Lady Macbeth's Daughter Read Free

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