The Third Witch

by Rebecca Reisert

  “I’m sorry,” I say to the broken trees. “I never meant you to be hurt.”

  It is easier to love trees than people.

  I see no signs of our goats, chickens, or our two cats. “Please be hiding in the wood,” I whisper. “Please don’t be dead.”

  Finally I gather courage enough to call out, “Nettle?”

  No answer.

  “Helga?”

  Silence.

  I pick up a burned stick about the length of my arm. I ease my way around the remains of the hut, poking into the mess.

  The light begins to drain from the sky like pus from a blister.

  Halfway around the hut I stumble over something and fall to the ground.

  The body of Mad Helga lies stiff on the ground.

  I crawl to her. It is hard to see plainly in the fading light, but it is clear that she has not been burned.

  She napped all the time. Let this be just a nap. Be napping, Helga. Be napping. I say her name. She doesn’t answer. So I shake her, commanding her to wake. I had not realized how thin she had become.

  But she stays dead.

  I begin to sob. I pull her into my arms and cradle her as if she were the child and I the grown-up mother. Crying, I cradle her until night comes. From time to time I whisper, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Finally I lay her back on the ground. Her old ashwood stick lies next to her. I lay my burned stick down and take up hers. The sky is overcast, and the darkness feels very heavy. “Nettle,” I call out. I use Mad Helga’s stick to pull myself back to my feet. I move like an old woman. For one wild moment I wonder if we have changed places, she the young girl and I the madwoman of the wood. With the helpof her stick, I work my way on around the burned hut, poking and listening. When I find myself back at her body again, I fall back to my knees. I use my hands to scrabble through the ashes, feeling for Nettle’s body.

  When dawn stains the sky, I am still pawing at the ashes. I feel the grit and soot thick against my face and skin.

  But I find no trace of Nettle.

  If I had a knife, I would cut out my own heart.

  At full dawn, I crawl over to Mad Helga.

  “Forgive me,” I whisper. My voice is hoarse and raw. “Forgive me. Forgive me. I thought He would die. I thought perhaps I would die. But I never meant—I wanted to free the land from two murderers, and all that’s resulted from my quest has been more murders. Helga, forgive—”

  Then I hear a noise. I leap to my feet, holding Mad Helga’s stick in front of me. Something large and clumsy is moving through the wood, drawing closer. I stiffen. With my free hand I reach for my broken dagger. I draw it, and then I let it tumble to the ground. I will myself to let death come. I have caused too much death. Now it is my time to pay. I will not fight. I will let Him take me and finish the business begun so many years ago. Now is the time to end all this. But just before the noise grows close enough to see who is coming, I snatch up the dagger again.

  Sister Grisel and Sister Inge blunder into the clearing. They are seated, one behind the other, on a fat donkey. The freckle-faced girl who opened the door to me yesterday leads their donkey.

  Sister Grisel gives a cry like a cheated cat. “God be our witness, it is just as we feared.” She squirms her bulky body to the ground. She flings her arms out as if she would embrace me, but I stiffen and she lets her arms drop.

  Sister Inge slides off the donkey’s back. “Helga?”

  Wordlessly I march around to where she lies. They follow. With Helga’s own stick I point to her body. Sister Grisel, Sister Inge, and the freckle-faced novice make the sign of the cross.

  “We must bury her,” Sister Inge says. “Is there anything to dig with?”

  “Should we not take her back to the convent and put her in sanctified ground?” Sister Grisel asks.

  Sister Inge shakes her head. “She would not wish it so.”

  “Do you say that, Sister Inge, out of concern for her feelings or because you do not wish to face Mother Brighid?” Sister Grisel demands, her face red.

  Sister Inge flushes but does not answer. She walks around the clearing, looking for something to use as a shovel.

  I cry out, “What has this to do with aught? Why should you bury Mad Helga in the convent?”

  Sister Grisel and Sister Inge look at each other. It reminds me of the way Nettle and Mad Helga used to look at each other. Is this a talent that women teach each other, these silent knowing looks that shut out the rest of the world?

  In a gentle voice, Sister Inge says, “Helga was a bride of Christ.”

  Her words are nonsense.

  Finally I say, “She was the bride of no one. Who would take her with that face?”

  “Helga was a holy sister, a nun.” Sister Grisel’s voice is also gentle.

  “ ’Tis a lie,” I say. “For my whole memory, she has lived with us in the wood.”

  “Did she never tell you?” Sister Grisel makes a clucking sound with her tongue. “Many years ago she was a novice, apprentice to the herb mistress, far to the north, way up in the Orkneys.”

  “Then why is she not there still?”

  The two sisters exchange another look, and then Sister Inge says, “The Northmen came.”

  I know of the Northmen. All who live in this kingdom of Scotland know of the danger of the Northmen, of their shallowkeeled boats that can slip into a bay or up a river silent as a whisper, of how in the space of scarce a hundred breaths they can lay waste anentire village. Folk in church regularly pray to God to protect them against the ravages of those cold-eyed, cold-hearted men of the north. I glance around the destruction in our clearing. “ ’Twas not the Northmen that did this to our hut.” I look at Mad Helga’s motionless body and my heart squeezes tight within me. “But your story still makes no sense. If Mad Helga was a nun, why is she not still with her sisters?”

  Smoothing her sleeve, Sister Inge says, “The sisters of her order were all killed.”

  “You stuff these words into my ear without a shadow of sense,” I cry out. “How came Helga then to be living?”

  Sister Grisel reaches out for my hand, but I pull away. She lets her hand fall. She says, “I got the story from Helga’s own lips. Fifteen or twenty winters before you came here—I do not recall the time exactly—she caught a chill and feared she was dying. Nettle sent to the convent, but no priest would come to listen to Helga’s confession. I was no older than little Sister Margred here, but I came. It seemed to me a sin to let a woman die unshriven for no reason other than she chose to live in the wood. In her confession, she told me how she came here alone.” Sister Grisel’s face darkens. “She was younger than you are now—barely more than a child. She told of how ’twas her turn to keep watch in the tower by the sea, and how she had smuggled a book up there to read. Intent on the book, she neither saw nor heard the silent Northmen ship that glided in from the sea and up the river. ’Twas the screams of her sisters that brought her to herself.”

  Sister Inge makes the sign of the cross.

  Sister Grisel continues, “She ran to the convent, but there was naught she could do. All were dead. The Northmen caught her and beat her and abused her, but it amused them to leave her before all the candles of her life had flickered out. She said she wandered for a long time and prayed to God for guidance. For a long time she was out of her wits, she said, but God guided her here where she made herself a hut and set about to heal the creatures of the forest.”

  Understanding breaks across me like a wave against the sand. I was one of the wild creatures she helped to heal. She and Nettle.

  “I cannot find Nettle’s body,” I say, and my voice also breaks.

  The little novice pipes up. “The king took her.”

  “What?” I wheel around sharply to stare at her.

  “ ’Tis true.” She nods so vehemently that her veil wobbles. “ ’Tis how we knew to come here. Mother Brighid was in at the village baker’s and saw her being carried through the streets.”

&
nbsp; Sister Inge says gently, “Perhaps he will not hurt Nettle.”

  I grow impatient. “He hurt Mad Helga.”

  Looking up from where she kneels beside the body, Sister Grisel says, “I see no mark on Mad Helga. I reckon her heart gave out before the soldiers could touch her. ’Twas not the soldiers that killed her, Gilly.”

  No. It was my mad craving for revenge that did that. My heart feels like a bruise that beats, and my stomach cramps like a clutched fist.

  Sister Grisel adds, “ ’Twas her own heart that betrayed her.”

  No. I was what betrayed her.

  My mind skitters back to the night when we gave Him the potion that made Him see imaginary spirits. If only it could have been poison then. If He had just died then, Helga and Lady Macduff and her brood would still be— And then an understanding flashes through me like an eel through clear water. How stupid I have been. How could my wits have all gone begging? It was true! All that nonsense we babbled to Him—all of it was true. It is as if God himself is shouting in my ear. Those silly things we told to Him, they were all true. How could I not see it? Our foretellings pave the way to end all of this.

  I grab my dagger and hack a tear in the skirt of my gown, just above the knee. I rip off the hem.

  Sister Grisel cries out, “Child, what are you doing?”

  But I am too busy unraveling my revelation to pay her any mind.

  We told Him, No man of woman born shall harm Macbeth. How blind I have been. It is so clear—this means that I am ordained to be the one to kill Him since I am no man of woman born. First, I am agirl, not a man And second, I was not born of a woman. My mother was no woman—she was a heartless fiend in the guise of a woman, a fiend who plotted the murder of her own husband and abandoned her tiny daughter to almost certain death. Therefore it is as plain as summer weather that I—girlchild of a fiendish mother—am the one called to kill Macbeth.

  I pull strands of my grown-out hair taut and begin to slash them short. Both the nuns call out, but I ignore them.

  We said, Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him. How could I have missed the clear meaning of this statement? I am the one meant by this, too. It was in Birnam Wood that I was brought back from the dead and reborn. In Birnam Wood I was raised. I myself am Birnam Wood. Now it is the time for me to come against Him.

  I saw off the last few long strands of my hair.

  Beware Macduff, we told Him. Yes. It was not enough for me to seek revenge for my father alone. God would not favor my campaign until I had a cause greater than revenge for my plight alone. But the king’s order to massacre Lord Macduff ’s family raises this affair from my personal feud to a holy campaign. Now I have a grand cause for which to fight. I must stop Him, not just out of my own hurt, but so that others will not suffer. I am the warrior of God himself.

  Without my knowing it, we spoke true prophecy to Him.

  What could be clearer?

  I begin to run from the clearing.

  “Gilly, where are you going?” Sister Grisel calls out.

  Over my shoulder I call back to her, “To rescue Nettle.”

  And kill a king.

  F O R T Y - F O U R

  EVEN FROM AFAR I can see that Dunsinane Castle is preparing for war. Banners hang from the ramparts. I see soldiers drilling in the field in front of the moat, although their clothing is foreign to me. At the gates, the porter stops me. It is the porter from Inverness, brought south now to guard the gates at Dunsinane.

  “Where be ye going, ye bag of bones and crap, ye hellborn brat who reeks like the stench from God’s back teeth?” If possible, he looks even dirtier and stinks more than before. “ ’Tis not the time for Satan’s misborn whelps to be sneaking into this maw of hell.” Then his jaw drops, revealing the black rotted stumps that were once his teeth. “By Saint Peter the seafaring tar and his boatload of saints— you’re the kitchen lad who went missing ten or twelve moons ago. The one who left his little brother with us—that addlewitted pup who hangs on the petticoats of the wafer wench.”

  “Let me pass,” I say. I have no time to wait. I am on a holy mission.

  His laugh turns to a belch and then a fit of coughing. At last he croaks, “By all that’s holy and hellish, all the wise folk be sneaking t’other way, lad. Have you not heard? Prince Malcolm and his armyof English folk be marching toward the castle. If you have a grain of sense, you’ll show tail and hie ye t’other way. ’Tis like rats in a barn fire, the way folk be sneaking out.”

  “Then why are you still here?”

  The porter lifts his jug of wine. “My lady of the grapes, the madonna of malmsey, she makes it worth my staying here. Besides, I have nowhere else to go, and I’m too old and ugly to be seeking a new lodging. But you, lad, if ’n ye have a few more seeds of sense than that brother of yourn, you’d be best to get you and your brother out of this hovel of hell as quick as ye can and take that French wench with ye. She’s a fine figure of a woman, she is, and I would fain she outlive the inferno that’s certain to engulf us.”

  “When will Malcolm’s soldiers be here?”

  “Within the afternoon, they say.” He scratches the stubble on his chin with a black, cracked fingernail. “The last messenger delivered his donkey’s end of news not half an hour since. He sent your brother to tell the great lord.”

  “Sent my brother? Why did he not go himself? Why send my brother with the news?”

  “That devil above—our cursed king—rages and roars like old Sam himself. None would—of his own free will—come near him. Your brother, poor innocent, had not the wit to say no.”

  I push past him and run into the courtyard. “Pod?” I call. “Pod?”

  The courtyard is a jumble of frenzied activity. All around me, servants with bundled possessions are trying to sneak out of the castle. I grab at the skirts of a frightened laundry maid.

  “My brother, Pod—apprentice to the wafer maker—where is he?”

  She clutches her bundled possessions more tightly and shakes her head, her eyes darting about.

  I let her go and push through the crowd that pushes back in the opposite way. “Pod?”

  I start up the stairs to the Great Hall and the private chambers. Then above me I see Pod, half running, half falling down the stairs. Tears are trickling down his face.

  “Pod!”

  For a moment Pod stares at me in disbelief, and then he throws his arms around my waist and hugs me tight. “Gilly! Gilly! You’ve come for me. You’re going to save me and Lisette. I knew you’d come back. I knew you hadn’t forgotten us.” He turns a tearstreaked face up toward mine. “Now, please, can we leave?”

  I hold him tight against me. I am overwhelmed by how glad I am to see him safe. For a few moments I can’t speak. For the first time in my life, I think that if things had been different, I might have liked to be a mother. Only I would have kept my children safe and loved. But as Nettle says, sometimes it is not till we lose a thing that we understand how much we love it. My entire soul senses that I will not survive this final meeting with Him. I hold Pod out so I can look at him. “You’re so big, Pod. You’ve grown so big.” I smooth back his hair and discover an ugly bump on his forehead. “What happened, lad?”

  Pod hangs his head.

  “Tell me.”

  He shakes his head, refusing to answer.

  I harden my voice. “Tell me, Pod.”

  Shame floods into his face. His voice drops to a whisper. “A soldier, down in the yard, he told me to tell the king that he spotted ten thousand soldiers and they would be here by the crest of the afternoon. So I went to the king. I was so proud—a soldier wanted me to take an important message to the king. But then—” His lip begins to tremble. “But the king shouted and he hit me and he called me names. He made fun of the way I talk and—”

  His voice fails him and he begins to shake. I pull him close. “That’s all right, my lad,” I croon. “You need not stay in this place any m
ore. ’Tis time for you to be going.”

  Pod looks up at me with a suddenly radiant face. It is clear that he does not notice that I say you and not we.

  “There is a convent in the village of Cree. Sister Grisel and Sister Inge, they’ll take you—”

  Pod’s mouth drops open and his eyes widen.

  I continue. “—and Lisette—they would take all of you. There is another lady, too. Her name is Nettle. She is down in the dungeon. ’Tis up to us to rescue her. We must get past the guards—”

  “The dungeon guards are gone,” Pod says. “I saw them run away before breakfast. No one wants to be caught here when the soldiers come for the king.”

  He does not know that I will make sure that the king will not be living when the soldiers arrive.

  I hunch over so that my face is level with his. “Listen to me. Listen carefully. You must find Lisette. Do you heed me?”

  He nods.

  “Then the two of you must to the dungeon and find the woman who calls herself Nettle—say the name, lad.”

  “Nettle,” he repeats.

  “Good. Keep saying the name to yourself until you find Nettle.”

  Pod keeps repeating the name softly as I speak. “Find Nettle. Open the dungeon door and let her out. Then fill all the baskets you can with goods from the kitchen. ’Twill be a journey of the better part of a day to the convent. Nettle knows the way. Find a way out of the castle—the porter will let you pass—and head out for the convent at Cree.”

  I give him a quick hug, but he does not let go when I do.

  He says, “But where will you be, Gilly?”

  I rest my chin on the top of his fuzzy little head. “I will join you there at the convent.”

  But I know in my bones, I know with every bit of knowing I possess, I know more surely than I know my own name, that I will not survive my meeting with Him. This does not matter. What does matter is that He will not survive it either.

  Pod clutches me more tightly. “I will not let you go. I do not want to meet you there. I want you to travel with us. If I let you go, perhaps you will not find us.”