Macbeth

by David Hewson

  Most times they went to bed early, rarely to sleep, instead to fall into each other’s arms, hotly moving, one within the other, repeatedly, till exhaustion took its toll and brought with it a fleeting, snatched hour of sleep.

  “My lord,” she whispered, late of a passionate evening, panting, sweating in his tight embrace. “If this womb were not barren, you would have sired an army for us both by now.”

  He laughed and kissed her. Scotland was theirs. And yet he could not help but notice that each and every time they gripped one another, naked, thrusting, screaming beneath the sheets, her tears flowed free and salty against his bristled cheeks.

  “Why do you cry?” he dared to ask one time.

  “For joy,” she said straightaway, and worked with her fingers to fire him anew.

  He moaned, and no more questions came. In these hot and feverish couplings they hid their fears and doubts, striving to believe with each encounter, every ardent thrust, that they might bury their dark remembrances.

  After a month of this strange and trancelike bliss, the skies abated. Clear blue replaced dank gray. Word came from the thanes across the Grampians, the north, the lowlands. A date was fixed for Scone. One week hence.

  The evening the heralds started to arrive, they flew into each other’s arms with greater desperation than ever before.

  Four days later, they set sail in a small flotilla of ships to travel around the coast, south to Perth and then by horse for the short ride to Scone.

  Macbeth would take the throne of Scotland on the day the pagans called the Winter Solstice, close to the Christian feast that followed in its footsteps—Christmas. It was fitting, the kitchen women said. A moment when the world renewed itself afresh through the coming of a new king. The turning point at which the days ceased growing shorter and slowly lengthened, beckoning fair summer to rise again.

  None knew that the party making for Iona had also escaped the season’s clutches and had reached the distant isle in the west. Or that even as Macbeth rose to mount the Stone of Destiny, a new monarch crowned in Scone, Duncan’s chill and decomposing corpse was lowered at last into Iona’s cold, dark peat.

  It seemed an insignificant place for such a momentous act, no more than a symmetrical grassy mound now covered in hard hoar frost and surrounded by a vast crowd of men and women shivering in heavy winter clothes, silent and full of awe. The Romans had reached this far centuries before, briefly turning the hillock into a puny fort from which they hoped to subdue the northern tribes. When the Picts came back to fight and fight again, the centurions fled, leaving behind a strange altar to a distant Persian god called Mithras, a deity the crude, superstitious tribes came to dread. So something foreign remained in this curious spot, not far from the snaking waters of the river. Afraid to despoil the simple temple there, the Picts, an itinerant people, embraced it instead, making the village nearby one of several capitals for the kingdom that became known as Alba.

  During an interminable civil war, a monarch called Nechtan found another god the Romans had brought and converted here to the Christian cross, forcing those who came after to follow the same faith, at least in the light of day. After that, the modest grassy swell became known as the Hill of Credulity, acquiring a mystical, otherworldly quality as a place where one man could become, for a brief moment, an earthly god himself, gaining power, however fleeting, from its sacred turf and stones.

  The three sisters, unremarkable among the lowing ragtag crowd of peasants and paupers, soldiers and thanes, around them, found a vantage point on a dry stone wall close to the ceremony, dispatching four youths who first occupied it by dint of foul-mouthed threats and promised curses. There, they made themselves comfortable on the freezing stones, watching the ancient rites begin in the narrow circle at the center of the multitude. The farthest edge was formed by all the principal thanes gathered in a row, Banquo a stride ahead of them, the silver crown of Scotland in his hands, the wolf skin on his back.

  In front of him sat Macbeth in a long, dark robe, the sleeves and collar trimmed with ermine, perched awkwardly on a slab of ancient gray sandstone, his face impassive, in his right hand a golden staff with a lion rampant at its head. Behind stood his lady. No crown for her, the young sister thought. Dressed in fur over an ankle-length sky-blue gown, her long blonde hair falling loose and brushed around her shoulders, she wore a faint and fanciful smile as if none of this were real.

  All were silent—bored, mostly—listening to a red- hatted cardinal, crook in hand, deliver a tedious sermon that began with a long-winded account of how God made the cosmos and everything it contained, among its plenteous riches the blessed kingdom of Scotland.

  “Idiot,” the giant sister muttered. “Every fool knows the universe was forged from the boundless sea of Lir—”

  “That was the Celts’ world,” the young one said. “You think there is but one? Even the Romans had different gods.”

  “Then which world is his?” the old one asked, pointing a skinny finger at the stiff man on the stone whose eyes strayed constantly to the burly figure of Banquo and the silver crown in his vast hands.

  “All of them and none,” she answered, staring at the rock on which Macbeth sat. The Stone of Destiny, they called it. The pillow on which Jacob laid his head that distant night in the east when he dreamed of a ladder reaching all the way to Heaven, with God and his angels descending it, speaking as they came.

  The two of them grumbled by her side. She barked at them for silence. There was a moment in this ceremony, one quickly approaching, that she always anticipated.

  The girl briefly closed her eyes, and in that sudden dark space knew she was elsewhere, far away in the northwest amid the howling gales on Iona. Her inner self watched the coffin of Duncan descend into the desiccated bog in the grounds of the abbey where king after king now lay, with more to come, few dead of old age, many in slaughtered pieces. Tradition counted even among beasts. When a monarch was killed in battle or through deceit, still his murderers buried their victim’s bones there.

  In the green and fertile lands of the south, they made kings. On the wind-blasted pastures of Iona, close to the ancient abbey of Columba, they returned them to the earth. There was a fitting symmetry here, even if none but she might appreciate it. And three others, she remembered—Macbeth, his wife, and Banquo. Two of whom would wish to forget the torn corpse now entering the distant ground, if only they could.

  And the third? She watched Banquo, the big and brutish man, wolf mane on his head, fire in his eyes, the crown in his hands, held with a feverish and clumsy desire.

  “Tragic in the present, yet glorious in the future,” she repeated to herself. “You shall beget kings, though never reign yourself.” The girl laughed and watched him standing there, pompous and nervy, torn between duty and desire, like them all. “How that last must hurt.”

  A single word—Jacob—brought her back to the ceremony. The cardinal had raised his crook and now recited the words the Hebrew prophet heard all those centuries before, his head upon the stone where Macbeth waited for the prize he coveted.

  In a fine and sonorous voice, the priest intoned, “And behold, the Lord said, ‘I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ ”

  The women beside her tittered and covered their mouths, half trying to hide their laughter.

  A few in the crowd around them turned and dared to stare.

  The burly sister leaned forward and said to a surly, scowling peasant, “They promised that to Duncan, too, fool. And now he’s dead, while his offspring cower with the English, fearing for their lives. Plenty of dust. Not much of it blessed, eh?”

  “Cower as regicides and patricides rightly should,” the young one added with a smile.

&n
bsp; “Macbeth will be a better king than Duncan,” the man retorted.

  “He could hardly be worse now, could he?” answered the old one.

  “A man of the people,” he insisted.

  “He’s a man no more,” the young sister replied. “A king now. Above you. Beyond you. Bent on whatever destiny your magical stone has given him.” She leaned down, eyes sparkling. “And if he disappoints, he’s gone. You shall devour him, like all the others.”

  The tall sister chomped her jaws, biting, making crude, disgusting noises. “Nothing tastes better than a monarch,” she spat at him, and the fellow shrank away into the crowd, leaving them alone.

  The sermon was over. Banquo approached bearing the silver coronet. A small group of musicians, harp and flute and pipes, struck up a dirgelike drone from nearby. The red-hatted cardinal came forward and sprinkled water on Macbeth’s bare head, chanting Latin dirges in a singsong voice.

  “Oh, magic, magic,” the girl crooned. “If so many fools believe it so, how can they be mistaken?”

  She turned and gazed at the two women next to her and thought again, They do not—cannot—understand. The sacrament being played out in front of them had nothing to do with holy water, with an ancient stone, or Latin rites any more than their own incantations and potions depended upon an otherworldly power to wreak their damage. Magic came from within, from turning a secret key that lurked inside, waiting for the words to set it free.

  The warrior in the wolf’s mane came forward and placed the crown on Macbeth’s head. The priest splashed yet more water on the anointed. The girl closed her eyes and, in her mind, saw clear as day a picture of distant Iona, peat being sprinkled on a closing grave—flowers, too—and the driving force of icy rain.

  “Like Ouroboros, the serpent that devours itself,” she murmured, smiling. “These creatures renew their agonies afresh with each new dawn.”

  A cry rang out. Then the crowd took up the chant.

  “All hail Macbeth! All hail Macbeth!”

  She laughed—and so did the other two—at that.

  “All hail Macbeth,” they shouted for a second time, though the man himself seemed muted and unmoved by all this noisy clamor about him, and his wife stood behind him as straight and rigid as a frozen corpse.

  Servants began to wander through the crowd scattering coins and bread and meat among the mob.

  The girl slipped down from the wall and bade them follow, handing the crone her crutches, watching as she sidled along the ground like a spider seeking prey.

  “What next?” the tall sister demanded. “These fools bore me.”

  “We wait,” she said.

  “For what?” the crone wondered.

  She nodded, laughing, and said, “For the king to seek an audience.”

  The girl watched the tall, strong figure in the wolf skin, standing now with the other thanes, talking to them in low voices, all of them apart from the two figures at the heart of the circle, one seated on the Stone of Destiny, the other silent by his side.

  “They have risen above the rest already,” she noted. “No longer thane and lady. King and queen, anointed by their god.”

  She hitched up her skirt and took a step across the tall and frosty grass.

  “A day. A week. He’ll want our company before long. Two creatures apart, detached from their humanity. He’ll search us out. As like seeks like.”

  By midday the elaborate public ritual had run its course. After came the private ones—whispered meetings, reports, promises of preferment, vows of eternal friendship from men Macbeth scarcely knew. The size of this new kingdom, stretching from the lowlands to the northern extremity, which not long before was property of the Norsemen, astonished him, as did all the beetling elements of the state—courtiers and diplomats, financiers and merchants, finally assembled inside the ancient, comfortable palace of Scone, each ready with information and advice.

  In Inverness his role was clear: defend the territory, maintain the king’s rule, collect his tithes. Here, in the gentler, more complex territory of the lowlands, not so far from the English border behind which Malcolm and Donalbain now waited, doubtless plotting, he came to appreciate the complexity of monarchy and question his own ability to manage the task. Cullen, the head of the household, both diplomat and servant, and—though a little old for it—occasional warrior, was his right-hand man in this. An honest soul, parsimonious with the purse, polite and distant with all the many seeking favors. It had come to Macbeth long before Scone that this man would give wise, dispassionate counsel always. He had no land to defend, no fortune to enrich further. He was happy merely to serve.

  With Cullen by his side, he endured two hours of these meetings, then, head hurting, retired to the private quarters in the palace to think, perhaps even to sleep, not that there’d been much of that lately. That same morning, after breakfast, Banquo had approached him, looking uncharacteristically nervous.

  “You want to talk?” said Macbeth. “I crave a moment’s peace, friend. This was a day and a half.”

  “When you’re ready,” Banquo replied.

  “In brief,” he said, “what is it? Tell me and I’ll sleep on it.”

  “A favor,” said Banquo, with a shrug. “A small matter but perhaps it merits more conversation than you’re disposed to give it now. It will keep till you’re more refreshed.”

  “As you wish,” said Macbeth, working to keep the unease out of his face. “I will do what I can for you, Banquo. You know that.”

  “Aye,” he said with a smile. “For old time’s sake.”

  Then he left him without another word.

  A favor.

  Which meant what? Gold? Land? A military post more prominent than that he already held? All these he could grant without qualm. So why did the idea worry him so much? There was a wariness in the man’s eyes that Macbeth was unused to. What could Banquo possibly request that his boyhood friend and comrade in arms would ever wish to refuse?

  And if he did say no...what then?

  The door opened without so much as a knock and a brusque voice said, “My Lord?”

  Macbeth turned and saw the grizzled porter, already half in the room.

  “The door was open, sir,” he said. “I trust you don’t mind...”

  “What is it, Fergus?” Macbeth asked, head heavy, wondering if this was true or whether the man had simply entered unannounced.

  “Might you have a moment, sir? A little time to chat?”

  Macbeth scowled at him. “Chat?” he repeated. The creature was intolerable. Even before the coronation, no one else would assume such familiarity with Macbeth, except perhaps Banquo. The porter had been a part of the household so long that he seemed to have forgotten the differences in rank between them. That or he saw through such things.

  “It seems to me,” said Fergus, with his odd, knowing smile, “that with your newly elevated position, you may be in need of people you can trust.”

  “Are there people around me I should not trust?”

  “I’m sure the greater part of your...subjects,” he couldn’t suppress the flicker of amusement as he said the word, “are, in most things, trustworthy. Yet in some matters—”

  “I have the court. My wife. Cullen.”

  “Your wife’s a wondrous woman. And Cullen...” He scratched his nose. “A capable individual, if a little dry and...judgmental, if you take my meaning.”

  “No, man, I do not.”

  “A man like that is welcome when it comes to affairs of state, my lord. Those things that occur out in the open light of day. But you are king now. Sometimes there will be private matters. Deeds your highness may not want the world to know.”

  He smiled and showed his blackened teeth.

  “After all, sire, there were occasions when you needed my special talents as a thane. Surely a monarch, a man who rules over such a large and intemperate kingdom, requires them more, not less. On occasion.”

  “If you’re angling to be bawd for the serving gir
ls...”

  Fergus spat with contempt. “Please,” he said. “Women are distractions for lesser men.”

  “So you wish to be...what? A counselor? A steward?”

  “I wish to spend the rest of my life doing things other than opening doors and lugging barrels.”

  “That I may appreciate,” said Macbeth. “And instead you would be?”

  “Cullen’s prodigal brother, as it were. Your left-hand man.”

  Macbeth looked at him, lean and sly as he was. The porter gazed back, his lip curled between smile and sneer, his eyes as incisive and hungry as a weasel’s.

  “You are an impudent cur,” said Macbeth, his voice low. “Little better than a common criminal.”

  Fergus laughed. “An uncommon criminal, please. In truth, I’m the most honest soul you’ll ever meet. For others will tell you what you want to hear, while I say only what you need to know. The truth.” He came close and whispered, “Good kings must sometimes sanction bad deeds. Cullen will howl and shriek at such a prospect. And while I defer to the queen’s sage words always, I think there will be times when you would wish her ignorant of the details.”

  “And you will be my instrument in these?” said Macbeth.

  “I have many talents and friends in low and obscure places.”

  “In return? Money? Status?”

  “Ease,” said Fergus. “Leisure. The right to keep my counsel and leave the fetching and carrying to boys and fools.”