Lady Macbeth's Daughter (4 page)
By the time Macbeth sails with his seven galleys to raid the Orkneys, he has put another child in my belly. Upon his return, I am as big as a ship with its sail full of wind. Macbeth waits upon me, worships me with eyes full of hope and hungry love. All will be well between us once this son is born and the long-ago promise of the oracle is fulfilled.
My lord has even softened toward Luoch. Perhaps he realizes that once he has his own son, Luoch’s existence will no longer rebuke him. He gives my son a dirk taken from a Danish pirate, with gems set in its handle and a sheath made of boar’s hide.
Luoch’s eyes shine, and he dares to ask his stepfather a question. “You left with seven ships and came back with six. What happened to the other ship?”
The boy is sharper than I realize.
“I will tell you a frightful tale,” says my lord, frowning. “We were four days from the farthest Orkneys when a storm struck our fleet. Gales ripped the sails and roiled the waves until their crests foamed like the mouths of wild dogs. You could hear the oars crack as the men strained against the sea. We prayed to Columba and all the saints to save us. Then I saw three ravens in the sky. They circled our ships for an entire day.”
Luoch’s eyes are as round as berries. Rhuven also listens, holding her breath.
“At last they chose a single heaving mast and settled there. Within minutes the galley and all her crew sank beneath the waves.” Macbeth looks at me, traces of fear still in his eyes. “It was no usual storm, I tell you, but some unnatural evil that wrought their doom.”
“Don’t frighten the boy with superstitious nonsense,” I say, suppressing a shiver myself.
The babe kicks my womb with such vigor that I know it must be a boy. Macbeth agrees that we will name him Kenneth, for all of Scotland will esteem a man named for such a worthy king. He boasts to his warriors of the lusty boy he will train in the arts of combat. Every important thane has at least one son. Banquo has a boy, Fleance. King Duncan has two sons, the princes Malcolm and Donalbain.
One day I realize that my womb is quiet. I prod my belly, but when my son does not stir, I begin to panic. My stomach feels ill and my bowels contract sharply. I should not worry, Rhuven says. She makes me lie down and drink sweet wine. But nothing calms me. The stabbing pains will not stop. The room whirls about me like a falling spindle.
Then blood begins to seep from between my legs. The drops become a stream. It does not cease, though I press my legs together. Like a wounded animal, I cry out as I feel the child slip from my womb. I hear Rhuven whisper, “No, no!” and look down to see, cradled in her bloody hands, a baby boy, perfectly formed but still and silent as Death.
My heart is a stone lodged behind my ribs. I am hard all over, as the looking glass shows me. My cheeks are flat, my bones sharp. Strands of silver glisten in my hair, though I am only twenty-three. My eyes are pale and hard, like an ice-covered loch.
I refuse to lay him in the kirkyard, because God and the saints ignored my prayers. We bury him near the castle. Rhuven weeps. The green turf at my feet is beaded with dew as if the earth is weeping. We pile stones atop the grave. My husband shakes with grief.
I remember his cruelty toward our innocent daughter, now long dead. Did he shed a single tear for her? Yet now he mourns a son who never opened his eyes.
“Be a man. Cease your fit of tears,” I say, full of resentment.
“I am a man. May not a man show sorrow?” he pleads.
My own despair spills forth in cruel words. “You are no man, for you cannot even beget a living child upon your wife.”
“And you are no proper woman! Why do you not weep for our son?”
“I am used to such loss,” I say bitterly. “Three times my body has quickened with your sons, and three times it has expelled them before their time—”
I bite my tongue. I meant never to reveal this to him.
“
Three
times?” he exclaims. “When were the other two?” Now he is angry, and I feel as if a storm is about to break, blow me down, and dash me on the rocks below. “Why did you not tell me?” He clenches his hands and steps toward me.
“Because, my lord, I was afraid!” I reach out to touch his cheek slick with rain and tears. I am afraid still—that he will cast me away because I am childless.
Macbeth does not react to my touch. He looks beyond me, frowning so deeply I cannot see his eyes. “Three times,” he repeats. “That signifies evil luck.”
“But surely I will conceive again. The fourth time always brings good fortune,” I say. “Come, let us go inside. Rhuven, prepare my chamber and bring wine.” I take Macbeth’s arm, but he will not move. His fierce gaze shifts to the grave.
“Was the woman a fiend, who said I would bear sons?” he demands of the mound of rocks. “I must find her again and learn the truth.”
Wychelm Wood and Wanluck Mhor
Albia
Sometimes when Mother and Helwain are both asleep, I slip out into the darkness by myself. I should be afraid, but the moon forbids me. Her white light makes the night almost as bright as the day, so that I cannot lose my way. Helwain goes out at night because she says that plants are more powerful when gathered under the full moon. But I think it is the night itself that draws her out. At night the forest is alive with sounds: the sweet call of the nightingale, the mournful hooting of the owlet, and the croaking of frogs from the riverbank. Sometimes a mist rolls along the ground, envelops the trees, and all around me I hear the patter of dripping water, as if faeries are tapping their tiny feet on the leaves. The faraway howling of a wolf on the moor tells me that some small creature has met its doom. Sometimes I walk as far as Stravenock Henge to see the stone giants hunched in a circle. Nearby, the twisted branches of the great oak tree look like the limbs of a bogle crawling from the earth. I relish the shudder this gives me, then I run back to the safety of the roundhouse.
Now that I live like the owl, I am awake when Rhuven arrives late one night. I hear her tell Mother that the thane and his wife have buried a son who was born too soon. Helwain questions her about her thane. They talk of war. I strain my ears to listen.
“Macbeth and his soldiers have been summoned to battle by King Duncan,” Rhuven reports. “The rebel Macdonwald, with his Irish footsoldiers and horsemen armed with axes, marches through the Spey valley toward Duncan’s castle.”
“A rebellion!” my mother says.
“And where does Macbeth’s loyalty lie?” asks Helwain.
“With King Duncan, of course!” says Rhuven in haste. “As he was leaving, he said to my lady that he would bring home the victory and lay it at her feet.”
“That may have a double meaning,” Helwain muses. “Are you sure he has no greater ambition?”
“He seems content,” says Rhuven. “The old thane of Glamis has died, and my lord expects Duncan to grant him Glamis’s lands and title. But something else worries me.” Rhuven pauses. “The loss of his stillborn son disturbs him deeply. Helwain, Macbeth believes you lied to him. He has vowed to seek you out.”
“He will ask in the village, and they will tell him where we live,” says my mother, her voice rising. “But he must not come here.”
However hard I listen, I do not understand all these matters.
“Nay, we will go to him,” says Helwain. “Next week, when the moon is full, we three will meet at Wanluck Mhor, and in that wasteland of ill fortune, waylay him.”
“What will you tell him, Helwain? You must not promise him any more sons,” Rhuven warns.
Helwain shrugs. “I will know by then what to say to him.”
All week Helwain is busy with her powders and potions. She casts bones on the hearth and prods the dust for signs. She searches the skies at night. Mother is silent and tense. On the day they are to leave for the moor, she tries to send me to stay with Murdo and Colum. But I want to see Helwain do her dark mischief, so I cry and beg and cling to Mother until she relents.
We set out for Wanluck Mhor early in the day, with Mother pulling the small sledge laden with blankets, food, and Helwain’s kettle. It may take several days to find this lord, she says. Rhuven, coming from Dun Inverness, meets us at the edge of the woods. She frowns when she sees me.
“Why have you brought her?” she says in dismay.
“She is afraid to be left behind. You can understand why,” Mother says, putting her arms around me. “Don’t worry. She will stay hidden.”
But I am not afraid, and I don’t understand why I must hide. I am simply excited to be going on a journey and curious about what I will see on the moor.
We climb up and down steep braes where the deer drink from the rivulets running down the rocks. The rising sun in our eyes makes us blink. Dew lifts from the ground and the long purple shadows fade. The sun is overhead, then at our backs. Gradually we descend to soft earth covered with bearberry bushes, dwarf birches, and heather with white and pink flowers. Helwain prods the ground with her staff to feel where the soft, peaty ground gives way to a sucking bog. We are on Wanluck Mhor. When I ask Mother how the place got its name, she says that no one knows. But I think it must have been a great flood, for I see ruined dwellings covered in lichens and brambles, islands in a shallow, grassy sea.
In the distance, too, there is movement. “Something is coming, Mother!” The sound of hooves thudding on the soft ground grows louder.
Helwain heads for a nearby boulder. Mother drags the sledge off the path and into the bracken. We crouch behind the rock. Now we can hear the jingling of harnesses and war-mail as horsemen converge on the path.
“We hail from the king!” shouts one of the men. “What news from the battlefield?”
“Take this message to Duncan,” comes the reply. “Brave Macbeth with his smoking sword has slain the traitor Macdonwald.”
A deep-throated shout rises from the first party.
“And you spread this word,” orders the king’s messenger. “The thane of Cawdor has confessed to aiding the king of Norway, and to punish this treason, Duncan has confiscated all his lands and cut off his head.”
My mouth falls open to hear about such killing. Mother puts her fingers against my lips.
“Cursed be Cawdor’s soul!” growls the man from the battlefield. “Tell the king how the loyal Macbeth fought. He doubled strokes upon our foes as if he meant to bathe in their blood.”
