by David Hewson
“I need to know...”
“Not here,” she said, and silenced him. The girl nodded to the hill behind. “Somewhere a little warmer and more fit.” That light look of amusement again. “Will you take a drink with three weird sisters and let us say our piece?”
She reached into his coat, her slender hand searching, found a pocket in his breeches, grasped, fumbling within, and took a coin.
“This time, though,” the child cried, grinning, “there’s a price that must be paid.”
Beyond the rowan grove, halfway up the steep hill, the cave mouth opened like a fissure in the earth. Inside, the air was warm from the smoky fire of damp branches and, it seemed to him, the very atmosphere itself, as if this gloomy channel reached all the way to regions lost far below, deep down, even to Hell itself.
Something—a hare, perhaps—stood on a charred spit over the fire. The tall one reached out idly as she passed and snatched a chunk of flesh from its burned limbs. They bade him sit on a low, cold rock and gathered opposite, the old one seated, the big one crouching on her haunches, the young girl perched on a rock, all eyes on him.
He glanced around the walls and saw there strange figures, sticklike men and animals that bore no resemblance to creatures he had ever known. “What is this pit?”
“A temple,” the girl responded. “To gods so bored with this mean world they slumber.” She stared at him, her black eyes gleaming. “And yet they know things, should you call them...”
The old one prodded the embers of the fire with her crutch and crooned, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
She looked up, stabbed the crutch at Macbeth, and hooted, “Ach! It’s there!”
“What are you?” Macbeth murmured. “What is your business?”
“Simple women who walk the heaths,” the girl said. “Our business? A deed without a name, not one you’d fathom, anyway. What do you truly seek, Macbeth? You’re king of Scotland, as we foretold. Our interest here is surely done.”
“A crown is nothing of itself...”
“Simple women who walk the heaths,” the girl repeated with a sudden impatience. “You have all the knowledge we possess. For more...” The hag crooned a strange incantation beneath her breath.
“A price, you said.” He threw before them all the contents of his purse.
The girl gazed at the coins as if she despised them. “You’ve nothing more to hear from us,” she replied. “Though, our masters—”
“Call ’em. Let me see ’em,” he ordered.
They went quiet at that, and then the tall one rose and, with both hands, opened her long sackcloth coat. Ranged along the inside stood small glass bottles, eight or more each side, all stitched and secure within the fabric as if she were a mendicant quack.
The brute of a woman pointed to a violet-colored vial and said, “This would raise the dead for one who knew the words to make it work.” Her fingers ran to an amber bottle next to it. “And this suck out the breath of the strongest, healthiest man alive and turn him to a corpse, all in a single heartbeat.”
“I want no poisons...” Macbeth hissed.
“Poisons and medicine...what’s the difference?” she asked. “Those guards you fed with mekilwort would have woken with clear heads had you not stuck a blade into their guts.”
“I want—” he started.
“This,” the girl said, retrieving a black bottle from near the tall one’s breast, “will take you straight into the bosom of our rulers and ensure they tell you nothing but the truth.” She shrugged. “Though you may not like the journey...”
“I have been through hellish times...” he murmured. “Do not treat me lightly.”
She strode over, came close, and held it before him. Her face was pretty, clean and flawless, the skin so smooth it seemed unreal. The girl’s breath carried the scent of strange fragrances—aniseed and flowers. Her perfect teeth, those of a babe, ranged white and even, none rotten, none misshapen, all the color of fresh milk. The black vial was tight in her fingers.
Her fine and slender hand went to his matted hair, her mouth rose to his ear. Macbeth recoiled at her unexpected touch.
“Do not shrink back from me, sir,” she whispered. “Not if you wish to know. Take this potion and you’ll hear such things that might never reach even our own ears.” She uncorked the bottle and sniffed the contents.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Mountain herbs and the distillation of a certain mushroom that grows in southern pastures.” The girl shrugged. “A man I once knew called it the Phrygian Cap, but then, he was a foreigner.”
She waved the black bottle before him.
“Nothing strange. No sow’s blood, no grease from a murderer’s gibbet or bat or lizard. I told you. We have so little magic in our hands. But this”—she nodded, raising the bottle—“is nature’s brew and will lead you where you wish. More”—her pale features creased in a frown—“we cannot do.”
“Give me,” he said, snatching the bottle and drinking down the contents in one swift move. The liquid was as thick as treacle and tasted like an exotic musty fruit blended with poteen.
They watched in silence, and then the hag said, “Had you listened, man, she’d told you to drink but half the thing. I spent a year distilling that concoction. And now some Highland fool...”
He didn’t hear. A booming noise was rising in his head like the sound of a distant ocean growing to a winter fury. The room was closing in, the dark walls shifting as if the rock itself beat to some infernal heart that brought to life the stick men and their quarry, turning the scribbled drawings there into an active, bloody hunt.
Then a fast and screeching form of sleep came on him—for how long, he didn’t know. When he woke, he was on the far side of the cave, close to the fire, half propped up on bags and blankets, back against the wall, a slumped and inert figure, legs and arms like stone, heart racing, mind awhirl.
The skinny girl was close upon him now, her lips on his face, her words in his ear. He tried again to move and couldn’t, so potent was the working of the drug.
“Oh, Macbeth,” she said, her fingers tugging at his coat. “Where are you, man? Your brow is sweaty, your skin as hot as the coals of Hell, your eyes as wild as a rabid dog. Let me loosen your clothes a little and make this brief, ecstatic journey halfway pleasant and memorable...”
“Do not touch me, you black and midnight hags,” he slurred. “I asked for secrets...”
He could hear the roaring, pulsing of the blood rushing through his veins, the myriad chatter of the insects in the gloom. She touched him, cold, smooth flesh against his, and brushed her lips against his cheek.
“What would you give to know these mysteries?” Her voice was cunning, low, assured. “If storms might bring down churches, if gales might wreck your fleet, if castles topple on the heads of warders and their children, and all of nature rot and sicken...”
“I’ll live with that. So tell me,” Macbeth mumbled, watching his vision shrink until it became nothing but the vast pinhead of her black eye, his own face a pale and pained reflection in its mirror.
She giggled and said, “Or something closer to home.”
Her fingers strayed to touch him.
“Think on this,” she whispered. “After slaughter, your soldiers take women as easily as wolves take sheep. No please or thank you. No need or hunger on their victims’ part. Yet men...”
He felt her thin and bony body shuffling ever nearer, breath coming in tense and anxious pants.
“...must stiffen their...resolve for the occasion. How works that, sire? You are a good and faithful husband. A would-be saint. Yet with my deft fingers and a simple potion, I may overthrow that flimsy thing you think of as your conscience...”
He felt like running, retching, but could not move. The eyes of the other two, dark and glittering, were on him, brightly avaricious, keen as knives.
“Ah! Like the sun, he rises,” the girl cried in triumph.
Ribald cheers and clapping from beyond the fire. His mind turned, twisting, seeking reason.
“Which wins within you?” the girl cried in his ear. “The lamb that whimpers for less or the mindless lion that roars for more?”
“Leave me, witch...” he pleaded.
“Too late,” she said, and straddled him like a beast upon its prey. “We are as one.”
Two thin hands gripped him, forced him, took him where he never wished to go, and still, he lacked the power to argue or resist.
For one brief moment, he felt himself unconscious. When he woke, her arms were round his head like vises, her lips forced hard into his ear.
“Whatever you are,” he moaned, “tell me...”
“Be silent, mortal!”
That was the voice of another, a man, dark and low and malevolent. The guttural words rose from deep inside the throat of the creature wrapped around him, writhing, the speech of some god inside her, as was he.
Her head twitched again; she sighed and rocked and whimpered, “He knows your thoughts, my little love. Hear him out and say naught, do naught, except move with me...”
The lilting tone vanished. She sighed, two long and bottomless moans.
“Macbeth! Macbeth!” the dark voice roared from deep within her. “Beware MacDuff. Beware the thane of Fife.”
“I hear you,” Macbeth murmured, swaying and hating every movement, “and thought as much...”
“Be quiet! Be obedient!” It was her again, limbs tight around him, arching, squirming, squealing, hissing.
He closed his eyes, wishing to wake from this sharp and infinite nightmare, and when he opened them, a naked, bloody child hung scarlet in the air ahead.
Its gory mouth opened and the thing sang through teeth like fangs, “Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!”
Its voice was childlike, high and bitter, and came from the throat wrapped round him.
“I hear thee...” he whispered, eyes locked on the naked, bleeding form.
“Be bloody, bold, and resolute,” declared the squealing tone, so close it chilled his spine. “Laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm you.”
His right hand went to the damp, soft nape of the head, pushing, heaving hard against his neck. A gesture of unconscious, unmeant gratitude, it could be no more. The lion, not the lamb.
“Oh,” he groaned, mind racing, shapes and urges gathering in his body, forces he could never conquer. “Then live, MacDuff. Why need I fear you?” A sudden stabbing thought, a conviction as hard and firm as that now growing in his loins. “Yet you shall not live. I’ll sleep fearless of a night and never count the cost. If...”
The blood and heat rose in him, and as it did, the scarlet babe faded. In its place rose another, a glorious child, five, six, no more, with shining yellow hair, upon it a crown, in its pale right hand an oak tree, growing, leaves and acorns, roots and all.
“This is the offspring of a king,” he muttered.
Her voice was at him, nagging, relentless.
“I told you to listen, lord,” it croaked, a good tone deeper than before. “Say nothing. Hold me. Move me, man...Ah, lord...”
Her tone rose wildly, a stream of imprecations flew like spittle from her lips. Now she had the clearest, sweetest voice he’d ever heard and said, “Be proud and take no mind who plots or frets or gossips. Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam wood walks to Dunsinane hill against him.”
A walking wood, he thought. If this is true...
The thing upon him caught wind of his distraction and clenched him harder, scratching, biting, screeching, spitting, warm saliva on his throat, vile grunts around his head.
“Banquo?” he cried. “What of Banquo? Will his issue rule this land?”
“I told you keep your peace, man,” the sister shrieked, and as she spoke, the child flew backward, toward the endless gloom that lay beyond the fire.
Shapes formed there, figures, grand and noble, glowing with a bright unearthly light. A line, a procession of regal forms, crowned and sceptered, in long and graceful gowns. They walked past, each a visible king, and last of all strode Banquo, throat cut, beard bloody, eyes burning, pupils like fire, staring out at him, laughing.
False lust and passion died at that moment, and in their place came a fatal, all-consuming shame. The strange potion withdrew itself and took what meager energy he owned.
Eight kings from Banquo. None from him.
“No wonder!” cried the thing besetting him. “What use are you, man? What dynasty comes from wilted, sterile loins? I wonder your woman got a bairn in her to begin with. You think it’s yours?”
So weak, so drugged, yet still his loathing of her brought with it a feeble show of strength. He pushed her back, looking to see the three blue salmon writhing, twisting, on that smooth, pale torso he’d first witnessed from horseback next to Banquo in the glen.
His fingertips touched rough skin and wrinkled flesh. The hag, the crippled crone, straddled him, laughing through a snag-toothed rotten mouth, foul breath a miasmic cloud upon his face.
Macbeth howled and shrieked, frozen as he repelled her skeletal frame from his. Cawing like a gigantic crow, she scrambled on the ground to find her crutches and crawled back toward the flames, where the other two sat seated, still and watching.
“What in God’s name are you?” he murmured, and tried to stand, stumbling toward the cave mouth.
“God hasn’t got around to us yet,” the girl said flatly. “He’s enough on his hands with the likes of you. I thought you might have noticed.” She reached out and ripped a piece of meat from the burning branch before her. “What are you, Macbeth? There’s a question of more moment.”
“No more, no more,” he moaned, feeling filthy and corrupted, the self-loathing rising in his throat like bile. “If I should see your ugly faces again—”
“Be confident of this,” she cried. “As you may be of all else you’ve heard. You shall not see us hence, Macbeth. There’s other work to do.”
He struggled upright, half fell, half crawled toward the moonlight beyond the door.
“Don’t forget your breeches, man,” called the hag, and fell to cackling. “A king without his trews is nothing more than a man.”
He snatched the clothes from by the rock and fell out into the freezing night, then spent an unknown time upon the ground, shivering, puking, weeping, wishing himself free of these frightful memories—dead, even. Quiet in an everlasting sleep.
That never came.
Dawn was breaking by the time he found the hamlet and the tent where Skena sat upright, pale and shocked.
It was the briefest of conversations. She saw the marks on his neck and face, smelled something strange and physical. Her face hardened as she looked at him, became puzzled, distant, hateful.
“Do you wish to tell me?” she murmured, nothing more, when he was naked, shivering in the bath, splashing water over himself constantly, teeth chattering, head shaking.
“Ask no questions, woman,” Macbeth snapped. “You do not need to hear.”
Banquo’s son was a boy of fifteen when Macbeth’s henchman slew his father in the mountain pass on the way to Laggan. He turned sixteen at the close of the year, not that he knew the date, since by then he was shivering in an empty peasant’s bothy forty miles south of Laggan, wondering how long it would take to die.
Tall and skinny, more used to talk than combat, he had known from the outset he was no use against the villains who flew at them that grim afternoon. His final memory of the ambush was of Banquo screaming at him to fly for home as quickly as his horse could take him.
Fleance obeyed. He always had. A loyal son, doing Banquo’s bidding without a second thought, so fierce and incontrovertible was the voice of the man who’d raised him, loved him, tried to teach him the hard ways of the Highlands. It was only later that the horror of what had occurred began to dawn in his young mind. With a grim heart, he rode back down the glen to the point at which
the men had set upon them. In his head, his father was so strong, such a roaring force of nature, that it was impossible to believe him dead. A part of Fleance fully expected to see Banquo there, seated on the corpses of the men he’d slain, laughing as he swigged from a hip flask, wolf skin round his neck, great fists smeared with their blood.
Instead, he found his father’s sad and mutilated corpse and sat by it, weeping, wishing himself dead, too, killed alongside Banquo, their common blood mingled on the heather, frozen in the icy burn.
Then there were more voices from down the pass—men from Macbeth’s court, from what they said—shouting out for Fleance, calling out their rank.
They did not call his father’s name at all.
Something Banquo had said as he went for the villains, sword flailing, came to him: “I love you, boy. Trust that. Trust no one else alive.”
He took his mare and scuttled back to the hills as quickly as he could, so anxiously that a mile on his mount stumbled, breaking its front right leg. There, he abandoned the animal and walked, through the driving snow, through blizzards, frost and fog, all the way to Laggan.
When he found the small house near the loch, his mother ran upstairs in floods of tears. His uncle, never a kindly man, weaker than Banquo but now with an eye on his land, questioned him repeatedly, more interested in the politics of the new court and Macbeth’s power than the details of the murder or who might lie behind the deed.
That night, Fleance tested his bedroom door and found it locked. A guard was snoring heavily outside. None of this was right.
The following day, his mother, still red-eyed and racked with grief, took him to one side in the kitchen, slipped him a dagger, looked him in the face, and said simply, “Flee south, Fleance, and don’t delay. The Highlands are Macbeth’s now. They’re safe for you no longer.” She clutched his hand. “And if we never meet again in this harsh life, know I love you more than anything else that walks these great green hills.”
When he went out to the latrines that evening, he never came back. Men on horses hunted him across the snowcapped peaks, following his footsteps, chasing him with dogs. But Fleance’s legs were long and swift. Fired by the furious glint in his mother’s loving, teary eyes, he found a flinty form of courage and determination, a steel he’d never guessed lived inside him.