"You should eat."
"I'm not hungry."
Lady Macbeth sighed as she pulled her cloak around her shoulders, the black fur settling like a reaper's shroud. Her pale fingers fastened the jeweled broach at the base of her throat, and then fluttered about her face, smoothing back strands of raven hair. "You'll need your strength, husband." she murmured, turning away from the ornate mirror to face him. "Today of all days."
Macbeth acquiesced, reaching for a bread loaf that the Gentlewoman had brought up earlier for breakfast. His large hands dwarfed it as he tore off a chunk. He chewed for a second, his brow tense as little crumbs dusted his russet beard. "It's no good," he said, tossing the mangled loaf back onto the tarnished tray. "I haven't the appetite for it." His big hands curled into fists as he spoke, and he blinked for a long moment, a rattling breath harshly escaping his lungs.
Lady Macbeth smiled in grimly, stepping towards her husband. Her hands brushed the scattered bread crumbs from his beard and lovingly came to rest on his broad shoulders.
"It's no good, my dear." he repeated in a whisper so quiet that she almost missed it. It was not the proud, haughty voice of her warrior husband that left his mouth, but the exhausted lamenting of an old man.
"You are going to be fine," Lady Macbeth said soothingly. She tried to meet his hazel eyes with her dark gaze, but her husband only stared at the stone floor beneath their feet. "It will be but an hour, perhaps less. That's it."
Macbeth jerked away from her touch and braced his hands on the wall with a sudden roar of frustration. The decorative tapestries swayed haphazardly on their pegs. "I fear having to keep myself together for a single second, yet you beg of me an hour?"
Silence followed the echoes of his cry, and Lady Macbeth sat down on their bed, the rich brocade of her gown spilling about her legs like a pool of ink. "No." she said finally, the word slipping from her tongue like venom. "No, my lord, I do not beg it of you. I demand it of you."
Macbeth turned on his wife with a wild glare. "Do you not understand what you ask of me, spiteful woman?" he bellowed, grabbing the bed's towering post with such ferocity that the wood groaned beneath his strength.
"Yes," Lady Macbeth hissed, unfazed by his outburst as he towered over her willowy frame. "I've asked you to treat Banquo as you would any other man you've slayed. You've taken many lives, husband. Tell me, would you have sniveled like a girl over the grave of Macdonwald?"
"Banquo was my friend!" Macbeth shouted. His knuckles were white around the bedpost, but relaxed as a sobbed sigh tore through his mighty body. "My only friend!" The bitter words caught in his throat.
"Yet you murdered him." Lady Macbeth said softly, rising once more to her feet so that she was but a handspan's distance from her husband's heaving, angry chest. Her flinty stare held no compassion, just accusatory malice. "You chose not to consult me on the matter when you had Banquo killed. And the thing is, my lord, you didn't even do it properly! Do you think Fleance will not seek revenge when he guesses who paid your half-witted assassins?"
"I didn't consult you because I wanted you innocent of such a horrible deed!"
Lady Macbeth snarled a terrible smile. "Innocent?" A harsh laugh left her red lips. "We are in this together, husband. Any scrap of innocence was tossed to the wolves a long time ago."
Macbeth cursed, turning from his wife, running a hand through his auburn hair and pulling at the roots in frustration. "I need a drink." he muttered after a moment, reaching for the jug of wine that accompanied their breakfast.
Lady Macbeth's thin, pale arm shot out with the speed of a viper, knocking her husband's reaching hand to the side. "Not today, my love," she said coldly. "You had quite enough of that swill at the banquet."
"You would have me face the worst day of my life with sobriety?" Macbeth snorted incredulously. "You are a terrible woman." Again he reached for the carafe, pushing his wife aside.
Lady Macbeth stiffened and clenched her jaw, her lips disappearing into a furious line. "I will not have you screaming at ghosts like a child again in your drunkenness." she said firmly, her clawed fingers clenched around his wrist. "Not when suspicion threatens us from every corner."
Macbeth laughed harshly and pulled out of her grasp. "A king does not take orders from his wife."
Lady Macbeth's lip curled. With a shriek of anger she snatched the wine from the tray and flung it to the stone floor. The ceramic carafe shattered with a deafening crack, and blood-red wine splashed to soak the hems of the gown and cloak of Lord and Lady Macbeth. For a moment, neither spoke as the scarlet rivulets seeped along the mortar, puddling in the pits and grooves of the stone.
Lady Macbeth let out a shaky breath and reached for her husband, her touch gentle and desperate now that her boiling anger had erupted. She grabbed his hand with her own cool ones, and brought it to rest at her rapidly-beating heart. "My lord," she whispered in a voice laced with exhaustion, looking up at him with obsidian eyes. "You have to trust me."
Macbeth sighed wearily and lowered his great head, resting his brow on that of his wife. "I think we're in over our heads, dear." he murmured into her silky tresses.
She raised her arm to stroke the rusty curls at the nape of his neck. "This is but one day, one hour," she whispered comfortingly. "And then no one will doubt our rule."
She pulled away from Macbeth and reached to grab the tartan cloak that had been laid out for him upon the bed. She draped the broad swath of red and blue plaid over his shoulders, smoothing away creases in the heavy ancestral cloth. "There will come a time, husband," she said starkly, "When more men will have to die, for we have risen to such a lofty position that we cannot afford to fall now."
"I rue the day that I slew Duncan." Macbeth groaned. "For he gets to be eternally at peace, while I live like a fox fleeing from hounds."
"Aye, but the fox is crafty," Lady Macbeth smiled. "I do not tell you this to frighten you, but so that you will muster your courage. We will face many trials, and blood may spill as readily as the wine beneath our feet, but I will always be by your side."
Macbeth smirked nervously. "What happened to that shy, quiet young girl I married so many years ago?"
Lady Macbeth did not return his smile, her expression growing mournful as she fastened his golden brooch. She grasped his hands again, taking a deep breath.
"I have failed you, husband." Her sad words struck his heart as she gazed at him with dark beauty that still caused his breath to catch, even in its aging. "I cannot give you strong sons to bear your name, nor wild-haired lasses to gift with ponies and dresses. I cannot birth an heir strong enough to survive its first winter, much less further your clan."
Macbeth tried to interrupt his wife, but she hushed him with a slender finger over his lips. "My mother's milk is surely venom, for I can make you the master of no family." She took a deep breath with wet eyelashes, meeting her husband's eyes with her black gaze.
"But I made you King of Scotland instead," she said, the rumble of a storm brewing in her voice. A raven cawed in the distance, and a chilled wind swept through the open window into the bedchamber, causing tendrils of charcoal hair to dance about her sharp cheekbones."I made you the master of a kingdom and myself a queen, and I will die before I let anyone take that away from us."
Macbeth's hands rose to cradle his wife's face in awe. She was beautiful, he'd always known that. But the promise of power that glittered in her onyx eyes and the ambitious poetry that bled from her mouth went to his head quicker than any whisky. He would willingly wade into the deepest cesspools of madness if he could enter with her hand entwined with his.
The freezing wind brought with it the muted tones of bagpipes, and Lady Macbeth gently removed herself from her husband's hold to look down the tower to the castle's courtyard. Illuminated in the dawn light was the shining black coffin. The first mourners had already arrived, dressed in somber colors as they reached into the open coffin to touch the body one last time. Although she could not see Banquo's face from the distance, Lady Macbeth could make out the green and red blur of his tartan. "Are you ready, my king?" she asked.
Macbeth took a steadying breath and nodded, holding out his arm for his wife. "Let the fox hunt begin."