Lady Macbeth's Daughter (9 page)

So I am to stay with Banquo, the man I glimpsed with Macbeth on Wanluck Mhor! I hide my surprise, for as far as Rhuven knows, I was asleep while she and her sisters danced and greeted Macbeth, then argued about Helwain’s promises to him.

“Protect me from whom?” I ask.

Rhuven ignores my question. “Banquo’s wife needs a companion. The advantages of such a position can be great, as you see.” She spreads her arms for me to admire her soft woolen gown. “A gift from the queen, whom I have served since she was a mere girl.”

“Do Banquo and his wife have children?” I ask.

“A son who is near manhood. Their daughter died lately. She was your age.”

Do they expect me to replace her?
Anxious, I follow Rhuven up the hill.

Banquo reminds me of a bear with his large hands, short, wide body, and bushy brown beard. His laugh even sounds like a growl, though a friendly one. He welcomes me with a wide smile. His wife Breda, on the other hand, is thin, sharp-featured, and cold. The hand she extends feels limp and damp as it touches mine, and her eyes dart around to avoid meeting mine. I know at once she does not want me in her home.

Rhuven whispers to me, “I will bring you some clothes when I come back. She doesn’t seem the generous type.” Her parting advice is brief. “Always remember to say ‘Aye, my lady’ or ‘Aye, my lord.’ ”

Compared to the roundhouse with its low walls and soot-blackened interior, the thane’s fort is spacious, clean, and comfortable. Rush mats cover the floors, and heavy woven cloth hangs on the walls to keep in the warmth. The windows have shutters, and the ceilings are made of real timber. At one end of the house stands a wide hearth where the cooking is done, and at the opposite end is a smaller hearth, so that all the rooms in between are warmed.

Breda leads me up the narrow steps to a tiny room with a single window under the slanting roof. It holds a heather-stuffed mattress and baskets for storage. There I stay for the rest of the day, afraid to come down until I am bidden. I smell fish cooking, and fresh bread, but no one comes to offer me food. I lie down upon my mattress and think of Mother, until I begin to cry from loneliness and hunger. Finally sleep overtakes me.

In the morning I open my eyes to see a surly-faced boy frowning down at me. He nudges my leg with his foot.

“I am no servant, you know,” he says. “It’s just this one time I’ll bring you something to eat.”

I sit up and take the plate of cold fish and the flour cake he thrusts at me.

“Then who are you?” I ask.

“Fleance, son of Banquo,” he replies with a look that suggests I am stupid not to know him. He does resemble the thane, with his thick brown hair and sturdy build.

“My name is Albia,” I offer, trying to smile. But already I dislike this ill-bred carl.

“Our little fosterling,” he says with a sneer. “Here to share the family hearth and fill my mother’s empty heart. Couldn’t my father have chosen a lass who was bonny?”

How do I even reply? I know my dress is rough and my hair untidy. But am I really so plain? Tears start into my eyes. Not all boys are as kind as Colum; this is the first lesson life at Dunbeag teaches me.

A sharp voice sounds from below. “Fleance! Send her down here now.”

I scramble to my feet and stumble down the steep stairs. There Breda stands with a look in her ice-blue eyes that makes me feel guilty, though I have done nothing wrong.

“You are to eat with us, pray with us, and at all other times busy yourself with spinning, weaving, cooking, and whatever I shall require of you,” she says. Her voice is harsh and her tongue gives the familiar words a strange shape.

“Aye, my lady,” I reply as Rhuven advised.

“And you shall call us ‘Mother’ and ‘Father,’ for my husband wishes it,” she says. Her nostrils flare with dislike.

“Aye, my lady. I mean . . . Mother.” I no more want to call her that than she wants to hear it.

“Ha!” Fleance’s sudden laugh is like the bark of a hound.

“Away with you!” Breda says to him. “And don’t come back without a deer to feed us. Even if you must trespass on the king’s land.”

Fleance and Banquo leave for the hunt, and my hours with Breda pass with little conversation. I watch her weave on a loom the size of a doorway. The frame leans against a wall and its warp threads are held down with clay weights. With fast fingers she passes the shaft back and forth between the vertical woolen threads.

“I have never seen a loom like that,” I finally say.

“I brought it with me from Norway.”

I wonder if all people from over the seas have such pale blue eyes and hair the color of ripening wheat.

“Why did you come to Scotland?”

“I was brought here. To be his wife.” Breda says no more, but jerks the weft threads tight. I notice that the cloth she weaves is bordered by a delicate gray band, like a cloud skimming the horizon.

When Banquo and Fleance return from the hunt, the quiet house suddenly rings with noise and life.

“Breda, my wife!” shouts Banquo, striding into the room, his tunic splattered with blood. He kisses her loudly, then turns to me. “And Albia, my girl.” With his huge hand he touches my head and I smile for the first time today.

Fleance follows his father, carrying a bow. “Mother, I did as you bade me,” he says eagerly. “It was I who brought down the doe even as she ran for the trees. My arrow caught her in the neck.”

“That is a good son,” she says without smiling.

My heart stirs with pity for the doe. I hate Fleance for being proud of killing such a noble creature.

That venison feast is the first I eat while seated at a table. With Mother and Helwain I am used to eating from a common bowl that rests on our knees. But at Dunbeag we each have our own platter. I am startled by the greed with which Banquo and Fleance devour their food, smacking their lips and cracking bones with their teeth. Banquo’s beard is greasy with bits of food. Her lips pressed tightly together, Breda reaches over and wipes it clean with a cloth, and Banquo laughs, making the table shake.

Before retiring at night, Banquo makes everyone in the household kneel while he speaks into his folded hands, calling upon “the Lord God and his only begotten son, Jesus” again and again. The image of a mighty warrior and his son comes to my mind. They must be the same gods that Colum’s priest worships. Banquo and his family have probably never heard of Neoni and Guidlicht and the four worlds.

“And Lord God we thank you for bringing into our midst Albia, this daughter for us to foster as you do care for us. Amen.”

Surprised to hear my own name, I glance over at the great bear of a man, his face bowed to the earth. A feeling of warmth spreads over me.
Is this what it is like to have a father?

I lower my head so that no one can see my trembling chin.

Spring comes to Dunbeag reluctant as a wayward child. A pallid sun barely shines, no rain falls, and the plants that poke from the hard ground are more yellow than green. Some trees and bushes do not bloom at all. In the town of Dunbeag, a dozen sheep and goats are stillborn and people are still dying from winter’s diseases. Or worse, they kill each other. The stonecutter’s wife poisoned her husband to put an end to his beatings, and a crofter stabbed his neighbor in a dispute. Banquo prays to his God for relief, asking that the grip of Satan—who must be the god of their Under-world—be loosened from us.

I overhear Banquo complaining to Breda that King Macbeth has seized more land from his thanes, worsening the people’s want. Now it is a crime for anyone in Dunbeag to hunt in the nearby forests as they always have, to farm the Findhorn Valley, or to pasture their sheep there. Banquo turns a blind eye to those who use the king’s lands, for he hunts there himself. But he cannot ignore Macbeth’s demand for more warriors equipped with new armor and horses. To satisfy his king, Banquo must press his tenants for their rents and tax the villagers. If he were not such a good and generous man, the people of Dunbeag would grumble even more.

I, too, feel a loyalty to Banquo because of his kindness to me. Like a favored hound fed on marrow-filled bones, I want to please him.

“Do you have a kiss for your foster father, my daughter?” he asks, and I oblige him, finding a bare spot high on his bearded cheek. He smells of smoke and sweat and, sometimes, stale food. Whenever he brings a gift for Breda, he brings one for me as well. My favorite is a shiny brass buckle decorated with knots and the figure of a bird. I wear it on my belt every day.

Fleance is as rude to me as his father is kind. He sees that I sometimes limp and calls me a “hirple-foot,” an insult I endure in pained silence. I wonder if Fleance is cruel because his father is rough with him and his mother cold and distant. Even so, that does not excuse his meanness.

Twice a week the village priest climbs the hill to Dunbeag to teach Fleance and me something called Latin. It twists my tongue into knots. Fleance, who has had lessons for years, calls me a lame-brain. He has taken to staring at my chest as if trying to see my breasts growing beneath my dress. The priest notices my shame and steps between us, his white hair like a cloud encircling his head. With infinite patience he teaches me to recognize the strange marks and the sounds they represent. Using a quill pen I learn to form letters, then words, but none of them make sense. One day at the tiny church at Dunbeag, while Breda and the other worshippers stare blankly at the cross, I realize that I understand the prayers the priest intones. It is as amazing as hearing words in the sighs of the wind and the melodies of birds.

This priest is a moral man and a lover of learning, with a pretty wife in the village and two children. He loves to tell about the past, when the powerful Picts ruled, battling the Scots, the Romans, and the other barbarians, until Ninian and Columba arrived and vanquished all enemies with their single god. Then they planted stone crosses for the people to worship. After that, the great Kenneth MacAlpin united the Scots and the Picts, and our land became known as the kingdom of Alba.

“Knowest thou,” the priest adds in his learned manner, “that thy name, Albia, is akin to
alba,
the Latin word for ‘white,’ and thus signifies goodness and virtue?” Then he murmurs, more to himself than to me, “Though our country’s whiteness is marred by the evil and strife afoot in the land.” He looks at me sharply. “Never let thy goodness be so stained! Ask thou the Lord God’s help.” He touches his forehead, then his chest and each of his shoulders, an odd series of gestures he often makes.

“I will. I promise,” I whisper, thinking he is warning me about Fleance.

A cold and sunless summer follows the barren spring. I am sitting outdoors, using small tablets to weave a braid to decorate the hem of a dress. The warp threads attach to my belt, pass through the tablets, and are secured to a timber post. The wind lifts my hair, which has grown long enough to reach my lap as I bend over my work. In the yard beside the fort, Banquo is training his warriors, and I hear shouts and the clash of swords.

Then Fleance and another fellow stumble into my sight, straining against each other in a contest of might. They wear nothing more than linen clouts over their loins. Their arms and torsos gleam with sweat. Thinking that the priest would not approve of my watching, I peek through the curtain of my hair. With a mighty heave Fleance throws off his opponent, who falls on his back with a grunt of pain. Fleance kneels on his chest and pins his arms against the ground.

“That’s two out of three for me, and I’m more fit than you for the king’s army,” he says loudly. Then he lets the fellow get up and hobble away.

Fleance looks over and catches me watching him. I lower my gaze, but it is too late. He saunters over and stands before me.

“Did you see how I wrestled that carl to the ground? He has ten years on me.”

I keep my eyes on my weaving. Fleance must not see that his show of strength did impress me. “I think he let you win,” I say with a shrug.

Fleance scowls. “What makes you think you can disdain me so? I am not ill-favored, am I? Look at me.” He holds out his sinewed arms, then crosses them over his chest. “I am the son of the king’s best general. And who are you? Nobody! You don’t even have a father.”