Lady Macbeth's Daughter (2 page)

“What a foul creature!” I cried. “Is it a monster?”

“Not unless you have lain with the devil,” said the midwife.

My husband
is
the devil,
I thought.

The midwife shoved the wailing boy into my unwilling arms. He suckled me until my nipples bled. At the touch of his hungry mouth, I gritted my teeth. When I put him from me, he screamed like the banshee.

“I wish you had not been born!” I screamed back. I felt like I was chained to a stone.

We named the boy Luoch. Even then, I couldn’t love him.

One day Gillam left to lay siege to a town, and soon word came that he had been burned to death by flaming pitch. I smiled for the first time in months.

The man who had killed Gillam won his lands and titles. Within a month, my father forced me to marry the new thane. His name was Macbeth.

I knew what marriage meant, so at the wedding I refused to speak. My father slapped me, causing me to cry out, which the priest took for “Aye.” Thus for the second time I was married against my will. My new husband gave me a gift, an armband made of gold and set with a large gem. When the jewel caught the light, it gleamed bloodred. I had never owned such a treasure, and it softened me just a little.

Macbeth was only ten years older than I. His most remarkable feature was the carrot-colored hair that fell to his shoulders and glistened on his mighty forearms. He did not seem to be cruel like Gillam. But we had nothing to talk about. We ate in silence and he spent the evening with his warriors. He slept in a chamber next to mine and did not try to force himself on me.

Soon I grew curious about this unusual man. I put my ear to the door of his room and reported to Rhuven that he did not snore or grunt in his sleep. Then I spied on him, with Rhuven beside me in the shadows, as Macbeth and his companions sat before the fire drinking.

“She is barely out of childhood and already mother to a son,” said one man. “Be a man, and beget an heir on her at once!”

“The oracle said I should father many sons,” came Macbeth’s reply. “I would not be in too much haste and overleap my good fortune.”

I whispered to Rhuven, “I wish I knew everything the oracle promised him, for it would touch my future as well.”

I decided it was time to make my new husband notice me. At dinner I would stare at him until he looked at me, then I would smile and glance down. I brushed his arm while serving him and felt him start at the touch. A shiver ran through me as well. Then I spoke to him directly for the first time, saying, “My lord, will you have some wine?” My voice was high and nervous.

“Indeed, I desire it,” he replied. His eyes met mine. They were deep-set and as black as a raven’s wing.

That night he came to my bed and I let him touch me where he pleased. He was not rough as Gillam had been. I began to look forward to lying with him in the darkness. Soon I sensed that I was with child again. As my breasts and belly grew large, I marveled at my power. The granddaughter of a king, I carried a king in my womb! Though I could not choose my own husband, I could bear a son who would fulfill his ambitions, and in so doing lift me as high as the stars.

When my pains began, Macbeth was away on a sea journey. I pushed until I had no strength left, but the child would not be born. Even Rhuven looked afraid. Finally the midwife reached in to seize it by the feet. I screamed in agony, feeling myself tear apart, and fell into blackness.

When I opened my eyes again, Rhuven was holding a tightly swaddled baby. A gold fuzz covered its head, not the black tufts Luoch had been born with.

“How can he be mine?” I asked, fingering my own black hair.

“It is doubtless Macbeth’s child,” Rhuven replied. “Will you hold her now?”

“Her?” I asked.

“The babe is a girl,” Rhuven said softly.

“My lord will be unhappy,” I said, turning away. “Let me sleep now.”

“No, my lady, you must look at her.”

The urgency in Rhuven’s voice made me sit up. She removed the baby’s swaddling. An amazed cry escaped me to see the naked, pink-skinned girl with wide blue eyes. She waved her tiny fists and one leg kicked the air. Then I noticed that the other leg barely moved. Its foot pointed inward.

“Is it a changeling?” I heard my voice rising. “The faeries took my baby and left this one in her place!”

“Nay,” said Rhuven, frowning. “This is the bairn you bore and none other, for I have not closed my eyes since she came from you.”

“O Rhuven, what have I done wrong?” I wailed. “Everyone knows it is a mother’s fault if she bears a deformed child!”

“Nothing, my lady. Perhaps it was the midwife’s fault. Or a weakness in your husband’s seed—” She broke off and threw me a fearful look.

My heart began to pound at the thought of Macbeth.

“We must keep it from him,” I said in a rush.

Rhuven nodded. “You can trust me to be silent.”

A month passed. I nursed the baby and watched her become fatter. She did not bite and torment me as Luoch had. And with each swallow of milk she drew from me, affection flowed into me like waves lapping at a shoreline. There was no reason to love her, for being a girl, she could bring me no gain. But I loved her anyway. It did not matter to me that she was not perfect. I longed to give her a name, but until Macbeth returned she could not be properly baptized.

Two more months went by. Every day I scanned the sea, and when I finally saw Macbeth’s ships approaching the harbor, I almost fainted with dread. Rhuven took control. She dressed me in my best gown and told me to wear Macbeth’s gift, the gold armlet.

I picked up my daughter and held her close. Then I changed my mind and put her back in the cradle. I greeted Macbeth alone, placing his hands on my milk-swollen breasts to distract him.

“My dear heart, my sweet chuck,” he murmured, kissing me hungrily. “I don’t want to leave you again for so long.”

I sighed with relief. All would be well!

“Now show me my son.”

“In good time, my lord,” I said, reaching for another kiss.

He would not be deterred. “Rhuven! Bring in the child.”

Her eyes downcast, Rhuven carried my daughter into the room.

“Now that you are back, let us choose a name and have the baptism,” I said, disguising my dread with false cheer.

Macbeth did not reply. He fumbled with the baby’s swaddling, then let out a groan of dismay.

“Great warriors must have daughters to give in marriage to their allies,” I said.

He stared at her. “Does the oracle deceive me?” he asked, bewildered.

“The next one will be a boy, I promise.” I took the baby from Rhuven, intending to cover her again, when my lord seized her. The blanket fell from her and all her little limbs began to writhe—except for the leg that hung limp, its foot turned inward.

“This cannot be my child!” Macbeth cried, and fixed his black, mistrustful eyes on me. “With whom—or what—have you lain?”

“With no one but you, my lord,” I said, fear rising in me. “Look, she has your fair hair and skin.”

“She has the bones of some weak, creeping villain,” he growled. “Who is the father?”

“You accuse me wrongly!” I said, indignant. “We are innocent.”

“The oracle does not lie!” Macbeth shouted, his face red with anger. “She said I would have sons. Strong sons. Not weak and deformed daughters.”

He shouted for his men, and the burly Eadulf appeared.

“O you fates that meddle in mortals’ lives,” intoned Macbeth, staring overhead. “Witness that I hereby renounce this unnatural child of a wicked mother.”

“I do not deserve this!” I protested, clutching my daughter until she began to cry. “It is you who should be punished. You slew my husband and took his lands and titles. And you stole me, too. I never wanted you.”

Fury gathered in his black eyes. He took the child from me and thrust her at Eadulf.

“No! I am the granddaughter of a king, and she belongs to me!” I threw myself at Eadulf, but Macbeth blocked my way. I grabbed his forearms and groveled to him. “I am sorry to offend you, my lord. I will do anything you desire, only give me my daughter.”

He shook off my hands. “You will forget her.” To Eadulf he said, “Take the spawn of evil to the heath and leave it for the wolves.”

Eadulf ducked out of the room, my daughter under his arm. My legs gave way and I fell back onto the bed. I saw Rhuven follow him, heard stumbling on the stairs. Macbeth leaned over me, his breath hot on my cheek

“She shall not live to rebuke your deeds—or mine!” He pressed his body against mine, and I struggled until I felt a roaring in my ears like a sea-storm and blackness engulfed me.

When I awoke on the rumpled bed, I was alone. The cradle was empty. My breasts leaked with longing for my pale-faced daughter, and all my motherly feelings spilled out in cold tears.

Here I lie, still. Weak and helpless as she was. Dry as dust, with no drop of milk, no tears left to shed ever again.

My hand reaches for the other arm. It is bare.

“Rhuven, where is my jeweled cuff ?” My voice sounds dull. “I have not seen it since—” But I cannot bear to speak of that day my daughter was taken from me.

“I don’t know, my lady,” Rhuven replies, not meeting my eyes.

“I think Macbeth has taken it away to punish me,” I say. “Next time I will give him a son, and he will give it back to me.”

Chapter 2

Wychelm Wood

Albia

These are my first memories, fragments mostly.

Lying in my mother’s arms, looking up at the wychelm tree. Its limbs sway and its leaves tremble. Birds flitting in its branches, a squirrel dashing up the trunk. A longing I have no words to express.

Tumbling with the lambs in the sheepfold. Burying my face in their soft dun fleece, imagining I am one of them.

The smells of peat and lime, heather and damp moss. My hands and legs, dirty from scooting along the ground. Mother coaxing me with a finger coated in honey while I cry in frustration.

A hot, smelly cloth wrapped around my leg. Helwain muttering over me. Mother rubbing my leg. Her look of dismay.

The small horse that hauls peat from the moor. The sledge bouncing along the rocky ground while I hold on with both hands to keep from sliding off.

A bird with a long white neck making ripples in the loch. I reach out to touch it, but the water pulls me in. Cold and terror fill me. Mother’s arms lift me out of the water. The bird glides away.

And this, most vivid of all: night, the moon a round face overhead. Being carried in a sling on Mother’s back and clinging to her neck. Helwain leaning on an elder staff. A grove of trees with white trunks. Great dark stones jutting from the earth like arms reaching for the sky. A woman who calls my mother and Helwain “sister.”

Helwain saying, “I tried to heal her, but my powers are weak from disuse.”

My mother explaining, “So we came here, where the spirits are most powerful.”

Lying on the damp grass. The stone rising up before me blacker than the sky. Helwain using her staff to draw a circle around me and the stone. The three sisters chanting:

The old sun dies and the new one is born.
Dead souls rise, their graves to scorn.
The spirits come, mankind to warn.

Helwain walking backward around the circle. Her voice wavering like grass in the wind.

Let nature’s false knot be torn,
That bound this babe when she was born.

The chants filling my ears. I feel the sound deep in my bones. The spirits whirling on the winds, pushing through the earth, surrounding me.

“Look at her eyes darting dart back and forth,” Helwain saying to her sisters. “She sees them.”

I think that Mother and her sisters and I are the only people in the world until the day I meet Murdo and Colum, who live in a cottage on the edge of the Wychelm Wood. Murdo grows barley and oats and has more sheep than I can count with my fingers and toes. He frightens me at first. His voice rumbles like rocks falling down a hill and his head is as hairless as an egg. He carves two pieces of wood and fixes them to my leg with strips of hide. Mother explains that he is helping my leg grow straight and strong. Like a tree.

Colum is a child like me. He has curly hair and makes me laugh with his silly faces. He can run and jump like the squirrels. I want to do the same, and one day I grasp Colum’s arms and pull myself to my feet. I take my first steps. My mother weeps, but somehow I know she is happy.