Macbeth

by David Hewson

  Her eyes turned misty, as if seeing something distant.

  “They killed the boy, then put me, his girl, and the babes in a coracle, towed it out with them on the next tide.” She shivered. “The Irish Sea’s a cold, gray beast. They cut the rope when Arran was but a speck above the waves. Six hours we paddled with our hands until the leather gave and that chill water took us. Still, I hear those cruel men laughing as they left. All that for six sheep and a few flasks of whisky.” She scratched her chin. “Damned fine whisky, though, like I said. Just a story, lady. One more dead peasant among a multitude.”

  The crone stared at the tall one, who said simply, “They hanged me for taking a chicken.”

  The others tittered.

  “I told you. I was hungry!”

  “You’re always hungry,” the old one said, still laughing. “Even now.”

  There was a grunt from the woman, then she shrugged and said, “Aye. True.”

  The girl closed her strange, dark eyes and began to sing a short lament in a tongue Skena didn’t know.

  “Speak words we understand,” the crone complained.

  “That was Latin, you peasant,” the girl scolded her. “The language of civilized men. Dead civilized men, I might add, but that’s by the by.”

  “You know—” Skena began.

  “I was the child of a fisherman from Berwick on the Tweed. Then the Romans came and wanted labor. Men who would help the emperor Hadrian build his wall. All the way from east to west, to keep the wicked Caledonians out. Fat chance, eh?”

  “You’re English?” Skena asked.

  “I’m dead,” the girl spat back at her, as if the question was ridiculous. “Only monarchs go beneath the earth with flags around them. The rest of us lie anonymous in the grave.”

  Skena reached out and touched her hand. It was cold, but skin and flesh and bone, as real as her own.

  “You don’t seem much dead to me,” she said.

  “They whistle us up at Samhain and we answer,” the crone cut in. “Be not ungrateful. How would you have us look?”

  “The Romans,” said the girl, “were a curious race. Bound up in their own importance, fond of ceremony and fleeting, pompous ideas. I loved a soldier and would have been his wife were I not of lesser breeding. A heathen, not a citizen, though this was no matter in his bed. One day, he’s summoned back to Rome and orders me to come. As slave, not even mistress. He had a wife, you see.”

  She thought for a moment, then added, “I told him I was born free by the waters of the Tweed and would live that way and die there one day, too. No matter. In his eyes—to all the Romans, with their laws and magistrates—I was a slave.”

  Her voice diminished and became that of a child.

  “The first time I ran away they beat and branded me.”

  Her nimble fingers rolled up the sleeve of her right arm. Dark, raised numbers stood there like a wound.

  “The second time they gave me to some centurions for amusement. The third...” Her eyes closed and there was pain upon her face. “They said they’d crucify me. Nailed to a cross beside that blasted wall of theirs.”

  Suddenly, she brightened.

  “Then along comes the emperor himself. Hadrian. Visiting his troops. He hears my story, orders them to free me. Says I may go to Rome and, there, become a citizen. It was my spirit, you see, that so impressed him. My mettle made me Roman by default.”

  She threw her head back and laughed.

  “There’s a man’s freedom for you, eh? Do as I say or I’ll nail you to a cross of wood, to feed the carrion crows piece by piece. Oh, no. That’s cruel. Do as I say and I’ll take you to a foreign land, far away from your native soil, your family, the ones you love. And, there, expect your gratitude.”

  Her hand reached over and took Skena’s arm.

  “Slavery comes in many guises, lady. A woman should recognize that.” She clapped her hands once. “So...the moment they loosed me this time I ran and ran. All the way to Berwick and the shining waters of the Tweed. There I threw off my Roman cloak and jewelry and walked bare as a babe into that river of mine. I still had my little knife...” She nodded. “Not as fancy as yours, but not so different. As that cold and friendly water came up to greet me, I opened my two wrists and lay there slowly bleeding, floating as best I could, feeling the seals and the salmon come by. They must feed, too, I reckon. Better I end up inside some harmless creature from the sea than trapped in the bed of a Roman bastard who thinks he owns me. Oh, that moment...sleep...”

  “Sleep,” Skena repeated.

  The girl shuffled closer, her breath quick and excited. “Aye, sleep, and such a sleep as you have never known. As sweet and deep and dreamless as a bairn inside its mother, warm and safe.” The girl cocked an eye at her. “How go the nights with you, lady?”

  She didn’t answer. There was no need.

  “You ask yourself,” the girl said, nudging her, “can this be true? Are these three phantoms haunting me across the burns and glens? Or mere hare-brained loons, their heads full of fancy and mischief?”

  “The dead do not speak,” Skena whispered. “They have neither flesh nor bone.”

  “Lady, lady,” the young one laughed. “Do I dream you? Or you dream me? Or does someone, something bigger than all”—her hands swept the vast constellations above them—“this beauteous calamity, dream everything we see and more? Since no one knows, why dwell on it? Think of who you are and what you face. Think of Skena, a wee girl of Glamis. That child, I see”—her black eyes shone with joy—“a bright young thing racing through the barley in the fields, slipping her fingers across the silky golden whiskers of the grain. She’s eight or nine, no more, and listens to the larks and linnets while gathering daisies, singing songs, so bright and full of life she thinks her heart may burst with girlish joy.”

  The woman on the ground—bruised, confused, and frightened—felt cold remembering those distant lost years, her father murdered in his home, her mother mourning, wasting away in silence. The happiness was brief, yet sweet and real.

  “In my mind’s eye I see this bairn,” the girl went on, “and she’s just like all the others, except maybe prettier. She dreams a man will marry her. A good, kind lord. And there’ll be children—two, three, four. A castle in the lowlands, a family to cherish.” She hesitated, as if moved by this idea herself. “Faces growing older as her own life fades. A sense of permanence, a small thing passed from old to young and then again.”

  Her voice hardened.

  “But then the one bairn dies and no more take his place. She sees her lord turn quietly sorrowful that other, lesser men rise in the king’s eyes before him, through nothing more than some shared blood or rank venality. The flaxen-haired girl who ran through the barley, so hopeful and brimming with an innocent virtue, dies slowly, day by day. And in her place comes—”

  “Stop!” Skena cried. “Be not so cruel, child. I have lost a bairn, a husband, and soon may lose this kingdom we have briefly mastered—and with it, my life.”

  The tall one glared at her and grunted, “Which matters most?”

  There were lights just visible across the valley, moving in Birnam and the wood toward Dunkeld. The English army with MacDuff and Malcolm at its head. They would not wait there long.

  “Macbeth,” she murmured without a second thought. “He is my soul’s companion, so sweet and decent...nor is this finished. There’s an accommodation to be made here. Give Malcolm the lowlands. We take chill Inverness. Or vice versa. I care not. We’ll build a cathedral for his dead father. Crawl on our knees to the pope, if need be. I can send messengers, I’ll...”

  She stopped. They were laughing at her.

  “This amuses you?” she asked coldly.

  “Poor thing,” the young one cried. “So wise in many ways, so credulous in others. Do you not understand? This concerns Duncan not one whit. Had you not stabbed that bastard in his nightshirt, his son would surely have had his head by now. No one suffers a single sleepless
night over that dead villain except Macbeth and you, and that in such measure you might be mourning for the world itself. These are men that hunt you. They speak of vengeance and retribution, but in truth, they’re moved by nothing more than hunger. For power. For land. To steal from you your supremacy, as you stole it before. As Duncan thieved the throne himself.”

  Her fingers strayed to Skena’s shoulder, her face, curious, interested, interrupting the view of the brands and torches across the glen.

  “Men! If need be, they would kill for one bare yard of barren earth. It is the victory they seek, not the prize, and they feel not one moment of conscience howsoever it is gained. Yet you two...Macbeth, impaled upon a needless guilt for Duncan, and a more solid sense of culpability for the wrong he feels he’s done the wife he loves. While you, like a dark mirror, reflect the same sorrows back at him in return.”

  “You told me!” she cried. “At Clava you said...his...”

  “Spine,” the crone spat at her. “A man with spine might have stood by Duncan in his difficulties.”

  “A man with spine might have hacked off the heads of all his enemies and strewn them everywhere—a warning to all,” the big one added.

  The girl thought for a while, then said, “The will you acted upon was your own, lady. Not ours. You thought you might supplant that milk of kindness in your husband with a fierce, manly strength that came from your own veins.” She sighed. “Imagine a king with both sexes in one head. Now, there’s a creature. But all you created was a man twice over—a beast, I mean—and in so doing destroyed you both.”

  “I will barter with MacDuff...” she murmured.

  “Tell him you’ll bring his wife and bairn back,” the hag snapped. “That should do it.”

  The sharp salt stab of tears pricked at her eyes. “What do you want?” Skena whispered.

  “To watch. To wait. To wonder at a world in chaos,” the girl said. “And hope one day you fools might learn.”

  She glanced upward at the grim shape of Dunsinane.

  “It’s a long way back,” she added briskly. “This journey’s run, love. Be bold and bring it to an end. Long ago, when I slipped into that river and felt that sharp knife upon my wrists, I was as you are now. Exhausted. Afraid. Yet still I found the courage. Can a queen not summon up the bravery that came so easily to a slave?”

  “I die with my husband!”

  “No,” the girl replied. “You won’t. You know what Malcolm is. You know the hatred MacDuff bears. They’ll strip you naked and hand you to their foot soldiers and all the while make him watch you bleed and scream. Then hack off your pretty head with a dagger and wave it in his face. You know this, lady. Be not such a fool to think otherwise.”

  Skena shivered, weeping silently.

  “Then they will kill him, most cruelly,” the young one went on. “Not the end of a warrior in battle. They will make him kneel like a peasant and take his head. Think on what I say! You are both corpses and do not know it. All that remains is the manner of your going. Die now and he is free and full of fury, a warrior once more. Walk in his shadow like a pale, wan wraith and both of you stumble forward to an ignominious close so shameful those who come after shall shun it and speak the name Macbeth as it were a curse.”

  She took Skena’s face in her soft, supple hands.

  “From that wee bairn in Glamis to queen of Scotland is a journey of some moment. Far greater than most might dream of. Close it now with valor. A dutiful wife, dispatching her husband to a glory of his own.”

  Her right hand moved, slipped to Skena’s clothing. The shining jeweled blade rose before them in the moonlight.

  “I have been here before,” her calm, still voice whispered. “I will help and sing an old song, a lullaby to pass the time.”

  “I fear—”

  “That you’ll wake later and find yourself bound to walk the earth in company such as ours,” the girl said with a knowing smile. “Do not worry. This is our burden. Not yours.”

  “You lack the hatred,” the giant said. “And the stony heart.”

  “Aye,” the girl agreed. “That, too. Here...”

  Skena cried as the blade fell upon her skin. A short cut. A scratch. A marker for the smarting pain to come.

  “I will not do the rest,” the young one said, offering her the dagger. “I may be many things, but not that.”

  So Skena Macbeth took the jeweled knife and worked with it, separating vein from sinew, one wrist then the next, and after the brief, exquisite agony, lay back in the scented heather, wondering at the beauty of the stars and sky.

  The girl began to sing, an old song, one they said the Irish brought with them in their boats. It was about a wedding, a union. And something more subtle, too, an idea that eluded her, hovering out of reach as the firmament grew misty and her life eked out in a slow and steady stream, onto the peat and grass and heather of that Sidlaw hill.

  By the time the sweet and breathy song had faded into silence the woman on the ground was tranquil, too weak to move, to speak.

  A mouth came close to her ear, and it was, she knew, the last thing she would hear in this or any other world.

  “Oh, lady,” the girl whispered. “I forgot to mention. Sometimes I’m wont to lie.”

  The following morning, Macbeth woke facedown on the hall table, among maps and sheets of troop numbers, weaponry and scheming. It was Cullen’s hand that shook him. The old retainer stood close by, his face impassive, a good and loyal servant always.

  “No more reports,” Macbeth said with a long sigh. “These endless tallies of who stands where...”

  He looked at the plain and practical man in front of him and wondered what he would make of such private and superstitious thoughts.

  “I feel old this morning,” Macbeth complained.

  “You look fit and strong, sir.”

  “I said old, not feeble. Fetch my armor. We’ll see off these damned traitors and their foreign friends before sunset. Go...” He nodded at the door. “I’m ready.”

  “There’s no need at this very moment.”

  “If they’ll not fight, we’ll laugh a siege to scorn. Send out horses. Scour the countryside. Fly banners from the ramparts. Let the English know we fear no low invaders.”

  He didn’t move and seemed, for once, reluctant to speak.

  A sound came to Macbeth from beyond the door. There were few women left inside the wooden walls of Dunsinane. Those who were there seemed to be weeping and shrieking out in the courtyard.

  “I had men out early,” Cullen said, his head hung on his chest. “They found such a...” He glanced at Macbeth. “Such a terrible sight.” The man’s eyes were bleak and glassy with emotion.

  “Found what?”

  “Your wife, my lord.” Cullen wrung his hands. “She must have slipped out in the night...”

  Before the words were ended Macbeth was racing to the door. Head spinning, he dashed straight into the yard. A group of soldiers stood around a hidden burden, one man at each corner of a vast swathe of dun-brown cloth.

  The nurse, the doctor, and two women of the household watched, hands to mouths, faces bloodless, tear-stained, pale with shock and fear.

  Like a fallen flower, Skena lay there in the fabric, arms extended, bloody at each wrist, face drained of all emotion, life, and pain, blue eyes shorn of the light he loved.

  As he knelt beside her, took her cold, dry hand, a trumpet sounded on the battlements. Men shouted, bellowed at each other, the way they did in the prelude to a fight.

  “Sire, she slipped away from us...” the nurse began. “I do not know how. I cannot apologize sufficiently for this sorrowful tragedy. It affects us—”

  “There is no need,” he said, waving her down. “Bear no blame, no guilt on this, I pray you. I am the cause of my wife’s sickness, no one else. Take all the women with you and flee this place for somewhere safer. The doctor, too. This is a fortress made for soldiers. We need no ordinary folk to hinder as we set about winning this
savage day.”

  He let go her hand and stood to see her one last time.

  “Take my wife and bury her at the church by Glamis.” He looked at them. “Will you do that for me?”

  They stood around, lost for words.

  “I swear I lack the space for mourning,” he pleaded. “Not now. I beg you...go!”

  With that, he turned away and stared up at the battlements. No tears, he thought. This was not the moment.

  Cullen, by his side, said, “Sire...there is a degree of chivalry in military matters. Were we to pass this news to Malcolm, he would surely wait a day or two...”

  “Chivalry’s for knights, not kings,” Macbeth replied. “What’s the difference? Tomorrow and tomorrow come creeping in and always will. We’re fools trapped in a mechanism of our own unconscious making. Shadows strutting and fretting for one brief hour upon a stage, then heard no more. I’ll weep an ocean in my heart, if the world would give me time. But not now.”

  He turned and gripped the old servant by the shoulder.

  “Listen, friend, and understand. My life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. It means nothing.” Macbeth unsheathed his sword and brandished it before him. “Today all I have is this keen blade, and by God, those men shall taste it. None of woman born may harm me...”

  He didn’t like the look in Cullen’s eyes. He had been a loyal servant, there for as many years as Macbeth could remember, but now the man stared at him as if he saw a madman before him.

  The gate opened, the party left, a single sad shape covered by a black wool sheet carried on the cart they pushed.

  “Tell me of our arrangements,” Macbeth ordered.