As will become abundantly clear, not all the words in this chapter are mine :)
The growing autumn cold broke for a day, and the sun beats down on Daryl's back as he returns from hunting by way of the stream below camp. Breaking through the brush Daryl finds Beth bathing nude in the swimming hole. The water is deep where she stands, but as she splashes and scrubs, and drifts weightless in the current, glimpses of her flesh, her curves and angles, appear in flashes through the water. Daryl shoulders his gear and crosses through the shallowest portion of the stream, stepping over the trip wires and moving sure-footed between the rocks. On their home embankment, he unloads the crossbow and his haul of rabbits and squirrels and seats himself on a large rock on the shore beside her. "You know," he says to her, wryly offhand, "you got a handful o' pairs of eyes on you, tryin' not to look," his head jerks slightly to the camp's ledge above them. Beth's eyes neither follow nor does her stance or position in the pool much alter.
"I know," with the slightest push off from her toes Beth glides her body through the cold narrow deep, feeling the current as it beats and pulls against her legs.
Daryl chokes on a chuckle and his eyebrows raise. "You do?"
"I don't think they mean anything by it." Knees bent and crouched in the river, Beth splashes the icy water on her arms, underarms, and neck. His eyes on her, Daryl appreciates the slight curve and heft of her white breasts, and the pertness of her rosy nipples as they sometimes unguarded bob into view. With her trim frame and lean limbs and everything else between she's making a beautiful scene as she bathes solitary in the deep running water.
"Interesting take, girl." Daryl pulls his knife and picks the muck and pebbles from the treads of his boots as he waits. "So," he glances at her, "you thought: 'Go with it'?"
Beth's eyes drift to where the boys had been, then lowers herself to mid-chin depth. She sucks the cold water into her mouth and slowly lets it spout across the surface from her lips. "They were kids," she says, watching the water-rings she makes, "when this all changed."
"You too," Daryl points out gruffly, his eyes wrinkling some as he looks at her in the sunlight and the black-blue ripples of water.
"They're sweet." Unceremoniously she ducks her head backward into the water. "There isn't any harm."
"Not sure who you are, Greene," he tells her with a trace of bemusement. Rising, Daryl grabs her shirt from the rocky shore and backhanded chucks it to her, prompting her to raise not just her arm but her chest above the waterline to catch it. "They'll have good dreams," is all he says more. It's not exactly the first time this has come up. In the early days in camp, the first week for sure, Michael and Simon had been unwittingly stopped short when they'd unexpectedly happened upon the view of her undressing in her hut, back before the roof had been fully completed and lined. He'd judged they hadn't planned it, but when Daryl came upon them it was the flat side of his hunting blade he'd used to gently turn their heads. "Best look a different way," he'd muttered then walked on. Beth hadn't registered their gaze that time, and now, above them, there's no longer any sign of Rob, or Tom, or John. He doesn't think he can fault them, but Daryl thinks back on all the time he's spent with new groups, integrating with new people, and how none of it was spent ogling women. He might have glanced once in Andrea's direction and those tight jeans when he and Merle had first joined up with the Atlanta group, but the novelty gave way to the urgency of survival. Knowing the women, living with them, made it hard to look, and the walkers made it pointless. He hadn't looked again until Beth Greene had asked him to. But not everyone has the hang-ups he does.
He looks at her there, clutching her balled shirt in one hand but still contentedly submerged, making no move to extract herself from the pool. There's a teasing sort of glint in her as she watches him. "Are you coming in?"
Daryl takes a few steps back to the water's edge and scoops up a handful to slurp a drink from. "'m clean enough." When Beth laughs at this, more than a little, Daryl turns from his path and looks at her, expression arched, "That funny to you?" Dipping herself to the tip of her nose to drown her laugh, Beth nods. "Yeah?" he takes a step, swinging the crossbow down to the stream to knock a splash in her direction. He smiles at her, then steps back. "Don't go drownin' 'r anythin'. An' don't freeze, that damn water's cold."
Having no purpose for it yet, Beth chucks her shirt back in his direction and dips lower beneath the surface. "A body can get used to anything, you know." Once more her head arches backward under water and rises some with a smile. "It feels good."
"Yeh? You gonna sing about it?"
Though he doesn't mind entertaining the notion of joining her, or what's more, of moving with her some ways down the riverbank, somewhere secluded, and watching her lower herself onto his lap — the thought is lovely; it's been some weeks since they've been together — Daryl leaves her to enjoy her icy bath. He takes up his game and makes instead for the steep slope back up to camp. "Ya got your knife on ya?" he asks before making his ascent. She doesn't bother to answer but does indicate the large rock behind her against the ridge where the sharpened black-handled blade lies. "Keep it in sight."
The blanket falls from Beth's shoulder as she holds the book closer to her eyes in the dim light, "'His flight was madness: when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.'"
"'You know not,'" John answers, rubbing his eye, "'whether it was his wisdom or his fear.'"
"'Wisdom?'" Beth questions in tragic incredulous despair. "'To leave his wife, to leave his babes? His mansion and his titles in a place from whence himself does fly? He loves us not,'" her voice shudders with heartbreak. "'He wants the natural touch—'" Her Lady Macduff is affecting as she reads, and now — as the scene continues between her and John's Thane of Ross, with Simon taking the part of the young Macduff child — like so many times before during their readings, their entertainment transforms to something real, palpable and moving. The boys have collected four copies of Shakespeare's plays and sometimes spend the evenings (or too-hot days), collected together, reading the parts. It passes the time, broadens the stories in their heads, and even the tragedies give respite from the world they live in.
Peter completes the lines of the hurried messenger, "'—be not found here; hence, with your little ones. To fright you thus, methinks, I am too savage; to do worse to you were fell cruelty, which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you! I dare abide no longer.'"
Attention is taut, rooted to the tension of the drama. Beth speaks the lines, desperate, pitiable. "'Whither should I fly? I have done no harm.'" All ears strain to hear the story, willing a resolution they have little hope will come. Daryl's head is dropped over his crossed arms as he listens, letting the words take form about him. "'But I remember now,'" Beth reflects miserably, "'I am in this earthly world; where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly: Why then, alas, do I put up that womanly defense to say 'I have done no harm'?'" In the closing darkness, Lady Macduff's misfortune, given weight by Beth's own knowledge of fears and helplessness, renders the Scottish ghost story more haunting than perhaps it ever had been in the centuries since its drafting. The resonating silence is broken by the violent banging of a log against the ground – Peter's sound effect for the intrusion of the three strangers into the scene, into the stronghold meant to protect the pregnant Lady Macduff and her small children. Fearful, Beth's character looks around, fearful in the firelight, "'What are these faces?'"
"'Where is your husband?'" Rob's voice curdles as the first murderer. The tension mounts.
Beth's answer comes defenseless but defiant, "'I hope, in no place so unsanctified where such as thou may'st find him.'"
"'He's a traitor,'" Rob growls in character.
"'Thou liest, thou shag-hair'd villain!'" Simon exclaims as the young son.
"'What, you egg!'" Absent of premeditation Rob pulls his knife for effect, and in the flicker of the fire the blade glimmers in the motion of a quick horizontal slash. "'Young fry of treachery!'"
"'He has kill'd me, mother,'" Simon gasps. "'Run away, I pray you!'"
"He dies," Peter narrates solemnly.
"'Murderer!'" Beth's Lady Macduff hurls.
"The scene ends—" Peter's stage directions continue "—with the three cutthroats closing in around the lady and her smaller babes."
"Christ," Daryl murmurs. "All dead?" He'd never known just how real a 400-year-old piece of fiction could get it, how close to home such old words could strike.
The group takes a breath, and then four pages turn together. "Act four, scene three," Peter reads. "England, the King's palace."
James takes up the role of Malcolm, "'Let us seek out some desolate shade, and there weep our sad bosoms empty.'"
"'Let us rather,'" Pete responds as the hero Macduff, "'hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men bestride our down-fall'n birthdom: each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face, that it resounds as if it felt with Scotland and yell'd out like syllable of dolour.'"
The dramatic irony builds until three quarters through the scene John's Thane Ross has to reveal, "'Your castle is surprised, your wife and babes savagely slaughter'd. To relate the manner, were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer, to add the death of you.'"
"'Merciful heaven!'" James' Malcolm emotes. "'What, man! Ne'er pull your hat upon your brows; give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.'" Somewhere in the circle, Michael nods.
Peter's emotion as a grief-stricken Macduff strikes a chord with all, "'My children too?'"
John nods, speaking the lines. "'Wife, children, servants, all that could be found.'"
Heavily the scene continues as the mourning Macduff struggles to reconcile himself with the loss of his family — "'He has no children. All my pretty ones? Did you say all?'" — and avows to "'—feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, that were most precious to me. Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?'" In anguish he takes on the burden of the guilt of his family's deaths, battling with Malcolm who urges him to action.
"'Be this the whetstone of your sword,'" James presses as the exiled prince, Malcolm, "'let grief convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.'"
"Uh,huh," Rob can't keep himself from interjecting.
Smiling, James refocuses and completes the scene, "'Receive what cheer you may: The night is long that never finds the day.'"
There's a collective release when the scene ends. All present stretch and breathe. "Man…" Michael sighs.
"They're gonna march, huh?" Tom says, looking into the diminishing fire. "Take it to Macbeth, and take back the country?"
"C'n they get to him though? Think about it—" Simon says "—he's got spies all over."
"Yeah," Rob agrees, "but look at it— he's killing all his Thanes, the people're livin' in fear, an' the only people loyal to him are the ones too blind to see the difference between the title and the man. He's weak."
"He doesn't see it that way," Daryl's gruffly quiet voice breaks in. "People get scared; they'll follow a sociopath if they think he's strong e'nough to lead 'em. This Macbeth ain't going t' yield." He flicks a twig into the blaze. "He can't turn back."
"Naw," John argues, continuing the tactical analysis as though the battles of the story are ones in which they'll be engaging. "That arrogance 's what'll bring 'im down. Not as untouchable as he thinks."
Daryl scratches and tugs at his beard, "Nobody's as untouchable as they think."
A beat passes, though no one takes the remark too strongly; it isn't as though it's not a truth they don't know. It's an irrevocable truth. They know it. They live it.
Peter takes a breath. "One more?" They nod, throw a little more brush onto the fire, switch around the book copies, and read. "Okay," he clears his throat. "Right, act five, scene one, Macbeth's keep at Dunsinane, an ante-room in the castle. Night. Daryl reading the physician, Mikey the lady in waiting, and Beth resuming the role of Lady Macbeth."
Daryl clears his throat takes up the heavy book in one hand, brings it nearer his eyes, and opens the scene. "'I have two nights watched with you, but c'n per'ceive no truth in your report. When was it she last walked?'"
Michael answers and the two dialogue back and forth some, setting up one of the most iconic scenes from the play. The boys have kept themselves busy with books and plays since their early days in camp. They began with Moby Dick, taking turns with chapters, and went on to Through the Looking Glass, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Great Gatsby, Othello, Lonesome Dove, The Tempest, The Sound and the Fury, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. It not only passes the time, but it also gives them something to talk about other than camp upkeep and the past.
In character, Beth distantly laments, "'The thane of Fife had a wife: Where is she now? — What? Will these hands ne'er be clean? — No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that, you mar all with this starting.'"
"'Go to, go to,'" Daryl commands huskily and in his own time to Michael's servant character. "'You 've known what you should not.'"
Beth's bloody haunted soliloquy brings to life the complexities of guilt and death and self-preservation. She layers in empathy and steeliness, great remorse and plagued resignation, acting the part with skill, but with her own emotions kept privately at bay. The images of blood bear far less weight now than they did when those who did among these nine readers first studied the speech in high school classrooms, but the regret, mighty and unrelenting, is a reality that permeates their time. With the sleep-walking scene ended the group retires for the night, with Peter staying up to keep first watch.
Beth walks close to Daryl as they make for bed. Beneath the cloud of campfire smoke lingering over both of them, she still smells clean and fresh from her bath earlier in the day, and he breathes her in readily. Once in bed, teeth brushed and bed clothes changed, she presses into him, her closed eyelids fluttering under the sensation of his fingertips running lightly through her hair. "Dark story," he murmurs.
"Mm,hm…"
"Seems like," he rubs at his eye, "there might be lighter things t' read."
"I know…" she yawns, "but still— it's kind of... wonderful. And—" she yawns again, her eyes growing heavy, as his do also, "you know it's gonna end — story's terror can't go on f'rever—" She's barely audible now, so tired and drained is she "— can't say that now 'bout much..."
Daryl holds her close. It's true. There may be more hope in this dark story than in the world as it stands, but he wouldn't have thought made up words on a page could cut so close, take the shape of something so near to real. Breathing in, he shuts out the world, both terrible and imagined, and holds on to what is most real to him. Daryl yawns into a kiss at her temple and shuts his eyes, her slowing steady breaths setting the pace for his. "G'night."
"Wheee-wheewwww," a sharp whistle jolts them awake. "Heads up!" Peter calls. "Walkers, fifteen yards!"