Lady Macbeth's Daughter (8 page)

The scene outside Duncan’s bedroom makes the wine in my stomach rise up into my mouth. The throats of the grooms gape open. Bone and sinews show. Their faces are dead white. Blood, enough to fill several bowls, pools on the floor around them. It is all I can do to place the daggers near their hands without fainting into the gory mess myself. Not one, but three dreadful deeds have been done here, never to be undone.

What possessed Macbeth to kill the innocent grooms?

I am afraid of my husband.

I wash my hands. The water in my basin turns pink, then red. But the blood clots beneath my fingernails and seeps into my palms and will not be rubbed away. I toss the guilty water out the window. It splashes against the rocks below.

The cock crows. I hear the servants rise to begin their work. Soon come the screams and shouts.

“Murder! Help! The king is slain!”

I follow the tumult to the door of Duncan’s chamber. I close my eyes, but the metallic smell of the blood brings the whole scene to my mind. I begin to sway, but Rhuven is there, holding me up. I see Banquo on his knees, Macduff standing with a horrified look on his face, and my husband pacing and tearing his hair.

“Who among you, if you loved the king, could have refrained from killing these murderers?” he cries, his face a mask of grief.

Lennox rushes up the stairs. “The princes are gone!” he cries.

“Let suspicion fall upon them!” Macbeth declares. “They must have bribed the guards to do the deed.”

“Why would they want to kill their father? It is most unnatural,” says Lennox, shaking his head. “Yet they are fled, which proves their guilt.”

“Nay, they are afraid for their own lives, and wisely so,” murmurs Banquo.

I see him glance at my lord, distrust in his eyes. Then faintness overwhelms me and I lean on Rhuven again.

“You have seen too much of this gruesome sight, my lady,” says Rhuven. She leads me to my room, locks the door, and seats me on the bed. I see her glance at the rowan ashes by the lamp.

“What did you have to do with it?” she asks, her voice urgent.

“I did not touch any of them. Don’t look at me so.” I close my eyes and turn my head away from her.

“Grelach, you must tell me, or I cannot protect you.” She grasps my shoulders and shakes me gently.

I rub my hands together, unable to stop myself. “Rhuven, bring me some water to wash with.”

“Not until you tell me the entire truth.” She takes my face between her hands, forcing me to look in her eyes.

I trust Rhuven. She is my constant companion, my other self.

“I only put the drops of mandrake in their wine to make them sleep. It was not part of the plan to slay them,” I whisper. “Only Duncan.”

I do not need to say more. I have as much as confessed my husband’s crimes—and my part in them—to Rhuven. Now she, too, has reason to fear Macbeth.

Chapter 8

The Shieling

Albia

When I come home from the shieling at the end of the summer, I notice at once my mother’s gaunt shape and the shadowy circles beneath her eyes. I ask her if she is ill.

“All of Scotland is sick,” she replies.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“King Duncan is dead, his sons have fled, and Macbeth rules in his stead,” replies Helwain in a flat voice, like someone who has tasted of a plant that numbs the brain.

So the painted warrior of Wanluck Mhor is now the king! Helwain should be exulting that her words have proven true. Then again, what does it matter which bloodthirsty thane sits on the throne? Nothing in Scotland changes but the seasons, and they follow one another as predictably as night follows day.

But I am wrong about that. First, my body changes. With Banrigh’s monthly visitation, my breasts grow round, my hips flare out, and my emotions reel from one extreme to another. That winter I turn fifteen.

The weather also changes, and with violence. Even before the fall crops are ready to be gathered, icy winds blow from the north and cover every green thing in heavy white rime. Murdo’s barley freezes and falls limp in the fields. Mother and I have to walk all the way to Inverness to buy grain, and it is so scarce that we can afford only a little. The winter months bring snow so deep that the sheep cannot reach the ground to graze and so they begin to die.

One day, six wolves threaten our flock even as Colum and I stand watch. Though we draw closer to the fire and throw rocks at them, they creep toward us, their teeth bared and their eyes gleaming with gold fire. I am afraid they will attack me, but instead they seize two sheep—not even the weakest ones—and the pack melts away, their tawny coats blending with the dead, gray-brown grasses. The bleating of the hapless creatures rises to the pitch of a scream before ceasing.

“Albia, did you notice anything unusual about those wolves?” Colum asks into the silence.

“Aye, they were fat. It could not have been hunger that made them so fearless.”

“Did you see their eyes? Something evil held those wolves, to be sure,” he says in a dire tone.

“Do you think Nocklavey is abroad?” I whisper. “And that is why everything is dead and destroyed?”

But Colum does not answer.

My mother is also in the grip of something unnatural. Her cheeks grow hollow and she shivers her very flesh away even while she sits directly before the fire.

The prowling wolves, the deathly cold, and my mother’s illness throw Helwain into distress. She scatters animal bones and mutters over their meaning until the clattering crazes me. I cover my ears until I cannot help shouting at her.

“Throw those damned bones outside. Can’t you see my mother is ill? Use your magic to make her well, you old fatereaper!”

Helwain turns on me. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Tell me why!” She grabs me by the throat as if to shake an answer from me.

I push her away and she goes sprawling into the fire. She screams as her hand touches the embers. Mother leaps up from her bed, her feverish eyes burning.

“Albia, never lift your arm against my sister!” she rasps.

I hide my head and shake with tears as Mother spreads Helwain’s gnarled hand upon a cold stone to ease the burning. But I still believe that Helwain is mad and that I will also go mad if I have to live with her any longer.

In February, Helwain makes us go with her to Stravenock Henge, where the moon and stars align with the stones to reveal when spring will come. Mother is so weak I must hold her up as we cross the frozen streams and clamber up icy hillsides. Helwain uses two walking staffs to keep from falling.

In the grip of the killing winter, the heath bears no sign of life, not a nighthawk or a raven or even a mouse. The tall stones of Stravenock Henge are slippery with white rime that forms patterns more intricate than those of the most skillful cloth-weavers. As we lean close to admire the icy designs, our breath makes them disappear.

Helwain scans the sky, but the moon stays hidden, and not a single star peeps through the blanket of night. Mother and I huddle together, blowing on our hands to keep them warm. Suddenly a bearlike creature lumbers into the henge, giving us all a fright. It is only Rhuven, covered in furs borrowed from her lady. She opens her arms and wraps Mother and me in her warmth.

Helwain shouts to the black sky, “O moon, show us your face!”

“Listen to her. She is mad,” I say to my mother and Rhuven.

“Nay, Albia,” says Mother. “For if the moon does not appear, then it means that the god of night has usurped the moon goddess. That is why the seasons fail and nature is out of joint.”

“I fear this is my lord and my lady’s doing,” Rhuven murmurs. “On that terrible night, I overheard her summon the god of night.”

“She called upon Blagdarc?” says Helwain in disbelief. “How did she come by such power?”

Rhuven’s whispering is lost to my ears. Then Helwain’s staff clatters against the stones like a lightning crack.

“By Guidlicht and all the gods! Are you saying that Macbeth and his lady—”

My mother interrupts. “Rhuven, why didn’t you stop them?”

“I did not understand, until it was too late!” Her voice trembles with tears.

“Ah, Macbeth was bound to act,” Helwain says knowingly. “And now Blagdarc rules through him, wrecking the order of nature.”

“Indeed there is nothing but misery with us,” Rhuven laments. “Sleep never comes to my lady, and she and my lord abuse each other. Luoch will not be ruled by Macbeth, saying the man is no father to him. The warriors who loved Duncan refuse to serve Macbeth. They drink and fight constantly. Horses thrash about in their stalls until they brain themselves. The lakes are frozen and even the seas are empty of fish.”

“What is to become of us all?” Mother murmurs.

The moon never shows her face. We trudge back home and fall asleep. When I wake up, Mother is sitting beside me, red-eyed, as if she has been crying all night.

“It is time to say farewell, my dear.”

“Where are you going?” I ask, rubbing my eyes.

Rhuven comes and takes my hands. “Geillis is not going away. You are.”

“Then where am
I
going?”

Helwain rears up from the shadows. “Away from here! You were not meant to live and die in the Wychelm Wood.” She waves her arms at me. “Go, find your own fate, let me grow old in peace.”

Stricken, I turn to my mother. She shakes her head.

“You cannot be happy here, Albia,” she says sadly. “Go with Rhuven. She knows a good man and his wife who will foster you in their household. There you will learn the customs of the world and how to find your way in it.”

“But how can you send me to live with strangers? I want to go to the shieling with Colum in the summers. I’ll miss the sheep!” Tears begin to roll down my face.

“It is for your own good,” says Mother, embracing me. “One day you will understand.”

I pull away from her and say coldly, “I cannot understand a mother who would send her own daughter away from home.”

“There is much that you do not understand,” says Helwain, frowning.

“Enough, sister!” Mother warns.

My few clothes are quickly packed on the horse that Rhuven and I will take turns riding. As we set out, I feel a stirring of anticipation, like the first time I went to the shieling. I will live with a real family! I might become friends with their children.

At the edge of the Wychelm Wood, we stop at Murdo’s cottage so I can say good-bye to Colum. He greets us with a puzzled look on his face.

“Are you going on a journey? At this time of year?”

“Rhuven is taking me to the town of Dunbeag. I will live in a thane’s castle, among all sorts of people. Will you take care of my sheep until I come home?”

“You know I will watch them as if they were mine. But why must you go?” His face clouds over.

I choke back sudden tears. “Don’t ask. I will miss you, Colum.”

“Dunbeag is only a day’s journey. I will visit you, if summer ever comes again.”

Rhuven is talking to Murdo, who strokes his beard and nods. I hear her asking him to look after her sisters. I feel a stab of guilt that I didn’t even try to persuade Mother that she needed me. Why? Because I want to leave, and for that I feel even worse.

“What is wrong?” says Colum. “What are you thinking?”

“Of my poor mother!” I sigh, then shake my head stubbornly. “But I am not deserting her, for she
sent
me away!”

“Don’t be sore. You are a fledged bird now, almost grown. Why, in two years you will be as old as I am now,” he says, thrusting out his chest.

“And in two years you will be a man,” I say, smiling despite myself. “Is that a beard on your cheeks?” I reach up playfully to touch his face.

He takes my hands in his and with a sudden move spins me around so that I am pinned in his arms. He picks me up and I scream.

“I don’t want to wrestle now. Put me down!” I laugh and twist in his arms.

“Albia, my lambkin, don’t think you can run away from me! I’ll come after you and bring you home to the flock.”

The sensation of Colum’s arms about me lingers long after he sets me down, and I feel less alone as Rhuven and I follow the glen southward towards Dunbeag. The frozen grass crunches underfoot. I know I will see Colum again, but for now I am leaving behind want and worry and fearsome wolves for something unknown but new and therefore promising. The brisk pace warms me, stirring up hopeful thoughts like brew in a kettle.

Then in my mind I see Mother’s worn-looking face and the sadness in her eyes when I did not return her farewell embrace. Regret washes over me. What kind of daughter am I? I should stay by her side, Helwain be damned, and love her to the end, like a good daughter.

Chapter 9

Dunbeag

Albia

Weak winter sun shines on a cluster of turf houses in the valley of the River Findhorn. Thin strands of smoke drift from the roof-holes.

“Why, Rhuven, this is no more than a village!” I say, disappointed.

“Aye, but Dunbeag is important.” She points to the top of the hill, where a large timber fort overlooks the huddled houses. “This is the seat of Banquo, chief of the king’s army in these northern shires. He is an honest and kindly man who will protect you.”