ip on my left arm.

Sid was in a dark gray robe looking like some dismal kind of monk, his
head so hooded for the Doctor that you couldn't see his face at all.

My skull was pulse-buzzing. My throat was squeezed dry. My heart was
pounding. Below that my body was empty, squirmy, electricity-stung,
yet with the feeling of wearing ice cold iron pants.

I heard as if from two million miles, "When was it she last walked?"
and then an iron bell somewhere tolling the reply--I guess it had to
be my voice coming up through my body from my iron pants: "Since his
majesty went into the field--" and so on, until Martin had come on
stage, stary-eyed, a white scarf tossed over the back of his long
black wig and a flaring candle two inches thick gripped in his right
hand and dripping wax on his wrist, and started to do Lady Mack's
sleepwalking half-hinted confessions of the murders of Duncan and
Banquo and Lady Macduff.

So here is what I saw then without looking, like a vivid scene that
floats out in front of your mind in a reverie, hovering against a
background of dark blur, and sort of flashes on and off as you think,
or in my case act. All the time, remember, with Sid's hand hard on my
wrist and me now and then tolling Shakespearan language out of some
lightless storehouse of memory I'd never known was there to belong to
me.

* * * * *

There was a medium-size glade in a forest. Through the half-naked
black branches shone a dark cold sky, like ashes of silver, early
evening.

The glade had two horns, as it were, narrowing back to either side and
going off through the forest. A chilly breeze was blowing out of them,
almost enough to put out the candle. Its flame rippled.

Rather far back in the horn to my left, but not very far, were clumped
two dozen or so men in dark cloaks they huddled around themselves.
They wore brimmed tallish hats and pale stuff showing at their necks.
Somehow I assumed that these men must be the "rude fellows from the
City" I remembered Beau mentioning a million or so years ago. Although
I couldn't see them very well, and didn't spend much time on them,
there was one of them who had his hat off or excitedly pushed way
back, showing a big pale forehead. Although that was all the conscious
impression I had of his face, he seemed frighteningly familiar.

In the horn to my right, which was wider, were lined up about a dozen
horses, with grooms holding tight every two of