The king was determined not to yield. He flung defiant words at his panting opponent and backed away, feeling the rough stone of the castle wall scrape his armored shoulders. In the background, the cries and clangor of mortal fray sullied the air. His whirling mind considered the awful consequences of surrender; the subjugation and the kissing of the ground before the young pretender’s feet, the hooting derision of the rabble, the degradation and sickening shame. No, surrender was out of the question. Death was better. . . .
(Gregory was thrashing, gripped by one of the vivid, active, cinematic dreams that occasionally visited him. Sometimes they were beautiful, sometimes they were frightening; sometimes their meaning was clear, usually they were cryptic and even silly; often they were the strange pastiches peculiar to scholars and writers, made up of half-remembered plays and literary scraps, the Bible being a frequent source, Shakespeare another. . . .)
His tired arm lifted the battered shield before his body. “Lay on, Macduff,” he quietly smiled. Then, through clenched teeth, he hissed the words that were to be his last: “And damned be him that first cries Hold, enough!”
Screeching the final syllable, Gregory lunged at the waiting Macduff, forcing him out, on to the balcony. The king swung his broadsword savagely, in murderous wide arcs, gripping its dudgeon with both hands. The air whistled as the blade cut through it.
Deftly, Macduff avoided the sword, waiting his chance. He saw it. The crazed king had brought back his arms to prepare for a mighty blow; he was open. Macduff plunged his sword into the king’s entrails. Gregory howled; his sword clanged as it fell on the stones. Macduff withdrew his blade, twisting it vengefully while the king’s breath rasped in agony.
Now, through bleared vision, Gregory saw his enemy lift his sword for the death stroke. He was aiming for Gregory’s neck: he meant to lop off his head with one blow. The sword sang through the air. . . .
Standing before Gregory were the three wayward sisters: those creatures of elder world he had encountered twice before and whose equivocating prophecies had led him to his downfall. Surrounded by blackness and mist they were, and their skinny, luminous, naked bodies gleamed. They smiled, and merged into each other, altering and melting until they became one grinning Presence who saluted Gregory in silent greeting.
The Fellow extended a hand. Gregory was impelled to grasp it. He was led along a blasted heath. Fog clung to his ankles. In the distance he heard a wailing as of many bagpipes. As they drew closer to the sound, he knew it for the mixed groans and screams of human voices. Some started low—a grunting in the belly—then rose higher and higher in tortured crescendo to break on a cracked, ear-piercing shriek. Others were only restless, fevered moans. But one, terrible to hear, was a woman’s full-voiced, continuous scream that stopped but for a gasping breath and then went on, hideously steady and unwavering.
Gregory saw her as the fog momentarily cleared and they stopped walking. Nude, with deep curves of flesh that shone with sweat in the red light, she sat on a throne, screaming. On her head was a crown, in her hands two maces, across her lap a royal sceptre. It was his wife, the late queen. The sceptre, the maces, the crown and the throne were white-hot.
His Companion, with a mocking bow, indicated a twin throne next to the lady’s. “All hail,” he chuckled. “Thou shalt be king—Hereafter!”
On the way to his throne, Gregory stumbled. He looked down. Riven to the heath, half-engulfed in mist, lay Banquo. His hands and feet were spiked to the earth. His face had lost that look of cunning Gregory knew so well: the half-smile and narrow eyes with which he had approached Gregory after the murder of King Duncan. What was it he had whispered? “Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis—all! As the weird women promised.” His voice had dropped to a low growl: “And I fear thou play’dst most foully for it!” Gregory had blanched and fingered his sword-hilt as Banquo, after looking to the left and right, had gone on. “If there come truth from them, why may they not be my oracles as well, and set me up in hope?” It was at that moment that Gregory had decided Banquo would have to die. And now, here he was—looking up at his royal murderer and gasping both in recognition and in torment. The slayer and the slain regarded each other with a certain comprehension, and, in that moment, they together knew for the first time the deepest, most awful, eternal truth of damnation: that it does not distinguish between him who commits the damning act and him who in his heart desires it done.
Hoarsely, Banquo whispered, “’Tis strange.” Then, in a mixture of puzzlement and dawning realization: “To win us to our harm, the Instruments of Darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray us in deepest consequence.”
And then he began to choke, for a yellow, sulphurous mist weaved in to swathe him. It was impossible for Gregory to see him now, for Hell (as his lady had once divined in a moment of revelation) is murky. . . .
• • •
Gregory awoke suddenly, bathed in sweat, calling out unintelligible words, trying to answer questions he had not been asked in the waking world.
He found himself completely dressed, sitting in an armchair in the rectory parlor. Now he remembered. He and His Excellency had given themselves a short respite from the all-night exorcism, and while Mrs. Farley prepared a bit of breakfast, Gregory had sat down in the chair for a moment’s rest. He had closed his eyes and . . .
What did the dream mean? The idea of being damned for deeds not committed was ridiculous and had no basis in theology. Why, then, had he dreamt it? The moment’s nap had not refreshed him. He looked at the clock: it was almost eight in the morning. He arose with effort and, his mind puffed with questions, walked heavily into the dining room.