The Scottish Play Murder Read Free Page A

Scot nodded as he made his way across the pit and up the side steps past Horatio. It was nearly a march he made, large and broad, each foot planted well, chin up, chest out, and the end of his tartan plaid drifting behind him, as if he were accompanied by the skirl of a bagpipe and the beat of a tabor. Suzanne found herself staring at his bare legs, which were lightly dusted with the sort of black hairs she had not seen since her days in a brothel in Bank Side. His calves were well-muscled, in a way that also steered her thoughts toward that brothel, and the urge to test their hardness made her fingers twitch. She shook her head to clear it, and drew a deep breath. Those days were gone, and she didn’t miss them. It was silly to think otherwise.
    As Ramsay took center stage the light changed, as if the afternoon suddenly plunged into dusk. A glance at the sky made her wonder where those clouds had come from. It seemed only a moment ago the heavens had been a flawless, pale blue. And now the clouds covered the sun so Suzanne could hardly tell where it was.
    Ramsay planted his feet and adjusted his plaid. For a moment he closed his eyes, and his entire attitude shifted somehow. His stance changed, though his feet stayed put. Tension gathered his shoulders together. His head tilted just slightly. He held out his hands, palms up, as if holding something across them. When he opened his eyes, the fellow who had walked through the theatre entrance was no longer there, replaced by a man screwing his courage to the sticking point to murder his king.
    His lungs filled, and his voice rolled out across the pit. It echoed from the empty galleries, and Suzanne knew it must be heard on the street outside.
    “
Is this a dagger which I see before me,the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.Art thou not, fatal vision, sensibleto feeling as to sight? Or art thou buta dagger of the mind, a false creation,proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?I see thee yet, in form as palpableas this which now I draw.Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;and such an instrument I was to use.Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,and on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before.”
    Now Ramsay’s energy gathered as if to tie him in a knot. His voice took on an edge of creeping fear.
“There’s no such thing:it is the bloody business which informsthus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one half-worldnature seems dead, and wicked dreams abusethe curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebratespale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d murder,alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his designmoves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fearthy very stones prate of my whereabout,and take the present horror from the time, which now suits with it.”
A note of trembling resolution struck.
“Whiles I threat, he lives:words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
” Ramsay then started to the tolling of an imaginary bell. “
I go, and it is done: the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.
”
    There was a dark silence. Ramsay remained in character during it, stock still, gazing upstage with a mimed dagger in one hand, ready to exit and murder Duncan.
    Horatio uttered a tiny whimper, his face pale as if Ramsay had actually stabbed someone to death. He said, “The role is yours. We’ll begin rehearsal on it in three days. Come and be ready at ten of the clock in the morning.”
    Louis said, alarmed, “He’s got the role? You won’t hear anyone else?”
    Horatio appeared defeated. “No. He will do it.”
    “I would have liked to play it.”
    “You’re too young.”
    “What about Matthew, then?”
    Horatio looked over at Matthew, for