“Peace!” Meredith said. “The charm’s wound up.”
James inhaled suddenly, like he’d forgotten to breathe before, and stepped out into the light. “So foul and fair a day I have not seen,” he said, and every head turned toward us. I walked close behind him, not afraid of stumbling now.
“How far is’t call’d to Forres?” I said, and then stopped dead. The three girls stood side by side, staring up at us. “What are these / So wither’d and so wild in their attire, / That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth, / And yet are on’t?” We descended more slowly. A thousand eyes followed us, five hundred pairs of lungs holding their breath.
Me: “Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me—”
James: “Speak if you can.”
Meredith sank down in a crouch in front of us. “All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!”
Wren came to kneel beside her. “All hail Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!”
Filippa didn’t move, but said, in a clear ringing voice, “All hail Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!”
James twitched backward. I caught his shoulders and said, “Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear / Things that do sound so fair?”
He looked sideways at me and I let him go, reluctantly. After a moment’s hesitation I slid past him, stepped down from the last sandy stair to stand among the witches.
Me: “I’ the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner
You greet with present grace and great prediction
Of noble having and of royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal. To me you speak not.
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favors nor your hate.”
Meredith was on her feet in an instant. “Hail!” she said, and the other girls echoed her. She darted forward, came too close, her face only an inch from mine. “Lesser than Macbeth and greater.”
Wren appeared behind me, fingers drumming on my waist, peeking up at me with an impish smile. “Not so happy, yet much happier.”
Still, Filippa stood off. “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none,” she said—indifferent, almost bored. “So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo.”
Wren and Meredith continued to pet and paw me, plucking at my clothes, exploring the lines of my neck and shoulders, pushing back my hair. Meredith’s hand wandered all the way up to my mouth, fingertips tracing my lower lip, before James—who had indeed been looking on with a kind of rapt revulsion—started and spoke. The girls’ heads snapped toward him and I swayed on the spot, weak-kneed at the loss of their attention.
James: “Stay, you imperfect speakers! Tell me more.
By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis;
But how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives,
A prosperous gentleman; and to be King
Stands not within the prospect of belief.”
They only shook their heads, put their fingers to their lips, and slunk back into the water. When they had completely disappeared beneath the surface and we had recovered most of our wits, I turned to James, eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Your children shall be kings,” he said.
“You shall be king.”
“And Thane of Cawdor too. Went it not so?”
“To the selfsame tune and words.” Footsteps approached from the trees and I looked toward them. “Who’s here?”
The rest of the scene was short, and when I wasn’t speaking, I kept a watchful eye on the water. It was still again, reflecting the tempestuous purple sky. When the time came, I and the two lucky third-years playing Ross and Angus exited right, out of the firelight.
“We’re done,” one of them whispered. “Break legs.”
“Thanks.” I ducked behind the shed on the edge of the beach. It was no bigger than an outhouse, and if I glanced around one corner I could see the fire, the canoe resting on the water, the stretch of sand where James now stood alone.
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?” He groped into the empty air before him. “Come, let me clutch thee.”
It was a speech I had never expected to hear him give. He was too spotless to talk of blood and murder like Macbeth, but in the red glare of the fire he no longer looked so angelic. Instead he was handsome the way you think of the devil as handsome—forbiddingly so.
James: “Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
I go, and it is done.”
He condemned Duncan once more, then stole away to meet me on the edge of the firelight as the audience waited, whispering to one another, for the next scene to begin.
“What now?” I said when he was close enough to hear.
“I think—wait.” He shrank back, bumped against me.
“What?”
“Hecate,” he hissed.
Before I could even catch the substance of the word, Alexander exploded out of the water. Little shrieks of surprise went up from the audience as waves crashed back down around him. He was soaking wet, naked to the waist, his curls loose and wild around his face. He threw his head back and howled up at the sky like a wolf.
“Literally wicked,” I said.
The girls emerged from the water again, and no sooner had Meredith said, “Why how now, Hecate, you look angerly!” than Alexander grabbed her by the back of the neck, flinging water everywhere.
“Have I not reason, beldams as you are,” he snarled, “Saucy and overbold? How did you dare To trade and traffic with Macbeth In riddles and affairs of death?”
James seized my arm. “Oliver,” he said. “Blood-bolter’d Banquo smiles upon me.”