Macbeth, Macbeth 9781474235556, 9781474235549, 9781474235563, 9781474235570

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Macbeth, Macbeth

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BEYOND CRITICISM Taking advantage of new opportunities offered by digital technology and new insights from contemporary creative practice that take us from abstract theory back to literature itself, Beyond Criticism explores radical new forms that literary criticism might take in the twenty-first century. http://thebee.buzz Series Editors: Katharine Craik (Oxford Brookes University, UK ), Simon Palfrey (University of Oxford, UK ), Joanna Picciotto (University of California, Berkeley, USA ), John Schad (University of Lancaster, UK ), Lilliana Loofbourow (University of California Berkeley, USA ). Forthcoming titles Blank Mount, Judith Goldman Ceaseless Music: Rewriting Wordsworth’s The Prelude, Steven Matthews Character as Form, Aaron Kunin Just Play: Theatre as Social Justice, David Ruiter Orpheus and Eurydice: A Graphic-Poetic Exploration, Tom de Freston, Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Max Barton The Winnowing Fan, Verse-Essays in Creative Criticism, Christopher Norris ii

Macbeth, Macbeth Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey with pictures by Tom de Freston

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC 1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 © Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey, 2016 Images © Tom de Freston, 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN :

HB : PB : ePDF : ePub:

978-1-4742-3555-6 978-1-4742-3554-9 978-1-4742-3557-0 978-1-4742-3558-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Series: Beyond Criticism Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi Preface vii

Macbeth, Macbeth I

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3

II

39

III

81

IV

95

V

137

VI VII

181 227

Afterword 280

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many friends and colleagues have encouraged us over the years on which we have been working on Macbeth, Macbeth, and it is a pleasure to thank them here: they include Harry Acton, Cassandra Amundsen, Margaret Bartley, Josie Billington, Sarah Annes Brown, Patrick Cheney, Katie Craik, Andrew Devine, Jonathan Dollimore, Elisabeth Dutton, Paul Edmondson, Deanna Fernie, David Fuller, John Gillies, Hugh Grady, Rana Haddad, Lia Hills, Graham Holderness, Joanna Laurens, Lili Loofbourow, Ben Masters, Steve Mentz, Margie Nelson, Jeremy Newton, Gail Paster, Joanna Picciotto, Namratha Rao, Stephen Regan, Adam Roberts, Abigail Rokison, David Ruiter, Kiernan Ryan, John Schad, Harold Schweizer, Adam Seddon, Andrew Taylor, Susan Wells and Michael Witmore. Tom de Freston has created dazzling original artwork for the book; we see these more as interpretations, or as parallel realizations of our project, than as illustrations of it. Bloomsbury’s David Avital has been a committed supporter of the project throughout, for which he has our warm gratitude.

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We began working on this project with a very simple desire. We wanted to get inside Macbeth’s murder chamber – something Shakespeare never allows. This meant imagining what it would be like to be Macbeth, captured in the act. We wanted to possess the terrible passions of the play – even to be possessed by them – rather than to pretend to master or explain them. How else to touch the play’s intense moral life? How else to enter and suffer its wounds? Inevitably this meant identifying with terrors and temptations in a way that critical writing almost never does. Of course, any actor playing Macbeth or Lady Macbeth has to do this as a matter of course. Perhaps we could learn from that. Perhaps we could write something with the emotional directness, the ethical fearlessness, of the best performances of the play. But we also wanted to enter the consequences beyond Shakespeare’s tortured protagonists – to enter the pain of the victims; to recover their experience, their voices. It was a political as much as a sympathetic ambition. At first we had no idea how even to attempt our goals. We tried various ways in, but they all felt stilted and fake, unlikely to embody anything like the human variety and spiritual pathos of Macbeth. We knew that a great gift of the imagination, such as Shakespeare’s, had to be received imaginatively. But what written form could a really imaginative response take? How could we make something that might speak to the adventure of passionate literary responsiveness, and encourage it in others? The breakthrough came when we were talking, as we often did in the first days of our friendship, about the books or music that had meant most to us when growing up. It turned out that vii

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at sixteen or seventeen we were reading very much the same things, albeit on different sides of the world. One of these writers – no doubt typically for hungry young minds – was Dostoevsky. It occurred to us that Macbeth shares the same basic structure as The Brothers Karamazov, pivoting on a primal act of parricide. And we realized that the four sons of Karamazov – the errant sensualist, the atheist intellectual, the apprentice saint, and the bastard in the shadows – uncannily evoked different aspects of Shakespeare’s anti-hero. What if we had a story in which each one of these sons, in their own awful way, proceeded to repeat the tragedy of Macbeth? We would write a sequel that was also a multi-pronged repetition, at once a tale in its own right and a critical reflection upon Shakespeare’s original. But in our story – again taking our cue from Dostoevsky – the temptation wouldn’t be a crown, but a woman: one whose possession might prove to each man how truly exceptional he is. Dostoevsky’s femme fatale, Grushenka, became our heroine, Gruoch (the Queen’s name in Shakespeare’s own source). Of course, true to our wish to enter the lives of those damaged by war and atrocity, she is not so easily possessed. She has her own longing, and her own resistance to the claims of men. And she too re-suffers the temptations of Shakespeare’s dark originals. The challenge was daunting and exciting – to set foot in Macbeth, into its scorched and turbulent consequences, to risk making a whole new world in its image! That, at any rate, is what we have tried to do. EF /SP

Macbeth, Macbeth

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I

light thickens A rook was flying across the filthy Scottish sky, her wings caked in ash. She was searching for her family. Yesterday, it seemed a thousand years ago, she was one of a roost, alive and thoughtless in their wood of Birnam. But then the humans came, endless trains of them, with shouts and swords and axes and curses, and the next thing she knew nests were falling like water down a cliff-face. Half a day it took them, hacking away, raping her wood, wrecking the homes of every one she knew. Then the humans lay down and drank, hours of drinking, pissing in the underbrush, drowning the ants and terrifying the beetles, before pitching upright, a branch or two on each shoulder, and marching with their burdens up the squat hill of Dunsinane. She had never seen anything so mad. Now she could barely recognize a thing. The crows sitting sentinel on the castle parapet looked alien, as though ghosted out of the invaders. The remnants of her wood were scattered as far as she could see. Even the humans that remained looked somehow wrong, wrenched out of time. On the far side of the castle was nothing but vegetable waste, with a collapsed jester snoring in a pile of compost. To the front was a tall man dressed in scarlet, barking orders as soldiers scurried around with carts and wheelbarrows, piled high with who knew what. Alone in the lane was another cart with a girl in it, the only girl 3

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in this world, shivering or trembling, hugging her chest, with the darkest bruises around her eyes. Not a familiar face in sight. Surely the rook wasn’t expected to seek out the sea! Surely things hadn’t got that bad? A lifetime of prohibitions annulled in a day. The rook’s wings were all set for that forbidden salt when she spotted another figure, hunched at the edge of the deracinated wood. She glided over. Oh, save us, thought the rook, another of life’s refugees. It was a ragged hobgoblin, perched in front of what looked like one of Birnam’s trademark new trees – a short thin pared pole with a clump on top, entirely undressed of branches. Get used to it, thought the rook, welcome to the razed new world. She alighted on the clump, thankful for the rest. At once the hobgoblin turned on her, his crazy chloroform eyes pinched with weeping. ‘Cha! Cha!’ he snapped, swiping her beak with scrawny fingers. The rook spun away into the ashy air, every particle a life that was, and started making for the unknown. ∞

told by an idiot The hobgoblin called himself Sod. He looked like a burnt-out golem, barely human, sitting half-naked on his stump at the edge of the decollated wood. Dried trickles of blood lined his thighs; tangles of lichen dressed his beard. But what a haste looked through his eyes! He extended one skinny bare leg. With a high hum and a solitary flourish, he unpinned a wound in his thigh and extracted a bloody purse. He withdrew a stack of thin parchments and began combing through them, his brow furrowed like a field.

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‘Where did it all go wrong, old man?’ Sod discarded one parchment after another, as though desperate to find the healing words. He had started to shiver, and his mouth was turning unholy yellow. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ He was addressing an enormous face that swayed before him in the breeze. The great head was stuck on a broomstick, the broomstick pitched in the drying mud. Seagulls stood motionless, shamelessly eyeing the head’s eyes. ‘You thought what’s done is done? I fear not, papa.’ He unrolled another parchment and bent his head intently. ‘You see they have to understand – to ensure it doesn’t happen again. To avoid repetitions. Emulators, papa! Perhaps I should employ you as my doll. Make a tour of any village left standing. Shouldn’t take long. Stick my glove in your neck, waggle your lips, impart a few home truths.’ Yes, thought Sod, that’d show them. Big Beth is alive! Still muttering in his cups, still scaring all and sundry into silence. ‘Cha!’ snapped Sod, and sent the seagulls flying. Sod steadied the King’s head upon its pole. He’d risked his life stealing this and he didn’t want it toppling in a ditch. He certainly didn’t want the new day’s administrator to claim it as his own. That sterilizing Macduff! He’d stick it on some bridge, dress it with a bovine superscription – ‘behold the tyrant’, ‘hail the cursed monster’ – and then hand round the apples for the vagrants to take aim. Sod shivered for the lack of imagination. There were enough tales about Macbeth going around already, myths and rumours and night-frighteners. Those bastard English invaders had even commissioned a play, or so he’d heard, no doubt some dirty tissue of special pleading and piety to hawk around the great houses for a garnished goose leg. He resumed studying his text. Was this right? Would this help? Sod saw by glimpses now, and the glimpse was fading. But they had to understand! Anything can be understood, anything, if only we linger in its conditions.

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Grinding his quill in his teeth, Sod hunched over his script and read. ‘It all began to turn when a soldier met some witches in a grove. The soldier was called Macbeth, a loyal Thane with a heart of milk. But when the witches told him he should be King hereafter, the milkman curdled. He went home and spoke to his wife, his constant companion and counsel. She was a prodigy, a woman of fearsome courage and, so the peasants whispered, three breasts, each coarsely blackened from the charcoal she spread on them every morning. She did this religiously, to repel the orphans who seemed to grow in number by the day. That very night they killed the King, fast asleep in the Macbeths’ guest bed. The throne of Scotland seemed a worthy prize. But the King and Queen could not rest easy in their beds. King Macbeth lay awake all night, eyes glassy and open, pillow heavy with sweat, his mind sizzling with scorpions. In the meantime his wife would go walking, suspended between asleep and awake, talking to herself as she cradled a small candle. During one such night-jaunt a moth flew into her flame and carried it to the streaming lace curtains of the stateroom. Fire raged through the house. King Macbeth watched in silence as the flames irradiated his straw. But he would not burn. Try as he might he would not burn. The old castle was reduced to ash. King Macbeth grew to need his sleeplessness, those long hours when he could see past every horizon. He needed to keep ahead of the game. To this end, and with his wife now frozen from his grace, he indulged two peccadilloes. First, he employed a retinue of wizards, who advised him hourly what was lifting in the wind. Second, instead of rebuilding their old house, he drew plans for a vast new castle atop the hill of Dunsinane, with views far and wide from all sides. His whole land would spread open to his survey. King Macbeth liked to sit in his chair and watch as the fortress slowly reared around

PART I

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him. He would speak with his wizards about the portents in every cloud, and as he did so Scotland’s once-great thanes took turns to haul the stone up the hill with mule and carriage. Or rather all of the thanes did so but one. This was Macduff, Thane of Fife. Macduff was a man of studied rectitude, a man who would not endure shame. He employed his men to do the carrying. King Macbeth was not placated, and determined to ride this rebellious man with a snaffle. King Macbeth sent servants to the castle of Fife to fetch him by the ears. But Macduff had his own wizards. He saw how the wind threatened to blow, and he had fled to England that very dawn. The King resented this deeply. There were many precedents in the annals for what to do next. Macduff’s wife and children and servants were slaughtered. The borders began swarming with terrified Scottish refugees. Queen Macbeth knew nothing of this slaughter until it had happened. She felt her marrow softening, she didn’t know why, and began to fear she was the only woman left living in the land. Her childhood started to haunt her, sometimes in the shape of a kitten, sometimes a rat, occasionally a mallard. The Lady was sure it was a sign, but she could never capture one of the creatures to make sure. They approached and then they melted away. Life was pouring through her fingers. She had to catch it in her palm. Her castle became a haven for any woman left homeless through the accidents of war. Many came. Oddly or not, all of the women were girls, and every last one of them was pregnant. Once upon a time the Queen would have known just what to do. A baby’s squelched and needy face was to her a monstrosity. She had no wish to behold one, ever. But these girls were another thing entirely. The Queen fed them, a cat with her kittens, and she saw herself in their innocent bloom. They were so beautifully riding the cusp. She closed her mind to the lives burgeoning within. Meanwhile King Macbeth sat in his chair as the final stones were laid upon his fort. But marooned on his throne,

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and with the walls around him growing steadily higher, the King had failed to see that gradually – servant by servant, subject by subject, family by family – he was being deserted. He had not spoken to his wife in years. He knew nothing of her mothering, and nothing of her vow, coldly resolved even as she adored her girls, that she would never behold another mother. If they gave birth that was it. As her wards approached full-term she turned away. Someone would know what to do. The new mothers were withdrawn, the babies left to fend for themselves. It wasn’t good for the soul. One short gloomy day, exhausted from sleepwalking, she tied leftover bricks to each ankle and dropped into Scotland’s deepest pond. When King Macbeth heard the news a brief memory of feeling chilled his hairline. He looked about for comfort but no one was there. Even his wizards had left him. A few heavy girls lay secreted in the farthest tower, deep beyond the knowledge of the King. Other than that not a soul remained – or rather nobody but a single foolish servant, called the Porter.’ Pah! thought Sod, throwing down his pen. Why remember a Porter! That gate is closed. Must he tell the rest? The rest was abortion. He could hear it even now on the filthy traitor wind. Ergo: – the tree army marched, King Macbeth was slain, Macduff was triumphant, his words ringing in the air like struck tin – ‘the time is free the time is free the time is free.’ The time is free? Did Macduff even know what that meant? It meant that time is off the rails, looping the loop, leading the merry dance. By the clock tis day, and yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp . . . Sod shoved the wallet roughly in his belt. He could hear shouts nearby, survivors surviving, leavers leaving. What do these time-servers know of anything? They think life rolls on, like the wheels of their corpse carts. Sod’s voice careened into the murky air. ‘The time is free! Free!!’

PART I

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The ash scattered at his breath. ‘Hey!’ A soldier’s voice. ‘Who goes there?’ ‘Ha?’ whimpered Sod. ‘I said who’s there?’ ‘Ha?’ Sod froze. If they caught him here he’d be strung up for the jackdaws’ supper. He grabbed the broomstick and started spanking through the brush. Adrenalin coursed through his rabbity limbs. ‘I am a doe!’ Terror gave way to wild delight. Sod was riding King Macbeth like a boy’s pet pony. The broomstick divided his buttocks as Sod held tight to the King’s blood-bolted hair. ‘Gee up, daddy, gee up!’ Stumps and bushes flashed by in a whirl. ‘Geronimo!’ The voices were receding behind him and the wood was getting thicker. Sod turned to check – and the next thing King Macbeth’s nose went crashing into an adolescent ash. Sod crumpled to the ground, the pole between his legs, the King’s cheek sticking to his own. ‘I am tied to a stake’, Sod whispered to his neighbour’s ear. He would have laughed but there were sere leaves in his mouth. The old sick jaundice began moving in his throat. A fit was coming, he could feel it; best to quell that hideous trumpet. But he was not sure he knew how. Sleep, wait until darkness, and then quietly remove the spoil to safety? But then what? Jesus only knew. Then something. Find a cave and write the future. Sod lifted the broomstick into the tree, leant the head in a nice elbow shaped branch, and clipped the nose-ring onto a twig for security. ‘Later, Dada.’ And out he slipped, like the emergent world’s most innocent boy.

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PART I

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There they were still, the cleaners, Macduff’s soldiers, three of them packed tight in a cart, the men on one side – and, big surprise, a maid, barely teenage, on the other. Sod ghosted past, looking like a small leafless bush. They don’t even see me, he thought, the grizzled goats. Oh, an ordinary man is a beastly thing! Look at them, their eyes bulging and yearning, roving over their little captive. ‘Pull out your peni, you liars!’ Sod screamed. The words echoed into silence; no one paid the maniac the slightest mind. No doubt they were under the strictest orders from the cleanly-does-it Lord Macduff. Touch his prize-child and he’d have them stripped and hoisted as a warning for the ages. No doubt he’d done it often enough to the naysayers and catcallers along the way. And no doubt his soldiers weren’t about to start quibbling. Sod could see it clear as day. All the way from England to fight the good fight, inspired by tales of butchers and fiends and ‘the grace of Grace’, fired by the dream of sacrificial battle. And what did they get in return? A few crying mothers, a fainting sot of a Porter, and a lonely giant slashing at ghosts. Not exactly juice for the parched soul. War wasn’t what it was made up to be; Scotland unfortunately was. Utter dunghill, best left to the carrion birds. Oh, Christ, thought Sod, I cannot do it. This is not my history. This is not my world. Sod it. He whimpered a laugh half-heartedly and folded up his parchment good and tight. He kissed it, with a brief and gallant flourish. He took out his needle and thread and applied himself to his freshly bleeding wound. Tuck it away, safe and sound for the future. And then, unregarded by a living soul, Sod vanished back into Birnam Wood. ∞

the time is free ‘The time is free!’ Macduff was still saying his mantra, hours after the terminal

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battle. He bestrode the scene, his carriage erect, his clothes scarlet, his long face gravely shining. He was the history man, none but he: slayer of the tyrant, saviour of the homeland, kingmaker and Protector to the overgrown imbecile Malcolm. All tomorrow’s children shall be his! ‘Where has he gone now?’ said Macduff, his voice exasperated. The soldiers’ gaze followed their general’s, as he looked this way and that across the plain and nearby copse of trees. ‘Sweet Jesus’, he said softly, and flicked his hand toward some long grass at the edge of the thicket, ‘over there’. A fat young man was bending over some dandelions. ‘Brain of a blancmange’, Macduff murmured to himself, and then louder to his men, ‘you two, go and fetch him, put him in my wagon’. Macduff pulled a scroll from his breastplate. ‘Give him this to read. Say he should memorize it for his coronation.’ The soldiers saluted and walked briskly toward where Malcolm crouched, stroking his earlobe, closely studying a yellow weed. A smile played on Macduff’s mouth. The virgin King shall not present an obstacle. Macduff walked in measured steps to the girl in the cart. She was staring vacantly, hugging her chest, her complexion drawn and sallow. A tremor of muscle flickered beneath one eye. ‘The time is free’, Macduff whispered consolingly in her ear. The girl neither blinked nor moved. ‘The time is free!’ he barked loud to the air, and started hurrying towards his coach, halting to look up one last time at the grey hilltop castle, aloof on its hill in the middle of nothing. ‘Dunsinane!’ he murmured softly. ‘Done sin, done sin, Dunsinane.’ The castle presented a picture of utter desolation. Grey stone crumbling at the corners, flagpole peeling and naked, a sorry goat nibbling at its weeds. That is no setting for government, thought Macduff, for a King! It never was. The

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very air forbids it. It is pure infection. No wonder the butcher and his wife could never sleep. Perhaps the wicked Queen had it right when she burnt the whole place down. After all, Macduff dryly surmised, there is no such thing as accident. He knew how the tale went, the tyrant stepping into the fire, daring it to melt him, and instead plating his skin in brand new purple armour. His people thought him superhuman; so did I, thought Macduff, just for a bit. Until I cut off that head and mocked in its hideous face. ‘But you will be burning now, my friend’, Macduff whispered, his eyes narrowing and glistening. Oh yes, he thought, you will be roasting in the liquid fires of hell, and my poor wife and crystal babes will be looking down from their heavenly perch and laughing as you turn in the sulphur and burn! Macduff felt his head shaking vehemently from side to side. There will be justice, nothing but justice, in his great reign. He gestured to his ginger adjutant to come to him. ‘You looked everywhere for the head?’ ‘Everywhere, my liege.’ ‘It does not satisfy.’ ‘I am sorry, my liege. It must have been taken away with the other debris. They will have buried it in the Freedom Ditch.’ ‘The Freedom Ditch!’ repeated Macduff, quietly scoffing at his own coinage. He leant toward his adjutant and whispered fiercely. ‘The time has been, that when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end. But now – ‘Now, my liege?’ ‘Now nothing, young sir! Now nothing! You think I would say, now they rise again, with twenty mortal murders on their crowns, and push us from our stools – eh, eh?’ ‘No, my liege.’ ‘No! Precisely! He is in the ditch, just as you say.’ ‘Yes, my liege.’ ‘Yes.’

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Macduff clapped his adjutant on his shoulder and smiled. ‘Good man!’ he said jovially. ‘Good man.’ The adjutant stood to attention and saluted. Macduff was hesitating. ‘It’s just – ‘My liege?’ ‘I would have liked to have seen his head – on a pole – for our progress south. To give pause to future malefactors, and such.’ ‘It would that, my liege.’ ‘A rare monster, no?’ ‘Rare, my liege.’ ‘Good man, good man.’ Macduff ruffled his adjutant’s copper hair and breathed a deep draught of cold fresh air. He must drown these superstitions. They are no good for a leader of men. Government must be rational, always rational. He looked up once more to the castle, at the battalions of crows, hundreds of them on the castle’s eastern parapet, looking as one toward the sea. Over the waters moved nothing but gulls, scavenging for scraps. He cast his gaze west to the edge of the heath, where began the great shaved stretch of Birnam Wood. It had seemed the right thing to do, as they marched upon the castle, emboldened by rum, singing their songs of freedom; it felt like he was stripping the tyrant bare. But just look at it now! That once gorgeous green world a forest of barbered stumps, like ten thousand fingertips begging for unburial. ‘The time is free’, Macduff murmured to himself, and stooped through the curtain into his wagon. He sat opposite the slumped corpus of the King. Malcolm’s wet fish lips wheezed and spluttered and resumed their rhythmical snore. Macduff snorted derision. History shall never repeat, not on his watch. He slapped the wall behind his head, a whip cracked, and the wagon started groaning forward. The cart followed behind, the girl hugging her chest as they moved through the skeletons of Birnam Wood. ∞

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remember the porter The Porter had awoken in the allotments to the back of the castle, slung in the middle of an enormous compost heap. Behind the allotments ran a thick ditch, a trickle of water in its depths, rubbish scattered along its banks. He observed two half-eaten horse corpses; a dagger, the blood dried black; a military banner, a child’s wooden toy, two or three empty wine casks; tiny pieces of creatures, a lizard’s leg, a dog’s tongue, the bulging eye of a newt; a mess of dead birds, choughs, martlets, magpies, rooks; and a three-legged stool, absurdly compact and erect. The Porter rubbed his eyes and scratched and spat. He squinted into the dreary near distance. Down below he could see the branches the invaders carried before them, lying across the field like bones that refused interment. As though on cue, a small scowling head popped out of a pile of refuse, directly in front of the old man. It was a lad, scratching his neck and flicking tiny bits of wood or bone off his jacket. The Porter was preparing a smile when a second boy darted from another pile and hurled a turnip peel at his twin brother. The boy scurried on top of a compost heap and started jeering. ‘I’m the King of the castle, and you’re the dirty rascal!’ A mouldy old parsnip came flying back at him, and together they chased off laughing. The Porter leaned back against the rotting heap. He shook his head at his tomfolly socks, at their harlequin bronze tartan and gaudy red patch. He must have jigged a thousand jigs for the master in them, one every evening since Lizzie died and the boys were saved for him to bring up on his own. But what was he meant to do now? The master gone, the castle emptied, what the hell was a Porter for? He started unpeeling the wool from his knees. His calves were hairless and his feet looked like fish. He chucked the socks on the compost. How long since he had seen these feet? Years, it seemed. The sight of that wood nearly killed him. He knew he should get back to work, whatever that meant, but first

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he had to see what remained of his forest. He could see his boys, half way down the hill, chasing some creature down a hole. He started a wobbly jog, balancing on the raw balls of his feet, and within minutes was surrounded by trees. Birnam felt wrong, thinner and more exposed than he liked. He glanced up, feebly self-aware, sure that some hard-eyed corvine would be laughing at him. But instead of a bird he saw a strange object, leaning at angles in a nearby ash. It was a long wooden pole – roughly lathed, foreign oak – tossed in the tree’s tangled branches. He started to pull the pole from the tree. But as he did so something snagged on the boughs. He jiggled it about and it became free. The pole was astonishingly heavy. The Porter almost toppled back as he stared in wonder at his find. For stuck fast to the top of the pole was the head of his master. It was his King, right there, exactly as he always was. The Porter bowed with something like awe. He had to remember how to face his master. He had to do it right. He slid the pole between his legs and drew the severed head close to his thighs. ‘Right Sir’, he said briskly, and shut each eyelid, bending forward to kiss both in turn. He yanked the head sideways and pulled it clear. He looked gravely into its face, holding the look for three or four blinks. Then he carried it away, stroking its massive bulk, his cheeks soaked with tears, babbling as if to a new born child. Soon he found himself at the castle chapel. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark and then, twining his fist in the skull’s hair, thrust the severed head in the font. And now, he had no idea why, the Porter was dropping his own face deep into the yeasty murk. He immersed his head entire, like a great shaved swede. His eyes were closed and the liquid was warm. He could remain in here, he really could, two peas in a pod, at one forever with his master. Only he could feel the pond life latching to his skin, and trying to slap it off he let the skull go loose. Some bubbly shit started funnelling up his nose’s back caverns. The Porter catapulted out, fearful of retching. He felt the water streaming out of nose

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and jaw and forehead. He opened wide his eyes, and saw before him the slops melting in cataracts off his head. A strange elation overcame him. Here is the rage we need! Here is the roar of love! And the Porter closed his eyes and plunged once more into the mire. But this time his skull crashed hard against the master’s, and he recoiled back out into air. The Porter looked around, holding his ear where it hit. He felt furtive and silly and embarrassed. He looked down at the stagnant font. The pool was filthy and separating, the master’s skull floating sideways on the muck. It looked unutterably forgotten and defeated. Oh stop it, you old fool! What would he say if he saw? He extracted the skull, wiped it on his coat, and shuffled down the nave and out to the sacred storehouse. He had never before entered this hallowed space. A fear rose in his stomach as he fumbled with the key. It turned heavily and the Porter moved inside the darkness. The sepulchre smelled obscenely of polecat. The Porter crouched toward the earth, slow and blind, his actions someone else’s. Why was this earth so wet? He didn’t understand. The skull slipped from his fingers and plopped dumbly aground. He felt a horror rising inside. He wasn’t up to this. His body was paralysed and he was too scared to speak. What words can speak for the dead? ‘Master’, he whispered, and kissing his fist the Porter fumbled to bless the skull. It was slimy to the touch and invisible, not of this world at all. ‘My ma-’ he started to say, but his mouth was parched and the words choked on him. He was never trained for such duties. He was a Porter, a Porter, and there were trespasses too far! He stumbled for the door and returned panicking into light, crossing himself like a fool. The Porter spied an old broom and grabbed it with tremendous relief. He started sweeping at the debris all around, the courtyard first and then inside to the house. But he had hardly entered the main rooms before he stopped dead in his

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tracks. Strewn at all angles were the enemy’s instruments, the killing machines of the Lord Macduff: silvered steel on long timbered poles, shaped not into a single sharp point but into numerous killing curlicues. Instantly he could see it – the shapes these weapons had made on the bellies of the Queen’s girls, the unborn babies hoisted like flags: images from Hell. The Porter snapped the weapons’ shafts and dropped them into the fireplace. He hastened upstairs, head down, eyes averted, sweeping with a wild sanitary grace. Still he could hear birds cawing, crows or ravens tussling over a worm. How he hated the carrion birds, renting the air with their shrieks as they fed on misery and death. ‘Caw, caw, caw’, mimicked the Porter, but even as he was saying it something felt wrong. He was sure he heard something crying. A child? Not one of the boys, surely? His mind hung open like a trap. It was a child, for certain a child! ‘Fyn?’ he called. ‘Grim? Is that you? Finny?’ His heart had started pounding. He began moving toward the sound, coming from high inside the castle walls. ‘Where are you boys?’ The Porter stopped again, staring wide as though it might help him better to hear. This crying was strange to him, younger, newer than anything he knew. It was a thin voice, tiny and weak-chested. It didn’t sound anything like his lads! ‘Boys!’ yelled the Porter, more sure by the second that it couldn’t be them. He was giddy with the thought that someone else might have survived the carnage. Perhaps God had been watching after all! ‘I’m coming’, the Porter cried, ashamed of the weakness of his own voice. He coughed hard and tried again. ‘I’m coming!’ He had attained the landing, his huge bunch of keys madly swinging. Still the crying rose. Guide me, my bonny, scream for your life!

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‘I’m coming, just you wait!’ The Porter mounted the final stairs to the attic and stopped at the door, his heart beating insanely. He forced himself to pause. He could hear the little thing behind the door, sobbing and gurgling. ‘Please God,’ the Porter whispered, ‘please God’. The Porter fell through the door like a mad thing. And sweet Jesus, the days of miracles were not done! For at his feet was a tiny pink-white baby, no more than a day old. The baby looked up at the Porter and instantly stopped bawling. It was a curled boychild, the size of a man’s skull, smiling in its own muck. ‘Lu-la’, it said. With a single swooping peck the Porter gathered it into his arms. The soft fold of its belly rolled and turned, and there exposed were the raw wounds of its recent severance. The Porter turned away, pulling the baby close to cover the sight. He was horrified. He had never seen anything like it; never heard of anything like it. There in the child’s brand new belly, savage and obscene, were two navels. The Porter didn’t know what to think. Two navels! One was inverted, a bruised little bulge; the other a tubular growth, some kind of sick tail. The Porter crossed himself. He didn’t know what to do. Was this some changeling monster, left by the angels to do evil? ‘Lu-la’, said the baby again. The Porter looked into the child’s tiny pink-white eyes. Oh how could this be the devil? How could it be? Come on, you superstitious fool, think rationally! God works in strange ways; nature is various; so let us say that the boy is a deliverance, marked for our castle’s happiness. Yes – a deliverance! His second tail will wrinkle and fall, in time, just as Fyn and Grim’s crusted coils had, five or six days after their coming. Let it be. Again the Porter held the boy’s eyes before his own. There was good in there, he knew it! And now behind him the heavy door creaked and his two sons entered, fake-sheepishly, their faces brown with dirt and grinning. The Porter grinned back, and opened his body to allow the little

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devils in. The Porter’s arm automatically covered the baby’s shame as he wept over his twins, kissing them, nuzzling them under neck and armpit. Oh, his sons, his sons, his sons! ‘Lu-la’, said the baby, ‘lu-la’. ‘Lula?’ said the Porter, holding him before his eyes. ‘That’s not a boy’s name!’ protested Grim from below, suddenly very serious. ‘Lu-lack!’ shouted Fyn triumphantly. The Porter nodded and beamed. Lulach, a name for the ages. But he shall not lack here; oh no; he would swear it to himself as a solemn vow. ‘Now God help thee, poor monkey! How wilt thou do for a father?’ The Porter chucked him in the soft place beneath his chin. He winked his broad wink and in response, he was almost sure, his pale newborn baby son smiled. ∞

she died every day she lived It was nearing dusk when the cart reached the nunnery gate, its pathway strewn with overflowing bins of apples and hemmed by scrubby shrubs with greenish yellow flowers. The soldiers withdrew, and the girl was faced by two bowed figures, ancient seeming, their faces lost inside vast wool hoods. They turned and led the girl inside. ‘Rue for chastity’, said one sister, handing her a draught of bittersweet cordial. ‘The herb of grace’, said the other, ‘to set you free’. The smell was acrid, the taste heady, fermented apples and something else, some herb with a vicious kick. The girl drank it down without thought. One woman held to the girl’s left shoulder, another to the right. Each prodded a choppy finger under her rags. The ladies looked at each other, and nodded in unison. The girl’s clothing fell to the stone floor. One sister

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stepped forward, and with pinched fist described the sign of the cross over the girl’s forehead and breastbone. The crone’s parched old paw touched nothing. The child shone in the cloistered light. Both women paused, just for a moment, to bathe in the glow. They took a concerted turn around her, three times east-to-west, three times the other way, before retreating into shadow, their fingers pressed gently to their lips. There was a single clap, and from the far door a novice entered soundlessly. She decked the girl in a long coarse gown and gestured for her to follow. ‘Peace,’ whispered a voice, the girl could not tell from where, ‘the charm’s wound up’. The whisper echoed from stone to cold stone, as though from another world. The women pressed her through a high dark doorway and at once vanished. The room before her smelt of dank wool and corner moss; a sickly light struggled from the window; at intervals stood bowls of water on thin stools. The girl lingered at the threshold, waiting for she knew not what. She felt strange and woozy; the stone floor looked very far away. Now she saw a monk, right there before her, abandoned at the feet of a stone pieta. The monk reared up and emitted a single appalling groan. The girl jerked back her hand. The skull turned, very slowly, and pinned her with a long impassive gaze. The girl gasped, a short hoarse eruption of surprise. The face before her was a woman’s! She could feel her breasts bubbling in milky spasms, insane and accidental. Her garment was flooding wet upon her chest as the woman stepped towards her in a strangely syncopated way. An arm jolted out and an icon quivered in a fist. It was a golden Christ, slung on the cross, his body broken like a bone. ‘The son will rise in the northern land’, murmured the saint, heat coming off her in waves, and turned back around to her devotions. The girl swooned, but already the novice was moving ahead. She stopped at a large oak door and knocked.

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‘Enter’, said a clipped voice from within. Behind a large desk was a woman in white. A small juniper bush stood in a pot, a bowl on either side, one of water, one emitting the vehement odour of rue. An ivory cross was around her neck. She was stroking a tiny ermine, blindingly white, its two black eyes glimmering. ‘You are one of the Tower girls. Yes?’ The girl’s head was bowed and she said nothing. ‘Yes. You think you have known suffering, girl. It is our business here to know it. It comes in waves. Yes? Like those men no doubt did. Yes?’ The girl looked at the woman doubtfully. An acrid taste flooded her mouth and she wished she could spit. ‘I know all about it, girl. There have been many like you. The soldiers come, one and then another, and you pray to be gone from life. Yes? The Lord knew more than you knew. He left a promise of His truth in you. Yes? Wave upon wave, I know it. A little pledge from heaven, to renew the truth in suffering. Suffering in receiving it, suffering in bearing it, suffering in delivering it, suffering in the face that you must feed, suffering in having it taken from you. You hardly know which suffering to suffer. Yes?’ The girl wasn’t sure whether to look at the woman or the stoat. She chose the stoat, it seemed friendlier. ‘The Lord has taken it all away. A nail beats out a nail, a fire a fire. It is a blessing for you. Yes? For you, but not for Him. Can you imagine His pain? Whenever you feel tempted to dwell on your suffering, think instead upon His, living in His flesh every sin that has ever been done, apprehending all crimes, re-suffering all vice and terror and misery, everything done, everything able to be done, everything! Every loss redoubled in Him. Imagine His suffering, and yours will seem like the blown angels on a dandelion clock.’ The girl thought she should nod and did. The ermine stared, its head cocked to one side. ‘You suffer for your home? Yes? For your child? For those soldiers, coming in waves, so many waves you thought you must drown? Yes?’

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She nodded more readily. She remembered that time she thought she might drown. She had been washing in the stream, she had slipped on a rock and could hardly get up and the rocks had cut her palms. ‘It is sin to do so. Even to remember such things, child, is covetousness. Renounce all objects; all love but Christ. Think on Him, on his poor besotted body, never asleep, reliving all of our horrors, even now, even as I speak! Even now! Can you imagine it?’ She had been told of the sweet Christchild but she had never felt He was hers to know. The ermine slipped from the Abbess’s hold and began nibbling at the juniper. ‘Pray think not on yourself.’ The Abbess recovered her ermine and addressed its eyes as she spoke. ‘Beneath God’s roof, think only upon Him. Yes?’ The girl nodded. Perhaps she would get her own little stoat. That would be nice. ‘Good girl. I have no more leisure for the present.’ The Abbess had started washing her hands in the water bowl. ‘You are a Bride of Christ’s now. I shall see you in a moment in chapel.’ She clapped, beads of water sprayed the chilly air, and Abbess and ermine were gone. The girl stood frozen in the emptied room, the Abbess’s words ringing in the air. Now she was alone all she could taste was her mouth. It felt poisoned; she wished she could lie down and sleep. She didn’t much understand what the lady had been saying, all of that stuff about waves. She knew that last night, it seemed so long ago, she’d had her baby. He had a purple helmet on his head. She peeled it off so she could see him better and then he cried. She had cried too. She should have kept his helmet on. It might have helped. All those horrid shouting soldiers and the screaming. It might have protected. It must have been her fault but there wasn’t any time. Her mam would have killed her. She’d said when she was taken to the Queen’s tower that he’d bring good luck and now she had lost him. She

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kept his little floppy head hood, she didn’t know why. It was no good but still, she had it, it was hers. The novice re-entered as the girl tucked the still-damp caul more firmly beneath her belt. They passed in single file down a windowless corridor, again measured by bowls of water and cordial, most of them half empty, and entered the open porch of a larger chapel. The novice dropped her hood. She was entirely shaven. The girl looked past her naked neck into the vaulted interior of the church. The priest and deacon were women, both of them tonsured. The pews and choir stalls were full of shaven women in coarse white robes, chanting an austere plainsong, bowing up and down like waves of a white sea. The girl quailed briefly beneath their gaze. She touched her head, ashamed of its covering, and at once her hood slid away. Black hair spilt from her shoulders and down her back. The shaven faces convulsed, a collective rictus twisting every cheek. The Abbess alone remained unmoved. She raised a bone chalice and salver and offered up bread and wine. Against the pervading whiteness, the bread looked never so black, the wine never so red. The girl walked head down to the altar rail, knelt and raised her white hands. She bit the bread and swallowed a gulp of sanguinary wine. She looked up to the abbess who nodded to her twice, indicating with her nod the wine. The girl took another draught. Once more she looked to the abbess, who once more nodded, this time more warmly. The girl emptied the cup and held it to the abbess for approval. The abbess looked as though there was still more for the girl to do. She licked at the moist dregs sticking to the base of the cup, and then stood aloft and held the cup upside down as proof. She was feeling giddy and swoony but the foul taste in her mouth had gone. The abbess raised her two arms, and clapped. ‘My son is dead!’ came a voice from the pews. ‘Show!’ called the collective. ‘My son is dead!’ came a second voice. ‘Show!’

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‘My son is dead!’ came a third. ‘Show!’ Eight times this happened, and at each call of ‘Show!’ the sister who had called would come down from the stalls and sit in a line before the new girl, the nearest crouching low, the next slightly higher, each head bowed such that nothing could be seen but a pink bald crown. Within a minute there was a line of gleaming domes rising from the floor, the eighth sister’s head bowed directly perpendicular to the initiate’s eyes. The girl felt herself reeling before this sight. A single thought stunned her mind. Each bobbing dome was a pregnancy! The floor seemed to have disappeared; a ripple passed across the line of tautly luminous bellies. The congregation began to groan a low, animal groan, bovine and ancient. And then the groan was shaping into song. ‘Show his eyes, and grieve her heart Come like shadows, so depart.’ The girl felt drunk and dizzy but strangely elated. ‘The son is dead!’ cried the abbess. A tearing sound and the girl started. A bloody child was hovering, swaying above the bowed head of the nearest sister. The sister arose before her, unnaturally erect, staring with vehement eyes before swooping into shadows. ‘The son is dead!’ The girl swooned at the series of apparitions: dead babies torn from their mothers’ heads; dead babies swaying on a rope; dead babies on disappearing sticks, stretching into darkness before her eyes. And after the babies came the mothers’ faces, sick and bereft and accusing. ‘The son is dead, the son is dead, the son is dead!’ The final sister rose and fled into the dark. The candles were all out, the chapel black as pitch. The girl was alone, marooned in absolute darkness. She thought of her funny boy, with his helmet head and his two tummy holes. She thought of

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these bald round faces and their disappearing babes, and a realization dawned. Each of these sisters was once upon a time a mother. At once a single flame appeared. In its light was the abbess. She advanced on the girl with ceremonious steps, a face-sized mirror in her spare hand. The girl felt woozy as she tried to make out shapes in the mirror. The glass glinted and shadows fled. She saw a tear-bloated face, looming and distorted. She thought for a moment it must be her own face, all punished and sad. Or was it her boy, wrapped in his caul and calling for her as she left? ‘Say it’, said the abbess, very softly. ‘Me?’ said the girl. ‘Yes’, said the abbess, ‘you’. ‘My boy?’ said the girl. ‘Say it.’ ‘My son?’ ‘Yes. Go on. Say it.’ ‘My boy – my son.’ ‘Go on.’ ‘Is dead?’ He was a funny boy, not for this world. ‘Again.’ ‘My son is dead!’ Or was he a dream? ‘Again.’ ‘My son is dead!’ cried the girl as loudly as her chest allowed. Her body emptied and she fell upon the abbess’s breast. She was one with the others now, with all the dead mothers. ‘Good girl,’ said the abbess gently. ‘Good girl.’ And now there was silence. The abbess held the silence for one, two, three counts, holding the girl close. Then she spoke high and loud to the assembly. ‘The son is dead? Is this so?’ A candle sprang up, and moved it seemed autonomously to beneath the abbess’s mirror. The same thing happened seven times, bodiless lights moving like glow-worms to the glass.

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Within a few moments the mirror was hedged in a halo of yellow light. ‘Show!’ called the congregation. ‘The son is dead?’ ‘Show, show!’ ‘No? Then the son lives?’ ‘Show!’ ‘He lives in the deaths of the departed!’ ‘Show!’ ‘In the mothers made maidens!’ ‘Show! Show! Show!’ ‘In the revirginated brides of Christ!’ The abbess’s voice was high and hard but now she smiled at the girl and turned the mirror around. A finely carved and brightly painted fresco was facing out of it. The abbess helped the girl upright. The girl stared in amazement at the mirror. ‘The son lives’, said the abbess. The girl saw in the mirror a tonsured Christ’s face, excruciated and yet at peace, his lidless eyes neither open nor closed. ‘The son lives’, said the abbess once more, ‘and so, my child, do you.’ The girl wept at His sweet face. Could it be that everything was all right? That she hadn’t after all done anything wrong? Oh His sweet face! He knew what it was to be ravished, and her ravishment was now as nothing. He was every taken baby, bleeding in his wounds, hanging in His grief. Here was the one behind the caul and the veil! Thus, from the slender hand of a female priest she received for the first time Christ in the Host, the same Christ who even now was being nailed to the cross, nailed over and over, more full of wounds than a dove-house of holes, the flapping tear in His side gushing out blood for her love and her salvation. She fell down and cried loud with her saviour, turning her body on each and every side. She felt all that she’d ever had or ever known falling from her, uncoiling into lightness. For she was with Him, she was wonderfully one with Him, twisting and

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hanging on that bitter tree, gloriously expelling the sins of that obscene and murderous world of men that she had only so lately known. ∞

comfort seemed to come The Porter watched while his boys slept. He had often been careless, but never again. Now all he wanted was to watch over them, never take his eyes off them, never ever again. By the light of his candle he would study their small purring forms. He watched until the candle was no more. At last he would lay himself down, his heart swollen painfully with love and hope. He tossed and turned, still warding off the demon sleep and its chaotic alphabet. It would be dawn before he dozed. He would wake in chill terror, cursing his own unconsciousness, blessing it in his boys. Sometimes of a morning he pushed them in his barrow toward the edge of Birnam, and felt a silly temptation to crown them with wild flowers, to make humble offerings of sweet purple berries and dappled pink eggs, assuming of course he could find any. He let the castle’s two goats wander free on the plain. The twins were commissioned shepherds. Their improvised staffs made great weapons, and useful whips. Fyn in particular was an audacious rider when the boys had goat races across the heath. The goats munched from dawn to dusk, day after day, and in the evening the Porter milked them dry. Lu lived on nothing but goats’ milk, three or four cups a day. Soon he was every bit as big as his brothers, his eyes as white as pearls, his complexion opalescent. The Porter looked upon his adoptive son and smiled a smile wide enough for a greater victory. Everything is redeemed in him, he thought, everything. The Porter did not read and he would have his sons the

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same. Some things were better unknown. But soon enough Grim taught himself this mystery, the Porter couldn’t imagine how, and the others eagerly followed. Words became Grim’s world. He wanted a word for each thing, a thing for each word. Anything more or less and he was angry. Fyn was different. He saw meanings tingling before his eyes in great necklaces of implication. Lu was at first too young, but he learnt to cherish the shape of letters, the smell of thought, feeling before meaning. It was the psalms that finally got him; they grabbed him by the heart and would not let go; the gospels followed, rising in his soul like yeast. From the time he could spell Christ he was rarely without his little Bible. Really the old man wished that history would just stop. He saw precious little need for anything but what they had. Why couldn’t they be left alone to farm their little leasehold on the hill! The Porter cherished nothing more than a nice blank horizon, promising nothing. The local stories were too foully familiar to relate. A man, egged on by a woman, killing for a plot of land. A son murdered in reprisal for the father’s crime; a daughter held as a slave and ravished day and night to sate a sick man’s hunger. The countless ditches where dead men lay hid; the silver clean brooks, cannily dammed, covering the corpses of kings and clowns; and Scottish soil, growing higher by the year, a guilty loam of worms and bones. Highland lords bridling wild horses, tying four at a time to a single naysayer’s limbs, calling in the public to watch the horses’ thrash for freedom; spectators roaring with joy, collecting the bits like paupers round a bin; shredded entrails, brains left flapping like flags from the village gates. Was it any wonder the air was so massed with carrion birds? And every crow fed to the gills with punished flesh, flesh coursed through with dying curses and unspeakable pain. Still more mothers weeping, and sisters sacked, and never an innocent tear. He would safeguard his boys if it was the last thing he did. The task required sleepless surveillance. The Porter’s liveliest fear was a drowning. From very young he instilled a fear of the

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sea and all that swam inside it. The dark stain of mackerel! The boys saw one once, washed up dead, in visible anguish, on the pebbles. Fyn picked it up, ready to taunt his brothers with its horror, but even he shrank from the sight and let the carcass drop. Its innards were like a cave painting of atrocity, with that dirty dark line where one flesh ends and another, already ended, begins to stain. Mackerel, filthy cannibal, its skin coal black and tanned hard as leather, its smell like a sulphurous cauldron, its meat with that subtle tang of the forbidden, the lip bubbling strangely. Do not go there. Even the scavenger seagulls were too close to the sea for these superstitious young lads. And as for that Neanderthal thrash they call swimming, good God, the exposure, as the gonads dangled and the sea-creatures rose to sniff out the intruders! Steer clear of the green one. But there was water closer to home, and with it came another prohibition. The nearby peasants never spoke of salmon; the very word was forbidden. Instead they called it ‘King’. They had a holy reverence for the fish and would cut off the hands of anyone who tried to catch one. The Porter had told the boys why. For centuries salmon was the King’s fish, and only thanes could serve it. The peasants made do with roach (don’t poach, poach roach went the nurses’ rhyme). But once the King had gone a new superstition descended, as though overnight. The King had gone, and with him all vassalage. And to safeguard this impossible liberty you had to tread softly, as delicate as a fisher on ice. Do not touch a thing! And so the salmon multiplied, thousands of them thronging the river, as the prohibition grew more violent than ever: catch a King, lose everything. Take one salmon and the whole house of cards would come crashing down. Some stranger in shiny coat on shiny horse would descend and put them all in irons. So just leave the salmon be, went the injunction, leave them to leap and eat, leave them in their furry bliss. Do not touch until – unless – lest – kingdom come. ∞

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what bloody man is that? The Porter told his sons bedtime stories, the toddler Lu on his lap, the twins cuddled either side and competing for a free arm. A favourite was the one they called Macbeth, told over and over again. It went like this; they all knew it by heart. ‘I was doing my duty, bringing up you boys – not you Lula, not yet! – serving the master. I manned the doors and cooked the meals. The master didn’t take a lot of notice of me; he had a lot on his plate, of course he did. He didn’t sleep much – that was a problem with him. Anyway, one morning, before he had drunk his breakfast ale – ‘Macbeth!’ Fyn would say. ‘Macbeth to you, the master to me. Anyway, this morning he held you two on his knees.’ ‘Which one was I on?’ Grim would say. ‘You were on this left side; Fynboy on that right side. Just as you are now.’ ‘But he was on a chair’, Grim would confirm. ‘Not a bed. Macbeth was on a chair.’ ‘The very chair I sit in for meals, lads. Now – shall I go on? The twins would nod briefly. ‘Then – Fyn it was – young Fyn – you were three years old, not a day more – you looked at the master and you said, your nose looks like a cow!’ On cue the twins would collapse with giggles. ‘You look like a cow!’ mimicked Grim. ‘You look like a – a – a pig!’ answered Fyn, and again they would convulse in laughter. ‘Alright, alright – do you want to hear? Settle yourselves – now, quick as you like, the master called for me – I was soaking some pulses, I’ll never forget it – he called for me – he hardly ever spoke to me see – he called out fool, old fool, and I came running, and he told me to bring my largest darning needle. I ran out to my quarters and hunted through your dear old mum’s things – God rest her soul – but all I could find was the

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ugly big knitting needles I’d used to knit my socks. Do you remember my socks, boys?’ ‘No, dad’, Fyn would say, ‘come on, the nose, the nose!’ ‘So I brought the needle to the master. He seemed satisfied. He told you, Grim – ‘Me!’ ‘Yes, you my lad, he told you to get a stone from the yard. So you did that and then – ‘And what did I do then?’ interrupted Fyn. ‘You? You were a right little devil-boy – you kept tapping him on the ear, and then the crown, and pulling his nose – you were lucky he didn’t whack you one.’ Fyn would look pleased as punch with this report. ‘Anyway, then he told me to go and rip the circular handle from the Queen’s jewellery box. Master? I said, the Queen’s? I couldn’t believe he’d let me touch anything of hers. I said it, fool, he said, the brass handle. So I did – it wasn’t all that hard to get off, just a little pulling and twisting – and anyways – I came back and you were back on his lap as well.’ ‘Me?’ said Grim. ‘That’s right – you’d got him his stone and he was sharpening the needle on it. Both of you were just – just looking – your eyes narrow and curious. He told me to burn the ring and heat the needle. As quick as I could I got them nice and hot and brought them to the master. Hurry, fool, he said once, but that was all, he was patient. And then I knew what was going on.’ The boys would squirm with anticipatory delight, Grim still holding to the Porter’s chest, Fyn riding his knee like a horse. Lu would be quiet and still, taking in who knew what. ‘The master took the needle – this long, thick, iron needle – as long as little Lu’s arm it was! – and without a moment’s doubt he – just like this – And the Porter would loosen his arms, raise his nose, and mime a steadily violent prod. ‘– he pierced his inner nostrils with the smouldering point. You two – good lord, your faces! – ‘What then dad?’ blurted Fyn, ‘what happened then!’

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‘Well, then, the master motioned to me – I was still holding the ring in the fire tongs – and he took this ring of brass – so hot you’d think it would have melted – in his hands. You two had both turned around – like you are now – and were sitting astride his lap looking at his face. This ring, it was too hot to hold, but the master held it anyway.’ ‘He was very strong’, Grim would say. ‘Very. No one stronger. Anyway – the master held the brass ring, and bent it apart where the join was – and then he – The Porter would delay a moment, check on the twins’ concentrated faces. ‘– then he plunged the ring through the holes that the needle had torn.’ ‘Plunged the ring!’ repeated Grim. ‘Ringed the plunge!’ said Fyn. ‘Was there a lot of blood father?’ said Grim, ‘a really lot?’ ‘There was blood.’ ‘A lot lot?’ The Porter would pause a moment, holding them in teasing suspense. ‘Blood you ask – blood? Oh yes, such blood!’ And again the boys would whoop with delight. ‘– it poured and poured, and my little pickles were covered in it!’ ‘Not me’, said Fyn. ‘Oh yes, you especially my bonny. Anyway – now – while the blood was flowing – the master bent the ring into a nearly perfect circle, and told me to bring more fire. I didn’t understand what he meant, but I ran to the kitchen and – I’ve never done such a thing in my life – I plunged the bucket – ‘Plunged!’ shouted Fyn. ‘That’s right, I plunged it into the fire and brought it flaming back to the master. You two parted to each side – like this – and in-between you was this, this burning hole – and we all watched the master duck his head into the fiery bucket – for twenty seconds, thirty, a minute!’

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‘He was really strong’, Grim would say, nodding to his twin. ‘And when he pulled his head out the only smoking thing was the ring. It looked huge and red, but the rest of him was pale, calm. Oh he was a man, my collops!’ ‘Macbeth!’ shouted the twins in unison. ‘He soldered the ring’s ends together, like this, with his fingers. The blood barely ran as he smiled at the completion.’ ‘He was really strong’, Grim would say again. ‘That he was.’ ‘Really strong.’ ‘Liar liar’, Fyn would laugh, as the Porter clipped him playfully on the crown. This the Porter taught. ∞

unsex me here The girl was a postulant now and joined the holy life of the order. She clutched her icon and received instruction from her saint. With each new moon the nuns shaved their hair and let their blood. They wore undergarments of rough wool, but no iron, or hedgehog skins without permission; they did not sting themselves with nettles, or scourge the body, or mutilate themselves with cuts, without permission. They welcomed the silence of each new morning, and spoke not at meals. They washed their hands every third waking hour, and drank rue for chastity, its bitterness allayed by the sweet fermented apples. They did not play worldly games at the window, or romp with other nuns, or gossip of light and worldly things. An hour every evening was spent in plainsong. As the day closed their whispered amens ran around the stones like sighs. In the anguish of night they rose again and they filled the dark with their prayerful supplications. They prayed and prayed and welcomed the penitential heat. They felt the heat of their Christ at all times, warming their blood and lending them new

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life. Oh, how they burned, and how they shone with that burning! The scarlet man who had put the girl on the cart had said the war was over. But all the shaven sisters knew men’s wars to be never-ending. And so against perpetual war the sisterhood set its power of prayer and adoration. The abbess taught the girl that eternity is action: the action of chastity, committed to with every bitter draught of rue. Such was the action of the Brides of Christ, who were in the world yet not of it, whose rituals transcended the rapacity of men. Their liturgy spoke one tremendous truth: that this conventual church was the real court and capital of Scotland; that these self-scraping women, anonymous in their white habits and fallow skulls, were doing for Scotland what no warrior or King could ever do. They were winning for their miserable land the grace of Grace itself. The girl’s hair seemed a small price to pay. When the new moon at last limped round she would give it all up with joy. One week later that day came. The girl sat in the walled garden of the nunnery on a three-legged stool. She was in a white shift, her black tresses twisting around her ears and almost down to grass. The sky was a depthless blue, fitfully torn by papery doves and swirls of swallows. Flowers were everywhere. A rotund sister was circling the girl and snapping two pairs of scissors over her head. The girl sat at the centre of this lobster dance like a smile. She knew it was her day – her birthday, her wedding day! – and her body was relaxing into the utmost submission. Two others entered, the Abbess and her male superior, and advanced upon the birthday girl. The girl smiled and closed her eyes. The scissor claws clacked in the sun. Then the abbot raised a pudgy hand and the claws froze. The girl’s eyes opened. The man’s piggy face was very close, a single dome of sweat between nose and lip, the large cheeks trembling delicately. The girl recoiled on her stool and tossed her head. Her hair was released, the whole awesome unthinking system of it. The pig curled the tresses over one ear, his finger lingering almost painfully.

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‘No’, he said, ‘This hair is reserved to glory. Ordain her as she is.’ No one moved or spoke. A huge bee hovered in silence near the girl’s revealed ear. The bee looked impossibly rich. All watched as the bee moved sideways to a primrose. The abbot turned on his heel and was gone. The Abbess kept her own counsel. Later that day the nuns were processing in a long line with shovels tucked under their arms. They were going to plough the terraced field in the foothills behind the nunnery. It was hard-work, backbreaking work, and the hour was hot. They chose the hour for the length of its bathing penitential heat. As they filed up the hill they cast down hoods. They resembled creatures of bone, sloughing off this dull vesture of flesh – or all except the girl at the front, walking ahead with her tresses long and scandalous. What were they to make of those black, black locks? Were they truly the Glory, a ravishing foretaste of the heavenly banquet? Or were they the picture of sin, of their own unregenerate past returned to mock them with the hopeless impotence of sacrifice? All they knew was that mortified desire was among them, that the twin gargoyles, jealousy and perversion, stalked their sleepless hours, that they coveted what they hated to love, that they burned with a corroding heat, that they burned and corroded and burned! For all unwittingly she had broken her sisters’ sacred unity. Most of them trailed behind her like craven serfs, their holy vocation soiled, licking their parched mouths and tortured by her hair. She was their idol, their secret Queen, darkly haloed in all the adverse desires of the world. A tight cabal of nuns vowed to loathe her. What had she given to be so spared? The girl was a traitor to women and a threat to the sisterhood. One night, late at night, five sisters came to her pallet, five that hated her hair and all it had aroused. As she slept they sliced all the locks they could reach. When dawn came she saw them on the floor, like dead black tails, hacked and uneven. She

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had no mirror but she felt a savage imbalance in her head. At once all of the sisters united against her, the girl frozen from company, the holy heat inside her horribly slow to kindle. And now day after day she sat alone, stranded among pale stooping shades. She felt her youth and confusion and longed for a clarifying saviour. ∞

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harbinger Far on the outskirts of Birnam Wood, Sod was ensconced in a glade. Years had passed since he had known human community, and he had done nothing but wax thin upon unripe corn and runner beans. Had he grapes he would have burst them; he wished vaguely for a minion. In lieu of which he lay splayed, stroking his penis, as limp as a flower in a shower of rain. One day it occurred to him that his grove was not providing, so he set off in search of sustenance. He had walked two days, without food but what he could suck from flowers, when he beheld a vision of hellish bifurcation. To one side of the straight road was a creature with two legs, two chests, four arms and two heads. The heads were arguing, chiding and brawling, renting each other pitifully with nails. Sod looked on helplessly, wringing his hands, aghast at what he was witnessing. Soon one of the torsos had fallen sideways, and flopped at an angle from its upright twin. Its mouth hung ajar, just as dead mouths hang. For six hours the survivor vomited and cursed, railing at his brother’s foul smell. Sod hid behind a hawthorn and watched, impotent with pity. By late afternoon the survivor was dead, unable to abide the grievous smell of the un-severable carcass. Sod stood over the joined twins and shivered. The smell of death was all too familiar. He thought he had left such things 39

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far behind. Does nothing ever simply pass away? The smell was sending him back years and years. He remembered a beautiful bay mare and her gorgeous chestnut colt, eating each other like gerbils. He remembered a boy, bent double, his face chewed by maggots and a fox cub nestling in his innards. He warded off the memory of Duncan himself, the gash silver and putrid a mere hour after the murder. He could not tell if his clairvoyance was returning. If it was – if it was – He recalled the vision and felt nauseous with fear. Something was splitting; something was cloven and wrong. There was a metal taste in his mouth that had always meant only one thing: the old boy was coming! Hide like a boy beneath the bed! Oh, he revered King Macbeth, he owed his life to him, his fear was the fear of true love – but enough was enough. A boy must be free to live! And the Sod-boy felt freer, certainly, if the old boy was at rest. If only he hadn’t lost the head. If he had possession of the head, safe and sound and in his care, he could rest a little easier. He knew it was idiotic, but now it was out of his sight, he couldn’t quite trust that the head was really dead. That face held secrets; and secrets come out! Sod thought again about the conjoined twins. Was it a sign? Was it even real? He had only known one pair of twins, the knavish Porter’s boys, a scrawny mucky motherless pair who went almost feral from the day they were cut from their bloodied mare. Surely the fool’s boys could not have survived the battle. Surely they dropped dead from terror if not from a sword. But what if he was wrong! At once Sod was floored by a vision: a vision of a single boyish body with two massive heads, each red and sleepless, all but indistinguishable from the undead face of King Macbeth. His teeth felt like tin as he tried to lick his mouth clean. There was nothing to be done. History must stop repeating! Ross started gliding like a mantis toward Dunsinane. ∞

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present fears are less than horrible imaginings The Porter had banned the boys from entering the fabled wood, rehearsing stories of ghosts and witches and quicksands. The Porter feared Birnam Wood like death. He knew that none of the villagers dared venture within a country mile of its ghoulish tree skeletons and callow new growth. But he might as well have drawn the boys a map and beckoned them forward with a toffee apple. Who could resist this green world, so various and individuating! Very soon, old Birnam Wood had become the boys’ primal playground. One day the three of them were out in the wood, doing their usual – Fyn chasing and mimicking and riding the pigs; Grim roaming with his notebook and copying and naming each living thing; Lu searching endlessly for the perfect acorn. Sod had been in the forest for days, pretending to be a vole, or a mole, or a troll, waiting for the two boy faces marked with the castle’s haunted pallor. He was deep in luxurious dream, wrapped in the innards of a vast emptied trunk, when he heard laughter, a single shout, and then the stunned thud of a rock against bark. Sod poked his head out from an owl-hole. He knew them instantly, although puzzled by the third boy, plump and younger but ineradicably one with the others. Sod slipped from his tree onto the dusty track. ‘Boys!’ They eyed him silently, this wild green man with bindweed for hair and alarming sinewy flesh. ‘Do I have the pleasure of the boys of Dunsinane?’ The twins glanced at each other and smirked. Fyn spoke, nursing a makeshift slingshot in his elbow. ‘You’re not an animal. You’re a man.’ ‘And you are the child of the castle’, said Sod. ‘Has daddy told you the burden you bear, being sons of the castle?’ ‘He tells us nothing’, said Grim, flatly.

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‘Oh dear. Not even about his master?’ ‘Macbeth!’ Such rapture on their faces! ‘Indeed, King Macbeth. A remarkable man. I knew him well.’ ‘You did?’ ‘Oh yes. Kith and kin. I can see his face, even now. What a face!’ ‘Did he really have a ring in his nose?’ It was Fyn, stepping a foot ahead of his brothers. ‘Oh yes. In the latter days. But I knew him when he was younger. A huge handsome man! Like you may be one day, my lad.’ ‘Not you!’ laughed Fyn, pushing at Grim. ‘The black eyes. The pallor. I see a resemblance. Definitely.’ ‘Tell us about Macbeth!’ interrupted Grim. ‘A formidable man! He wasn’t always King, you know. His mother was Doada, a woman composed of milk. She spawned a milky man. But, my lambs, he curdled.’ ‘No he didn’t!’ said Fyn. ‘Your father should have told you! Listen closer, child.’ Sod put his arms around Fyn and seemed to be addressing him alone. ‘Macbeth found fame by stealing upon a dead man – a leader – who was lying dead among the residue of the slain. Macbeth beheld him, and caused the head to be cut off and set upon a pole’s end. He kissed it, laughed in its face, and then sent it as a present to the King.’ ‘He did?’ said Fyn, wide-eyed. ‘He did. Macbeth loved to violate the sleeping. That is what he did. The sleeping or the dead, it did not matter, both were but pictures to vandalize. Macbeth’s greatest triumph was of a kind. The Danes had invaded, and they surrounded the castle of Bertha. The old King lay quivering within. He relied upon Macbeth to save him. Macbeth pretended to come to the invaders in peace. He caused his cooks to gather buckets of mekilwoort berries. The cooks mixed the berries in their ale

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and bread, sending it thus spiced and confectioned, in great abundance, to the enemy. The hungry Danes rejoiced. Each seemed to strive to eat and drink the most. Macbeth sat amongst them, drinking water, stroking his sword.’ ‘He knew better!’ said Fyn. ‘He knew more. Soon the operation of the berries had spread through all parts of the Danes’ bodies. They were brought into a fast dead sleep. It was impossible to wake them. Macbeth tried sundry ways to start them into life. He put his sword in every hole and crevice made for man. It was impossible to wake them.’ ‘He was checking!’ ‘He was. Only then, assured that they slept, Macbeth made such slaughter as Scotland had never seen!’ ‘Never ever!’ ‘Yes, but – are you listening to how he did it, my lamb? Macbeth removed the snoring heads. One slice, and off it would roll. The mouth stayed open; the eyes stayed closed. It took two full days, and only at the end did a few thin men, dizzy and amazed, awake to witness their end. Macbeth gathered the heads on carts, in very neat piles, tied cart to cart and donkeys to the train, and carefully rode out at daybreak. He delivered them into the mouth of the Tay.’ ‘So they couldn’t catch him!’ ‘Yes, but – he wasn’t happy! Macbeth rested but did not sleep. In place of sleep, he would sweat.’ ‘Sleep is for babies!’ ‘You are too young to understand! He swam in his own juices. He washed in them. He could never swim in the sea – the green one, he would call it, and shudder – but he learnt to swim at night, in his sweat. Every sleeper he had slain was a pint of sweat to lather in. His sweat was his crimes – his cowardice – his fear.’ ‘He wasn’t afraid!’ said Fyn. ‘He could never look a victim in the eye!’ ‘What’s the point? They were dead! Stupid Danes!’ ‘Every one a mother’s son!’ ‘Who cares about Danes? Great Danes! Ruff!’

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‘Pitiless boy!’ ‘Ruff! Ruff! Hey Grim, better not go to sleep tonight. Better keep your eyes open!’ ‘Shut up Fyn, you’re not him even if you think you are.’ ‘Ruff! Ruff!’ And with that Fyn went barking off into the clearing and away. ‘He’s such an idiot’, said Grim. ‘An idiot indeed’, said Sod. ‘Perhaps you will pay more heed?’ ‘We have to get back’, said Grim. ‘Come on Lu.’ ‘To the castle! Of course, may I accompany you boys?’ They said nothing as Sod stepped in and out between them, suddenly turning to eye the older boy. ‘Did you know, Grim, there was one before you in the castle whose name was also Grim?’ Grim halted for a moment. ‘There never was!’ ‘I tell true! King Grim – known to many as Grime.’ ‘We’ve never heard of him.’ ‘Learn from the past, my boy! Let’s talk and walk, boys, talk and walk.’ They resumed walking, Sod holding to Grim’s arm as they made their slow way along the lane. ‘Once upon a time day there was a great bishop of Scotland, called Fothadus. He came to King Grim on his knees. He told him he came as the humble servant of Christ and author of all peace and concord. ‘Take ruth and pity’, said Fothadus, ‘of the great misery and trouble fallen to the realm. Injuries and mischief are put in practice, without restraint or punishment. Murder, robbery, rape, in such licentious sort that no man can assure himself of his own.’ Sod stopped and held Grim by the arm. ‘Do you know these words, my boy?’ ‘Go on!’ ‘Great King’, said the bishop, ‘give relief to the poor commons of Scotland. Make peace with your brother

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and rival, else ruin befall your land!’ King Grim made peace, and it lasted for eight happy years. The King was chaste and austere. But then – King Grim’s appetites began to flicker. His appetites, through long sloth and increase of riches, became most covetous. Do you know that word, boy?’ ‘Yes! Go on!’ ‘He began to oppress the people by continual exactions. King Grim proclaimed that everything divisible is half the crown’s. If the people resisted they were powder. If you can divide it in half then one half is Grim’s. And what cannot be divided? When do you stop? What is left the poor souls to farm? The civil wars returned. The great battle was on Ascension Day. On the dawning of that morning the whole world had turned brown. Grim was taken at noon, brown noon, standing at defence and fiercely fighting the wind.’ ‘Did he win?’ Grim turned urgently to his tutor. ‘He won, didn’t he?’ ‘Victory comes in many guises. Both of Grim’s eyes were put out – so they were! – and a cake sized chunk was cut from the back of his skull. The battle was over. Grim was left to walk in an ecstasy for three days and nights, in misery and languor, as the citizens watched and mocked. So they did! Nobody warned him as he walked near Bay Cliff. Nobody! A fat dwarf rode his back, whipping his thighs with a riding crop and biting his skull wound for the savour. He did, Grim. He kept yelling, ‘sweet, sweet!’ as the blind King headed for the edge. So he did, he did, I tell true. The villagers, drunk and recumbent, allowed it to happen. So they did! The sea had far withdrawn when Grim went tumbling over. So it had. The pebbles were very round and large, glistening like black mirrors. Some say a small boy helped with the final push. Did he even know he was falling? Well, who can know such a thing?’ Hard rain had started falling, the dust turning in seconds to mud. Grim was staring, not at Sod, not really at anything at all, his eyes glassed with water. ‘Victory’, he said.

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‘Sorry, boy?’ And then Grim seemed to smile. A smile, thought Sod, like a new adventure, creasing the boy’s face like never before. Grim accelerated away up the path, his notebook closed under his arm. ‘What about the little one?’ cried Sod, but Grim didn’t seem to be hearing. ‘It’s alright’, said Lu, ambling with his stick in the mud, ‘I know the way home.’ ‘Do you?’ said Sod. Lulach nodded to himself. He had made a channel of mud for the water to flow through. ‘What’s your name, boy?’ said Sod, crouching down to the boy’s level, head on his wiry bent arm. ‘Lulach. But they all call me Lu.’ ‘Lulach the Simple!’ I know this boy, thought Sod. The boy with a heart to love. ‘Listen, little man. Wilt thou listen to a man who knows? Wilt thou listen to a man who has seen?’ Sod’s eyes popped at him like peas. He leapt backwards from the muddy path onto a low branch and started thrusting his legs out and in. He was swinging on the branch like a very old child. Sod touched his nose and pointed at the boy deliberately. ‘We were meant to be, you and I, you see if we weren’t! Do you want to know some secrets, boy?’ Lulach nodded. ‘Our secrets?’ Lulach nodded again, his eyes unblinking. Ross slipped forward on his branch. ‘Good! Let me tell you a story about love – about a great man –your patron saint.’ ‘Mine?’ ‘His name was Constantine. He owned a castle. Imagine that! Constantine was an earnest and devout fellow. He was a man of faith. He despised worldly pomp, and of each year six months were spent on his knees, on the cold concrete of St Andrew’s Abbey floor, hushed in divine contemplation. A fellow after your own heart, boy?’

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‘I do pray.’ ‘Of course you do! But Constantine had terrible responsibilities. The world was burning all around him. The river was overflowing its banks. It would not stop. The cattle were drowning, cow after cow getting swept out to sea, their hooves raised in surrender. No one but Constantine knew why. It was love, you see – love! He loved his lady like no man has loved another. This was his weakness, Lulach – love! You see, years before, his Lady had been banished from her county as a witch. She had been caught frying a candle in a pan. The candle had melted and the wax spookily resembled the local Thane, a hawk-faced man with a turkey neck. It was devil-witchery, they all thought. She was lucky to escape with her life. But Lady Constantine – she wasn’t a woman who forgot things. She would get her own back one day! So it was that, some years later, when she had met Constantine, and Constantine came to be Thane of a nearby county, she suggested to him that the source of all troubles was her home county. Purge that, and the nation’s troubles will be purged. It was her revenge, you see!’ ‘Purge?’ ‘Clean, cleanse – the clean ones are the worst, my lamb, never trust the cleaners!’ Sod stopped for a moment and studied the boy before him. ‘Ah, my milky boy!’ ‘What happened then?’ said Lu. ‘Ah yes – well, secretly, silently, Constantine’s men did as she bid. Into the loch, one by one, went the men and women of the Lady’s home county, each of them weighted by a stone.’ ‘No!’ ‘Love, my lamb! The river grew higher and higher. People blamed the cows but a cow is rarely to blame. Constantine wanted to make amends. His prayers were fierce and durable. He built a cathedral upon the town’s ruins. But rebellion was afoot. The people were starving. The old King was anxious and came to stay with Lord and Lady Constantine. He came to

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stay! You know what happens when old men are too trusting, don’t you boy?’ Lu shook his head. ‘Love makes a wound, my sweet! It is all so very tragical! The old King came, and the Lady looked at Constantine, and he swore he saw her smirk. Clearly she thought the King a fool. She had watched the King show clemency to a group of reprobates – ‘Rep-what?’ ‘Reprobates – rebels, lost from God, poor souls. The King did not have them executed – do you know why? Because they were beautiful and goodly.’ ‘Is that true?’ ‘Can you think of a better reason? Constantine saw that the King liked their limbs. He saw that his Lady saw this also. Her smirk was saying be a man. That evening Constantine was long at his prayers. So too the King. They knelt side by side in the castle chapel, muttering to God, never looking sideways, until it was late at night. They wished each other sound sleep. Shortly before cock’s crow Constantine entered the chamber – where the King lay – and without the slightest agitation – ‘No!’ ‘Not the slightest – he secretly – secretly! – cut the King’s throat.’ ‘No!’ ‘Oh my sweet – love makes a wound – and then, my sweet, you go deeper, and deeper, and deeper inside. That is what love does! It makes the wound and then draws you deeper and deeper into its secret heat. The wound once made, everything follows! So – Constantine’s men were readied. They conveyed the King’s corpse – secretly, secretly – to a water mill. They buried it beneath a dam. The King’s chamberlains entered the next morning – and do you know what they found? All they found were three giant cakes of blood. Constantine crossed himself and invoked the devil. Two days later he was crowned King.’ ‘Really?’

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‘He was crowned King. And then – are you listening, boy! – and then his lady, distract with terror, left him forever.’ ‘He was crowned King?’ ‘She left him forever,’ said Sod, almost shouting, ‘never to return! Are you listening, my lamb? Constantine was lost! He did it for her, all for her, and she left him! Do you understand? He was lost!’ Sod pressed Lu’s ruddy cheeks with his palms. ‘Don’t you see? He was left alone with his wound! Oh my sweet, beware what you love! Beware whom you love!’ Lulach nodded his head, doubtfully. ‘Constantine was King, but he was sad’, said Lu. ‘Yes!’ ‘But love is good. It forgives anything. I read it in the book. He needed courage.’ ‘Courage?’ ‘To make his love known. Then everything is forgiven. Thank you, sir. I’ll pray for Constantine. And for you too, if you tell me your name. What is it?’ Sod was shaking his head. Had he failed utterly as a history tutor? ‘Sod’, he said. ‘My name is Sod.’ Lu’s face beamed. ‘No it isn’t!’ ‘Is so!’ ‘Isn’t! Sod is this’, and Lu picked up some grass and mud and held it toward the funny green man. Sod leant forward, opened his mouth, and started nibbling the turf like a cow. ‘Mine’, he said. The earth tasted sweet and almost fleshy. Lu twisted his nose, but not quite in disgust, thought Sod, not quite. ‘I’ll pray for you anyway’, said Lu, and quietly started for his castle. Sod was left alone. What was the point? He had nothing to impart; there was no one to listen. He was sick of duty, sick of freedom, sick of others, and even sicker of himself. He looked at a mole hole and pretended a great surge of wistfulness at the

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blind misanthrope buried in the soil. Ach, thought Sod, even your envy is inauthentic. Time to burrow. ∞

sister One evening the girl was alone in the chapel on her knees when from nowhere a green-eyed nun appeared. The girl’s head was down but she noticed the eyes and thought they looked kind. The nun’s smell was strong and sweet, like new-hung lamb and mint. From inside her shame and loneliness the girl felt a small hope pulsing. She kept her netted head down and quickened her murmur of prayer. ‘. . . forgive me my sins, give me the strength to serve, sweet Jesu, keep me from temptation, your virgin and your child, sweet Jesu . . .’ The green-eyed nun said nothing at all. The girl’s prayer slowed as she sensed herself being listened to. She felt the nun smiling, she didn’t know how, and stopped her prayer entirely. The chapel was silent in the empty evening. ‘The fairies dance’, whispered the nun, ‘and Christ is nailed to the cross.’ The nun began tapping her heel slowly on the floorboards. ‘Can you hear them?’ she whispered. Her foot-tapping rapidly accelerated. ‘Here’s a knocking indeed, and no-one at home!’ said the nun, more loudly now. The girl sniffed an involuntary laugh. Her foot stopped and she began rubbing her hands together and blowing upon them as you might a fire. ‘Rub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub!’ The girl positively giggled. She felt embarrassed and went to take a sip of rue from her cup. But before her tongue could touch the liquid the greeneyed nun had slapped the cup away.

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‘Don’t touch that poison, my dear!’ ‘It’s rue for chastity!’ ‘Forgetfulness, more likely. It takes you from yourself! Do you want to end up like the rest of these numbed skulls? It takes you from yourself!’ ‘I – I thought that was a good thing.’ ‘Then what are you left with?’ The girl coloured and felt silly. ‘What’s your name, dear?’ asked the new nun. ‘Don’t be shy. Tell your Sister Rose.’ ‘No one here has ever asked’, said the girl, smiling now. ‘I haven’t minded. I never liked my name.’ ‘I’m seeing flowers, trees’, said Sister Rose. ‘I know – Leaf!’ ‘No!’ ‘Twig!’ ‘Stop it.’ ‘Bark!’ ‘Stop teasing!’ ‘Woof woof woof!’ And Sister Rose nuzzled like a puppy into the girl’s neck. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wish it.’ ‘I was called after my mother’, the girl said. ‘It’s Gru.’ ‘Gruesome! What was your father thinking, a beauty like you! You can’t trust fathers.’ ‘It would have been my mother.’ ‘You certainly can’t trust mothers!’ ‘Don’t say that!’ ‘Oh, my sweet, I’m only kidding. You can trust me. Trust me.’ ‘I’m sorry it’s not a nice name.’ ‘Oh, of course it is. Gruoch, it’ll be – a lovely long-maned Scottish name. Gruoch of the lochs.’ She flicked at the girl’s long tresses. ‘Yes?’ ‘Do you mean my hair?’ ‘No girl! Gruoch of the lochs, the lakes! A Scottish princess!’ ‘I don’t think so!’ she said, smiling hugely. ‘Oh, come to your Rose!’

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And they cuddled and nuzzled together. Two sisters entered, their tonsured heads gleaming. ‘Remember Sodom’, they hissed, and crossed themselves darkly. Sister Rose looked at Gru and pulled a face like a gargoyle. ‘Sod them’, she whispered, and cupped her hand over Gruoch’s mouth to restrain her bubbling laugh. They were inseparable friends thereafter. Everything was lightened. In morning break they would walk around the orchard, in all weathers, arm in arm and chattering. Gru took one or two cups of rue a day, but nothing like she had been taking, and felt her mind awakening. The bruises around her eyes began to vanish. They would push their pallets together and whisper through the small hours. Rose would talk and talk, of the old times, of legends and ludicrosities, as she put it, and sometimes even of her own past, alone in a house with a father cursed and terrible. Gru would long to tell her own tale – her mother so tired, their goat that ate the dunghill, the barley she grew and soup she made, the beggars every Sunday. She longed to tell simply for the sharing, though she knew she must not. She could even sleep, once the whispering was done, with Sister Rose warm and fidgety next to her, as she hadn’t slept in years and years, sleep as she thought she would never dare sleep again. Once upon a time, there had been love in the world, and here it was again. The other sisters looked angrily at the friendship. They suspected the secrecy between the too-beautiful girl and this glitter-eyed intruder. They mistrusted the lightness between them, a shared smile of something like mischief, and now these books they were sharing, the wrinkled one reading all afternoon to her laughing companion, dictating who knew what heresies for the girl to scribble on her tablet. It didn’t smell right; it all came too easily. Obedience and discipline meant more to the Lord than casual smiles and laughter. Take the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

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At times Gru did fear for what she was forgetting. She wondered if in forsaking the simple rule of renunciation – for surely these days she was renouncing nothing at all! – she was throwing herself under the sovereignty of the Devil and illimitable wants. She wondered if the secret joy she shared with Rose was a ground of sinful concealment, a place for fantastical rankness to flourish. She wondered if she was losing the simplicity and clearness of her life. Could laughter truly be allowed? Could memory? But then days would go by, weeks at a time, and she didn’t feel bad, she didn’t feel wrong, she didn’t feel the slightest trace of sin. And yet she promised to search for what she was free of, contrition and penance and holy terror. So she observed the sacred duty of the hours as never before, assiduous and quiet, her attendance beyond reproach. She prayed longer than ever, scrubbed her palms like a fury. Drank the bitter rue when Rose was not looking. But all the time her step was lightened and her eyes glanced sideways for her friend. ‘You know dear’, said Rose one late afternoon, ‘the past is never past. No matter what old Starchy says.’ ‘I must not speak of it. How can I think of me when He suffers so?’ ‘Is punishment God’s?’ said Rose. Gru nodded her head. ‘Then it is not yours!’ ‘Is love God’s to give?’ ‘Of course, Sister Rose.’ ‘Then so is the feeling of it! Is your chastity free to give?’ ‘Of course not, Sister Rose.’ ‘Then nor is its taking!’ Rose grabbed her forearms tight. ‘Tell your Rose! Salve thy wounds. Mum’s the word! There are things it is sin to hide!’ ‘Oh Sister Rose, I can’t – ‘The shame of shame! You think I am innocent of the knowledge? Those shrieks that rent the air! Tell your Rose!’

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Rose was there when the soldiers came roaring? ‘The downfall birth dome!’ When she cut the veil from her baby’s crown? ‘No mother, but a grave!’ When she could not bury his poor naked flesh? ‘Oh, I can hear your babe crying in the clouds for pity! You think anything rests in peace? Bleed the wound, my dear. Shall your Rose bleed it for you?’ ‘No, please don’t.’ ‘You carry the stain, I know, my child. The shame, the shame! Oh, night’s black agents, their faces vizards to their hearts! Tear off their mask, my child! Tear it away and be free of the shame!’ ‘Please Rose, peace.’ ‘They entered, I can see it even now, four abreast, deathpoles at the ready, those fatal steel curlicues! You screaming and weeping as the soldiers did what soldiers do! Oh, I have words that would be howled out in the desert air, where hearing should not latch them! Oh, my child, bleed the wound with words! Quiet those men, those pigmen, grunting for truffles!’ ‘Peace, Rose, peace! What do you speak?’ ‘I speak of your dead bastard, a-coming in the fire of night, as the torches burned, and the hut you hid in burned, and you my darling child burned, you burned and burned and burned as the soldiers took their pleasure!’ ‘No!’ ‘Burned!’ whimpered Rose. ‘You know not, Rose! That’s not how it happened!’ ‘No?’ Gru shook her head. ‘Mum’s the word’, murmured Rose. ‘Rose – please. The day I lost him – the little one – yes, it was much as you say. But the day he came – no. He did not come in flames – or in waves. I must not say but it was not like that.’ ‘Write it down! Starchy said nothing about that. Relief is at hand my dear. A heart can be too full. Trust me.’

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Rose held out her pen and parchment. ‘Go on. Commit thy pain to paper. Mum’s the word.’ And with a fierce whisper Rose held Gru’s two cheeks. ‘Mum’s the word!’ ∞

the horrid deed Rose was wrong. He came softly, secretly. Her mam had said, as she saw the soldiers approaching, be kind and they will spare you. Kindness deserves kindness. Her mam was so sick but she went out to them herself, and tried to stop them coming, but in they came. It is unmanly, she yelled at them, entering my house, all badged with blood, uninvited. Her mam called be kind, be kind, as the two soldiers came smiling like devils. She backed in to the corner as they undid their breeches. Then she saw her mam running in, bless you sire, she was saying, bless you sire, and she was on her knees and she looked so sick. A big man touched her on the head and she bowed her head and then he came in. Everyone froze. He had a cow’s ring in his nose. The cowman said, you heard what the lady said, unmannerly. Spoils is spoils, said a soldier, and the other one laughed. The cowman cut them, just like that, and they fell. He held his huge hand out to her. She didn’t move. Her mam was madly nodding her head. He stroked her and was kind. She shivered and he stroked her. She couldn’t see her mam but it was like a father. She went to sleep and the pain came and she felt she’d been stabbed in a dream and she woke. It wasn’t a dream. She had been stabbed. She looked up and her mam was there, just over his shoulder, saying shush, shush, and nodding her head as the cowman moved. She pretended she was asleep and the cowman was her father. That’s how the little one came. It was only later her mam, on her very last day, her hand so thin, her face all sockets, told her who it had been, she said that’s what it means to be a subject,

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you do as you are bid and be pleased to do so. She had done as she was bid. And now, while Rose spluttered and snored next to her, Gru scratched down the first words of her own that she had ever composed. I shold like to tel I have not forgot you I shold like to tel you things I have a frend now roaz our mother preechd of the again-buying that is in Christ jesus you are with Him now ‘Is that it?’ said Sister Rose at dawn, throwing Gru’s scratchings on her pallet. ‘You should not have looked!’ ‘There’s naught to look at!’ ‘It isn’t for the lookers. It’s for me. Or him.’ ‘Him? Which him? You said nothing about him!’ ‘I don’t need to. He knows.’ Gru shoved the parchment beneath her bolster and sat defiantly upon it. ‘Oh you are a stubborn minx!’ said Rose, but Gru would not relent. She would write what she wanted, her own words, in her own time. you came in my sleep my angel it was not what they say the sodjers cum roring he kild them I felt scared The king it was he pretected us he held my hed then I sleept Then I thot it was a dreem The devel big in my belly

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It wernt the devil it was you Gru considered what she had written, very slowly, over and over. She scribbled out some words and added others. you caym in my sleep my little hoodman it was not what roaz say the sodjers cum roaring unmanly, he yelled at them he kild them I felt scard The king it was he pretected us he made my hed warm then I sleept well Then I felt it was a dreem The devel cutting me big in my belly It wernt the devil it was my litel helmutman he had gone you was safe Once more Gru read what she had written, holding her pen between her lips, pensively mouthing her words. Then she resumed her slow cursive script. my mam sed you wood bring luk after she had gon the king would never harm us she sent me to the queens tower then wen you was born rapt in your vayl the men came agen I shold of held on harder Again Gru stopped. She wasn’t crying but she was biting her lip. Very roughly she scribbled another line. the lord give the lord take

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She scrunched the paper roughly into a ball. Then she unfurled it, and with her face dumb and remote she held it over the candle. The paper started to crumple brown; soon her words would be shrivelled into nothing. Gru at once blew out the flame and swept the parchment clear of ash. She read her overwrought words out all over again. What did she care if Rose thought them silly? The Lord give, the Lord take. I shold of held him harder Gru retrieved the crinkled caul of her baby from her belt. She flattened it, careful not to let it crack, and placed it between the two sheets of parchment. In a minute or two she had sewn the sheets together, the hardened membrane snug in its new envelope. She checked that Rose was still sleeping. She undid her hessian stomacher and sewed the parchment tight to its back. Her words were no good, but they were good enough for what remained of her little man. She would never, as long as she lived, tell a soul. There was nothing and no one to tell. The King was dead; her mam was dead; her boy was dead. Whatever remained was hers to stomach. ∞

ross One morning Gru found Sister Rose near an apple tree in the orchard. She thought she saw her climbing the tree but that couldn’t be right. But certainly she was holding herself hard up against it, her face to the trunk and her hands pressing hard. ‘Sister Rose?’ ‘Ah, my dear. I’ll be with you in a moment.’ Her voice was hoarse and strange. ‘Sister Rose? Is something wrong?’ ‘No dear. Just a moment.’ ‘What is it, Sister?’

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Gru went closer and saw that Rose’s face was red with effort and what looked like grief. ‘Rose, you have been weeping! Is there something ails you?’ Sister Rose’s face was blotched and the green light in her eyes had gone out. Her wimple had slipped and the front of her cloak was stained and crumpled. ‘Oh, Rose!’ cried Gru. ‘Why are you so sad?’ ‘Oh, I am more taint than saint!’ ‘No, Rose, no!’ ‘What a sight I must be!’ she said quickly, adjusting her wimple so that it once more framed her face. She flicked bits of bark from her cloak and started to talk. ‘I wish I could tell you, my dear, I wish I could tell you everything. But I can’t.’ ‘You don’t need to then.’ ‘There are things that you are too young to hear.’ ‘There is confession’, she said. Ha!’ shouted Rose, ‘to those old witches!’ ‘Sister Rose!’ ‘Ah, sorry – you are right – I am sorry – it is not their fault.’ ‘There is always the Lord.’ Sister Rose looked at her friend and smiled. ‘The Lord?’ ‘We are his daughters.’ ‘I thought he was our spouse.’ ‘That too.’ ‘And son.’ ‘That too’, said Gru, more quietly this time. She looked down. ‘You seem strange, Sister Rose.’ Sister Rose grabbed the girl’s face in her palms. ‘Do you believe, my dear, in the holy wound?’ Gru nodded. ‘You believe in the saving wound?’ Again Gru nodded. ‘And the wound can never heal?’ Gru shook her head and was about to speak but Sister Rose was squeezing Gru’s temples hard.

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‘It can?’ Sister Rose whispered intently, ‘it can be healed?’ Gru nodded. Sister Rose abruptly let go of Gru’s head. ‘I do not believe it. Who can bring a clean thing from an unclean? No one.’ ‘But Rose, Christ is not unclean!’ ‘There are other wounds than His, my dear.’ ‘What are you saying, Rose? You are frightening me.’ ‘Oh, child, if only I could tell you. You are young. For me – for me – the wound does not heal.’ ‘There is repentance, and forgiveness.’ ‘For all?’ ‘All, yes.’ ‘No matter what?’ ‘No matter – I mean, no, you have to purge your sin – Sister Rose suddenly laughed, dry and strange. ‘Who said anything about my sin?’ ‘I thought – ‘I am sorry, my dear – forget me – I am a bitter old fool. I am sorry. I would protect you all if only I could! Oh, we must protect the little children! Yes, my love?’ Sister Rose grabbed her face and lifted it urgently toward her. ‘Come away with me! Now, from here, come with me!’ Gru didn’t know what to say. What was Sister Rose asking? She turned to one side, for comfort, or release, she didn’t know quite why, and saw that a small group of elderly sisters had sidled up close behind them. ‘Ya, witches, witches!’ hissed Sister Rose, and raced away into the orchard. The elderly sisters, one on each side, walked Gru back inside. That night Gru and Sister Rose were on their adjacent pallets. All the other nuns were sleeping. Gru could tell from her friend’s breathing that she was awake and thinking. Gru felt frightened of what these thoughts might be; she feared for her only friend’s happiness, but dared not touch her or interrupt her or ask her what was wrong.

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After hours suspended like this, Sister Rose finally spoke. ‘You’re awake, dear.’ ‘Yes. Are you alright, Rose?’ Rose turned around and faced her. ‘Let me tell you a story. It is the story of the Sodomite.’ ‘Sodom?’ said Gru. ‘Rose, no – you can’t!’ ‘Sssh!’ hissed Rose. ‘Not Sodom – that is for these witches all around. The Sodomite. Quite a different thing.’ Gru said nothing. She looked along the line of pallets. There were snores and smells but that is all. Sister Rose had already begun her tale, her voice hard and almost mechanical. ‘The Sodomite was born in the early days of the old King’s reign. His father was gigantic and warlike. He had begotten the Sodomite on a ditch-drab, one of thousands, some years before his marriage.’ ‘Rose, please’, interrupted Gru. ‘Is this going to be horrible?’ ‘Shush girl. Time we all woke up! Now don’t interrupt.’ Rose’s voice was brisk and strange, as though speaking queerly through her. ‘Gratified by the chance to do something for his most valued warrior, the old King secretly made over a vacant castle for the boy’s upbringing. He was left for months and then years at a time. His father left him in the care of a monk, a guilty monk who specialized in punishment. The father was busy being a warrior patriot, bashing the King’s enemies, teaching Dane and English alike what Scottish manhood was. He hadn’t troubled to give his son a name. The monk said the boy’s true name was scrolled on a shining white stone, kept by the saviour, which if he were very good would be delivered him at the portal to the pearly gates. The boy did not believe him. He decided to name himself. He read many books, searching for the perfect word. After months of this he found it.’ Rose paused just for a moment. ‘The name was Ross. He thrilled to its secret truth. Ross: it meant rubbish; refuse; dregs; the merest scrapings, the stuff even appetite leaves behind. He would call himself Ross.’

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Sister Rose went quiet. She looked at Gru, curled up tight under her blanket. ‘Do you know Scottish castles, girl?’ ‘Castles?’ ‘Ay.’ ‘Not really’, said Gru. ‘They’re all much alike, Scottish castles, all forbidding forehead, nothing but coldness within. Young Ross rattled round like the last thought in a dead brain. The monk taught him Latin and fed him beans. Ross wished he had been born in Rome. The light in his mind was not Scottish. He longed for warm weather and dreamt in primary colours.’ Gru smiled at the image and felt herself relaxing. ‘Funny boy’, she said. ‘Indeed’, said Rose. ‘A funny boy. On rare summer days he stripped down to his under garments; he even experimented, very occasionally, with nakedness.’ ‘Rose!’ ‘A funny boy, you said it dear! His father returned once a year, on the year’s deadest day, frozen between Christmas and New Year. Young Ross would be waiting, and from his window would see his father rising from the snow like some furred monster. He always brought a gift, and the gift was always made of stone. The boy’s room filled slowly with pots and crosses. One year, Ross’s thirteenth, his father brought him a hacked claymore.’ ‘Claymore?’ ‘A man’s sword, dear. For chopping off heads!’ ‘Oh, Rose!’ ‘So it is! The sword’s steel was encrusted with barnacles, its handle the coldest granite. Ross was unable to lift it and he buried his face in shame. His father laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair. Then he sat on his stool, as he did each year, and slowly revealed his latest wounds. Ross stared at the gashed stabs and swooned. He swooned! The wounds were so red and alluring. At night they would return, ruby wastes for the sleeping boy to swim in.’ Gru was listening intently now.

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‘When Ross reached his teenage years, his father started to send women to wash and dress him. All manner of women came. They would enter with cloth of great variety, silky cloths borne from far-off lands. They also brought unending supplies of hot water. The monk hid in his cell and groaned while the boy swathed himself in rainbows. He quickly became a slave to vermilion – ‘Vermilion?’ ‘Scarlet red! Everything must be vermilion. He so cherished the word that the ladies called him Vermi. He hated this and moved onto aquamarine, again for love of the word. But still the ladies teased him, now calling him Quaqua. He loathed them for that too and resolved to keep his passions to himself. He settled upon green and would have no other colour. He wanted his cloths green, green central, the acme of all green.’ ‘Did you make that up, Rose?’ ‘Sssh! No! The ballad is true! Ross required green. If his women got it wrong he would whip them; they had to learn how much it mattered. Yes?’ Gru flinched and grimaced and nodded. ‘Meanwhile his dreams became more and more lurid, shaped in pale yellow and sick. He would wake and swaddle himself in green, but he feared that the world was turning vile yellow.’ Again Rose paused. She swallowed and licked her teeth. ‘Go on!’ said Gru. ‘One day his father came unexpectedly. It was autumn and he shouldn’t have been there. He arrived, as never before, with a lady. The lady was dressed from head to toe in pale gold. Ross felt disgust; a month more of bonecold winds, he pondered, and that cloak will be the colour of my dreams. He greeted the visitors politely but the woman would not look at him. She looked right through him. Ross retired to his bedroom, and heard the couple arguing. He hated couples. Late that night his father came to his room. He fell on his knees beside the boy’s truckle bed. He was writhing as though he were lit tallow. His face was melting and his eyes burned. Ross saw that his father’s right hand was holding a dagger.

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‘My son’, said the father, ‘my son, you are a bastard.’ ‘He wouldn’t!’ said Gru. ‘Oh, he would!’ said Rose, ‘now hush! You are a bastard!’ said the father. ‘Yes’, said the boy. ‘A bastard. In everything illegitimate.’ ‘Father?’ ‘Farewell bastard!’ And the father drew his dagger. Can you imagine that, girl? The father drew his dagger on his own child!’ ‘Nice!’ ‘Hush! Now – Ross leapt back upon his bed and hid his face in the pillow. Very slowly the father rose and stood above him. His knife rested on Ross’s arse.’ ‘Rose!’ ‘On his arse!’ Rose was wrapped in her story, her body erect in the bed and green lightning in her eyes. ‘I am sorry,’ said Daddy, ‘she will have it no other way. We mean to be married next week.’ ‘Next week?’ said the boy. ‘And where will I be next week.’ ‘Ask your monk’, said Daddy. Oh he was a mordant man, was this Daddy. Then he grabbed the boy’s hair and jagged his head back. Ross’s throat had no Adam’s apple. ‘Father!’ cried the boy. He did not want to die. He’d hardly begun to live. ‘I have seen you!’ ‘Be quiet and pray’, said his father. Ross turned to face his father, his eyes shimmering, shimmering! ‘In my dreams! I have seen you.’ ‘Of what do you speak, fool?’ ‘I have seen you in my dreams.’ ‘Dreams? Are you a wizard?’ ‘A bastard wizard! How can you behold such sights?’ ‘What sights?’ said his father, ‘What is it you see?’ ‘I see the King’s horses, the minions of their race, turned wild in nature!’

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‘His horses?’ ‘His stallions – contending against obedience, as they would make war with mankind!’ ‘And?’ demanded his father, ‘what else?’ ‘I see thee nothing afraid of what thyself did make –’ ‘Make? Make? What did I make?’ And the boy shouted back, ‘Strange images of death!’ ‘Whose death, whose?’ said Daddy, but the boy didn’t seem to hear. ‘I see earnests of still greater honour!’ the boy shouted. ‘Greater than what?’ said Daddy, ‘Greater than what?’ ‘King!’ the boy whispered. ‘King?’ said Daddy. ‘God save the King!’ the boy shouted, ‘God save the King!’ Now Rose was shouting, and Gru was shushing her, and two or three nearby nuns were shifting in their beds. ‘God save the King’, whispered Rose, as though to herself, ‘God save the King’. She slumped back upon her pallet and covered her eyes. ‘And then what happened?’ whispered Gru, ‘did his father become King?’ ‘Become? Become?’ said Rose violently. ‘What in Hell’s name does become mean? Become is no simple thing! Become! The foulness that word conceals!’ ‘You told the story’, said Gru, ‘don’t tell it if you don’t want me to know what happened!’ ‘Things don’t just become, child, do they?’ Gru turned away and drew her knees up, shaken but defiant. Did Rose think she was some sort of infant fool, to be teased with treats and left hanging like a puppy? ‘Become’, rapped Rose once more to herself, as the space she shared with Gru lapsed unhappily into silence. In the grey morning Sister Rose’s head was dumb with pain. She could hear breathless weeping to one side. She should never have told that tale. Whatever was she thinking? A

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freezing breeze was upon her side and her thigh was throbbing madly. And Christ was she cold! She opened her eyes and checked for her blanket. Oh Jesus. Sister Rose closed her eyes very tight, just for a moment, to kill the tears she felt welling. She looked down at her sapless body and felt sick at the sight. She was always sick at the sight, but this was different. Her woollen blanket had been thrown to one side and her nightgown lifted to her chest. Below this chest, and so very strangely innocent-looking, a great nest of feathers was blowing upon her tummy. They were chicken feathers, some white, some off-white, a few bright yellow, and beneath them she could see a great thick smear of birdlime. The feathers started on her upper tummy and continued down, over her groin and down upon her thin rabbity thighs. She reached down and plucked off a clutch of young yellow feathers from her upper left thigh. They detached easily and she flicked away the sticky birdlime. She sat up a little as her fingers gently rubbed the cleared area. It felt hot and wet. Her fingers travelled up her thigh and rested upon a six-inch wound. The stitches were loose and the wound was green, although new red blood had started travelling down her thigh. For a moment Sister Rose closed her eyes. She wanted to fall upon her pallet and sleep. But there was sobbing to her left and it had started to sound hysterical. Rose knew she had to look but just for the moment she could not manage it. ‘What are you?’ shrilled a voice, ‘what are you!’ Sister Rose turned her neck, very slowly, like a dying thing. ‘How could you?’ the voice sobbed. A few feet from Rose’s bed was Gru, held back by two old sisters, and she was pointing at her friend and shouting. ‘Who are you?’ she was yelling, ‘who are you?’

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For a fleeting moment Sister Rose thought to answer, I’m a chicken, I’m a bird, but she could not evade the horror in her young friend’s eyes. ‘This?’ she said, lightly touching the wound in her thigh, ‘don’t you worry your pretty little head – But Gru’s eyes were not on the wound at all. They were staring to its right, where a small pink seahorse seemed to be nodding underneath the chicken wings. ‘You’re a man!’ screamed Gru, as the two old crones tried to shield her from the horror, ‘a man!’ Rose had quite forgotten that. He looked at his misbegotten penis and almost smiled. The things we shall not be rid of. ‘Sassa, sassa, sass!’ the crones to each side hissed, ‘begone, Sodom, Sodom, begone!’ Gru was on the ground, curled and clutching at her body as she sobbed. ‘Sassa, Sodom, sass!’ hissed the crones. They were pointing their fingers like chicken bones. Rose picked a single feather from the cowed head of his cock. ‘And so his knell is knolled’, he murmured to himself, a sad smile on his caved-in face. And within minutes the limed-and-feathered Thane of Ross had been whipped over the wall and was gone. ∞

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the poor cat Sod had laid himself to rest in an abject angle of Birnam Wood. His entire being was cloudy and sick. He felt shame like he could hardly remember, moving inside like a fat tumour. Had he ever had a soul? If so, its light was going out. As a thing divine he was surely terminally cankered: his heart clanging in a narrow sprocket, his pulse beating down to its own demise, his only living part this trenched gash in his thigh. He had seen into Gru’s frightened eyes and now he could not bear the shame. Only one thing was he sure of. He would not be returning to Ross. Ross was a death dealer; a child of monstrosity; the clairvoyant accessory to terror. He could live better as Sod. Sod at least knew he was lost, and broken, and begging for unlikely repair. His mouth mewed involuntarily. He needed to be punished. He wished he could be a buzzard, dozing away on an old rotten stump, a dull and lazy and cowardly raptor. Yes, an aged female buzzard, three or four ugly feathers sticking from its bald pate; a mind closed like an eye; a jealous maternal itch; staring for vacant hours at a single unmoving thing. Or perhaps he could shed weight, like a suicidal bat, readying for a final winter. A couple of finches fluttered about, inspecting him, more or less amused, before fluttering away again. His belly was nude, still flaked by chicken feathers. He could feel his heart inside, rising up and down, up and down, more quickly than he would wish. All in all existing was humiliating. A carrion crow appeared on the branch immediately to the right. Sod froze in fear. The crow was eyeing him blackly, like a trained cannibal. You could never have a conversation with a face like that! The crow sidled nearer, sizing up the meat. There’s nothing here, mate, nothing! You’d be better off with a worm. The crow was so black that Sod almost swooned. Blacker than ink, every feather the fossil of a murder. Sod felt like a used dishcloth in comparison, drying into the shape of his redundancy.

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At his feet there was a beetle, with black armored back, emerging out of shit. My shit, thought Sod. The beetle seemed a model of purposiveness, and with rare ease Sod rose from the ground, stood upright, and started to walk on the very tips of his toes. He had never done this before, and the feeling was abstract and insane. He continued on, feeling that he might gingerly goosestep into the air. His thigh-wound was aching like a curse, while all the rest of him seemed to be gently dematerializing. No end to the surprises of flesh. With his head upright and his cheek half-crushed, Sod started tip-treading through the wood. He had no idea of a direction, but after half a day realized he had arrived on the fabled heath. It was so long since he had been here! A crystal beard framed his lips. He felt as fragile as glass stretched to its very thinnest possibility. He knew he was on the brink of a shattering fit, worse perhaps than ever before. And yet it seemed, quite unexpectedly, that he could live upon this brink. He held all other thought at bay as he moved across the heath, his body strangely quivering. He flinched to see the bodies of gorse around him, huddled and flaring with their pain. And now, as though by magic, a ransacked castle bobbed into view. It looked adrift, deserted, peculiar – altogether like a dream. ‘That is my father’s house!’ Sod whispered. He was sweating profusely; the fit was hanging in the air, as keen and glinting as a knife. His itching eyes swept the surrounding waste. ‘That is my father’s garden!’ With the dexterity of dream he bounded up Dunsinane Hill. In what seemed seconds he arrived at the castle gates. A goat trotted by. For a moment Sod thought to jump on its back and ride in like that, but as quickly as the thought came the goat left. The bones of fish stood heaped in a hill near a shed. The heap was very neat. Sod thought of all the wounds dealt here – all those red wounds. Perhaps he could spend the rest of his life tending to this garden, hanging red wounds like roses upon trellises of bone.

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His lips were twitching now, but still he repelled the fit. He knew he had to go on. Sod bowed his head deliberately, and stepped through his father’s gates. Birds flew round Sod’s grass-stained forehead. They chirruped and coupled in the air. Sod batted them away and took a long swill of the atmosphere. He smelt washing on a line and ran to the underwear flapping cleanly in the breeze. He wrapped some long-johns round his face and sniffed long and hard. His mind’s eye saw a grizzled man watching and scoffing, lazing in a hammock, a giant bull-ring through his nose. Macbeth is alive! Sonship coursed hotly through Sod’s veins. He was tender and blazing and young. His cheek yearned to brush against his daddy’s cheek. Macbeth is alive! Sod knew exactly what he was here for. He noticed a mansized open window. He jumped eagerly on the castle ramparts like a huge bedraggled cat. O my manly father! He all but sang it out. He was a raw thing now, a living blush. With that he rose on two legs, hulled hard against the stone wall and shuffled along sideways, wedging the back-turned hooks of his hands into every crack and crevice. Sunset commenced as he reached into the open window. A green curtain billowed. It was the most indisputable green. ‘My green’, said Sod softly. His nostrils were twitching, greedy for their father’s scent. He negotiated the precipice. He stood at the extreme verge, his toes clenched around the ledge. Sod stepped through the curtain and the stage was set. A man was lying on the bed. There was no mistaking the old dupe. He had a face like a clown, red nose, hangdog eyes, skin that would peel at a touch. Sod hardened into oneness with his father. As though by gift he saw a small knife on the bedside table, a fruiting knife, a letter-knife, something designed for precision. Sod smiled a precise smile and lifted the knife with

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thumb and finger. He held it high above his head and weaved it in the air. ‘I am Macbeth!’ he whispered, and laughed a pealing laugh. He looked round for his audience. And now before him was a single boy. He had seen this boy before, some years ago. But here before him was another thing entirely. The boy was on that cusp, the troubled cusp between child and adult. He was staring at Sod with undisguised disdain. Sod turned his feet like a ballerina and aimed his dagger’s point at the boy. This boy was so beautiful he took Sod’s breath away. Every other beauty, he thought, was but a shard and prophecy of this. He looked the beautiful boy up and down as he did his oriental dance. The boy did not move a muscle. His sneer expressed the simplest contempt. Sod looked down for a moment at his own bedraggled carcass and he blushed. His left elbow rested on his hip, the forearm cocked and the palm spread wide like a turkey’s tail. His body was absurd, he knew it, but try as he could it would not straighten. He lowered his body balletically. And then, like an old wrinkled tortoise, he nuzzled his head upon the slope of the boy’s soft neck. ‘Such beauty deserves tribute. It requires it.’ Sod planted his dry kiss on the boy’s unmoving face. The boy looked amused but Sod was hyperventilating slightly. He felt a flushing wave of fear; he felt like the only animated thing in a world frozen against him. ‘This is my scene, bosun’, he hissed. His dagger quivered over his head. ‘Yah!’ He made a stabbing motion into empty air. ‘Yah! I am Macbeth!’ He clicked the heels of his clogs and dragged the soles exaggeratedly backwards across the tiles. Now he heard a sniff and a sob. A child’s cry! That is why he was here! To save the children from grief! He revolved prematurely on the ball of his right foot, the dagger still held over his head, quivering like a weathervane. On the far side of the bed was another boy, a little younger but

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huge, sniffing snot from his nose, not the slightest sign of weeping. Sod tittered in a high falsetto. ‘Yah – you fell fat from the bed! I mean flat!’ ‘Hello’, said the younger one, rubbing his eyes. Sod looked rapidly from face to face. ‘I am come to prevent evil’, Sod shrilled suddenly, ‘I am come to save!’ ‘Save who?’ said the younger one. The old man lay dead still in his bed. Sod looked down at his sleeping victim and once more started executing little steps. Every nerve in his body was tightened to a pitch. The veins in his forehead and neck stood alarmed. As he got closer to his victim his little steps degenerated into a demented shuffle. He was buzzing with excitement. The two boys watched, the lovely one half-smiling. Sod’s arms were describing vast arcs in the air. Now he was positioned plum for the kill. He spun right round on his foot and brought the knife home in a great downward sweep. He jutted out his right leg, pretended a bow, and in a delicate sweep inserted the knife deep into his own upper thigh. ‘He’s already dead!’ he screamed wildly. The Porter turned over and rattled a horrible liquid snore. The beautiful boy laughed loudly; the fat boy looked quizzical and concerned. Now a third boy emerged from the shadows behind the beautiful one’s shoulder. He scowled with low brow at the maniac intruder. Sod stood up straight and pinched his nostrils theatrically. Blood was pouring from his thigh; the knife hung apologetically, a picture of detumescence. He started making his way backwards out the door. ‘Don’t you see what I would have done? Don’t you see I’d have done it for you?’ The beautiful boy’s eyes were hard as he watched the goblin’s retreat. ‘Don’t you see?’ appealed Sod, one last time. He was sobbing pathetically. ‘Not for Daddy, for you, you boys!’ Who else was there to care for them?

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‘For you boys, I say!’ He had meant to save them from a terrible guilt. Parricide was an awful thing to grow up to. ‘Parricide!’ he hiccuped mournfully. ‘Parricide’, said the third boy sternly. ‘What is that word?’ ‘Yah!’ shrilled Sod. ‘What is that word?’ repeated the boy. ‘Merder!’ shrieked Sod, in a weirdly Nordic accent, ‘or or or merderer! – of father or brother or King!’ The serious boy looked straight at Sod, concentrated and suspicious. The beautiful boy stopped laughing. ‘Let’s get him!’ he said. ‘Grimmy, Grimmy! Come on, don’t let him escape!’ Sod was terrified. He dropped the knife, sniffed like a rabbit, and darted out of the door into what he prayed was empty space. He found stairs, miraculous, and bounded down them and outside in a breathless jiffy. He could hear the laughter behind him as a flurry of stones and gravel pinged his back and landed on the ground around. The fit was upon him, he could feel it smudging yellow across his vision. His wound throbbed like a summons as he high-stepped around the castle’s backside and down the darkening hill. ∞

all ill run in, all good keep out Sod caught his breath against a friendly tree. He felt moulted clean of feather. There was thunder in his head and beads of sweat on his brow. He began tearing at his clothes. It was cold and he wanted to feel it. What in hell’s name was he doing with all these children? He sprawled in the dirt and remembered his boyhood. Ross, the boy of tears, wringing his hands and sighing out unheard warnings! The little boy wizard, seeing all of the horrors that

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his daddy would do, but speaking nothing, for fear of daddy, daddy who made the nightmares true. Old foolish innocence, hanging by a thread! Old foolish innocence, slaughtered in its bed! He should have ended it when the old King died, right there and then. He should have sliced his own neck, like a boy-lamb, and lain down to die on the corpse of the King. It would have served his daddy right! Instead he cut himself, like a girl, his wound a small secret child for him to fondle and protect. And with this tiny little wound kept safe, he became handmaiden to the horrors of his daddy’s new regime. Oh, but it was disgusting! He thought of his father and his stony gifts. He thought of his vanished monk. Before repentance, before forgiveness, there shall be mortification. Those old hags in the nunnery were right. He was sick, he was corrupt, he was a body ripe for punishment. Anoint thyself the Sodomite. We deserve everything we get. Sod blackened his face and reduced his clothes to rags. He found the nearest nameless town. It was formless and ugly, peppered with disbanded soldiers and refugees and parentless children. As evening came he lay himself face down upon the stone, at the crossroads of the town where patriots and martyrs lie. He raised his backside in the filthy cold, recalled an old chant, and whispered it all night long to the passers-by. Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in, Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky, Liard, Robin, you must bob in, Round, round, round, about, about, All ill run in, all good keep out! His was the guilty loam, and they would be the planters.

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I come, I come, I come, I come. It was the deadest day of the year, and he would be its cenotaph. But no one came to take him. They simply passed by, or spat on his insect body, or jeered at this latest beggar. Eventually he fell asleep. He woke at dawn and wanted to move on, to where or for what he had no idea. But he couldn’t muster the energy. He sat against the stone and dozed fitfully. He kept seeing old King Duncan’s body, all doomed and old, enveloped in its haze of urinous gas – and his kind face, so ordinary and uncrowned – and his royal nightshirt, wide open to the white tummy – and his sick brown blood, dripping from his chicken skin – and – ‘Sister Rose? Is that you?’ Sod started from his sleep and saw the familiar form of the Abbess, older and thinner, amazingly clean and close before him. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’ Sod didn’t know what to say. He wanted to hide in his wing like a baby bird. ‘You’ve been a fool, sir’, said the Abbess. Sod bashfully nodded his little head. ‘Go to the chapel – confess your sins, ask for forgiveness. The Lord is mercy.’ He shook his head and once more tried to bury it in his chest. ‘You are weak and shiftless, sir. You are a deceiver. Expose yourself to judgement.’ Sod looked up weakly at his accuser. The Abbess’s face was like white bone, pared to the very element. Oh for a countenance like hers! ‘The Lord commands exposure.’ He shook his head. ‘No, sir?’ Sod began to shake his head again but stopped himself. ‘It’s just – I can’t – ‘Can’t, sir?’ ‘I have – exposed – too much, Holy Sister.’

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The Abbess almost laughed, and the laugh turned into a hacking cough. ‘Indeed you have, you foolish man.’ ‘I cannot go to a church.’ ‘There is nowhere else for you. You are lost without the Lord.’ ‘There is you!’ ‘Me, sir?’ ‘I will expose myself to you, Holy Sister!’ The Abbess smiled, dabbling her phlegmy lips with some linen. ‘I am sure you do not mean that.’ ‘Oh, sister, I am a miserable tainted thing!’ ‘Surely.’ ‘I am, I am. I saw the old King’s horses eat each other!’ The Abbess smiled, more gently now. ‘I held a cushion at the coronation’, he continued. ‘I smirked as the King had fits at feasts. I heard sighs and groans and shrieks, but marked them not. Every day I heard the dead man’s knell, but scarce asked for who. I saw good men’s lives sicken and die and gathered for myself the flowers in their caps. I did, I did!’ ‘Hush, man! To say such things!’ ‘I did it! I picked out foredoomed children – ‘I saw that, sir! I saw your trespass with children! Keep away from the young!’ ‘Yes, sister.’ ‘You have no business with children.’ ‘No, sister. Shrive me, sister, and I shall.’ ‘I am not your confessor, sir.’ ‘Hear me, please. I picked out foredoomed children, I picked over their tiny corpses, I made away with keepsakes. I was the bogeyman with his cart of bone!’ ‘You are speaking gibberish, man!’ ‘No, Mrs, no – ‘Mrs!’ ‘I’m sorry – Holy Sister – believe me! – I hid in a tree and fingered this cut – this one’ – Sod lifted his cloak and thrust his

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gangrenous wound in the Abbess’s direction – ‘I fingered it lovingly as my father was stuck on a pole!’ ‘Enough!’ shouted the Abbess. ‘Be silent. You are a profane and sinful and very foolish man.’ ‘I am, I am, thank you sister, thank you.’ ‘It is not a cause for thanks, sir.’ ‘No, sister, thank you. I am a miserable tainted thing, sister.’ ‘You are that, sir.’ ‘I am, sister. I saw it all and said nothing.’ ‘It?’ ‘The King’s murder!’ The Abbess eyed him suspiciously. ‘King’s? Which King’s?’ ‘All of them! Both of them! The old King’s, and daddy’s, I could have stopped – ‘Daddy’s? What do you speak of?’ ‘I was – I am’ – and the wretched fool’s face crooked in a simpering smile – ‘I am his son!’ The Abbess’s eyes were wide and horrified. ‘I am, Holy Sister. I am his son.’ ‘His? That butcher’s?’ Sod’s teeth were grinning mossy. The Abbess hurriedly crossed herself. ‘You should not be here’, she said briskly, repelled by his festering wound and lurid nude limbs. Her mouth was twisted in distaste. ‘You are his creature. The taint is upon you.’ ‘It is, ma’am! I am sorry!’ ‘You are sin, sir, sin!’ ‘I am, ma’am, you are right. What should I do?’ ‘Begone! Go! Pray for cleanliness and leave!’ ‘Go where, ma’am?’ ‘Anywhere, far from here – a hole in the ground!’ ‘A grave, ma’am?’ ‘A grave is too good for you!’ ‘Yes, ma’am.’ ‘Too goo–

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The Abbess stopped herself. She raised a hand and held it trembling in the air. ‘No’, she said, ‘I do not mean that. It is un-Christian. I mean – I mean keep away from others, if you can.’ Her voice had softened now. ‘We all are tainted by sin. Yours is great, very great, but you are a child of Christ’s still.’ ‘I am, Sister?’ ‘Of course. We are all the children of sin. Only – ‘Only, sister?’ ‘You are not made for fellowship.’ ‘No.’ ‘Keep away – as best you can – from society.’ ‘Yes, sister.’ ‘It is best.’ ‘It is’, he repeated. ‘No society.’ ‘No more than is safe. Keep from temptation. And keep others from temptation. You bear a terrible burden, my friend, being the child of such sin.’ Sod nodded like a child. ‘Keep others from that sin. Do you understand?’ ‘Keep from sin. Keep others from sin.’ ‘But yourself from others!’ ‘Keep myself from others and others from sin. I can do that, sister.’ ‘I am glad.’ The Abbess tried to smile. Sod could feel himself strangely cheering up. ‘And no children!’ he pealed gaily. ‘No!’ she hurriedly said. ‘Keep yourself from children.’ ‘And children from sin!’ ‘That’s right, sir. That’s right.’ Sod moved toward her, bowing his head like a boy, but the Abbess instantly retreated. ‘No blessing, ma’am?’ The Abbess was leaning away, as though from a festering pestilence. ‘Bless you, may Christ save you from your sins.’

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Sod leaned into a bow. ‘I must go’, said the Abbess. ‘Thank you ma’am – and bless you too.’ The Abbess moved quickly away, her robes blindingly white in the noon light. Sod smacked his lips together. He felt terrific. A burden shared is a burden less. Ha! Ha! He could not recall feeling so light. His wound had settled and the pain in his brow relaxed. A little boy went by, chewing a bad apple. He giggled when Sod poked out a tongue. Sod felt a brief urge to chase the boy and ask if he might share his apple. Tell them what not to do; show them a better way. That’s what the Abbess was hinting, sort of. Sod’s mouth curved once more in a crooked smile. He looked at his encrusted flesh, at his legs like a strung hare’s, and felt a hot violent shiver of shame. Oh, do as you’re told for once in your sick life! Those old hags were right. The Abbess was right. He shall live a man forbid. Keep away, you foul piece of corruption! Or let them come to him. Again his smile curled like a weed. He was a miserable tainted thing, to be sure. ∞

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signifying nothing Life for Gru had ebbed almost to nought. The years returned to winter and the trees to fossils. The birds were gone and the grass was mud. The nuns went to the field with mattocks to dig up briars. And then it would snow, smothering the dead chest of creation. Everything was ruined for Gru once Sister Rose left. She spent the months and years that followed trying to turn habit into Mass. Surely all things should be sacraments; either that, or the resurrection was a lie. The resurrection was a lie, and all its hard-won grace and innocence were gone from the creation. If hard black bread was God then why not the grain she crushed or the vinegar she poured upon her brand-new wounds? Why not the puddles she kicked or the urine she spent each morning? In each object she sought her risen Christ until she could hardly eat or walk or touch the air for fear of remurdering the murdered. The Abbess confined her for delirium tremens, swerved from the furrow and a danger to the sisterhood. On her third or fourth day of confinement a vision brought all of Gru’s suffering to a head. She had just given birth to the Crucified, blue and bearded and pierced, and he was sinking like a stillborn foal into buckets of messy afterbirth. She plucked him out – she had saved our saviour! – and then she 81

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laid him, all the blue and gory length of him, across her lap. Gru woke with the vision still writhing in her mind. She entered the chapel in the middle of the High Mass, shouting and tearing her hair, ‘My baby, my baby! Cut him down, you’ve nailed my baby where the Christ should be!’ No one seemed to be listening. They didn’t care, these unnatural, hairless women! All of them, every last one of them, they all wanted her baby dead! She flung herself toward the cross but he was there still, just out of reach, his tongue stilled and eyes dulled with pain, and his lovely chubby legs grossly foreshortened against that bitter rood. She groaned and clawed at the air like a wildcat. Her groan became a scream, and the next she knew she was out of doors and into the cold white world. Gru stepped into the silence of Birnam Wood. Its canopy of trees formed a high white church above her head. She shook the snow from her hair and, for just a moment, her heart lightened. Everything was tingling imminence. She could taste it on her tongue! She slumped in the snow, and saw hanging in the trees above her baby, burning in the air, tickled and licked by leaping flames and fuelling the fire with his tears. Her baby inclined his blistered cheek and simpered, but she could not hear what he said. ‘Love, love!’ she called, over and over, but he was shrinking and fading and then he had gone. She sat up in the snow and the world was ordinary around her. The heat in her breast had abated. The world was ordinary and she had nothing. She was an orphan in an orphaned world, and the son would never rise. Now Gru sat at her meals, one wimpled crone stirring her broth, the other de-boning her roach. She was as numb as a fish to the red flint of love. There was nothing left to live for. The Abbess was languishing in her last illness, her eyelids bluer than her fading irises, her lips whiter than bone. She looked the image of Gru’s mam in her closing days, skin like paper, the bones growing as the flesh died. She lay perfectly still on the small bed in her narrow death-chamber, wreathed in silks, her palms joined gently upon her breast. Her curtains had been

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removed at her own desire and her diminishing body appeared and retreated with the sunlight. Each morning the lobster sister bustled in, bearing scissors and blades and bowl. But there was no need for her ministrations. The Abbess had no more locks, nor brows, nor lashes. Her head was one halo of bone. She was readied for the Lord. One day, upon a silent sign, her bed was removed to the chapel. The sisters gathered like clouds around the dying sun, every one of them double-dosed on rue. The bed was placed near the altar, beneath an unbroken arch that separated the nave from the chancel. It was wreathed in green lilies still in the bud. A candle burned pure and tall. Gru stood among her sisters, watching a sexless figure bowing in grief and trailing a palm gently across the Mother Superior’s bared feet. She has gone beyond tickling, thought Gru. She gaped at the row upon row of sisters. Who in God’s name were they? They looked alien and identical, their faces dissolving as one in the same unholy light. ‘Behold the handmaiden of the Lord’, said a voice, ‘let it be, according to thy will, forever and ever, amen.’ At once the Abbess’s face was changed. Her death-robes went bright as lightning, and the candle beside her hissed and flared as the lilies flourished in flames. Her whole form was wrapped in yellow light. ‘Mandorla’, whispered a nun. Gru closed her eyes for protection. She imagined a bright beam shining vertically from the Abbess’s dead body as down the beam slid a cavalier Christ. He was all compact with light, and finely tonsured, and his moustache and beard were exquisite. His sleeves were billowing and his gestures unspeakably delicate. He dived as though through water and scooped the dead woman in his arms. She is his good mother, thought Gru gravely, and He has come to take her to heaven. Gru could see her up above, sitting on a pale chair, swathed in the blue of the virgin. Her mane was the most variegated orange and gold, with a crowd of

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worshippers lit in its blaze, angels, saints, patriarchs, prophets, and a throng of bald nuns shouting out hosannas. She is the good mother! A savage envy burned in Gru’s brain. She stepped back from the light and plucked off her wimple. She shook her hair out all around her. Never had it felt so dark and separating. That very night Gru rose from her pallet like a malicious ghost. All night the words had been murmuring in her mind: the good mother, the good mother, the good mother. There she was, cavorting with her beau, her beau who was also her boy, while below we are left emptied and dead. Gru spied a large pair of scissors on the mantel and pocketed them; she had no idea what for. The scissors felt huge and violent and desecrating. Gru crept into the chapel where the Abbess lay in state. A vile smell hung in the room, rat’s piss and vinegar and meat gone off. Some of the sisters had seized on the fact like harpies, and already grief had given way to gossip and permission. Gru felt nothing of this. She was sick of earth, resentful of transcendence, sick of feeling anything but hate. Her heart was beating hard as she stole up to the coffin. She gripped fast to the cold scissors and peered in. The smell punched her like a fist. She recoiled, shook her head free, and moved forward once more. She hardly recognized what was before her. The Abbess was in there, her little face crunched like a leaf, or like a flyblown parchment, rained on for hours and left in a corner to dry. Gru was rapt and immobile. She would sob but she too was dry as a rag. Why had she never kissed that face, not once in its long and loving animation? Gru reached out to touch it. The face was cool more than cold; it felt nothing. She stared at the corpse, not blinking at all, and found herself foresuffering every phase of its decay, all the black and crimson flows, the flesh ravelled in a skein and frittering slowly to dust. She saw an ear, the nose, great mouthfuls of meat, all disappearing, as though chewed by invisible birds. And beneath the flesh she saw bones, already soft and fragmenting, and then all was chalk, and the powder

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was lost to the wind. Gru stared and stared until the face shrunk into total eclipse. ‘Now she’s in a north province’, she whispered softly, not knowing what the words had ever meant. Gru bent down into the coffin. As she did so she blinked, two times, three times, working to restore her normal sight. Matter was very close and grey. She could not tell if it was a hand or a blanket she was seeing. Slowly the object turned into a hand. Gru was trying to remember how to compose a kiss. But the more she did so the more she smelt the smell, sheer, disgusting putrefaction, coming off the hand, working its way through it, fermenting the Abbess like an apple. Gru jerked back and held to the scissors for balance. For a moment, just a moment, she thought to stab the fermenting good mother in the heart. But instead she grabbed a bit of white sleeve and, with one quick snip, cut it and plucked it into her fist. Gru put the newly laundered garment to her nose. Once again she almost retched. It smelt of dead seal, boiled seal, the seal they slaughter for their soap. This whole world stank to high heaven. The next morning Gru woke from a dead sleep and searched for something to feel. She thought of the King who took her in her sleep, all those lifetimes ago, unable to buckle his cause within the belt of rule. Did he ever know he had been made a father? You could almost pity him for the lack. She looked at the sole remaining icon on her wall, tatty and askew on the wall. It was a shaven female Christ, beatific, crucified. She felt sorry for this hanging idol. There was nothing true in torture. It was merely torture. Useful if you want to punish or forget, but otherwise a lie, a delirious lie, like love. Gru had had enough delirium for three lifetimes. ‘Are you new made, sister?’ ‘Are you ours?’ She looked lazily at the two crones, sitting as ever by her bedside. She could imagine them younger, not lovely, not loved, probably savaged by soldiers. There was little reason to hate. Witch was just another word, like orphan or whore or tyrant,

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meaning loveless. No love, no family, no home, no child, no God. Grant that and grant all of us sisters witches. ‘Are you ours, sister?’ Gru yawned and turned over. She wasn’t anybody’s. Gru was amazed one day to find the door in the nunnery back wall flapping wide open. If not a gift it was an invitation. She walked for some time, west toward where the wood started thinning and the river widening. She even whistled. Eventually she came upon a busy cottage, nestled amid a copse of young sycamore. The sweetest smell came from the flung-wide windows. Neat rows of husked wheat lay beneath an awning in the garden. Ladies were bustling to and fro, their faces happy red. ‘Won’t be a jiffy’, said a round red woman, her bare forearms specked with white flour, ‘the batch is nearly done.’ ‘I’m sorry?’ said Gru. ‘I was just admiring the smell. What is it?’ ‘What is it? So you’re not from the Lord Macduff! Lordy, I was saying to my sis, here already!’ ‘Oh no’, said Gru. ‘I’m from nowhere. What are you baking? The smell is so lovely.’ ‘I call them cakes, they’re so sweet. Come here, try some.’ She turned and beckoned for Gru to follow. Inside the little cottage were three or four other women, likewise squat, kneading dough, working a single blackened oven, packing loaves on large wooden trays. ‘Bread!’ said Gru in wonder. ‘Ay miss. Have you ever seen the like?’ Gru shook her head. She felt almost frightened of the softness and beauty before her. ‘Go on miss. Take a bite. He only needs twelve loaves and we’ve made about fifty. Couldn’t waste all that lovely mix now could we? Go on, have a nibble. I think you’ll find they pass muster.’ A second plump baker-woman nodded and grinned and handed Gruoch a large rounded loaf.

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‘Lord Macduff wanted twelve of those – see if our wheat is up to scratch. Light and bright, soft and lofty – that’s how he put it! If it is then we’ll have a great big bakery here by the spring, he promised. Just what the place needs! We’ve been dying on our feet, miss, so we have.’ Gru broke off a piece and ate it. The crust was orange and the rest like a fluffy cloud. She broke a larger piece and ate that too. The lady laughed. ‘Told you, didn’t I? Go on, take a few, why don’t you?’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Go on, you look a touch jaundiced. We can’t have that, a beauty like you. Go on, do you the world of good!’ Who on earth would resist? Gruoch returned to the nunnery with six loaves, neatly packed in a straw hamper. All of the sisters were in chapel. Gru entered without thought. She unpacked the hamper and laid the bread out on the altar table. The smell had died a little but it was still like a sweet jolt of heart. The sweetness filled the altar and seemed to charge the air with it. The ladies leant toward the bread. Their noses filled with the smell and a swooning was amongst them. As one they felt their lungs dilate as their pipes opened to the smell. Gruoch broke a large piece and ate it, and then another. The ladies leant into her the whole time, attending every chew as though to a liturgy. With every chew Gru felt herself getting stronger. God knows what she thought she had been doing all of these years. She ate her fill and then left the chapel. There was plenty left for the others. ∞

become a man Day after day of rain, the boys stuck inside, their brains crawling with leech. They were experiencing boredom as never before. Surely there was more to life than this! They were

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nearly-men; their bodies itched and heated; they needed to explode. After fourteen merciless days the rain stopped. The boys looked out upon what seemed a new world, so green it could take your eye out. The twins walked west through Birnam for an hour or more and came upon a road, thick with mud and deserted. They followed it without mind, and before long arrived at the longrumoured village. They came in the back way, from behind, like robbers. The village looked like an apology, belated and almost accidental, in the form of hanging towel and leaning wooden boards and wet piles of compost buffeted by cats and pigs. The bunched alarms of grass were hugely green and virile. A living frog moved from one of them, its eyes bulging grapeshot. The road glistened like brand new shit. A stiff wind might have blown the whole thing away; perhaps it already had. ‘Welcome to the other half’, said Fyn, and laughed, and started walking off at an angle. Grim slowly followed as Fyn climbed a dirty woodpile and disappeared behind it. As though from nowhere a young girl stood before him. Green snot hung on her upper lip. ‘Heard about you’, said Fyn. She crouched down to the mud, her eye fixed on the stranger. Her hair was a muddy yellow, her dress torn and getting shorter. She chucked a mouldy apple at the handsome boy and half-turned, giggling. The brown flesh of the fruit looked too slush to taste but Fyn bit into it anyway. Fyn spat it out and looked briefly to Grim. ‘Wait there’, he said, chucking the apple and following the girl into a thick bower. She was ready for him, as supple and liquid as fishlife. He couldn’t quite believe it was going to happen. Grim watched from the bower’s edge as it did, as the girl drew Fyn to her without seeming to move, and gripped him as he fell upon her, and sniggered as he tumbled and thrust. It was over in seconds. Fyn turned with triumph on his face and saw Grim standing at the margin of the covert. The girl was laughing as she rubbed the mess on her thigh with her dress.

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‘It counts!’ cried Fyn. ‘Definitely counts! His turn now – come on Grim!’ The girl looked at Grim, so much stumpier than the other one, with his rust hair and rashes and thin eyes, and sneered. She seemed to be daring him to move. He could move. He could do it. He could do it better than Fyn had, he hadn’t even got in, he could see his stuff all over her. ‘Come on, Grim! Break the duck!’ Grim was motionless in the too-lucent light, the sun dead on his crown. There was nothing beneath that skirt, he knew it, she was naked as a kid goat. The girl was still laughing but the laughing had started to sound like a crow. Was she an idiot? Who cares if she was! He was about to move, he was almost sure he was, when he was distracted by distant laughter. He thought it was her but it wasn’t. The girl was still emitting a mirthless low caw, but a harsher cackle was coming from somewhere behind. Grim looked at Fyn; Fyn had heard too. Without a word they crept from the clearing and back onto the lane. The girl’s crowing died away as the cackle grew more distinct. It was coming from the lane’s last shack. A great weeping ash scraped across the tin roof, its heavy green branches like a burial wreath. They saw a silent line of crows in an upper branch, their sheen of black feather sleek and perfect. Fyn winked and they took a step or two closer to the shack. Grim gently fingered the curtain that hung across the doorway. The room smelt oversweet, like an untreated sore. He jerked back in disgust. Fyn poked his head all the way through the curtain. The light in the shack was fuzzy and sallow. Against the backboards sat two old crones, one of them stirring a pot, the other biting a pipe. Both wore darkly shapeless garments with hoods down to reveal two hairless heads. Smoke and steam joined and rolled against the corrugated tin ceiling. One of the crones fished a sausage from the broth and forked it with her spare hand. The other grabbed it off the fork and gulped it at once. Fyn laughed.

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‘What are these?’ he said, and picked up a sausage and hurled it in the direction of the pot-stirring crone. She raised her fork and caught it flush on its prongs. The pelican gobbled it like a fish. Fyn was momentarily dumbstruck. The sisters eyed him as they chewed. Now Grim appeared behind Fyn’s shoulder. ‘Witches?’ he whispered to his twin. ‘Speak if you can’, said Fyn. ‘What are you?’ At once the women laid choppy fingers on their lips. ‘What are we?’ said one of them. ‘What are you?’ said the other. And they laughed like jackdaws. ‘We are the boys of Dunsinane!’ said Grim. The crones looked to each other and linked arms and chanted. ‘Done sin, done sin, Dunsinane Double twins and double trouble!’ ‘Hail!’ said the first. ‘Do you mock us?’ said Grim. ‘Lesser than Macbeth’, said the second. ‘And greater!’ said the first. ‘Hail!’ they cried merrily. A great gristle of fat flew in Grim’s direction, spraying him with hag-juice. ‘Vile witches! Come on Fyn. They are infection!’ Grim tore at the curtain to leave. ‘Come on Fyn!’ But Fyn was edging closer to the sisters, a twisted smile on his face. ‘How now, you black hags – who am I?’ ‘Our girl’s new goat!’ ‘Her broken moat!’ ‘Blind worm’s sting!’ ‘Ring the ring!’ ‘How would you know, you cowards?’ mocked Fyn, ‘You’re not even women!’ He ripped the pipe from the one sister’s mouth and flicked the burning ash over the other.

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‘Dust for dust, sisters!’ he said, and retreated backwards through the curtain, the pipe insolent in his teeth. Fyn couldn’t bear the thought of trudging back home, explaining where he’d been, sitting in a circle and praising Lulach’s soup. He had been born, it seemed to him now, about two hours ago. Grim was nowhere to be seen. He stuck the pipe in his pocket and headed into Birnam Wood. Deep in the wood’s secret interior, Fyn suddenly heard singing. The voices were high and gay, dancing in the high trees as though stealing from the throats of birds. Maidens? Fyn felt his heart bubbling again into life. He heard one line sung by a choir of girls, and then the next by a single female voice. Your mum wore a glove to hide her palm, My hand is not healthy, she said Lines scarred by love, no hope of balm, My life is not healthy, she said. Fyn stood and hearkened as the singing came closer. Spawned in a ditch, the devil her leman, My boy is not healthy, she said. Along the bending forest track was a line of women, fifteen or more, each balancing a basket of bread on her head. Fyn watched them straighten and approach. All were bareheaded and shaven but for the leader. Their scalps were scabbed with cuts; lonely clumps of hair sprung like inverted divots. The woman at the front was a head taller than the rest, with black hair tumbling down her back. Your mother a witch, your Daddy a demon My boy is not healthy, she said. Your mum wore a glove to hide her palm, My hand is not healthy, she said. She slowed as she neared Fyn and raised a hand. The singing

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stopped. All of the women bowed their heads and lowered their baskets. The bread was bright orange, its perfume intoxicating. Fyn thought to grab some, but looked to the woman instead. Her skin was so pale it looked almost blue. She did not smile. Her neck was as bare as her cheeks. Her eyes were as black as dream, her fingers the longest that Fyn had ever seen. Fyn could hardly resist the strangeness rising within him. He moved towards her and her jaw-muscles visibly tensed. Fyn stopped in his tracks. The woman resumed her march and her strange train followed. Fyn was left gazing in her wake. He had never known such ownership possible. The next morning, minutes after dawn, Grim started up from dreamless sleep. He panicked. Next to him Fyn’s bed was empty. He stumbled to the window and saw one of the battlement’s scruffy domestic crows flying from the ramparts. As Grim followed the rook’s flight he spotted a lonely figure threading its way into the forest. Grim looked down at his feet and tried to collect himself. It didn’t seem possible. He hadn’t been consulted. A single globe of raindrop hit Grim on the bridge of his nose. In seconds it was a torrent. He looked out upon a world suddenly without constituents. The bird had flown, his brother had gone, into what he had no answer. Grim had never felt so dark, so contracted. He spotted a baby chick down below, bedraggled by rain as its mother led the stronger ones to shelter. The chick once was yellow but now it was not. Grim drew back inside the castle, caught in the cold snows of a dream. ∞

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the crow makes wing . . . A single black rook was flying south, growing ever closer to the English border. It looked tiny and the sky was very large. All who saw it would think that it’s not where it should be. You rarely see a rook alone. They like their mates; they take solace in their fellow rooks; they are happy to share their space, toss nuts or berries to and fro, nibble in concert at a small dead mouse. What’s more they don’t really travel. They are homebirds, sedentary and un-ambitious. And so what was this solitary birdy doing up there, miles from home, flapping for dear life? You can only imagine the panic. The rook was heading south, tracing rivers as best it could. It was trying to keep up with Fyn. But it was a devil of a job, as the manboy popped from cart to carriage to donkey, from alehouse to outhouse to whorehouse, making all the time for freedom. The rook hugged its homesickness and waited, sometimes all night, for Fyn to emerge. Once or twice he didn’t; once or twice he left and the rook missed him, in which case it rejoined the river and hoped for the best. Every morning at dawn it lowered and ate. It liked to alight near a river, the rook did. You could bank on a little grub. What it didn’t much like were all these monsters cropping up wherever the rivers seemed fullest or fastest. It had never seen 95

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the like! It could spy them from miles away, looming like silent behemoths. It first saw one shortly after dawn one foggy morning. It was readied to dive down for its daily feed when, as though vented by the disappearing night, like night’s illicit remainder, this great row of chimneys ghosted into view. Like they’d been born to the world that very moment! No smoke, just these nude chimneys. The bird recoiled as if from sulphur, and flew perpendicularly up and away. Ever since it has kept seeing these pillared monsters. They were very reliable. Always next to a river, and always at a downhill break. The water would shift in colour as it passed them, from dark grey to furry white, and start to tumble, as though running from itself, whereas for miles on end beforehand it seemed barely to move. And these monsters were always tanked in a clearing, no trees for half a mile or more; near each one were piles and piles of fallen oaks, sometimes naked lumber. Soon there’d be no woods left at all, thought the bird, we’ll have to roost in a chimney or a drainpipe. Welcome to merry England. Now it was late afternoon, the sky already thickening, and down below the rook spotted another monster. It knew it should probably keep away. But something was drawing it on. Maybe it was that great fat ditch spreading around the monster’s far side. It looked highly promising; who knew what worms might be waiting! Should it? They were deep ditches, it reasoned, wouldn’t want to get stuck. It was a rational rook. But something was drawing it on. Well, it hadn’t seen Fyn in twenty-odd hours and, who knew, maybe he was down there? So the rook dropped vertically, surreptitiously, imagining itself a brainfree heavy feather. It alighted on to a section of roof, surprisingly firm, kilned mud and thatch. Now it started eyeing a chimney. Might it? What if it’s toasty hot? What if it burns its little rook-talons to a cinder? But still, might it, might it . . . The bird hopped atop the chimney. Cold as bone! Ha! It let out a wonderful fruity fart and flickered down to the ground. It started to stalk around. It saw that what looked from above like

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a long dark wall was in fact measured by repeated arches, each the height of a human. The arches were open, without door. It waddled in. Everything was semi-opaque, as though all colour had been squeezed from the world. Not a soul was about. The floor was covered in ash. The back wall was not in fact a wall but a series of small doors, half-way up, that closed and opened upon further small square black caverns. The ash piled high in each. Cave within cave, black inside grey, and now it saw a streaky cat pretending to sleep. I hate cats, thought the rook, and hiccuped a giggle. It had never had that thought before. It flapped out and was instantly over the ditch. Staring up at it was the skull of some dead thing, a round-domed mammal, sockets like death itself. It shook its head and began flying along the ditch toward the river. It turned a corner and there was a dam, piled high from ditch-soil. Next to it a building stood on big pine legs. A large wheel turned, and as it turned it groaned and screeched, abrupt little caterwauls underpinned by a continuous drowsy hum. The sound was so like birdlife at night that it felt even more homesick. It descended onto one of the blades. The air was dusky and the lines of the blades seemed to blur. It flew closer, and hovered like a dragonfly at the ingress. Water dappled its head and breast. It moved still closer and was showered by stream and by sound. It reached out a talon toward a downward spiralling blade, getting closer and closer to whatever was turning in the wheel. All of its body was soaking. It should have been scared but something was drawing it on. It stopped on the blade and listened as it lowered slowly toward the pool. Somewhere along the current it could hear single drops of water on unmoving stone. It didn’t like stone. Stone was very final. Inches from immersion it leapt off, in the process pinging its head on the blade above. Jingo, what would its mother say! Its heart was beating wildly as it flew up. Suddenly, it knew not why, it feared that it was late. Late for what it hadn’t a clue, but late.

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How did it get so dark? It started flying so low that it heard the crickets striking up. And now below it could make out hundreds of humans, many of them carrying lights, all heading in one direction. It slowed to a glide and lowered still further, so low as to be almost upon their shoulder. Many pushed barrows, and the rest carried leaping torches. Half wore high white hats. It recalled the ash and felt terrified. Once more it accelerated away. It flew for mile upon mile, a panic in its throat, a little heart pattering at its chest. Eventually the air started to thicken, and vaguely to warm up, and in the distance it saw the murk of buildings, smaller houses, a church spire, the fug of woodburn in the air. The rook rejoined the road and sped up again. Now it saw wagons and children, up late and euphoric, and horses nibbling black grass. It heard individuals, with voices, and it could hear great careers of laughter and song. And then it spotted him! It was sure of it, that flawless face luminous in the nightlight, it was him, peeling off from a party, hugs and handshakes, a lady running to him for a final parting pet. Fyn, Fyn boy, my Fyn, you beauty! ∞

if thou canst nod, speak too There were cries, sobs, confusion among the people, as a man of terrible authority came forward. A matured man, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken eyes in which there was still a surprising gleam of light. They gasped and breathed his name: ‘Macduff!’ He was wearing not his gorgeous robes of state but a coarse old cassock. At a distance came his gloomy crew of assistants: the so-called holy band of slaves. Macduff had seen everything – how Fyn came among the cityfolk like youth itself, like a new day dawning, like a smiling ghost – and his face had darkened.

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He held out a long, accusing finger and ordered his guards to arrest the intruder. The henchmen laid cold hands on Fyn; the crowd dropped to earth as one; Macduff blessed them with a gesture and moved on. Fyn was taken to the Tower’s cellar prison and shut up fast inside. Macduff repaired to his private chapel and prayed. It was deep into evening when Macduff visited his prisoner. Candles guttered in the stale dark; near the wall hulked a stone table like an altar. Macduff came close and peered into Fyn’s eyes. Then he set down his light and spoke. ‘Is it really you?’ Silence but for the faint noise of a bird’s beak, pecking at the far side of the keyhole. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Still Fyn offered nothing. ‘Good’, Macduff went on, ‘good, don’t answer. Silence is truer. For what can you say? How dare you say anything more?’ They sat for ten seconds, perhaps more; ten long seconds. ‘But why, in God’s name, have you returned?’ Macduff’s eyes were flashing but his face was equine, huge and grey, as though struck into some semblance of stone. ‘Don’t mock me, man – if ever man you were. You mocked me once and in payment I took that head from off that neck.’ He pointed as he spoke and seemed to see a tearing wound. Fyn stroked his throat. ‘I said, don’t mock me, friend. An army, a universal army – for all the creatures in sky and earth had joined my side – saw me sever your head and bear it to the heavens. We laughed, we spat in your bitches’ eyes, we drank till daybreak, man – did you know that? I could have used your skull as my hogshead!’ Briefly he pictured his triumph, the blood on the walls, the shattered stumps of what seemed a forest of leaf and bole, the impossibly young mother he had saved. And then he remembered that stupid Porter, distracted with grief, crawling on his belly back to Dunsinane, crawling like a slug over fathers, brothers, mothers, sons, his tears a glistering track behind him. ‘I am King in all but name here, you’ve seen that.’

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Macduff heaved a sigh and the candle puttered out. He cursed and fumbled, the light revived and he resumed his speech. ‘You’ll want to know what happened next. Of course you will! It won’t surprise you – perhaps you’ll laugh – but that Malcolm – well, he emerged the same palely fat grub he had always been. Jesus, the fake sunburst of his coronation! But give him his due, he knew a worthy man. I swear the first act of his realm was to make me Surveyor General – and off we went to proclaim his yoke among the people. Do you want to know? Yes? No doubt it will amuse your taste for the mordant. We sat in his royal chariot with the curtains drawn. He wore his crown. His crown! Too burdensome a fruit for the branch that bore it. And he talked, big talk about the times to come. ‘Nervy boy’, I thought. ‘Not up to the task.’ Malcolm talked and talked. Disconnected clichés of kingship, fragments of his father’s, things he inferred might please me. My heart plunged: Did they really die for you?’ Macduff was staring out of the thin grate in the upper wall. ‘O Scotland! Your rural settlements were open sewers and graves. Those who went upright were hardly more alive than the corpses they left to birds and wolves and wild cats. Scabrous and slavering they came, tapping on our windows and keening tunelessly. They knew nothing of Macbeth or Malcolm or of Scotland. Vague indigents who knew not what to beg. Thousands of naked looming faces. I recall a mad mother standing in the open road, her breasts hanging like toads, a cancer in one of them the size of a cooking apple. An infant hung screaming on her caving shoulder. Our driver altered his course just in time. Malcolm stirred in his sleep, Malcolm with his stupid crown on. I threw open the window and looked back and the child twisted round to leer at me. A perfectly white-eyed child, eyes of bone.’ He shivered, and looked straight at the silent Fyn. ‘It was a mockery, you see. Better days, the time is free, the new dispensation, while all the while Malcolm the First, his regal vesture stinking of sin, touched himself and mangled ballads that he learnt along the way. I had given all – all – for

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Duncan and his line! Something had to be done. The old structures – monarchy, church, state – all had failed. What was needed was a new centre, one more basic and reliable. And that is what I have given them!’ He stopped for a moment, as though waiting for a question from his still and silent addressee. ‘Did you hear me? Are you hearing me?’ And now more quietly, his whisper urgent and confiding. ‘Listen, man – you will like this! I appealed to England for a grant – I had to start in England – a small price for what in time I will bring home. I taught myself agriculture; I travelled around with expert advisors, teaching farmers to increase their crop yields. I built mills everywhere, mills powered by water and wind. I built five enormous bakeries in the south and south east, each with a thousand ovens, the biggest the world had ever seen! And I fed this miserable nation. For years they have called me ‘The Baker’ – no doubt they find it amusing – but I have taught them not to despise earthly bread. There has never been a time when every man, woman and child has had enough – but I have baptized that time down here in England! I am done in York; soon I will at last come home. A new era of happiness for all! Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!’ He paused for a moment, shook his head reverently, and continued. ‘I swear, that morning, when I stood in my first factory in Norwich, and I took in a great stab of doughy air – by God I was cleansed! Grains of flour dancing in the morning light; that plain sweet scent; the warmth of new bread rising – it ravished my heart as nothing had since I carried my laughing bride over the threshold. I stood stock still and there was wetness on my cheek. ‘I have seen the future’, I said to myself. ‘I have seen the future and it works!’ He fell to a musing silence; why seek anything from this silent imposter? The Baker was already justified. ‘You see, only I could be your successor. I’ve made this nation. I have raised its people up. Everyone has enough – everyone. And now I will raise my own. Scotland awaits.’

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Macduff stopped. His eyes glittered. ‘Don’t you see? This is the promised end; the end of struggle; the end of history, my chronicle the very last. Everyone is happy!’ He yearned to sit but he lacked a stool; he leaned back against the stone table and folded his arms. ‘My people are happy. How could they not be?’ He smiled, and with a whispering lilt began to sing. ‘Oh he’s the baker in the catacombs! People praise him for he’s seen the ruins, He feeds our babies by the bone and tombs, Yes, he’s the baker in the catacombs!’ Macduff chuckled. ‘You see, my friend, they are children. Merely children. You have to care for them. Do you understand that? Care. It embraces so much! I give them what neither man nor god has given – peace and plenty – peace because plenty. It’s true, they work, they work, work, work, work, work! They must work! I have set them to it, but when all my factories are up and running, well then we will play beautiful games, I shall shower them with toys and titles, God knows, I shall even allow them to sin! Why not, they will love me all the more for permitting their follies! I’ll tell them every slate is clean for as long as it is I who does the cleaning. Show me your sins and I will rinse you clean! That is why I give the pureness of white bread – they know it comes from me. Oh, we make bread for the churches as well, of course we do. They no longer make their own; but to them we supply black buns, seed and barley; the church’s is a stony gift; mine is as light as a song. Sing, my people: sing! Yes he’s the baker in the catacombs. So long as I give permission; that is all I require. That, my friend, is love, the love of care. Tell me, will it not suffice? Ha? Is this not a solution? And now I shall take the waters of your land, that bloody mucky filth you bestowed, and purge it too to a sound and pristine health! Ah, Scotland, Scotland, I shall deserve your love! After all, it is no small thing truly to save a people.’

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Macduff paused, opened his mouth like a dog. Then he slowly closed one eye while fixing the other hard on his prisoner. ‘You know, I meant at first to kill you, to kill you again, without any speech. As one might kill a pig.’ And he drew the faded cloth back from his leg to reveal a curved hilt and scabbard. His thigh-flesh trembled faintly under its tracery of black hair. Sword on thigh; a shiver of the grand old days. ‘But I won’t kill you. Not yet.’ He sheathed the blade and he smiled. ‘I find I still have things to say. And I find I lack company. Thanks to you, I have no wife, no son, no family at all.’ He paused; a fly was buzzing in the grate. Both men watched it butt against the rusty iron. Now a little black beak poked out and nabbed the fly. ‘But then nor did you, did you? Ha?’ Fyn looked at the old revenant blankly. ‘Perhaps it is better that way. To have no children, I mean. I couldn’t bear it, truth be known – the weight of it, needy lives, nowhere to hide, the rawness and the need of it. You have to cut and run. I mean, the little ones, Jesus, why me?’ Macduff was leaning toward his captive, his pose intent and confidential. ‘What would it take, I mean really take, to deserve all of that trust?’ Still Fyn’s expression was blank. ‘You couldn’t deserve it, just couldn’t. Mark my words – that is why fathers do as they do – leaping into distractions, public duties, anything to take their mind off the absoluteness, the absolute chosen singularity, of a child’s trust. All traitors to their little commonwealths, every last one! Every father, every last one, they should lay themselves down and offer their throats. No?’ A lazy half-smile appeared around Fyn’s lips; Macduff leant still closer. ‘Did you know my son? He would have been good to love. Yes, and love would have loved him in return! He would have

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been a friend to men. He had a smile, you know? He saw into hearts, had a way with them. Do you know? He would have been a good man, there was love and cheer in him. He looked in my eyes sometimes, smiled into them, and he knew I was good. He did! He liked me, see, trusted me. Even now I reach out to touch him in my sleep.’ His voice was now barely a whisper. He was on his haunches, leaning forward, his mouth inches from his confessor’s temple. ‘You see, it has to count! The deaths of them all – they have to count.’ Macduff was gripping one of his wrists hard. ‘My wife – remember her? Oh, I failed her too, don’t you worry. I carried my love like a man might carry a child in his belly. A ridiculous miracle, humiliating really – I didn’t know what to do with it. I could never, not really, speak my love. I should have risked that speech. It might have freed our bodies, cut their jesses of confusion and embarrassment, so – at last – well, it might have made me. But instead – instead I played the father.’ He was looking down, his eyes almost ashamed. ‘I have to remind myself that you killed them. I didn’t. You did. I did nothing but serve my nation.’ That is correct, thought Macduff, his head nodding briskly, it is the case! For Scotland I betrayed the despot, for Scotland I abandoned my home and went to England, for Scotland my wife and babes were murdered. One after the other, in front of each other, they dropped dead to the cold stone floor of Fife. For Scotland they did it. It had to be. ‘But they understand, do they not?’ Fyn raised a lazy uncomprehending eye. ‘The women and children!’ said Macduff, dropping down and grabbing Fyn’s arm. ‘They understand the price a man must pay. I know my son did! He understood!’ Still Fyn said nothing. Macduff bent his head and gritted his teeth; he was shutting his eyelids fast and refusing the tears that were welling. He hoped his pretty chicken wasn’t hurting when the assassins came grinning. He so hated it

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when he hurt, his chin would wobble and dimple like it did. Did he think Daddy would come, all the time he would come, and then the puzzle when somehow he didn’t? Macduff clenched his eyes and was reaching fast for the dark. He was turning gum to rubble, pressing the bitter juice of love from his memory. But he had paid the tyrant back. He had served justice. For the nation, for Scotland! ‘Oh, hellkite!’ he yelled, and roughly kissed Fyn and released him. Macduff heard a scraping behind him and saw the beak of a rook stuck in the grate. He jumped toward it, as though in relief, and manfully worked to release the beak. The mask of Fyn was motionless. A tiara of sweat was on Macduff’s lips as he struggled with the beak. He could feel the silent eyes of his captive watching him. His tongue started rolling like an eel, and he found himself squeezing the beak hard between thumb and fingers. He turned in a red rage. ‘Why don’t you say it? Go on, say it. Oh God man, say something!’ Macduff was shaking but Fyn remained as still as a tomb. ‘You think you can haunt me still? I swear, on my children’s grave, I swear that nothing you do can – yaaa!’ he yelled, and brought his fingers rushing to his mouth. ‘Devil bird bit me!’ He sucked his finger, withdrew it clean, and at once the red blood returned. ‘Whose bird was that?’ He swivelled to look but the bird had gone. The blood was swelling richly from the cut. Macduff sucked upon it wildly and turned back to the stranger. ‘Yours?’ he yelled, ‘yours!’ Fyn leaned back and smiled. ‘Don’t say I did it!’ shouted Macduff. Never had he felt so exposed. Of course, he reasoned, this mutant refuses to answer. How can I, his executioner,

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possibly reach him? Kill him again and again, kill him time out of mind, and each time something unreachable crawls away. Caterpillar! His fingers pulled with babyish rage upon the neck of his sweat-drenched cassock. His breast was so bony old. He could not go on! This stranger would not speak, he would never speak, and yet still the room was rebounding with voices. Where were you, Macduff, when the good old King died? I came too late to wake him. Where were you when Banquo was slain? Somewhere else, I forget where. Where were you when I tore into your own wife’s womb and minced the babes inside it? I was in a foreign country. Doing what? Preaching the need to defend mothers and children. O fool, fool, infinite fool! Macduff risked a glance at his silent tormentor. Was he laughing at him? Behind that bored mask was he laughing? Macduff broke his thoughts, snapped them like a branch, and spoke. ‘I wish you would say it. Please sir, say it. Speak your charge.’ He looked imploringly at his prisoner but still Fyn rendered nothing. ‘So be it. Tomorrow I shall condemn thee and burn thee at the stake. Yes, and this time I shall make good the task; I will leave no remains, not a single black tooth for you to spring from. Know you not that?’ He looked again at his prisoner; at his accuser. ‘Know you not what I say?’ Once more he stared into the gory blankness of two lips curled like a clown’s. Macduff sighed and straightened his spine. He spoke now with an exhausted formality. ‘Why have you returned? I ask you for a final time. I won’t ask again.’ Fyn picked his nails, shrugged, leaned back in his chair.

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At once Macduff jumped down as though to grab his interlocutor by the throat. ‘I did it for Scotland, hell-hound – for Scotland!’ Only now did Fyn look up. His eyes were like dusk, as calm and certain as. And finally he spoke his reply: ‘And what is this Scotland without me?’ Macduff’s cheeks performed a sudden rictus. Could it be – ? ‘Who are you?’ he said finally. ‘Who are you really?’ He was shivering with a new and holy terror. Fyn rose, walked toward him, and bent down. And then softly, ever so softly, he pressed his lips to Macduff’s. He held the kiss as a bird flapped and a cart started rolling. Eventually Fyn drew away. Macduff’s lips searched for some answering word. But before he could do so Fyn laid a soft index finger to his own twinned lips, kissed its ring, and half-mimed, halfwhistled a long goodnight sssshhh. He started to stroll toward the outer door. ‘You’re not –’ began Macduff, but then stopped, his arms lank and strangely besotted. Why would he want this man to stay? The door squeaked wildly as it opened. The scent of yeast, rising and heating, smacked with sweet remembrance into Macduff’s nostrils. That’s it, the Gospel of Earthly Bread; the Idea is all; adhere to the Idea. ‘Go, and come no more! Come not at all, never, never, never!’ Fyn disappeared into darkness. The kiss glowed in Macduff’s heart. ∞

seyton Fyn found himself in the cold wet maze of the town streets. He had no idea of a direction. He pressed himself into the darkness of tenement walls, shuffled hopelessly down some rat-arsed

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alley, sat smack down in a puddle. A voice was echoing off the cobblestones. ‘Come out of the alleys, Enter this embrace. Come out of the alleys, Reach into my face. Come out of the alleys, Like man new-made!’ All of Fyn’s senses cooled in its echo; his hair stirred as though awakened. It seemed a voice from a dream of deliverance, so clear and familiar. He stepped out. A figure stood at the end of the street, a figure too scrawny for that voice, too small for the spaciousness it tendered. It was a seedy ginger-haired creature, holding an oil-lamp and smirking like a monkey. Fyn moved toward him as though magnetized. The monkey grabbed him in both arms, nuzzling his head against the younger man’s breast. He stepped lightly back and raised the lamp and squinted into Fyn’s face. ‘Good evening Fyn. Don’t worry, I’ll sort you out – think of me, as it were, in loco parentis. I’ll look after you boy.’ As he spoke the gingerman’s countenance began folding queerly into its wrinkles. He bounced half a yard ahead and then turned and beckoned with a crookedly elongated finger. They were walking step by step, elbow to shoulder, the monkey’s left foot dipping into the stewy gutter, Fyn taking the dry mainway. The rook swept into the alley above them. ‘Shoo, shoo, shoo!’ hissed the gingerman, batting at the bird with a three-striped banjo. They vanished downstairs into a dark basement. There were many others here, men and women, and the monkey was soon getting Fyn drunk, gin-drunk, telling him tales of the high bloody days before this low bloodless Baker, tales of his father and his castle, all of it the devil’s own hearsay. This monkey had been around forever, and what didn’t he know!

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Fyn drank and softened and heated to the gingerman’s ingratiation. Ah, men in the world, they are so much more fun than earnest old fathers and brothers! And Fyn was not inured to love; he loved this stranger already, loved him like he’d known him all his life. ‘More gin!’ cried the monkey. ‘Chin up!’ cried Fyn. ‘Gin up!’ returned the monkey, ‘chinny chin chinny chin chin!’ And they downed their cups in one. ‘Good man!’ cried Fyn. This gin was transparent, beyond all secrets, you could see right through to the heart of things! ‘More gin I say! Pip and grain, man, pip and grain! Shelah!’ Fyn was warm with drink and breezily musing at his companion. The monkey’s red rug was thinning on top, with yellow ribbons tied in its rusty growth. The hair beneath his shirt was a still more livid ginger. From inside his star spangled waistcoat the monkey drew a tiny new sky-blue guitar. It had glossy white clouds painted on it. Fyn wondered drunkenly what became of the stripy banjo. The monkey winked a wink and plucked at his solitary string. Twangg! ‘Yoohoo!’ he hollered. He walked up close to Fyn, very close, and winked so hard that the wink seemed to shut the eye of the world. He collapsed onto Fyn’s shoulder, simulated tears, kissed the hem of his garment. He was screwing up his face in a parody of artistic contortion. And now, he sang. As I was walking home one day, I met Macbeth along the way, So hail the witches, hail the wife, Hail the resurrected life! For reared in gore and supped with pain, Black eyes shine, he’s back again! Said I, ‘Macbeth, why are you here? And why have you not perished, dear?

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He raised a hand and shifted shape, Became a man of a different make, With handsome face and smile so fake, The parricide reborn as rake! O! Any man would take his part, O any man who had a heart! And here you are, you must confess, Here you are! My man Macbeth! As he finished singing the monkey was hauling Fyn to his feet, strange eruptions seething in his face. ‘I must go now’, slurred Fyn, thinking there isn’t a moment to lose. The drink sloshed, waves against a dam, waves too large for the pondlife all around – ‘Pondlife!’ he slurred, ‘look at all these waves, longing for a sea to, to, to – ha, to wave in.’ Fyn lurched where he stood. ‘I must go . . .’ But the monkey was laughing. ‘That’s it! Good boy, that’s my good lad! Home now – they are all waiting!’ And now all the men and women in the basement bar turned and they too were laughing at Fyn. Ha hahahahahaha. God, life is a bloody laugh. Every one of them was laughing, he could count them as his eyes swirled the room: one (ha) two (ha) three (ha) four (ha) five six seven (ha hahaha ha!) Jesus, he thought, I wish I had a fucking gun. And right on cue the monkey-man laughed again. His long crooked finger seemed to have turned into a bare bone, and with it he was pointing dead at Fyn’s heart. ‘That’s it – go home to Daddy, there’s a good boy!’ He stepped back, leaned forward, and drummed on his knees with horrible quickness. ‘And tell him Seyton says hello! Seyton! He’ll remember!’ He touched two ginger fingers to his blue lips.

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And with that the monkey-man was done. He absently stroked a rump-fed whore; drained his cup dry as hay; and vanished into the smoke. Fyn stood alone, swaying with drink. He would go home, of course he would. But not until he was ready. ∞

as if it felt with scotland Macduff was coasting the lowlands south of Birnam Wood. It was so long since he had been home. Was it ten years? Was it twenty? He had not come in pomp, but in his solitary car, a private man rather than the fabled Lord Protector. None were with him, not his soldiery, nor his courtiers, nor his holy band of slaves, only his favourite bloodhound and a wordless peasant driver. This was the road home and he must travel it by himself. Not least because he did not quite know what it would mean – quite what it would be – to return. All he knew was that he felt strangely opened to feeling; he had been so ever since he had lost his head over the young fellow in York. Such susceptibility, he reasoned, was acceptable: he must feel things like a man. This he had learned. Yes, he mused as the cart bounced through the gorse, mine is the way of nature: feed men, and then ask of them virtue! Was that not the yeast in his idea, its moral realism? Such, surely, was the Good’s only sure foundation. The image of his English bakeries sat flush in his mind, bronzed and beaming like risen bread. And now Macduff shall rise in the northern land! He leaned back in his chariot. He was bringing revolution home. It was just as he had said on the day of freedom. All tomorrow’s children shall be his. But first, a mere detail, he must go to Scone to reunite with the idiot Malcolm, the oldest ward in the known world. Over a game of scissors-paper-stone they would arrive at an understanding; they would seal it with a giggle and a kiss; and

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Macduff would be King of Scots in all but name. The theology of succession was always superstition. The Scots are a rational people, thought Macduff; they will bow to reason when it appears in my shape, bearing loaves like the manna of God! And then who cares if I ever set eyes on the princely Malcolm again? Let him gorge himself to death, the little piggy. He looked out of the window and hummed as Scotland offered itself in tribute. O Scotland, Scotland, how I have missed thee! He washed his face in his country’s sallow light, his heart thrilled to be reacquainted with such pale Scottish brightness. ‘Gorse and scrub, heather and scrub, scrub scrubscrub!’ he sang, rubbing his palms like a miser. ‘Heh heh!’ he chirruped and his driver, taking it for an instruction, chivvied the horses on harder. Poor land, Macduff admitted, yet mine own, mine own! He had been working too long. He must take more time to smell the grass, the flowers, Scottish flowers! A twitching bunny appeared on the plain, a stilled deer, even once a rustic minstrel. Each bulked perfectly in its thingness, each silently blessed by the returning father. His hand rested gently upon the sleek muscle of his bloodhound’s silvery neck. He found his rhythm slowing to that of the canine’s pulse, and soon enough the great man’s head tilted back and his eyes fluttered closed in the delicious breeze. And then, like honey from a high jug, came sleep. A gorgeous warmth suffused Macduff’s chest and fingers and toes. His head nodded, as though to heavenly music, and in the fringes of his eyes he saw his pretty chickens pressed tight against his sides, his arms around them like great sheltering wings, the whole scene quivering with divine laughter. And then he heard a soul, it must have been his own, addressing God like an old familiar. Then I am forgiven? His soul-voice hung in the sweet air, soft and lovely as a girl.

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And my children still adore me? God smiled with a face like his own, russet bearded and Scottish. And I deserve their love? The carriage jolted. ‘Stop the cart!’ cried Macduff, awakened and eager for his earth. He exited clumsily and fell to his old knees by the roadside. He pressed his lips against the ground, rubbed his beard in the Scottish earth, whispering to it and watering it with tears. Every grain of soil was Macduff’s darling. His peasant driver looked away, his peasant eyes full of shame and fear. Macduff rose and smoothed out his cassock. His nipples shivered, and he furtively stroked the silken undergarment he had slipped on beneath. A day of permissions indeed! My God was he open to feeling! He calmed himself by attending to the dog. How he loved dogs! They had long been balsam to him. He looked deep in his hound’s dewy-wet eyes and breathed in its doggy scent. He held the dog’s ears and wished he could kiss it smack on its soaking mouth. Good God he needed a woman’s touch! He was gazing in his dog’s shining eyes and seeing a blackhaired fairy with a wand and a skirt of crystals. ‘Hello pretty’, murmured Macduff, ‘don’t you love your daddy duff?’ Yes, he thought, a pretty little ward, that’s what the homing man needs – a pretty toy to be girlish with. Look at her, lying deep in his dog’s eye! Don’t sulk my pretty, put on the crystal skirt and smile for your daddy duff. And then, with the force of the predestined, the image lurking in the lachrymose eye of his dog resolved into the clearest recollection: that girl, that black-haired beauty he deposited in the nunnery on the day he triumphed over Macbeth! The history day, the history man, the history girl!

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At once Macduff knew why his Scotland seemed so supercharged, so brimming with the promise of life. He had been skirting Birnam like a courtier, little thinking that his girl, his woman, his marriage! – why not, it is predestined, why not? – waited hardly a league to the north. She was his Scotland! She would be his crown! Macduff leant out of the carriage, his face flapping like a bird, and yelled to his driver to alter direction. ‘Faster, faster!’ shouted the happy man. The carriage was careering wildly through copse and bush, risking tree-trunks and crashing low branches as they took the crow’s flight toward the nunnery. ‘Faster, faster!’ The cart smashed through another copse and the atmosphere suddenly altered. The light was ruinous, the trees twisted and thin. From a pile of leaves emerged a human figure, a female. The driver superstitiously stopped the cart. Macduff felt coltish and nervous. Surely this cannot be her, so emaciate, so deathly pale? The female dropped her head in bashful modesty. The head was no more than skull, shaven and scarred to the bone. ‘Sister’, he whispered, hardly able to breathe, ‘dost thou know me?’ She shook her head blankly. Macduff felt himself draw in a great bite of oxygen. ‘Sister, where is thy house?’ He was trying to sound spiritually sincere but he was all serpentine sibilance and haste. She said nothing, but a sickly twig of arm turned and pointed behind her. ‘Through there?’ said Macduff. ‘No, no – it’s big, the nunnery, a strong house.’ Her lips appeared to press out a smile but her head remained low. Macduff found himself distracted by her naked skull, the bone tapering into neck. Is that really the habitation of spirit? Can those truly be the contours of soul? Still she was pointing through the near trees, chewing her free fingers and palely smiling at the stranger.

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For a moment Macduff felt sickened. He wanted to retreat to his dog and find his glitter girl in its eyes. Look at this spectre, her hand but carved bone, her lips more bleached than a sheet. She is dead, thought Macduff; her age has passed; this is no land for ascetics! Not his bonny Scotland with its bonny dark-haired Queen! String up all the monks and nuns. Why not? In the name of reason and love he would do it! That’s it, he thought, the first age of love and reason, love as reason, reason as love. Why not, him and his sugar Queen? A new epoch of happiness for all! ‘Goodbye, poor soul’, he whispered. ‘Wait!’ said the female castrate. The creature shufflingly approached. Her smile broke open and degraded at once into scattered pegs of darkness. Macduff swallowed at the sight of such stumps. Now the castrate unsheathed a cross and held it up to his gaze. It was of pale wood, at least a foot high, and covered in pits and tunnels. Lice and worms and roaches were eating it away as she spoke. ‘You must live a dying life’, she whispered hoarsely. Macduff batted the crucifix away and pressed on into the clearing. What to do with such imbeciles but raze them? He stepped through a small arch and into the nunnery’s grounds. Before him was a scene of dishevelment. The nunnery’s gate was wide open, its walls broken by ivy, its roof all open to the elements, the rue bushes sprawling wild and untended. A vestigial rafter fell with a crash. Macduff walked around to the gardens, in his memory well-tended, apple-hanging. He discovered a palace of weeds. Women of all ages were perambulating, in various states of undress, alone or in scandalously affectionate pairs. They were weaving gracelessly through weeds as high as a man and pushing up to heaven. Two of the women, one young, one old, stopped and smiled at him. Their arms were around each other and they gestured for him to join them. Macduff’s gorge rose. If he had his men with him he would level this place in seconds. He hunched

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his cloak around his shoulders and pitched himself like a King in the middle of these perverted creatures. He pulled his knife from his thigh and started shouting, shoo, shoo, shoo. They scattered with barks and shrieks, like rooks might. Macduff was alone in the nunnery ruins. For a moment he felt entirely deflated. So this was his prepossessed future? He snapped a weed and bit its evident poison. And then it happened, as though by gift of providence. It was her: his black-eyed fairy, aloft in the garden, flowing through the grass towards him. Macduff dropped his weed as his arms went vertical. He sheathed his knife and stood unmanned as the girl drew near. She was so much bigger than he had pictured her, fuller and stronger and more real. She stopped a yard or two before him. Her eyes were black lightning and not at all dead. ‘This is the day’, said Macduff, embarrassed by his folly but somehow sticking fast to its truth. Her expression glinted with spry intelligence. ‘– that the Lord has made’, he added. God knows what he meant but the words were speaking through him. ‘This is the day that the Lord has made’, he said again. She was nearly as tall as he was. ‘How you’ve grown’, he murmured, and suddenly wondered whether he would pass muster, so many years, what if she saw him as old? He stood up a little straighter. Was she smirking at him? He didn’t think so but surely she was hiding a smile. ‘You are a woman’, he announced, and held his hand out for her to take. She looked around to her fellow sisters, who stood in twos and threes, holding hands, looking at her and this man. ‘The future is elsewhere’, said Macduff, still holding his hand out to her. ‘Help me make it.’ She took his hand, and they turned around the house to the front gate, she silent the while. He did not mind her silence; it

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pleased; it reminded him of his dogs. Nor did he mind that she had grown. That pleased too; all the better for dressing her up. Abruptly, in precise detail, he imagined lacing her into corsets and pulling on her boots. He felt himself harden; it felt exactly like a blessing. ‘For Scotland’, he found himself murmuring quickly, ‘for Scotland!’ They arrived at his carriage and she stopped. Macduff already had one foot on the step but he stopped too. She turned to her confederates and declined her head. They seemed to be smiling and nodding at the scene. Macduff stepped down to the grass and waited. He couldn’t read her face; all he knew was that she was here. As effortlessly as a dream, Macduff moved into his cowboy troika and sat by his woman. He couldn’t believe how easy it was. She was beautiful and she was speaking not a word. His left hand was on his dog and his right hand on her shoulder. This is living, thought Macduff, as he urged his peasant to go quickly. Macduff was jouncing on his leather cushion and shouting at his peasant to drive still faster. Scotland was racing past on either side, the road flying into his bright and happy future, his soul revelling within himself. ‘Faster, faster!’ God was on his side, he felt sure of that now, with his woman at one side and his dog at the other. ‘Faster, faster!’ shouted Macduff, taking vast lungfuls of inspiriting Scottish air. He turned towards his coal-eyed fairy and heavenly Queen. ‘Eh, my girl? Eh?’ Macduff laughed at the top of his lungs, clean over the din of his racing chariot. He exulted in his resounding laugh and neither expected nor required her answer. ‘For Scotland!’ he carolled, ‘for Scotland . . .!’ ∞

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the yellow leaf The Porter was pottering in the castle courtyard in the fading light, sweeping at leaves still coming across the plain. Every day he did this. He swept the yard and he studied the plain and he watched as nothing came forth. Every day Lu’s soup hung untasted over the fire. The Porter would rather drink rain. There was nothing in soup for him, nothing stirring its paws to rise. Live beer, he remembered that – seeds fermenting, whole worlds thrumming at the bottom of your glass! But ah my Fyn boy, thought the Porter, if you ever come back to me we will drink until the dawn birds cry. So went his daily vow as he smiled and swept and crooned. ‘Autumn, autumn, everything is fallen, Crown my temples with yellow leaf.’ He pulled the brush by the bristles and squinnied into its straw. It was a woman, hair stiffened with spunk. Jane Nightwork, he remembered her! He fondled the break in her neck, bowed, and he was capering with her, serenading her. One last dance! Come on Jane, dance out of your grave! ‘We ripen and we drop; We drop and so we rot!’ He took Jane by the handle and laid her gently down. ‘Ah, Jane –’, he sighed, nuzzling bristle upon bristle, ‘we are brinking a winter without end. Our prince has gone and we are starving. Oh, Jane, the very tree of life could die here. I see it, shrunk to a few brittle whiskers. I see it fall, and no one hears a sound.’ There was a knocking at the gate. The Porter arrested his pantomime at once. He hadn’t heard that sound in years. ‘O, Jane, my poor mind!’ Another knock.

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Fyn? Could it be his Fyn? ‘Fyn!’ he gasped, kicking the broom from between his feet and limping hurriedly for the gate. Knock, knock, knock. But just as quickly the Porter stopped. His boy would never knock! He would simply enter, bold as day. Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. The Porter knew who this must be. It will be him: the traitor, the wheat chief, the master builder, the man with a pan for a hat. Who else could it be? They had all heard the peasant rumours. It was time. The Porter felt sick as he neared the door. But it wasn’t Macduff. It was a woman, hair freshly shaven, holding in her hands a wicker basket. How long since the Porter had seen a woman? A real live fleshly lady? His soul was pouring like sunstream to a flower. The sister beckoned to the basket she was holding, and slowly unfurled its covering cloth. She raised her offering. He saw a loaf of bread, whiter than her hands, whiter than he had ever seen. She broke the bread with her fingers and held it aloft toward him. Between the tip of index finger and tip of thumb was a slither of white manna. His mouth opened. She laid the wafer deliberately on his tongue, and the old man swallowed. And then they laughed – O how they laughed! – like children! Then abruptly she stopped. Over his shoulder was the madness of which she’d been warned. Two idiots, overgrown idiots wrapped in swaddling cloths. ‘Ah – ah –’ it slipped out like an eely scream, her voice harsh and thin – ‘the brothers Macbeth!’ They were staring blankly at the scene: their old father, with an ugly sister, in a mess of dust and bread, chuckling as he chewed. ‘Father!’ said Lu, ‘it’s – it’s – But before he had time to compose his words Grim had spat a glob of phlegm, bright green and streaked with yellow. It flew through the air like some sick globe and fell between father and stranger.

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Lu looked down at the ruined bread lingeringly. It was so unlike the bread he baked, it was so bland, all the texture and goodness ground out of it, the singular grain as if it had never been! ‘It is white bread, father. Don’t you know?’ His tone seemed to allege some horrible religious error. The woman gathered her basket, covered her head in the cloth, and was gone. Lu had seen what was happening. Maybe he was the only one who had. The Porter hadn’t left the castle in years. Grim spent day and night with tallow-lamp and books, plotting God knows what. Fyn had long gone, three years now, and all purpose went with him. Their little farm reflected their sick torpor. Manure and acorns to gather and spread; the odd scrawny pig or duck to sacrifice; the occasional ditch to dig or fence to mend: but nothing whatsoever to thresh into hope. The Porter and Grim would eventually do as he bade them, in silence or indifference, before speeding back to their respective separations. He thought of the times they once had, the games and laughs they had shared! That time Fyn dressed up as a wizard and commanded them to dance on hands; or when he sang that song about building a monster from giblets and compost. And now? Now they waited, for what who could tell? You might think they were waiting for death. Or maybe for that world over yonder to creep in and overcome their own. And it wouldn’t be long, thought Lu, not the way things were heading. For beyond the river there was another world entire. We the men in sleep, they the rough-riding night-mare. Lu had seen the vast fields of wheat, their seeds imported from who knows where. He had seen the women, two cauldrons each, bent double as the water they carried splashed mockingly at their feet – ‘irrigation’, he heard them call it. Never such a drought, and the river lowering by the hour. He had seen wagons, a dozen to each field, stocked to the brim with wheat before returning at dusk to the Factory. The Factory! It almost made him believe in Hell.

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It was evil, he knew it. There had been blight, disease, near famine now for three seasons. There was more sawdust in their own bread than barley; Lu laboured all morning to make the tiniest batch, manically cherishing the tiniest vestige of anything that might fill a loaf. He had never been wasteful, but his recent husbandry was a kind of wizardry to behold. He seemed to conjure bread from dust and bone, so little of the threshed barley would he dare to use. But the outhouse was running low; he was down to the last barrel. They’d be chewing what was left of the grass soon. But that factory was evil: he knew it. It could not be good to produce such succulence and clarity when all around was bald, half-patched filth. He had seen the crumbs that spilled from these loaves – he had touched them! – dropped by peasants munching like sots. They were like magical snowdrops; they would vanish to the touch they were so light. You could not simulate spirituality and avoid punishment. Spirit was a gift, not a bribe to manufacture. Lu saw something approaching and it felt like terror. That evening he headed out, on one of the two aching donkeys that remained to them. He covered himself in a vast cloak, the hood of which seemed to touch him nowhere, instead encircling him like a rough halo. Let the warm space between hair and wool be the space of God, protecting him, protecting him: such was his prayer. He had travelled less than a mile before he knew it was too late. This was not his country! It was like he had slept for thirty years and awoken to the unfoundland, in which nothing moved but unhallowed birds, blood-billed choughs that had ravaged all beneath, every last field and tree and hedge. And yet humanity remained: it remained, and in that remainder was the gathering death. For it was not an emptied scene that Lu beheld: not at all. A single kite glided in the dead sky but beneath it was an army of women, hundreds moving in slow file, lined across and along fields, indistinguishable in their black coveralls and doing God knows what to the ground they trod. It was too late for harvesting; too early for ploughing.

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What were they doing? Some sort of superstitious preparation; some service without purpose; some routine of blessing. Lu didn’t understand at all. This was something foreign, an invasion, an interruption, a demonic refusal not to work and serve. A routine, thought Lulach, to set Man in the place of God! And parked at the side of every field he passed was a train of wagons, each one festooned with the same red and white banner – a broken cross? a stag? a dog? – that Lu had seen fluttering from the roof of the Factory. It was the flag of the future, flouting the sky and fanning the people cold. Lu felt a chill wind up his spine and turned for home. ∞

. . . to the rooky wood The rook had lost Fyn. She had followed him through fog and through filth as he went on his adventures, all those months in the towns, and all those liaisons, and that lovely year at sea, leaping from fishing boat to gunboat to pirate ship, and then those endless weeks on foreign shores, and more liaisons, more assignations, with the wind so cold and the chatter indecipherable and Fyn drinking too much and eating too little, Fyn the secret man of blood, creeping in and out of chambers, and the men in rage, and the ladies weeping, and Fyn risking the knife from them all. Oh he was a lucky boy, and a bad boy, and he should never have left his rook behind! She was sure she saw him on a Northumbrian beach, a week ago, ten days, and where else to go from there but north? She had to get home! She scented out the river and swooped down to its level. The world was close and touchable.The rook skimmed the water with her feet, the stream as smooth as a mirror. She eyed her reflection and felt surprised by its smallness. Now the river started getting choppier, the air more brisk. She looked ahead and everything was in shadow, and then grey, and then hurrying into black.

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The monster, one of the Macduff-man’s bakeries! She was drawn on as by destiny. She performed a flapping reconnaissance around the site, but in truth she knew she was heading straight in. She entered through the main arch and immediately panicked. As the light turned to dark her wings flapped faster. She could feel her world starting to narrow. It was narrowing and arrowing and now the world was the purest annihilating pitch. Before a thought had time to tumble she had smashed hard into a solid block of brick. She rose groggily. She was inside a ludicrous oven. Moments beyond the rim humans were entering their workcave, torches burning, trenches clattering, talking with infernal simultaneity. Large sacks of seed were being stabbed and emptied. Fires were being charged by the dozen. Water was heating, she could feel the steam condensing into smoke and the smoke muddying the steam. She could smell spores arising. Goodness, it was a veritable orgy of reproduction! Down the corridor, or was it through the wall, she could hear stones churning, huge stones, and the unmistakable sound of crushing. The rook felt like weeping, to hear the yelp of seed crushed beneath cold stone. Life was very mortal here! She could hear cauldrons bubbling. Humans with very red faces were stood above them, stirring. The fires rose as the workers toiled. They were throwing in seed after seed, God’s seed, she thought, don’t dunk it in that slabby thick gruel, give it to me, for God’s sake, don’t drown it in that ditchshit! But drown it they did, the sweet nut of the seed lost in the subterranean salt-sea. All was slivered in eclipse. Out she levitated, warm as a Christmas goose, miraculous. She hit the air, desperate to escape. But those chimneys! God, so beautiful! So beautiful! She found herself flying back to where they flickered their ash into the night sky. There were a thousand chimneys, or so it seemed, each one sending out this bright tribute, red and gold and amber, the ash scurried with night-moths enjoying a final immolated fling. It was too gorgeous to resist. She wanted to feel that warmth on her tail just once more before it all disappeared.

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Her scaly grey talons wrapped around a chimney’s warm rim. All around her issued these flickers of beauty – points of orange light, flung vertical and free, new-hatched to the blackened air. But down below, deep in the chimney, she could hear a horrid crackle of sound, like strange screams of death, prophesying with accents terrible. She shot up and away as fast as her little wings could take her. She so longed to be home, and was coming closer with every wingflap. The trees so familiar, the scattergun cries, the friends she thought lost. Birnam Wood had never seemed so verdant. They stripped it bare and here it was, thick as a lady’s chamber. She gathered speed up the River Tay, ecstatic in anticipation. Ah, living is the thing, she thought, it is the thing to be! She somersaulted in love, breathed deep back into lung, and let out the shrillest alarum that ever small bird tolled. ‘Home!’ It was only now that she saw what reared ahead. The true event, industrious soldiership, the certain issue of approaching time. It was another monstrous bakery, rising broad as day at the river’s nearest edge. A half-built monster this one, scrawled by midgets with rope and tool and brick, each one issuing arbitrated strokes, scarring the poor bird’s home. She stopped in her tracks and fell slowly to the floor. The grass was soaked and Scottish; she pecked pointlessly at a single yellow leaf. It crumbled, pointlessly. She buried pointy beak and scraggled skin inside her wing. A little sleep, she thought. It was long since she had slept. A little dream. It was long since she had dreamt. But now she heard from above an approaching echo, a hollow thud of slapped wind. She glanced up, feeling too weary for rooky japes. It was a raven and a mousing owl, she saw them clear as day, four eyes dead as a nail. They were racing, or were they chasing, and if they were which was harrying which? Time stood still as the birds accelerated into hugeness. One body, many wings, strange how brown is so tinctured and black is really blue. Surely you can’t mean –

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Two beaks struck like a cannon-bolt. The poor bird scattered like ash into air.

∞

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we’ll jump the life to come It was a morning like any other, one of those cold Scottish mornings when it’s an effort to eat. The three men – Grim, Lu and the Porter – weren’t eating their porridge, and nor were they talking, nor even thinking. And though they weren’t doing all these things together, each of them was completely alone. Then something transpired in the misty courtyard. Father and brothers clattered to their feet and watched, passive but for a shared tremble. Lu had somehow known that it would be like this. He had a new and spruce moustache, and fine black boots with golden spurs, and porcelain skin as pure as a vase. Fyn always was beautiful, and now he had returned. He had returned bearing a gift. Across his shoulders he was carrying a vast pink sow. He strolled up with an effortless swing, his face beaming. As he got within a few yards, he thrust the carcass above his head. His legs buckled and locked; and as if in answer, the sun brinked the castle wall with sudden airy gaiety. Fyn let his offering fall. Pig bulk turned in the shiny air, pig trotters beat the ground, pig snout settled in homage at their feet. ‘Meat,’ said Fyn, his smile dazzling, ‘looks like you need it.’ His gaze was sweeping the old place with appalled and happy amazement. ‘Christ, this castle needs a King!’ He kicked a bucket of slops upright, and all three seemed to stand to attention. ‘But no King without a Queen, hey?’ Fyn laughed a hollow laugh and soon he knew everything – about the shaven woman (he smiled) and Macduff (how he smiled!), about the bakery and the dearth, about the Porter’s boozy frittering – everything. Fyn smiled and smiled and then he dragged upon his pipe and spoke. ‘It’s easy.’ They were hanging on his words. Fyn took out his pipe, emptied the smouldering weed in his palm, and whistled

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harshly across it. Ash and char lifted into air and fell at his knees. ‘It’s easy. We make the bakers a little visit. A little house-call. We show them who we are.’ ‘What do you mean who we are?’ said Lu. ‘I mean who we are. The men from the other side.’ ‘Right then’, said Lu, doubtfully. ‘We will go and explain – what? – that we come from the castle, and the wood and river is ours as much as theirs, and – ‘Explain nothing’, said Fyn. ‘We will act, and in that act we will show them.’ Each of Fyn’s eyes was a burnt-out world. It was so easy to live with the eyes of a dead man. He felt at the very cusp of the future. The appointed day was a Sunday: the only time of the week, according to Lu’s breathless report, that production abated and the workers, every one of them a woman, half of them shaved to the gills, would be dutifully in church. On their knees, supposed Fyn, praying for a man. Fyn smiled his pallid smile and recalled the most recent girl he had known, a little young but ever so ardent. It was all so easy. The brothers arrived at the bakery and were aghast. The silence was cavernous. They had heard of Behemoth, Leviathan, the carcass of a whale, but here was something else entirely. A machine for producing light white sweetness; a workplace as grace-state; a whitewashed world. Human breath might vanish instantly into such broad casing air. Without knowing it each of them felt the same cold thought: here is an antagonist worthy of the name; here is terror, to be answered with war. Fyn recalled the horse-faced inquisitor from long ago. A superstitious fool, no doubt, but even a fool could be a prophet. He stroked his moustache and pondered the scene’s strange beauty. We have jumped, he thought, the life to come. Meanwhile Lu had found a vat of oil – a whole vat, like a milking trough, for greasing ranks of ovens and doors, to lube the evil white elephant. At once a vision of joy took hold of

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him. He was lifting and emptying the vast cauldron; the oil laved his feet, it laved his brothers’ feet, and spread slowly, inexorably, until everything – all this vast cathedral of whiteness – was smudged and yellow and ruined. It was ravishing. His brothers sidled over to where Lu stood transfixed. They wondered at the yellow light dancing in his eyes, and then saw the golden pool of oil, deep and silent as a private sea. There wasn’t even a choice to be made. Fyn struck a flint; the flame could hardly be seen in the blazing whiteness of the scene. He looked at Lu; he looked at Grim; as one they appeared to nod. Grim accepted the match being held toward his face and watched it burn down. As the flame touched his finger he flicked it deliberately into the vat of oil. A great carpet of flame at once rushed across the surface and over the cauldron’s lip. Within seconds it was eating every bench and oven. The boys had never seen a thing so thrilling. They ran out, panting like dogs and elated. They stopped only when they reached the thickest part of the wood, their elation still high. Fyn drew them into a tight knot and held his brothers hard with his dead eyes. ‘You know what we have done?’ They nodded between pants. ‘You know who we did it to?’ They knew. ‘You know what we are?’ They nodded again. ‘We are the boys of Dunsinane!’ said Grim. ‘We are terrorists’, said Lu. ‘We are. But who need know it? The law knows us not. We have lit the fuse – now let the conflagration climb.’ ‘Let it come!’ said Grim, ‘Let Scotland return to itself!’ ‘Yes’, said Lu. ‘The woods are everyone’s, surely. That is God’s benison.’ ‘Surely’, said Fyn. ‘Surely it is right.’ ‘Surely.’ ‘Even Jesus says that sometimes –

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‘Lu-boo – look – your hands are clean. Clean. Now hush, no more. Let’s home.’ ‘But father mustn’t know!’ said Lu. ‘What has he ever known?’ said Fyn, and smiled, and clutched both brothers by the shoulder as they resumed their march. He had never felt closer than he did right now, to the two companions of his youth. He knew it was over. ∞

our downfall birthdome The women in the village could see it from miles away. They came out from the ramshackle church, bakers and sisters alike, and immediately smelt the sweetness. They saw that great sweet flame, black and orange. Some of them thought it must be the saving holocaust they had been promised for so long, it smelt so unearthly and sweet. Others looked at the floor, cursed the strumpet Fortune, and looked glumly ahead to the destitution they dreamt they had escaped. Baker-women were chattering like mad, rumours floating like pollen. Who could have done such a thing? Who would take on government in this way? The village women scurried to the hopeful safety of their homes. The shaven sisters were left alone. They collected into a tight file as commotion came over the crest of the hill. They heard wheels and hooves and staccato shouts. A train of carts and horses came straight at them in a cloud of dust. Ahead of the rest raced a ginger-haired man on a white horse. It was Macduff’s adjutant, armoured in white steel. He reached the sisters and raised his long white sword. ‘Silence!’ His voice was sharp and high. ‘Macduff loves the people. His love is the white loaf he gives daily. Bread is the fruit of work. Scotland will sink if its women do not work. It will sink!’

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The adjutant lowered his sword a little and started pointing it, subject by subject, at the women beneath him. ‘Do you understand? Do you? Do you? Now – He paused a moment, looking up and down at the twenty or so women around his horse. The train that followed had stopped a few yards behind. The horses were snorting heavily. ‘Now: which of you have done this?’ His sword pointed down the hill to where the great bread factory stood smoking. None of the women turned a head. ‘Which of you, I repeat, have done this?’ Still the sisters were silent, their heads lowered. ‘So be it. The Lord must punish the few to save the many.’ The young man beckoned to those waiting behind him. Six more men on horses came forward, unsheathed their swords, and sliced the sisters across head and back and neck. None of the women moved or even screamed. In less than a minute all twenty lay dead as wood on the ground. At this moment another wagon clattered into view. Four flags decked its corners and a bright purple curtain flapped in the breeze. Before the wagon had stopped the curtain opened and Gruoch jumped out. The soldiers turned as she rushed toward them. ‘You cowards!’ The adjutant turned his horse toward her arrival. ‘Those who will not work,’ he said, ‘the Lord will not love.’ Gru shook her head. ‘Be quiet! I have heard it all!’ ‘Lady – ‘Ha!’ interrupted Gru. ‘You miserable cowards!’ There was a rustle and a groan and the lean figure of Macduff stepped out of the wagon, his silver-beige bloodhound moving beside him like a shade. As one the soldiers bowed, the adjutant too from his saddle. Gru’s face was afire with rage. ‘You! You assured me you came in peace. You coward! They were my sisters! You wish me to warm your bed, like a dog, and you will do this?’

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Macduff cocked his head to one side. ‘Virgin.’ ‘Do not call me virgin!’ ‘Sister.’ ‘Do not speak to me.’ ‘I stand for law. If this were unjust, the price will be severe. I assure you. Sister?’ Gru was paying him no heed. She had moved to where the sisters lay. A few flies had already gathered over the bodies. She brushed them away and stared intently at the heap of shaven skulls, with their little razor nicks and emergent tufts. Not a single head had been severed. A deep gash, usually in shoulder or back, defined each corpse. Gru licked a finger and tried to clean one of the heads of its blood smudge. But immediately a large fresh wound, like the softest fruit, opened at her touch. A choking rage clutched her throat and for a moment she could not swallow. Here it is again, she was thinking, the same old thing. Nothing dies, only life, and then not quickly enough. Gru rocked on her haunches and grimaced. She pushed her hair out of her face and spat. Everything was mockery. There was fault, and punishment, and she had never known the two to meet, not ever. ‘If this was not justice, sister – ‘Justice? They toiled for you, and in return – this?’ ‘Rest assured, no stone shall be left unturned.’ The adjutant stepped forward on his horse. ‘My Lord, they would not answer, when I asked them to say what they knew. About the terrorist cell. I asked them twice. Conspiracy is a capital offence, my Lord.’ ‘Conspiracy! You stupid imbeciles! Do you know nothing? I could tell you where the cell is. Up there! There!’ She was pointing to a castle on a high hill, a few miles east toward the sea. ‘Dunsinane?’ said Macduff. ‘It was they who torched your precious factory. That sister there – that one, look at her! She was doing your service,

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Macduff, she brought them bread, your service! She saw the madness in their faces and was frightened. It was those boys of Dunsinane!’ ‘Dunsinane’, whispered Macduff again, his voice reverent and distracted. ‘I hoped never to visit it again!’ He turned sharply to his adjutant. ‘You didn’t know this?’ ‘My Lord, this is speculation. There is no proof. They are harmless. An old jester with his three idiot sons and a few goats, living on bran and puddles. It is not the house you once knew.’ ‘Ha! Not the house we knew! My love – Sister – fear not the ghosts of Dunsinane. Macduff shall fear nor death nor bane, Till dead souls rise from Dunsinane! You recall, my love, I saved you from its lairs, on Freedom Day!’ ‘Freedom? I recall nothing of the kind.’ ‘It was, if only you could see! But – I insist on nothing. I cannot resist you! It is best forgotten. Leave Dunsinane to the kites and maggot-choughs. Come – Sister – we shall have justice here!’ ‘No’, said Gru firmly, casting a disgusted eye at the sisters’ corpses. ‘It is too late for justice here. You come too late. Always too late, Mac-duff!’ ‘My love.’ ‘I will go to the castle.’ ‘No!’ ‘I shall go to the castle! I shall get justice. Confession, surrender, satisfaction. Or I shall die.’ ‘No my love!’ ‘Enough! I should not wish to live without justice. And where better to die than there, where my life ended!’ ‘My love!’ ‘I say ended!’ Macduff bowed his head. He knew when he must desist. It was not kind of her, to speak that way. But – she was a woman; he did not need gratitude. Only faith. Or if not faith, then – abidance would do. And if she would still not abide then at

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least he had tried. He would let Gruoch gather some things; and calm down; and come to her senses; and then he would show her a man. He found her in the carriage, sitting with a bundle in her lap, breathing purposively, working he guessed toward repose. ‘My love – ‘Oh, Duff’, said Gru at once, ‘if I am to live – to be alive again – don’t you see – I need justice.’ ‘I will apprehend them, if that is your – ‘No, stop, not that. Don’t you understand? I mean justice! For my sisters, yes. But also, for – do I have to say it?’ Macduff’s face crinkled with a tender smile and the struggle to hold back tears. ‘Oh, my love! I understand. I can see you even now, so pale and frightened and young. My heart – I never thought – ‘Duff. It isn’t about you.’ Gru took his hand as she spoke. ‘I need to find out for myself. Let me – let me see if I can – I don’t even know that she, her, that girl, that she was even me. Do you see? You say you can see her but I can’t. I can’t! Do you see? Those boys – they stayed – and I left – and – do you see?’ Macduff was trying still to smile, trying to understand, wanting nothing more than her acceptance of his goodness. ‘I had a baby. He died.’ Macduff’s head was down. He felt fearfully embarrassed. ‘You knew that, didn’t you Duff. He died and I never buried him.’ Macduff paled and shrugged. ‘You knew. Did you think I would forget?’ ‘I thought you might want to.’ ‘I might want to?’ ‘You were so young.’ ‘And now I am so old! And still I have not buried his sweet flesh!’ ‘Nor I mine. I share your sorrow, my love, I do. But – ‘You don’t forget your pretty chickens!’

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Macduff drew his hands away and hugged himself and pulled his hat down over his eyes. ‘No’, he said. ‘I could never – I swore – but – the children of love – they are different.’ ‘Than?’ ‘Than a child of war!’ ‘Of mine!’ ‘But you were – you know – I can’t say it! You know what I mean.’ ‘Ravished? Is that what you mean? Say it man, don’t pule like a girl! Raped?’ ‘If you like.’ ‘Was I?’ ‘Weren’t you?’ ‘You don’t know?’ ‘But you were a child!’ ‘A devil child, perhaps, Duff! An evil one, Duff, letting in whoever knocked! Knock, knock! Come in, tailor man! Knock knock!’ ‘Please, love, don’t mock me.’ ‘What do you know of rape? What does any soldier know of rape? You think you watch it happen, time and time again, and still you know nothing!’ ‘I, watch?’ ‘You think it is men with their swords, my turn, my turn, boys on a spree. Perhaps it is as soothing and stroking as you, Duff, when you try to whisper me into your bed! Perhaps it creeps upon her as she dreams sweet dreams. The men with their swords do not get to decide what it was or when it was. Not those sorry men offloading their loads and creeping back to their wives. Leave them to their sick souls. Only suffering knows!’ Gru was shaking, her teeth clenched, her face reddening, her heart pounding crazily. ‘Or maybe the men were being used too! Who is to say that the Lord wasn’t using them, using their sickness? They thought the act was theirs but it wasn’t at all! That would teach them!

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They thought they did merry making evil and all the time, all the time, goodness was growing to mock them!’ ‘My love, I have no notion what you are saying.’ ‘Oh I don’t know I don’t know! Maybe suffering knows nothing too. He smelt the air and then was gone. Goodness is as weak as a reed. You suffer for nothing. Heaven looked on, and did not take his part. It did not.’ ‘My love – I know how – ‘Don’t my love me!’ ‘I’m sorry – ‘Oh, Duff, don’t pretend to understand, or to feel for me. I don’t want your stroking hand. I don’t want your peace, or your strength! I have felt understanding, sir, and sympathy, I have been stroked and coddled into sleep and dream – I have understood that all right! I have known what it is to feel cared for. Oh yes – before you came too, sir! And do you know what I learnt? Do you? I learnt do not! Do not trust your feelings – especially your feelings when they are warm and nice and deep in your body – banish them! Feeling is a lie. Peace is even worse. And never, ever, ever, ever, fall asleep! Yes? Never! Yes!’ Macduff was too shocked to speak, or too scared. He watched as Gru rubbed her eyes and calmed her hair and turned once more to face him. ‘Anyway: I am going. To the castle. I will bury what is left of my child. Then perhaps I will sleep.’ Macduff longed to understand but still feared to speak. ‘What is left – to bury, I mean?’ ‘In here, Duff, in here!’ said Gru, tapping with right hand at her temple. Her left palm touched the stomacher where the caul nested, securely sewn between parchments. He was not going to know about that. ‘Of course dear’, said Macduff. ‘I support you. But – my love – alone, with four men?’ ‘Oh they will not dare touch me! I am a lost sister, homeless, they must give any shelter I require.’ ‘But those boys?’ ‘They are boys!’

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‘Twenty years if a day! I remember them as bairns.’ ‘They will never have seen the like.’ ‘All the more reason!’ ‘They would not dare!’ ‘You don’t know the species.’ ‘Of men? I know men. They cannot – cannot – hurt me. I have wintered so long, Duff, that I am – not pregnable. Put all such things from your mind.’ She was weary now. Hadn’t she explained it already? If she hadn’t then she couldn’t, and worst luck. ‘Listen’, she said, holding Macduff’s two wrists. ‘Those boys. They stayed in the castle. I did not. My boy did not. I go to see what that meant. What it is. That is all. I go to see that they are – that they are nothing, I suppose. And be eased.’ ‘And your – ghosts – your sleeplessness – will then be at rest?’ ‘We shall see. I have said all I can say. Give me one week. And I will give you what you need.’ ‘What I need? Oh my love – ‘I told you. Confession, surrender, satisfaction.’ ‘Ah, yes, my justice! Good, good. But – how shall I know? That it has happened? That it is time for apprehension? Of the felons – the terrorists?’ ‘See this flag?’ She half-unfurled the scrunched bundle on her lap. ‘It is one from the carriage. I will raise it on the castle tower, after seven days – if they are faithful servants of your government – if they are innocent. If the flag is not upraised – after one week – enter Dunsinane and raze it to the ground!’ ‘And then you will come with me?’ Gruoch smiled inscrutably. ‘Come what come may! To alter favour ever is to fear.’ She folded the flag under her arm and started toward the castle of Dunsinane. ∞

V

god help thee, poor monkey! Sunday morning Who can she be? She said she is a homeless sister but I KNOW there is more to it – I always knew that miracles were possible and here she is – perhaps it is even true – she has been sent by GOD !!!! I really cannot believe she is in our house. I cannot believe she is here all the time – looking out our window – seeing the ash tree – and the compost heap – hearing the same bird sounds at the exact same time as me – I‛m too scared to go to the bathroom – what if she heard my horrible splashes? I CANNOT pray. Her back is so straight – I can‛t imagine her ever even being a child. It‛s weird to know you can be humiliated ALL THE TIME . Sunday – midnight I should be drenched – bleached – bled – beached. Beached like the whales that I resemble. I am those dying fish-belly up and expiring. All of this waste in my palm – and it STINKS . I keep looking at my stupid hand like a stupid boy – there was life moving in it – tiny tadpole life – and now there‛s nothing but dried-out glue. Surely life cannot be so NOTHING . Come on write your thoughts Lu! Write them!!! 137

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Right. What is the virtue in strain and suffering? Pain does not ennoble – ease does not condemn. If I could achieve clean skin and a body less like a WHALE would that make me good? Of course it wouldn‛t. Blaaah. I should at least try to pray – I could get on my knees and try – but they are so fat. It is hard to forgive your own body. Monday Everything is her – nothing to think or write but her. She asked about the bakery – she was teasing us – and I blurted everything even though Grim looked like he would kill me – I don‛t care – I can‛t even remember why we did it. I have decided to start giving up things. I have to shed myself of so much that is unnecessary. I think there is a clear way to where I want to be but first I have to forswear unnecessary things – meat – which is pointless – and puddings. Father is being annoying. He has always been so lazy and left it all to me and now he is all house-proud – he licks his finger and caresses the tops of tables and shelves for dust and picks up brass goblets and pretends to admire their lustre – He thanks our presence at breakfast or at dinner as though it is all for him – everything is for her of course. He is so OLD . He took her on a tour like he owned the place – she didn‛t care she‛s not like that – she only liked the old attic for some reason. He even opened the old royal chamber and bashed out the mattress and has taken it for his own room would you believe. It is embarrassing – does he really expect her to come to him? She did laugh though when she saw him and stroked his beard and kissed him but that was because he is OLD . And THEN she came when I was cooking – and no one usually shares my kitchen ever – but I started showing her my grayling – my lady of the stream – her flesh swelling beneath its shimmering grey scales – her sleek back – her proud dorsal fin – and the colours in her fins – she sat on my bench and watched as I gutted her – I felt so proud and manly as my blade described its line – nothing ravelled – nothing stabbed – but instead the symmetry of love. I prayed that my knife should bear no blood – & incision seem voluntary – my knife stayed

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spruce and fine like the flesh it revealed – I told her I never – as a matter of faith – enter inside her head – I never ever sever the head. Even if she is living – and perhaps she is still living – my knife will inflict no pain. My grayling feels no pain. Tuesday It is funny how many lives the mind can live – How many times I have met her for the first time – and all those things I said – not funny or important things but things that she UNDERSTOOD . She belongs in sun not here in this greyness with father and Fyn and Grim and their EYES . I think that‛s why she has taken to the attic because it has those windows to the sky. She – Gru! – washes her hair every morning. It takes her about eleven minutes – I sneak in the corridor like a robber – the sniffing robber. She almost caught me this morning the water was sloshing and I heard her voice singing like she does and I was listening and suddenly the door swung open and she was there in her robe running to her room and leaving little pools with each step. If she had seen me I would have gone off the bluff. Anyone could be a criminal. Anyone. Wednesday Amazing day! I was walking in the wood eating an apple and I heard a voice and I knew straight away it was her – no she said – I couldn‛t tell if she said it happy or angry and I didn‛t see anyone so she might have been talking to herself like I always do. There was a rustle and suddenly she was there – five inches from my face – right THERE – I couldn‛t believe it had happened so quickly I looked straight at her for the first time ever and I saw her cheeks all flushed and I had never known how pale and almost blue her normal face is. Everything stopped. It was like for a second the universe FROZE – she started picking dirt out from her nails with a tiny twig she clipped off a branch – she did this for three fingers and then she tossed the little twig away and turned and looked at me – hello you she said. I don‛t know what I did then I think I tried to smile but got it wrong and I sort of lost control

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of my face – that had never happened before – I don‛t think she noticed she just smiled and touched my lip with her finger and then a bit of apple was on it and she put her finger in her mouth and the apple was inside her. I don‛t know. I can‛t express it. Later My new favourite word is ascetic. It reminds me of this thing I imagined myself telling her – her – GRU . We are talking about favourite words and she says hers is sometimes sky and sometimes lullaby always these open-ended soothing words and she asks me mine and I say abattoir – I say it in a fake accent – she doesn‛t say a thing for a second and then she realizes it‛s a joke how nice it sounds but how awful it is and then she says you‛re a bit of a devil aren‛t you because she then realizes that I‛m not AFRAID of bodies. I think she slightly punches me then playfully on the shoulder and I blush. I love the fact that she sings badly. Thursday GRIM!!! Just because she doesn‛t coo over him he pretends to hate her. He called her a father lover because she has such lovely long hair – and then he came to dinner with his head completely shaved – completely! – and declared he was giving up sleep. I am the one giving up things – quietly and for the truth. He isn‛t worthy. I was embarrassed. She must have thought him a fool – and then when he looked so angry she left and went away – I bet because of him. When she goes up to her attic chamber we can‛t disturb her which is annoying. Fyn laughed – I didn‛t know who at – he makes everyone aware of themselves because he doesn‛t care what they think and just says things even if they are cruel which makes people want to please him. I am giving up that too! I am a little worried for Gru because she looks sad – she spent ALL MORNING in the attic and when she came down looked like she hadn‛t even slept – her face is pale and her eyes have gone dark around them. Fyn spends all day in his hammock sucking reeds and waiting for Gru to bring him drinks pretending he is bored out of his brain –

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he got me to come over to him and said listen Lu-boo listen and put his arm around me and I felt pleased of course and then he started saying let me explain Lu-boo – he said it all fakewhispery – it has two legs with a space between them – a blush you can‛t see – calves like a filly – a peachy bum – hips that swivel – hair that would make a good whip. I felt weird. Weird idiot – embarrassed and annoyed. He shouldn‛t say those things but also I knew that blah!!! Then Fyn said those breasts demand respect there is knowledge in their load he could die upon them and barely feel a thing – Lu-boo he said the other girls I have known were like garden birds edible he said nibbling at nuts and seed and she‛s a cat spitting out feathers – and then he shouted mee-oww and took a big sip of beer – and then and this is the worst bit he said do you know Lu-boo every time I see her she ducks her head and blushes – her blush yes he said it pleases – it pleases! How could he speak like that? And then he said blush more kitten blush till you burst – and this is EVEN WORSE he said if he were not lost from love he might even like her. He was drunk maybe but still he shouldn‛t say things like that. Just because he‛s Fyn he thinks he can. Friday Awful day. I‛m not even sure what has happened but I know it is BAD . How can I tell it? Father had a starched shirt on – his neck was so small inside the shirt – then she came and he jumped to his feet and fumbled over her – sit here – sit here – and she let it all happen and then he made his announcement. Do I even care? I don‛t know. He has bequeathed everything to her. His estate he called it. To my princess – if she will do me the honour of becoming my LAWFUL WEDDED WIFE . I watched her as he said it and she didn‛t blink once. Grim went mad you‛re not the bloody King old fool he said you are a Porter you carry people‛s bags you open doors for others – he threw some of my cauliflower at Father and left – I was shocked but also I don‛t know. Father didn‛t even notice – he was holding a branch of hawthorn – it was so beautiful – the stalk tied with a ribbon

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and the bright white flowers and the apple tiny and scarlet and the sharp bush in its navel – then he handed it to her and said the lone bush – and she had TEARS in her eyes and she stroked its veins I thought she would prick her finger on the thorns and she did but she didn‛t even care. I have smelt hawthorn flowers – they smell like decomposing flesh. Father was beaming – he looked so happy – the lone bush he said again and this time she looked at him and he said the fairies hide in it and never ever age. He told us the same thing years ago and now he doesn‛t even SEE us. I can‛t really believe any of it is happening. She didn‛t speak but then Fyn got up and he was smiling his Fyn smile and he said may I kiss the bride and everybody blushed especially Father and there seemed nothing else to say. I was too SOMETHING to say anything. Too burning but also numb like my body wasn‛t mine. She let Fyn kiss her then somehow HE was holding the hawthorn apple and he bit it and was saying things I couldn‛t hear and I couldn‛t tell if she was smiling or grimacing it was all horrible. I cleared the plates and my tummy felt like a whale. Friday midnight Grim is mad and madder – I don‛t even know him anymore. He asked me if I prayed and his face looked strange and I said of course – even though you know blah – and he said pray for father – I said of course but asked him why – did he think she would do him harm – and he laughed. Then he looked very serious and began counting with his fingers as he spoke like he was listing reasons. He said she was beloved but never loving – that marriage was a lie – that the truth is absolute – that love is too – that love is beyond ethics – and that CAN ‛T be true! – and needs sacrifice – and a crime to break into the clearing – and more – I don‛t know what – that you must kill what you love for a higher love – something like that – it sounded like the scriptures gone wrong and Grim has NEVER really believed – I don‛t know – I felt scared and tried to calm him and then he said pray for me and left.

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I haven‛t slept for thinking but Grim is WRONG – all his anger about everything and marriage and she will steal the castle blah. She didn‛t say yes she just didn‛t know how to say no. Saturday afternoon I have just got back from being with her. If anyone is reading this GO AWAY !!! I was in the wood – O TELL THE TRUTH GOOSE ! I followed Gru. She had gone outside and then down the hill and into the wood – she didn‛t look round once – I stayed back so she couldn‛t see me – after a bit she sat down in a clearing. I didn‛t know what to do. I was watching her from behind a hawthorn and plucking up the courage to go out from the bush when she sort of lay back and stretched and put her arms out and her legs and then her legs were raised in the air and I was THERE – twenty yards away – I couldn‛t believe it – for I don‛t know how long – a minute – she stood on her shoulders and raised her legs and opened them. I couldn‛t BELIEVE it it was so RED – like I don‛t know – like a smile it glistened – so secret and happy – like heaven and hell in one – I don‛t know!!! I don‛t know what happened then perhaps I stumbled or gasped because she brought her legs down and brushed her skirt down and said who‛s there and then said Fyn is it you then who‛s there more loudly and I felt terrified and then I think she saw me because she said Lu – Lu – come out Lu – and I did all stupid & sheepish. Hello Lu she said and said sit down come on I don‛t bite – for some reason I looked around the glade as though that would guide me what to do and I saw that the sun was directly above me straight up and there were no shadows at all! My face was burning and I thought in light like this there is NOTHING she won‛t see – then she said I‛m glad it‛s you it‛s a relief and I burned even more but felt stupidly proud – then she said come on sit – and I felt ridiculous – standing like a post in the light and I wanted to get down to her but couldn‛t think how to do it – and my head was spinning I was looking at her red lips and trying not to look down THERE and she said Lu what are you thinking – what was I thinking! – I was thinking that beneath

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your skirt is that terrible grove – I had never seen red like it – I could barely believe that as she sat there now her legs crossed her wrap down to her ankles that underneath is all of THAT – huge and waiting like I don‛t know what – then she said again please sit by me and held out her hand and I held it and then somehow she drew me to ground – she was holding my hand and I felt like a MANCHILD – I had fallen into her lap – my head in her lap – and she was stroking my cheek and my head and I closed my eyes and turned my head onto its side – everything was amazingly quiet. I could feel her body moving beneath me gently up and down rising and falling and rising and I closed my eyes even tighter and felt her movement beneath me and I thought there is a world in THERE – just beneath my ear – a miraculous engine – I could feel it trembling and then I was seeing it again the hugeness of it the hungriness good God! I can‛t believe now that the back of my hand was ON HER THIGH . Can all of them have THAT ? even a twelve year old? – those lips – I could never believe such lips – the strength to hold such a thing! And it is ALWAYS THERE it always has been so huge every one of them good God – even a twelve year old sitting on this monster with a face as sweet as fruit – sitting on its strength – good God good God good God good God I can‛t believe I have just done again what I did then it is disgusting blaaagh. If she had smelt it or seen the damp I would have gone off the bluff – AGAIN ! Later I think we are all going to the devil. First Fyn came in running and wet – his coat bulging like he was pregnant – he opened both arms and a huge fish flopped onto the table. He had already gutted it – it was amazing – pink and orange and crimson and the skin shone like silver – but then father said ah the King the King and choked – and I realized what Fyn had done. Salmon! Fyn said stuff your superstitions and grabbed butter – all runny and rancid – and slapped it on the fish and held it aloft – the butter dripping – its silver skin

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laced with this golden blood. It was beautiful – and it was, it was beautiful – so rich – but it felt WRONG – it tasted wrong – and now no one wants my grayling they want more King! Then I washed and was going to cook and saw Grim in the state room all by himself in the corner rubbing his palms together and rubbing his face and his head as hard as he could and he was watching the flakes fly – he blew at them as they fell – there were little piles like confetti at his feet and his face looked smooth as a ruby but for little gouts of blood. He just stared at the piles as they grew – I wanted to pray with him but felt wary of a scolding. He hasn‛t slept since she came I swear. O my brother Grim – I should kneel down beside you and tear away my flesh. O my brother Grim. Saturday evening Thank God I have my diary because I can tell nobody ANYTHING ! We went for the longest walk! We – me and Gru. Father tried to stop her going out but she didn‛t listen she put her arm in mine and said shall we? Then she said I‛m not a throne for him to sit on am I – and I said – but wanted to scream – NO ! – or a crown for him to wear – GOD NO !! I could have died. I didn‛t seem to be thinking at all or making any decisions. We went down the hill and I thought she would stop but we went on and on and it was like floating saying nothing – the light was fading and we reached where you can see all the way down to the channel past the peninsula – its outline darker than the sky and lighter than the water – it was getting dark and chilly but all I hoped was that she didn‛t say its cold lets turn back or anything. I was desperate to tell her something but couldnt think what and she said chilly and held my arm tighter and then as we looked down where the land ends I said that‛s where they used to slaughter the seals – I dont know why I said that but she shivered and I took my jacket off and gave it to her and she said thanks la. Thanks la!! I think it was the best moment of my LIFE . I got these chills in my spine and neck and was madly thinking of more to say when

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she said I‛m glad you‛re here with me it looks horrid down there – I told her about the cauldrons bubbling with blubber – I got it wrong and said blubbling but she didn‛t seem to care – I told her about the baby seal flesh and about the ladies who had to carry the cauldrons cast iron and heavy as rock filled up with the slops from the boiled baby seal – those poor native women I said forced to haul small portions of hell. I thought I‛d said too much but Gru just held my arm and was very still – I told her the smell was so bad that even the seagulls were frightened away and no one lives there now at all. Then she asked how long it would take to reach and I said only a few hours and I said shall we go – it felt like it was possible – but she said she would go alone – she had something to give to the water she said – an old life to bury – and held her tummy and then put her fingers on her head and touched her hair back like she was embarrassed – how could SHE be! – anyway I have been thinking about it and I think she meant she wanted to be BAPTIZED – in the waters – but by herself because that is what she is like. It is so amazing it makes me love her even more. I wanted so much to look at her but was scared to but then I did. She was gazing out at the peninsula all grey and dumb and sort of sulky in the distance and I thought how could you ever be sad with a face like that? I looked at the gorgeous softness of her face right next to me and I looked sort of THROUGH her face to the bay and I thought of all of that industry – all of that killing and suffering and how it all happened – right here – for years and years and years – God knows how many women – chained to their rocks and whipped if they protested – and all those seals – good God – the brains inside the bashing – and I could hardly BELIEVE that all of that – all of those horrors and blasted lives – all of that unheard suffering – that all of that can have led to THIS – her me here this now US ! I thought can I allow it? Can I really allow it? And I thought YES – it is such a beautiful word. Yes. I can do anything. ∞

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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.

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‘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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‘What happened in England?’ repeated Lu. ‘You may as well tell me.’ Fyn was stroking his moustache, his fingers delicate, the nails very fine. He arched forward toward the bulk of his waiting brother. His grin had gone, his face now a deathlike mask. ‘Have you ever been recognized, Lulach?’ ‘I don’t know what you mean. Every day, yes.’ ‘You are what we all think you?’ ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘I mean – what is recognition?’ ‘Well, it is – it is someone knowing another – when they see them – identifying them. Acknowledging them. . . .’ ‘As what they are?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you are so recognized?’ ‘Me? We weren’t talking about me.’ ‘We are now. Are you so recognized?’ Lulach’s eyes were down. ‘Everyone has secrets’, he said quietly. ‘So no one can truly be recognized.’ ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not.’ Fyn paused briefly. He knew what he was about to say. He relaxed backwards. ‘But what if you are?’ ‘Recognized?’ ‘Truly – perfectly – recognized.’ ‘Even in your secrets?’ ‘Even in – even as.’ ‘Who could know such things? It is not for human hearts. It is for God alone. Or, or, it is demonic.’ ‘Precisely. Precisely! This world – all of this – ’ and Fyn flicked at his sleeves and around the messy room – ‘me, you, this pathetic vessel – it is not the thing at all. Not at all!’ ‘I hope you mean there is more. There is, Fyn, there is more!’

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‘Oh yes. There is much more. Do you know the secretest man of blood?’ ‘Blood?’ ‘He treads our blood, he wades in it, Lu. Have you not felt him?’ Fyn was leaning forward, hugging himself tight. ‘Have you not felt that pull upon the heart, as the secret man, very secret, wades in the corridors of your veins? It is a heavy thing, Lulach.’ ‘I don’t understand, Fyn.’ Lu’s voice was quiet and sad. ‘Are you lost?’ ‘Yes. And found. Very found.’ ‘But who found you? I don’t see it at all. Who is this secret man? Is it the devil? If it is the devil then the devil can be beaten!’ ‘It is not the devil. Not your devil, anyway.’ ‘Then who?’ Fyn opened his arms a little, and half-smiled. ‘It’s me, Lulach. Me. They pointed the bone, into my heart and into my eyes. Twice they did it, once as the past and once as the future. They pointed the bone and the bone was mine. I’m the King of the castle. Do you see?’ ‘Who pointed the bone?’ ‘It doesn’t matter who. A traitor and a fool. A baker and his apprentice.’ ‘A traitor, a baker? What baker?’ ‘A traitor baker.’ ‘Macduff!’ Fyn leaned back, his eyes open mockingly wide. ‘You’re not serving Macduff! You can’t be! It was your idea to sack the bakery – his bakery, his evil! You can’t be his servant!’ ‘I am not his servant, Lu.’ ‘A rebel then! Are we in danger? Will Macduff attack Dunsinane? I don’t understand!’ ‘Of course he will.’ Fyn chuckled. ‘Why do you think she is here?’

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‘No! You are wrong! She would never betray us!’ ‘No – she is here for us! To make us come true’, and he chuckled again, ‘if we haven’t already.’ ‘I don’t understand you, Fyn. Why do you speak in riddles?’ ‘I assure you, no riddles at all. I am the King of the castle.’ ‘I don’t understand. That’s a fairy tale. A child’s rhyme. What do you mean?’ ‘I mean I am the King of the castle. This castle.’ ‘The King?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘You mean’ – he could not pronounce the name – ‘you can’t mean father’s old master?’ ‘But of course, Lu-boo! Who else? I tell you, once your insides are scorched away, and you realize you really are just a vessel, a nothing, a vehicle – it is a wonderful thing, quite wonderful. The world is like a – like a mime – a mime, without feeling, almost disembodied – it is beautiful. No, angelic – the word is angelic.’ ‘But – Fyn! – the sin! What stops you from the sin?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘Nothing?’ ‘Why would it?’ Lu would not believe what he was hearing. ‘You cannot mean that! He – father’s master – he killed an innocent, sleeping old man!’ Still Fyn’s ghastly pale face smiled fixedly. ‘You cannot!’ shouted Lulach. ‘You cannot be planning that!’ ‘That?’ said Fyn. ‘Oh no, not that. Why bother myself with that? But I will take the old man’s place. Certainly I will do that.’ ‘His place? What do you mean?’ Lu felt nauseous and terrified. ‘I mean, Lu-lu, that I shall steal his pearl. If I haven’t already.’ ‘His pearl?’ ‘Of course. She the old impotent wears like a crown.’ ‘You cannot!’

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‘Cannot?’ What could Lu say? He felt trapped and frantic and desperate. ‘He will die!’ he shrieked. ‘He will die if you do!’ Once more Fyn’s blanched white face was smiling. ‘You can’t!’ repeated Lulach, clutching his fists tight and rocking on his stool like a child. Fyn watched him a moment, rose from his stool, and held Lu’s crestfallen head in his soft feline hand. ‘Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed. Good night, little brother.’ Lulach could not sleep. For hours he had been crouched at the upper east window, desperate for the first hint of light. Now he sensed the blackness lifting; a hint of yellow beyond the horizon. It was enough. He stumbled down in the darkness and heated some barley broth and started up towards her attic room. He arrived panting and very quietly placed his ear against the keyhole. At first all he could hear was his own heart; then a few cawing birds out the window; and then, faint but indisputable, he could hear murmuring. Then she was not alone? Lulach’s head began to tremble. He could hear murmuring, and sighing, and groaning. He felt control leaking from him like piss or oil. He shoved his head against a crack in the door and listened. She was not alone! He could hear a rustle, a murmur, a pant, a hiccup. They are beyond speech? What kind of relationship is beyond speech? Not Fyn, please please Lord not Fyn! Lulach slumped to the floor and hugged himself. The thick barley drink spilt slowly across the stone. Imagine, he thought, if original sin was just a sound. A faceless whimper and a slurp and a throat whine like an animal slowly dying. He could hear it through the door: uugh, uugh, uugh. He could hear it inside himself, at the very rear of his throat, his sin and grief like a

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dying toad. A jackdaw on a branch was laughing at him. He couldn’t see that either but he could hear it well enough. He had had enough of ears. He got up, prepared to run from the horror. But he could not. He could not let this be. It may kill, or he may kill, but either way he needed to see. Lulach retrieved the half-empty cup, knocked once, grabbed the handle, and fell like a bear through the door. For a moment he thought the room was empty. He could hear things but could make out nothing. The low sun was slanting through the window in a single white line. Dust fluttered in the light. Below the white line, in the corner, was a dark clump. Lulach put the drink on the floor, lowering himself to his haunches. He bent closer and started shuffling on his knees toward it. Very slowly, a knee at a time, Lulach crawled toward the clump. It was Gru, and she was alone. He would barely have recognized her. She was curled in a ball on the floor. She looked about twelve. Her face was white and her eyes had huge smudges of dark beneath them. She was murmuring to herself, sounds he could not decipher. A small pool of gruel smelt vile on the floor near her head. Her legs were tightly wound and she was gripping her belly as though for warmth. She had not yet noticed him. As Lu drew closer he began to think she was rehearsing something, muttering intently, her eyes blinking quickly, as though in nervous recognition. He continued crawling, very slow and quiet, until he had fully reached where she lay. And now as softly as he could manage he curled himself up, exactly as she was curled, and pushed his curved flesh gently back into hers. She opened imperceptibly to allow him in. He could feel her heart, it was full and strong. Gradually her murmuring slowed and then ceased. One of her arms crested his head and the other rested upon his huge torso. All around the beat of her heart, nuzzling it, softening it, he could feel her breasts, full and strong and pillowy upon his back. He wished someone could see him here, just like this, beaming so proudly. He wouldn’t let them in, he wouldn’t let go at all, he would just

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smile at them and nuzzle his back still deeper into her bosom. He felt like a hibernating thing; like a white bear, deep in the leafy hole, head on its mother’s chest, lingering in the moment of transition, beaming, nothing to fear, nothing in-between, the world growing quieter and quieter outside. He need never return; he need never need again. Within moments Lulach was sleeping like a baby. ∞

his pendent bed, and procreant cradle The Porter lay in the royal bed, an enormous four-posted thing with heavy curtains and pillows the size of wheat bags. His body was dwarfed by the bed’s purple wastes, but his head looked happy, peeping out of the sheets like a sparrow. A crimson nightcap flopped over one eye and he blowsily puffed it off. Tonight, he thought, that’s what she said. Be ready tonight. He must prepare very carefully. He would rise in early afternoon. He would eat a little soup, and perhaps turn the soil in the vegetable garden. He would have a little wash. Heat the cauldron and so on. That will take some time. Much to be done. And a nap, he wanted to be fresh. The Porter turned over on his pillow. Twenty years, give or take, since Lizzie went, and never a kiss in anger. You wouldn’t credit it. ‘A husband!’ he confirmed, slightly hiccupping as he spoke the sacred word. He leant over to his bedside table and collected the mortar and pestle. He smelt the paste swilling in its bottom and dipped his fingers to check the consistency. Nearly there, just a few hard shards of chickpea still to soften. He applied Lu’s pestle once more, turning it around and around, grating it upon the mortar’s hard clay, and watched with pleasure as the egg yolks grew firmer and firmer, rising and swelling at his beck. Oh, the omens were good, they were very good! The Porter mumbled a tune.

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‘Eggyolk and chickpea, sang the big bard, Makes the man happy and healthy and hard!’ The Porter tasted a little with his finger. Invincible! He put the pestle upright in the thick paste. It stood there like a totem as the Porter regarded it from his pillow. Invincible. ∞

in the catalogue ye go for men Lulach had spent the entire day in a trance, wandering the wood, dreaming on last night, dreaming on love. It was now late afternoon. He came upon a field of dandelions and fell into it as you might a bed. ‘Am I really a man?’ whispered Lu to himself, rising on an elbow and hulking gently over a dandelion clock. ‘Could I really have a station in that file?’ He saw a crowd of angels waving in the weed. Lu plucked a filament from the clock and twirled it, envying its sylph-like body and upraised arms. And then he laughed. A whole world in a single wisp! ‘A man in love!’ And yet, he thought as he twirled the angel, the loss of one of these, just one – Lu hesitated a second, and released this first captive. All at once its tiny body disappeared from sight, arms lifted in surrender or valediction. Love is relinquishing. He dropped his soft head over the seedpod and plucked out another embryonic tree. He might have been exfoliating earth, clearing it of each last inhibiting object. He let another angel go into the blue, his fingertips smudging with every touch. Love is this dusty smudge. He gently disjoined another life, blowing his little angel into the late afternoon air.

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Love is overcoming. He disjoined another, and another, watching them floating and vanishing into light. Love is the same as death. But was that true of his Gru? To touch her was life itself. And what of that mysterious man, his Christ, He who had almost vanished from his mind? Lu didn’t know! He sighed in exasperation and at once the whole globe of angels went fluttering into air. ‘Oh Christ – tell me, Christ! What is this love that is the same as death?’ Corpses of sterile angels were strewn over his lap. Lu raised his poor remnant of weed and fumbled to rebuild his dandelion – that brain of light, that pattern of all glory – but his hands had become hooves, his flower a bald stump. He was bovine now, almost cow, almost ox, a giant pointless ruminant misplaced in the crystal dew. ‘Oh – just bless everything, bless every damn thing!’ The sun was lowering through the trees; only an hour or so of light remained. He turned away from the wood toward the featureless plain stretching south. Only it wasn’t featureless. Something was approaching, rolling in a cloud of dust toward him. Lu retreated into the nearby trees and watched. Something was wrong. He could see individual body-dots, in massed ranks, no more than a furlong away now. But no one’s head was higher than their hands; the men were crawling and nosing the turf. He could hear a low rumble of growls, chuckles and barks. And now discrete forms were emerging from the pack. A spotted coat; a frothing jaw; tails erect in the breezeless plain. Lu saw snouts and hanging jackal tongues. ‘Dogs?’ he whispered. He looked again, and made out mutts and greyhounds, mongrels and spaniels, curs, shoughs, water-rugs and demiwolves. ‘Hell-hounds!’

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It was an army of curs, come to wage war on the world’s last man. Lu slumped behind his tree and tried madly to conjure up his Christ. He could sense the dogs steaming, a hundred yards or less away, snuffling and sniffing for prey. This is a plague, thought Lu, some monstrosity, like biblical locusts. He would not look. As a child he had seen a swollen frog drag itself and a smaller male into the Burn; it split and scattered thousands of eggs, like moonshine, which the male had sprayed with more sperm than frog could possibly contain. Soulless tadpoles were spawned, and the tadpoles in turn spawned articulated frogs; and now, thought Lu, the frogs have spawned men-curs, popeyed and deformed, the devil’s image, seeking God knows what. It was the dry-shrink of life! He would not stay to allow it. He would rebel, he would! Or he would run into its jaws and be eaten like a steak. Lu staggered towards the edge of the plain. Strange screams were coming from the dogs’ throats, unearthly screams; they were throwing their entire bodies into the screams, as though to vomit themselves into new forms. They were rising by the hundred onto their hind legs, their crooked forelimbs extended, eyes alive with alien meaning. Now the pack halted, a mass of snout and snarl. A breeze of heat was all that divided them, slow and serrated, moving between dog and human. A dog stepped away from the ranks. It slowly extended its stubbed paw in the direction of the shivering boy. Lu was mesmerized by this advancing cur, with its piss-yellow stare, and its screwed right eye, and its snout crossed with scars, and its raw breast of ribs, pointing the bone, pointing the bone, saying you, you, you . . . With a shiver he recalled Fyn’s words. Surely Lu had not been recognized – oh God! – by this hound of Hell! He did not move a muscle. He dared not risk a single breath. But now, as though by magic, a figure in a long scarlet cloak emerged from the heat-haze. The dogs parted in the middle to allow this figure to walk through their centre. As the dogs

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reformed into two ranks more men came into view, hundreds of them, lined up in rows behind the dogs. The scarlet man reached the first dog and crouched down and nuzzled it. The dog took something from the scarlet man’s palm, received his pat, and melted back into the pack. And as the soldiers came closer the pack seemed to diminish in number. Not a thousand, barely a hundred, settling down on haunches and chewing whatever the men threw in their direction. The scarlet figure had turned to face his men. He raised an arm and pointed. ‘Here it is, boys’, he shouted. ‘Birnam! Birnam Wood!’ A shared mumble rose from the men. ‘Today, a generation on, we return in triumph!’ ‘Three cheers for the Lord Macduff! Hip hip – hooray!’ Macduff? Oh my God. ‘My liege’, came a single voice from the pack, ‘shall we strip the boughs for our helmets?’ ‘No no’, shouted Macduff, in evident good humour, ‘we move on, not back. But yes – some flowers – you there’, he said gesturing to a ruddy man at the front edge of the troop, ‘get me some flowers, a big bunch, colourful ones! Go with him, you two.’ Three soldiers jogged to the edge of the wood, no more than ten trees from where Lu had retreated, and started plucking flowers, any old thing, mostly dandelions by the look of it. The scarlet man turned to check on his flower-pickers. Lulach froze. He had never thought the man might be handsome. Weathered, yes, lined, yes, but not aquiline and tanned and hawkish, and those eyes, like polished steel! ‘Go deeper in lads, don’t be bashful. Get me something red if you can.’ Lu would never have believed it. This is not the man he had heard slandered for so long, that inhuman ice-blooded zealot. ‘Red, purple, like my cloak!’ he shouted, ‘a colour fit for my Queen!’ A Queen?

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‘Ten minutes rest, lads’, said Macduff, turning to his idling troops, ‘ten minutes, and then – Dunsinane!’ Dunsinane? Lu felt sick to his boots – Dunsinane? – a Queen? – at Dunsinane? – oh my Christ! They were betrayed.

∞

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the sticking place Fyn let out a slow languorous burp and rose from his hammock. It was dark evening; it was time; he could delay no longer. Five minutes earlier she had stood at the door, her hair falling, mouth imploring, robe ready to fall. Or so he inferred. It must be time to do it. Fyn emptied the lees of his wine into the slop bucket. He would have liked to do it in that attic she had made her own, with the moon and the owl their close witnesses; or if not up there, then in the stateroom, on the very bed of blessed memory where the tyrant would lie awake and roll in his sweat. But she insisted on the Queen’s old room, a place so layered in tassels and curtains and tapestries as to muffle the goatiest grunt. Fyn started towards the stairs but was arrested by a book lying open on the table. One of Grim’s, he could tell by the furious underlining. He flicked back a page or two and found a passage boxed avidly in ink. The being of Spirit is a bone. Fyn laughed out loud. The being of spirit is a what? His brother really was a sad maniac. He laughed again, mirthlessly, and flicked over another page. The true being of a man is his deed; in this the individual is actual. The deed does away with the inexpressibility of what is merely meant. In the accomplished deed this spurious infinity is destroyed. It is a brave deed, a good action, or a murder, it is this, and the individual being is what the deed is. He ceases to be something only meant. Fyn read it over three times. The individual being is what the deed is? How dismaying! But a promise was a promise. He threw the book at Grim’s reading chair and climbed slowly up the stairwell. The door to the stateroom was ajar. He couldn’t remember when it was last unlocked. If that’s not an invitation, thought

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Fyn. He pushed the door open with his foot and surveyed the scene. The Porter was half-upright in the enormous bed, slumped asleep and snoring. Next to the bed was a pestle, crestfallen inside one of Lu’s mortars, half-full with some sort of viscous jelly. Fyn extracted the pestle and licked its coated head. Not bad, actually, like uncooked cake. He wiped the pestle clean and licked his fingers. Now Fyn went up very close, and crouched so that his father’s head was inches from his own. Beneath Fyn’s gaze were wisps of hair, beneath them flaking skin, beneath it a skull-bone, beneath that a brain. Where the man was he hadn’t a clue. Fyn’s survey passed to the old man’s crepuscular flesh, and to the quiet chest, rising up and down in the lullaby of sleep. The old man’s mouth was ajar and his breath acrid. Fyn felt a momentary temptation to fill the mouth with the pestle. He arrested a guffaw and lightly touched his father’s throat. He had never in his life felt this skin before. The skin was folded, like uncooked pastry, and soft as a baby’s. You could unseam it with two dry fingers. Or I could, his son, his princeling, his heir. What else was such a status for? It occurred to Fyn that his father fell asleep, religiously, every single time his legs went horizontal. Did he always assume he would awake? Fyn studied his father. He seemed content enough. The violence, thought Fyn, is in the waking. In sleep is true charity – to prolong the sleep of those you love. Macbeth loved to murder the sleepers, so the tale went, seared in Fyn’s mind. Who knows, maybe he loved in doing it; precisely loved the sleeper. Fyn pressed the pestle to the aged temple. One push, one deed, and goodnight Daddy. Fyn could take this pestle, locate an orifice, and shove it deep inside his father’s body. He could push it and turn it and listen to the consequences, as the pipes snapped, and the organs sank, as the whole machine grumbled to a halt. Fyn blew a sigh, as though bored. But he wasn’t quite bored, it wasn’t boredom, it was something else. Tiredness, maybe. Only yesterday he had stepped on a hedgehog and the bones

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cracked like dry leaf. It was humiliating really. He hadn’t seen the hedgehog, he hadn’t chosen the crunch, but what difference if he had? Lu-la would see a difference; Fyn doubted the hedgehog would. All as accidental as a life. As he thought his thoughts Fyn was absently stroking the old man’s lips with the pestle. The lips readjusted a little, as though to an unforgotten teat. Fyn pushed the pestle in a fraction more. And if I don’t do it, thought Fyn, is that a choice? A world of things not done and every last one my choice. A life of infinite choices; every moment another choice murdered, as we spread in a hammock and ingest. And compared to that what is an action? The very idea of an action! What a disgusting diminishment. Fyn pissed messily into the sink, his mind itching now with a peculiar vindictiveness. He felt bored with everything, bored with thought, bored and disgusted even to be having any. He pulled the blanket down and shoved the pestle upright between his father’s thighs. He thought he should laugh but did not, and instead stumped away towards the Queen Room. Fyn did not knock. He entered silently. The room was dark but for a single candle, emitting the faintest smoky flame. He could see Gru’s head, or rather its shadow on the wall behind the bed. The shadow grew higher as Fyn closed the door behind him. He arrived at the bed and sat down. He had not yet looked at her. He held the silence for a minute or more. ‘Are you sure you want this?’ he said finally. She nodded. ‘I don’t know’, he said. His voice trailed off. ‘Don’t know what?’ ‘I don’t know if this – He paused; he felt stupidly embarrassed, and could not tell if the qualms in his mind were made up or not; they felt borrowed, or risibly moral, and yet here they were on the tip of his tongue. ‘He has never done me wrong’, he heard himself saying. ‘Not really.’ Still she said nothing.

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‘He loves his prince!’ Fyn said, but felt his words falling between sincerity and sarcasm, each of them equally fugitive and ashamed. ‘He loves his princess!’ she snorted back at once. Fyn smiled, shrugged, mimed a nod. Well, that at least was true. ‘It’s just – I don’t know. Can I be bothered?’ ‘Can you be bothered? You liar. All of that time, boasting and preening and drawing me in – and the time comes and you go all green and pale!’ ‘I dare enough. I dare do all – ‘Oh, don’t tell me – that may become a man!’ Had she come this far only for the man to back away, like the cat in the old adage? ‘Time and place have made themselves’, she said, ‘and their fitness does unmake you!’ Fyn sat unmoving on the bed. His knees were together. Funny how the misgiving was coming true, even though he didn’t believe in it. He didn’t believe in the deed, and he didn’t believe in his recoil from it. ‘Are you really so gospelled, preacher-man?’ she sneered. ‘You know I’m not.’ ‘Then do it!’ He was silent. She moved closer to him and held the nape of his neck in her palm. She twined a little of his hair in her fingers. His neck was soft, his hair still softer. ‘Do it’, she whispered. He could feel her digits as they clamped around his skull. He bent slightly forward but otherwise he did not move. He wished this were over, or not begun. He fancied swinging in his hammock with a drink. ‘Do as you have sworn’, she whispered intently. Still he sat passive. His knees felt small, cupped in his hands at the end of his visible legs. Beneath his knees everything was grotesquely foreshortened. ‘And then?’ he said.

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‘Then nothing.’ He nodded softly in the dark. He so wished he were somewhere else. ‘Then nothing’, she whispered once more. He felt like fish bait, or old bread, thrown out at a lonely angle and floating backwards on the shitstream. Gru had climbed off the bed and slid down between Fyn’s feet. She was kissing his feet and calling him prince. Fyn’s moustache started to itch. My only friend, he thought absurdly. He could taste his mouth, strangely crammed full of salt. If only he had a beer. He was happy in his hammock, more or less. It really was better not to connect; better to leave your purpose or promise the subject of someone else’s illusion. Fyn shook his head and tried a wry smile. The disappointing, the disappointed, the disappointees. He could found a church of them, a nation; this would be their sacred rite. He looked down and, half involuntarily, started caressing Gru’s huge hair. She accepted his touch like a horse and nuzzled harder into his thigh. ‘I love you’, she said urgently, and her hands were inexpertly upon his groin. ‘I love you’, she said again. Fyn’s moustache was itching madly. She was kneading at his groin like pastry. Her touch was muscular and he wished it softer. His hands tightened in her hair, its slightly sour perfume flooding his sense. Gru was struggling with the cord around his waist. He could feel his whole body curling away and he began to laugh. ‘Don’t’, she said, thinking he was laughing at her. But he was not. He was laughing because – because what else was there? Finally Gru unpicked the knot. In a single movement she rolled down his breeches. ‘There!’ she said, and was flooding his body with her messy breaker. And he really did feel like seaweed, the ugly limp colourless kind he had so hated as a child. His head flopped to one side,

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in precise imitation of one of those foul little seaweed polyps he used to steal upon and pop. Daddy had been right to warn them from the sea. ‘Oh Fyn’ said Gru. ‘Cold’, he responded, but she didn’t appear to hear. Instead she had climbed above him and was biting on his earlobe. ‘Screw your courage’, she hissed, ‘to the sticking place.’ In answer Fyn lay flat out on his back. His eyes were vacant, his being popped like the polyp and pointlessly suspiring. ‘Cold’, he said again. He was seeing himself from far above, washed-up on the beach. His face was ghastly and his bloodless lips were laughing. ‘The Lord’s judgement’, he said. ‘On?’ she asked tersely as she rose and fudged her hair. Fyn had nothing to add. He shook his head and cleaned around his teeth with his tongue. His moustache bristled independently, like a porcupine licking its quills. ‘You might have done much’, said Gru. ‘I might’, said Fyn, eyeing their shadows on the wall and idly wondering what kind of kiddie-wink monster they made. ∞

who could refrain? Lulach had never known the house to be so quiet. Not a light was burning. He moved quietly up the stone stairwell. He arrived at his father’s door and listened. Still there was no sound. He knocked, very softly, and turned the latch. He was surprised by what he saw. It was his father, sitting up under the back-turned coverlet and smiling on his finger’s ends. Two large candles burned on either side of the bed. The Porter saw his son and his forehead knotted in annoyance. ‘Not now, Lulach’, he said, fluttering his fingers and indicating the door. ‘But, father – father! – we must leave!’

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‘What nonsense is this boy?’ ‘We must leave! Now, right away, there isn’t a moment to lose!’ The old man smiled beatifically. ‘What nonsense, boy!’ ‘It is Gruoch’, said Lu with a miserable intensity. ‘She has betrayed us, father.’ The Porter was nodding his head and smiling. ‘Father – please listen. She has put a spell on you. Don’t you see?’ The Porter was looking pityingly at his son, smiling, lankly self-abandoned. ‘Are you hearing me? Father? She has betrayed us all – Still his father benignly smiled. ‘She has betrayed us to Macduff – he’s coming!’ Lu’s voice was losing conviction and evenness. The Porter was grinning from ear to ear, as though playing some stupid old man’s charade. For the first time in his life Lulach felt like slapping him. ‘Father – wake up! We’ve got to leave, now! She’s put a spell on us all! She is a fiend, a liar!’ The Porter sat up abruptly and began waving what looked like a sprig of hawthorn in his son’s face. ‘Her lies sound like truth to me, boy! Not jealous are we? Yes, she is a charmer! An enchantress, if you will! And yes, I am under her spell! Why not, boy?’ There was spittle on his lips and he was raving. His little old eyes were like coals as he taunted Lu with his hawthorn. ‘What’s it to you, eh? I mean to be enchanted! Why not? I shall be transported, tonight, I shall! And there’s nothing that you, boy, can do about it! I know all about you jealous sons – you young lions who turn upon the leader of their pride! Yea, though he has nourished them with his own milk – even out of his own old paps! They would devour him as soon as eating cheese! Cheese, I say! But enough, enough! She has chosen! And she didn’t – choose – you!’ Lulach could not believe his ears.

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‘Why would she?’ jeered his father. ‘Ha! Why the hell would she?’ ‘Shut up’, says Lu. She did choose me, he thought, she did! Lu stepped closer to his father. ‘A woman like her is not for the likes of you!’ ‘I said shut up!’ Lu’s teeth were clenching and his eyes blinking fast. ‘And I said’, said the Porter, rising in his bed with his old face red as a boil, ‘I said she’s not for the likes of you!’ Lulach had raised his hand and it was trembling beyond control. ‘She is’, he screamed. ‘She did! She is for me!’ ‘Ha!’ shouted the Porter, ‘As if she would ever choose you – f-f-fatty!’ Lu screamed and leapt upon his father. He was being pitched like a ship by his own screaming, and in the current of his scream he picked his father up and twisted his body like some devil’s tail into the air. The old man dropped against the hard straw bed. Lu’s mouth was open wide and his teeth bare. He was a maddened white bear, his eyes hysterical pink, thrashing uncontrollably around the room. He screamed again, and smashed the oak wardrobe as though it had been plywood. A candle fell, still burning, and began smouldering on the rug. Lulach picked it up by the flame and held it tight in his palm, but the burning was pathetic, pathetic, and the wax slid into nothing but congealed sweat. The bedroom door flew open. Lu turned around in alarm and saw Fyn standing in the black. ‘Huh?’ gasped Lu. A flame had caught lightly on his shirt. He glanced down and airily flapped at the flame, and then looked back in panic at his father lying silent in the bed, and then back once more at Fyn, standing quizzically in the doorway. Lu gasped again, his voice high-pitched and panicking, his right hand flapping the flame on his shirt. He looked this way then that, sniffing like a hunted bunny.

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And now, abruptly, his mouth emitting a foolish and ugly grunt, Lulach fell upon the Porter, a sudden dead lurch, as though to hide the old man’s body from the light. There was a sickening report of cracking rib, and the weird wheezing sound of a tube puncturing. Fyn watched and waited but his little brother did not move, did not even peep up. ‘Lu’, said Fyn eventually. Lu’s body was covering his father absolutely, like a giant rug over a lady divan. ‘Come on now Lu, get up.’ Lu’s head was buried in the quilt. A slow trail of grey smoke was curling from under his tummy. ‘Come on, Lu. Up you get.’ Fyn bent forward and touched Lu’s large curved back. Immediately the back started to heave with sobbing. ‘Come on, over now’, said Fyn. Very slowly, like a huge washed-up sea-mammal, Lulach rolled over onto one side. He lay facing the rigid form of his father. Lu’s mouth was moving, little bubbles of saliva forming between his lips, but no sound was escaping. ‘What are you saying, boo-boy?’ said Fyn. Lu shook his head and turned away from his father. Tears were coursing down his cheeks from his two closed eyes. Fyn looked at his little brother and swallowed hard. He didn’t deserve this to happen. But what in hell’s name could Fyn say now that it had? Fyn touched his brother’s wet cheek. It was pink and burning. Once a baby, always. ‘God bless you, Lu.’ Lulach shook his head vehemently and the tears slipped fuller and hotter. ‘Yes, Lu-boo, you. God bless you. Only you.’ Still Lu was gritting his teeth and shaking his head. Fyn shuffled in-between the weeping son and the Porter. His eyes cast quickly over his motionless father. The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures. Someone said that, didn’t they? He

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ruffled Lu’s hair with one hand and then, without intending it, winked. He already knew what he must do. ‘Amen’, he said very quietly, and leant down and pulled a knife from his boot. He put his free arm around the shoulders of his brother and lowered Lulach’s head more firmly into the quilt. He gently kissed his father on the forehead. And with that his knife described the finest line across the old man’s gizzard. For a moment, just a moment, the line stayed fine and almost white; then the tiniest red drop peeped over the curtain; and then there was nothing but a crimson satchel of flesh, hanging like a new lip. ‘It wasn’t you, Lu-boo’, said Fyn quietly. ‘Yes? It wasn’t you.’ Lu looked at his brother in cold fear and terror. ‘But – ‘There is nothing to be done. I will tell Grim. No one will blame you. It wasn’t you. Yes? Sleep now. God bless you.’ As he said this he saw that Gru had slipped into the room. Their eyes locked over the event. Lu had stopped trembling but he had not opened his eyes. The sweetest smell had filled his senses. ‘Amen to that’, said Gru. Lu heard the blessing and jumped. Amen, did she say? Amen? Gru was bending down next to him, her face level with Fyn’s. He saw she was holding his brother’s hand. ‘I –’, started Lu, but could get no further. ‘Come on old boy’, said Fyn, ‘let’s have you.’ Fyn grabbed Lu around his back and started escorting him to the door. Lu moved as though in sleep, but when he reached the door his head wrenched around, mutely appealing for who knew what. Gru saw Lu’s frightened white face and smiled. She kissed a finger and pointed it and blew. He looked bewildered, frozen in imminent loss, frozen by things that would not be undone. Gru nodded and smiled again. Silently Fyn took Lu away. ∞

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the great doom’s image Gru knew she must not cry. There was no gain in tears. She looked at the Porter and patted down a little of his ruffled hair. There were many worse men. She studied his old hopeful face for a moment longer, and then covered it with the quilt. The single remaining candle was burning very low. She lifted the candle to eye-level and gazed into the flame. She could make out in the flame a little girl, flickering in an orange dress, her black hair covering her eyes. Now she felt something warm behind her, a touch upon the shoulder. Gru turned, still holding the candle, and saw that Fyn had returned. ‘I gave him whisky, two drams, a hiccup, and gone. He’s with the fairies now.’ Fyn was uncannily altered. He was holding out a smouldering white ember, and on his head was a red peasant’s hat. Still more unaccountably, a tiny dog was on his shoulder. The dog looked remarkably simian, with a tail as long as a skipping rope. Fyn was smiling into his ember. She had never before noticed the small dark gaps between his teeth. ‘Lu saw this little hairy fellow and he went hysterical; he wanted to run off, said the dogs of war are coming and we are all betrayed. Silly boy.’ ‘Is that thing real?’ said Gru, motioning to the dog, ‘I don’t know what to believe tonight. It looks like a monkey.’ ‘Here’s your monkey’, said Fyn, and bit her on the nose. Gru smiled and pulled the silly hat down lower on Fyn’s brows. ‘My yeoman,’ she said softly, and kissed him back on his nose, ‘you can laugh, even now?’ ‘What else is there?’ said Fyn, almost savagely, and turned to the monkey-dog and yapped close in its face, ‘wah!’ Gru smirked and blew hard on the ember. It glowed like diamonds but still the candle wouldn’t take. Fyn was very close behind her as they huddled over the fuel. ‘Wick’s gone’, she said, pressing her bum into his warmth.

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‘Wick’s returned’, said Fyn, and he threw the ember into the grate. His eyes were green in the flickering near-dark. He pushed hard into her bum, as proud of his erection as any fourteen-year-old. She bent her head back to his face and put a long finger into his strangely garish mouth. ‘Come on!’ she whispered. The little dog barked and leapt to the floor as Fyn moved above her. ‘Come on’, she hissed again. Fyn saw the old man’s head, rocking benignly on the bed, and felt the strangest access of strength. It is so easy, he thought, so unbelievably easy. He pushed deep inside her. The dog jumped on the bed and he flicked it away like a fly. Gru’s face was arched away in darkness, every last vestige of expression gone from her voice. Fyn slowly, slowly deepened the wound. He felt himself frisking in her murder chamber. He saw past moments dropping to the floor like perishing leaves. He thrust up and she yelped like a killed thing. Now her bum loomed in the filthy air. It was broad and globed, smooth as a baby. Dead at its centre was her other hole, squirmed like the stone of a plum. It was the oldest part of her; it was the oldest part of anything, ever. He gently fingered the evidence, each wrinkle like a laugh-line, frozen in some unearthly crime. A murmur came from Gru. ‘Oh, that’s so –.’ He felt the warm guilt of the rectal search. Here was a twilight sanatorium, a terminal home for diseased tyrants. Guilt was irrelevant, simply irrelevant. Fyn wanted it for his coffin and it wanted him for its corpse. An owl shrieked outside and the little dog leapt and yelped at the window. ‘Ouch!’ Fyn released his finger and climbed aboard her back. He felt numb and savage. Break open the temple, he thought, look upon the great doom’s image. He laughed and gasped.

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‘Knock, knock!’ Fyn was pushing hard upon the dry creviced stone. He could see his father’s dead head, rocking on the edge of the bed, and he pressed still harder upon the tightening hole. ‘Open locks, whoever knocks!’ But it was clamped shut and would not make room for him. He felt himself bending from the task. ‘Not there, here’, whispered Gru, fingering Fyn gently into her cunt. Ah, he thought, the primrose way. It wasn’t daddy he needed, it was the other one. Hail the everlasting bonfire. He could die in here. ∞

a breach in nature Grim’s legs were lifting exaggeratedly high, his arms held aloft in front of him, as he made his way down the black windowless corridor. As he moved he rehearsed his catechism. Love seeks the clearing Ethics is the temptation He felt vaguely amazed. There was a breeze in his scalp, a brief rush and rise of hair. Phrases tolled in his head like a churchbell. Overcome the ethical Leap to the absolute Slowly his eyes adjusted. His knuckles loomed in the nightlight, like luminous satellites of skull. Be more than the meant A man is his deed

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Grim turned the handle to the royal chamber. The door opened unnaturally easily. The room was black. He passed like a ghost toward the room’s centre. Love finds the clearing The deed is love He could dimly make out the Porter’s pale head face down on the far side of the bed. Be loved by the beloved He must execute this gently. He remembered his first lamb. He was nine. The grass was green and the Porter held its girth between his legs and its front paws – do they call them paws? – for the life of him he could not remember – in his hands. The Porter’s knife was between his teeth. The Porter gestured to Grim to take the knife from his mouth. He pulled Grim inbetween his own legs and got him to straddle the lamb. Grim found himself sitting on his bum, the lamb in his lap, the Porter struggling to hold the lamb’s legs. The lamb seemed to know what was coming because it started shaking terribly. He delayed so long that the Porter shouted at him. Grim went red with mortification. The moment he touched the lamb’s neck, and he barely touched it, sudden red blood appeared. The knife was too sharp. Grim started crying. He had cut the lamb’s neck and now it wouldn’t stop bleeding. Again the Porter shouted at him but he was no longer listening. Grim shut his eyes and started to scratch with his spare hand. The Porter ripped the knife from him and in a blink had sliced the lamb’s neck. The blood flooded like a bath through Grim’s shirt. It was impossibly warm. The Porter hugged him, ‘better now, my little man?’ He nodded and he was. Grim understood now the magic of a really sharp knife. A touch as light as thought, and the warm bath would flow quite painlessly. The knife was not cruel. It was the faithful servant to love. He leaned down still closer to his father’s sleeping head.

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See the cut as a kindness. Grim was crouched where the Porter’s head was hanging, the knife prone in his fingers like a pen. Twice, thrice, four times he moved toward and then moved back from his target. He had to do this right, be clean and sure. He could just about make out the round dome of head, but beneath it could not tell where the face and the quilt separated. Grim slipped back toward the window and moved to draw open the curtain. He stared at the round plate of moon. It was too near! There was too much of it! He threw the curtain over his shoulder, and like magic it ripped from its rail, flew through the air, and landed like a giant bat on the bed. Only then did Grim turn around. The bed was covered in the vast rumpled green silk curtain, but hanging out from its nearest edge was the neck and head of his father, eyes to the window, head near the floor. With slow-motion horror Grim took in the sight. Where once there was an old man’s white throat there was a gash oozing with thick black blood. Grim retched, but nothing came out except dry spit and a terrible low animal moan. His hands were on his knees, his head level with the bed. He went down on his haunches and for a moment waited, he didn’t know what for. He felt fantastically alone. He grabbed the string of lank white hair and jolted his father’s face back into the light. He didn’t mean to be rough but it seemed to catapult back so easily. The eyes were open and made entirely of milk. There was no pupil at all. They were awash in sickly milk and unblinking. Grim blew hard into the right eye. It clouded over for half a second and then cleared, like a barnacle, or a wind-kissed pond. He did it again. It was like he was eight years old. The world was an oyster, as harmless and wobbly wet as. And now a noun was solidifying in his brain. Or was it a verb? The word was murder. ‘Murder’ he said, speaking the sound softly, almost reverently. He cradled the head like a baby’s. ‘Murder’ he repeated, again softly.

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The milky eyes were agape. ‘Murder?’ Grim’s heart was knocking at him from far, far away. ‘God forgive us.’ He stared again at the milky cloud of eye. ‘Father?’ He was whispering for their ears only. ‘Where are you?’ he whispered, ‘Where are you now?’ Grim lifted his father higher onto the bed. But as he did so he felt the old man’s head knock up against something hard. A rigid terror seized him. He threw off the curtain, and there before him was Fyn, lying across Gru, both of them asleep and half-clothed. They looked like children, so pearly white and innocent. Gru’s hair cascaded across her body like some goddess’s victory sash. Grim averted his eyes and tugged her gown over curved hip. He had forgotten about her. He had seen his father and she was washed from his mind. How could that be? He looked down at his brother. Fyn’s face was extraordinarily beautiful in repose, his torso tight and perfect. Gru’s hand lay relaxed upon him, as though here at last at home. I always came in his wake, thought Grim. Always, always, always, he was there before me. Grim’s mouth filled with nausea. His heart was thumping in his head. He pulled his arm from beneath his father’s head and tightened his grip on the knife. He slowly lifted it high. His heart thumped but his hand was as steady as fate. ‘Bless you’, he whispered, very softly. ‘Bless you’, he repeated, and lightly kissed the blade. Every time, his brother came first. Be more than the meant. A man is his deed. Grim raised the knife sky-high. And then with smooth and single momentum he brought it down and stabbed Fyn fair in the heart. A gush of blood hit Grim in the left eye. Fyn’s head and torso catapulted forwards, horribly accelerated, and his aquiline nose crashed into Grim’s cheek. From nowhere a simian yelped and moved as though to bite Grim on the wrist. He screamed in terror and the foul monkey rushed out the open

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door. Fyn was locked onto Grim, rocking back and forth, his arms wrapped around Grim’s shoulders. Blood dripped from Fyn’s chest like drawn wine. He appeared to be smiling, as though to remind his suffering brother, yet again, that there’s nothing serious in mortality, that all is but toys. His liquid black eyes were shining into Grim’s. With shaking fingers Fyn grabbed both of Grim’s hands and placed them on his bloodied chest. ‘You did it’, he said. ‘No!’ Fyn was nodding and seemed to be smiling deep into the face of his twin. Then he stopped. His head relaxed from its intent communion. His hands slipped from his brother’s face and he slumped back down upon the Porter’s chest. ‘Fyn!’ whimpered Grim, ‘no, Finny!’ Grim grabbed his brother and kissed him upon the mouth. ‘Fyn?’ came a voice from the bed. Gru was pushing her hair from her face and covering her loosened breasts. ‘Fyn?’ she said again. ‘No, oh no!’ From below came the sound of dogs barking, and men laughing. Oh my God, thought Gru. Her heart felt like it had stopped. One week? It felt like a hundred years. She had forgotten her promise completely. Grim had slid to the floor, his head upon his dead twin’s upper arm, and was murmuring in a monotone, ‘no man, no man, no man. . .’ A flat beige light was coming through the opened window. Anonymous birds were twittering and the castle was filling with the sound of boots and voices. ‘You’d better go’, Gru said to Grim. He didn’t look up. ‘That’s Macduff down there. He’ll not take prisoners. Go now, out the window!’ Grim’s eyes were closed. Fyn’s corpse had lurched sideways onto the ground. Gru looked at them on the floor, both so ravaged and alone. She shook her head. Desire was always punishment. She

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dragged the Porter’s body off the bed and to the window. She patted his hair once, brushed some blood-spittle off his cheek, and pushed him over the sill. He made the softest bump as he hit the grass below. God knows where Lu was, asleep, or dead, or ten leagues away in the wood. She moved back to the bed and crouched down to where Grim sat as though comatose. ‘Grim?’ she said, but he was immobile and vacant on the floor. She lifted Fyn’s body and staggered up. She could hear Macduff’s voice from below, exhorting his men to wait, to be careful with their torches, to search in every room. She dragged Fyn to the door and looked once more round at Grim. He was a blood-bolted wreck, dead to all things human. She closed the door and started dragging her lover’s corpse down the stairs. She had not gone half way before Macduff saw her. He removed his hat and bowed, smiling like a boy. Then he saw Fyn’s face and went white. Gru continued on her way, struggling to protect Fyn’s beautiful body from the bumps. She reached the bottom and laid him in the Porter’s old chair. ‘My love’, she whispered, ‘you only lived till you were a man.’ Macduff had come up behind her. ‘Then he is dead?’ She nodded. ‘You are certain?’ Macduff took Fyn savagely by the chin and peered like a wild man into his unfocusing eyes. ‘I will have his head.’ ‘You will not!’ said Gru. ‘No?’ ‘Absolutely not!’ ‘As you wish’, said Macduff, raising his hands in placating surrender. ‘The monster is gone. The time is free! Any others?’ ‘Just the Porter.’ ‘The Porter!’ repeated Macduff rhapsodically. ‘Yes. Dead too. Outside – over there, east wing.’ ‘The Porter!’ he said again.

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‘Enough. You have your revenge – now enough.’ She walked out the door to the waiting wagon and sat huddled in her cart. Was this worse than the last time she had been carted off? The question made no sense. There was death upon death, and still her life limped on. She could smell the castle burning. She felt her thighs sticky with wasted seed. That’s it with longing, she thought. Life was better once it had gone.

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some sweet oblivious antidote A woman in a hooded cloak was on a donkey, riding slowly along the hardened mud of a village lane. She was fatigued and heavy. At each hovel she stopped, and at each she was turned away. When she resumed she did so at the same steady pace. Eventually the string of hovels ceased. She and her donkey had reached the farthest fringe of Birnam Wood. The donkey slowed and the woman sighed and leaned into the shade. With head bowed low she threaded the paths of the tanglewood. As her donkey stepped ahead the dark grew darker, the trees more ancient and alien. They started to pluck at her cheeks and grab at her hair beneath the hood. A tough knotted arm descended and laid her flat. The woman was ready to welcome the outrage; after all, she had done so before. But instead she gathered herself, remounted, and ventured farther into Birnam’s matted heart. She was very afraid for the lives inside of her. Abruptly she was within a perfectly circular glade. It was suffused with the most extraordinary green light. Everything here was green! Ferns draped and opened like hands before the Fall. Beans erected themselves on tall, evenly-spaced sticks. Her heart almost stopped as she spied the bloom of a single, vivid green rose. O la! 181

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Palely green chickens pecked at jade seed, and a lime goose sat down like a vast jewel. The cock of the walk, his treasure breast all plumed up in spectrums of emeralds, started crowing out the most intensely green song. The woman laughed. She was instantly and entirely converted to this green life. Her donkey had been death-eager, but now he too came willingly and mildly. A plump moss-breasted robin dotted its way along a path, and the woman and the donkey followed this robin as it wound through the green. The robin halted when it reached a small windowless hut. The hut was overgrown with tufts and tendrils and looked less like a human habitation than some mound or outcrop of earth. Tethered alongside its little knoll was a goat so still and self-sufficient that it looked like a young tree. In the face of the hill was a doorway. In the doorway sat a heavily weathered man, his legs finely crossed. His hair was plaited with grass, and his arms were thin and knotted like bindweed. The man patted down his tunic and looked up at her and smiled. His teeth were green, and his eyes still greener; they were green as a dream and ecstatic. She should have felt surprised, but somehow she was not surprised at all. Instead she felt like a blossom might feel when first it recovers from a storm. The woman slid off her donkey and glided toward him. She could feel a tizzy prickle everywhere under her skin. It was all she could do not to leap into the green man’s arms like a girl with her long-gone daddy. The man seemed to blush and turned his hot green gaze downwards, but only for a second. As the girl inclined toward him his eyes were smiling just like hers. ‘Rose?’ The green man pursed his lips as though holding in a happy tear. His cheeks creased a thousand ways. ‘Rose!’ she said again. ‘I call myself Sod these days. The old Sod’, he said, nodding jerkily and ready to laugh for the first time in moons. ‘Hello, Sod!’ she laughed.

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He sprang in one movement to his feet and held out his thin green arms. ‘Welcome home, little doe.’ She declined her head onto his shoulder and drank in the sheer clean smell of plant. Her cloak flapped open to reveal her impossible protuberance. ‘Ha!’ he said, ‘a green world still!’ And with that they went in, arm in arm, bending through the low doorway. They had breakfasted on green eggs, leeks, and clear water. She lay purring between his knees, while he stroked her dark hair with a hand like an ivory comb. Between thumb and forefinger he separated a single seam of grey. With his free hand he was feeding her pumpkin seeds. The birds were choiring a peagreen symphony. Gru shut her eyes and seemed to see a single bill releasing all their exquisite music. There was sap in her blood and marrow on her bones. All the force of life was laughing in her. ‘Did you know’, confided Gru, ‘this is the happiest I have felt since – since you know when?’ Yes, he knew when. ‘There was truth even in that lie’, he said quietly, and caressed her swollen belly. ‘I am still your Rose.’ Every day was the same. A green breakfast, and then thought greened and the birds sang hopping arpeggios. Gru relaxed between Sod’s hale legs and he tickled her belly and murmured songs into her navel. ‘Omphalos, omphalos, omphalos.’ He had fallen in love with the word. He squealed like a boy when a little kick came from within. He was sure he could count four feet. ‘You’re not gestating a pony in there, are you, my dear?’ he asked, tickling her blue-veined mound, ‘or perhaps a dog?’ And he bent close again and hummed. ‘Omphalos, omphalos . . .’

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High on the thigh his wound sat tight and bound. He longed to itch it but knew he must not. He had kept it alive these twenty years, farmed it, manicured it, cut it weekly for life, like a lady’s lawn, or like the mop of a cherished child. And locked safe beneath the stitches were his hectic leaves of history. What need of them now? Perhaps it was time to bid goodbye to his wound’s fetid hoard of memory; time to bid farewell to tomorrow. But he wouldn’t burn his leaves; not just yet. Instead he would lock them more tightly than ever from temptation. And so as Gru dozed in the sun Sod drew out his needle. ‘A time for reaping, a time for sewing’, he murmured to himself, and chuckled. He threaded a lovely long line of green yarn and hummed contentedly as he sewed his wound up nice and secure. ‘Shall we play confessions?’ said Sod one evening over their warm bowls of goat’s milk. ‘Like we did in the nunnery?’ ‘No, I don’t think so.’ ‘Oh come on girl! Confess, cleanse, continue!’ ‘Can’t we just forget? No need for memory in the green world!’ ‘And what are those things growing in your belly, girl?’ ‘You want to hear where they came from? You naughty man! All the gory details, is that what you want?’ ‘Pooh!’ said Sod, smiling and frowning, ‘I do not!’ ‘Bless me father, for I have sinned’, said Gru, imitating a childish lisp and hanging the wooden spoon comically from her lip. ‘Pooh! If you’re not going to play properly . . .’ ‘I am a s-sinner, sir, a s-sinful s-sinner!’ ‘Oh stop your mouth, girl!’ ‘Unsex me here.’ ‘What?’ ‘Unsex me! Isn’t that what confession is for?’ ‘Oh you rude girl! How you have altered without your Rose, without her birch and her catgut to keep you honest!’ ‘I mean it.’ Gru’s voice lowered to a confidential whisper. ‘Can’t I be unsexed? As you are? Wouldn’t it be perfect?’

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‘You don’t want to be like me, girl.’ ‘I’m sorry, Ro – I mean Sod. I didn’t mean anything.’ ‘Some of us can never be clean. But never mind that! Come on girl. Give me your sins! Fill me up!’ His shriek was desperate and involuntary. ‘Oh, alright then’, said Gru. ‘Where do I begin?’ ‘At the end!’ ‘The end?’ ‘Where else? Come on, fill me up!’ Gru looked pensive, chewing her inner lip. ‘I desired – I wanted – a man.’ ‘Pooh! Who doesn’t? More, come on, come!’ ‘I desired him, carnally.’ ‘Getting warmer – fill me up! His name! Give it up!’ ‘He was called Fyn.’ ‘Fyn?’ Sod’s tummy thumped. Of course she had found Dunsinane. How could she not have? And of course they found her. How could they not have? The risk made Sod shiver. And yet it wasn’t what he had feared, all those years ago. Plainly it wasn’t nothing, a nice little picnic with dad and the lads at the reservoir, and then au revoir. But it wasn’t what he had feared. She got out alive; she got out with more life than she had entered with. ‘He was so – ‘Beautiful, beautiful! I know it!’ ‘You knew him?’ ‘Pah! Of course! What hasn’t your old Sod known? He was a beauty! Beauty attracts beauty, it is simple mathematics! Go on!’ ‘But – ‘Cruel, too. Yes?’ ‘You know?’ ‘Beauty is cruelty!’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Yes’, she said very quietly. ‘Yes! You too, girl, with your devilish black eyes, and that hair, do you think I have forgotten?’

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‘Can we stop now, Rose? Please?’ ‘Stop? Did you stop then?’ Gru shook her head. ‘No?’ said Sod sharply. ‘You didn’t stop?’ She shook her head again. ‘Until? You didn’t stop until what?’ ‘Until nothing.’ ‘Until nothing! Exactly! Nothing! Oh – blivion!’ She was nodding her head like an automaton. ‘Oblivion.’ Gru was nodding blankly. She was remembering that dark room, and the man inside her, she closed her eyes and she was all filled up, the blanket of the dark and everything filled! She could have ended then and there. ‘Pooh!’ said Sod, ‘there is no more to say. We are all sinners together! God, forgive us, goodnight.’ They looked at each other. What did it matter, thought Sod; not everything is apocalypse. He poked his tongue out like a gargoyle; Gru’s face broke into the sunniest smile. Her belly resembled an ocean, alive with its own weather, undulating strangely at odds with the rest of her body’s movement. Sod jinked himself closer and held the hand that held the belly. ∞

thou cream-fac’d loon Gru needed food. She was about to have twins for Christ’s sake, and Sod had to get her bread. He hated the village with the hate he had come to feel for all human society, but the Lord Macduff had bread to give and his gift was for all. Weekly it was given at every market cross in the land. Sod peered through the fringe of the wood and into the exhausted heart of the hamlet. Peasants were starting to mill like rats. There was a rattle of hooves and a white rider entered.

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He lifted a small bugle and drew breath. The crowd’s ears opened, passive and obedient for the blast. Sod shuffled forward, his arms out-splayed. ‘Bread please! Bread please! Bread please!’ The rider looked down contemptuously; the crowd murmured and grudged. ‘Beg pardon’, Sod continued, ‘the Gospel was brought even to me. Bread please!’ He paused and offered a flourishing bow. A square-headed tradesman stepped forward to block Sod’s path. ‘This bread is not for you. You are not one of us.’ ‘Even to me, flathead!’ spat Sod, and advanced with infernal eye upon Macduff’s hair-brushed envoy. ‘Give me your bread of sin!’ His hands visibly shaking, Macduff’s envoy extracted two bright white loaves from his sack. ‘Merci beaucoup’, said Sod, bowing extravagantly, ‘merci, merci, merci’, and turned to the retreating audience. ‘Haven’t you work to do?’ And off he scurried, like a crab. Immediately the envoy kicked at his horse, his riding-whip flailing. The citizens stood back, mute and unmanned; the women cowered and covered the children’s faces. ‘You heard him – back to work!’ And the envoy left in a flurry of dust, his bags still heavy with bread. In seconds all of the citizens too had vanished, wary equally of Macduff’s man and the vicious green hobgoblin. Or all but one had vanished. A large boy in a huge hat stood alone. It was Lulach, but no one had used that name for some nine months now. He had watched the scene as though from deep under water. It was what he was used to, life on the level of the mollusc. He had woken the morning after the murder covered in vomit and sweat, on the parched ground near the castle’s sacred storehouse. He had awoken to the ugliness of fact. His father was dead. He remembered that. He rolled his weight from one side to the other. Next to him a dog was exercising itself over

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a large bone. Only then did he smell the reek of wet smoke. He looked up and saw that the castle was a charred and blackened wreck. It had taken a moment to realize what this meant. Grief ravaged him. He swallowed the blood in his mouth and wished he too were a dog. But even that seemed too ambitious. He was a floating invertebrate, thrown-up in a drowned world. The bone had been too large for the dog to grip properly with teeth and had rolled toward Lulach’s feet. It was a skull. The nosebone was large, and from its holes hung a large rusted ring. Once upon a time Lulach might have felt afraid. Or excited, or astonished, or worried for what it might portend – the old King’s head, his father’s master, the murderer of sainted age. But now he felt nothing. He knew what it portended; it had all happened already. He kicked the skull into the storehouse and walked away. For nine months he had wandered without aim, haunting gates and back-alleys and sharing scraps with homeless dogs. But now he found himself strangely awakening. As he watched the hobgoblin limping away from the crowd, something other than brainless, squid-like hunger started turning in Lulach’s belly. The very antagonism of the stranger seemed to offer a flint of hope. And so Lulach, as strange to himself as the earth’s first amphibian, distantly followed the holy fool down the lane. Sod was headed for the churchyard. He needed a little peace and quiet, and where better than the church, a place to which no one travelled these days unless told to – which meant once a week, at the hour apportioned by the Baker. The yard was unkempt, the ground grey and broken, its low wall crumbling away. Nothing was growing but a colourless moss the locals called rigor mortis. A pony whinnied and bit a gravestone. Its exposed gums and teeth were grey. The church hunched in dark wetness, as though ashamed. A figure moved on the dilapidated stone, a whisky vicar, evidently lost from his flock and function. There was the smell of drink on his breath and his eyes were grey and cloudy. ‘I am not long for this pasture’, he said, and moved away.

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Sod entered the church. It was colder than the yard and the grimed windows let in precious little light. There was nothing in it but a few timber benches and a stone floor, concave with bumshaped dimples. Sod sat in a dimple and felt instantly at ease. He would head home to Gru in a moment. He needed to think. The world was going to rack and ruin. He saw that with his human eyes. He saw it whenever he looked at another human creature. How much bread can a human eat, he thought, before he becomes a corporeal fart; or before he farts out his own soul, in one rank, yeasty blast? That, thought Sod, is the question. He looked at the humans in the village and saw nothing but sallow flesh and spiritual torpor. He could see nothing else whatsoever. Once upon a time he had been cursed by clairvoyance: the wizard who saw, who spoke, and who watched as it all came true. And now? Now all he wanted was to bury deep into his hovel and care for his girl. History was no longer worth his exertions. Consider the Baker’s latest innovation. He had diversified, in his infinite benevolence, to cake. Sod could respect a vegetable; a shank of meat; even a good hunk of bread. But grown men nibbling a biscuit, gorging themselves on scones? It was the opiate of imbeciles. If you want humiliation, thought Sod, go the whole suffering hog and open your arse to all comers; shit your degradation like a trueblood. Instead we have a nation of men and women, working in silence for the Baker, ten hours a day, nibbling at intervals, and then going home to nibble a little more and fart their floury paths to oblivion. Truly, it was the end of history. The gorge started to rise in Sod’s mouth. Once upon a time this fact had presaged the yellow lightning of a fit, visions and tumbles, the terror of something about to happen. Now it presaged nothing, or at least nothing but vomit, of the kind perhaps that is vented by puppies, such efficient mammals, when they have eaten something untoward. Sod swallowed the vomit and reached for his wound, pulsing as ever on his thigh. Surely, surely there was more to history than a baker and his lubricating butter? Time to break another vow.

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Sod scribbled at his wound’s stitches, entered with pincer fingers, and extracted a dripping soggy wallet. Its leather was soft and almost liquid from long immersion; the papers within were likewise soft. Sod smelled and separated the filaments of his wad as if they were slim membranes of flesh. ‘Flesh of my flesh, my own fond children’, he crooned, ‘perhaps you still have some growing to do!’ He unfurled one filament after another, hastily reading and discarding, plunging into untold histories, unsure which scenes were gone and which to come, or whether there was any difference. ‘He scoured the countryside for traitors, bursting upon villages and hanging any man who smelt of fear. . .Everywhere was locked violence. . .The cooks mixed the berries in their ale and bread, sending it thus spiced and confectioned, in great abundance, to the enemy. . .Old foolish innocence, slaughtered in its bed. . .Make peace with your brother and rival, else ruin befall your land . . .’ The words whirled in his mind as he tried to tame them into sense: ‘A cake sized chunk was cut from the back of his skull. . .People blamed the cows but a cow is rarely to blame. . .Drown the weeds. . .a horse careened backwards, skinned and shining, its lidless eyes weeping . . .’ Sod lay back in his big bum dimple, stray membranes of text sticking to the floor around him. He felt panicked and overwhelmed. He had to get out of here. Gru was waiting for him, hungry and brimming. There was a world elsewhere! Sod started shoving scraps of paper in his wallet, careless of tearing them, thinking he should never consult them again. History’s runes? History’s ruins, more like. Truly he was done with it all.

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He had gathered the last of them and was about to scarper when a figure loomed in the darkened door, huge and haloed like death. ‘Knell!’ screamed Sod, all involuntarily. The doom had been closing and now it was here. ‘Knolled!’ he yelled, his voice hideous and mad. Sod rose and bowed hyperbolically. He saw big blotched bare feet, and frayed coarse wool, and an enormous girth beneath the gown. With mounting antipathy he traced the visitor’s body, yarn by yarn, to where the wool gave way to mottled pink flesh. An imbecile stood before him. A peeled egg under a floppybrimmed hat! ‘What, patch? What, whey-face? Where got you that gooselook?’ Sod’s basilisk eyes threatened, and he reached up and twisted the man-beast’s nipple in a pincer-grip. ‘Look at you, uselessly encumbered with all that flesh! You look like a cow! Ugh, all that blank flesh! Is it tripe you’re made of? Do you bleed milk?’ The idiot returned nothing. ‘What, you abomination? What?’ Sod clapped hands in a face that neither recoiled nor flinched. ‘Thou dead thing thou!’ The imbecile’s eyes were pink and raw and wire-thin, from weeping or not sleeping who could tell. Sod’s posture softened. There was suffering still, even in the fat. ‘I was leaving, sirrah’, said Sod. He moved to get around the bulk of the visitor, who instead of moving quietly spoke. ‘Please, holy father.’ ‘It speaks!’ shrieked Sod. ‘I followed you. A holy man, I knew it at once. I am lost, father.’ ‘So are we all, boy’, he said. ‘Why do you trespass upon my peace?’ ‘I want –

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‘You want? We all want, boy! No want, no life, boy!’ Lu blushed and his chin wobbled. ‘I – I’ ‘Is there nothing but I in this world! I, I, me, mine, mine mine!’ Lu blushed even redder and tried to bury his chin in his throat. ‘Hear my confession?’ ‘My my my!’ Sod was all readied to abandon the soft fat fraud when an image of his old chastising monk rose in his mind; an image of how he too had once been a needy boy, longing for a soft word or a soft hand and receiving nothing but whips. Sod howled inside at the good that he must still perform. ‘Oh, I suppose!’ But he saw there were pressing difficulties. Ergo: how in God’s name can you stand when someone’s soul, raw as an organ and every bit as stupid, is trembling in your care? You must sit with your spirit-child, in colloquy, you must. Sod cast his eyes around the spartan church. He had never seen a less spiritual seat than that splintered bench along the wall. It would have to be those concaves in stone; this cow-boy had an arse to test their welcome. ‘Down’, said Sod, and drew Lulach onto the dimpled floor, ‘you that hollow, me this’. They were sitting back to back, Sod bony and adrift in his dimple, Lu overflowing his. ‘Proceed, boycow’, said Sod. ‘What is your theme?’ Very quietly, Lu began. ‘It is myself. In whom I know all the particulars of vice so grafted – ‘Don’t boast, dear. Stick to the facts.’ ‘The cruellest tyrant will seem as pure as snow, and be esteemed a lamb, compared to my confineless harms.’ ‘You and whose army, dear? Facts!’ ‘There is no bottom, none, to my voluptuousness. The cistern of my lust and my desire –

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‘No bottom! My dear, hush a moment. I do not believe you. I have heard these words before. Sin is a condition, not an act. No words of mine can allay it. Give me an act, and I may wipe it from all fond and trivial records. For the rest, live with it, boycow!’ Lulach was silent for some moments. His face was burning pink. His voice when it came was like a recitative, learned rather than thought. ‘I loved a lady more than life itself.’ ‘Better, boy. And you repent that love?’ Lu said nothing, burning in his dimple. ‘You do not repent that love?’ Lu shook his head but Sod could not see it. ‘You do not?’ said Sod. ‘Well, you love; that is your sin; live with it, dear.’ ‘I – my love was a jealous love. I – my brother.’ ‘Ah’, said Sod. ‘She loved your brother?’ Lu nodded; again Sod did not see. ‘And?’ said Sod. ‘My father.’ ‘Your father too! Busy girl!’ ‘No!’ said Lu. ‘He loved her, not her him, it wasn’t that, but – ‘But?’ ‘He – ‘He?’ ‘Father – well, he owned the castle and – ‘A castle?’ said Sod. He turned around and grabbed Lulach’s shoulders. He saw the boy’s face crimping and blushing, desperate to avoid eye contact. ‘Which castle, boy?’ Lu tried to shrug him away, like a horse might, but Sod’s fingers were strong. ‘Let me look at you!’ he said harshly. Sod held Lu’s jowls and studied the face before him. He had never seen guiltier flesh. A heavy nausea moved in his trunk. ‘You?’ he said, tightening his grip and tilting backwards. ‘You!’

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Lulach averted his head to avoid the scrutiny. ‘I should have known! Don’t you know me, boy? I know you!’ Oh, he knew the boy too well. And his brothers, and his hapless father. And he knew too, with the sickening certainty of his intelligence, the lady in question. He knew that all that he had already known, all those years ago, all that he had seen and desperately tried to forestall, all of that miserable repetition, he knew that all of that had happened too, just as he had known it must not, and just as he had known that it would. ‘You killed the old man in his bed’, said Sod, blankly. Lulach was weeping as he nodded his head. ‘For her you did it. You and your brothers, co-agents in the act.’ Lu’s head swayed on his thick neck, swinging between a shake and a nod. ‘And you dare to seek forgiveness?’ Still the head swayed, like a traitor’s on a pole. ‘You regret it?’ ‘Yes’, whimpered Lu. ‘But you wanted it too.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And your brothers? You wished them gone?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And now you have your wish?’ Sod held his breath in fear but already he knew the answer. And sickeningly on cue Lu meekly, pathetically, fearfully nodded his assent. So it had all come to pass. ‘All gone, all dead, all done?’ Lu looked to his accuser, half appealing, half as-though submitting to the executioner’s axe. ‘The fire – it took them.’ ‘The cleansing fire! You regret that too I suppose?’ ‘It was my fault.’ ‘Your fault was it? And you regret it?’

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Lu desolately nodded his head. ‘Regret? Oh yes. But repentance? True repentance? Oh no! You moral coward! You would not have it otherwise – you would die rather than risk them alive once more! You would not have your brothers back – oh no, not if having them dead meant that she might still be yours!’ Lu was strung up and swinging in his sin. ‘Yes.’ ‘Yes you would not have it otherwise?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘No repentance, no contrition, no forgiving, no expiation. Only regret at the mess. And sin. And guilt. So, so, take your guilt and live it, boy! Perhaps it is the best part of you!’ Sod watched coldly as Lu squeezed his pink eyes closed and tried vainly to quell the tears. How hateful that every human should be so at the centre of their own sorry universe; as though theirs was the only life that mattered; as though their paltry sin was exceptional. Sod’s wound was throbbing like a maniac. My wound, my wallet, my chronic chronicle. Oh, if his guilt is the best part of him, thought Sod, then my wallet is the best part of me. Which means the worst. Oh, he was a most miserable and tainted thing! Who was he kidding, pretending to pretend that history was done, or that his part in it was anything other than to suffer it as an impotent witness, seeing it all and altering nothing, gaining nothing, losing nothing, belonging to no one, an echo-chamber of the wails and wants that belonged most truly to others. Hand it back, you life-renter, you pathetic limping impostor! He hated the sin-soured cream boy whimpering before him – but not half as much as he hated himself. ‘Boy’, he said. ‘It is time for the destruction of error. Hear my prescription, boy. You must wear your passion like a harness on your back. Passion, is suffering, is love, is guilt, is sin. Forgiveness is for fairies. Repentance is impossible – unless you kill what you love the most. The most, I say! Until then you are tied to the object of love, tied like a bear by its nose!’

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Lulach was wilting in his dimple, lost from self, lost from Christ, and lost above all from her, dying for her, over and over again, with every sting of this strange man’s salt words. ‘Do you understand me, boy?’ said Sod. ‘There is no expiation. You are tied to your guilt as to a clapper!’ Lu knew it was true and he nodded his head. ‘But what this means, boy, is that you forgive yourself. Yes, yes, you do! That is the nub of your sin. Even in the teeth of your guilt, chewed by guilt as you are, you would allow it all over again, over and over, if only you could live to look upon your love, even if only for a single moment. No? You would allow anything, anything that might save her for you, for your obscene enjoyment. No? Tell me that is not true. Tell me!’ Lu knew that it was true. ‘No, boy, you are not forgiven.’ It was true. ‘Yes?’ Lu nodded, bashful and excruciated. ‘Yes’, said Sod. ‘Now listen to me.’ Lu’s face had collapsed into pitiable misery, his face crimson in pain. ‘I said listen!’ shouted Sod, and slapped Lulach sharp in the cheek. ‘Do I have your attention? Yes? There is no choice. Not for you. And not for me either.’ Sod too knew that it was true. ‘We must wear the knowledge we bear. Each of us. That is God’s sentence. Yes?’ Sod could barely bring himself to say what he knew he must. ‘Listen to me! Your beloved lives. Do you hear me, boy? She lives. I thought to protect her, but I am not the man. There is no protecting. I say she lives.’ Lu looked upon the stranger as upon a saviour. ‘She lives?’ ‘Brimming with sin, like you!’ ‘Gru?’ ‘The same.’

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‘You have seen her?’ ‘I have saved her!’ ‘Oh my goodly man, my saint, my – ‘No! None of those! None of them!’ ‘I’m sorry. You said – ‘Hush! Forget not what I have told thee! Wear what you bear! Your guilt, I mean.’ Lu was nodding with wild disbelieving impatience. He would barter his soul for what this saint had promised. ‘I will take you to her. But do not expect happiness’, said Sod. ‘That will not be your lot. Love, without consolation. I say without! Now, come away – now!’ It was all that Lu could do not to try to fly. ∞

firstlings Lu stood in the hovel’s dank porch, obedient and panic-stricken, waiting for his saint to reappear. He had disappeared through a stiff leather curtain into some kind of cave or burrow, leaving Lu in this loamy vestibule, smelling the silt, his belly almost touching its close earthen walls. Lu felt dizzyingly on the threshold, neither in nor out, neither up nor down, neither permitted nor proscribed: suspended. He could still scarcely believe what he’d been told. She was here; to all intents and purposes, she was waiting. It wasn’t fortune that made him track the holy fool: it was fate! But what was he waiting for? Why must fate tarry so? He had been waiting for minutes now, minutes and minutes and minutes, he had counted to twenty fifty times or more, and still no sign of release. Lu could hear his godly saint’s voice, rising from the cellar, and just occasionally he could hear what must be his angel, loud then softer, louder then softer, then silent. He felt terrified by the silence. Surely she would agree to see him? It was fated, she must! Lu decided to close his eyes and count really slowly. ‘One.’

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He would get on his knees and pray but was scared he would get stuck. ‘Two.’ Have the voices stopped? ‘Three.’ Someone is coming! ‘Four.’ Something crawling – a beetle? A snake! ‘Five.’ A hand was touching his ankle. ‘Six.’ Ha? Did the hand speak? ‘Seven.’ ‘Keep counting!’ said the hand, its whisper hissed and harsh. ‘Eight.’ The hand held a candle, flickering over a face. ‘Nine.’ The face was pinched and strained and ashamed. ‘Ten.’ ‘Tomorrow!’ said the face, as the hand held tight to Lu’s ankle. ‘Eleven.’ ‘And tomorrow.’ ‘Twelve.’ ‘And tomorrow.’ ‘Thirteen.’ ‘Petty pace!’ ‘Fourteen.’ ‘Day to day!’ ‘Fifteen.’ ‘Recorded time!’ ‘Sixteen’ ‘Yesterdays!’ ‘Seventeen.’ ‘Dusty death!’ ‘Eighteen.’

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‘Walking shadow!’ ‘Nineteen.’ ‘Frets his hour!’ ‘Twenty!’ ‘And heard no more!’ Lu opened his eyes but the candle was out. Lu had never seen such dark. ‘The liars and slaves inherit!’ hissed the voice, as though from nowhere. ‘Always the liars and the slaves!’ The whisper sank into earth. Lu was too petrified to move or answer or even think. Quiet as a beetle, Sod scratched his way through Lu’s legs to his exit. The dark wasn’t dark enough. Those awful parting moments would not shut down in him. Her pleading face, her accusation, the stab in his heart when she said that now she knew, she knew again, that one such as he could never ever be trusted. He heard her voice saying Rose, and then friend – or was it fiend? – and then saying in tears to leave. He had tried to explain and she had not understood that he was not and could never be the man. Someday, surely, she would understand? He would never see her again. Sod crumbled the half-melted candle in his hand. Bah, he thought, it signifies nothing. Lu heard the latch lift and the door close. The leather curtain billowed and the faintest light crept in. He at once understood his harsh saint’s gift. The house was his! He shuffled ahead with the utmost caution, every moment expecting to fall or be pushed. His soul was twisting like a salamander. He pulled aside another curtain. A weak green light filled the space. She was sitting in an anchorite’s cave. Above her head was a crucifix that looked to have been scratched in the cave wall. Before her stood a crudely made table. On it was a little oil lamp, a smudged bottle, white bread, and some hardened meat in a wooden dish. Nothing but dregs remained of the wine. The goat or mutton was splotched with pallid fat. She was eating apathetically, wrapped in anonymous animal skin.

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He hardly would have recognized her. She was glum and pale. Her hair looked thicker but unkempt and greyer. Her body seemed enormous compared to her face, there looked to be no end to it. She looked at him looking at her but her face gave no expression. ‘Fatter than before?’ she said. Lu blinked and felt confused and joined his hands over his tummy. ‘Not you, you idiot.’ Lulach blushed and couldn’t think what to do. He moved his hands to his sides and then again over his belly. ‘Surprised you can bear the sight of me’, said Gru. ‘Oh, no’, started Lu. ‘That other one couldn’t. Could never bear butchers’ shops, he said. Wanted to get away before things turned ugly. Funny kind of man he turned out.’ She puffed out her cheeks and tried to smile. ‘Anyway. I’ve come down in the world, as you see.’ ‘No!’ ‘Serves me right.’ ‘No!’ ‘Anyway. . .come to play midwife?’ ‘I want to – I want to make amends.’ ‘For?’ ‘Everything.’ ‘Oh stop being such a Christian!’ ‘I killed my father!’ ‘It was an accident.’ Gru pushed at her mutton with a spoon; Lu wanted to get on his knees and do something, anything, to make things better. ‘Everything was an accident’, said Gru, and then as though to herself, ‘everything is’. ‘No!’ said Lu, ‘It was wrath. My wrath. That night – I thought that you – you know – did you? Macduff?’ ‘Did I what?’ ‘Did you tell him? About us, the bakery? I don’t mind if you did! But did you?’

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Gru sighed and put down her spoon. ‘I wish I hadn’t. It was my sisters. He blamed them. I was angry and – I’m sorry. I meant to stop him. I forgot.’ ‘We were wrong to do it.’ ‘No – you weren’t.’ ‘We weren’t?’ ‘No. He deserved it. For what he did after if not before. And for what he shall do. Although – ‘Although what?’ ‘It is true what they say.’ She smiled as though sadly. ‘His bread was very beautiful.’ ‘We were wrong, I knew it!’ ‘Oh Lu, wrong or not, it’s done. Listen – can we stop? I am tired. It is done. These deeds must not be thought after these ways.’ ‘No?’ ‘It will make us mad!’ She looked to him impossibly drained and sad. So she too had suffered for her acts? ‘God loves us all’, said Lu. Gru tried to smile. ‘He does! Truly!’ said Lu. ‘Good. Look – I’m tired. Come on, come here.’ Lu moved toward her. ‘Here’, she said, reaching an arm out and beckoning for Lu to come down. The hugeness of her hips, her chest, her tummy, her everything, it was almost too much to bear. He rested his head tentatively amid Gru’s lap, anywhere plausible and proximate. His tried to shut his eyes on the thoughts that came tumbling. She smelt of wine and piss and some third thing, he could not begin to know what. He shut his eyes still tighter but already he was flushing with confusion. Lu felt himself trembling, his gut heavy as dough, a sick metal on his tongue. He put a fist in his mouth to stop the scream that he knew was coming. ‘Oh what is it now?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘I’m tired, Lu. What is it?’

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‘I can’t tell you.’ ‘I don’t want to play games.’ ‘I can’t tell you.’ ‘Fine, then stop breathing like a pug.’ ‘It’s about you.’ ‘Fine.’ ‘I can’t tell you, I’ll go all red. You’ll think I’m a baby.’ ‘Lulach, please, I’m tired.’ ‘I want to be strong for you.’ ‘Fine. Tell me then.’ ‘But you’ll see me.’ ‘What?’ ‘I can’t say it when you can see me.’ Gru pushed him off in exasperation. ‘Oh you big baby! Go in the cupboard then!’ ‘It’s too small.’ She was joking but he was considering it seriously. ‘Crouch then! Crouch in the cupboard and say what you have to.’ The cupboard was a hollow in the earthen wall, covered by a stiff leather curtain. There was nothing in it but Gruoch’s cloak and an old candle. Lu sat heavily and awkwardly. He tried to cross his legs but there was no room. He got on his haunches, the unlit candle between his knees, and hid behind the leather. ‘Well then?’ said Gru. ‘It’s – it’s about the baby.’ ‘Mm?’ ‘Just – it. I mean. It’s there. Just that.’ ‘And?’ ‘Nothing. Just – ha – ‘What? I can’t hear you.’ ‘I said how.’ ‘How?’ Lulach nodded behind the wrinkled leather matting. He was too embarrassed to say it again. Instead he was gripping the candle like an icon. He took a match from his pocket and lit the candle.

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‘You know how, Lulach. Surely you are not such an innocent.’ Lu could smell the candle very close to his face. He bent toward it and started to pray. ‘You mean who?’ said Gru. ‘Is that what you mean?’ Lu smelt his hair incinerating. He could see her face smiling, her body opening, her thighs so swept. ‘It doesn’t matter who,’ said Gru, and then fiercely, ‘and anyway, I have forgotten.’ He saw her face smiling as her long white fingers held happily to a back. His brother’s back, it must have been his brother! ‘Come out now. I’m not going to talk about it.’ Grey smoke started spiralling from beneath the leather curtain. ‘Lulach! Lulach!’ She would get up but the babies were so heavy. ‘You haven’t set fire to yourself! Don’t be soft!’ When she smiled at me that evening, he thought, when I showed her where they boiled the baby seals, had she already smiled that way at him? Lu shook his head violently. The smell of burning was asphyxiating. He put his fingers down his throat and dry-retched. ‘Lulach! Don’t wear a heart so white! Put it out!’ A hack of cough came from the cupboard. The smoke smelt of old weed and sheep. ‘That’s enough Lu. I’m going to sleep. Stay in there if you want to.’ The curtain opened. Lu was black with soot, his hands and wrists thick with molten wax, hardening all the time into a dirty yellow membrane. Across his chest and shoulders were the tattered remains of Gru’s cloak, still smouldering at the edges. His lank white hair was burnt reddy brown at the ends. ‘Oh you silly big bear’, she said, more softly now. He began to crawl out, still holding the candle and the cloak. He shuffled on his knees toward the bed. He could not yet look at her face. ‘I’m sorry’, he said. Gru half-smiled. ‘Oh come here, you big baby, give me a hug.’ Lu moved sheepishly inside her embrace.

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‘I’m sorry.’ ‘Forget all that now. We have to make do. Things without remedy and all that. Now rest, it’s late.’ It wasn’t long before Lulach was asleep, snoring loudly. Fat lot of help he’ll be, thought Gru, when push comes to shove. And he’s far too young. His head was heavy on Gru’s belly. The babies were moving about, as uncomfortable as she was, desperate she supposed to get out. Gru shifted heavily in her seat. There was too much to think about. Rose, Sod – whoever that was. Only yesterday they were laughing over pea soup like there was no tomorrow. It occurred to her she was one person with him, quite another with Lulach. With Lu she was less a child, more a – she hardly dared allow it to herself – a parent. And now this new mother business; it felt like she’d been taken hostage. She began to caress her fat belly and fat thighs. She barely recognized herself. Maybe she wasn’t anyone at all. Macduff was old but at least with him she had felt – something – unafraid – bristling or something – she didn’t know why. He made her stronger. Taller, somehow. And Fyn, good God, Fyn! She had squeezed and squeezed him from her mind but there he was still, reducing her to nothing, a doll, a slave. What the mower does to the grass, he does to my thoughts and me. And she would be mown all over if only she could be. It didn’t make any sense. One thing with one man, another with another; it was like she, she, didn’t really exist. And now alone, or as good as, she wanted nothing but to be empty of all of it, of all of them. Things without remedy should be without regard, so she had heard. So she would believe. She was too tired. Gruoch had sunk into sleep. Lulach busied himself lighting logs, walking about on tiptoe, examining the sleeping beloved. He was studying the faint showing of sweat on her upper lip, the shattered flush on her cheek, her eyelids flickering in dream. Hadn’t everything, every moment of every day, been preparation for this? He would forgive her anything.

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She groaned in her sleep and he jumped like a criminal. Lu assumed a lotus position, and blew out his little light. He decided to think, very deliberately, of the twins in her belly. She had told him she could feel four feet, kicking like swimmers against her gut. Lu imagined instead a pair of roses, red roses, glowing on a stem and throbbing gently, each a folded world of knowledge. He laid his palms together, raised them in front of his face, and started to pray. He prayed with every resource of his spirit. Any day now, his love would give birth to two new lives. He would hold her to his heart like an icon; he would love all that she loved; he would hold her to himself forever. Yes. ‘Aaagh!’ It was Gru, slipping on the wet floor. ‘Quick, Lu, towels, towels!’ Lu came running from the next room, a small knife in one hand, a turnip in the other. ‘Towel, Lu, towel!’ Lu’s face was pink and frightened. ‘Oh my Lord’, he said softly, ‘water.’ ‘Yes, water, and more than that soon. Towels, quick!’ ‘Where has all the water come from?’ ‘Oh, God, Lulach, you useless –aaagh!’ Before she could complete the curse Gru had collapsed onto the straw. She was gripping her belly, her teeth clenched in pain. ‘Oh, dear’, said Lu, ‘Let me stroke you.’ Lu moved toward the bed where Gru lay sweating and grimacing. His hands were absurdly full. ‘Get some towels, quick, and heat some water. Quick, now!’ Gru ripped the knife from Lu’s hand and turned him forcibly around. ‘Now!’ she gasped, ‘the bastards are coming!’ Gru was on the bed and moaning. Ropes were alive like snakes inside her, straining and tightening and causing her body to spasm.

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‘Quickly! They’re coming, I tell you, the buggers are coming!’ The snakes tightened their hold. She fell back and still they tightened. She was afraid the snakes might break her in two. Lulach re-entered with a huge clay bowl, water sloshing over its brim. He lowered the bowl shakily to the floor, afraid even to look at where his loved one was gnarling and writhing, knees in the air and fist in her mouth. ‘A towel, a towel!’ she shouted briskly. Grabbing one from Lu’s limp hand she twisted it tight and bit. Gru’s gown rode up her belly as she tried to butt the low ceiling with her pelvis. ‘Gnhnhnhnhhng!’ Lu was shaking as he mopped the ditchwater into his dripping towel. He could not look. ‘Gnhnhnhnhhng!’ All he could think was that a strange swamp smell had filled his air. ‘Gnhnhnhnhhng!’ His gaze was fixed in the distance and he had started quietly chanting. ‘Fillet of a fenny snake, in the cauldron boil and bake . . .’ ‘Gnhnhnhnhhng!’ ‘. . . slivered in the moon’s eclipse, nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips . . .’ ‘Gnhnhnhnhhng!’ Gru was breathing rapidly, in short bursts now, her torso for a moment relaxed. She rose on her elbows and assessed the head that lay face up and dead still in her lap, fat and round and pink. ‘. . . birth-strangled bab, ditch-delivered by a drab . . .’ ‘Lu, Lu! the knife!’ He was not hearing her at all. Gru cast blindly on the floor for the paring knife. Suddenly she was flattened again. ‘Gnhnhnhnhnhnhhng!!’ ‘. . . make the gruel thick and slab . . .’ Her body mightily convulsed. ‘Gnhhnnhhnhnhnhnh!’

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And with one move the entire baby came flushing out. Her breath was heavy and she was gasping for fuel but she had given up on Lu. She picked up the baby, sliced the cord in a trice, and dipped it once into the cooling bowl of water by his side. The water coiled brown and the baby boy started bawling. She pinched away the mask of mucus and blood, and quick as a flash laid the new life on her trembling tummy. In seconds the birthcake was pushed out, a black pudding, splatting like a cowpat into the bowl. Gru’s hair was wet and her shoulders still shook but already her milk was rippling. She had started to tremble from her shoulders and down. Surely there was not still more to do. She looked at the shapeless little skull on her chest. She didn’t recognize a thing. Where in hell’s name did it come from? Now from somewhere deep below, it seemed miles away, she could feel a great flushing shitsurge rising. ‘Uuugh!’ she grunted, and opened wider than she could have thought possible. She let her insides flood from her like gravy. In moments another body slipped out, smooth as a flounder. Once more Gru clipped the twig and handed the second child carelessly onto her trunk. She barely seemed to notice as the second boy too started blindly sucking. Lulach had stopped his murmuring but now felt simply afraid. His body had taken on a strange sympathetic tremble. He wanted to get to her face, without having to see it all down there, but he didn’t quite know how. He stumbled onto the bed-edge, and at that exact moment Gru groaned, drew her legs up, and abruptly released the second placenta. Out it plopped, straight onto the palm of the startled Lu. ‘Ahh!’ he yelped, and jumping to his feet scooped it in one frightened movement into the bowl by the bedside. The water splashed as the afterbirths combined into a single jellied mass. ‘They don’t bite, you fool’, she said, ‘at least not yet.’ Lu felt startled and ashamed. ‘I’m sorry!’ he mumbled, but all he could think was how lovely she was looking, her eyes turned weird blue and all of that hair, thicker than earth.

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‘I’m sorry’, Lu said again, trying to muster the courage to touch her clammy brow. But Gru was looking nowhere. The next morning Gruoch awoke feeling like a single compound bruise. Somewhere inside the blood of this bruise floated a heart and brain, both shrunk to the size of blackberries. She groaned and dully remembered that the man by her bedside must be Lulach. Her head toppled to one side. She looked at the son on each breast with slack-mouthed exhaustion, then back at the man. None of it felt right. Lu had sworn to make amends. He was looking down, as from a great height, on three sprawled consciousnesses. He saw two new moons of love, revolving around their mother earth. He saluted this strange new world, so much bigger, so much better than the old. He felt a benediction rising on his tongue. ‘Rejoice!’ he abruptly crowed, ‘rejoice! I see God’s love pouring on us all!’ His voice felt free and loose and he rushed to the door to let the light in. ‘It’s a new day! And here are two new human beings! Rejoice! There’s nothing bigger in all the world!’ Lu snatched up one boy and carried him confidently toward the light. The boy clawed in the beam like a tiny lion. Lu laughingly returned him to his mother’s breast and scooped up the first child’s brother. This one was blind and chubby. He bathed in the light, stretching into sunray. Dancing motes of dust fluttered and fell in celebration. Lulach kissed the boy’s soft shoulder and whispered in his ear, ‘O thou salmon in a seam of gold!’ He restored him to the mother, looked down again on the trinity they made, and dropped to his knees. Gruoch was not looking but he couldn’t help himself. ‘O shamrock, in whom three are one!’ he gushed, and looked to raise his prayer to heaven. ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit doth rejoice in God my saviour!’ Lu kissed Gru’s hands, pressed them earnestly, longing to speak the thoughts that so ravished, of the new life they would

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forge together, a wholly new life, not as man and wife – not that, not yet – but something new, their own entirely – something that would show the world the way. Right now she was tired – and he would be patient – but oh, he thought to himself, oh, life is alive! ∞

milk for gall Gruoch was gazing at the ceiling, impenetrably silent, as the babes’ little fists bunched tight to each breast. Her hands were behind her head and her eyelids sinking. She could not rise to speech but her dreams came with turgid regularity. She saw massed armies of amoeba, rising like ghastly white pudding and waiting to be fed. She saw clouds of weeping newborn hoisted and horsed on the winds, whirling around her, wailing their demands. She saw a mountain of slaughtered mammal, deer and horse, dog and cow, and on top of them children, moaning with hunger, drizzled with blood, and every last one wearing Gruoch’s own facemask, with hateful eyes and lips bruised from kissing and cheeks like bitten nipples. ‘No!’ she yelled, plucking herself free from the boy’s boneless gums and dashing him to the floor. The watching Lu leaped up and collected the little chubby, unhurt but screaming. The second boy battened on for dear life as Gruoch returned to restless sleep. And so it went on, with Lulach holding the family together. He wiped the babies’ bums and the mother’s brow. He emptied the slops, cleaned the soiled towels, provided meat and grain and vegetables. Barely a word was exchanged. Again and again Lu tried to raise Gru from prostration, but for weeks she would do nothing but lie in bed, hugging her chest and sweating. She spilt with milk but was utterly careless of it. Her boys seemed barely to exist. One day, as Lu was dabbing her forehead, she spoke.

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‘I can’t.’ Her voice was small and cold. Lu bent closer and wiped her as gently as he could. ‘Love – love – it’s all right, it’ll be all right.’ ‘I can’t. Please. Take them.’ ‘Love, you’re tired, I will look after you.’ ‘I can’t.’

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‘We can.’ Her eyes opened. ‘I can’t do it. It’s not right. They’re not – right.’ ‘You’re tired, that’s all.’ ‘I’m not right, I’m not. Nothing is right! I’m not here, do you see?’ ‘Love – ‘Take them. I don’t want them. Please. Otherwise I’ll – ‘Love – ‘I’ll do something terrible.’ Lulach was too stunned to speak. ‘The smell – it’s too much!’ ‘We will clean more – clean them five times a day, more, whatever you want!’ ‘No! Not that smell. Just the smell! Milk, vinegar, whatever it is.’ Her body started up, her eyes red and wild. ‘Their smell! I can’t take it. I don’t want to be there.’ ‘Where, love?’ ‘There.’ ‘Where?’ ‘There! Where they’ve taken me. The smell. I don’t want it! Just take them –please – you’re so much better at being a mum than me. I am a bad mum. A bad one.’ ‘Gru, love, please – ‘I always have been. I’m sorry. I have to get out.’ Gru had thrown off the bedclothes and was stumbling with arms outstretched toward the cupboard. ‘Oh, love, please – ‘I have to get out of here.’ ‘Gru! Don’t!’ ‘I have to get out!’ She pulled open the cupboard, having forgotten that her cloak was a charred mess. ‘Ha!’ she cried, ‘naked we come, naked we leave.’ She tottered out of the bedroom and into the parlour where once upon a time Sod used to sit sewing.

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‘No!’ shouted Lulach, ‘your babes! And – and’ – he could not think what to say – ‘you have nothing to wear!’ At once Gru drew a curtain, and revealed Sod’s parting gift: a row of dazzling cloaks, azure, emerald, vermilion, harlequin. Gru carelessly plucked a deep green cloak from the hanger. ‘No!’ shouted Lu, ‘the boys!’ ‘Leave them. I don’t want them. Leave them!’ He would do anything she bid, anything, but not that! And with a babe like a ball in each arm Lu hurried outside in the wake of his beloved. Lu heavily followed as Gru walked deep into the wood. The moment she hit the fresh air she had started to weep. ‘Look at me’, she said bitterly, ‘more tears than milk. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Weird sister, worse mum!’ Gru sat on a felled log and wiped her eyes roughly. Her face was puffed from crying. Lu drew up next to her, at a safe distance along the log, and waited. Not a bird sang as he sat and waited in the lifeless wood. Eventually she spoke. ‘Do you think I’m hard, Lu?’ ‘No!’ ‘I used to be soft. I did. It’s just I was so young. I would have been a good mam then.’ Lu didn’t understand what she was saying. He swaddled the babies in his capacious breast. He felt both strong and afraid. ‘Please love’, said Lu, ‘tell me what is happening.’ A yellow light had lit Gru’s puffy skin. She rose and walked a few paces into a clearing, her gown dappled by the floating shadows of leaves. ‘I am older than you think, Lu. Sometimes I feel a thousandyears-old.’ Gru’s head had been downcast but now she looked straight at Lu. She took a breath and blew out and spoke. ‘A long time ago, I had a baby. I was too young. It happened in war. I shouldn’t have loved him but I did.’

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The twins were crying but she paid them no heed. ‘I lost him. I should have told you this before. It was at the castle. Yes, yours. That is why I came to Dunsinane. I lost him there when the soldiers came. All I had of him was his little caul – the little sheath he was born in. I kept it on my stomach. I wanted to give him good burial but I never did. And then, when it happened, that night, I forgot him. How could I do that? I left his caul in the attic. I am a bad mother. How could I forget him, Lu?’ Lulach was too stunned to speak. ‘I look at these two and I keep seeing his face and smelling his smell. I mean I don’t even know if it’s his smell. Just the smell of his little caul. It might still be there!’ He couldn’t believe a word he was hearing. ‘But love – the castle is a ruin. There is nothing there. Here is where you are needed.’ ‘Lu – I don’t care. I have to go. I keep thinking this one thing. That whatever is there, whatever it is, is all that remains. That will have to do. I don’t expect you to understand. I am going.’ The green of the glade had turned brown. ∞

into the sere The castle was a blackened ruin, half hidden by mist. Gru walked into it like a revenant. She moved up what remained of the stairs toward what remained of her attic. Now that she was here she had no hope at all, absolutely none, of finding her old caul intact amid the ash. She ghosted past stumps and charcoal, recognizing nothing. The door to the attic was black and ajar. Wind stirred through the gap. She could smell something ancient, like an abandoned abattoir, meat and sweat and urine. Her mouth was nauseous and the ground very far off. Nonetheless she lifted a foot and pushed through the door.

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A burnt man was slumped against the wall. The roof above him was splintered and charred. Damp wooden beams jutted out at angles where the roof tiles ended. From floor to ceiling the walls were swept with black; at certain points they seemed to crimple, like a nervous chin. A jaw-shaped hole was blown in the west wall, beneath it the steepest precipice of Dunsinane. There was a light persistent tapping sound. It was the drip of water, coming slowly down from a hole in the roof directly above the man. At intervals he held his palm beneath the water, watched it laboriously overflow, and then rubbed the palms with slow violence. Gru couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Could it be him? Could it possibly be? ‘You?’ she said aloud, for the moment transfixed. Grim? Grim? Who else could it be? Here was all that remained. ‘Grim?’ she said uncertainly, ‘is that you?’ It had to be. Who else could it be? She moved a step closer, and then a step more. She was three feet away when she saw the damage. ‘Oh you poor baby!’ He looked straight at her, she at him, and then his head turned down and he shut his eyes. His nose was quivering. The floor around was covered in small pale flickers of skin. On his chest and shoulders there spread a fine layer of powder. In his cheeks, a dense intensity of bruised spots. A birthmark on his forehead seemed to peel. His neck was raw, as though sacs of water were bubbling from beneath the surface. His left hand hesitated over the wounds, touching his neck gently, compulsively. The nails were black and bitten and irregularly long. He started scratching his forearm, gritting his teeth and ripping at flesh and losing his eyes entirely. She heard a tiny moan. ‘You poor lamb.’ She knelt beside him, took his head in her arms, and kissed a small cut on his scalp. He winced. There were places she dared not look. She felt an urge to shut parts of herself down.

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You could have too many senses – this she knew – each of them alive and drawing from the stock. She needed to be as fine and exact as a scalpel. Or perhaps a needle, miraculously light, with a tiny eye at one end for her thread. Somewhere in her mind was everything she had ever done, and every last one of them was asking to be put to bed. She knew what she had to find. His two pretty navels. But she felt terrified. What if it wasn’t him? What if it was! She was stroking his forehead with the tips of four fingers. Lightly, lightly, she thought to herself, lightly as a brush of oil. Against his leprous flush her fingers looked slim and fine. Her nails were mellow pink and their half-moons shimmered. She felt something retreating in him, some angry thing beneath the skin. She weaved slow patterns, seeking the rhythms of sleep. She looked intently at his face-skin, allowing it alone to fill her mind. She was searching the freedoms in virtue, lanes and lanes of it, hedges and green fields, plains all the way to the horizon. She stared at a small burnt section of cheek. Even this was almost more than she could take. ‘Have you eaten anything? You have to eat. What do you want? Cheese, bread?’ She looked at his burning skin. You poor boy, you poor burnt boy! ‘Did the flames hurt a lot, la?’ she asked, very quietly. He winced as she nearly touched his neck. She was bending closer to his wounds, to his roasted throat and his forearms crisped over like a giant auburn birthmark. She felt the rudeness of invasion; yes, we must live our lives like mantis on a pond, more silent and delicate than a caress. ‘I am here’, she whispered fervently. She glanced down at his tattered shirt, more than half-afraid it would show her what she dreaded. Again the terror of revelation froze her rigid. What if it is him? What if it isn’t? Better to live in the if than risk the abyss of knowledge. Outside in the cart Lu was getting restless. The day was drawing down, the babies were getting cold, surely she should be done by

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now. He looked at his old burnt house and swallowed the vague feeling of sickness it provoked. Fears are traitors; the house was dead. Lu lifted the kids to his shoulders and started inside. She found wine in abundance but there was no food anywhere, just jars of seeds and weevils. She returned to the attic and placed wine and seeds on the floor. She knelt and stroked his sleepless head. ‘I am here. No words if you don’t want them. Why don’t you eat, la. Eat, then sleep.’ He was motionless as she poured the wine. To her surprise he took it. She grabbed a palmful of seeds and picked out the crap and offered them. He accepted a few and nibbled at them like an apprentice bird. She was again a mother, absurdly grateful for the tiniest motions of acceptance. His eyes were closed but there was movement of lip. A lick, another, a dry swallow. For a moment his hair caught the light. It was parched red, split by fire into a thousand wispy ends. What colour had it been? She could not remember. His eyes were shut very tight, his face crisped and brittle. He looked so battered, old before his time. He looked a thousand years old, or like a skinned seal, an ancient skinned seal with a brow of thunder. If only she could bathe him, she thought, what could they not overcome? Salt, she thought, the man needs salt. Short torture of tears, then healing. She could stand above his frame, think for five short seconds, and shower him with rain. All that he had suffered, all that she had done, all could be plucked from memory like a root. ‘Oh, dear-la, try to stop scratching, it can’t be good for you.’ She studied his chest beneath the torn shirt, scarred by eczema. Could this really be her boy? He didn’t feel anything like him. But then how would she possibly know? Gru hovered over him, searching for the right place to squat. Oh, she thought, the stupid delicacies of care! Why could she not just seize him, and rock him, and counter his violence with

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a tiny piece of her own? She felt weak and inexperienced, flapping inside herself for resource, for anything useful. She knelt closer. In the muffling gloom she could barely make out the one eye; but one was enough. God, how lonely his eye, how ochre his egg! She thought exactly that without clear knowledge why. Weak yolk, broken vein, jaundiced white, how close his desolation! She smelt his smell and cursed her delicate senses. God, woman, blow down, won’t you, blow down! Curse the nausea of delicacy. Curse it and overcome. One, two, three, and dive. She fell into his body like a wave. She was closer than ever before but she needn’t look just yet. She buried her nose in his bosom and she sighed for a kind of consuming. Lulach really was getting a bit worried now. He had promised himself he wouldn’t interrupt, he would let things take their course. But the twins were missing her, he could tell they were. Still, he would not rush things. She would be in her old attic, he thought, sleeping. It was what she needed. The day was long, and then there would be another. Gru so wished he would sleep but Grim looked as far from sleep as from peace. He had been nibbling seeds and sipping the wine for what seemed hours, fidgeting and scratching all the while. Gru felt herself drifting and nodding, but then what harm in that? He wasn’t going anywhere. She lifted her eyelids and watched as Grim held out his burnt left arm and peeled off a layer from its purpled skin. The skin shrivelled and dropped to join the thousand fellow particles on the floor. She heard him chewing and sucking as her head dropped onto the floor. She tried to stay awake but it was so lovely to doze. A voice was murmuring and all she needed was to nod. ‘This is all there is’, said the voice. ‘There is sin. And nothing more.’ Gru rolled in her sleep and was nodding. She cupped her knees and seemed to feel a warmth coming up behind.

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‘This is it. Nothing can come from sin. No possibility. Precisely no possibility.’ A beautiful face was smiling at her, a tiny gap between his teeth. ‘Life will not come from death. Sin is death. Nothing comes from death. This is death. Do you hear?’ said the voice, louder now. Gru’s eyes opened. Milky light was streaming where the wall used to be. How long had she dozed? Next to her was Grim, his voice speaking mechanically. ‘Only death comes from death. It is very logical. That is the only consolation.’ Everything about him was an emptied sack. She saw his eyes widening in the face of the streaming evening light. And all at once Grim screamed. ‘Aaagh!’ He was pointing in horror toward the doorway. ‘Which of you have done this? Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?’ There in the streaming light was a huge white ghost, with three heads, each of them grotesquely fleshly, with wispy white hair and bright pink lips. The eyes of none of them could be made out. Around each head was a corona of light, bright white angelic light, glazing off into three shimmering haloes. ‘Never shake thy gory locks at me!’ Now the ghost spoke. It was the middle ghost, the big one. His mouth was a dull hole and still he had no eyes. ‘I thought you were dead’, said the ghost. Grim stared mesmerized at the vision. ‘I thought you were dead’, repeated the ghost. Grim was amazed that the afterworld had words. ‘I thought you were dead but you are not!’ ‘The time has been’, Grim said in a strange shrill voice, his body rising and moving toward the ghosts, ‘when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end. But now, they rise again.’

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Two of the ghosts started shrieking. The big ghost drew his confederates into his chest, and as he did so his blazing white head changed before Grim’s horrified eyes. It was his little brother Lulach, holding two new babes as if he owned them! Gru saw her babies and how scared they looked and could not bear to watch. She wished she could hold them and quieten them but she knew she must not. There was no knowing what Grim would do. Grim looked like death. His eyes were ochre wastes and his cheeks were trembling insanely. He buried his face in his hands, plucked at his cheeks, and then blindly grabbed toward the apparition. ‘The only life from death is sin!’ he cried. But the apparition had gone. At once Grim seized the cowering Gru by the throat. ‘Whose sin are they?’ His fingers pressed her gizzard. ‘Whose, I say? I have never seen fouler faces. They were red and flaccid, like unhoused brains. Yours?’ He pressed harder on her throat. ‘Yours!’ Gru was weeping and coughing and trying to nod. Grim threw her to the ground. ‘Yours’, he said once more, quietly now, and started nodding his head. He slumped onto his haunches. His head was nodding like an automaton. Gru bit her lips and looked at this cold burnt man. There was always punishment and this was hers, again. She felt weak with hunger, of stomach and soul both. If it is him, she reasoned, if it is, he is right to claim his rights. A son would have a right to his disgust, would he not? ‘I’m sorry’, she said. She started smothering his blasted arm in kisses. Flecks of skin were sticking to her lips as she puckered up and down its shredded purple. The burn looked hard as a plate but flaked into pieces like pastry. Disgust was all that remained.

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Grim said nothing. He was remembering, long ago, a shiver in his scalp, every time the maid passed him; even when he shaved himself bald still he felt the quills stand on end. ‘Look not so pale’, said Gru. He was almost sainted then, thought Grim, so close was he to the source of love. ‘Come, give me your hand’, she murmured, her lips locking upon his bloodied wrist wound, ‘let me stroke you into sleep’. His love was so pure and terrible that murder would have been perfection. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘you are feverish, sleep’. He would have killed, and in killing been alive to it all. But he had missed the main chance. He had entered like a saint, and then sprawled before him was a murdered old man, his veins spewing like straw from a mattress. And this perfect woman, open as a wound, and his perfect brother, gloating silently of invasion. And even then, even then, as his head filled to the brim with religious pity, this perfect woman was warming the egg for two new sinners. ‘Enough!’ cried Grim, and smashed Gru hard in the side of her head. She fell to the ground, holding her ear. Above her was this maniac, reddened with rashes, his shirt hanging in shreds. In the middle of the scars was a single folded navel, brushed by ginger hair, barely visible. She should have known. There was no returning. There was no such thing as if, only is, is, is. Gru closed her eyes and felt warm tears welling, from relief or grief she couldn’t know. She heard her babies crying down below. She should never have brought them to this house of the dead. Grim had limped over to where two rafters gave way to the emptiness of sky. He looked over the stables and grounds, down the hill, past the wood’s eastern fringe, all the way to the sea, sitting like dull metal in the distance. His thought was bitter and cold. Yes, it had all been so very logical. He had leapt beyond the ethical. He had done it not for marriage but for the absolute. Yes. He would have been married to the absolute.

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Yes. Instead he fell upon the tawdry detritus of sexual obsession, and he stabbed his brother like a sleeping ferret. Yes. He was the saint who sacrificed the ferret. Or no – the ferret who inherited himself. The self-born weasel. Yes. It was humiliation, abomination. Yes. He had leapt and now he was lost. Yes. There was only one thing for it. ∞

the casing air It was sundown, and Grim was picking his way across a ploughed field, thrusting his headless broom-handle out in front. He was a scorched thing overwhelmed in brown. Brown is what I am, Grim thought, the ruin of all colour. A soft rain fell and the brown got browner. Grim thought of the lives of the men who toiled in it. He thought of all the life that was buried in it, continents of insects. He would not live to see the wheat raise up its many pinnacled triumph; he would not live to see more yellow. If only he could have burned. When the flames had come they rose like petals and he swooned. Inside their heat he had been clay in a kiln that promised to fire him into form. But try as he might he would not burn. Everything flattened, his skin grew a plate, and the skirt of flame merely guttered into ash. Grim dropped his stick and started to flay his skin with his nails. He was better at this than any man in the world. Let that be his distinction – the sole red thing in an endless sea of brown. The sun was dropping like a copper coin near the horizon. Grim was left looking into what seemed a clayey void. This field, he remembered, was Macduff’s. Everything was Macduff’s. The field’s furrows were ditches, waiting to swallow whole armies of men. Grim sank in the brown earth, half-asleep and delirious. Bleeding clumps hung from his uncut nails. He wiped his brow with stubby perpendicular wrists. Now a white light moved

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above the brown ground, and he saw advancing across the field a figure in a moonbeam. Grim was looking into the black eyes of his murdered brother. The spirit grabbed Grim’s wrist and piloted his hand into the chest wound. Grim’s digits groped after knowledge of death. I thought to have murdered father, but I murdered you instead. The ghost stepped back and shook out unexpected wings. The wings shone in the young moonlight, spangled with looping dew. Grim narrowed his eyes for a better look. He saw Fyn’s clipped moustache and locks of jet. But in place of nose and mouth was a beak the colour of unripe wheat, a beak faintly glazed and ceramic. The wound gleamed more and more blue, like some strange collecting place for light. Undead eyes fixed Grim’s and the small beak moved in song. You are the bird who comes too fast! You would overwhelm the past! Raising its wings around its head, the ghost performed a feathery revolution and stamped its three-pronged feet. But you will overwhelm yourself, And perish on the beachy shelf Again the ghost lifted up its wings, danced another swift circle, and stomped. That spreads itself beneath your dreams To gather in your dying screams. It spanned its wings to their full extent, flapped them twice, and vanished. Seconds later it reappeared on the horizon, small and gleaming like a fairy. Grim followed. It was no longer a strain to traverse Macduff’s overploughed field.

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It was like walking on air. Grim arrived at the bluff and found a single straggling tree. He grabbed the slender trunk and swung like a boy over the precipice. Even the green one was brown. Grim looked down and down and down. He imagined the crush of jaw as face hits strand. He felt his body turning to mince, felt himself chewing his own teeth, his scrupulous nostrils ravaging into brain. And then he felt himself becoming corpse, quiet as a bundle of linen, as the frenzy inside petered to a halt. So be it, thought Grim. I will drink the bloody draught, bone goblet and all. It had started to drizzle. Grim looked up and saw a drop descending. He stuck out his tongue; one last time he would taste the liquid drop. As the raindrop bounced Grim saw figures dancing in the splash. Dead father? Dead brother? Will you two never be quiet! He held out his palm and gathered another raindrop. Perched upon the fine tracery of veins, the raindrop seemed for a moment to stay miraculously entire. A drop of thought; a tiny translucent brain; a brain-drop . . . My last, my very last, thought Grim, and then it is gone. One more drop tumbled, large and lonely. Grim caught it flush in his hand. He turned his palm over, and waved. He peered over the rocky shelf and tried to see the drop fall. He could see nothing; but nor could he hear pain. So the void is kind; it is nothing to suffering. Grim laid hold of the tree once more. His flesh was trembling but he was not afraid. The void is kind. He was shifting ever closer to the edge, but his arms remained locked around the trunk in a backward clutch. He imagined letting go – one, two, free! – but still they held onto life. A thought shadowed across Grim’s brow. What if the silence isn’t silent after all? What if the sack hit the floor and out he stepped, a see-through miracle, rising like mist from a

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rock? What if he stepped over his corpse, surprised by his thirst, aware of various itches, and then suddenly – and how sudden this suddenly is – memory joined with mind and he realized that here, yet again, was life . . . ‘No’, he said softly, ‘no’. He had done that already. He had long been the walking shadow. The void will be kind. Grim looked to the watery horizon where sea touched sky and each disappeared. The sun went down and the scene was struck with reddish gold. The warm waves blushed with wine. It was a beautiful world for leaving. Grim looked back at his life. He saw it all in one fell swoop. It had been absolute, perfect failure. ‘And my failure has saved me for this!’ He let go of the tree and breasted the void. ∞

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the crack of doom The hooded boy was walking in the wastes and plains of his land. He was scarcely Lulach now; he was scarcely anyone at all. Gru had taken her babes and without a word she had left. Now he walked for twelve hours a day with a staff and a wooden box. At intervals the cargo within his box clanged like a bone. He had been walking this way for weeks and weeks, filing his mind down to about twelve thoughts. ‘If only we were completely dead to self. If each hour we could root out one fault, we should soon become perfect. Let us lay the axe to the root, that being cleansed from our passions we may possess our souls in peace.’ He had not seen one inch of his body for seventy sunsets, except for the nibs of his fingers when he chewed the coarsegrained bread that sustained him. It was hard to put down the thoughts that tortured. ‘Whoever loves much, does much. Remain silent, and be not among men. There is no peace in the heart of a worldly man. In the perspective of infinites, all finites are equal.’ He would wake each day in some barn or outhouse and sigh to think of another day’s roaming. ‘You may not live until evening. You must live a dying life. Look up or down, without you or within, and everywhere you will find the Cross.’ 227

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The world was blank and uncreated as Lulach inched up or down the coast. ‘It is safer to obey than to rule.’ The reeds would pass on left and right and every last one looked the same. ‘Not what I will, but what thou wilt.’ The weight in his box slid and shifted as the hills became fields became hills. ‘If only we were completely dead to self, if only we were completely dead, if only . . .’ The holy if was lonely. Famished and exhausted, Lu arrived at a hostelry. He heard a vibration, followed the sound, and when he stepped through the curtain there was a gingerman playing a guitar. The hostess brought him soup and a spoon and disappeared behind a screen. The soup burnt his tongue and smelt of small meat and vinegar. Lulach sat back and allowed the music through him. Oh what a dainty pleasure is this To ride in the air When the moon shines fair, And feast and sing and toy and kiss! There was something in the sound, some memory of pain in the pluck of the catguts, but the words meant less than nothing. There escaped a faint sound of sobbing from behind the drapes. The gingerman smiled. His teeth were very rotten. He strangled the frets on the fingerboard and started strumming, the sound harsh and lewd. Here comes one down to fetch his dues, A kiss, a cull, a sip of blood, And why thou stay’st so long I muse, I muse, Since the air’s so fresh and good?

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Lu had had enough. The soup had an aftertaste of mouse and this gingerman was a nasty fraud. But as he rose to leave the gingerman leapt off his stool. ‘Speak!’ he said, smiling with russet teeth. ‘Demand!’ he said, bowing down to his knees, ‘we’ll answer’. ‘Soup’, replied Lulach. ‘Soup!’ shouted the gingerman, impossibly delighted. He capered to where Lulach was sitting, took his wooden bowl, and danced through the nearby curtain. Still there were sniffs and sobs in the near distance. The gingerman returned seconds later, the bowl filled to overflowing. Lulach started spooning it into his mouth. The soup was still too hot to taste on the tongue; only once swallowed did some savour remain, of charred vinegar, wet meat, salty reed. The gingerman relished his every mouthful. ‘Good stock?’ Lulach raised an eyebrow but did not otherwise reply. A knotty thread of meat had caught in his front teeth. The aftertaste intensified as he licked at the stuck strand. Never had food tasted so dead. ‘It is good stock’, the gingerman repeated. ‘The broth is foul, sir, and you know it.’ ‘Foul, sire?’ The gingerman tucked his head into his shoulders and with angled eyes searched for Lulach beneath the hood. ‘Please, sweet prince, come and see.’ ‘I have seen too much.’ ‘See more, sire – here, through here.’ He drew the curtain open. It smelt viciously of vinegar. Steam shot through, and stronger now came the cries of women. ‘You think you can shock me, friend?’ Lulach was surprised at his own unused voice, harder and deeper than he remembered. ‘I have supped full with horrors.’ The gingerman took Lulach’s arm and led him through the curtain. ‘Here, sire – we have been waiting – look up, look up!’

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The room was long and steaming and the air appeared to waft. Along its length the same sight repeated over and over: a woman, kneeling, head bowed, over a body laid out horizontal on a blanket of reeds. The line stretched out so far that steam obscured its end, the most distant figures seeming to float in watery gas. Most of the women were murmuring or weeping. As the steam blew and lifted Lulach saw that every corpse was bandaged only to the waist. Torsos and heads were naked and, what is more, open. Organs were missing beneath flapping satchels of skin. ‘Scotland, sire, is dying’, whispered the gingerman. ‘Macduff is taking us all. Revenges burn in wounded breasts. Their dear causes would excite even the mortified to the grim alarm.’ Lulach was looking at the body nearest the cauldron. It alone had no woman tending it. The flesh was bloated and its arms were black. The chest was cut open and the ribcage smashed and splintered. Where heart should be heart had gone. Lulach turned slowly to the gingerman. ‘In there?’ he asked, motioning toward the gruel. ‘We need it, sire, for our vitals. It is heart’s blood. Macduff has no heart; we have many!’ Lulach fingered the viscera beneath the ribs. All was black and pungent and laced with vinegar. ‘I found him in my fishing boat. In my net he was. I thought he were a porpoise!’ ‘You haven’t closed his eyes.’ ‘I daren’t, sire. His eyes were open and his mouth was open and I daren’t touch a thing.’ ‘Close his eyes.’ ‘I daren’t, sire. We took his heart for the broth but his eyes were watching, we swore it, and we won’t mess with that. Strange forces are abroad. They say Macduff has a secret Queen, and two bairns, and plans to rule till the crack of doom.’ ‘A Queen?’ ‘Ay, and two black-eyed bairns!’ A huge rope knotted in Lulach’s belly. ‘Leave me’, he said. He cast around and raised his voice. ‘All of you – leave me!’

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The gingerman and the women scurried from the long-room. Lulach could feel the rope tightening. His fingers touched a protruding rib. Its end was sharp and the bone was strong. Lulach snapped it like a branch and secreted it in his belt. His strength was thrilling and strange. Now he touched his brother’s cheek. His brother Grim, never grimmer than now. His cheek was caved in on one side and the nose had disappeared. His hair was matted and long. His nails were as black as sin and growing. Lulach bent closer. Both orbits were wide open. You could not call them eyes! Lulach looked into them, one at a time. In each he saw the action of mites, slowly eating the jelly. ‘My brother’, he whispered, ‘to gain my peace, I will send thee to peace.’ He kissed his forehead and closed each eye. He did so twice, three times, but each time the lid peeled back like a plaster. He tried a fourth time but still it would not hold fast. Grim’s orbits shone in restless ecstasy. A shiver of recognition froze Lu’s scalp. It was his brother, the same as ever, in torture of the mind. The thought was clear and new. Sleep no more . . . Lu moved sideways to the cauldron and dipped in his hand. It was scalding hot. He cupped his hands and plunged them back into the boiling gruel. He pulled them out and sucked greedily upon the soup. He repeated the act, and again, and again. His throat burnt and his stomach cramped. He removed his hood. His hair was white as fear, his face pale as bone. He bent forward, halted for a second, and then buried his head in the cauldron. He held it down as the skin buckled and popped. He pulled out, put his hands together in prayer, and in searing pain spoke his incantation. ‘Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale.’ He would be the pale boy no more. Now he was the only man.

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The moment he emerged all fell to their knees. The gingerman spoke from his prostration. ‘Prince, for so you are, we are yours.’ ∞

poor birds Macduff was in his vast tent, fretting and thinking. He had Gruoch on his mind. Patience is not infinite, he thought. Greatness demands its dues. I shall be King, and Kingship commands. ‘Oh, sweet pea, come and give your old man comfort. Give the bastards to the nurse. Nurse! Nurse!’ She had heard it all a hundred times. ‘Ooh, my poor monkey, have you got your little face all a-grimed? Come to mummy and let’s make you nice and clean.’ ‘Sweet pea, Gru, leave the child and tend to me.’ ‘Oh, come here monkey!’ She was bussing her boys and ignoring the military man. ‘The stuff that weighs upon my heart!’ She held the child and turned briefly to Macduff. ‘Don’t do it then. Let the people be. Fears do make us traitors and the people are afraid. Better, chubby-chub?’ ‘Da-da’, said the boy. Macduff stood straighter. ‘I have no choice. It is a recalcitrant people. One more push and Scotland will be ours. Not Malcolm’s, ours.’ ‘Da-da!’ ‘Do you want your dada, my poor prattler? Sssh, but I do too, sirrah, I do too. Don’t tell the ogre over there, ssh!’ ‘You know, sweet pea, I do learn from your little bastards.’ ‘I thought you loathed them.’ ‘Yes. I learn from how jealous they are of their own! My bauble, my mummy, mine mine mine! Oh they are vicious in securing their own!’ ‘And you are not, of course.’

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‘Oh, they are right to be so! That is what I have learnt. We have to have our own – even if it is just a little – our own patch, our own small piece of – of – of distinction. Yes? This is what I have gleaned. We must give to the – the babies – the privilege of a little jealousy. Yes?’ ‘Whatever you say, Duff.’ ‘Let them think that theirs is the soil to toil. Small measures of self-government, inside the great tent of our unity. Genius, no? I have not told them yet – but I have many sops for the babies, many many. I have been devising this very carefully. Instance – each bakery will get to elect its own emissaries! What do you say to that! Instance – women who are carrying, or nursing, will choose among themselves – they will choose! – which of them is to work the bakery nights. Ha! The work must be done, of course, but you see my plan. Each bakery can even paint their own carts, and in their own hideous colours, should so they wish! They are babies and their baubles must be respected. Are you with me? Premise – the great tent of our unity; gift – tiny measures of self-government. It is irresistible, and the great tent will stand the longer. I will do this soon, once this latest little fracas has been put down.’ ‘I fear you do not know your own people.’ ‘A mere fracas; local insurrectionists; it is nothing to me. You know I could walk out, like this, in my underclothes, my army asleep, and not a soul could hurt me. The mutineers would vanish, like a cloud! I am protected! Have you heard the ballads, darling? Have you?’ ‘No.’ ‘They amuse me. But they are correct. ‘Macduff is King in all but name, till dead things rise from Dunsinane!’ Heh heh, the old ballads ring true! No?’ ‘As you wish, old man.’ Macduff rose from the divan and looked more imploringly at his beloved. ‘Love?’ ‘Da-da’, said one of the babes. ‘Sirrah-wirra, your da-da’s dead.’

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She had reclined on the thick rug and was holding a baby over her head. ‘Poor bird, what wilt thou do now?’ ‘Poor bird! You speak to your disgrace, and my discomfort. His father was a traitor and traitors must be hanged. All of them!’ ‘You know, do you!’ ‘I should never have allowed you to re-enter that haunted house.’ ‘Allowed me!’ ‘Yes – I allow you too much, woman!’ ‘You exact your fee, sir.’ ‘You owe me!’ ‘Ha!’ ‘Yes – don’t you know who I am?’ ‘No, I have forgotten. Tell me again, please!’ ‘If it weren’t for my goodness – my – forbearance – those babes you so dote on would go the same way as your first!’ ‘How dare you!’ ‘And good riddance too! Nothing good can come from that place. Those boys, they bear the infection, I tell you! Better they were drowned like cats.’ Gru looked like she might kill him. ‘Don’t you see, my love? I am sorry to be harsh. But it is so. Nothing but death can rise from Dunsinane. I have known it since I found you weeping, that first time – when I saved you – do you remember? Do you? Do you remember how I saved you? You were a child, weeping, in that cold attic, with that – that – ‘That? That what?’ Her voice was vicious with scorn. ‘What did your greatness divine?’ ‘With that dead thing on your breast!’ ‘Dead!’ ‘It was death, I will never lose the sight! Those white eyes and porcine bulk, the blood on his crown, those navels! ‘He was my baby!’ ‘An abomination! Two buttons! Two! You know what that means.’

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‘No, I do not.’ ‘The child of clovenness! I saved you! I took you to safety. I pitied you and lodged you with the sisters. The devil’s soldiers put the evil one inside of you – ‘Hush, old man, you know nothing!’ ‘Macbeth’s soldiers! Macbeth! – may the name stand accursed in the calendar!’ The thought came to her again: he would have been the son of a King. A prince. Did that matter? It never had before. ‘That castle is death’, continued Macduff. ‘It is manifest. I took you from Hell. I delivered you to the Virgin Sisters. You owe life to me.’ A prince! What good could it do anyone? He was her prince, that is all, the rest was vanity and lies. ‘Nurse! Nurse!’ called Gru. An old lady entered, half crouching. ‘They are hungry, take them.’ Macduff paused as the nurse and children left. ‘I saved you, did I not? I will always protect you.’ ‘Forgive me if I am less than moved by your selflessness. You are a man. You spent too long with the English. You developed tastes. You say you recognized me – you say it was fate – but I could have been anyone.’ ‘I saw you!’ ‘True, I had a face – and the rest – and you slavered like a dog. You had developed a taste for sweetness!’ ‘And what of you, with the devil-porter and his idiot sons! You refuse to admit a thing but I know, I know!’ ‘You know nothing but the fears your boneless gums suck nightly.’ Macduff’s eyes cast down. ‘Then why did you return to me? If I am so nothing to you? Why?’ Gru’s hands were on her hips. ‘Boys need a man.’ ‘There are men all over. I don’t want you to be here if you don’t want to be. If you despise me so.’

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‘Oh, be quiet. I don’t despise you. Just – ‘I only do what is best for you.’ ‘I know Duff. Just don’t – go on so. Don’t nag me. And let my boys be.’ ‘I have, haven’t I? Oh, love, love – all I do is for you. Be mine, Gru. Be my wife.’ ‘I rest your hermit.’ ‘Please – sweet – be my wife.’ ‘We rest your hermits. Nurse!’ Gruoch pulled a curtain sharply. Behind it sat the withered old nurse, the babies sucking hard from two pendulous breasts. ‘Please, love? It will all be yours!’ ‘Thank you, but no. We rest your hermits.’ ‘You are a serpent!’ ‘Ssssssss!’ Gru gathered the babies to her hips. ‘Come, my unsanctified eggs, let’s to market! How much at market for a father? Let’s go and buy one! Let’s buy two!’ ‘Merciful Heaven’, whispered Macduff, as mother and babes played giggling on the rug. ∞

ripe for shaking The peasants of the lowlands had swelled into a kitchen army. The first few lines were men, carpenters and blacksmiths and farmhands. Behind them came the motleys, the ragged and undrilled, the women and the kids and the ponies, holding saucepans and slingshots and kitchen knives, infants perched on shoulders. The women’s faces were painted white; the children wore lilies in their hair. Only those already whitened with age came without adornment. But they too were carried on the promise of freedom. A lonely creature was hopping about in-between twin white files. He was shrieking and wheeling, dancing around his mule

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in shapes of madness or fury. He was a crimson thing, tarred and feathered from his neck’s nape to the bridge of his nose, the skin around his eyes sore and his pupils stark and staring. His headdress was bunched in handfuls of chicken and bunny, half feather, half fur. He was unarmed and naked, save that round his neck was a chain of lovers’ favours and trinkets and keepsafes. His nipples were painted in blood and his penis bent vaguely erect, hairless and lurid. He stood there like a cockerel, his head jerking one way then the next, his upraised arms saluting the rebel army. He stopped, mid-pirouette, and called over one shoulder. ‘Hail the pertinacious bastard! It is I!’ And he started slowly to hop, left foot, right foot, left foot, right, rolling his shoulders and sprinkling his fingers. All around this raving rooster the scullery army was moving. They showed no sign whatsoever of having heard his cry. He threw back his red head and let the crow rip out from his belly. ‘It is I!’ It was the Sodomite, and he had things to reveal, even if he did not know quite what they were. He swept the trudging army with his gaze. Perhaps he would say nothing, but merely offer himself, and wait for the pennies to drop. ‘Cha, cha!’ he chanted, he knew not why. He wove his way through this vanguard of phantoms. Their smell was unaccountably fierce. He held his nose and his legs pretended a wobble; he thought of a heron, lost on the banks of the Styx. Behind him lumbered his ass, its great head also painted with chicken blood. ‘Cha, cha!’ went his urgent whisper. He turned around and at once was lost in a knot of bloodless women, their hair bound tightly around their skulls. They were brandishing freshly cut staves, chair-legs wrapped savagely with wire. ‘And who will care for your little ones?’ he howled. The moment he spoke he saw children advancing in their own ghastly dwarves’ division, decked with glinting daggers and short

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swords. He saw them all primped and determined, marching in their best britches, with their darling little plaits and partings. One creature played a piccolo in the vanguard. They strode on to its melody, wearing the same drained aspect as their elders. The Sodomite moaned. Another line of women passed him, arrayed in high white baker’s hats, holding hands and chanting. Drown the weeds, drown the weeds, Though hearts must bleed, And sorrows seed, Drown the weeds, drown the weeds! The Sodomite’s sore heart marvelled. Women and children! All these white buds that will open only into death. He rubbed his eyes still redder. Surely these were figments of some delirious dream? And indeed they had already vanished, emptied into the pale tide of fools, rolling out like death’s very own white sheet. Now he was among a lapping tide of whitebeards. With a shock he recognized men who long ago marched against his father. Before the day was out, each will be struck dead as marble. ‘You old fools! Put your weapons down! Take up spades to dig your graves!’ But they merely filed past, mute and pale. The Sodomite was jostled by a pack of dogs. The colour had leeched entirely out of them. Even their tongues were alabaster grey. They came moaning, dragging their bellies and hindquarters and dusty genitalia on the ground. The Sodomite fell upon all fours and began crawling along with them, his bum obscenely in the air. The dogs ignored him utterly. He collapsed into the dust, and a thought began slowly crystallizing. I have almost disappeared. Now where the hell was his ass? He started to rise but immediately was struck from behind. His legs buckled. A white cow swerved around his own cowed body, its hind legs streaked with milk and yellow shit. The two of them, Sodomite and

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cow, tottered and righted themselves. Briefly they exchanged an understanding glance. And then, dropping darker slops as they went, the twinned bovine broke into an ungainly jog. ‘Towards the promised end’, he sang, ‘towards, towards, towards. . .’ Jesus, thought the Sodomite, if only Daddy could see me now. A glade in the wood, the cusp of dusk. The kitchen army had been corralled into a vast natural amphitheatre, the trees tramped back, the grass delicately cut, the hill shaped into fine gradations of terrace, with soft pews descending into the lovely dark of a recessed stage. Centre stage, in the very palm of the scene, was a ginger-haired man called Seyton. Slung over his shoulder was a halberd, a spear with a butcher’s blade at its head. He flung out his arms and tore his coarse linen shirt, offering his breast to the dying sun. ‘Welcome’, he cried, ‘my shag-haired villains!’ His chest hair was twisted in curlicues and whorls. He tossed off his shirt to reveal the sunlit rust that curled over his back and belly and chest. He was a man with the pelt of a dog! He rolled his shoulders, snarled, and gave a horrible blast on his horn. The kitchen army howled back in unison. Seyton held his halberd up, its axehead glinting. His soldiers growled and showed their teeth. ‘Sing!’ commanded the gingerman, and at once the whole assembly was chanting with him. ‘Drown the weeds, drown the weeds, Though hearts must bleed, And sorrows seed, Drown the weeds, drown the weeds!’ And then instantly, the halberd lowered, there was silence. Seyton held the pause deliciously. ‘Lordlings’, he said. A shiver of delicious complicity. ‘For you are Lordlings, not beasts for grazing on bread! Exceed yourselves!’

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‘Hurrah!’ cried the mob as one. It was a cry to saw all trees down. At once the theatre tingled into an absolute hush. Seyton stood swelling and nodding on the grassy perimeter. He drew a curtain and struck a match. In its yellow light waxed a hooded creature, motionless on the stage. It looked like some beastly puppet, slumped, unstrung, waiting for predication. ‘Who is the hooded one?’ asked Seyton, teasingly. ‘Who is he?’ The question ripened on his lips like a fig. ‘Nay, my lordlings, it is not your Lord Baker. The Day of that Lord is nearly done. We are on the brink of a new age. We are waiting for a son. Behold!’ He yanked the figure’s white cloak-tail violently. A seam ripped, and a great skull was wrenched back and then flopped forward. The crowd gasped. They saw a face of neither bone nor flesh. They saw a face that looked sculpted in water; a man made entirely of weeping. ‘Here he stands’, he said, ‘for you, the new son. He feels your pain! He suffers, lordlings, he knows!’ He struck his breast piteously. ‘Know him, cherish him, hear him.’ Seyton’s candle flickered here then there over Lulach’s massive frame. Lulach looked calmly at the mass of citizens before him. He knew exactly what to say. ‘Men’ he said, ‘and women. Men and women of Scotland. We shall not live by bread alone.’ The words fell like manna as the thousand took up the cry. Each syllable was a celebration. ‘. . . shall-not-live-by-bread-alone!’ The refrain was aloft and singing. And at the very back of the crowd, hunched and alone, lurched the Sodomite, his red eyes wet and amazed. For he too was singing, weeping and singing as though he, like the rest of this besotted community, owed the white boy fealty. He cursed himself and ripped the chicken wings from his chest. This lachrymose delirium, he thought, it’s wrong, all wrong, a nation caterwauling to its

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doom! Don’t they know that Macduff will crush them before breakfast and string their boy up like a puppet? Surely, he thought, it’s not still my task to save him? The Sodomite considered his paltry body. ‘You want guilt, you Scottish sots? You want sacrifice? Look no further.’ ∞

slivered in the moon’s eclipse The army had camped for the night by the river. They all knew the area too well. Only last week half of them were working night and day in the stupendous bakery erected on its banks. The whitewashed emptiness of this factory now cast its own muted light. They felt spooked to be sleeping in its presence. The massive windowless walls, the identical chimneys, the giant waterwheels that turned the axles of the grinding stones: the unused power of the place was terrifying. The very memory of that creak, and grind, and crush, was enough to send chills down the spines of those who worked there. This night, however, both stones slept in their silent cavity. The Sodomite too had been asleep, but he jolted alive at the shriek of an owl. His nose twitched in distaste. He had never been so close to his compatriots, snoring and wheezing all around his swollen knoll. He was in a sorry state. Mantled in sweat from unquiet sleep; the strings in his temples pulled painfully tight; his eyebeams twisted in a knot; his fingers locked and intergrafted, cemented together with a fast balm. He tried to unfasten their grip but they were horribly mortified. The Sodomite arose and, carrying his hands before him, staggered toward the sound of river. He would have liked to jump in and sink, just like his daddy’s dead bride. But tonight would bring no such relief. It was dead midnight, and the only thing moving was the Sodomite.

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Through the trees he followed the owl’s scream, stealing around snoring boys and dozing ponies. He struggled to maintain balance as he ran, hunched like a throwback. His hands were trapped tight before him. It was as though he was carrying a small bundle, perhaps a baby, or some heavy looted treasure. But no, he thought, all I bear is my own leprous corruption. He shuffled across the burn and into the brookside clearing. The bakery stood before him, as massive and white as heaven. That is what the little man thought, bent like a monkey before it. He shivered at the thought. This is exactly what heaven will be like, when I get there, which I will, I will, for what I am about to do I will. ‘Halloooo!’ he called, but the sound died into blackness. He ascended a few whitewashed steps and bent down over the fixed lower stone. With a squelching violence he unplugged one finger from the rest. His sewing finger, bent as a bird’s talon. He ran the finger along the granite vein of rock. Other fingers were now loosening, like a baby’s might, when first they curl and point and clutch. And now in seconds he was a boy, intrepid, doing daring deeds and imagining the pleasure of his daddy. He turned his attention, suddenly potent and serious, to the raised sister stone. He unfixed the axle and released one side. It clumped heavily onto the rim of its counterpart. Shazam! He loosened the other side, stepped away, and watched the stone clatter down the steps, huge and rough, like the world’s first wheel. It wobbled into the centre of the clearing, and fell. The Sodomite ghosted out after it, growing by the moment. With each step he was moving from boyhood. He was feeling something rising, a glandular itch, a longing for secret risk and a violent secret scratching. He lay himself down on the stone and gently touched his penis. It felt tiny and hard, like a finger. His body began to shake. He was ready for this. He had never really done a thing but finally he would do it. An owl howled and the Sodomite responded with an ancient chant.

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‘Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in, Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky, Liard, Robin, you must bob in, Round, round, round, about, about, All ill run in, all good keep out!’ The words came hot and soft and echoed around the glade. And as swift as the words issued forth people began to emerge. ‘Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in!’ They gathered in the shade of trees, leaning forward to the Sodomite’s summons. ‘Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky!’ In the stony echo one man stepped out, his face not his own. The Sodomite felt a shadow on his back. He rolled over to meet the stranger. He pointed to the wound throbbing high in his thigh. ‘Liard, Robin, you must bob in!’ But the man seemed to pay no heed. He slapped the Sodomite across the head, grabbed his straw hair, and pushed him on his front to the stone. He ripped away the Sodomite’s tatty garment and lifted him with single violence to his knees. The man mounted, unbuckled, and broke into the supplicant’s body. The Sodomite buried his face in the stone. Was this it then? Was this what was intended? Was this really it? And he screamed – ‘Pour the sweet milk of concord into Hell!’ He was shaking and loosening. Yes, this was it, the hellhole moment that would redeem it all! This was it! The stranger erupted in his hole and the Sodomite howled.

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‘Put rancours in the vessel of my peace!’ The man savagely departed. The Sodomite whimpered, just like he had heard dogs do. He was sure it was not yet finished but he was too frightened to turn around. He started softly murmuring. ‘Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in . . .’ And before he knew it another man was upon him, and then another, and another. The Sodomite gritted his teeth and hummed throughout like a maniac, thinking this is it, this is it, this is it, as all the time Scottish seed boiled and died inside him. He received the last and the first, each man and each boy, bachelor and husband and widowed. He would be taken by all, in the name of every foul thing that had ever been done in Scotland. He was the Sodomite, the lonely host of history, the keeper of Hell’s gate, letting in some of all professions. ‘I am your body of sin!’ Something tore inside him and, bucking and twisting, he threw the present rider off his back. He wheeled around and there in front of him, sprawling like a spider, was a boy, a mere boy, his eyes empty of feeling and his jaw hanging brokenly off his cheek. The Sodomite screamed. ‘I’ll devil porter it no further!’ And out he stepped, past the broken child, into the centre of the glade and a sudden moonbeam. He was drizzling with blood and seed. A few stragglers scattered like deer through the clearing; they would not meet his mineral gaze. His tummy hardened and chest clinched. The froth in his mouth multiplied to a bubbling hale of vomit, brown and unstoppable. Hunched and alone, the Sodomite murmured into the darkened ground.

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‘Oh strangely visited people, All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye The mere despair of surgery!’ His chest trembled as his throat emitted its words. ‘You think that this will have an end, but I say that it will have no end! Each minute teems a new grief!’ A bitter froth was bubbling on his lips. He stepped pathetically away, trailing hind parts beyond all doctoring. And then, in spite of themselves, people started peering between their fingers or through the forest’s leafy screens. Boys and men came in pairs or threes, pointing at the Sodomite and giggling. Three boys together broke into a sprint, laughing and whooping, and leapt upon the broken man as he crawled toward the bushes. ‘Half-part, half-part!’ they shouted in jubilation, as the biggest boy prepared to ride the scapegoat. The Sodomite shut his eyes and tried desperately to shrink. The boy’s mates were jeering and clapping, the ring of spectators thickening. But then a sudden silence – the sudden, unmistakable silence of shame – froze the bacchanal dead. The Sodomite took a sharp gulp of breath and jerked his head around like a rabbit. The boys had vanished; the onlookers melted as one into night. The Sodomite cast this way and that across the moon-blanched glade, breathing hard as he sought the cause of his release. And then he saw it, upright and alone and moving toward him. It was Lulach, looking hardly less immense than the bakery walls, a white blur but for the liquid glistening in his eyes. An hour or more passed, the wounded thing enveloped in Lulach’s arms, its head buried, tummy fluttering, spindling breast thinly crackling. The creature’s flesh was torn with thorns and turning cloudy. Lulach massaged the bruised neck and the

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creature curled his body still tighter, his knees reaching for his mouth. Lulach flinched at the exposed bumhole; it seemed to pulse grotesquely with life. A ruby lake was pushing itself out in a great flopping swathe, like some creature delivered from the depths. The lake’s edge was crusted with ejaculate like coral; the hole itself gaped and shaped a horrible silent red scream. Lulach pulled his eyes from the sight. He must make amends for this! He bowed his big head and jogged heavily toward the water mill. He returned a minute later with towels and a pail filled with river. ‘Brother’, he said, ‘Forgive me. I have done you wrong.’ Sod curled on the ground as Lulach washed him. Jewels stood forth on his forehead. He was a sleeve for pain, nothing more. Lu knelt and cupped Sod’s tiny head in his palm, but Sod could barely make out the white boy’s features. His fuzzy head resembled a bleached cowl against the rising light from the east. ‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Sod, weakly. ‘This?’ said Lulach. ‘I am responsible. We did you wrong.’ ‘I didn’t mean me’, said Sod. He fluttered his hand helplessly, at the war, the chaos, the world collapsing all around them. ‘I meant why are you doing all of this?’ ‘I don’t know’, said Lulach. ‘Why are you?’ Sod sniffed a laugh. A great cobweb of dirt hung between his nose and the ground. He shook his head to dislodge it and squinted into Lulach’s pink eyes. They were kind eyes. Perhaps this is how love looks, he thought. He felt very weak and grateful. He had known so little kindness. ‘Thank you’, said Sod, and closed his eyes. He felt very, very tired. He searched again for the kind pink eyes but couldn’t make them out in the dazzling light. I wonder, thought Sod, if this is what dying is like; it’s not so bad. ‘Approximations I have known’, he murmured softly to himself, he didn’t quite know why. Sleep was flooding into him, and he felt for the very first time why they called it falling. ‘Lulach’, mumbled Sod, and tried to nod his little bird-head. You are the one, he wanted to say, and wondered if he had.

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He was seeing those kind pink eyes and concentrating upon opening his own. If we could share a gaze, he thought, he will understand. He will know what I have borne and striven for. I was a good boy, thought Sod. He will see that. A good boy! Eyes open for the one, thought Sod, eyes open! Blink and the pink skies will darken! Good boy, good boy, good boy. Sod slumped into coma. His wound sagged, and the soggy wallet flopped out and settled like a turd on the ground. Lu hadn’t seen its emergence, but he saw it now, naked in the sunlight like some dropped gift. He carefully extracted his hand from beneath Sod’s head and picked up the wallet. It was crammed full of wafer-thin papers, all of them incredibly closely scribbled. Where could the goblin have got them, wondered Lu. That Seyton? Or Macduff! Lulach unfurled the inmost scroll and began reading its first words. ‘A low rumble came from the clouds. The very air shuddered as rank upon rank of snow was released. This snow fell straight down and sidelong, flocking and blessing all the dead. Soon all were blanketed and the snow stopped. The air was empty. And except for the carrion crows perched high in the trees, Scotland was an entire annihilated white. The boy stepped from his litter, box in hand, and began walking like a wraith across the snow. In the trees perched more and more birds; raptors made circles in the whitened sky. The boy saw nothing human.’ Lu stopped reading. It was some story, some epileptic fantasy of the poor creature he had just rocked to sleep. Lu felt spooked reading it, gut-heavy and unhealthy, like he was spying upon the dreams of the afflicted. He looked at Sod lying pitiably on the ground. He had seen me with my box, thought Lu, that is all. Fool visions of apocalypse, a morbid maniac’s dream: hadn’t he heard it all before? Lu shoved the scroll into the wallet, slipped it softly under Sod’s bony hip, and stole quietly away lest the poor man awake.

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Lulach was deep into the heart of Birnam Wood before he stopped walking. He entered a glade and fell to his knees and put his palms together. The wood above was silent all around him, the sky as neutral as a pillow; and his childhood’s scene, the stage of all the changing weather of his life, was waiting for his movement. He felt that he had entered the carnival flux of eternity, entered it absolutely, and at long last his caravan had parked upon the clearing. He was in no rush. The pace of the world seemed his to measure; accident and providence were one; let it come. So went his prayer. He exited the glade and walked slowly toward the camp. Through heart and hair he felt a constant radiating tingle. He was not happy; it was not happiness he felt. But he was stepping in rhythm and it was effortless. Nothing was accidental. And if God was anywhere he was here. The holy if was alive. ∞

gashes cry Macduff stood on the far edge of the plain at the head of his army. The sky resembled the high cornicing of a cathedral. The sun had disappeared; the desert flowers had hidden or died. Clouds swept overhead, in sheets of silver-white, and behind them their parent clouds, swelling and looming tremendously. The clouds were softly drizzling but as yet they did not yield their load. The world below shimmered a mirroring paleness. Ahead of Macduff, a furlong away, the kitchen army fanned out, stilled and silent, like some frieze of whitened crows. Macduff stood in profile, at right angles to his waiting soldiers, in a charcoal grey cassock with a broad lace collar. Beneath the cassock was the breastplate tied by his beloved. He had lost all his hair but his high-domed head was partly covered with a skullcap of ebony. His once jet beard was streaked white and his eyes deeply shadowed. He looked to be made all of wrinkled bone.

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Macduff raised an arm. He held it aloft for several seconds. The men’s fingers fidgeted. Finally he brought his arm down, and at once his army struck up their instruments. Across the fields sprang a hideous disciplined music, trumpets and drums and the metallic percussion of marching. A line of engines rolled to the front and started to belch fire.

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The front lines of the kitchen army broke ranks and began charging into the mouths of Macduff’s war engines. Within seconds they were all doing it, saucepans clattering, mouths screaming. They charged with a wail and, with comical speed, they fell groaning. They fell in one great corporate bellyflop: young and old, beasts, women, children. All around war did what war would. Macduff watched with satisfaction as his cannon and men did their work. The wave of rebellion collapsed red upon the sand. It might have been a party game, only there was no rising after. The field looked peeled, as though the rind had been taken off the world. It could almost have been beautiful: gorgeous vermilion, the carmine of love, a return to hopes long lost. But it was not. Scotland’s skin was all torn off. Everything was painted wounds. Sod’s eyes looked upon such scarlet – such savage scarlet – as though hills or green or wild thyme had never been. It was Hell’s pastoral, he thought, a glowing rose, unveiling fold by fold its ever deadlier breast. He sank down and picked up with his fingers a flung-free human organ. He didn’t know which one it was, a kidney, a liver, a heart? It was so spongy and innocent that tears welled in Sod’s eyes. He touched his cheek with the organ. It was very warm and wet, like a burnished cauliflower. He caressed his cheek with the fist-shaped thing and kissed its dappled tissue. It reminded him of something lost, he couldn’t quite think what. Sod kissed it again and held it to his temple, like a wetly loving compress. It was not a vegetable at all, he thought; it was stone before the great freeze; its mottles were holes where the feeling gets in. He recalled his stony father and all his stony gifts; and indeed, if you squinted at it, the organ did look a bit like Macbeth’s face, that fierce red thing, burning with desire. He kissed it once more and was sure he felt it kissing him back. Holding the organ to his cheek Sod gently allowed the surroundings back into sight and mind. Next to him was a boy’s body; he must have been no more than ten. His head was still on

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his shoulders but the skull had been split in two. Inside the skull was a chasm of black nothing, like an emptied pomegranate. Sod had read once of pomegranates; now he almost retched. He looked around and saw a thousand other such unliving things, limbs and organs thrown across the plain, as though creation was yet to come and here were its constituents, just waiting to be stitched into form. Ah, he thought, but my needle is long lost. He looked again at the little organ. He traced one capillary after another. Such care, such complexity! Who made life so fugitive and delicate and tenacious? Who could have thought of such a thing? He stared sorrowfully at the boy lying brainless next to him. He looked from the corpse to the organ, from the organ to the corpse, feeling more maudlin by the moment. This poor little organ, homeless and lost, and that lovely young boy with his emptied head. And then it clicked. This is where the boy had gone! Here he is, thought Sod, right in my palm, warm and entire and invincible. All of memory was here! He looked at the boy’s brain and felt the dizziest kind of wonder. So beautiful, and so dead. You always came too late, Ross, always, always, always. Sod stuffed the brain in his belt and walked blindly at angles across the killing field. None of the kitchen army were standing. Macduff’s men saw him but turned away, joking and smoking and paying no heed. Sod staggered over a ditch. He had seen a tree and thought he might lie in it. Pretend to be a bird, or a vole, or a twig, just like old times. In the hollow to one side of the tree was a bright painted wagon, seemingly forgotten. He studied the litter’s whitewashed sides, decorated with grotesque carvings, with de-created men and severed heads and tossing smiling porpoise. Sod extended his finger and drew back the tiny curtain in the window. He could not believe what he beheld. It was a man, past the flush of youth, munching something crumbly, some cheese or bread or cake. He was fat and over-

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primped, ageing almost visibly, and yet with the lucent cheeks of a barely-born puppy. The bonny King Pretender! Look at him, white as a babe, as his own most corpulent ghost! A shrinking gold crown had slipped over one ear. On his chubby thighs was a small, highly wrought chest, perhaps to keep his crown safe when the poor fool nodded off. Sod had known him when young, a fat pubertal thing. He was sorry enough back then. But now! He looked like foetid turnip soup. Verily, manhood was sheer degeneration. ‘What’s in the box’, Sod howled, ‘white bread?’ The great Pretender did not blink; he failed to register a thing. Perhaps he has no eyelids, thought Sod; perhaps those great white scallops are eternally open to the weather. And this pupa, thought Sod, the words very conscious in his head, this pupa succeeded my papa? ‘Cha!’ hissed Sod, but still King Malcolm seemed oblivious. Hanging from the window was a long scabbard, ornamented with baroque sea-life and wildly curling tendrils. Sod plucked the carriage door open and withdrew the sword from its scabbard. The sword was thick and white and virgin. ‘Sire!’ he spat out loud, ‘Sire!’ Malcolm slowly turned his way. ‘A pupa for a papa?’ Malcolm’s mouth was full, and he registered blank incomprehension. Sod had seen quicker ewe. ‘I said, a pupa for a papa?’ Wet crumbs were on the King’s aristocrat-pink lips. Then again, thought Sod, this King looks more like a giant breast. He lifted the sword and put it to the imbecile’s throat. Only now did King Malcolm move. His eyes opened marginally wider and he struggled to swallow a large lump of matter. He glanced in newborn terror at the sword, and then over Sod’s shoulder, as though appealing to something or someone. ‘God has left the building’, said Sod, ‘haven’t you heard?’ He felt himself grinning, and heard his voice jeering, and suddenly felt doubtful. He turned around to look where his

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victim was looking. Standing to the side, no more than three feet away, was Macduff. Sod gasped, a tiny boyish sex-gasp. ‘Hah?’ Macduff raised an eyebrow. ‘Hah?’ gasped Sod again, looking back and forth from the quivering Pretender to the very erect Baker. Macduff ever-so-slightly inclined his head. ‘Yes?’ said Sod, and at the same time started nodding his head too quickly. He looked back at Malcolm. All he could see was a breast wobbling above his sword, with an unhealthy nipple where a mouth should be. His arm was hardly his own and it had started trembling. The sword felt huge and fat and heavy. But all the same he tried to move it along Malcolm’s neck, like he imagined real men do, sectioning he heard his daddy call it once. The sword snagged on the King’s protuberant Adam’s apple and almost dropped from Sod’s grasp. He briefly looked around to check that it was still alright. Macduff was looking away toward the western sky and sharpening his sword on a rock. Sod turned back to the carriage and was surprised to see Malcolm’s fat face smudging upon the blade. It looked like he was kissing it; dark red blood was streaming down the metal. ‘Hah!’ he yelped, and dropped the sword, which flopped out of Malcolm’s throat and flat to the floor of the carriage. Malcolm slipped forward from his bench and on top of the sword. ‘Hah!’ simpered Sod, and jumped like a cricket from the opened door and bang into the chest of Macduff. ‘What’s the matter?’ said the general. ‘Hah?’ Macduff was wiping his long sword with a towel. ‘Down’, he said. ‘Hah?’ ‘I said down.’ Sod crumbled to his knees. He would look behind at the carriage but he didn’t dare. Had he really killed a King? He was curled up like a little hedgehog.

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Had he really killed a King? Daddy would be so proud. Macduff was studying the crumbling form at his knees. The boy’s brain had fallen from Sod’s belt and Macduff picked it up with his sword-point. ‘Yours?’ he said, and flicked it into the long grass. He tucked the towel into his belt. Now with his boot he turned the rebel over. He placed the point of his sword upon one cheek, then the other, considering his wrinkled face. He could feel cogs turning in his mind but it was all so rusty. Something, something, but Macduff was tired. Then it came to him. ‘Ross’, he said simply. The simper on the poor fool’s face told Macduff it was true. ‘The Thane of Ross?’ So he has returned, thought Macduff – the tyrant’s newsagent, he who lingered so long in the tale of my pretty chickens’ slaughter. There was no such thing as accident. With renewed purpose Macduff moved above the writhing carbuncle, its tiny face so glazed and petrified, its spidery legs spread-eagled in the dirt. Sod slowly opened his arms. His little boy body was flat on the ground and his arms were open wide. I killed a King, he thought, I did it. Macduff put his boot upon Sod’s shallow chest. He felt a thin rib crunch at the touch. ‘Me?’ croaked Sod, but his pooling eyes were in his brain. Daddy would be so proud. Macduff skewered the true son like a spatchcock. ∞

our rarer monsters A low rumble came from the clouds. The very air shuddered, and rank upon rank of snow was released. The snow fell straight down and sidelong, instantly blanketing the dead and the dying. For a few moments the swirl of flakes took soft and

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condoling shapes, like pity’s children. But soon enough nothing could be distinguished from anything else. The snow stopped, the air was empty, and except for the carrion crows perched high in the trees, the Scottish scene was an entire annihilated white. It was some hours later when Lulach stepped from his litter, box in hand, and began walking like a wraith across the snow. In the trees perched more and more birds; raptors made circles in the whitened sky. Lulach saw nothing human. The snow crunched as his legs fell. Deep beneath the snow the dandelions breathed on, as weeds will. Did they really cry ‘drown the weeds’, he wondered. The thought seemed distant and absurd. The battle started without him, and somehow it was over before he began. He so wished it was dawn again, and he could do the day once over, and do it better. Lulach knelt in the snow and placed his box before him. The lock opened and he threw it in the snow. He lifted the lid of the box and placed both hands inside. And then his words were echoing across the silence. ‘The time has been, That when the brains were out, The man would die, And there an end. But now they rise again.’ Lulach rose to his feet, a large grey-white sphere in his hands. He lifted his arms high and brought the object slowly down to his crown. He pulled hard and his head felt alarmingly soft. He was jamming a huge skull around his ears. Though his head was large the skull was still larger. His head contorted as the skull was forced down. The flesh beneath the hair was pressed into small tumour-shaped bubbles; his head felt spongy and yielding as a newborn’s. His face turned pink with the effort and his ears felt murdered. An egg of doughy flesh was pressed out through a slat in the cranium. The egg was bright

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white, its follicle sacs strangely revealed and excretory. Lulach pulled harder still and the skull shut down over chin and jaw, encasing his head like a giant helmet. The bone was awesomely chiselled. Through the nosebone was a large rusted ring, encrusted with a tiny coral-like necklace

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of white growth. Lulach’s brain felt violently compressed and he could barely move his mouth. His face was fat beneath the bone. The skull jammed into cheek and jaw like a vice; only around his eyes and temples was there any release; only there could air circulate and function as if normal. But of course nothing was normal; there was no such thing as normal. Everywhere was locked violence. Lulach ripped off his shirt, as though gagging for air or lightness, and let it fall in silence to the snow. He bent down once more, his legs very straight, and reached into the box. He withdrew a rib-shaped bone, with three dirty prongs at its end, and secured it in his belt. He started stumbling across the snow, his flesh pale and huge, his burning eyes encased in the brainpan of Macbeth. Macduff was floating in the brightness, alone and brimming in his triumph. He had served an idea and the idea was good. Look at his new Scotland – his Scotland! – bright and white and shining with the truth of history. When he returned she will have awoken, and he shall greet his Queen with the first flower of summer! ‘No fool like an old fool!’ he growled, and smiled, and started jogging to where the snow looked freshest. He would not return without his garland. Seal all with a kiss and make her his Queen! He accelerated but at once tripped over his cassock, face first into the crystals. He lay recumbent in the featureless blue-tinged whiteness. He shook snow off his nose and kept his eyes closed, almost lazily. The light in his mind was moony blue. He could see her smile as she accepted his garland. He could sense the flowers, tenacious in their beauty, sheltering beneath the bed of snow. Yes, he thought, some men are born survivors; they are born to survive! He felt new-made, lucid and virgin as the snow. Macduff blew the flakes from his moustache, shook his brow free of the wet, as dogs do, and he opened his eyes, ready for anything. A posy, he thought, a posy of marigolds! But his view was blocked by a pale shadow, looming above him like a pillar of salt. It was a mammal on two legs. From head

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to toe it was perfectly white. For a second Macduff assumed it was some apparition, a snowman of the mind telling him to get back inside, to warm his freeze and cool his fever. He shook his head violently, but the apparition stood there, less than three feet away, its head whirled into a blur by the papery blizzard. ‘Grrr . . .’ it moaned. Macduff sat up straighter. ‘What are you?’ The apparition said nothing. ‘I said, what are you!’ Macduff struggled to his feet, slipping once and stumbling closer to the intruder. Now a cross-breeze lifted the snow away from the apparition’s head. Macduff had rarely seen a thing so close or so clear. He could not believe what he was seeing. ‘Avaunt, and quit my sight!’ A giant skull was before him, aloft on the body of a white bear. Through the nose of the skull was a rusted brass ring. Macduff saw the ring but he could not believe it. There was only one such ring and he would not believe it was here. He had held the same head by the same ring twenty years ago! He had twirled it in the air and cried the time is free. ‘Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold!’ The bear took a step toward Macduff, who was looking past the ring and through the bone and into the silently screaming shellfish beneath. ‘Thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with!’ He longed to retreat but was hypnotized. ‘Macduff shall know not fear nor pain, till severed head do speak again – ha – speak, shadow, speak! – there is no such thing!’ Still the bear walked forward, so close to Macduff that the steam from their mouths intermingled. ‘Hence, horrible shadow!’ Macduff touched the monster and was horrified by the soft clammy tissue of its shoulder. Its breasts were white and round, with barely the memory of a nipple, and its breath was wheezing.

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‘Let the earth hide thee!’ Macduff was backing away but still the bear moved nearer. He saw its tummy heaving; he saw the weapon prone in its belt. My God, thought Macduff, not like this, it cannot end like this, alone in the snow with no one! He lunged toward the monster, grabbed the bone, and jumped a step back. He held the bone pointed toward his enemy. ‘Step back!’ Macduff eyed the monster as it stood wheezing before him. He saw how the breast and belly rose up and down in rhythm; he saw how the belt that held the bone had slipped to his fat hip; and now he saw, dead centre of the belly, two ugly keyholes, two squirmed and squashed petals where a mummy used to be. ‘No’, said Macduff, ‘no!’ He would laugh were it not so monstrous. Surely it wasn’t possible. Surely this mooncalf could not be hers. ‘Those’, said Macduff, pointing the bone at the boy’s twin navels, ‘they are yours?’ What was he saying? Who else could it be? But surely this overgrown reprobate could not be his angel’s! Lulach was trying to look where Macduff was pointing but could not quite lower his head. ‘I thought I saw you dead, boy, you and the rest of Dunsinane’s devil spawn. But you crawled away, did you?’ Lu stood stock still before the pointing bone. ‘I saved your mother, boy, know you that? Ha! Saved her from you, boy! I am sure Gruoch would thank me if she knew. As if my Gruoch could ever want a mooncalf such as you!’ Behind the bone Lu’s amoebic eyes moistened and dilated and grew huge. A wrenched indecipherable sound came from the grille. ‘Gguuh, gggwwh’ ‘And here is the sorry flesh that got up and crawled away! The devil had gone and all that was left was this?’ Macduff retreated as Lu moved towards him. ‘Even if you were hers, boy, you will never ever have her! You are no son for a Queen!’

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Still Macduff retreated, his heart pounding. ‘Not in my Kingdom, boy!’ Lu was swaying like a tree in the wind, his eyes huge with water. ‘Foul boy! You think a sorry relic like you can interest my Queen? I will not have it! We will not! We are the living – we are for life – we are the true survivors! You are dead! Dead!’ Macduff retreated and his voice was high. ‘Take back your dead relic, boy!’ Macduff sent the bone singing through the stopped air. Lulach stood motionless as the bone turned in the air towards him. His head was bursting but he could see it all. The grain was fine but sallow. The end was uneven and its points as sharp as three daggers. His temples throbbed, his ears were crushed, thunder stunned his crown, but as the missile came closer Lulach relaxed his eye in recognition. Come on, he thought, let it come! The bone hit home like a breaking wave. The rib of Grim was in Lu’s eye and the blessing was tremendous. He sank to the snow without effort. The rib was warm in his eye and the flow of juices extraordinary. The headache that had gripped him since putting on the skull was leaking away like wine. And as quick as the migraine left vision was returning. The world had been mottled and out of focus, but now bright colours were snapping back in view, waves of blue and shivers of white – had he never known that whites could so fluctuate! He slumped back and with his working eye saw the line of the rib form a cross against a distant tree. ‘Art thou dead and gone?’ came a voice to one side. A dark bird sat in the tree, waiting. Lulach glanced left and saw more trees, and more birds, and beyond them still more and more. He cast up to the white sky and there they were, he could recognize them now, ravens and puttocks and magpies and crows. For a moment he thought they were a blessing, his personal angels, spirits attending his passage. And then he remembered. ‘Art thou fit for the daisies?’ whispered the voice near his ear. Lu could barely turn his head for the skull, but with a murderous effort he shifted a tendon in his neck and looked

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sideways. As far as the eye could see were bodies, half-covered by the snow. The nearest was twenty feet away, a woman with an arrow in her back and a posy in her hair. Next to her was a dog, its head severed, and next to it a child that seemed entire but dead. Very close to the child was another woman, whose back was split by an axe. Next to her was another woman, and next to her a man, both of them face up and dead with flowers crushed in their hands. ‘Art thou living or gone?’ he heard near his back. It was another Golgotha, thought Lulach. His Christ had gone and instead there was this. He pulled the bone from his eye and dropped it to the snow. Blood and jelly flopped out. Immediately the throb in his skull returned, a heavy palpitation inside a vice-like press. Somewhere nearby he could hear a world returning, the grate of wheel and clang of iron and blow of horse nostril. Had not all the horses been eaten? And just behind him, very close now, that insinuating voice: ‘are you dead and gone, bone-boy? – nothing stirring? – good, good –’ Lulach forced his eyes open, forced them awake against the piling gravity that was crushing down upon his brain. And there was Macduff, his ear listening close to Lulach’s chest. ‘Two brats too many already – no room for this ugly orphan.’ Lu saw the bone lying nearby in the snow. His fingers closed around Grim’s rib, bloodied and warm to the touch. Lu raised the bone and with a blind sideways jab stabbed his enemy deep in the neck. He at once started shaking uncontrollably. The old man barely moved, but just touched the bone puzzlingly. ‘Let fall thy blade’, he murmured, ‘on vulnerable crests.’ Macduff extracted the bone and blood started pouring from the gash. ‘I bear a charmed life.’ From deep beneath the welded bone Lulach’s mouth was making noises, Gurr, grrr, okk, animal noises, choking noises, gch, ukkk, grrrrk – Macduff dabbed his wound with punctilious care.

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Gch, ukkk, grrokk – Macduff stopped the blood with a napkin and watched the frenzied maniac by his side. Gch, ukkk, grrrrk, grrokk. Somewhere in the glottic chaos Macduff heard a word. Gruoch, was it? ‘Gruoch?’ he said. Lulach shivered and shook and said rukk – ‘Gruoch?’ said Macduff. ‘She is mine.’ Now three soldiers came running. ‘My Lord? My Lord!’ Two of the soldiers ran to hold Macduff upright. The third stood over the trembling figure, half naked in a death’s head. One of Lu’s eyes was a mangled world but the other was staring like a fish. ‘The devil!’ cursed the soldier, ‘the devil!’ The soldier shielded his eyes and drew his sword onto Lulach’s throat. Two others stood on his chest, kicked him over, and tied his arms behind his back. They were careful not to draw any blood for fear it too would be white as snow. He was a monster to them; some sacred monster or demon. Further soldiers arrived and picked the Lord Baker out of the snow; two made a chair of their arms. He nodded as though this were the most natural thing in the world. ‘Be not afeard. This fool thought to fool me with his mask – it is a deranged orphan, that is all. Remove his skull. You are not fit, you foul orphan, to empty the dregs of the wine of the great Macbeth. Remove his skull!’ The soldier drew his sword and it flashed a milky blue in the light. ‘No’, said Macduff. ‘I said remove his skull. We’ll have him, as our rarer monsters are, painted to a pole!’ The soldier saw that inside the fearsome cranium lurked a larval imbecile, alive and sweating, with a translucent brow and a single blinking mollusc for an eye. Lulach’s flesh trembled like jelly. The soldier kicked him to his knees. Lulach almost fainted sideways, and his huge head all but fell into the soldier’s

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hands. The soldier grabbed the skull on either side and pulled with all the might that was in him. He fell back, empty-handed. As Lulach had long known, crushed inside his pain, the skull would never release him. ‘It is his, my Lord’, said the soldier, ‘It is him. He is the devilmonster!’ ‘Silence!’ The soldiers let him drop to the soft floor. Lulach’s blanched flesh was barely visible in the surrounding whiteness. They stared at him in sorrow and fear. Man or monster, let better judges decide; none of them would touch his flesh for fear. Only scattered snowflakes now fell, and the flowers at the boundary of the wood were clearly visible. Macduff gestured to a near soldier. ‘You!’ ‘My Lord?’ ‘Grab a sackful of flowers from the margin over there. Do it, quick!’ ‘What flowers, my Lord?’ ‘Flowers, flowers – any colour but white. Go! Wine, somebody – get me some wine!’ A soldier hurried to him with a hogshead. The other soldier returned at pace with his sack. ‘What do you have?’ demanded Macduff, sucking down the wine. ‘Dandelions, my Lord.’ ‘Dandelions? Weeds, weeds, weeds! Were there no gillyvors, no violets, no daisies? Where is the love in this forest, hey? Where is the love!’ He was shouting and grinning as he emptied the hogshead over his crown. ‘More wine! Fill full – this is a celebration. No petals of love, boy?’ ‘Sorry, my Lord, only the dandelions.’ ‘Ach, they will do. Sit down here and make me a necklace. A nice long necklace. For my Queen! A coronation garland!’

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Macduff tossed an armful of dandelions down to his captive. Lulach was shivering in a foetal clench. ‘You men, show him what to do – a nice garland for his bonehead! Go to it, go to!’ Macduff was emptying the wine and thrumming with cheer. He felt invincible. ‘That will do, that will do – throw it over him – an idea has come to me – yes, just like it is, toss it over him.’ The soldiers placed the half-finished garland messily around Lu’s crown. ‘You keep going, sir’, he said to the other soldier, ‘I want the necklace long and strong. It is for my Queen!’ Macduff lurched forward in his seat and pointed blowsily at his captive. ‘An idea has come to me. Over there – to Birnam Wood. Tie him to a stake!’ Macduff surveyed the small patch of ground between himself and the wood. He saw the corpses scattered, the gliding raptors, the corvids waiting silent in the trees. ‘Ah, Scotland, Scotland! A King must feel his earth; a King must feel! You, help me up, quick, no delay!’ Two soldiers started carrying the old man across the snow. The rest of the train began to follow. ‘Wait! you man, give me the necklace – good, good, it will serve – now, can you write, sir?’ ‘Aye, my Lord.’ ‘Good, good – men like you will serve! – now, run quickly, strip some bark, say, this long’ – he indicated a foot or two – ‘and engrave on it Not of woman born – yes? – Not of woman born. Go, quick, and neatly, neatly!’ And this strange carnival parade – the wine-lit ayatollah, the soldiers festooned with flowers, the white bear roofed in his cathedral of bone – limped messily toward the trees. By the time they arrived Macduff was feeling tetchy. His wound was aching. He wanted it over. He had passed too many corpses and needed a return of cleanliness. ‘String him up. Here, to one of those trees.’

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The light among the trees was a precise azure; the birds appeared still and obedient; Scotland could be so beautiful! ‘This place needs a scarecrow. I’ll send some carts in the morning. Nice and fast, tight, no sagging!’ The soldiers did their duty, busily untying Lulach’s hands and dragging him to the mark. ‘Oh – the superscription – you sir, finished yet?’ The soldier showed Macduff a plate of bark, two feet long, with an inscription written in stark capital letters. NOT OF WOMEN BORNE. ‘Not quite, but it will do. Now nail it to the tree – to the tree, above his head, that’s it, good, good.’ The soldier scrambled up the trunk and, using Lulach’s outstretched right arm to rest upon, fixed the bark to the tree with his dagger. The bark flapped against Lulach’s lowered skull. Macduff’s voice was snappy and peremptory. ‘Behold where hangs the usurper. The time is free. Now – home, home! – I see me compassed with my Kingdom’s pearl.’ He drew his necklace to his nose. As he was carried away he started to doze, his face aged and crabbed, his fingers holding fast to the dandelion chain. Lulach remained alone in the dying light, sagging on his pins like a stuck owl. His neck could barely take the weight of cranium. Pain excruciated his mind. His one good eye seemed nothing but iris, the sunset colour of a three-day bruise. Somewhere deep inside, beneath the skull beneath the skull, his brain hammered at the gates for exit. God was nowhere near. ∞

suffer in exposure The carts had done a speedy job. At dawn they began appearing, filled with men and brushes and spades and blankets. They were going to clear up the mess. The birds had been at it all

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night; there were open wounds aplenty to begin with. Most of the corpses now lacked eyes. The citizens shooed the birds away and they flew off to skulk in the copse. Great pits were dug and as quickly filled with corpses, among them the hirsute ginger body of Seyton, his mastic jaws still curved in an insolent smile. There were many bodies and the snow had turned to sludge. It seemed a shame that it had to be so; a shame that the bright white could not remain, smooth and shining, a sign of the new dispensation. But it could not, and as the shovels did their work the snow turned the shade of an old man’s barley-ale shit. For whatever reason it felt embarrassing, a disappointment, an inappropriate setting for these new days of pearl. An order went out to remove the sludge. The citizens amassed in the centre of the plain, in a great horizontal line, three hundred or more of them, each with a brush or broom or spade in hand. They looked like Lulach’s kitchen army, but these peasants did not come to fight. They moved slowly across to the edge of the wood, pushing an ever-growing pile of sludge ahead of them. The wood could absorb it. The men and women then returned to the middle of the plain and, implements in hand, worked in the opposite direction, pushing the sludge down the gentle incline and into the river. It was immemorial work, feeding the soil and filling the rivers; it was good Scottish work, and they were cheerful enough, working as one in the mild summer light. By mid-afternoon the plain was clean as a whistle. Of course many of them had known Lulach the Good. Some had even gone to battle for him. But those already were distant days. They knew he was up there but they didn’t like to look. A few threw sludgeballs, a few hissed and laughed; but there was work to do and most of them got their heads down and did it. ‘They say he parted well’, thought the best of them, ‘and paid his score, and so God be with him’. There was work to do and families to keep and Scotland deserved a little peace. It was nearing dusk when Gruoch emerged. She walked across the new-filed ground, her coat lime-green and the children in a basket on her back. She looked the picture of possession. The

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citizens retreated to their carts and allowed the first lady her space. The spot could be seen for miles. Buzzards glided above it, sometimes only two, more often four or five. There was much flesh to be had here; the birds too had functions to fulfil and broods to feed. She expected the worst but still she was shocked at what she found. She unclipped the basket and set the children on the ground near the forest margin. One crawled into the piled sludge and briefly started crying. She picked him out and brushed him dry and directed him into the wood’s outskirts. Soon they were both merrily digging with sticks and eating the dirt. Gruoch stood before Lulach’s tree. It was hard to look but she looked. She could not believe his get-up. ‘Oh, Lu’, she said, ‘what have you done to yourself!’ She saw his head squeezed inside a skull, and the mangled eye, and the brainpan so tight that lumps of flesh were pressing like fat ears through the bone. She saw his head hanging forward, almost at right angles to the bare pink chest. ‘What have they done to you?’ Gru noticed the piece of bark that hung raggedly behind Lu’s slumped head, secured by a rusty dagger. The knife was just about within reach if she stood on the tree’s lowest branch. She jumped up, once, twice, and the third time managed to knock it out. The knife hit her face as it dropped. She licked her finger and touched where it hit. The touch stung and her finger was red. She rubbed the graze a few times to try to staunch the annoying flow. As she leant down to retrieve the guilty knife she saw the letters scratched on the bark. Not of women borne. Men were such irredeemable children. She stepped on to the lowest branch and struggled up toward Lu’s left arm. She cut the rope and the arm immediately dropped. Now she was worried that when she cut the other arm loose he would flop to the floor like a bag of wheat. But there was nothing for it. She stretched across his body to the

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other arm, and as she did so butted up against the skull. She had to lift it slightly to reach, which she did with her elbow and upper arm as her knife-hand grabbed for the rope. Only now did Gru see the nose-ring. She cut the left arm free and Lu fell heavily into the sludge at the tree’s base. She slid down next to him and with a mighty effort turned Lulach over. She dragged him up to the tree and rested his head against a squirrel hole.

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For a moment or two Gru sat gathering her breath. She didn’t know quite what to look at. She wished the birds hadn’t already eaten one of Lu’s eyes. All three of those brothers had eyes, she thought, but his were the whitest. She knew that something remained for her to face but she wanted a moment first with Lulach. He deserved that. She wanted to remember things. She recalled his reverence for that grayling; she remembered his care and excitement as she watched him cutting and cooking the fish; that evening they went out walking, and he told her about the baby seals, and how weirdly warm he made her feel. She remembered how good a mum he’d been for her bairns. And now here he was, stone dead inside that bastard’s bones. She turned and eyed the mute implacable skull. ‘You bastard’, she said, ‘You bastard’. Gru surveyed the bleached, ugly remains of King Macbeth. The jutting forehead, the rusting nose-ring, the false garish smile of those teeth. Would she have said anything at all to him had she met him again alive? Probably not, she thought. Maybe that I was a child. That I trusted you. That you were the King, that you were like a father, that I trusted you. ‘I trusted you!’ she whispered, as one of her boys came toddling upon her and touched his mummy’s wet face. Still she held the head in her gaze. No, she knew what she would have said to him. She would have said: Was it worth the memories you made? That is what she would have asked him. Was it worth the memories you made in those you hurt and deceived? Was it worth the fear? Was it worth the guilt, stealing upon the sleeping and venting your filth? It couldn’t have been, she thought, it just couldn’t, and now you are dead. Gru flicked at the nose-ring with her index finger. What a sorry affectation that was. ‘Was it worth it?’ she shouted, and flicked the ring once more. Oh, leave it, she thought, he is gone; it is gone; none of this is worth the expenditure. Except now it was Lu who was Macbeth’s captive, sleeping his sleep, knowing his nothing.

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‘I was a child’, she whispered one more time, angry at her stinging eyes, ‘a child, you fucker’. She shook her head free of the tears. What to do now? Her body ached and her face stung and she felt ill with useless rage. She reached through the bone to Lulach’s face. His face was warm; warmer than her fingers. Surely he couldn’t – ‘Ha! Lu?’ Could it be? ‘Lu! Lulu!’ She manoeuvred her head to one side and blew hard, with rounded lips – phoo, phoo – into the un-maimed eye. She felt how cold her breath was, so she opened her mouth wider and blew from the back of her throat – hah, hah, hah. It ricocheted warm off the warm flesh. ‘Lulu! It’s me, Gru. Are you alive? It’s me. Wake up. You are, you’re alive! You’re not dead yet. Wake up!’ And again she blew, hah, hah, hah. Now one of the babies crawled up onto her legs. It laughed at her hah face. She patted it gently as she reached toward her cut cheek. She had forgotten that! It must look bad. As she was worrying over her graze Lulach’s eye opened. He saw her before him. It must be a dream. She had a string of dandelions around her neck. It had to be a dream. She has come to me, thought Lu, and this is the neverending. Gru turned back to him and her face creased in joy. ‘Yes!’ she cried, ‘yes – look, look, it’s Unkalu!’ Unkalu? She kissed him on the nose and laughed. ‘Oh, what have you done, silly? Look at you! Was your own silly head not burden enough? And how did you smash up that eye? Both his eyes were dropping tears and his head was trying to shake. The thunder inside hadn’t so much gone but it was no longer the thing. It wasn’t the thing, it was something else. ‘How will you live like that, silly?’ Milk, he was thinking, with milk. A word was inside him, echoing in his chambers, but his mouth was paralysed.

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‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.’ Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy – ‘Uuu’, said Lulach. My mummy. My mummy. Mummy. Mine – ‘Miii.’ ‘Yours? Did you say yours? Yes? What? What’s yours baby?’ ‘Mmi.’ ‘My?’ Above them in the trees erupted a tremendous chorus of cackaws. ‘Uuu.’ ‘Are you hurting? Yes? Can we get that silly hat off? Yes?’ ‘Mmee.’ ‘Yes, off you, I’ll try.’ A huge group of rooks suddenly lifted from the tree-tops. Gruoch looked up and vaguely stroked her face. ‘Ooh!’ And with that Lulach raised one arm – the other hung forlorn on the ground and looked broken – and touched Gru’s cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Ooh’, he growled or grunted once more. His iris was enormous blue before her. The rooks had shot up to the sky and were now shooting down, like a single black wing. ‘Oh, yes, it’s a cut, nasty is it? – got it saving you, didn’t I –’ ‘Mu-m’, he groaned, the first consonant strong, the second weak and approximate. ‘Mu-mm’, he said. ‘Mum? Are you saying Mum? I know, I know – you taught me how, you know. I love my little cherubs, you see if I don’t.’ Again the rooks whooshed up and across the copse, moving as one, out into the plain, back above the nests, stretching back and forth between one compacted mass and a thinner trail of glitter. He reached for her again, harder now, holding to her shoulder with all his weakened strength. No, you, mum, mine –

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‘Nyoo – maa – uhm – ’, he said. ‘Rest now.’ She was getting tired, her cheek aching a little, her calves too, and the kids needed a feed. ‘Uvv, uvv’, he said. You and I and my new brothers – She hadn’t the foggiest notion what to do. ‘I’ll see if I can find some fresh water.’ I’ll show them the good fish and the bad, the oil in the acorn, the grain in the wood – ‘Mm-e’, he said. ‘Come back here – oh, you little terror!’ Gru yelled and turned and ran after one of her bairns. Could I really truly have milked you, was that me and you – ‘Uh-’, he said. You must remember! His jaw was murdering him and his breath very short. Lu looked to the sky. It was bright dusk, the air slanting yellow as though lit from below. He saw a surge of dark birds in the sky, fanning out and in, dark then darker, then spun-out into a twisting rope, whipping the air before collecting into a tight black coil. Lulach watched it move, a black body in the ochre light. They glided slowly over him, resting in the glide, stretching gradually until individual corvids reappeared. You could get lost in that, he thought, and never feel alone. His head leaned back further into the tree-trunk; his body slipped down slightly. The yellow was turning rusty. It would soon be night. Now the rooks were a shadow against the copper sky. All the time Lulach heard them, jak-jak-ajak. He would have liked to be one of them, one of the little ones, nestled safely at the heart and carried without thought. The roost swooped up again, faster and faster, accelerating so fast that it seemed the picture of mania. Then just as suddenly they stopped and without turning were plummeting back down to earth. Lu froze as he watched them swoop as one past the copse. They went so quickly that they thinned out. He could now see singular birds flapping crazily to catch up.

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They switched direction again, and now again, an alarming somersault in the sky. The roost thundered toward him, their voices hard rain; now they fractured like lightning, an electrified blanket in the darkening sky. The flock jack-knifed before him and started whooshing into the branches above. But they were so close, too close, and it was not one but a thousand, black shape after black shape whistling to its nest. And now there was one bird, only one, seconds before him! Lulach could see its broken beak and yellow eye getting larger. In the flicker of an instant he saw the bird glance askance. It was coming so close! He could see the tiniest motion of light in its eye. It’s heading for me, he thought, he could see it! Time was slowing and the bird was getting bigger. He could see it, a tiny flicker in its eye, saying this is not where I should be, stop me, stop me, he could see it, the panic as the light in its eye grew bigger and brighter, he could see it, he could see it, he could see it, he could see – The sea withdrew its tremendous suck and nothing remained but a glisten. Gruoch was standing with her babes in her arms. ‘Wow’, she said, ‘wow. Did you see that, Lu – But now she looked at Lulach and he had changed. Two black feathers were flapping across Macbeth’s skull. A very black bird had its beak stuck in its eyehole. Its wings were flapping to escape and its talons were scratching Lulach’s throat. Gruoch closed her eyes for a moment. Her babies laughed as one at the bird-monster. Gruoch got to her knees and gently released the bird from its trap. It started to hop gingerly away into the wood, but as though concussed merely described a tottery circle back to Gruoch’s feet. She briefly stroked its nape before returning her attention to Lu. She turned him over and saw the light had gone for good. A small bubble glistened on his lip. She wiped it dry. His iris was now as purple as night, and less a muscle than a haemorrhage. Her necklace tickled his poor mashed face as she tried to clean a little of the blood off.

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She looked pityingly into the massacred eye. She hadn’t the tools to bury him but couldn’t bear the thought of further desecration. His poor puppyish face, it shone with such faith! The air was teeming with crows and this poor remaining eye wouldn’t see morning. There was only one thing for it. ‘Let’s get you free’, she whispered. She pulled the dagger from her belt and sharpened it on a nearby stone. She bent over Lulach one final time, nuzzled her lips close to the gap in the skull above the half-remaining eye, and kissed it. With a fine sweep of knife she started to sever the head. Deep, deep inside the head of Lulach – or was it still Lulach? – he felt the strangest gush of something releasing. The world was silent, its colour a blanket of the deepest blue, but now he felt warm hands drawing him on. A silky rope had unravelled and he was flowing out upon it. It was so warm. He could feel her hands and the love in them; he was open to touch and the touch was opening. Deep in the dark of head he was holding to a tiny flicker, nothing to be seen, just a flicker like a fireflint that would not ascend to flame. The silken rope was unravelling into a sleeve, longer and longer, and he could feel himself winding out upon it and spreading into grass, and a voice was calling to him from across seas, saying – sleep, sleep the innocent sleep sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care And now fins were growing, he was becoming fish, gliding through seas into sleep – death of each day’s life sore labour’s bath balm of hurt minds It was beautiful to lend flesh to the cut of love. He was fillet and flow, the fillet curling into palm and the flow

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resting silky in the grass. Slowly, slowly, the flicker lengthened and lapsed and slept. The bath was warm. The grayling felt no pain. ∞

a heart to love Gruoch wiped her hands on the grass. She felt hot but pleased enough. Lu’s head lay on its side. She glanced at it as she lifted the twins into the basket. ‘Well boys – he was a good boy. You be like him. You be good too.’ The concussed crow still stood expectantly near her ankle. Gru smiled and raised it in her two cupped hands. For a moment she was stunned by the weight of it – the pressure of muscle packed into its blackness, not an ounce of fat upon it. She pressed gently on its breast and felt its independence, its density, a heart beating and that tangle of feeding veins, the mind behind the eyes, astonishing! She almost swooned. Who could ever take such an animal for granted? It looked barely real, too perfect, like a flower, with all of its elements unbelievably in place. The simple fact of it was worth a prayer. With infinite care Gru placed the wounded bird next to her sons in the basket. She glanced at the headless trunk by the tree. It looked so abject and forgotten. She couldn’t leave it there; she’d get one of the carters to dig a grave; in the meantime she should cover his poor corpse. Gru started kicking leaves and twigs over the body. A scruffy layer started collecting around his midriff, wedged beneath the large tummy. It didn’t look right, the legs all covered and the torso bare. She bent down and flicked at the leaves that were lodging near his trouser top, jiggling his belt to move them. And then she saw them. Nestled amid the leaves and dust were two navels, one inner, one outer. They looked to Gruoch like the first and the oldest things ever made; like the newest

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and the most beautiful things in creation. She rested her head on his tummy. She kissed him, over and over and over, kissed him as you can only kiss someone who will never kiss back. She held to him as to a life raft, her arms across his girth and her cheek on his soft pink flesh. From her resting place Gru heard her babies, gabbling in the basket, their voices seeming to travel to her across dimensions. Eventually she rose and brushed herself clean. She felt faint and strange, remote from her own body, and looked dumbly down at the bleeding corpse of her first son. ‘Oh, my baby’, she whispered beneath her breath, shaking her head, without the faintest idea how to feel what she felt. My baby. There would have been a time for such a word. She removed her lime-green cloak and covered him as completely as she could. The head lay in the grass, the faintest steam emitting from its bloodied neck. She averted her eyes as she felt for the nose-ring, snug in the grass on her blindside. She put her finger through the ring and picked up the skull. She lifted it to eyelevel. And now, with the fullest clarity, she saw Lu behind the bone. There he was, in there, behind those bars, in there! Hot tears surged from nowhere into her eyes. Her face flushed hot and she puffed out as if to cool it, and then again. She shook her head, assaulted by the strange intensities in her chest, by this hot clean saltwater bursting all her levees. ‘God’, she whispered, the whisper vehement and strange to her. ‘God!’ Gru blew out her cheeks and rocked on her haunches. ‘So young!’ she heard herself whimper, and again felt her head shaking at her mind’s bequest. Had she never before seen how young he was? Gru sniffed, and tried to smile, and as though seeking release moved to ruffle the hair of her babies. But she missed and flicked the beak of the bird instead. The bird turned a fraction, very unsurprised, and turned again to face the land ahead of it. It looked supremely intelligent and assured.

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‘At home already, birdy?’ smiled Gru, biting at her lip, searching for control, nervous of more engulfing floods. She looked again at Lu, peaceful behind his screen. He really was a good boy; he’d had a good life, short though it was; he had lived. She still couldn’t quite believe it. He had lived! It was far more than nothing. ‘Home now’, she whispered, touching his cheek, helpless to allay the flow or cool the heat of her tears. He had lived! It was as much as any of us can. Gruoch heaved the basket onto her back and picked the skull up by the nose-ring. She sniffed a laugh at her mad unlikely load and brushed her hot eyes a little drier. What would old Sod think, she thought, cherishing his awful daddy’s skull like an heirloom? Another Golgotha, perhaps. But there was no choice. Here was her own and only family: her modern family, her modern ecstasy, mother and father and sons – and why not, a holy spirit to boot in the shape of a distracted rook. Sod would surely laugh. Gru breathed in deeply one more time, exhaled till the breath expired, and shut her eyes closed. There was no cease to the weeping. She didn’t wish there to be. She shimmied her shoulders for comfort and checked that the straps were secure. One more intake of air, one more exhalation. The skull ticked like a metronome as mum and boys and bird began the long trek back to Dunsinane. ∞

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AFTERWORD

Throughout this project we have tried to stay faithful to the Macbeth-playworld’s most intimate movements and physics – wearing it, as we used to say to each other, like a harness on our backs. For instance, in splitting Macbeth into numerous individuals we were also faithful to Shakespeare’s own methods of composition. Macbeth is a Scottish King from the eleventh century, but Shakespeare drew upon a host of figures from the chronicles in composing his hero. What is more, most of the male characters in the play – Banquo, Malcolm, Macduff, the murderers – are in one way or another doubles or shadows of Macbeth. Already in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is leading more lives than his own, just as he is haunted by lives past and passing and to come. The same applies to Shakespeare’s language. In the same way that his scenes invite us to infer and imagine more, so too do Shakespeare’s notoriously dense metaphors teem with possibilities. We wanted to enter these words, bringing them to new life, just as we entered other gaps in the play. As we worked, almost every image – a ravelled sleeve, a cup of wine, a pack of dogs, the haste in a character’s eyes, Tarquin’s ravishing strides – became a potential cue or prop for a new realization. One such prompt was some words from the play that are rarely noticed, spoken by Macduff to Malcolm, telling the fledgling prince about his mother: The Queen that bore thee, Oftener upon her knees, than on her feet, Died every day she lived. 280

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This is the only presence that the play’s first Queen is allowed. But once we fully attend to and realize the image, a whole new backstory flowers in her silence – one where a Queen is praying daily, inexplicably guilty, lashed by existence, wound upon wound, worried for her sons and severed from her saintedKing, living the dying life, every day a fore-suffering and rehearsal of death. Each detail becomes a pre-echo of the world she haunts. Another way of putting it is to say that we wanted to find out the buried lives. Macbeth is full of them. Or perhaps it is better to say that they are unburied. For they never are quite lifeless; still less are they forgotten. The play presents a savage world where women are sacrificed and families, it seems, impossible. And yet there are delicate mysteries amid the violence. Most mysterious of all is the hint of children surviving. If Lady Macbeth had children, where are they now? For one thing is sure in this world – the dead haunt the living, whether in the form of accusing ghosts, or horrible visions, or in baroque images of naked babes, newborn or undead, striding the blast. Nothing and no-one is safely dead. As we have said, to recover these voices and figures also seems to us a political act. Macbeth is sometimes criticized for its sexual politics. Lady Macbeth, the harridan who exceeds the bounds of her sex and goes mad; Lady Macduff, innocent and helpless without her husband’s protection; the bearded witches, feeding upon catastrophe, tempting goodness from itself. It is true that mythical archetypes shadow all these figures – but true too that things are never so simple. Lady Macbeth might be seen as a misogynist’s monster, but she might equally be understood as an arch-pragmatist: upwardly mobile, with one eye to procedure and the other on her partner’s prospects, a sort of ultimate multi-tasking housekeeper. Lady Macduff is scornful and sarcastic about the husband who has abandoned her for the greater good; she looks with cold humour on the prospect of being a single mother. And the witches, too, exceed any simple label, sometimes suggesting nothing so much as a band of sisters, taunting and defying the men who have blasted

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their world. After all, what makes a witch? What makes a mother? To enter the world of Macbeth – wherever we locate this world, in the eleventh century, in 1606, in an ever-imminent present – is to confront the violence of sexual relations and gender nominations, and more broadly the coerciveness of institutions and words. Such things have a persisting, shaping reality for everyone, man and woman, girl and boy. To pretend to escape them is sentimental evasion. And yet, one of the most thrilling and direct moments in Shakespeare’s play is when the heroine screams, ‘Unsex me here!’ The very action of living – and of reading as a form of life – must always seek inside and search beyond convention. In Macbeth, Macbeth, that is what we have tried to do.

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