Macbeth, Macbeth by Ewan Fernie & Simon Palfrey

Author:Ewan Fernie & Simon Palfrey [Fernie, Ewan & Palfrey, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781913861087
Google: ziozEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Boiler House Press
Published: 2021-06-30T23:22:38.713971+00:00

the secret man of blood

Lu closed his diary and tucked it under his mattress. He felt the strongest urge to do good. He found Fyn alone in the front parlour, a single candle glowing, beer on his knee, nothing before his eyes.

Grim was wrong, thought Lu. Love is not beyond ethics. Love is everywhere, and love does good.

‘Fyn?’

‘Lu-la!’

‘Fyn –

‘Lu-boo!’

‘Are you –

Lu checked himself and began to blush.

‘Am I?’ said Fyn. ‘Now there’s a question. I sometimes doubt it, Lu-la.’

‘You only ever joke.’

‘What’s not to laugh at?’

‘Christ is not to laugh at’, said Lu.

‘He is if you stand beneath him and look up. The man should be ashamed.’

Lulach looked down; he wouldn’t rise to such taunts; he knew Fyn said them as deflection, he didn’t really mean them, he was better than that.

‘I miss you.’

‘Don’t.’

‘But I do. I thought I could never grow to be like you. So easy. I would never learn such things. There was a light in you.’

Fyn kicked at the logs in the fire.

‘He has left. I have left.’

‘Left?’

‘Gone. Not to return.’

‘Can’t you come back? Please? We need you.’

Fyn sighed. Could he be bothered having this conversation? Couldn’t he just get quietly drunk and leave it all to tomorrow? He could not remember the last time they spoke. Have they ever? Lu was always such a baby.

‘We need you, Fyn. Grim too. He’s not the same without you. He hardens. Have you seen how he looks at father, since – since you know what. And he is horrid to Gruoch, almost vicious. He won’t say anything, but he is lost, and hardening, and I don’t know what he might do.’

‘Grim won’t do anything. He never has.’

‘Please, Fyn – come back.’

Fyn threw his ale into the fire and looked fixedly at the logs as they fizzed and died.

‘Listen Lu-boo - look into my eye – go on – in here –’

‘No, Fyn –’

‘No do, come on, right up close - look deep into the pupil. What do you see?’

‘I don’t want to say.’

‘Come on, what do you see?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Come on little brother! What do you see? Say it!’

‘I see nothing. Nothing at all. There is nothing in there.’

Fyn snapped back on his stool and clapped his hands.

‘There! What did I tell you?’ He looked weirdly triumphant. ‘I have gone, I tell you. Whipped away, stolen, the life of the building stolen.’

Fyn leaned forward into Lu’s huge, pink, alarmed face.

‘Can you imagine, Lu, a world entirely without feeling? Without sorrow, compunction, guilt, longing. Without feeling at all. Just – emptied. Like a bag.’

‘I cannot believe such a thing possible.’

‘Anything is possible.’

The room was very silent, the air not clean. Fyn sat blank and still, Lulach fidgeting and grimacing. He had a question but feared to ask it. He was terrified of the answer but needed to hear it anyway.

‘What happened in England, Fyn?’

The room was getting darker and cold. The fire was out completely, the hard floor around the two of them speckled by ash and charcoal, the cups by their sides empty.

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