“No need—” he started.

  “Your face and speech and clothes mark you as Aragon,” the youth put in, “who stand amongst the vanguard of Orsino’s foes in the Tuscan war. In how many battles have the Illyrians crossed their swords with yours? But we of Arden have made little show so far. So let us be your mouth and ears, or you might only find your prince from the next cell.”

  Benedick nodded, conceding the point, then turned sharply as Helena hissed at the fire. “What is it?”

  “The witch that sought us on the beach is coming back. Her immortal master is not satisfied with her lack of captives, I’ll wager.” The physician’s eyes glinted in the firelight. “If you must go, go now and travel swiftly. She comes in from the sea; head south and I will send her from your course, even as I hide us.”

  Benedick grimaced and nodded at Ganymede. “Come on, then; but, I pray you, let philosophy wait on safety or we shall never reach this port at all.”

  “You know of Zeno then, whose paradox the ancient world did marvel at...” Jacques began, and continued and then continued further until distance hushed his voice.

  HELENA TOOK A stick and began to mark a circle in the dirt about their fire, calculating in her head. The magic of Old Scotland was a very different matter to hers, a thing of fairies and diabolic pacts, chaining its practitioners to ruinous powers she had no intention of dealing with. Her magic was book magic, an outgrowth of the natural philosophy that had made her such a prodigy as a doctor, able to cure all ills and almost raise the dead. Hers was the magic of an age of reason: of alchemy and philosophy and the clear light of day, not the smoke and cobwebs of the past’s dark night.

  “Should I douse the fire?” Parolles asked nervously. She should, Helena mused, make him scared more often. His sense of self-preservation was probably his best quality, though that was a low bar.

  “She does not search with eyes,” Helena told him, relishing his expression. They had history, she and he.

  The witch was near, now: the wind picking up about them and rattling the trees.

  “Stay close within the circle,” she warned the two men. “Say nothing. Do not look at her.”

  Overhead the clouds were racing, and she spared a thought for Benedick’s search party, hoping her misdirection would cover them. The Aragonese seemed a decent sort, the philosopher might be needed, and Ganymede... Well, Helena could not deny a little affection for one who had been forced to go to such lengths to make a way in the world.

  Then Don John seemed to stumble, tripping over a root and scuffing backwards until his heel had broken the circle.

  “What are you doing, you fool?” Helena demanded. For a moment there was a look of pure malevolent cunning on the nobleman’s face, swiftly covered by almost theatrical contrition.

  “Alas! My clumsiness has undone us!” he cried out, far louder than necessary. “Fear not, sweet maiden, I shall draw the enemy off and save you and your man.” And he actually grinned at her, just before he ran towards the witch waving his arms. In that moment, horribly exposed before the magic of her enemies, Helena could not help but admire the sheer barefacedness of him. Honesty in a villain is a rare thing. She was turning to her circle, hoping to repair the damage, but Parolles bolted too, in the opposite direction, following after the search party, and she was left with nothing to repair, too many feet in too many places.

  So she stood, gripping her stick as if it were a true magician’s staff, and waited to see if the witch would be satisfied with John and, if not, whether Helena’s new magic was a match for the sorcery of old gods.

  The garrison at Apollonia.

  Soldiers and servants alike in slovenly attire bustle about a great table groaning with meat and drink. Presiding over the general disarray, the duke’s kinsman by marriage, Sir Toby, topples ever deeper into his cups as the day grows on, calling for more cakes and ale.

  Enter MACBETH.

  THE GENERAL SOUNDS—of drinking and wenching, of dice-rattle, of oaths and counter-oaths—fell silent, leaving only Sir Toby singing tunelessly to himself, his voice cracking and vanishing into the otherwise silent air as he saw the cause.

  The Scot—whose name no man dared speak—cut a formidable figure in this latter age. Perhaps, centuries before, this had been a nobleman’s customary attire: this dark mail, this hooded helm, within which the grey face could be glimpsed but darkly. He had come without darkening any doorway, his cloak trailing shadows and his hand about his dagger-hilt as though murder was never far from his mind. And what was he after all, but a murderer, a kingslayer, the consort of witches?

  At least he had not brought any of his witches with him this time. He himself was a fearsome enough figure—the soldiers crossed themselves in his presence, but only behind his back. This current Pope had given up his crusade against magic, just as a predecessor had abandoned his prohibitions against the use of black powder. Back when the Scot had cast his lot in with his mistress, though, he had turned his back on God’s grace as well as man’s law. The air about him was cold, and smelled of musty graves and the iron tang of blood.

  “What?” Sir Toby mumbled, squinting red-eyed at the warlord. “What, now?” Drunk enough to stare at that grim countenance and keep his ruddy colour, he waved at the table. “Has Orsino made you his messenger, or will you have a skin of sack?”

  Abruptly the Scot was looming over him, and the drunkard cradled his mug protectively. When the warlord spoke, his voice was deep and hollow, a tomb-voice, ornate with the crumbling lilt of a Scotland five centuries dead.

  “My hounds scared from the brush a curious deer,” he intoned. “Your own dogs have taken it up.”

  Sir Toby nodded wisely, though actual understanding only came three heartbeats later. “New prisoner, you say? More sailors and servants to go on the prison ship with the rest?”

  “A man of rank, or so he claims,” the Scot confirmed. “No doubt you’ll put him with the other.”

  Even then the sound of tramping feet heralded a new band of soldiers, whose casual discipline shamed those of the garrison. At their head was the young officer known as Cesario and in their midst a dark Aragonese.

  “What, now?” Toby stood suddenly, his belly jolting the table and spilling a tide of ale across its top. “Is this not the very fellow we took before? And did the villain escape, after giving us word for his conduct? I’ll have him flogged!” He leant heavily on the table and glowered at Cesario with the full weight of his displeasure.

  VIOLA STARED INTO the blotchy, choleric face of her kinsman—the uncle of her sister-in-law, worse luck—and resisted the urge to march over there and slap him. Perhaps, if the walking mortuary that was the Scot had not been there, she would have given in to it. “This is not he,” she said, “though the resemblance is plain. I trust you still have Don Pedro close until the Duke sends word?”

  Toby goggled at her—perhaps perplexed by the young soldier’s familiarity, perhaps just so drunk his wits were dissolving. At last he belched massively and sat back down, seemingly losing interest. She was about to have her new prisoner sent to the cells when he stepped forwards and spoke, practically elbowing her aside.

  “Hold, brave sirs! Do I understand you have my brother, Pedro of Aragon, in chains?”

  “In chains? What now, are we Dutchmen?” Toby growled. “No, he is held in comfort, but we have him. As we have you, so if you come to trade yourself for him, you’ve made a poor start.”

  “Trade myself?” the prisoner laughed. “Rather I come to warn you, good sir knight. I myself am John, a prince in my own right and one who regards my word as iron, ever one to respect the nobility of my foes even as I bear arms against them. But know you, my brother Pedro has no such scruples. Chain him hard, or he will slip from the least crack and cut the throat of any who stand in his way. Rely not on any promises he gives, for he breaks them as swift as straws. Alas that I were not more a slave to fraternal loyalty, but my love of truth and justice forces me to give such a report of him.”

  What impressed Viola most was the matter-of-fact way the words were spoken. The Aragonese fixed his eyes on Toby and the Scot, and spoke his piece without the least attempt at passion and conviction. His skill, she saw, was in judging the interests of his audience. While the brooding warlord just stared thoughtfully at the prisoner, Toby was obviously won by the idea of having a prisoner he could bully, rather than one he had to respect.

  “Warnings well heeded!” he exclaimed. “You, and you, go find that rascal Pedro and hold him close, if he has not already practised on our generosity and fled. It would not do for our great prize to vanish before the Duke pronounces on his fate. And you, sir?”

  “I, good knight?” the Aragonese prisoner adopted a mummer’s pose of humility. “I am Don John, poor second son, who has lamented the turn of events that ever brought our nations into dispute. For sure, had I been on the throne when this war had loomed, I would have found some other path than to make an enemy of bold Illyria.”

  Viola opened her mouth to object, but once again the words were plainly music to Sir Toby. “Find this fellow quarters, get him set,” he ordered, “and then perhaps, Don John of Aragon, you’ll join me at my table?”

  “Nothing would please me more,” and even in that, the man sounded mocking, but only Viola seemed to hear it.

  Act III

  The backstreets of Apollonia.

  The echo of a hundred accents and languages sound here even in wartime. The voices of sailors and merchants, hurrying to their beds as night draws on, cries of street vendors, distant music from taverns, the ringing of the watchman’s bell. The air throngs with the sounds of a hundred vices and depravities, such that only the vilest specimens of mankind would frequent such a place.

  Enter PAROLLES.

  ALL NATIONS HAVE their ports, but all ports in their way belong to one nation. Parolles had seen enough of them, now, to find his way in any of them. His Rousillon grey he’d disguised under a cloak donated by an incautious laundress.

  About abandoning Helena, he felt no guilt. They had never been friends, and Parolles was only on this embassy in her company because her husband suspected her virtue. The idea that Helena might be unfaithful would be plausible to anyone, Parolles thought, who did not know her. She was comely enough, and she and her lord could barely stay in the same room as one another anymore. She was too cold to find a new love, though, Parolles guessed—and too unwilling to have another man meddle in her affairs. Even the King of France, whose life she had saved, had begun to fear her. The perfect emissary, therefore, to wizard Prospero.

  There had been a time, back before she was either married, important or powerful, when she and Parolles had been able to exchange civil words. She’d had a keen wit on her, back then. The thought of that had almost given him pause as he fled. But then the witch-storm had been close, and his courage was a quality more boasted about than evidenced.

  So let her fight it out with the Scot’s witches. Parolles had other priorities. Ever since he had discovered the shore on which they had been cast up, his thoughts had been of treasure. Despite Helena’s caveat, in this one thing he was truthful. A man—a man in a tavern, admittedly—had indeed prophesied he should find a treasure should he find himself on Illyrian soil.

  He had certain particulars, vouchsafed by the same man—and he had read some books and heard some tales. The idea of Parolles engaged in research would no doubt have made Helena laugh him to scorn, but wealth and power were a strong goad. Parolles felt he had been hanger-on for long enough.

  “And, when I am lord and others came to beg, I’ll make them crawl and flatter,” he swore to himself. He had just left his third tavern, buying drinks from another man’s purloined purse and asking covert questions. So far, all word led the same way—a daunting way, truly, but Parolles felt himself nothing if not resourceful. “And those who mocked me—all those false friends who spurned me—well, they shall come to me and feign their friendship anew, and perhaps I shall not deign to recognise them, or I shall set them tests of loyalty.” This was sounding good. “‘Mercy, Great Parolles!’ they’ll cry. ‘We always saw the star of greatness in you, but were misled!’ and I’ll say—” But just what Parolles would have said to those hypothetical supplicants was lost when someone stepped up behind him and thrust a bag over his head.

  He squawked in fright, but there were arms about his, and a low voice whispered, “Quiet, or your next sound is your last,” in a guttural accent. Obediently, imagining a world of knives beyond the darkness of the bag, Parolles went limp and let himself be led.

  They took him some place enclosed, that reeked of animal—a stables was his guess—and there set him down on a barrel top. One man held his arms, and he tensed for a blow, but what he heard was a rapid foreign gabble, strongly accented and utterly unintelligible. His carefully constructed story about sympathy to the Illyrian cause fell apart in his mind. Some rogues of a country far further afield had apparently got hold of him.

  “Gentle lords, please,” he got out, his voice muffled by the bag. “Are you Turks? For I do hear the Sublime Porte is in alliance with Ilyrria—”

  “Not Turkishmen,” said the fierce voice that had spoken to him before. “Know you not the tones of Muscovy?”

  Parolles racked his brains and failed to find any reason why a party of Russians should have swiped him off the streets of Apollonia. “Then, gentlemen of Muscovy, pray tell...?”

  Again that babble, that now came to him on a cold wind all the way from the steppe—no doubt the magnate of these Tartars giving instructions to his interpreter.

  “Pray tell you tell us, Sieur French, what cause you have to skulk about this town,” the voice whispered in his ear. Parolles pictured sabres half-drawn, wanting only a mis-spoken word to find his flesh.

  “Please, sirs, if you but spare me,” he got out, “I can make you rich! There is a treasure here within this town, was promised me by a man—some gambling fellow, some drunken fellow, but very sage nonetheless; some rosbif braggart, Will of Stratford his name. Spare me slavery or death, and I shall lead you to it.”

  More gabble, and then the interpreter was at his elbow once again. “Why, Sieur French, you are so generous. What is this treasure of which you speak?”

  “The treasure that divides the world, the knife that ransoms nations,” Parolles trotted out. “So the fellow said. I thought him mad, but he assured me that there was a thing, a simple blade, that all the powers of Europe would empty their coffers for. Please, my friends, if wealth can move you, will you not be moved by wealth such as that?”

  “A knife...?” And if the voice at his ear had somewhat less of an accent for a moment, Parolles failed to mark it.

  “I know, I know, and I was wroth with him for playing me and trying to settle his stake with idle fancy, but he swore on it, and powerful convincing he was! A knife, a magic knife that can sway destinies, and here in Illyria waiting for me to claim it!”

  “Stay put, Sieur French,” the Muscovite told him, and then the three of them retired off and muttered together, a sinister buzz of conspiracy just past his ability to eavesdrop on. He might have reached up and taken off the bag, then, and bolted for the door—except perhaps there were another three Russians between him and freedom, and no doubt they’d be unamused with the attempt. He sat tight, and prayed that greed would quell even the legendary bloodthirstiness of Muscovy.

  “Sieur French.” The interpreter was at his ear once more. “You did not come alone, on this hunt of yours. We know others were spared from the wreck. What of them?”

  “I cast them off!” Parolles assured them hurriedly. “An anchor to my ambitions, no more. What were they but a witch of a woman with a heart of stone, two haughty boasting Spaniards whose talk ever outstripped their skill, a beardless boy so rustic that he prizes his wife as a wrestler, and a dotard greybeard overflowing with bad simile. I left them in the woods to quibble with the witches and the Illyrians. Do you want them? I shall lead them to you, or you to them, only please”—and he felt the interpreter grip the bag as though about to twist the edge of it like a noose about his neck—“please spare me, spare poor Parolles and he shall be your servant always.”

  And then the bag was off, and Parolles’ fear-wide eyes stared into the cheery face of Ganymede, and beyond him Benedick and Jacques. In that moment, his mind served him up a dozen different stories that might have cleared him of blame—how he had only been going along with his kidnappers to stall them, and would have tricked them or trapped them, or... But instead he hung his head in utter despair at himself.

  “Not again,” he got out. “How many times will I fall for this one trick?”

  “No bold words, valiant Parolles?” Benedick asked him. “Perhaps you wish to slight my skill again?”

  “No, sir,” Parolles mumbled.

  “Or will you lead us to ourselves? Betray us to ourselves, perhaps?” Ganymede put in.

  “Or shall the knave cast the name of ‘fool’ upon the learned?” Jacques asked archly.

  “For you, old man, I know only shame that you should disgrace your grey beard by playing bibble-babbler in this mummer’s show,” Parolles told him hotly.

  “What ignorant men shall call a babble, learned men shall know as the most exquisite tongue of Muscovy,” Jacques told him frostily.

  “And have you now no boasts of how you abandoned Helena and John?” Benedick put in.

  “Helena has no use for me or you or any mortal man anymore,” Parolles said bitterly, “and as for your countryman, he abandoned us first into the very arms of the enemy. It was as though he wanted to be caught.”

  All Benedick’s mockery vanished with the news. “Tell me everything,” he said flatly.