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earlier version is that its differences lie chiefly with the witches, especially Hecate, who is said to be “both there and not there.”
    I glanced up. “Thus Hecate?”
    “I’m an actress,” she said with a small shrug. “I learn characters by playing them. Finish it. ”
    There wasn’t much more:
    A riddling sentiment of an appropriately Shakespearean fashion, I suppose, but exasperating all the same. I cannot make head or tail of it.
    As it is, I am hoping that you can glimpse the Forest through the Trees.
    Nell
    I lifted the letter, but there was nothing else in the folder. “The enclosure?”
    “Missing.” She sighed. “And no indication where, when, or how he acquired the letter, either. So you see, I don’t know what Angus found.” She cocked her head. “But I know what he was looking for.” for a moment, I sat in stunned silence. Someone—a real woman, not a witch or a fairy—had believed not only that an earlier version of Macbeth had existed, but that it had survived to the dawn of the twentieth century. And while Ellen Terry had been skeptical, she had not been able to dismiss the woman’s tale out of hand, either. On top of that, it was the witches—and their magic—that were said to be different: the very aspects of the surviving play that bothered scholars most.
    A tremor of excitement, or maybe it was dread, went through me. What if it were true? The Cardenio manuscript I’d helped to find had had cachet as a lost play…but this…we were talking about one of the great plays. One of the most profound explorations of evil in all human history. A play most people could quote, even people who’d never seen it—or any Shakespeare at all, for that matter. Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble…
    Lady Nairn cut into my reverie. “What do you suppose it would be worth?” she asked.
    Cardenio had gone at auction for many millions; a lost version of Macbeth would very possibly fetch more. A Macbeth that linked Shakespeare to magic actually practiced, not just cackled on a stage…I shook my head, running my tongue around dry lips. “I have no idea.”
    “Surely it would reach to a sum worth frightening an old man to death for, at least in some quarters.”
    I looked up sharply. “ You think …?”
    “I don’t know what to think. But I would like to know what happened to my husband. And if he did find what Ellen Terry was talking about— I want it. ” She drew about herself all the hauteur of a queen. “ I want you to find it. And then I want you to stage it. ”
    She straightened, erect as a queen heading for execution. “I loved Angus, Kate. I left the stage for him, the adulation of the world…. And he was enough. He was worth it. You, of all people, might understand the measure of that. I am not asking you to find his killer. I am asking you to find the manuscript. Will you help me?”
    Something about her strange mix of pride and fragility tugged at the heart. And however disturbing her charge of murder might be, the manuscript had just enough plausibility to pluck at my curiosity.
    “ Dunsinnan must go to Birnam Wood, ” I said quietly. “You took him there?”
    She nodded. “I had no idea it was a real place—at least, not one that still existed…. I suppose we should start there.”
    She let out a long, slow breath, bowing her head with relief. “Thank you.” Straightening, she rose to leave. “I’ll take you there first thing in the morning.” At the door, she turned back, her eyes gleaming, though whether with tears or with triumph it was hard to say. “Meanwhile, don’t go up the hill alone.”
     
    My head still spinning, I changed into a pair of striped silk pajamas laid out for me and climbed into bed. On the bedside table was a copy of Macbeth .
    I sat for a moment with my arms wrapped around my knees. My agreement to help Lady Nairn was already beginning to look like folly. Her charge of murder, for one, was a dark return to