Lady Macbeth's Daughter

by Lisa Klein

  I begin to reach out my hand, then fold it quickly over my chest, grasping my upper arms. I cannot put aside sixteen years in a single moment. I hear a fresh sob from Grelach and close my eyes against her.

  Through my sleeve I feel the jeweled band, like Geillis’s hand holding my arm. She had no reason to love me, a crying baby dropped in her lap. But she did. I have no reason to love Grelach and every reason to hate her. We stand close enough so that a breath of wind brings me the scent of her hair and clothes: woodsmoke, and lavender, and peaty earth. Yet the gap between us seems as wide as a chasm in the mountains, as profound as the deepest loch in Scotland.

  I force myself to glance at Grelach. Her shoulders are slumped and she is weeping. I realize that I am taller than she is. Just then she draws herself up, as if sensing my gaze. We stand eye to eye. Hers are blue pools of tears.

  I remember how I used to be afraid of the loch, of the monsters that lurked in its watery depths. But none of them had ever harmed me. One, Nocklavey, I even tamed and made my servant. As I slew the boar. As I faced my father with a firm arm. What do I have left to fear? This woman can no longer harm me. But I can hurt her terribly. With a word, I can cut every thread of her hope.

  I lean forward and touch Grelach’s hand. I do not speak.

  Her fingers close around mine with such force that her knuckles turn white. I feel her strain toward me as if she would clasp me in her arms, but like a queen she stands erect, holding herself back.

  I see myself taking both her wounded hands in my own. The creases around her eyes and mouth, like so many rivers inked on Scotland’s map, seem to relax, softening her expression. I glimpse my mother when she was my age. With my fingertips, I stroke the skin of her hands until the bloody spots begin to fade, then disappear.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Lady Macbeth’s Daughter is a work of fiction inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which is based on what passed for history in Shakespeare’s time: Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles. Holinshed in turn got his material from fourteenth-and fifteenth-century chroniclers. By the time Shakespeare wrote Macbeth (sometime after King James came to the throne in 1603), it contained more fiction than fact. He telescoped the action into a very short time span, combined two different royal murders from Holinshed, and made Macbeth inexcusably evil. Shakespeare kept the Weird sisters he found in Holinshed, for they would please not only playgoers but King James, who was an avid witch-hunter. With their predictions about Banquo fathering a line of kings, Shakespeare (following Holinshed) created a mythical ancestry to flatter his sovereign and patron.

  When you read Shakespeare’s Macbeth, also look at the excerpts from Holinshed (reprinted in the Signet Classics and Norton Critical editions, to name but two). It is fun to study how he changed his sources and to ask why. Nick Aitchison’s fascinating Macbeth: Man and Myth (London: Stroud and Sutton, 1999) asks these questions in a much larger context. As his title suggests, he sorts out the history from the later fictions. With this kind of foundation, you’ll be able to see how I, too, altered my sources. I restored some of the history Shakespeare changed, but I also went out on a big limb by creating an entirely new character and putting her at the very center of the story.

  What do we know about the “real” Macbeth? He indeed killed King Duncan in a dynastic feud but went on to rule Scotland in relative peace for seventeen years (1040–1057). In 1054 Duncan’s son Malcolm defeated Macbeth in battle, but Macbeth’s kingship survived until Malcolm killed him in 1057. Macbeth had married Gruoch, the granddaughter of a king, after killing her first husband in battle (avenging the death of his own father). Gruoch had a son, Lulach, by her first husband, and he ruled Scotland briefly (1057–1058) until Malcolm killed him in 1058. It was a bloody time. Shakespeare got that right.

  There is no record of children being born to Macbeth and Gruoch. But written records were pretty scarce then, so they could have had children. The birth of a daughter especially might have gone unrecorded. Regardless of what might have occurred, why did I create Albia?

  The quick answer, among others, is that I wanted to give an entirely new perspective on the events of Shakespeare’s play, using a protagonist who is outside the main action but crucial to its unfolding. (Whom in the play would you have chosen for this purpose?) I considered having Lady Macbeth tell the story, but she is an accessory to the central crime of the play. Though she is a tragic figure, I didn’t think that my younger readers would identify with her. But it was Lady Macbeth who gave me a tip when she tells her husband: “I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me …” (1.7.54–55). Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth admits that she has nursed a baby? Then why do they have no children in the play? When I looked at all the male characters in the play with sons, I asked myself how the lack of a son might make Macbeth so anxious about his legacy that he is driven to commit murder. How might the loss of a child affect Lady Macbeth? So I invented Albia and made her rejection by her father the single event that precipitates all the tragic action of Macbeth.

  To create a vivid physical setting for my protagonist, I studied a number of books, the best of which were Ann Mac-Sween and Mick Sharp’s Prehistoric Scotland (London: B. T. Batsford, 1990) with its magnificent photographs of tombs, ritual stones, forts, and henges. Also good is Iain Zaczek and David Lyons’s Ancient Scotland (London: Collins and Brown, 1998). For details of daily life, two useful resources are I. F. Grant’s Highland Folk Ways (Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd., 2007) and Regia Anglorum, a Web site that re-creates in fascinating detail English and Scottish life from 950–1066 (www.regia.org). To help me invent the stories and belief system of Albia and the Wyrd sisters, I dipped into Sir George Douglas’s Scottish Folk and Faery Tales (London, 1892. Reprinted Bath, U.K.: Lomond Books, 2005) and Arthur Rowan’s Lore of the Bard: A Guide to the Celtic and Druid Mysteries (Llewellyn, 2003). Another useful Web site with several links is www.medievalscotland.org, covering Scotland from 500–1603.

  Actually going to the places you are writing about is a great way to do research, and “I need to research a book” is the best excuse ever for a trip overseas. In the summer of 2007 my son Adam and I visited Scotland, driving on the wrong side of the road from the prehistoric ruins of the Kilmartin Valley, to the stone henges at Callanais, to Cawdor Castle and Dunsinane Hill, eating haggis, neeps, and tatties along the way. Thank you, dear heart, for your company. (On my Web site, www.authorlisaklein.com, you can see photographs of some of the places that inspired the setting of this book.)

  But the journey really began more than thirty years ago at a high school in Peoria, Illinois, when I first read Macbeth in an English class taught by Judith Burkey, and then with a nutty bunch of classmates wrote and performed a parody, The Tragedy of Rich Macwood, surely the silliest homecoming skit in that (now defunct) school’s history. Thank you, Julie Bartley, Brian Green, Mike Humkey, Joe Kella, Liz Klise, Cyndi Lakin, Kevin McGowan, Tom Mueller, Beth Newsam, Jerry Novy, Paula Schweickert, Bob Simon, Patty Van Buskirk, Martin Willi, Louise Ziegler, and everyone in that Academy of Our Lady/Spalding Institute class of 1976 who made the Bard roll in his grave, laughing. Wasn’t that a blast?

  Returning to the Now-world, my gratitude goes out to my extraordinary editor, Melanie Cecka, and the talented staff at Bloomsbury Children’s Books. Bless you, Carolyn French, for your encouragement and good sense. And thank you, Rob, for making it possible for me to have my cake and share it, too.

  Cast of Characters

  Names or descriptions in boldface denote characters also in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

  MACBETH, thane of Moray, later king of Scotland

  GRELACH, his wife (LADY MACBETH)

  ALBIA, their daughter

  LUOCH, Grelach’s son by her first husband

  RHUVEN, Grelach’s servant

  HELWAIN, a soothsayer

  GEILLIS, known as Albia’s mother

  THE WYRD SISTERS

  MURDO, a farmer

 
; COLUM, his son, a shepherd

  CAORA, a shepherdess

  Albia’s friends

  BANQUO, Macbeth’s general, Albia’s foster father

  BREDA, his wife

  FLEANCE, their son and Albia’s love

  DUNCAN, king of Scotland killed by Macbeth

  MALCOLM, his son

  MACDUFF, thane of Fife, leader of the rebels against Macbeth

  FIONA, his wife (LADY MACDUFF)

  WEE DUFF, their son, one of several children

  ROSS

  ANGUS

  Thanes and allies of Macduff

  EADULF, murderer, servant to Macbeth who turns against him

  SEYTON, servant to Macbeth

  It was to be my first outing in the queen’s company, a barge ride on the Thames. I put on a new dark blue skirt and matching square-necked bodice I had sewn under the watchful eye of Lady Veronica, the most skillful needlewoman at court. I had even embroidered some ivy on the bodice, a tedious task that made my neck ache and my fingers bleed. I combed my hair so the waves fell loosely down my back. Emme placed on my head an open cap threaded with pearls.

  “The queen likes her maids to wear these,” she said.

  I touched the cap with pleasure. It made me feel like royalty.

  “If only Father could see me!” I murmured. “He would be proud.”

  “And your mother would be, too,” said Emme. “There’s not a woman in the kingdom who doesn’t wish for her daughter to be one of Her Majesty’s maids.”

  I doubted that. Again I recalled how lonely my mother had been with my father away, and how she had pulled me back when all I wanted to do was touch the queen.

  We hurried through the galleries to a chamber over the queen’s private jetty, where her entourage waited. I spotted Lord Leicester, the queen’s “Eyes,” looking out of sorts. Elizabeth was leaning on the arm of a younger man who had red hair but was otherwise handsome to behold.

  Dick Tarleton plied his wit among the party. “What a ship of fools is gathered here. Look at Thomas Graham, the fool of fashion. Why, his doublet and hose are all slashed to ribbons. He dueled with a madman and lost!”

  Graham’s face turned as red as his hair, but when the queen laughed, he had no choice but to laugh as well.

  Then the clown bowed to the queen, who wore the ruff it had taken me hours to set. It stuck straight out from beneath her chin, a full twelve inches all around.

  “My mistress, you look delectable with your head upon that great platter.” He licked his lips and pretended to tuck a napkin at his own neck.

  The queen smacked his head with her fan. “Fool Dick, I do not like your wit today.”

  A hush fell over the company. We followed Elizabeth down the stairs to the water’s edge, where the waves lapped against a barge with a covered cabin, glass windows, and gilded fittings. Oarsmen waited, standing firm despite the rocking of the barge and the rain that had begun to fall.

  With a flick of her wrist, the queen indicated those whom she wished to board her barge with her. Graham was not among them, but the clown and Frances were. Emme sighed and boarded the second barge, which was like the first but with less ornament. I was too excited to feel slighted. Stepping aboard, I lost my balance and was pitched onto the seat beside Emme.

  As the vessels floated away from the jetty, a peal of bells broke out from across the river.

  “God’s teeth!” said the burly Leicester, now in an even worse mood. “Can’t Her Majesty go anywhere without Lambeth Church proclaiming it to the whole city?”

  “Tush! Why are you so ill-humored, my lord?” said Lady Veronica, sitting beside him. She was a widow of about thirty and still well favored in her looks.

  Other church bells joined the chorus.

  “Now the Thames will be clogged with traffic all the way to London Bridge!” grumbled Leicester.

  Lady Veronica, not one to be ignored, leaned against him so her bosom swelled over her bodice. She put her lips to his ear.

  I looked away, embarrassed. “Is there something about the water that makes everyone so amorous?” I whispered to Emme.

  “You see why some prefer not to be on the queen’s barge,” she whispered back.

  Opposite Leicester and Lady Veronica, Thomas Graham sat beside Lady Anne, the queen’s distant cousin and the prettiest of her ladies. Stroking her hair, he did not seem disappointed at being relegated to the second barge.

  “I don’t think we ought—,” Anne began. She glanced at Leicester, whose eyes were now fixed on Veronica’s bosom.

  “He is blind to us,” said Graham.

  “The queen has more than one pair of eyes.”

  “Frances? That little puritan will never know,” scoffed Graham.

  Anne gave Emme and me a significant look. Emme shook her head, as if to say she would not tell.

  “Come now, my lady. Don’t be coy,” Graham cooed. She relented and kissed him, inserting her fingertips in the slashes of his doublet.

  “Is that how Frances earns her favor?” I whispered to Emme. “By spying on lovers?”

  Emme nodded. “And not just that. Why, if you wear so much as a piece of Spanish lace, she’ll report the fact to Sir Francis Walsingham.”

  “Who is Francis Walsingham?”

  “He is the councilor who always wears the close black cap on his head—the queen’s spymaster. He thinks every Spaniard is the devil himelf.”

  “Ah, the man with the eyes like black glass beads,” I said with a shudder.

  “Let’s not speak of such grim matters today, Catherine,” said Emme with a wave of her hand.

  So I put my mind to watching the city glide by, new to me and full of wonders. Great houses peered over the stone walls that held back the river, walls broken at intervals by steps and streets ending at the river’s edge, where women washed clothes and men cast their fishing nets. They shouted at the sight of the queen’s barge.

  Anne was now sitting on Graham’s lap.

  Swans bobbed on the waves near a green islet and boatmen rowed their wherries between the north and the south banks of the river. Several boats followed the queen’s barge, from which the sound of a lute drifted back to us.

  Emme pointed out the Inns of Court where men studied the law, the abbey of the Blackfriars, the spires of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the palaces where the queen’s favorite noblemen lived. The barge bumped against a jetty and we clambered out beneath the London Bridge, a wide and noisy thoroughfare crowded with houses and shops. The current churned through its many arches, making it dangerous for the barges to pass, so we reboarded on the other side and resumed our journey. Soon I heard the cries of fishmongers and smelled their wares.

  “Billingsgate,” Emme informed me, wrinkling her nose.

  We glided by a harbor crowded with all manner of vessels, from fishing wherries to tall-masted sea ships.

  “By damn, that’s Walter Ralegh’s ship, the Roebuck!” exclaimed Thomas Graham, dumping Anne from his lap in order to peer out the window. “Laden with Spanish treasure, I’ll be sworn. I’d give my eyeteeth for a share of that gold!”

  “And I would not love you if you had such gaps in your grin,” said Anne, frowning.

  “Who is Walter Ralegh?” I asked Emme.

  “Why, have you not seen him at court? He is unmistakable—tall and quite proud,” she said.

  I shook my head. There was little opportunity to observe the gentlemen courtiers, let alone learn their names.

  “The queen sent him to Ireland to put down the rebels, then to the Netherlands when she sent Monsieur Frenchman away. Now he profits from … shipping,” Emme explained with raised eyebrows.

  “I’ve heard his dream is to colonize the New World,” said Graham. “I’d sail with him. What a feat that would be!”

  “Every young man fancies himself an adventurer,” grumbled Leicester.

  “I do love to gaze on his finely turned legs,” sighed Anne.

  “But his sights are set only on the queen,”
said Veronica. “Just like my Lord Leicester’s.” And she tapped him with her fan, pouting.

  “If this Walter Ralegh went to the Netherlands, he must have known my father,” I said to Emme, and she touched my arm in sympathy.

  The sound of a fanfare meant that the queen had reached her destination. A moment later our barge bumped into the wharf and we disembarked, climbing the steps to the street. As soon as I saw the high stone wall with its bastions and battlements and the tall keep with its four turrets, I knew we had arrived at the famed and feared Tower of London.

  My father had told me many stories about the Tower, where the kings of England had once lived and where traitors were now kept. Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, had been beheaded here after being accused of adultery by her husband, King Henry. Yet look how Leicester and Veronica carried on! Did no one remember the past? Surely the queen could not forget. As a young girl, she had been imprisoned here by her sister, Queen Mary, a Catholic who feared that Elizabeth was plotting to overthrow her.

  “But why would our mistress come here?” I wondered aloud. “The Tower must hold terrible memories for her.”

  Graham, in a giddy mood, replied, “Why, to visit the Royal Mint and hear how well each coin flatters her. Such praise may help to fill my flattened purse.”

  “Thomas, you are incorrigible,” said Anne fondly. “But I think it is to see the menagerie.”

  I nodded, having no idea what she meant.

  As we neared the Tower I stared up at the forbidding wall, with its narrow slits. From the squared battlements protruded tall spikes topped with what looked like bundles of blackened rags. I squinted in order to see better.

  “Is this the menagerie?” I asked, imitating Anne’s accent.

  She burst out laughing. “Yes, it is a menagerie—of criminals and traitors! Thomas, do you hear how witty this new maid is?”

  “They are heads, Catherine!” Emme hissed. “Some of them have been up there for years.”