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Läsebok. N:o 92-93.
103
Early in the morning, the nobles and gentlemen who
attended on the King assembled in the great ball of the
castle, and there they began to talk of what a dreadful storm
it had been the night before. But Macbeth could scarcely
understand what they said, for he was thinking on something
much worse and more frightful than the storm, and was
wondering what would be said when they heard of the murder.
They waited for some time, but finding the King did not
come from his apartment, one of the noblemen went to see
whether he was well or not. But when he came into the
room, he found poor King Duncan lying stiff, and cold, and
bloody, and the two sentinels both fast asleep, with their
dirks or daggers covered with blood. As soon as the
Scottish nobles saw this terrible sight, they were greatly
astonished and enraged; and Macbeth made believe as if he were
more enraged than any of them, and, drawing his sword,
before any one could prevent him, he killed the two attendants
of the King, who slept in the bedchamber, pretending to
think they had been guilty of murdering King Duncan.
When Malcolm and Donaldbane, the two sons of the
good King, saw their father slain in this strange manner,
within Macbeth’s castle, they became afraid that they would
be put to death likewise, and fled away out of Scotland; for,
notwithstanding all the excuses which he could make, they
still believed that Macbeth had killed their father.
Donald-bane fled into some distant islands, but Malcolm, the eldest
son of Duncan, went to the court of England, where he begged
for assistance from the English King, to place him on the
throne of Scotland as his father’s successor.
In the meantime, Macbeth took possession of the
kingdom of Scotland, and thus all his wicked wishes seemed to
be fulfilled. But he was not happy. He began to reflect
how wicked he had been in killing his friend and benefactor,
and how some other person, as ambitious as he was himself,
might do the same thing to him. He remembered, too, that
the old women had said, that the children of Banquo should
succeed to the throne after his death, and therefore he
concluded that Banquo might be tempted to conspire against
him, as he had himself done against King Duncan. The
wicked always think other people are as bad as themselves.
In order to prevent this supposed danger, Macbeth hired
ruffians to watch in a wood where Banquo and his son Fleance
sometimes used to walk in the evening, with instructions to
attack them, and kill both father and son. The villains did
as they were ordered by Macbeth; but while they were killing
Banquo, the boy Fleance made his escape from their wicked
hands, and fled from Scotland into Wales. And it is said,
that, long afterwards, his children came to possess the
Scottish crown.
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