[Verse 1] She carries a taper, that's just a lone candle's flame, eyes wide open yet she can't recall her own name, the Gentlewoman whispers she's done this many a night, fetched paper, sealed it, folded it, sat by candlelight. [Chorus] "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" she scrubs at skin that won't wash away, "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand"— no soap, no priest, no ocean, no sand. [Verse 2] Watch her knuckles turning, round and round the same patch of skin, a stain no water's ever going to let her wring clean within, "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" she asks the dark, and the dark stays dim. [Verse 3] The Doctor leans in close, keeps his voice down low, says her perturbation—her troubled mind, you know— runs past his tinctures, past the reach of any pill, "more needs she the divine than the physician," he says, standing still. [Chorus] "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" she scrubs at skin that won't wash away, "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand"— no soap, no priest, no ocean, no sand. [Bridge] The Doctor fears what infected minds will do, to their deaf pillows they discharge what's true, he says, remove from her the means of all annoyance near, she's mated now—that's beaten, baffled, caught in her own fear. [Verse 4] She mutters of a wife, a child, a house set to flame, she mutters of a ghost who wouldn't answer to his name, Duncan's blood still pooling underneath her tread— "what's done cannot be undone," is all that's said. [Verse 5] The Gentlewoman swears she'll never breathe a word of this, locks it in her chest like a secret kept amiss, these castle walls have heard a queen who cannot rest, she keeps her silent vigil, it's the only test she'll pass or fail. [Verse 6] Somewhere down the corridor her husband walks alone, haunted by a dagger and a crown he's made his own, he hears her crying softly in a dream she cannot share, two souls undone by murder, drowning in their own despair. [Verse 7] Thunder cracks the heavens like the night they spilled the blood, the candle gutters low now, drowning in its flood, she whispers "to bed, to bed" like a lullaby of dread, walking back to chambers where she'll never rest her head. [Outro] The woman who once said a little water sets us free now can't find a basin deep enough to let her be— she traded sleep for a crown that wouldn't hold, walking corridors at midnight, forever cold. [Chorus] "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" she scrubs at skin that won't wash away, "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand"— no soap, no priest, no ocean, no sand.
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