by Mike Ashley
To forestall discovery, I strode forward with confidence, as if I had every right to be there. And indeed I did have every right. I am a King’s son, after all.
“Good evening, Banquo,” I said.
I felt rather than heard the man in front of me breathe a sigh of relief. There was a scraping sound as he widened the aperture on the lantern and a measure of light spread over the place where I stood.
“It’s Malcolm Canmore,” said he, then remembering himself. “My lord.”
The Thane of Lochquhaber is a brave man but like many men he is superstitious enough in the dark. I wondered to see him out so late.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “Nor could the lad. Bad dreams.”
So the short shadow now coming to join him was his young son Fleance.
“Nor I,” I said. “I am out too – and having a piss here.”
I shrugged over my shoulder at the empty doorway. Then resolved to say no more. Why should a King’s son have to explain himself? There was a pause.
“Goodnight, and better dreams,” I said, without stirring a foot.
“Goodnight, my lord.”
He nudged Fleance and the boy aped his father: “Goodnight, my lord.”
“Honour to you and to him,” I said, thinking all this while Begone, begone, Macbeth is due.
Father and son moved off into the night, Banquo having reduced the lantern’s gleam to a glimmer. But, as bad luck would have it, they had gone not more than a dozen yards before they collided with a third shadow. Literally collided. I heard the thump in the dark, the gasp and the oath. I sensed rather than saw hands reaching for swords. But identities were swiftly exchanged and a short conversation followed, of which I could gather only scraps, something to do with honour. I recognized Macbeth’s broad tones.
I waited. Reduced to a bystander’s role, I could do nothing else in this great drama. Whatever passed between them must have satisfied Banquo (who was of course an old friend of the new Thane of Cawdor) for after some moments two of the scraps of darkness split off from the third and Macbeth passed my doorway. As the warrior crossed in front of me, I heard him muttering to himself.
I did not stir or speak. This was his business. Gruoch’s plan, which I had willingly endorsed, was that her husband, alone and unaided, should carry out the murder of my father in the belief (encouraged by the three hags and his wife) that he would become King hereafter. Then, the dirty work done, Macbeth would be “discovered”, tried and executed as a regicide. In everybody’s eyes he would be a devil, driven to that dreadful deed by overweening ambition. And this would leave the way clear to the throne for Malcolm Canmore, the elder son of King Duncan. This Malcolm would share his throne with Gruoch, Lady Macbeth, she who was the granddaughter of King Kenneth III and who was born to power if ever woman was.
I might have waited for my throne. I was young. I had time. But young men are impatient, and time is always passing.
So, my Lady Gruoch’s plan offered the best road forward – for both of us. Despite the difference in our ages, she and I were cousins. We were notional enemies too. My grandfather, also a Malcolm, had usurped hers. But it must have been the cousinage – or is the word cozenage? – that accounted for something similar in our glances, our postures (even though I am more than a head taller). Recently, before her husband’s return, rising in the early half-light in her chamber, I caught sight of her in the polished metal which stood on the far side of the room and in front of which she was dressed each morning. Momentarily, I glanced round to ascertain that she was still curled up in the marital bed. She was. It wasn’t her I was glimpsing, it was myself.
These things, or some of them, went through my mind as I waited in the courtyard for Macbeth to do the deed. I could not, for the life of me, have returned to my quarters to await this night’s event. An owl hooted and I jumped.
“Canmore.”
An urgent hiss.
“Gruoch? Is it?”
“Has he finished?”
At that moment there came an unearthly low wail from the floor above. My scalp prickled. Gruoch clutched hard at my arm.
“Is that him?”
Her breath smelt winy, sour. So, probably, did mine.
“Who else can it be,” I whispered.
“Is it finished?”
“Go and see.”
I didn’t mean her to do this – I was hardly aware of what I was saying – but she at once moved across the yard and toward the stairs. Before I could call out to bring her back she had vanished.
Part of me thought: well, it was her plan before it was ours.
I might have counted to thirty but no more before she was back by my side.
“It’s all gone wrong,” she said. “You must go and do it.”
“Not dead?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked into his chamber. The door’s open. He’s still sleeping. I saw him.”
“Where’s your husband?”
But she didn’t have to answer. At that moment there rushed past us in the dark a frantic shape. It stumbled, picked itself up with much cursing, then flew on into the night.
“You must go and do it,” she repeated, and when I didn’t move away: “My darling, it makes no difference. Macbeth will still carry the blame.”
“Where are the daggers?”
“In the outer room. He dropped them when I came in. He saw me in the doorway and the knives fell from his hand. He’s in no state to kill anyone tonight. He was shaking and weeping.”
She sounded oddly composed.
“I thought you’d prepared him.”
“I had. But I’ve told you what he’s like. Superstitious – and easily overawed. He can make a shambles on the battlefield and stare death in the face but evidently he cannot lift a finger against the King himself.”
“Evidently,” I said.
And so I moved off into the dark to do my duty.
I reached the entrance to my father’s quarters. The fleeing Macbeth had left the door ajar and a few candles guttered in the interior. Kenneth and Rhun remained where they’d tumbled down.
At that point I might have continued walking along the passage and past my brother Donal’s room until I reached my own. I might have retreated to the security of my couch and there passed an uneasy night, rising in the morning to greet Duncan and Gruoch and Macbeth with the pretence that all was normal. Not a word said. Then all I would have to do was wait . . . a month – or a year or three – or a little longer until my father paid his dues to Nature. With luck I might land the crown while I was still young enough to enjoy it.
But I did not choose this easy path. Instead, lured by the failing light in the antechamber and the slumped bodies of the chamberlains, I entered the King’s quarters, picked up the wet, sweaty daggers from where Macbeth’s nerveless fingers had let them fall, strode into the inner chamber and there killed my father.
My father as he slept.
I did not stand long by the bedside and watch the inert figure before plunging the blades into his chest. I did not suffer any scruple. Reminiscences of happy days spent together – the way he had dandled me on his knee, or steadied my childish hand as it held its first foil, or lovingly watched as I formed my letters – not one of these reminiscences occurred to me, for the simple reason that we’d never enjoyed them. I’d hardly ever seen my father. He was a King. Kings have better things to do than to entertain, instruct or love their sons.
All that the unstirring man on the royal couch represented was a stumbling-block between me and the throne. Otherwise, he was nothing. To my mind he was already dead, the sheets soaked in blood. So I stabbed home, with the right and the left, again and again.
When I was sure that he was gone, I returned to the antechamber. The chamberlains continued to mock their charge with night-groans and snores. One of them turned over and I feared he was about to wake. I hastily wiped the daggers on the rushes to remove the grossest gouts an
d put them back on the floor. Then I left the room, intending to wash the murk and mire from my hands and to dispose of my bloody clothes.
I had made only a few strides along the passage when a white face loomed at me out of the dark.
“Brother!”
“Jesus save us!”
“I cannot sleep, brother Canmore. Come into my room and pray with me, and then I may rest.”
So, accoutred in blood as I was, I joined Donal Bane in prayer. Luckily, only the feeblest candle flickered by his bedside, no doubt for poring over some devotional text. It was scarcely enough to light the tips of his fingers conjoined in prayer. I knelt near him – but not too near for fear he might smell our father’s blood – while we prayed to our greater Father in Heaven. If I’d been a superstitious fellow like Macbeth, I might’ve been unable to mouth “amen” in answer to my brother’s pious, fluty tones. But I found I was able to give a hearty “amen”, and so returned in peace and quiet to my chamber. I’m pleased to report that I suffered no real ill effects from my murder, though I did shake a little as I climbed into my couch and lay watching for a while.
Unaccountable thoughts occurred: that my father might not be dead, and that I would have to get up and kill him all over again. And another: that he was already dead when I entered his chamber. But then these strange notions subsided, and I wiped a few tears from my face, and settled down for what remained of the night.
I was tugged out of sleep the next morning by the ferocious ringing of the alarum bell. There were the sounds of feet thudding backwards and forwards along the passage, followed by an uncivil thumping on my door. Strange as it may seem, it took me some time to realize what all this pother must be about and so I didn’t have to pretend irritation and bafflement when I called, “What is it?”
By the time I’d dressed with a becoming haste and made my way down to the courtyard, the elements of the next act were in place.
There was my host, Macbeth, dumbfounded. His fair hair and beard were whitened in the early morning light while Gruoch’s foxy features looked drawn. I had not seen her since quitting her in the courtyard last midnight to go and murder my father. Macbeth strode off somewhere and she glanced in my direction. The pity which she showed for a newly bereaved son was a lesson in playing. There were others milling about the scene. Banquo, the Thane of Lochquhaber, was talking earnestly to Macduff, the Thane of Fife. I soon gathered that it was he – arriving early at Glammis to escort my father abroad for the day’s hunting and being dispatched by Macbeth to the King’s quarters – who had found Duncan’s body.
And then there was my brother Donal Bane, looking quite shocked but wholly pious. He clasped me round the shoulders in fraternal style. Then he whispered in my ear, “What were you doing away from your room last night, Canmore?”
“Like you, I couldn’t sleep,” I replied.
“Did you see anything?”
For an instant I was tempted to answer “Macbeth” but caution chained my tongue.
“Only you, brother,” I said instead.
“This is a sorry business.”
I was prevented from replying by a great stir at the foot of the staircase which led to the guest quarters. It was Macbeth. He stood there, with a grim and angry visage, his naked sword in his hand. The reeking blade was clotted with red.
I could guess what had happened even before he announced that he had slain the two chamberlains as accessories to the King’s murder. Apparently, they pretended that they had slept through the whole thing. But their bloody daggers gave them the lie. The other thanes clustered round Macbeth, whether in approval or disapproval of his action I couldn’t tell.
Was this part of the plan or not? I couldn’t tell that either.
I looked towards Gruoch. She looked away.
I felt the tightness in my belly. The sky suddenly grew darker, and a thin rain started to fall. Several of the thanes and their retainers now began to pace about the courtyard, half-drawing their swords as if they expected to be attacked any instant. I felt that, as the King’s elder son, I should have stepped forward and spoken. If there was any moment to assert myself it was this one.
But I waited.
I should have been proclaimed.
You cannot proclaim yourself King.
By rights, I should have been proclaimed. I was the elder son. I had done the necessary work.
Macbeth walked towards his wife, waving the bloody blade more in display than threat, and she swooned into the arms of one of her gentlewomen. A curious kind of nothingness descended over the place.
I decided to quit the scene. Pulling a long face, and huddling into my clothes against the rain, I walked back to my room to contemplate the next move. The door was ajar. Hearing noises inside, I stopped on the threshhold. Then walked in, meaning to give the servant the thrashing of his life. It was no servant, however, but Lochquhaber. He was standing in the middle of the chamber. His face was flushed.
“Ah Canmore,” he muttered. “Sir.”
“Banquo.”
“The door was open. I thought you were inside.”
This was possible. Perhaps I had left the chamber door open in my haste to get downstairs and play the part of the grieving son. Then I remembered that the blood-boltered clothes I had worn last night were in a cedar coffer in the corner. There had been as yet no opportunity to dispose of them by burning or burial. Was the coffer locked? Again, I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t been in the mood for precaution six hours ago. I could dimly discern the coffer now in the chamber corner. Something seemed to be hanging from it.
I cast my eyes round the room, trying to see it as Banquo had seen it. He looked as shifty as I felt, and waited on his dismissal.
Eventually I said: “You wished to see me?”
“To commiserate with you, sir, on the loss of your father. And to know whether you saw anything last night. Did you?”
Had my brother put him up to that question?
“We met in the yard,” prompted Banquo, as if it was likely I’d forgotten.
“I saw no one. Did you?”
“Only you – and Macbeth.”
“Well then,” I said, hoping he’d draw the obvious conclusion.
“There were four empty goblets in the anteroom.”
“I expect my father was enjoying a drink with his chamberlains . . . if that’s what you’re referring to,” I said a little too quickly. “Before he went to bed. They were old retainers, Kenneth and Rhun.”
“Treacherous ones,” said Banquo, but without animus.
“Well, they will never tell us anything now that Macbeth has given them their quietus. Where was he going last night when you met him?”
“To his wife.”
“Good,” I said.
“She is a delicate woman,” he said. “Did you see how she swooned at his naked blade and the blood on it?”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
“But four goblets, Canmore. Why four?”
“Lochquhaber, I must honour my father now in private.”
“Of course,” he said, relieved to be dismissed by a dead King’s son. “Honour to him, and to you.”
I bowed him out the door and locked it. Be sure I hastened to the coffer which sat in a dark corner of the chamber. The chest was not secured. Hanging down one side was a bloody sleeve. I gave a start, as if an entire corpse were immured in there. But it was only the shirt I’d worn the night before.
Had Banquo seen it? How could he not have done? He’d plainly come into my room to snoop around. Was he, even at this moment, alerting the other thanes in the courtyard? Were they about to move on me, swords drawn? Where was Gruoch in all this? Then I remembered that she’d swooned in the yard.
There was a creak behind me. The door opened. Impossible! I’d just locked it. I was still clutching the key in my hand. I felt the hair rise on my nape. Slowly, slowly, I swivelled round, still crouching. Gruoch, holding her own household key, stood in the doorway. Her whitened complexion was
a fine foil for her dark red hair. She had recovered quickly from her courtyard faint but she looked older.
“My darling,” she said, “you must depart –”
“Depart?”
“– for a time only.”
“I did not leave this.” I picked up the bloody sleeve where it hung limp from the coffer. “I am sure I did not leave it like this last night. I am afraid Banquo may have seen it.”
“He must have done.”
Again, she sounded quite composed.
“How did you know he was here?”
For answer, Gruoch merely looked at me.
“Someone has been here and opened this coffer and pulled out the sleeve. Look, it has snagged on a nail and torn,” I said. Or had the sleeve been ripped as I stabbed my father? I couldn’t be sure, couldn’t be sure of anything.
Through my head there flashed the image that had shaken me last night on my couch: my father as he slept and I, his son, standing over him, two slippery daggers in hand. The body was still. The sheets were covered in blood. Was this about to happen – or had it already happened?
“Yes, Banquo must have seen the shirt,” Gruoch said quickly.
I didn’t immediately hear her. I was remembering the feel of the daggers when I first picked them up from the floor. Wet, sticky – but sticky with what?
“What?”
“They are saying that you were in the courtyard last night.”
“Who is?”
“Banquo and his son Fleance. And Macbeth, my husband. They are all saying it.”
“They were also down there. God knows who was about last night,” I said, feeling matters slip out of my grasp.
“They had each other for witness, Banquo and Fleance,” she said.
“And Macbeth? Macbeth has no one.”
“Macbeth has me,” she said deliberately. “He was by my side and slept sound after I wakened him from a nightmare.”
I said nothing. There was more than one kind of treachery, I reflected.
Seeing I wasn’t going to answer, she said, “It is safest if you depart – for a time. They are not going to proclaim you King today.”