Third Witch

by Jackie French

  Would she still think me good if she knew I planned to charm our thane?

  My lady frowned as I entered her chamber. Even so she was more beautiful than any girl I knew. Gold glinted in her brown hair. Her eyes were midsummer blue. She had been married but three years, with one babe who had died of the flux six months before.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ I said, teasing her. And forgetting to curtsey yet again.

  She glared at me, and not because I didn’t curtsey. ‘Do not play with me! I have been sitting, cramped, confined, while you have been dallying on the hillside.’ She paced across her chamber. ‘Oh, for a muse of fire that could breathe me to the battlefield. I’d teach men how to war, to imitate the action of the tiger, summon up their blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage.’ She strode over to the narrow window and gazed out as if she could see the battle. ‘Once more unto the breach, men, once more,’ she whispered, ‘and choke the battlefield with our enemy Cawdor’s dead.’

  ‘Your mother would be proud of your modest stillness and humility,’ I told her.

  Her mother had been the daughter of a Norse lord and had gone a-Viking with her brothers till her father arranged her marriage with a Scots laird. The laird was dead now, as was his wife, of spotted fever, leaving a son to inherit and marry off his young sister to the Thane of Glamis. A good marriage, even if Lord Macbeth was twice her age, especially now he had command of the king’s army. And even better if, with her urging — and Mam’s, Agnes’s and my help — the Thane of Glamis could become Thane of Cawdor. He would have the largest estate in all Scotland then, except for the king’s.

  My lady grinned at me reluctantly. ‘My mother could go a-Viking and wield a sword, while I must sit garbed in the body of a woman even though I have the heart and courage of a king.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Where is the potion?’

  ‘I don’t have it.’ I held up my hand before she could protest. ‘Old Agnes says the task is too heavy for a potion.’ I went closer and whispered, in case a servant listened at the door. ‘It must be done by a charm, at dusk today.’

  Would her ladyship be angry? Send me from her service, have Agnes thrown from her cottage? ‘Suffer not a witch to live,’ they said at kirk. I knew Agnes’s charms were only words, but neither the villagers nor the castle folk who crept to her cottage in the shadows believed that.

  My lady met my eyes. ‘Will a charm work?’

  I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I should have known my lady would embrace even charms, if they brought what she desired. ‘If there be three of us to make his lordship believe in it. Agnes says Mam and I must be with her.’

  ‘Good. Then you will see it done aright.’ She paced again, a wolf caught in a tower. ‘What it is to be a wife. Our lives, our souls, our careful accounts, held not in our own hands but in our husband’s —’

  ‘I’ll need a horse,’ I said, stopping her speech mid-flow. Gentlefolk always used a cartload of words instead of one.

  ‘Take Thunder. Tell the steward he needs the exercise.’

  I swallowed. I could ride a pony, but my lady’s horse had as fierce a temper as she did. But he’d get me to the heath on time — if I were still upon his back.

  ‘Yes, my lady.’ I remembered to curtsey this time, but she was too het up to notice.

  ‘What are you waiting for? Go! Make my husband’s mind as strong of purpose as his sword! Go and get me Cawdor!’

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ I said again.

  We met each other’s eyes, hers bright blue, excited at the challenge. Then I left.

  Chapter 3

  Fog sat on the heath like a vast cat on a giant’s hearth. Shadows had swallowed the earth, the sky and us. Thunder growled all around. Even the ground vibrated.

  I tied Thunder to a bush downhill from the track. A white horse, like the fog. I hoped he wouldn’t whinny when he heard Macbeth’s horse coming.

  My shoulders ached, my hands were blistered and other bits of me needed to be soothed with Old Man’s Bottom. Not that I’d ask Agnes for it, I thought as I stumbled through the heather up to the track. There’d be a feast tomorrow. When Lord Murdoch kissed my hand I’d rather smell of roses.

  Two figures loomed out of the white belly of the fog. Agnes’s hair clung to her face in wet tangles. Mam was no better, pale with cold. She’d had to walk while I rode.

  ‘Did you bring the mutton?’ Agnes demanded.

  I held out a leather bag. ‘A stuffed mutton flap, hardly touched.’

  ‘Spiced? It’ll give me wind.’ She sniffed at it, grunted, tore off a bit and passed the bag to Mam.

  ‘There’s some cold salmon as well,’ I told Mam. She found mutton hard to chew.

  Agnes was the only woman past twenty in the village who still had all her teeth. When I was small I’d asked if she’d charmed them. She’d grinned and answered, ‘Snails. Eating their shells keeps teeth strong.’

  ‘There’s pepper in this,’ she complained now, delving into the bag for more. ‘You should’ve brought good plain roast venison. Don’t know why they bother with this fancy muck.’

  I shook my head. ‘No one’s hunted these past three days.’

  ‘Men are hunting other men instead,’ Mam said bitterly, looking up from her salmon.

  ‘Nothing better than a bit of venison if it’s well hung.’ Agnes gave me a glance. ‘Not the only thing that’s best well hung neither.’

  Had they forgotten why we were out here in the wet? Macbeth could be here soon, my lady waiting all hope and fire back at the castle.

  ‘Lady Macbeth gives us permission to charm her husband,’ I said pointedly.

  Agnes raised an eyebrow as though she’d had no doubt on that score. But all she said was, ‘I’m glad we didn’t climb all this way in the damp for nothing then. How much is she paying again?’

  ‘Three sacks of oats.’

  Enough to see Mam and Agnes through the winter. Coin is easy to carry, but what use is coin in winter when there’s no food for sale in the village to buy with it? Oats could be stored in secret and eaten in secret, with no questions asked.

  Agnes swallowed the last of the mutton. ‘Any cheese?’

  I shook my head. ‘But there’s quince paste in the saddlebag, wrapped in a bit of leather to keep it dry. I thought you could eat it going home.’

  ‘Can’t be doing with quince,’ said Agnes, shoving the food sack behind a rock. ‘Gives me wind.’

  Mam winked at me. She loved sweet things. Every summer Da used to climb the hills to a wild bees’ nest only he knew of. The secret died with him. We’d tasted nothing sweet after that till I’d won my lady’s favour.

  Agnes wiped her chin on her sleeve, then opened a small bag at her waist.

  I wrinkled my nose. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Soot.’ She dabbed some on her finger and reached towards my face.

  ‘I’m not wearing that!’

  ‘So you’re happy to have his lordship take one look at you and say, “Why, Mistress Annie, what brings you to the heath?”’

  I watched as she applied the soot around Mam’s eyes, stroked it below her cheeks then along her neck. I blinked. Suddenly Mam’s white face seemed to hover out of the gloom, all eyes and horrid shadows. Even I wouldn’t have known her.

  ‘All right, I’ll wear it,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad Mistress Annie agrees,’ muttered Agnes, applying the soot to me, and then herself. She looked even more terrifying than Mam did.

  I felt a shiver of triumph. Yes, this could work.

  ‘You remember what we rehearsed?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said impatiently. I’d had to learn a lot more than a few verses in the past four years.

  Agnes turned to Mam, her voice suddenly a cackle. ‘Where hast thou been, sister?’

  I blinked at her. I’d never have recognised her voice. She sounded . . . evil.

  But this wasn’t evil, I told myself. Just play-acting to convinc
e Macbeth to claim the reward that should be his.

  ‘Killing swine,’ hissed Mam.

  I had never guessed she could sound so sinister. She glanced at me as if to say, I do this for you.

  Agnes glared at me, waiting for my line.

  ‘Sister, where thou?’ I asked, trying to make my voice as harsh as a crow’s.

  Agnes settled into the speech. ‘A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, and munched, and munched, and munched . . .’

  Just words, I told myself. And yet, spoken in the fog, from her black-shadowed face, they chilled me.

  ‘“Give me,” quoth I.’ Agnes’s voice was a frog’s croaking from the marsh. ‘“Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries. Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master of the Tiger: But in a sieve I’ll thither sail, and, like a rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.’

  ‘I’ll give thee a wind,’ hissed Mam obediently.

  ‘Thou art kind,’ said Agnes.

  ‘And I another,’ I added, still attempting to be a crow.

  ‘I myself have all the other,’ declared Agnes’s croak. ‘I will drain him dry as hay! Though his ship cannot be lost, yet it shall be tempest-tossed.’

  I blinked. Suddenly I could see him, a poor man lost far from home, pining, dying, never knowing why . . . No! This was play-acting. Only words. And yet . . .

  ‘Look what I have,’ crowed Agnes.

  ‘Show me!’ hissed the voice that wasn’t Mam.

  ‘Here I have a pilot’s thumb, wrecked as homeward he did come . . .’

  The thunder snickered, as if it knew a joke we couldn’t share. No, that wasn’t thunder. Those were hooves!

  ‘A drum, a drum!’ I said urgently. ‘Macbeth has come.’

  Agnes held out her hands to us. Hers was warm, despite the fog. Mam’s was cold, like mine.

  We circled across the road, chanting: ‘The weird sisters, hand in hand, posters of the sea and land, thus do go about, about: thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, and thrice again to make up nine.’

  ‘Peace,’ muttered Agnes. ‘The charm’s wound up.’

  A man’s voice said, ‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen.’

  We turned, our blackened faces shimmering in the fog and gloom, and there they were, letting their tired horses walk for a stretch. Two men: Lord Macbeth and his friend Lord Banquo. Both looked weary, but I could see by their faces that this time, finally, the king had won.

  Yes, I thought, the king owes Macbeth for this.

  Macbeth saw us first. He pulled at his reins, startled.

  ‘How far —’ began Lord Banquo, then stopped too. ‘What are these,’ he muttered to Macbeth, ‘so withered and so wild in their attire, that look not like the inhabitants of the earth and yet are on it? Live you?’ he demanded, staring at Agnes and trying not to show his fear. ‘Or are you aught that man may question?’

  Even after a battle, I thought, gentlefolk will still spout a speech.

  Agnes nudged me, then put her bristly finger on her lips. Mam and I copied her.

  Banquo gazed at us as if we had thrust our tombstones aside and risen from the grave.

  ‘You seem to understand me,’ he whispered. ‘You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.’

  It’s only soot and fog, I thought. And yet despite the cold I seemed to burn, as if these minutes were the most important in my life. Two great lords trembled in front of me. I would charm the Thane of Glamis! Give my lady all that she desired!

  ‘Speak, if you can,’ demanded Macbeth. ‘What are you?’

  Agnes stepped forward. ‘All hail, Macbeth,’ she cried, as imperious as my lady could ever be. ‘Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis.’

  Mam spoke from the shadows. ‘All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor.’

  Macbeth’s face was paler than the fog. He believed us. Two strong knights, scared by three women and some words. I felt like I had drunk a pint of heavy winter ale.

  I was supposed to say, ‘Ask Cawdor of the king and he will grant it ye.’ But my lady didn’t just want a husband who was the Thane of Cawdor. She wanted one with fire and ambition.

  The words seemed to seep into me from the fog. I stepped forward. ‘All hail, Macbeth! Thou shalt be king hereafter!’ I saw Agnes’s startled glance.

  The air quivered, as if we hung between the earth and the sky. Macbeth started, and his horse shied in fright. He patted its neck to steady it.

  I could feel Mam staring at me. Could feel Agnes not staring at me. And yet the words had felt so right. Ripples flowed from me; a stone thrown into a pool.

  Lord Banquo was trying, impossibly, to make his horse back away without turning his back on us. ‘In the name of truth, are ye fantastical, or that indeed which outwardly ye show?’ he muttered. ‘My noble partner you greet with present grace and great prediction. To me you speak not.’

  He took a deep breath, in control of his horse and himself again. ‘If you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me, who neither begs nor fears your favours nor your hate.’

  I glanced at Agnes, wondering what she’d do. She hadn’t prepared a speech for Banquo. We hadn’t even known he’d be here.

  ‘Hail!’ she said, to gain time.

  ‘Hail!’ repeated Mam.

  ‘Hail!’ I said, because I had run out of ideas too.

  But Agnes hadn’t.

  ‘Lesser than Macbeth, and greater,’ she growled.

  ‘Not so happy, yet happier,’ cawed Mam, taking her cue.

  And now words came to me too. ‘Thou shalt get kings though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!’

  ‘Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!’ Agnes called hurriedly. She grabbed my hand and tugged me off the path into the fog.

  Mam followed.

  ‘Stay, you imperfect speakers!’ yelled Macbeth. ‘Tell me more. By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis; but how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives.’

  His horse stepped off the path into the fog a dozen steps, before he pulled at the reins. The ground was treacherous with bog and well he knew it.

  ‘Say from whence you owe this strange intelligence?’ he called after us. ‘Speak, I charge you.’

  Agnes stuck her fingernails into my palm, warning me not to answer. We stood still as the fog swirled about us. Moisture dripped down our faces. Mam’s and Agnes’s were streaked with black. I supposed mine was too.

  ‘The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them,’ said Banquo at last, almost succeeding in not sounding terrified. ‘Whither are they vanished?’

  ‘Into the air,’ said Macbeth unsteadily. ‘And what seemed corporal melted as breath into the wind. Would they had stayed.’

  ‘Were such things here as we do speak about?’ whispered Banquo. ‘Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?’

  I moved closer, soft-footed through the heather. I could just make out Macbeth’s face staring at Banquo.

  ‘Your children shall be kings,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You shall be king,’ Banquo replied.

  They believed us!

  ‘And Thane of Cawdor too. Went it not so?’ Macbeth sounded breathless.

  ‘To the selfsame tune and words.’

  We heard more hoof beats. Agnes clutched me. We stepped back carefully so as not to trip.

  ‘Who’s here?’ cried Banquo as riders loomed out of the fog. ‘Lord Ross!’

  ‘Great tidings,’ called the rider. ‘The king hath happily received, Macbeth, the news of thy success. Every one did bear thy praises in his kingdom’s great defence! And so he bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor. Hail, most worthy thane! For it is thine.’

  And that was how Lord Macbeth became the Thane of Cawdor, just as my lady had demanded, and Mam and Agnes and I watched, the soot dripping off us, as he and his men galloped back into the night towards the king.

  Cha
pter 4

  ‘Why did you say all that stuff about kings?’ hissed Agnes, still grasping my hand.

  I pulled away. ‘My lady wanted a husband with fire and ambition, not just Cawdor. Macbeth is Thane of Cawdor now.’

  ‘And always would have been,’ said Agnes flatly. ‘Else I’d not have done the charm.’

  I stared at her. Her face looked dreadful, all striped in black and white. She pulled out a rag tucked into her petticoats and began to wipe the mess away.

  ‘You only ever make a charm for what you know will happen,’ she muttered angrily. ‘A shy man wants a love charm, but you don’t give it unless the lass glances his way first. A soldier wants a charm to keep him safe in battle.’ She shrugged. ‘You give it to him knowing that if he lives he’ll think it worked, and if he doesn’t he’s beyond complaint. But this!’

  ‘It was only words.’

  ‘Words have power, you stupid child.’

  ‘They don’t!’

  ‘They do,’ said Mam softly. She took Agnes’s rag and began to wipe my face as if I was a baby. I let her. She’d do it better than I, and I must be clean before I went back to the castle. ‘Your father said “I love you” and the world turned green and bright.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘You’ll learn,’ said Mam. ‘The first time your baby calls you “Mam”. That’s a flower opening that never fades. Or words of forgiveness on a death bed.’ She looked at Agnes. ‘Or a friend saying, there’s soup for you and your child at my hearth as long as you may need it. Words can change a life, can make or take it.’

  I turned to Agnes. ‘How did you know the king would make Macbeth Thane of Cawdor today?’ Agnes just grinned at me, showing her strong teeth. ‘From the soldiers who came to you for charms?’ I said slowly.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Macbeth’s men have been gossiping more than village women at the well. Who else would get Cawdor except the leader of the army that defeated him?’

  ‘Then my lady worried for nothing?’

  Agnes shrugged. ‘What does she know of the world, except for halls and castles? No harm done to make her grateful to you, and oats for me and your mam. But now!’ She shook her head. ‘Now you have gone and promised those two men far more than fate should bring. A kingdom for one; sons who will be kings for the other.’