Suddenly the air is split in two by the sound of several women wailing. Has Malcolm arrived already? I listen hard, but I hear no sounds of invaders, and after a moment or two, the cries of the women cease.
I need a weapon. I need a disguise. I run back up the stairs and slink like a midnight cat from bedchamber to bedchamber, looking for anything that might aid me. In one chamber I find an abandoned cloak. I grab it and wrap it around me. At least it hides the gown. Its thick folds will make it hard for me to fight with Him, but He would laugh to scorn a foe in a fine silk dress.
It is time. I must find Him before Malcolm arrives. I move quickly and quietly through the deserted castle. All the serving folk seem to have vanished. I do not blame them for running away. I feel like a ghost, drifting through corridors, popping in and out of rooms and sheds. Has Pod found Lisette? Have the two of them freed Nettle? I hope by now all three of them are far away.
I move back through the Great Hall and hurry across the courtyard. I see a few of His Irish mercenaries waiting nervously for the attack, swords at the ready. Even in the courtyard there is no sight of serving folk. Or of Him. Then there is the crash of a log being pounded against the closed gates, over and over. The Irish soldiers move toward the front walls. Not yet! The attacking soldiers must have reached the castle. Not yet! I need more time. I must be the one to kill Him, not the soldiers. I dash up a stairway to the battlements, just as the gates crash in.
No! Let me find Him first. I hear invading soldiers swarming in below me, shouting, and I grab up my skirts with one hand to run faster. I hear the clash of swords below. I must find Him. The omens made it clear that I am to be the one to defeat Him. This is my last chance.
Faster and faster I dart around the corners and about the battlements. Once I see a man who seems to be one of the attackers, but I am gone before he even knows I am there.
My heart pounds and my breath saws the air. I am so frantic I feel almost as if I am the one being chased rather than the chaser. Yet time is running even faster than I. As I race around a corner, I wonder how much time there is to—
And I see Him ahead of me.
In front of Him a boy of maybe fifteen summers lies on the ground. I do not recognize the lad. He must be part of the invading army. The boy is spotted with blood, but he holds his head high and his jaw is clenched. He wants to look brave. It is as plain as day that He has fought with the boy and knocked him down. High above the boy’s chest He holds His sword as if He is mocking the lad. Then He growls, “You were born of woman!” and He plunges the sword down with all His might. The boy gives a cry that turns into a gurgle, shudders a few times, and then lies silent and still.
At that moment, I realize that I have been so intent on finding Him that I have not armed myself. For a few heartbeats, I cannot think what to do.
Then I see a sword almost at my feet.
It is a sign! Like the omens, God has provided this sword because He wants me to be the one to bring down this monster.
The other part of my brain tells me that this sword probably belonged to the boy, dropped when he was knocked to the floor.
My mind becomes very calm and clear. Slowly, deliberately, I kneel down and slide my fingers around its hilt. It feels solid and alive in my hand.
“Turn, monster!” I cry out in a low voice. “Turn and face your death.”
He whirls around. He looks both angry and confident. His red hair flames forth, but for the first time I see that it, like my mother’s, is tinted with silver.
“Begone, child!” He growls. “You cannot kill me. Or if you will not turn and run like a little whipped pup, then prepare to die!”
I step forward.
He steps to meet me, His heavy sword raised, His eyes a little bored. Like my mother, He has grown old. But He is just as tall, His body just as strong as ever. The cloak is heavy about my legs and the hood has slipped too far over my forehead for me to see well, so with one hand I throw the cloak off so it will not impede me.
Then all color drains from His face. His arm trembles, and His sword falls to the ground. He makes the sign of the cross.
“Angels and ministers of grace defend me,” He whispers. “They said you were dead.”
I am surprised that He recognizes me. It was so many years ago that He last saw me, and I was a child then. Now I stand tall and strong, holding the heavy sword high.
He slides to His knees as if He would pray, His face as white as leprosy. “My lady, be you ghost or live flesh and blood?”
“I am neither dead nor a ghost,” I say.
I step closer, my sword raised. Could this be a trick? My brain feels drunk with confidence. “I am your doom!” I tell Him. “I am the goddess of divine retribution, come to claim my due. I am Birnam Wood, come walking to meet you. I am no man of woman born. Macbeth, behold your death!”
“My lady, my wife, forgive me! I have wronged you—”
I stop. He thinks I am my mother.
“Stand and fight!” I command. “Or die like the coward you are!”
“Were those reports false? Are you still alive?”
What does He mean? Has He gone as mad as my mother? She is not dead. I spoke with her not an hour since—
“Or did you not die? Are you the phoenix, lady? At the moment you killed yourself, did you find yourself reborn young and beautiful, changed back into the girl of fifteen that I first loved?”
Then I realize my mother is dead. My mother has killed herself.Those women crying—they must have been crying for my mother.
I don’t feel anything at all. Not glad or sorrowful. Just hollowed of all feeling.
“My dearest and only love,” He says, “never did I mean it to end in this fashion. Forgive me. Lady, forgive me.”
I screw up my courage. “Stand like a man and fight.”
“My lady, I cannot fight with you. All I have done, I have done for love of you. My dearest and only love, I—”
“Fight or die!” I say in a voice as heavy and cold as the leg of a corpse.
He stays on His knees, His sword on the ground at His side. He makes no movement to pick it up.
“How came you to be dead and then alive again, Roah? I have learned to my cost that this is a land in which the dead do not stay dead. What brought you back, my love?”
“Damn you! Stand and fight!”
God has brought me to this place where I can avenge my father, King Duncan, Mad Helga, Fleance’s father, Lady Macduff and all her little ones, even the dead boy whose sword I hold tightly in my hands.
“I am your death,” I say in a voice that is supposed to sound like the voice of doom, but to my ears sounds more like a fearful child’s. “I have come to kill you.”
“Then kill me now!” He says, His arms open wide, His chest open to me. “I will not kill you.”
“Stand and fight!” Then I realize that this does not have to be a fair fight. In truth, I am no match for Him in skill and strength. In a fair fight, it would not be Him who dies. After all, it was not a fair fight when my father was butchered. It was not a fair fight when Lord Banquo was stabbed, or Lady Macduff savaged. I see that God has given me this opportunity to execute this monster, and this is the only way I can have advantage enough to stop this beast. If He will not fight, then I will slaughter Him like a trussed pig.
I raise the dead boy’s sword as high as possible. It is heavier thanI expect, and my arm trembles as I raise it above His chest. He does not seem to see it. He stares only at my face.
Let my stroke be swift and deadly, I pray. Give me the strength of arm to plunge the blade deep into His cesspit of a heart.
Then I hear Pod cry out from nearby, “Gilly, save me! Save me, please!”
F O R T Y - S E V E N
ON THE SEVENTH DAY, the messenger finds them.
“I come from King Malcolm,” he announces in the liquid tones of one who has been educated far to the south. “I come seeking the kitchen lad, Gilly, who saved the life of the king. T
he king commands me to bring the lad to court so the grateful king can shower him with honors. I was told I could find the lad here.”
The pale young woman looks away. “There is no kitchen lad here,” she says in a voice that is as flat as a stone.
Nettle explains that the kitchen lad was really a lass in disguise.
The messenger looks a little surprised, but his voice remains smooth. “Then let me bring the kitchen lass called Gilly to court so King Malcolm can shower her with honors.”
“Gilly is dead,” the pale young woman says.
Nettle looks at her with irritation, then explains that Gilly is not the girl’s real name, that her real name is Roah.
“She bears her mother’s name,” the pale young woman says in her flat voice.
“Then let me bring the kitchen lass whose real name is Roah to court so King Malcolm—”
“She was not a kitchen lass. She was nothing, nothing at all.” The pale young woman stands up and moves back to the clearing and resumes her work, setting up willow posts for the walls of the new hut.
Nettle explains that Roah is really the daughter of Queen Roah—she who was Lady Macbeth—and her first husband.
At this, despite all his years of training in schooling his features, the messenger looks shocked. “Then she’s a princess,” he blurts out. “She’s the great-granddaughter of old King Kenneth.” He looks around at the rubble from the fire and the frame of the new hut. “But what is a princess doing here?”
Nettle explains how she took in the child found wandering in the wood many years ago, right after the death of her father. “Her mother thought Gilly had perished in the fire along with her father. For the lass’s own safety, we saw no reason to tell her otherwise.”
The pale young woman does not even turn around.
The messenger walks over to her and kneels before her. “My lady, I must escort you to court. King Malcolm is overwhelmed with gratitude. Not only will he honor you for saving his life, but he can restore your name, your title, and your lands.”
“No,” she says.
Though he coaxes, wheedles, and cajoles until sunset, the young woman returns no other answer.
After he is gone, Pod creeps out of the wood.
“Where have you been, you vexing young scamp?” Nettle asks, but her tone is more worried than angry.
“I do not like kings,” Pod tells her.
“This is not a king like the other one,” Nettle assures him. “This is a good and kind king.” She glances at the young woman. “And he wishes to honor Gilly.”
“Gilly is dead,” the young woman says. She stirs the cauldron of soup. “Besides, she should not be honored. She failed. She was too much her mother’s child. Like her mother, she boasted she would kill a king. Like her mother, she left it to someone else to do the murder.”
Nettle sighs, and the sharpness of her sigh seems to slice through thesoft summer air. “We’ve gone through this nonsense a dozen times, child. Because of you, I am alive. Because of you, Pod and Lisette are alive. Because of you—”
The young woman whirls toward her, her face full of fire. “And I have told you a dozen times that because of me, Mad Helga is dead. Lady Macduff is dead, and all her children and servants. Lord Banquo is dead. ’Twas my desire for revenge that killed them!”
“No. You did not kill them. Macbeth did. Never forget that. You were not the murderer. He was.”
The young woman goes on as if Nettle has not spoken. “I had made my life an arrow. Its only target was the killing of the man who killed my father. And I failed at that.”
“He is dead, just as dead as if you had been the one to kill him. What does it matter whether ’twas you or Lord Macduff who did the deed? Lord Macduff ’s cause was at least as great as yours. Surely you do not begrudge Lord Macduff his revenge. And had you not gone to Pod’s aid, Pod would be dead now, too. Be you daft, child? You saved Pod from that soldier who was trying to kill him. Because of you, Pod is alive. Because of you, Lisette and I got away safe from the castle. So what does it matter that Lord Macduff killed him ’stead of you? He’s just as dead, either way.”
“I have failed,” says the young woman, and she says no more all the rest of the night, even when Pod tells her about the newborn fawn he saw down by the brook.
ANOTHER MESSENGER RETURNS three days later, and another one three days after that, and soon they begin to arrive every single day until it is clear even to the young woman that the king will not take no for an answer. So at last she agrees to go to his court. When the messenger asks how many attendants she will take with her, she tells him three. They fetch Lisette from the convent, and Nettle, Pod, Lisette, and the young woman set off.
King Malcolm’s castle is much larger than Dunsinane. When she arrives at court, she is given a chamber of her own with two antechambers. Heaped on the bed in her room are many elegant gowns with headpiecesand stockings and undergowns of the finest materials. She looks at them indifferently. When Nettle and Lisette try to get her to choose one to wear, she says, “Lady Macduff dressed in fine gowns, and where is she now? Mad Helga dressed in rags, and she’s just as dead.” The young woman lets her eyes slide over the piled gowns. “Tell me—which gown best flatters a failure?”
Lisette gives her a look that mingles pity and impatience. “Wearing a silk dress does not mean you mourn any less for your good Helga and the rest.”
Even Nettle agrees that it would be a good thing for her to bathe.
“I do not need to bathe,” the young woman says. “I am the walking dead.”
Lisette pulls the young woman’s shift off over her head. “Good,” she remarks. “The dead do not put up resistance, so stand still while we wash you and comb your hair and dress you as befits a princess, little rose leaf.”
On that dark night on their journey away from Dunsinane Castle, Lisette showed no surprise when she learned Gilly was a lass. Pod, too, accepted the change calmly. Neither showed surprise when Nettle told them of the girl’s history—Lisette because she claimed she was too old to be surprised by anything and Pod because he thought Gilly so glorious that even being named an empress would not be honor high enough for her.
Both Lisette and Nettle cluck with pleasure over the young woman’s appearance when she is washed and dressed.
“ You look like a princess indeed,” Lisette croons, and Pod’s eyes shine with amazement and pride. But when they want to bring a looking glass to show her how fine she looks, the young woman shakes her head. “In the glass I would see my mother, not myself.”
The Great Hall is filled with folk in their finest clothes. Jewels glitter on hands and around necks. The tables groan with an abundance of food. Lisette, Nettle, and Pod—also dressed in fine new clothes provided by the thoughtful king—nibble and whisper, but the young woman sits with an impassive face, not eating anything.
After dinner, one of the lords talks for a long while to welcome the king back to Scotland. The crowd cheers when he describes the suicide of the formerqueen. They cheer louder when he recounts the story of how Macduff chopped off Macbeth’s head.
Then King Malcolm rises to speak. Even before he opens his mouth, the crowd cheers and cheers. Malcolm speaks for a long time, thanking different lords and announcing they will now be called earls, not thanes.
“Finally,” he says to the crowd that has grown hoarse from wild cheering, “my deepest gratitude is due to a valiant young woman who saved my life the night I fled the assassination of my father and escaped through the wood. Would Roah—once known as Gilly—come forth to receive the thanks of her king?”
Like a sleepwalker, she moves to the dais. She pays no heed to the crowd that whispers to each other of her beauty and bravery.
King Malcolm looks older than the boy she helped escape from the castle,-but he is still just as beautiful. He takes her hand in his. His heavylidded eyes are warm. “I owe you my life,” he says. “No reward is sufficient for that. Because you saved me, you thereby saved S
cotland. There is no reward great enough for that. All I can do is to restore to you your father’s lands. You are now rightly one of the richest nobles in all our land. Henceforth you will be known throughout the land as the first princess of Scotland. And I deed you the rents from the following holdings . . .”
He rattles off the names of a dozen or more properties. The hoarse crowd manages to squeeze out a few more cheers.
When she thinks he is finished, she turns to go, but he keeps her hand in his. “My fair princess and savior,” he says, his eyes twinkling, “I would ask one more favor of you. Do not bury your beauty in the countryside, Lady Roah. Stay in my court, as the first lady of the court. You have given me a fine new life. Let me give you one as well.” He smiles and tightens his hand around hers.
“Nay, your majesty,” calls out a voice in the crowd. Surprised, she turns to locate its source. Lord Macduff strides forward, shouldering people out of the way so he can reach the dais. He kneels in front of her and bows his curly head.
“My lady, I have heard how you tried to save my family. I was gone, but you risked your life to save theirs.” He looks up at her with sadbrown eyes. “Lady, both you and I have families who were killed by that dead butcher. ’Twas the fondest dream of my wife and my oldest son that you come live at Fife. Let me become the father you lack. Let me adopt you as my daughter. No father could love or pamper his child more than I will love and pamper you. My child, for too long you have had to take care of yourself in the world. ’Tis time for you now to let someone take care of you.”
“Gilly!” A young voice calls out above the crowd. “I mean, Lady Roah!” Her eyes widen. Fleance squirms through the press of bodies until he stands on her other side. “Don’t listen to them. Come with me instead.” He squints in the bright light. “I am not yet used to you in that dress,” he says severely in his squeaky-growly voice, and for the first time in a long while, she smiles. “ You and I have had enough of this cold land. My uncle is going to take me to the south, to France and Italy, where I can study science. We will spend the next year in Rome. Come with us. You will love life in the civilized south, far from this cold and wild place. When you are there, you will have no reminders of all the sorrows you endured in this harsh land. There are fine libraries and great scholars. Come with me and leave this land forever.”
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