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“My good Ross.”
The young Thane looks up from his papers, the light of his candles casting dark shadows under his tired eyes. “Lennox.” His return greeting is spoken as if a weight has been suddenly lifted off his shoulders, his tone utterly relieved.
Lennox takes the greeting as an invitation, striding across the room to greet him with an embrace. For a moment, Ross sinks into his arms as if he is too weary to keep himself upright, straightening quickly as Lennox releases him.
“I’m glad to see you well,” Ross says.
He looks, Lennox thinks, like he’d aged a few decades since their last conversation at the King’s banquet. The bags under his eyes remain, almost darker away from the candlelight. His curls are unkempt, falling haphazardly into his weary eyes. He looks, quite frankly, like he’d be better suited for the field after a skirmish than for this well-furnished room.
“The same to you,” Lennox replies, biting back his guilt. It’s a small lie to tell a friend he looks well regardless of his true condition. It’s the smallest lie he’ll tell tonight.
He returns to his seat, half falling into it. “It’s a relief, Lennox. Truly.”
Lennox forces a smile. Ross, by his tone, is genuine and honest enough for the both of them.
“Not everyone has been so lucky,” he continues, expression darkening. Lennox nods, looking as understanding as he can muster. “By the time we do something, there’ll be nothing left to save.” He realizes then what he’s said--or implied, rather, but were his guest quicker to turn on him, even the implication that Scotland is anything but flourishing would be enough to get him killed. He fights to maintain his composure, quickly correcting himself. “I only mean--”
Lennox holds up a hand to stop him, pulling up a chair on the other side of his desk. “No harm.” Ross nods warily. “What news of our friends?”
“What of them?”
“Angus? Macduff? Caithness?” His master only wants news of one, of course, but he blends the rest carefully in with Macduff.
Ross does not react with any apparent suspicion but remains short with him.
“They’re getting by.”
“I suppose that’s the best any of us can do,” Lennox replies, as if this is merely small talk. He prefers it to interrogation. People talk, he’s found, more naturally this way than they do when pressed for information.
Ross shrugs in some semblance of agreement and a silence passes between them. “Would you like a cup of tea?” he offers, rising.
“No, no, thank you.” Ross sits. Lennox takes a breath, composing himself before he speaks again. “You know why I’m here.”
“Sorry?”
Lennox leans forward a little. “Duncan, kind old Duncan, honored by Macbeth, now dead. Valiant Banquo--” A pang of sorrow crosses Ross’s face. Lennox forces himself not to falter, pressing on with a furious, rehearsed sarcasm. Perhaps he’s bold to exaggerate Macbeth’s careful propaganda against him, but it will all serve his King in the end.
“Well! He walked too late. Men mustn’t walk too late. Patricide, Ross! Scotland’s scourge! Fleance killed his father. The proof? He fled. And who cannot think how horrible it was for Malcolm and Donalbain to kill their own father? And to flee the honest law that ought to have brought them to heel! So the story goes.”
“The story, yes,” Ross mutters, unable to help himself.
Lennox keeps his expression even. “Ah, but we shouldn’t speak so loudly.”
“Who told you to seek me here?” Ross near-demands without warning.
“No one,” he answers coolly.
“How did you find me?”
“In honesty? I followed you. You’re elusive these days. I inquired as to your whereabouts, but it seemed as if you’d simply vanished! I rode for Fife, thinking perhaps you’d gone to visit the lady--your cousin, is she? I fell upon you by chance, thinking I would stay a night in town before speaking to the good Thane of Fife on the matter of your disappearance. I suppose you’ve spared Macduff a visit.”
Ross, albeit warily, takes the bait. “Why did you seek me?”
He feigns mild offense. “To ensure your safety! Why else?”
“My safety?”
Lennox glances at the door, bolted safely behind them. “Men have,” he says, lowering his voice, “died for less than asking questions.” Alarm passes over Ross’s tired features. “You toed the line at the banquet.”
“I caused no offense, I hope, in my concern for…” Ross chooses his words carefully, “for the King’s health.”
“But who can be sure the tyrant will see it that way?” At last, Ross’s guard drops. He sinks back into his chair, exhausted and desperate for a friend. In better times, Lennox might’ve provided.
“Any words beyond absolute loyalty mean death,” Lennox continues, telling a half-truth. In honesty, any words pass for loyal if their purpose is to the King’s liking, his own lies included. Tyrant. Macbeth wouldn’t like the epithet, but he is not in the room and Ross will not betray his friend to the tyrant King. Lennox wishes the feeling were mutual.
“You believe I’m in danger?”
“Not so much as the Thane of Fife.” Ross nods as if he’d already known this. “To tell the truth,” Lennox goes on, wondering if it adds to his sin to lie about the truth itself, “I had further purpose for my visit to the Thane. I feared for you, Ross, but worse for him. Those Macbeth deems traitors do not live long.”
“You believe he’s to be killed?” Ross asks, with no particular surprise.
“He’d be lucky to get off so easily.”
Ross closes his eyes and runs a hand over his face, his fatigue more apparent by the second. “What may we do?” he asks, almost begging Lennox for an answer. “This tide of blood does not ebb but only grows. The land itself bleeds. Men die for words and their executioners are crowned for wounds made to innocent bodies.” He pauses for a moment, searching for words. “Banquo’s boy was a child,” he says, far quieter, as if the words hurt to speak aloud. “Only a child.”
His voice shakes and Lennox is struck. He musters the courage to meet Ross’s gaze, expecting to find tears in his eyes, but it seems he has already cried them all away. For a man yet living, he hardly looks the part. His expression is distant, only the lines of his furrowed brow seeming to cling to the last bit of sorrow he has the energy to muster. Otherwise, he looks almost calm, the way corpses do when they’re laid in their coffins, but not so at rest as a dead man. He cares too much to rest.
“There is no justice,” Ross goes on, his brown eyes flick up, locking with Lennox’s blue, weary and brilliant all at once. They pierce him to the soul, sharper than any dagger. “Justice is dead, bleeding in a ditch like Banquo or killed sleeping.”
Ross must catch the way his stomach turns or how his eyes dart away, for he elaborates. “Angus found him. It--he--was…” he takes a breath, paling at the memory, “he was freshly dead. Angus, she… she checked for a pulse, but he was already cold. And…” he swallows, struggling to go on. Lennox wants to stop him, to cover his ears, anything. This isn’t what he’d come for. His voice evades him.
Ross composes himself and continues. “There were little handprints in… in the blood. Little handprints on his face because Fleance had tried--” Ross breaks off with a sob. Lennox forces himself to look at him. He’s shaking a little, tears finally streaking down his cheeks even as he tries to wipe them away. He gathers himself. “Fleance tried to save him. I’m sure there was no chance but he tried. He tried to staunch the bleeding, to do something. Scotland,” he shouts, startling Lennox as he rises, nearly sending his still-lit candles tumbling onto the floor, “bleeds as badly! Whose hands are large enough to stop the bleeding? Who dares so much as to try?”
Lennox glances at the door, praying they haven’t been overheard. He wants to bolt but finds himself glued to his seat.
“Donalbain is gone to distant shores, Malcolm has sent no word. Macduff has gone to the English court to speak with him, claiming Malcolm will listen to him but even a fool could see through him! He’s a coward, a damned coward, running from his bleeding fatherland lest he be swept away as well. Is this what our nation is? Is the bravest among us a boy of ten? At least Fleance dared to try. At least Fleance returned to the scene of his father’s murder, even for a moment! Our country lies bleeding and we stand and watch. We dare not dirty our hands. Burn, Scotland. Your sons have abandoned you and left you to die.”
Ross slumps back into his seat as if drained of what remained of his energy. His cheeks are stained with tears, the shiny paths weakly reflecting the lights of his candles.
They sit in silence for a moment, Lennox stunned speechless and Ross too miserable to go on. Lennox fixes his attention on the candles rather than his fellow Thane, but he’s difficult to ignore. His eyes are trained blankly on some empty spot in space, looking without seeing. The candles burn down a little lower. A few more minutes and they’ll snuff themselves in their own wax.
Ross looks up, gaze falling upon Lennox. Fear—no, realization—passes across his face. Lennox is close enough to see his chest rise and fall, faster now as his breath quickens. Ross does not look away.
“You never left his side,” he mutters, almost unintelligible.
“What?” Lennox finds his voice at last, hardly more than a whisper.
“Loyal, aren’t you?” It’s almost accusatory. More upset, more lonely than betrayed, but not without bite.
“Ross, I--”
“You didn’t come for me. You came for him, didn’t you?”
“I… I don’t understand.”
“What will you tell him, friend? What wound will you add to your country’s corpse?”
He should be afraid, upset, horrified, anything. If Macbeth hears his spy has been discovered, Lennox will be killed. Perhaps Ross will get to him first. He can’t bring himself to care.
Ross looks at him, betrayal etched onto his face, probably, Lennox realizes, not for the first time. His sorrow hurts worse than any blade. And all for what? Lennox had come here to lie, but he’d told more truths than he’d expected. Men have died for less than asking questions. He’d been a fool for expecting anything less for himself. One wrong move and, rather than some new thanage or castle, he’ll find his own head on the chopping block. Surely Macbeth won't give him the kindness of a knife in his sleep like Duncan. No, he'll be like Banquo--good, loyal, valiant Banquo--dead in a ditch, waylaid on a ride through the park. He has no son to beg him to live, no one to leave a print of friendship on his cooling corpse. He’d betrayed anyone who might’ve cared enough to do him such an honor.
“Did Fleance survive?” Lennox asks, holding Ross’s gaze. He is a coward but he must be brave, even if only for a moment.
“No.”
“Why? ”
Ross shrugs, just barely. “He was a threat. So am I.”
“You’re not… I don’t see you like… that.”
“Are you armed?” Ross asks, seemingly far from caring what the answer may be.
Lennox shakes his head. “Not for--”
“You are.”
“I wouldn’t--”
“Then you were never cruel enough for him,” Ross remarks.
“Good. ”
“Get out,” Ross orders.
And, like the coward he is, he turns tail, head spinning as he stumbles back down the stairs of the inn. In a daze, he finds the stables, untethers his horse, and rides. The air, so fresh in the morning, now tastes stale.
He spurs his horse on as if he might outride the imagined stench of blood hanging on the air, but he’s headed north. It will, he knows, only grow thicker, but he can’t find the will to turn back. His horse’s momentum presses him onward. He weaves between the trees of Birnam Wood, legs aching for rest. The shadows in the woods scream for fathers murdered and he rides faster, outrunning the wailing, blocking it out over the sound of his mare’s hooves beating the ground.
The sun is rising when he dismounts, stumbling off his horse into a clearing. Before him stands the King of Scotland, alone and trembling, nearly as frightened as he is.
“What’s your Grace’s will?” Lennox breaths, his voice hardly his own. A braver man would run and let himself be killed. He is not brave.
Macbeth starts at the sound. Lennox doesn’t question for a moment how they’re here, met in the woods, or why. The King talks nonsense. Lennox does not hear him.
“Macduff is fled to England,” he says, interrupting the King’s ramblings. Under normal circumstances, perhaps he would be scolded for his insolence, perhaps worse. Macbeth does not seem to notice.
“Fled to England?”
His heart screams at him to deny it, but the words have already left his mouth. He can’t place his reasoning for speaking them. He has none. There is nothing to gain here or anywhere. All that had spurred him on seems worthless now. What use is there for power when the men he might’ve ruled lie buried? What use is there for land when the ground itself bleeds? “Aye, my lord,” he chokes out.
Loyal, aren’t you? Ross’s voice echoes somewhere in the back of his mind. Yes, at least he’s loyal. That’s a rare thing to come by in these times. Scotland lays dying and he wounds it deeper with his loyalty. It is a brave man who can look on the corpse of his nation unflinchingly. Lennox is not brave.
He has more to say. Fleance is dead, or so says Ross, the traitor. He can’t muster the words. He looks blankly at his King, turns before Macbeth can order him otherwise, mounts his horse, and flees once more. Whatever had compelled him to carry out his orders has vanished. Blindly, he drives his horse onward, sparing no glance back for his bleeding nation’s soul.