You will not burn like some king upon his pyre. I will kill you for the bloody traitor you are and cast your body to the dogs.”
“Traitor?” asked Macbeth. “I wear the crown of Scotland. You gave it me in Scone. I am still king, and you—with your English invaders—are the turncoats.”
“Treachery is not confined to kings and nations,” said MacDuff, stepping forward, his jaw set, eyes blazing. “You are a traitor to friends, to family,” he said, voice cracking. “To all that our people hold dear and true.”
There seemed no rage, no fury or fear, inside the man before him. Instead, Macbeth seemed to listen, and at last, he looked away, his face sad and distant, as if thinking of things from long ago.
“I live a charmed life,” he said, though the voice was bleak, bitterly amused. “Three witches told me. None can harm Macbeth. No man born of woman.”
MacDuff frowned. “Then despair,” he said. “No woman gave birth to me.”
The man on the chair looked at him then, his face unreadable, his eyes full of strange, intense emotions, the last of which—if MacDuff had to name it—seemed a kind of desperate longing.
“That is impossible,” he said.
“There’s a story,” said MacDuff, “about Caesar and the manner of his birth. Perhaps you’ve heard it?”
Macbeth continued to look at him, saying nothing.
“My mother took sick a month before I was due,” said MacDuff. “The doctors tried to save her but...The moment she was dead they cut her open and tore me out, squealing, as they did with the Roman.”
For a long moment, neither spoke. The wind had died to nothing and there was a curious, empty calm in the hot air. The battle below seemed over. Beyond the sounds of the fire, there was nothing but the breeze that carried on it the faint cries of dying and wounded men.
Then Macbeth began to laugh. It was a long, slow, mirthless sound that raised the hair on the back of MacDuff’s neck.
“You think this funny?” he asked. “You’ll die upon my sword and I will take your head, as once you did MacDonwald’s.”
“The wheel is come full circle,” said Macbeth. He rose very slowly, setting the battle crown upon the chair. He gave the thing a long look, then turned and slowly drew his sword.
“I do not fear you,” MacDuff lied. He had seen Macbeth in battle.
“You’re no fool, man,” said Macbeth. “Of course you do. But anger is as good as courage. Lay on, MacDuff. Lay on.”
The first charge came, shield first, MacDuff’s sword lancing over its rim. Macbeth deflected the strike and stepped to the side. The roof of the burning keep was cramped and its surrounding flimsy wall just three feet high. MacDuff deflected Macbeth’s cut, then slashed wildly with his blade. His foe swung down his sword to catch the blow, then kicked back hard, sending him stumbling against the wall, headf
irst over the sickening height below.
They both felt the tower sway at that moment. It would not last much longer.
MacDuff steadied himself and came lunging and cutting, forcing the man before him to give ground, sweating, his face half black with soot. He pressed home the attack, driving the king back so that he tripped against the open trapdoor. Then he heaved at him with the boss of his shield and Macbeth sprawled into the corner.
A moment’s breathless pause. The man on the ground gathered himself to spring and MacDuff braced, his sword lowered, aimed like a spear.
With a great cry, Macbeth leapt forward, but his breast was bared. In that brief moment, MacDuff stabbed once and knew that it was over.
A single deep breath of sharp, cruel pain. The stricken figure slumps against the shallow wall and finds his vision retreating to a diminishing tunnel, yet clearer with each desperate passing second. His hand goes down to feel the wound and comes back crimson from his guts.
An image rises in his memory: the stone they built for Sueno outside the palace in Forres, the line of kneeling warriors, heads taken by the sword like barley cropped with a farmer’s busy scythe.
“Aye,” he murmurs from the floor, “I bleed, too. You see, man of Fife?” His voice goes lower. “But I do not leave this foul stage stooping.”
The figure opposite is dark and distant. Macbeth marvels at the stain and rubs the crimson between his fingertips. His head tips back into the empty space beyond the shallow wall. He gasps and chokes on the smoky air, then stares beyond the carnage and the cries of dying men.
The day is bright and beautiful. Red kites hover overhead. The purple heather crowns the distant Grampians beyond the wide green valley and the sinuous snaking line that marks the river. In the verdant land before him, that wild and savage paradise, stags roam, hares box, and salmon leap for joy and freedom, daring bold men to seize them from their glittering, icy burns, for that’s his destiny and always will be, to lust for the shiny prizes men covet and wish to own before all others. Somewhere close, he wooed his wife and first lay with her amid the meadowsweet and buttercups, a memory that now bites more keenly than any blade a furious foe might wield.
This sight, these recollections, fire him with such inward anger and regret.
Unarmed and bleeding, he rises this one last time, confronts the man before him and his gleaming, swinging sword, throws strong arms wide, and bellows in a bold, defiant roar, “This precious realm was mine!”
To squander, croons that low, interior voice he first heard the night in Inverness he crept to Duncan’s chamber, dagger in hand.
“My love,” he whispers. “I did all this for you. For us. I am so truly sorry.”
There’s a rushing sound in his ears, like a falcon cutting through the air as it swoops toward its prey. And then that lustrous great green world beyond is spinning round and round before him, its bejeweled peacock colors fading slowly with his agony.
The river flows red like a vein through the land, bleeding to the sea. Hawks and crows swoop upon the carrion lying scattered on both banks. Wild dogs and foxes, all the hidden ravening vermin of the fields, come out to feed on the crimson carnage strewn over grass and heather, thistle and gorse. The victors stagger around drunk on arrogance and beer; the losers lie slain or fettered in chains if any think them worthy of ransom. In the ragged camps of Malcolm and MacDuff, weary soldiers slowly settle in for the night, too tired, too full of trepidation to speak.
At the foot of the steep slope beneath the charred remains of the wooden fortress Dunsinane, three dark shapes whirl and skitter, cloaks flying, past the corpses of man and animal, like three black crows scavenging for meat. They grow larger, becoming the last things alive possessing energy at the end of this long and bloody day.
Then they stop by a burn aflood with water the color of a babe fresh from its mother’s aching womb.
“Ach! Poor man! Poor man!” the youngest cries. “Here! Here!”
They crowd together, and then the young one reaches gently down and, from the stream, retrieves the bloodied head, hair matted and dripping, lips black, eyes open, blank and staring.
“Oh, sir! Oh, sir!” she whimpers and the tears start in her eyes. “It was a majestic visage. Too splendid for a thane. And now...oh...”
Indignant, she holds the thing for them to see, and neither crone nor brute knows what to say. Her eyes are streaming, full of grief and pain.
“We’ll need a cart,” the big one grumbles. “I cannot carry a man so large all the way cross Scotland.”
“Find one, then,” she orders, sane again, and places the severed head next to the savaged torso the giant has lugged here, staring at the grim and fearsome sight.
An eagle cries. A shape approaches.
She is not of a mind to turn for a moment, and when she does, she sees Fleance there, a skinny, trembling figure, with wispy beard and shabby armor, bloodstains upon it. His face is set in angry fright, and his sword quivers before him.
“Fleance lives,” the crone says, seating herself on a tussock of heather. “Let all the world rejoice.”
“Yet,” the girl adds, cocking her strange head, opening her black eyes farther, “he is different now. I feel it.” She stares at them. “You?”
They think for a moment, nod their heads.
“I slew a man!” he screams, wild eyes damp with tears. “Some...poor soul wounded in the side. I watched him trembling and thought he meant me harm.”
“There’s courage,” mutters the crone. “Still, it’s a start.”
“Silence!” The sword wavers. “You promised me...”
“What?” the girl says, standing to face him.
“A throne. Some elevation.”
The big sister throws her head back and laughs like a taproom drunk. “All hail, Fleance,” she cries. “Hail monarch of the piss pot. King of the kitchen hearth.”
A juvenile look of anger distorts his thin, gray face. He waves the sword and shrieks, “I’ll slay you all, then, and do the world a favor.”
With a single slender finger, the girl reaches out and touches the bloody blade.
“Do it, then,” she says, smiling. “You may as well murder the weather or the ocean. We are mere bystanders in this tale...”
“You are the cause!”
She laughs and places her hands on her skinny hips.
“Now, is that so? Had your father kept his counsel, Macbeth here would have reigned for many years, trying to swallow his guilt, perhaps, but a king with good intentions.”
“Better than Duncan,” the crone cuts in.
The tall one stares down the field, across the bloody landscape, toward the sprawling English camp and mutters, “Better than that foul son of his shall be.”
The girl touches the silver crucifix that hangs over his armor on a chain.
“It was Banquo’s greed that brought about his end, as it was Macbeth’s ambition that engendered his. Men and monarchs make uneasy bedfellows. Both desire the other, but neither wishes to countenance the cost. Slavery on one part. The heavy burden of a people’s manifold sins on the other. There is a reason you slay your kings with tedious regularity.” Her fingers leave the cross. It clatters noisily against his chest. “And always have. This god you pray to gave the world his only son and still you slaughtered him, the greatest king of all. Do not lay the blame for your savagery on the likes of us.”
Trembling, he watches. She comes so close his rank and nervous breath assail her flaring nostrils.
“But tell us, Fleance. You have a rare gift. The dreams. That faculty we share. Peer into the shadowy future. Tell us what awaits you there.”
“I cannot!” he weeps. “I cannot...”
They say nothing, waiting.
“I slew that man and felt the strangeness leave me as if some bird had flown. I see...”
“Nothing,” says the big one. “It happens.”
The child glowers at the shambling figure in front of her, then spits full in
his face. “So nature gives you a third eye, boy, and all you can do is blind it with your timid rage.” She nods at the troops along the river. “Go join the rest of them. You’re a pawn, a puppet, nothing special to us now.”
“A line of kings, you said...” he whines, wiping away the spittle.
“One day!” she laughs. “And that’s a miracle. I will waste my breath on you no more. Know this: your mother’s dead, your uncle’s thieved your land in Laggan, Malcolm loathes you, and MacDuff, though decent, sees his dead wife and bairns each time he sets his eyes upon your bony frame. There’s nothing here for Banquo’s son but death and misery.” She glances at the distant camps. “As there is for them.”
The crone points a crooked finger at him.
“Go south and west, boy. To Wales and the court of a prince called Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. There, marry his daughter and take the name Steward, for that is what, in truth, you’ll be.”
The big one grunts, “And die a lowly, insignificant death, knowing none of those who follow you to greatness will remember the cowardly boy who sired them from a distance.”
He shakes with the impotent fury of a child, stabs the sword at the severed corpse before them. “And what of him? You scoop up this murderer’s remains as if they’re holy.”
The girl gazes at the bloodied torso and the head with blackened lips. “Macbeth, Macbeth,” she sighs. “Our fleeting king. You had the heart but not the stomach. Half a monarch, then, which is better than most of who went before and those who will soon follow. We take him to Iona to be buried in the place he merits. The graveyard where our kings have lain since men first walked this land.”
He stares at them, aghast. “He was a monster!”
“He was a man!” the child retorts. “Who, had the die turned differently, would have been the most just and well-loved king this nation’s ever known.” She strikes him on the face; he whimpers. “You are not fit to stand in his shadow. Be gone. This is no place for fools who’ve thrown away the single curious talent they owned. Be”—her arms shoot out, and she seems, for one brief and terrifying moment, to fly in some great black cloud before him—“gone!”
