Pedro slumped, groaning. “No.”

  Macbeth’s armoured shoulders shifted in a shrug. “It matters little either way. Your days end here, for I have come to take you off to execution. Your brother and I have already come to an agreement: he shall carry news of your demise back to your people, who shall fight the war all the fiercer for your death. And die on every field in Europe, with the rest.”

  His gauntlet closed upon the lock and clenched, crushing and twisting the metal until the cell door sprang open. In one smooth motion, he drew his rusted blade.

  “Fight me, then,” Pedro challenged. “But bring me a sword and I will face you like a soldier.”

  “I could bring you swords, knives, muskets, hatchets, cannon even,” the Scot informed him. “They would not aid you. I am proof against any effort of yours. But you mistake me. Have you not heard my tale? Did your nurse not scare you with it when you were a child? What is left of he that was Macbeth in this shallow age? That he was a great murderer. And so I murder, and move on. The blood of one more man will barely shift the scales, should I ever come to judgment.”

  “But that is not what I have heard,” Jacques broke in. “For well I know your story.”

  “You know nothing,” the Scot growled.

  “If only that were true, but I am yet on the cusp of man’s last age, and my mind is sharp,” the philosopher told him. “Do you truly think that history has picked the bones of you, until all that’s left is ‘murderer’? Then listen as I tell you of a man ambitious, of a warrior who fought his nation’s foes. Another tale I have is of a man misled, who gave his trust to prophecies and powers and was sore betrayed. But yet of all the Scots that I heard of, the one that touched me most was of the husband, and the man who loved his wife.”

  “My wife...?” The Scot seemed frozen at the thought.

  “How long is it, I wonder, since you last thought of her? And yet the stories tell of how in all the world you valued her, and how she was a strong, fierce woman worthy of you. And how she died.”

  “She died,” the warlord echoed. “Yes, she died.”

  “There are a hundred men contained in you, and each one has a different tale to tell,” Jacques told him softly. “You do not have to be the murderer.”

  The Scot paused in the doorway of the cell. It was impossible to know whether he was staring at Pedro, or at the sword between them. For a long, long time many things hung in the balance.

  Then that helmed head shook and the warlord said, “No. I serve a harsh mistress. What am I, if I do not do her bidding?” And he stepped forwards, a hand reaching out to seize his prey.

  With a sound like birds taking flight or ruffled pages, Helena, Benedick and Ganymede burst out of nowhere at all, stumbling over each other to land in a heap behind the Scot.

  The warlord whirled, and Benedick saw and understood precisely what had been going on. He shouted a challenge and had his rapier from its scabbard just in time to turn aside the downstroke. With a flourish of his wrist he had his slender blade past the Scot’s guard and drove it through the rings of his enemy’s armour.

  The Scot laughed. One mailed hand closed on Benedick’s quillons and ripped the weapon from his hand. With the rapier still hanging from him he chopped at the Aragonese, but Pedro leapt on him from behind and spoiled his blow. Growling, the warlord threw the prince off him and shook himself.

  “So, die elsewhere or die here, I shall have the blood of you all!”

  Helena had a stone and was trying to scratch a circle into the stone of the floor, with little success. Ganymede stood away from her, bowstring drawn back and his sole arrow nocked.

  “Hold off, monster,” he warned. “Sheath your sword, or we’ll see if my shaft fares better than his blade.”

  The Scot laughed him to scorn. “I laugh to scorn the power of man,” he reminded the youth. “For—”

  “None of woman born, yes,” Ganymede agreed. “But it’s ambiguous, is it not, your prophecy?”

  “It has been plain enough to see me through five centuries and more,” the Scot declared.

  “‘Laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born may harm Macbeth,’” quoted the archer. “Does that mean none at all, or none of those who wield the power of man?”

  “What difference does it make, stripling?” And the Scot took a menacing step towards the youth.

  “Only that I have never owned to the power of man,” explained Ganymede. “My name is Rosalind, in truth. I am a maid.”

  Macbeth paused, silent for a moment.

  “Truly?” asked Benedick, and then he was stepping back with Helena as more company came down the stairs: the two Illyrians who had fooled them in the tavern.

  Ganymede—or she who bore the name—kept her attention on the Scot. “I am Rosalind du Bois, though not a one of my shipmates bar this old man knew it,” she announced. “And I read your prophecy thus: that you are safe only from the power of men. If you dispute my interpretation then take one step more, and my arrow shall be the arbiter.”

  “And my blade also,” and the younger guard had pushed forward to draw sword and stand by Rosalind. “For I am Viola, Duchess of Illyria, and I know full well my husband has spared these prisoners.”

  Three times the Scot tensed, ready to try the truth of his charmed life. Three times his mettle failed. Perhaps a man who had lived five centuries fearing nothing had never had to test his courage; and now he at last had cause to use it, the Scot found it rusted and brittle.

  “And know this,” Rosalind told him as he hesitated. “From this day forth each battlefield that falls beneath your shadow shall hold a maiden with a musket hunting for you. Your bloody reign I here consign to history!”

  With a roar of thwarted rage the ancient warlord flung up his arms and gathered all the shadows in the room to him in a whirl of darkness. Ganymede’s arrow zipped through the murky air where he had stood, but only shattered against the far wall. The Scot was gone.

  In his absence, there was a moment of relief from all concerned, but then Benedick broke in, “There goes my sword. Madam Doctor, are you able to whisk us away as swiftly as yon Scot just left?”

  “Not without some time for calculation,” Helena informed him tightly.

  Viola returned her blade to the scabbard and glanced across at Feste.

  “It took a fool to see that clown above was naught but a distraction,” her sergeant remarked. “But even this old fool did not think it was diversion for so many. Whose is he?”

  “Mine,” Helena confirmed. “So, may we ask, what is Illyria’s pleasure now?” Her eyes were fixed on Viola.

  The garrison hall.

  The air riotous with laughter, shouts and cheers as all lean in to hear Parolles strut and fret his hour upon the stage. Sir Toby drools ale and spittle into his beard. Orsino is scratching at a scrap of parchment, trying to record the prodigy for posterity. Don John critiques.

  Enter a company: VIOLA and FESTE, ROSALIND and JACQUES, BENEDICK and DON PEDRO, HELENA.

  PAROLLES WAS STILL at his fictional Battle of Lepanto. Already he had travelled on a cannonball and hauled himself out of the water by his own hair. Each listener had tried to challenge the lie—Orsino, Don John and Sir Toby amongst them—and each challenge he slew, and then piled up the bodies to reach even greater heights of the absurd. Where his words might have taken him, when the newcomers broke in, was past all guessing. Some men, when given rope, refuse to hang themselves but instead weave a ladder to the moon.

  He faltered only when he saw his comrades, and silence reigned as every ear there hung on the words he had not said.

  Into that quiet Viola barked out, “Guards, arrest the Aragonese villain, Don John!”

  The guards were slow to react, but John started at his name and turned. He saw his brother, free and with a knowledge in his eye that did not bode well. Perhaps, if he put on a bold front and denied all culpability, he might ooze his way into Don Pedro’s good graces one again, but his nerve failed him. In a single motion he was over the table, kicking Sir Toby’s cup to spatter Orsino with the dregs. In a flash he was down the other side and running for the door.

  Parolles, finding at last an opponent who required no great courage to best, tripped him, sending Aragon’s second son sprawling across the floor. As Don John spat and cursed, his assailant bent down and neatly relieved him of his purse and, to cover the larceny before so many eyes, of his knife. Thus drunken prophecy was proved true: the treasure that could shake the world had come into the hands of the world’s most ardent liar.

  By then, Illyria’s soldiers were stirring, and enough of them piled on Don John to end his escape bid.

  Orsino was staring at the young officer who had given the command. “What treason’s this? Who has released my prisoners and who assaults my guests?”

  “One whom you swore would ever rule you,” Viola told him, stepping forward, and he went to greet her with a smile.

  It was the matter of an hour before Orsino had listened to all that had happened—tales overlapping and sometimes contradictory, told by his wife, his fool and various of his prisoners. After that he sat in thought, banishing all save Viola, even the protesting Sir Toby, from the hall.

  “HERE IS THE judgment of Illyria,” Orsino proclaimed, when at last he had reassembled the unlikely company. He sat, stern as a judge, with Sir Toby slouched half-conscious at his left hand, and Viola on his right. She was attired as befitted a duchess now, her splendour and her beauty drawing all eyes. Only Rosalind looked on her and thought, She is counting the minutes before she can throw all that off, and play the breeches part again. She herself had resisted any suggestion that she should lace herself back into a dress. If she was offending the dignity of the family du Bois then, of all men, her husband would understand.

  Parolles was merry—he had spent the hour in finishing his tale for Sir Toby and the wine-sops of the garrison, and had profited from it in gold and in ale. Benedick was glad he had his prince back, and Pedro plainly optimistic to be freed. Don John, under guard, stood hunched at the back, practising his black looks. Rosalind had heard something of his history from Benedick, and no doubt the elder brother would pardon the younger yet again. But then, as wife to a second son herself, she could hardly complain of it.

  Jacques was pensive and self-involved. Had he been telling everyone exactly what degrees of cogitation afflicted him—in iambs and at length—she would have said he was his old self. It seemed he was thinking on the melancholy story of the Scot—not often a philosopher came face to face with such a shard of history. No doubt he would regale them with his thoughts upon the matter in due course, but for now he was sensibly silent.

  And Helena, of course: but Rosalind could not categorise or anatomise her. Magician, physician, walker of worlds, she stood still and regal behind them as though she were king and queen both, and the rest of their party no more than pawns. Yes, she had got them where they needed to be, but she was a fearsome creature, a power in the ascendant. Did we even need Prospero?

  “I free you all,” Orsino pronounced, “but on condition that you, sir”—to Don Pedro—“go not about your task, but instead take ship for Aragon and there command the release of Sebastian, my wife’s brother. For this, I give your own brother into your care. I do not judge him, for the chiefest witness of what he might or might not have done is fled to darker places.”

  “Though I had hoped to harbour in Milan,” Don Pedro agreed, “it seems that errand was lost before e’er it was begun. I accept your terms with all thanks.” He clapped Benedick on the shoulder. “So, you shall see your wife all the sooner. I hope you have replenished your store of wit.”

  “And take this message back to Aragon,” Orsino added, gesturing for a scroll to be taken over to Don Pedro. “Illyria is tired of war and offers terms for our withdrawal. Let the Tuscan throne be a Tuscan matter. Bring this to Aragon’s alliance, and perhaps they will not fret that you never made Milan.”

  IN THE GENERAL celebration that followed that pronunciation, Parolles relaxed. Wintering in the sunny climes of Aragon was surely better than a stay in the shadow of a sorcerer’s tower. The stories that came out of Milan turned the rumour-mills of all Europe: statues that spoke and moved, gusts of air with human faces; a city full of bodiless voices, lights and terrible wonders.

  But, even as Pedro and Benedick drew apart to discuss their return home, Helena glided to his elbow, drawing Ganymede—no, Rosalind—and Jacques close.

  “Let the Spanish run home to bicker about prisoners and war,” she murmured. “Milan awaits us.”

  “You’ll find no barque so bound out of this port,” Jacques cautioned her. “Though all the winds—” And then he stopped at Helena’s upraised hand.

  “We need no ship, nor winds, to reach Milan.”

  “But what can we hope to achieve?” Rosalind ventured. “Prospero’s dead, and far beyond joining the league.”

  “And would our journey ever have borne fruit?” Helena shrugged. “Old Prospero scorned the dealings of nations for many years; I do not think we could have moved him to meddle now. But there are surely books and things of magic still in his lonely tower; perhaps a student with power and knowledge will find much to reward her. Will you go with me?”

  “To see the secret city of the magus,” Jacques said swiftly, “of course!”

  Rosalind was slower, but she nodded still. “The children and accounts can be my lord’s burden for another season,” she decided. “I have not had my fill of voyaging.”

  And then, of course, Helena turned that cool, clear gaze on Parolles. He remembered his moment of self-knowledge outside the garrison—a flash of a time long gone, for he had never been very innocent, and what she now was, he had no name for.

  Yet at the same time, she was the closest thing he had to an old friend.

  “My stock back in Rousillon was low, my debts high,” he said, with unusual frankness. “And there are those in Milan who know neither my stories nor my vices. But may you bring me back to Illyria, after?”

  “If your desire to travel is so meagre, than I shall,” she confirmed. “I myself shall have grander ambitions by then, I have no doubt. Perhaps I shall go places even Prospero but dreamt of.” And then she held a hand out to him—not to take his own, but to receive something. “If you would, keep Don John’s purse, but I must have the knife.”

  “The knife?” Parolles frowned at her, then sudden revelation struck him. “The knife? This knife?” He had the thing in his hand, staring at its dull blade. “This is... the knife?” For a moment he felt a darkness coursing through him: a blade in his hand, and so many people within arm’s length. But for all his many, many vices, that was one he never owned. He gave the thing to Helena, and—treasure or not—counted himself glad to be rid of it.

  Helena regarded it in her hand. “I saw this, when we stepped between worlds. Do you know the source of its power? It is not from here. A poet—a mummer—sent it, bloodstained, from his world to this by means of his words. Drove it here out of mourning for a friend.” She tucked it out of sight.

  “Now stand close,” she instructed them, and fished the silver flask from within her robe. “Today, Milan in our world,” she tells you. “Tomorrow, perhaps, in yours.”

  JONATHAN BARNES

  O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,

  That, notwithstanding thy capacity

  Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,

  Of what validity and pitch soe’er,

  But falls into abatement and low price,

  Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy

  That it alone is high fantastical.

  Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene i.

  On the First Night

  25th of December, 1601

  THE FIRST INTIMATION of the coming catastrophe arrives after nightfall on the feast day which commemorates the birth of your god.

  You are woken from warm and fathomless dreams by the sound of a loud retort, like the inaugural drum-beat of thunder or of a clash of arms upon some distant battlefield. It pulls you back unmercifully to consciousness and brings with it that unwelcome clarity of the smallest hours, that invitation to unstinting self-examination which comes when all the world but you seems lost to slumber.

  Your first thought is that the sound has been made by your husband, your spouse of almost twenty years, he who drowses beside you now, pot-bellied and damson-faced, unshaven and beer-breathed, whose sprawling posture speaks of purely animal pleasures and whose inveterate tendency to snore has been known to you (in what at the time was a gentle kind of scandal) for several long and energetic months before the church, before the aisle, before any public declaration of your love was made. Scarcely noticed at first, in the decades since you have become intimately accustomed to the sound of his slumber, to its noisy rhythms, its shattering crescendos and monotonous longeurs and its regrettable tendency to be affected by strong drink.

  Yet on this occasion, the blame is unjust, for your man’s sleep is, if not quite soundless, at least muted and sedate, no more than a rustle, a hedgerow snuffle, emerging from his lips. You sit up, you draw the blanket around you, for the night is chill and not kind, and you listen.

  The sound comes again. Not from this room at all but from downstairs, from somewhere out of sight. It is, without question, a determined rap upon your front door, a knock, after midnight. Something which betokens in your mind only the worst—the very worst—of things.

  For a moment you lie still, your head full of old tales about the nature of unexpected sounds, of fireside yarns of rapping spirits and purgatorial guests, of malevolent boggarts and of dread and nameless things walking, of strange prophets and of visitors from that which lies beyond death. And then, of course, being sensible—being renowned in fact, if not exactly celebrated, in this little fortress town, for your hard-headedness and stolid practicality—you put such foolishness aside, and, with affectionate determination, poke your husband in that soft, expansive realm which lies beneath his ribcage and hiss: “William? William?”