Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

CXIV. The First Conversation With Death: Hell Rising

24
THE FIRST CONVERSATION WITH DEATH
The Narrator & Macbeth
Nairn, Scotland
Tùr Ifrinn
Territory: Cawdor
Unknown, 1056
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    And thus, the story goes: the first time a Scot cheated death, he walked through fire.

    Fire. Sewn from the blood of Hell, and reposed from the finest of smoke. Fire, where the jaws of Hell burned so fierce it sank into his veins. Fire, where the wind howled amidst the destruction, begging for an uncleʼs mercy. Fire, where Macbeth stood, grand in a kingʼs grandeur, was all-consuming, all-obliterating.

    His riches setting the rest of the town ablaze. Coughing hoarsely, Macbeth blinked twice – tears of blood rolling down his face, and drying on his hands. His heart thudded in his chest listlessly, nearly stopping, as marauding soldiers fell around him, a panic chilling the bristles and bones. Panic, that surged through him like violent winds, coagulating like the blood that baptized his face, and as the tears rolled down his silky skin, Hellʼs fires screamed as Heavenʼs vehement rage clawed at its face.

    And what remained was the fire.

    The world, which was born oʼ fire.

    At the crossroads, where the soot and blood spread across the medieval grounds in earthen tendrils; like menacing spires, striking down on the virgin soil with desperation to jut up into ground like undergrowth, the fire rose from its ashes with the ferocity of a wolfʼs claws.

   And in the fire, stood the antithesis of Man – Death – and Macbeth watched his blood boil. Fingers scarred from the teeth of the flames, tongue pink and barbed as the devilʼs, Death stared on in the form of a Uppsala priest, lapping up the blood and dirt of Suenoʼs Stone, his lips, eyes, and ears painted black, his pure white robes bathing in the blood of Macbethʼs countrymen.

    A warlock greedily lapping at the entrails of what was dead and gone, an animal dancing with the woes of thirst, and dying a blissful death when that quench was satisfied. The fire danced, and Suenoʼs Stone served as the gateway to Tùr Ifrinn, Hellʼs tower. Muffling its screams that rung through the charred earth, glaring at Macbeth with red eyes. As thunder and lighting crashed against each other in demonic fury, dark clouds swallowing the moon in a vultureʼs break, fire burning inside Ifrinnʼs roots, overshadowing the ornate, Gaelic and Norse carvings of Suenoʼs Stone.

    "Hail, thane of Cawdor," Macbeth spat, blood in his mouth, raising his axe into Tùr Ifrinnʼs hellish gaze.

    Cawdor smiled, burning amidst the smoke sinew.

    The fire was not finished with him yet, it seemed.

    "I saw you die, Rí Deircc. Glorious, it was."

    "Aye, that you did."

    The wind howled, and wrapped around the fabric of Macbeth's bones, were the entrails of Cawdorʼs norsemen, Karl Hundasonʼs – the sea king, Cnut the Greatʼs patsy to power – spewing more blood onto the ground, into the fire like oil, a ritual sacrifice.

    "But I will never die."

    "Oh, my liege Macbeth, death is all you will ever know. A bloody, violent death serving your bloody, violent king Duncan."

    Macbeth raised his axe, a warhammer commanding the lightning and thunder of Hell, letting out a warriorʼs howl.

    "In the name of King Duncan, the rightful king of Scotia, of Scots and Picts, Donnchad mac Crinain, kneel, Cawdor, sorcerer of Nairn. Kneel before your king and Christ–"

    Tùr Ifrinn howled, rattling the way bones do on a skinned skeleton, craving the pull of flesh. The corpses Macbeth had slain piled onto each other, food for flies, as the blood poured from the Heavens, recreating Hellʼs image in a forest of arteries, organs, and bile.

    Fire, sewn from Hell. Even Macbeth was not prepared to face his demons, or the shadows of those that he had left behind. When the panic set in, Macbeth listened to the muffled screams of the virginous bodies hit his ears – the charred homes, and mud and blood, screaming to the flames above. Soon enough, a charcoalʼd claw reached for his throat, and the fire swallowed Cawdorʼs eyes.

    This story only had one end.

    A bloody, violent one.

    "History writes of heroes, of their valor, of their courage with sweet-honeyed words and sugary words. And yet, look at you, how youʼre written, the mighty Macbeth. Hailed warrior. High and mighty atop his throne. But lo! What history does not write of: the corpses of thousands of Scotsmen you climbed upon, the babies throats you slit and the women you r*ped and defiled to get to where you are.

   "Scotland sees you as a hero, paved in Christʼs image, a man whose life is carved in Christʼs images, but the writers – just like the Gods — know what took place here. I am viking, cut from the cloth of Uppsalaʼs flesh. And you are a jealous Scot whose envy pumps through those veins, climbing into my ride to take everything that is mine. A tiny, little man, who can never have it all, high on that high horse, suckling Duncanʼs t*at through-and-through."

    Cawdorʼs ribcage began to bleed, forming a bloodied eagle, as he kneeled in front of Suenoʼs Stone, baptizing the floor in godly blood.

    "No Macbeth, I will not kneel."

    "Then I will have to cut you down, tighearna Chaladair."

    "So be it," Cawdor spat. "History will not write of you, gille righ. Only of the bloodthirsty general who was Duncanʼs lapdog for all time, just like the carvings of this stone."

    A beat; the dead howled, screaming into the abyss.

    "You were born nothing. And you will die and wither away into nothing."

    From that day, the story of the Scotsman who cheated death, rang through Scotland: from the Orkney to Inverness, Shetland to Edinburgh, and all the sires in-between.

    Fire. Sewn from Hellʼs repose.

    Macbeth screamed, a warrior cryʼs, taking flight with his sword and axe like that of the bloodied eagle. The soot and blood spread across the medical grounds in earthen tendrils, circling Suenoʼs Stone like menacing spires, striking down on the virgin soil with desperation to jut up into earth like undergrowth. The hellish fire, phoenixes rising from the ashes, clawed at Macbeth with the ferocity of a wolfʼs claws, craving scarred bone, cracked knuckles, the flesh that greedily sucked on his sword. Cawdorʼs tongue was pink, barbed, salivating, shouting, screaming when Macbethʼs sword pierced him and Suenoʼs Store.

    A single scream. Shaking, crying, as the fire swallowed him whole, his knees hitting the floor, flesh carving into the nails as the voice in his head hummed – distracting him, singing to him, lulling him deeper into the burning, acidic arms of the Devilʼs embrace. Macbeth rebelled, lips leeching onto his bloodthirsty hands and watching as more pooled from the crevices, damned by the dalliances of the dirt and mud, of Cawdorʼs body and his. Suenoʼs stone shrieked, winced, whining at the feeling of ash piling on-top of the two – Macbeth and Cawdor – cradling in its bleeding breasts a new Scotland.

    Hovering over the bodies heʼd slain, strewn before him with an animalʼs jaws, the fire carved into Macbethʼs neck – blood jettisoning from the flesh and spraying his body in Picasso arcs, Da Vinci arcs, Michelangelo arcs and oozing from the flesh as it coated his body. And as the crevice opened, like a downpour ready to swallow the city, the fire slithering out; thick and relentless, shuddering around Macbeth as Cawdor was impaled against Suenoʼs Stone, with the bodies crying out behind him.

    "Hail, thane of Cawdor," Macbeth gasped once more, as the earth rumbled around him, giving birth to Hellʼs hearth on sacrosanct Scottish soil.

    And when Tùr Ifrinn sank its jaws, the jaws of hell, into his teeth, it was then our story began: long before there was man, long before Life, there was Death, and when he wanted to claim the world for himself...

    He claimed a Scotsman, to walk through fire.

    And to give him an heir to Godʼs kingdom.