Lady Macbeth's Daughter by Lisa Klein Page B

cupping my elbows. He presses upward, bunching the cloth of my sleeves until he is holding me by the shoulders. There he stops and regards me, his eyebrows raised, mutely asking, May I?
    I feel the tingling start up again beneath the girdle, deeper this time. I clap my hands against Fleance’s back. It is damp with sweat, and the muscles ripple beneath the skin. I pull him to me.
    Where is the harm?
    I press my lips as hard as I can against his. My teeth bump into his. He kisses me back and we almost fight to hold each other the tighter, until he lifts me off my feet. Soon I feel my strength begin to falter and release my arms, letting him hold me in the air, with nothing to ground me.

    Rhuven comes for me the very next day, like one of the priest’s angels who save those who are about to lose their souls. My pulse is still racing from kissing Fleance. How could Rhuven have known what happened between us?
    Of course she does not know. The reason she has come, she says, is that the pestilence infecting Scotland has reached the Wychelm Wood. My mother is very ill. In fact, she is dying.
    We leave Dunbeag at once. Even on Rhuven’s palfrey, we cannot travel fast enough to satisfy me. I yearn to see my mother. But my thoughts are also full of guilty desire for Fleance. When I fall asleep sitting up, I feel his hands on me and with a start realize that it is Rhuven holding me up as we ride.
    We stop for the night and I have a dream about Banquo. His face is pale beneath his beard, like a ghost’s. His look reproaches me as he whispers through bloodless lips, “Avenge me, daughter of evil!” The dream frightens me. It makes no sense. I ask Rhuven if Banquo is my father.
    “What gives you that idea?” she asks, looking at me as if I am crazy.
    “Never mind.” I decide to wait and ask Mother who my father is. But she is dying. What if we are too late?
    When we come to the edge of the wood, I leave Rhuven and run ahead. The spreading branches of the wychelms reach out to welcome me home, but they are leafless. The burn rushes along as always, but there are no flowers blooming on its banks, and the birds sing plaintive notes as if protesting the loss. The roundhouse looks darker and more ancient than before, as if it conceals an entrance to the Under-world. Helwain stands in the low doorway, her eyes sunken and her hands twitching. She says nothing, yet her eyes speak of the fear that her sister will die.
    Inside Mother lies, too weak to rise from her bed, yet glowing with gladness to see me. If she can smile so warmly, perhaps she is not dying after all! I kneel down and take her hand, and then I see that her skin is as thin and white as the bark of a birch tree.
    “Mother, I am sorry that I left you last time, without even a kiss!” The words tumble out of me. “But why did you send me away? You must have been sick even then. I should not have left you. Will you forgive me?”
    “There is nothing to forgive, daughter,” she says, shaking her head. “Tell me, are you happy at Dunbeag?”
    Like a child I am eager to tell her everything.
    “It is never dull there. I have learned to read and write. I can even fight with a sword. Don’t look surprised, it is more for the sport. The lady Breda dislikes me, but the lord Banquo is most kind and fatherly to me, and Fleance—” Here I blush. “He is . . . as rough as one would expect of a brother.”
    Mother smiles. “They are good people and will see that you are married well.” She closes her eyes.
    “Married? Mother, I have no wish to marry. I only want you to be well!” The tears fill my eyes, leaving her face a blur. “Helwain, can you cure her?”
    Helwain pays no attention to me. She is plying Rhuven for news of the king.
    “My lady suffers terrible dreams and wakes nightly, her clothes as wet as if she had fallen in the well,” says Rhuven, her face creased with distress. “She cries over and over, ‘What’s done is done and cannot be undone.’ Your