The rat, its small black eyes bright against its matted brown fur,
poked its nose out of the small chamber it was hiding in. Seeing no one
around, it skittered across the chamber's roof. Its paws clacked on ivory
bone and then sunk into the soft padding of rotted flesh as it scurried out
of the eye hole and across the half eaten expanse of the skull. Finding a
satisfactory spot, the plump rodent stopped, and sunk its teeth into the
nourishing gray flesh readily available for consumption. Ignore the rank
smell and plentiful rot, it gnawed happily at the decayed corpse.
Suddenly, the rat itself joined its meal in death as a heavy new
body, thrown on top of the rat's meal, and squashed its tiny life away.
The new addition to the pile of rotting bodies was recently deceased, its
skin not yet marred by the cold stiffness of death.
One of the living stood a short distance away from the gruesome pile
of soulless flesh. The man, once a well know doctor, stared at the proof
of his failure. It had just been a childhood disease that had killed so
many of the once proud castle's inhabitants. A childhood disease that
apparently so many of the nobility, having never been exposed to bad food
or water, had never developed immunity towards in childhood.
They had all died, while he, with the other members of the servant
class, had watched. The noble fighters found themselves defeated by an
honor less foe on who even the sharpest sword wouldn't leave a scratch.
The doctor sighed, rubbing eyes that had been denied the pleasure of sleep
for too long, dull orbs that reflected the scene before him. He turned and
walked towards the chamber of his last surviving patient.
The creaking of the floor harmonized with the creaking hinges to sing
the chamber's inhabitant's funeral hymn of the near future. The doctor
entered the room, pausing momentarily at the threshold, taken aback by the
heavy sickroom air he had never been able to become accustomed to. His
wondering eyes came to rest on the gaunt figure resting on the bed in the
center of the ominous chamber. The gray, moist walls of the room matched
the pallor of the figures skin, and patient's frail frame seemed barely
able to support the harsh weight of the pile of blankets nearly covering
him.
The doctor approached the bed; the tapping of his boots joining the
sound of the figure's rasping breaths in filling the burdensome silence
with heavy rhythms. The scrawny neck, blue veins evident beneath
translucent grey flesh, turned towards the approaching doctor.
"Doctor." came the croaking gasp, a glorious instrument rusted away
to a mere shadow of its former beauty, justly reflecting the decrepit state
of its owner. The figure struggled to sit up, and with a gasp fell back
again.
"My lord," the doctor replied with a weary bow of his head. He could
feel Death's dark presence near, a seductive promise of welcoming night and
eternal rest. Yearning for the gray release from a world of too sharp
colors and reality, his mind reached longingly for the visitor's gentle
path, all the while knowing that he was only the spectator to the
embarkment of so many into the gentle dusk. He knew his time had not yet
arrived; his day was still bright, the last colors of sunset barely
beginning to streak the bright sky. A sudden cough brought the medical man
back to the not yet departed patient prone before him.
"Please," came the grinding voice from beneath the mountainous pile
of cloth. A hand, the bones just barely covered by skin's thin blanket,
reached for the nearby table. On it sat a monstrous gold crown, just
barely out of reach of the grasping appendage. The doctor picked it up and
handed it to the man to whom it belonged. The burdensome weight of the
golden onus was too much for the atrophied muscles of the dying man, so
with his last strength he rested it on the precarious support of his well
covered chest.
"When I die..." came the last breath of the man, "you must make sure
the kingship is passed on well. "Our goals for Scotland must be realized.
So we appoint Banquo's heir as the new king, and he will rule well. Will
you make sure that this is so for us?" He looked at the doctor, an unusual
pleading in the hopeless eyes of one who has become used to ordering
instead of asking.
"I will my lord" came the reply. The doctor didn't have the heart to
tell the dying king that Fleance, last of Banquo's line had died several
days earlier, shortly after the castle was quarantined the words drifted
through the air towards bed as Malcolm, king of Scotland joined Death on
his distance less journey.
The doctor clutched his head in his hands as he sat inside the
defeated fortress. The king had been taken without an heir, the kingdom
ruined. Nobles would fight for generations to gain the crown. A sudden
impulse seized the fatigued man. Feeling Death's hand reaching towards
him, inviting him to join the dark parade down the shadowed path, he
grabbed one of the nearby torches. Frantically, he spread the fire. The
table burned, the blankets, the bodies. Then, he threw the flaming torch
out of the nearby slitted window. Below, bodies, hay, furniture, all
joined him on his funeral pyre. And the light from the fiery fortress lit
up the night like a small sun, illuminating all around it.
A short distance from the castle, Lady Macbeth watched the fire rage
with a tight lipped smile plastered on her grimy face.