Macbeth by David Hewson

Author:David Hewson [Hewson, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612183015
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2012-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

It seemed an insignificant place for such a momentous act, no more than a symmetrical grassy mound now covered in hard hoar frost and surrounded by a vast crowd of men and women shivering in heavy winter clothes, silent and full of awe. The Romans had reached this far centuries before, briefly turning the hillock into a puny fort from which they hoped to subdue the northern tribes. When the Picts came back to fight and fight again, the centurions fled, leaving behind a strange altar to a distant Persian god called Mithras, a deity the crude, superstitious tribes came to dread. So something foreign remained in this curious spot, not far from the snaking waters of the river. Afraid to despoil the simple temple there, the Picts, an itinerant people, embraced it instead, making the village nearby one of several capitals for the kingdom that became known as Alba.

During an interminable civil war, a monarch called Nechtan found another god the Romans had brought and converted here to the Christian cross, forcing those who came after to follow the same faith, at least in the light of day. After that, the modest grassy swell became known as the Hill of Credulity, acquiring a mystical, otherworldly quality as a place where one man could become, for a brief moment, an earthly god himself, gaining power, however fleeting, from its sacred turf and stones.

The three sisters, unremarkable among the lowing ragtag crowd of peasants and paupers, soldiers and thanes, around them, found a vantage point on a dry stone wall close to the ceremony, dispatching four youths who first occupied it by dint of foul-mouthed threats and promised curses. There, they made themselves comfortable on the freezing stones, watching the ancient rites begin in the narrow circle at the center of the multitude. The farthest edge was formed by all the principal thanes gathered in a row, Banquo a stride ahead of them, the silver crown of Scotland in his hands, the wolf skin on his back.

In front of him sat Macbeth in a long, dark robe, the sleeves and collar trimmed with ermine, perched awkwardly on a slab of ancient gray sandstone, his face impassive, in his right hand a golden staff with a lion rampant at its head. Behind stood his lady. No crown for her, the young sister thought. Dressed in fur over an ankle-length sky-blue gown, her long blonde hair falling loose and brushed around her shoulders, she wore a faint and fanciful smile as if none of this were real.

All were silent—bored, mostly—listening to a red- hatted cardinal, crook in hand, deliver a tedious sermon that began with a long-winded account of how God made the cosmos and everything it contained, among its plenteous riches the blessed kingdom of Scotland.

“Idiot,” the giant sister muttered. “Every fool knows the universe was forged from the boundless sea of Lir—”

“That was the Celts’ world,” the young one said. “You think there is but one? Even the Romans had different gods.

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