Lady Macbeth's Daughter (12 page)

“But how did it come to be finished?”

“I took it to the weaver woman in the village.”

I examine the braid and cannot tell where it was broken, so well did she complete the design.

“It is so lovely, I cannot accept it,” I say with a shake of my head. “I have nothing to give in return.”

“Only grant me leave to put it on you,” he says, his blue eyes on mine.

I hesitate. Still, I long to wear something so beautiful. Where is the harm?

I hold up my arms and Fleance passes the blue silk around my waist once, twice, and a third time. He has to lean close to me, but his hands do not stray. He ties the girdle and lets the ends fall. I feel the cloth snug against me yet not binding, a light thing of beauty.

“Thank you,” I murmur.

“I want to kiss you.” His words come out in a single rapid breath.

I freeze. I feel hot tears begin to form and I close my eyes to keep them from falling. I have been so lonely since coming to Dunbeag.

“Now . . . may I?” he asks.

Where is the harm?
I nod, and as his lips meet my forehead I feel a pleasant tingling of my skin beneath the girdle.

Oh please, now on the lips!

But instead Fleance draws back. Disappointed, I open my eyes.

“Where . . . where did you learn that?” I whisper.

“To kiss? Why, that was hardly anything.”

“Nay, I mean, to
ask
.”

He cocks his head to the side. “The other ways did not work with you.”

I smile and finger the ends of the sash. “But why?”

“Why what?”

Why are you, with your rough manners, now being kind to
me? I thought you considered me too plain for your attention.
Why does your father treat me like his daughter? Why am I so
confused?

“Why did you give me this gift?” I ask.

He smiles. “I don’t know. It wanted doing.”

I peer into his face but cannot read his feelings. I yearn to shake him until his words and deeds fall into some pattern I might understand.

“Fleance, what do you want of me?” I say with all the earnest longing in me.

He steps back, dodging the question. “I want to teach you to fight!”

“And I want to learn,” I say, letting the question drop, for I don’t think I am ready for an honest answer.

Picking up the shield, I clumsily fasten its leather bands to my left forearm. I let Fleance show me how to protect myself while striking a blow, and how to fend off blows.

“Use the edge. If your enemy’s sword gets stuck in the front of your shield, it will be useless.”

We practice until I am nearly breathless.

“Now you are ready,” he says.

I raise the sword and it promptly slips from my sweaty hand. I groan with dismay.

Suppressing a laugh, Fleance takes a thin piece of deerskin and wraps it around my hand. I try not to think about his hands touching my fingers and wrist.

“This will improve your grip,” he says. Then he picks up a sword, and I see that it is made of wood.

“Why, that is a mere toy!”

“Don’t frown so,” he says. “It wouldn’t be a fair match otherwise.”

Determined, I face Fleance in the small clearing. With a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, I feel balanced and secure. I match his every move. My knees are bent and I lean a bit forward, waiting for the opportunity to thrust. Has Fleance noticed that my sword is now sharp?

“Just so you know,” I say, with a hint of teasing in my tone, “if I hurt you, I don’t mean to.”

Fleance laughs in a loud burst. “I think I can defend myself. I’ve had harder opponents.”

At that moment his attention falters, and I bring my blade briskly down upon his wooden war-toy. With a crack it shivers into pieces and he is left holding the hilt. He lets out all his breath at once and stares at me, stunned.

Now it is my turn to laugh.

“By Saint Brigid!” he cries. He looks me up and down, his eyes stopping at my waist. “Could the old woman have woven some magic into that girdle?”

“If so, I must never take it off.”

“Let me see that sword.”

Beaming with triumph, I hand it to him and slip the heavy shield from my forearm.

“It is the same one, surely, but you had it sharpened,” he observes. “Did you put a charm upon it, too?”

“I am no sorceress! But I have been building my strength. See?” I hold out my arms, letting the loose sleeves slip back, and tense them so that my sinews show, small but hard.

Fleance grasps my wrists, then slides his hands along my forearms, cupping my elbows. He presses upward, bunching the cloth of my sleeves until he is holding me by the shoulders. There he stops and regards me, his eyebrows raised, mutely asking,
May I?

I feel the tingling start up again beneath the girdle, deeper this time. I clap my hands against Fleance’s back. It is damp with sweat, and the muscles ripple beneath the skin. I pull him to me.

Where is the harm?

I press my lips as hard as I can against his. My teeth bump into his. He kisses me back and we almost fight to hold each other the tighter, until he lifts me off my feet. Soon I feel my strength begin to falter and release my arms, letting him hold me in the air, with nothing to ground me.

Rhuven comes for me the very next day, like one of the priest’s angels who save those who are about to lose their souls. My pulse is still racing from kissing Fleance. How could Rhuven have known what happened between us?

Of course she does not know. The reason she has come, she says, is that the pestilence infecting Scotland has reached the Wychelm Wood. My mother is very ill. In fact, she is dying.

We leave Dunbeag at once. Even on Rhuven’s palfrey, we cannot travel fast enough to satisfy me. I yearn to see my mother. But my thoughts are also full of guilty desire for Fleance. When I fall asleep sitting up, I feel his hands on me and with a start realize that it is Rhuven holding me up as we ride.

We stop for the night and I have a dream about Banquo. His face is pale beneath his beard, like a ghost’s. His look reproaches me as he whispers through bloodless lips, “Avenge me, daughter of evil!” The dream frightens me. It makes no sense. I ask Rhuven if Banquo is my father.

“What gives you that idea?” she asks, looking at me as if I am crazy.

“Never mind.” I decide to wait and ask Mother who my father is. But she is dying. What if we are too late?

When we come to the edge of the wood, I leave Rhuven and run ahead. The spreading branches of the wychelms reach out to welcome me home, but they are leafless. The burn rushes along as always, but there are no flowers blooming on its banks, and the birds sing plaintive notes as if protesting the loss. The roundhouse looks darker and more ancient than before, as if it conceals an entrance to the Under-world. Helwain stands in the low doorway, her eyes sunken and her hands twitching. She says nothing, yet her eyes speak of the fear that her sister will die.

Inside Mother lies, too weak to rise from her bed, yet glowing with gladness to see me. If she can smile so warmly, perhaps she is not dying after all! I kneel down and take her hand, and then I see that her skin is as thin and white as the bark of a birch tree.

“Mother, I am sorry that I left you last time, without even a kiss!” The words tumble out of me. “But why did you send me away? You must have been sick even then. I should not have left you. Will you forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive, daughter,” she says, shaking her head. “Tell me, are you happy at Dunbeag?”

Like a child I am eager to tell her everything.

“It is never dull there. I have learned to read and write. I can even fight with a sword. Don’t look surprised, it is more for the sport. The lady Breda dislikes me, but the lord Banquo is most kind and fatherly to me, and Fleance—” Here I blush. “He is . . . as rough as one would expect of a brother.”

Mother smiles. “They are good people and will see that you are married well.” She closes her eyes.

“Married? Mother, I have no wish to marry. I only want you to be well!” The tears fill my eyes, leaving her face a blur. “Helwain, can you cure her?”

Helwain pays no attention to me. She is plying Rhuven for news of the king.

“My lady suffers terrible dreams and wakes nightly, her clothes as wet as if she had fallen in the well,” says Rhuven, her face creased with distress. “She cries over and over, ‘What’s done is done and cannot be undone.’ Your potion of poppy did nothing to calm her.”

“I will make a stronger elixir with nightshade and belladonna,” says Helwain. “Better yet, something that would hold a child within her loins. What of the rue that was meant to strengthen the king’s seed?”

“He tasted its bitterness in his wine and demanded to know who poisoned him,” says Rhuven. “I think he suspected me and my lady. I was as afraid of him as on that terrible night!”

I listen in disbelief. How can they fret over King Macbeth and his queen at a time like this?

“Then what poison shall I concoct for His Majesty?” Helwain’s voice drips with malice. “The deadly nightshade, ground with the bones of night-flying bats. That is the way to end a tyrant’s life. It does its deadly work inside, where the evil dwells.”

“Nay, you shall do no such thing, nor shall you even think it,” says Rhuven fearfully.

Finally I can bear it no longer. I stand up to Helwain, inches from her hairy chin. My hands shake and the words seethe from me. “Enough! How are the troubles of the king and queen any business of yours? My mother is dying. Why don’t you heal her!”

“I have tried and it is beyond my powers,” says Helwain in anguish.

“O peace. Between you two, peace,” pleads my mother.

Helwain sinks down on the hearthstones and begins rattling bones in her hands. The sound irks me as always, but at least she is no longer ranting.

I take a deep breath. If I do not ask Mother about my father now, I will never again have the opportunity. I kneel down beside her again and smoothe her thin hair. I am loath to displease her while she lies at the brink of her death. But I must learn a simple truth.

“Mother, tell me please, who was my father?”

The soft hiss of the peat fire answers me. The rattling of bones stops.

“Please. I am old enough to know whose name I bear.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Rhuven stiffen. In the silence and the swirl of smoke, I hear the intake of my mother’s breath. She exhales without speaking.

“It is time for her to know the truth,” says Helwain.

After a long pause, my mother speaks. Her voice is barely above a whisper, and I must strain to hear.

“Macbeth, Scotland’s king, is your father.”

I sigh and turn to Helwain. “Does her mind often wander so?”

The old woman shakes her head.

“I am dying, Albia, I cannot lie.” My mother’s voice is stronger. She lays a hand on my arm.

I suppress my tears and decide to humor her. “How did you come to bear Macbeth’s child? It would have been long before he became king. Tell me, it must be quite a story.”

My mother shakes her head. Then she confesses, with the little breath remaining in her, that she is not my mother at all.

“You were born of Grelach, Macbeth’s lady. Though I have loved you all these years as truly as any mother.”

I stare at her, openmouthed. Then I turn to Rhuven. “Your
mistress
?”

Rhuven nods. Her face is twisted with sorrow.

“No. That can’t be! You’re both lying.”

I see my mother—no, not my mother, simply
Geillis—
wince with pain.

“Then explain why I grew up here,” I demand. “Did the faeries steal me from this Grelach and leave me . . . in this pitiful house?” My voice is full of scorn.

Rhuven says, “In a manner of speaking, yes—”

“Don’t lie to her!” thunders Helwain. “She is no child. She must know the truth, black as it is!”

“What truth? That I am kin to that painted warrior you conned on the moor? The tyrant who seizes land and lets his subjects starve? That is madness! The king is not my father.”

“Your hair is exactly the color of his,” says Rhuven, reaching out to me. “And you have his temper.”

I push her arm away. “How should that make me his daughter?”

“Albia, you are Scotland’s daughter, and here is proof,” says Helwain darkly. She holds out a gold armlet set with a large gem the color of thickened blood. I gaze upon it in fascination but recoil from touching it.

“What is this bauble?” I demand.

“It belonged to your mother,” Rhuven says. “My lord gave it to her when they were wed. Now it is yours.”

“That proves nothing. For all I know, you stole it last week.”

Rhuven is on the verge of tears. “Do you think we would make all this up? We would never torment you so.”

“Then let me take this gem to Dun Forres and see if I am welcomed as the long-lost daughter of the king and queen.” I try to sound defiant as I thrust out my hand for the armlet, but my voice wavers.

“Foolish girl,” says Helwain, snatching it away. “Do you want to be killed?”

Her words, like a wintry blast, pierce to my very bones. Clearly there is more to this matter than learning who gave me birth.