Page 15 of Lady Macbeth

Her father extends his hand to her. It is the only time she can remember seeing it stained with blood. He does not ever dirty his hands over trivial things. Grim, quotidian violence can always be deferred to someone lower and weaker. Her father taught her this: Violence is like coin. If you spend it easily, people will think you imprudent and reckless. If you save it and spend it only in the most vital moments, people will think you canny as an ermine. For this, Roscille thinks her father the cleverest man in the world.

“Apologize for nothing,” the Duke says. “The boy is dead. And you have taught yourself a better lesson than I ever could. Sometimes no words are as eloquent as the spilling of blood.”

Roscille takes her father’s hand and stands. Her knees are trembling. Her gaze does not leave the ground.

Soon after, there is the visit from le Tricheur and the fitting of the veil. After that, she is given Hawise as a handmaiden: a shield against the ravening appetites of men, if a fragile one. But this story is not a secret. This story is known to her father, and to the stable master, and to Hawise, and secondhand to most members of Wrybeard’s court. The story is a good lesson, a good warning.

The secret is this: Roscille wanted the stable boy’s hands on her hands and his lips on her lips. It was lust that overtook him, not madness. It was her desire, fed into his blood like poison from a barb. She wanted him and she made him want her back. That is the danger of her eyes. That they may compel men to do as she wishes.

If the truth were known, it would not be a veil and a bridal gown and a marriage to a faraway lord. It would be a noose or a blade or a pyre. To cause lustful madness is one thing—any beautiful woman has that power, if she wishes to exercise it, and even if she doesn’t, even if such a thing can be called power—to mold a man to her will is another. Wrybeard could not save her, if the truth were known. Nothing could. And so she has been sent here, to the bleakest, grimmest brink of humanity, so that the world may be kept safe from her.

Roscille reassumes her veil. It flutters with the long breath she exhales. Then she rises and walks far away from the chamber, so she cannot hear her husband’s anger, and so she cannot hear the peasants, begging for their lives.

She is lying curled on her side in the bed, staring at nothing. Well—she is staring at the blank stone wall. It is impossible to stare at nothing. But behind her eyes, her death-touched eyes, the same scenes are playing out over and over again. The stable boy’s lips, so near to touching. Her father’s blood-slicked hand. The shepherd hobbling into the chamber, his son and grandson at his side. Her husband, roughly grasping her face, turning it over like a bauble he wants to buy.

The door opens and Roscille shoots up. Macbeth enters. There is no blood on him she can see, and no coppery rust-smell blooms outward from his body. But his eyes are angry slits.

He strides toward her, and Roscille cannot help but flinch. Perhaps it is better that she does. All men like it when women cower.

“Did you find them?” she asks in a small, tremulous voice, as her husband towers over her. He is so enormous it is almost farcical, a droll god’s study in extremes.

One of her first thoughts was that her husband is handsomer than she expected, for a man near twice her age, but rough, his edges craggy, like the cliffs of Glammis. It looks as if he grew right out of the rocks. Now Roscille thinks this again. There may as well be a stone pillar between her and the door.

“Fléance’s wound did not bleed,” he says. “Nor did he recognize any of the men that were brought before him.”

Roscille swallows. “It is difficult,” she says. “They were masked. And it all happened quickly.”

“Of course.” Macbeth does not speak for a long time. His gaze runs over her. He does not fear staring right into her eyes, through the veil. Then he says, “Your prize would suit you better if the chain were tighter.”

Roscille’s hand jumps to her throat, to the necklace. Before she can protest, Macbeth moves behind her, pushing aside her hair, unclasping the necklace and then clasping it again. He has made it so tight that it chafes with every movement, even just the drawing of a breath. Now she will never forget that she is wearing it.

“Thank you,” she says hoarsely, as he steps away again. “I am blessed to have a husband who honors me in such a manner.”

“Yes, I honor you, and I honor the ancient customs of Glammis.”

Ancient. Roscille thinks of the three washerwomen. It occurs to her that perhaps he must honor these old traditions, that he is bound up to les Lavandières the same way they are chained in his basement. Perhaps if he does not abide the ancient ways of the land, their power will weaken. They will no longer be able to protect him or speak his prophecies.

This thought makes her braver. “You have fulfilled the first of my three wishes, and so swiftly.”

The room is suddenly blanketed in silence. And then, to her shock, Macbeth sits down on the bed beside her.

Roscille’s heart stutters with panic. But he merely lays a hand on the edge of her dress, as if to gently pin her in place, and his gaze looks past her, thoughtful.

“Lady Roscilla,” he says, “do you know what it means to be a righteous man?”

That is what Macbeth means. Righteous one. It is not a patronym, as she initially thought. It is not his father’s name, passed to him through birth and blood. It is one he has earned by his own actions.

In Breizh, to be righteous means to be pious, to accede to the directives of the pope, to take a priest into your rooms for counsel. Lord Varvek is not a righteous man, nor has he ever pretended to be one. He prefers to be the ermine, not the lion. He luxuriates in stories of his wily nature.

Macbeth is not a righteous man. He keeps witches for counsel. He is wed to a foreign hagseed. But perhaps in Glammis, righteous means something more.

“I am just a woman,” Roscille says. “My mind is not disposed to wonder about such things.”

Macbeth does not make a noise of agreement, but he does not dispute her, either.

“In Alba,” he says, “to be a righteous man means to honor your oaths to your clan. I am Thane of Glammis, the head of clan Findlaích. It is my duty to protect my people and to always seek their advancement. But what am I to do when my clan does not honor me in return?”

Roscille blinks at him. Is he asking her for counsel? No, it cannot possibly be so. He is merely speaking to the air, and she is an incidental audience. At least, this is what she thinks, until Macbeth turns to look at her, his gaze serious.