Peregrine finished his notes. Macbeth and Macduff waited behind. They were onstage.
“Come on,” said Peregrine. “What was the matter? You’re both good actors but you don’t turn sheet-white out of sheer artistry. What went wrong?”
Sir Dougal looked at Simon. “You went up before I did,” he said. “You saw it first.”
“Some idiot’s rigged a bloody mask in the King’s chamber. One of those Banquo things of Gaston’s. Open mouth, blood running out of it. Bulging eyes. I don’t mind telling you it shocked the pants off me.”
“You might have warned me,” said Sir Dougal.
“I tried, didn’t I? Outside the door. You and Lennox. After I said, Destroy your sight with a new Gorgon.”
“You muttered something. I didn’t know what you were on about.”
“I could hardly yell, ‘There’s a bloody head on the wall,’ could I?”
“All right, all right.”
“When you went up the first time, Sir Dougal, was it there?”
“Certainly not. Unless —”
“Unless what?”
“What’s the color of the cloak attached to it?”
“Dark gray,” said Peregrine.
“If it was covered by the cloak I might have missed it. It was dark up there.”
“Who could have uncovered it?”
“The grooms?”
“What grooms? There are no grooms,” said Simon. “Are you crazy?”
“I was making a joke,” said Sir Dougal with dignity.
“Funny sort of joke, I must say.”
“There’s some perfectly reasonable explanation,” Peregrine said. “I’ll talk to the Property Master. Don’t let a damn silly thing like this upset you. You’re going very well indeed. Keep it up.”
He slapped them both on the shoulders, waited till they had gone, and climbed the stairs to the room.
It was extremely dark: an opening off the head of the stairs with a door facing them. The audience would see only a small inside section of one wall when this door was open. The wall, which would have a stone finish, faced the audience and ran down to stage-level, and the third wall, unseen by the audience, was simply used as a brace for the other two. It was a skeleton. A ladder leading down to the stage was propped against the floor. A ceiling, painted with joists, was nailed to this structure.
And looming in the darkest corner, facing the doorway, the head of murdered Banquo.
Peregrine knew what to expect but even so he got a jolt. The bulging eyes stared into his. The mouth gaped blood. His own mouth was dry and his hands wet. He walked toward it, touched it, and it moved. It was fixed to a coat hanger. The ends of the hanger rested on the corner pieces of the walls. The gray shroud had a hole, like a poncho, for the head. He touched it again and it rocked toward him and, with a whisper, fell.
Peregrine started back with an oath, shut the door behind him, and called out, “Props!”
“Here, guv.”
“Come up, will you? Put the working light on.”
He picked the head up and returned it to its place. The working light took some of the horror out of it. Props’s head came up from below. When he arrived, he turned and saw it.
“Christ!” he said.
“Did you put that thing there?”
“What’d I do that for, Mr. Jay? Gawd, no.”
“Did you miss it?”
“Last I checked, it and its mates were all laid out in the walking gents’ room. Gawd, it’d give you the willies, woon’t it? Seeing the thing unexpected, like.”
“Take it down and put it back, and, Ernie —”
“Guv?”
“Don’t mention this. Don’t say you’ve seen it. Not to anyone.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. Hope to die.”
“Hope to die.”
“Cross your heart, Ernie. Go on. Do it. And say it.”
“Aw, hell, guv.”
“Go on!”
“Cross me ’eart. ’Ope to die.”
“That’s the style. Now. Take this thing and put it with the other. Half a jiffy.”
Peregrine was wrapping the head in the shroud. He turned back the hem and found a thin stick about two feet long slotted into the hem. A string was knotted halfway across into another and very much longer piece. He took it to the edge of the floor and let the loose end fall. It reached to within three feet of the stage.
Peregrine detached it, coiled it up, and put it in his pocket. He pulled out the stick, snapped it into small pieces, and gave Ernie the head, neatly parceled. He looked at the place where the head had rested and, above it, saw a strut of rough wood.
“Preposterous!” he muttered. “Okay,” he said aloud. “We push on.” He went downstairs.
“Second part,” he called. “Settle down, please.”
The second part opened with Banquo alone, suspecting the truth yet not daring to cut and run. Next, Macbeth’s scene with the murderers and Seyton nearer, ever present, and then the two Macbeths together. This is perhaps the most moving scene in the play and reveals the most about them. It opens up, in extraordinary language, the nightmare of guilt, their sleeplessness, and when at last they sleep the terrifying dreams that beset them. She fights on but knows now, without any shadow of doubt, that her power over him is less than she had bargained for, while he is acting on his own, hinting at what he plans but not telling. There follows the coming of darkness and night and the release of night’s creatures. It ends with self-dedication to the dark. Now comes the murder of Banquo and the escape of Fleance. And now the great banquet.
It begins as a front scene before the curtains. Macbeth, crowned and robed, seems for the moment in command as if he actually thrives on the shedding of blood. He is a little too loud, too boisterous in his welcome. He is sending his guests through the curtains and is about to follow when he sees Seyton in the downstage entrance. He waits for the last guest to pass through and then goes to him.
“There’s blood upon thy face.”
“Tis Banquo’s, then.”
Nothing is perfect: Fleance has escaped. Macbeth gives Seyton money and signals for the curtains to be opened. And they are opened, upon the opulence of the banquet. The servants are filling glasses. Lady Macbeth is on her throne. And the ghost of Banquo, hidden, waits.
It was going well. The masking of the stool. The timing. The nightmarish efforts of Macbeth to recover something of his royalty. Every cue observed. Thank God! Peregrine thought. It’s working. Yes. Yes.
“Our duties and the pledge.”
The servants swept the covers off the main dishes.
The head of Banquo was in pride of place: outrageous and glaring on the main dish.
“What the bloody hell is this!” Sir Dougal demanded.
This was too much. The time for concealment was past. Strangely, Peregrine felt a sort of relief. He would no longer be obliged to offer unlikely explanations, beg people not to talk, be certain they would talk.
He said, “Stop!” and stood up. “Cover that thing.”
The servant who still had the oval dish-cover in his hand clapped it back over the head. Peregrine walked down the aisle. “You may sit if you want to but remain in your positions. Any staff who are here, onstage, please.”
The assistant stage manager, Charlie, two stagehands, and Props came on and stood in a group on the Prompt side. The entire cast drew forward, some sitting onstage, others leaning against the set.
“Somewhere among you,” said Peregrine, “there is a funny man. He has been operating intermittently throughout this rehearsal, his object, if he can be said to have one, being to support the superstitious theories that have grown up around this play. This play. Macbeth. You hear me, Macbeth! This person put a Banquo mask on the wall of Duncan’s room. He’s put another one in this serving dish. In any other context these silly tricks would be dismissed but here they are reprehensible. They’ve upset the extremely high standard of performance, and that is lamentable. I ask the perpetrator of these tricks to let me know, by whatever means he chooses, that he is the — comedian.