There followed a complete silence. Wendy on the edge of the rostrum looked over. Perry lying on his back looked up at her.

‘All right?’ she asked.

‘Perfectly,’ he said in a strange voice. ‘I won’t be a moment. Next scene. Clear stage.’

They moved away. Peregrine gingerly explored his right side. Below the ribs. Above the hip. Nothing broken but a hellishly sore bruise. He crept up into a kneeling position on the tarpaulin-covered mattress and from there saw what had happened. Under the tarpaulin was an unmistakable shape, cruciform, bumpy, with the hilt tailing out into the long blade. He felt it: undoubtedly the claymore. The wooden claymore, discarded since they had begun using the steel replicas of the original.

He got to his feet and, painfully holding his bruise, stumped on to the clear stage. ‘Charlie?’

‘Here, sir.’

‘Charlie, come here. There’s a dummy claymore under the cover. Don’t say anything about it. I don’t want anyone to know it’s there. Mark the position with chalk and then move it out and tuck the cover back in position. Understand?’

‘I get you.’

‘If they know it’s there, they’ll start talking a lot of nonsense.’

‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘Perfectly,’ said Peregrine. ‘Just a jolt.’

He straightened up and drew in his breath. ‘Right,’ he said, and walked on stage and down into the auditorium to his desk.

‘Call Scene Three,’ he said and sank into his seat.

‘Scene Three,’ called the Assistant Stage Manager. ‘Witches. Macbeth. Banquo.’

III

Scene Three was pretty thoroughly rehearsed. The witches came in from separate spots and met on stage. Rangi had his speech about the sailor to Aleppo gone, and contrived an excretion of venom in voice and face, egged on by moans of pleasure from his sisters. Enter Macbeth and Banquo. Trouble. Banquo’s position. He felt he should be on a higher level. He could not see Macbeth’s face. On and on in his beautiful voice. Peregrine, exquisitely uncomfortable and feeling rather sick, dealt with him, only just keeping his temper.

‘The ladies will vanish as they did before. They get up to position on their “Banquo and Macbeth, all hail.”’

‘May I interrupt?’ fluted Banquo.

‘No,’ said Peregrine over a vicious stab of pain. ‘You may not. Later, dear boy. On, please.’

The scene continued with Banquo, disconcerted, silver-voiced and ominously well-behaved.

Macbeth was halfway through his soliloquy. ‘Present fears,’ he said, ‘are less than horrible imaginings and if the gentleman with the fetching laugh would be good enough to shut his silly trap my thought whose murder yet is but fantastical will probably remain so.’

He was removed by the total width and much of the depth of the stage from Banquo, who had been placed in tactful conversation with the other lairds as far away as possible from the soliloquist and had burst into a peal of jolly laughter and slapped the disconcerted Ross on his shoulders.