Prologue

Birnam Wood, near Dunsinane castle, Scotland 1057A.D.

By the time the victorious army had withdrawn in some kind of order, it was raining and the blood-soaked ground was rapidly turning into a quagmire. The air was filled with the groaning of the wounded and the occasional shriek of terrified and dying men. Some bodies were still twitching and some poor souls were trying to drag themselves across the slippery filth of the ground in a desperate attempt to avoid the fate they knew was coming. The scavengers had moved in, looting the dead and with a terrible mercy, cutting the throats of those too weak to avoid them, before they stripped the bodies.

In an island of dark silence, quite separate from the droves of death-dealing scavengers, moved three women, standing so closely together that they seemed to share one vast body. They were dressed in heavy cloaks, made of a material that was black only in the same way as a starling’s wing is black, and which seemed to shine even in the dull skies overhead. Their faces were partially hidden by their long, matted jet-black hair and folds of material that covered their noses and mouths, yet their dull-grey eyes missed nothing on the heaving battlefield around them. The scavengers made haste to avoid them ignoring the dead that lay in their path, as they moved with deliberate purpose across the hellish killing ground.

As it was with the Goddesses in the old religion that still clung to the wilder parts of the country, she was three – The Morrígan – the Raven Goddess of Battle, who chose the heroes from the slain. On this field she had come for one body – and one body only. It was a man – the King - her champion - dressed in a fine woven plaid and the most expensive of body armours. Not that that had availed him anything for his head had been hacked off and the corpse lay in a sticky pool of blood.

One stooped and lifted a cold and stiff arm upright.

“You have it?” one asked, her voice muffled by her cloak.

“Aye, it’s here.”

“Take it from him.”

The woman, a surprisingly slender creature of indeterminate age, tugged at a dull golden band that encircled the arm and when it would not come, she drew a long bladed dagger and hacked the limb near the wrist, so the circlet fell into the bloody earth with a squelch.

She lifted it and all three placed a hand on it and began circling the corpse widdershins as they intoned,

“Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

And thrice again, to make up nine.”

The tallest raised the circlet above her head and it seemed to the few scavengers that dared to watch, that a grey mist rose from the desecrated corpse and flowed into the band, making the gold grow dimmer.

“Now the charm’s wound up and through all eternity, as we dwindle and die in men’s memories, this band shall seek out new champions, until it finds a man who has the power to undue the ruin of this defeat and restore to us our power over men’s fate. A champion who need fear no man of woman born but will triumph over the treacherous Macduff and all his kind! The evil done to us on this day shall be revenged on all traitors and false friends by those that possess the band and but speak the name of Macbeth!”

A Charmed Life

A “Captain Scarlet and the Mysteron” short story

By Marion Woods

Lawrence Olivier as Macbeth

Portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent (1899)

June

Captain Blue wandered into the sick-bay on Cloudbase carrying a newspaper under one arm. Unbeknown to the medical staff, the newspaper was wrapped around a bottle of pale ale. He skirted past Doctor Fawn’s office and sidled past the nurses on duty at the desk, returning their smiling ‘hellos’ with a weak grin. Once in the ward he hurried over to the bed where Captain Scarlet was lying, eyes closed and head nodding rhythmically in time with the loud music over his headphones.

Blue dumped the bottle on the bed and in so doing very nearly gave his friend a heart attack.

“The things I do for you,” he complained at Scarlet who was examining the bottle with delight. “I’ll be the one who gets hauled over the coals if I’m caught.”

“Adam, you are a life saver. I am dying of boredom and blandness here.” Scarlet stretched out his hand.

“One, you said one bottle,” Blue reminded him.

“Bottle opener?”

“Damn! I knew I had forgotten something…”

“What?” Scarlet’s face fell. “You are having me on, aren’t you? Oh, Aadaamm…” he whined.

Blue dropped the paper on the bed beside his friend. “Hey, just show a little gratitude here, buddy. I go out of my way to smuggle your illegal hooch in here for you and all I get is complaints.”

“A bottle is no use without a bottle opener.”

Blue was rummaging through his pockets, emptying a handkerchief, some loose change, a biro pen and a leather wallet onto the coverlet. Finally he found a bunch of keys and assorted gadgets.

“Here you go.” He selected a small penknife and flicked a blade open to reveal a bottle opener.

“How do you manage to keep all that stuff in your uniform and still look presentable?” Scarlet asked rhetorically – Adam could make rags look chic. He happily took the cap off the bottle and handed the bunch back to Blue, who was carefully stowing his possessions back into the various pockets of his uniform. “Hand me that tooth mug, please.”

He poured out the beer and proffered the glass to his friend, “Want some?” Blue grimaced and shook his head. Laughing Paul downed the first glassful and sighed with content. “What news?” he asked.

“Nothing much on the Mysteron scene, at least, but Seymour has called a meeting of the CADS committee for Friday, to discuss a new project. He’s putting it all together now. You should be out by then, yeah?”

“Soon, Fawn promised me this morning that it won’t be long now.”

“You’ve only had three days off work - with a shattered pelvis,” Blue smiled. “I don’t know if I should envy rather than pity you.”

“Oh pity me, please! I’d be at work right now, but Fawn is flexing his muscles and keeping me here ‘for observation’.” He sipped his beer and grimaced, “Just my luck to be on the Glenn Field shuttle when they let a novice pilot it! They were lucky more people weren’t hurt.”

“No, you were the only passenger who got injured, luckily enough – and that was only because that freight container with the machine parts in broke free and crashed through the passenger doors. If you’d been a little friendlier and sat up front with the others you wouldn’t have got crushed at all.”

Scarlet pulled a face and asked, “Who was flying that day?”

“A young English woman promoted to Cloudbase Lieutenant from the admin side at Spectrum London. She’d been working in research for a few months before her name went on the flight duty rota – and guess what? – now she’s back in research! ”

“So I should hope! What’s her name – just so I know to avoid her in the future?”

“Lieutenant Flaxen.”

“Flaxen? Right - keep her away from me, Adam.”

Captains Ochre and Magenta walked in to the conference room for the meeting of the Cloudbase Amateur Dramatic Society and apologised for being late. CADS was the brainchild of Lieutenant Green who had – and no-one quite knew how he’d managed it – got permission from the Colonel to start the group about 18 months ago. It had quickly become a very popular pastime – especially amongst the senior staff, who found it an acceptable way to avoid the Colonel’s wrath whilst still having an opportunity to ‘act the giddy goat’.

Lieutenant Green scowled at them and pointedly carried on his argument with Destiny Angel. “There aren’t enough French speakers to do a Molière play.”

“But it isn’t fair – always I do your English dramas.”

“And very good you are in them too. Now Destiny, please be reasonable.” Green produced a red folder and waved it theatrically, “Everyone – your attention please! Now we are all here, I have a suggestion to make. So far we’ve put on one performance – our Christmas pantomime of Robin Hood, which we devised ourselves -so now I suggest we do a full production of a recognized play. We could be ready to do a few performances around Halloween – if we concentrate.”

“And if the Mysterons give us a breathing space,” Blue reminded him.

“And if Scarlet can avoid landing himself in sick-bay every other week,” Ochre laughed.

“Stop waving it about, Seymour – we can’t see the title!” Scarlet demanded, glaring across at Captain Ochre, but managing to bite back his retort.

Green opened the folder and began to distribute the typed scripts inside.

“What is it?” the impatient Ochre asked as the individual scripts were passed around.

“Macbeth? Oh, I have a sinking feeling about this one…” Blue muttered as he flicked through the pages.

“You’re not supposed to say the name of the play!” Rhapsody warned with a grin. “You call it ‘The Scottish Play’.”

“Why?” Symphony asked.

“Tradition has it that Shakespeare wrote real witchcraft into the play to impress the new King – James I - who was an acknowledged expert on witchcraft. He’d even written a book about it.” She noted the surprise on the faces of her friends, “And you all thought I was just a pretty face, didn’t you?”

“No, never that,” Blue said and added hastily, “I mean you’re not just a pretty face… but you are, of course… very pretty….”

Rhapsody laughed at him and bowed her head in mocking acknowledgement of the compliment. She smiled at Symphony who was watching his confusion with a jaundiced eye.

“Shakespeare?” Scarlet queried, “Do you think we’re ready for that? It’s a bit highbrow, Seymour and well, most of the company are Americans and everyone knows they can’t read the lines properly.”

“Who can’t read?” Ochre bristled.

“Read the lines – it’s what actors call speaking the blank verse,” Scarlet retorted.

“That’s a form of racism,” Ochre protested.

“Yup, cruelty to dumb Yankees…” Scarlet teased. Usually it was Ochre who annoyed everyone else, so he was delighted to find an opportunity to needle the dark-haired American.

“You must have been working on these for some time to have them all ready and edited, Seymour,” Blue said glancing up from his script. “Were you so confident we’d agree?”

Green shuffled a little, “Well, to be honest, Captain Blue…”

“Always the best policy, Seymour,” Blue smiled at the younger man.

“On my last trip home I met up with an old teacher of mine, Miss Adrian. She’s a marvellous woman and she was the one who introduced me to the theatre and the delights of Shakespeare. We did this particular play in my last year at school there. Well, when she mentioned that the school had received money to buy new script sets for the drama department and I mentioned that I had set up a little Am-Dram at work, she offered me these scripts, and as they had played such a major part in my last year at home I said yes…”

“Ah, so you are an old hand at this play, then?” Symphony said looking at the typescript over Blue’s shoulder. “It says there are witches – is that why you wanna do it at Halloween? I have this real neat Witch’s outfit I could use…”

“I don’t think these witches are the same kind as the ones that would wear that green chiffony thing…” Blue warned her and they began to whisper together.

“I would say that this is the ‘edited highlights’ of the play Shakespeare wrote,” Scarlet commented as he started to read his script copy.

“Well, it has been pruned – there are too many parts for us to play them all – even doubling or tripling up,” Green explained. “But the story isn’t altered any.”

“Well, I think it’s a good idea; plenty of meaty parts for us girls, for a change. We won’t have to fight over who gets the only speaking part like we did with Maid Marian,” Rhapsody said. “Will you direct again, Seymour?”

Green nodded, “Do we need to hold auditions?” he asked tentatively.

“Non,” Destiny said sharply. “Last time it was too much fighting and Ochre and Scarlet did not talk for weeks afterwards.”

“Huh, I still say it was fixed,” Ochre muttered.

“Hey, Richard the Lionheart was English,” Scarlet responded. “And it was only a bit part, so it made sense to get the Lieutenant to do it. I don’t know what you were making such a fuss about - you got to play The Sheriff of Nottingham, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but he only agreed to that because he thought he was gonna get to be a cowboy,” Magenta said with a snigger.

“Coeur-de-Lion was French,” Destiny chipped in poking Scarlet in the arm.

Needled by their carping, Scarlet went onto the attack, “OK, ok, so it wasn’t our best effort, but it went down well enough. And everyone had agreed to do a pantomime of Robin Hood,” he reasoned. “If I had known we would still be arguing over it all these months later, I would never have agreed to play Robin.”

Blue gave him a disbelieving glance and rolled his eyes. The acting bug had bitten Scarlet deeply and it was mostly his pestering that had jollied everyone into joining in.

“I thought the guys looked splendid in those cute costumes,” Symphony laughed, coming to Scarlet’s assistance by changing the subject slightly. “Well most of them anyway… those that had the legs for it.”

“Funny, I was just thinking the same about you and Destiny, when you played Will Scarlet and Alan-a-Dale,” Magenta winked at her.

Destiny snorted her feelings about that, “It was stupide that we two had to be men!”

Rhapsody laughed and glanced at Scarlet, “Hmmm, I agree with you, Karen, although it’s not a million miles away from the situation with their everyday uniforms, of course…”

Symphony nodded, “And I guess it was an example of the famous British sense of humour to get someone as tall as Adam to play a guy called Little John!” She ruffled his hair with her fingers.

“No, as I explained at the time, he wasn’t called Little John because he was little…” Scarlet began to explain again.

Green cleared his throat and said loudly, “This is why we need to do a recognised play, so that the Colonel can see we are really serious about it and so he’ll continue to authorise exemptions for radar duties and admin work during the rehearsals and the performances.” He paused significantly and looked around the room, well aware that some officers remained in the company solely for the exemption passes. “We can prune some more of it if necessary,” he added.

“So, who’s playing which part, Seymour?” asked Blue, guessing the young man had worked it out to his own satisfaction already.

“Well, I have a few suggestions,” Green cleared his throat. “For Macbeth, an ambitious Scottish general, I thought of Captain Scarlet…”

“No fair – he’s not Scottish – and if I couldn’t be Richard the Lionheart because I wasn’t English…” Ochre protested.

“You’re not Scottish either!” Scarlet retorted.

“I’m descended from…”

“Oh, shut up you two!” Blue commanded with a rare display of irritation. “Carry on, Seymour.”

“Banquo, Macbeth’s right-hand man, that’s you Captain Blue. He’s murdered by Macbeth but his ghost comes back to haunt the King.”

“Hey, Adam, at last a role commensurate with your acting skills,” Ochre said sardonically. From Captain Blue’s expression it was obvious that he was waiting for the put down and sure enough, Ochre continued, “You should have no trouble playing a stiff!”

“And as Macduff – a Scottish nobleman who’s the enemy of Macbeth – I suggest Captain Ochre,” Green said hurriedly as Scarlet looked ready to leap to his friend’s defence.

“Is that another example of your type-casting, Seymour?” Magenta grinned. “Macduff is the man who finally kills Macbeth.”

“Seymour,” Destiny wheedled, “Who will be Lady Macbeth?”

“It’s a very important part,” Scarlet said, glancing at both Destiny and Rhapsody Angels with some hesitancy.

“I thought that Rhapsody should do it,” Green said avoiding Destiny’s eye.

“Hey, she’s a real bitch, this Lady Macbeth,” Symphony said, looking up from the script she had pinched from Blue. “And I use the word ‘Lady’ in its broadest sense. What makes you think any of us could pull it off, Seymour? What with our nice manners and all?” she teased.

“ I assure you, Seymour, I can do a real bitch just as well as Rhapsody…” the French woman protested, her eyes flashing with indignation.

Symphony laughed gaily.

“Yes, I am sure you can,” Green agreed. “But well, Rhapsody’s English and …er… surely you’ve seen the definitive picture of Ellen Terry playing Lady Macbeth with long, red plaits?” he hedged looking intimidated.

“I plait my hair for no man,” Rhapsody warned playfully. “Plaits make me look like Anne of Green Gables.”

“She is very sexy,” Blue muttered, thinking aloud. He became aware of the sudden silence and glanced around the room. Ochre and Magenta were grinning and Scarlet was looking amused, whilst even Destiny was smirking and Rhapsody was blushing a little.

“Anne of Green Gables is very sexy, is she?” Ochre sniggered. “Tell me, did this proclivity show up in your character profile, Adam?”

“I meant Rhapsody… I mean, Lady Macbeth is a very sexy woman!” he protested. “Well, all powerful women are sexy,” he muttered, wishing that the ground would swallow him up.

“You’re lucky - I’m gonna take that as a compliment,” Symphony purred in his ear and Blue sank lower in his seat, his face a picture of stoic resignation at the surety that he hadn’t heard of the last of his gaffe.

“Let’s get a move on,” Green shouted over the laughter that broke out. “There are also the three witches, and these will be played by Symphony, Destiny and Lieutenant Flaxen.”

“Oh no,” Scarlet groaned dramatically his head in his hands, to a general sniggering.

“Magenta, I’d like you to play the Thane of Ross, a Scottish nobleman, if you will. Some of the minor parts can be played by Lieutenants, and I’m sure we can double up with some minor parts towards the end of the play, especially those whose main characters are already dead. Good, well that’s settled then,” Green said cheerfully. “Rehearsals start tomorrow afternoon with a read through. I’ll speak to the Colonel about the exemption passes…”

The meeting began to break up, with everyone taking their scripts with them to study. Blue was waiting for Scarlet and as they turned to go Green said,

“Oh Captain, I nearly forgot, there is also this…” he held out a thick torque made of a yellow metal. “My grandfather gave it to me when I was a kid. He said his grandfather’s grandfather had found it on a beach – washed up from some wreck, maybe. I’d guess it must be much older than that, but I never cared enough about it to find out. In fact, I never liked it much at all. When we did our performance of Macbeth at school, I loaned it to my best friend, Sam Myers, who was playing the lead role. Sam and I knew each other since we were knee-high… his parents were good friends of my parents and they helped me a lot with the kids, when my folks were killed. It looked the right sort of thing for Macbeth to wear and Sam became quite attached to it – he used to wear it all the time – I think he wanted me to give it to him permanently, but it was almost all I had left of my family and I wanted it back when the play was finished. I thought if things got really desperate I could sell it – but it never came to that, thankfully. We argued about it – just about the only argument we ever had.” He looked with intense dislike at the object lying in his dark hand and sighed.

“Eventually, Sam did give it back - his parents made him give it back – just before I was going to University in Jamaica. He was obviously not happy to have to do it, and we had another argument – he said if I was his real friend I would let him have it as a gift of friendship. I might as well have let him keep it – a few days after he returned it he went out on a bender and was killed in a bar-room brawl and we never did get the chance to patch up our quarrel. Now all I see when I look at it is Sam’s face – it comes between me and my memories of my own folks…”

Green’s genial face set in a hard and angry expression. Scarlet looked askance at him, Seymour Griffiths was so laid-back as a rule that his reaction was surprising. Still, it was a dear friend who had died.

Green caught the concerned expression on Scarlet’s face and snapped out of his musing with a rueful grin, “Sorry… lost track there! Anyway, as I said, Sam wore this as part of his costume when he played Macbeth – and to be honest I can’t see any other use for it, I’ve been using it as a paper-weight myself – but it looks right for this, at least! Would you like to wear it in the play?”

Scarlet took it with a smile, “Why of course I will, Seymour. You’re right; it looks as if it would be the right kind of jewellery.” He examined the heavy metal band with some interest, noticing a fine tracery of carving on what he had assumed was a plain gold band. At the end the torque had intricately woven strands of metal interlaced into a solid ball. It was about the right size to fit a man’s arm. “Was he good as Macbeth?” he asked conversationally, as he slid his uniform sleeve up to his elbow and experienced a slight static shock, which made the hairs on his arm stand up, as he clamped the torque onto his left wrist. It fitted perfectly, almost seeming to mould itself to his arm and the metal felt surprisingly warm. He admired it for a moment before pulling the sleeve down again.

“Best I ever saw. You’d think he was the man himself…” Seymour smiled.

“What part did you play, Seymour?”

“Me? Oh I was Banquo…”

Scarlet raised an eyebrow; “Is that why you gave the part to Adam?” he nodded at the silent American still waiting patiently by the door. “Continuing the tradition from Macbeth and Banquo, through you and Sam - best of mates and all?”

“I guess it had something to do with it…” the young man smiled in response.

“Well I hope I can do your friend – and your torque – justice,” Scarlet said, twisting the ornament around on his arm until it felt comfortable “And maybe that will exorcise the sad memories you have about it now and remind you of the good ones.”

That evening as they came off duty Captain Blue suggested they wander over to the Amber Room – as they usually did - but Scarlet knowing Rhapsody was in Angel One, called off with the excuse of looking over his script. Waving goodbye he went back to his quarters. There he sat in his armchair with a glass of whisky and opened his script to read it through. He knew the play fairly well, had seen a couple of excellent productions at Stratford and he wanted to do his best to bring the man to life. He read his lines, muttering them under his breath to get the rhythm of the scansion. Gradually he became aware of a burning sensation on his left arm and rolling back the sleeve to investigate he saw that the flesh around the torque was red and inflamed and as he tried to move it away to inspect the problem, a sharp pain jarred his nerves and he grimaced. He twisted the thing round and the sensation eased. Frowning he examined it closer under the reading light and his frown deepened. Not only was it causing him pain, but the fine line carvings had disappeared and across the red skin were faint white lines – almost like crease marks - that seemed to correspond to what he remembered of the carvings.

The pain had all but disappeared now, but he was reluctant to risk reanimating it by trying to remove the torque now. He felt sure his retrometabolism would deal with any other problems overnight and it would slip off easily in the morning. He undressed and rolled into bed, finishing the script before he turned out the light. He was looking forward to this production – very much indeed.

He slept with an unusually deep and dreamless sleep and so in the quietest hour of the night there were no witnesses to the faint grey mist that rose from the torque, which still encircled the strong arm. It hovered above the sprawled body and someone with sharp hearing might have heard faint echoes:

"Of all the men that have come to our call, this one is a most worthy champion. Come sisters, let us make sure he will do out bidding and revenge us at last."

A slow murmuring filled the room and slowly the words became intelligible,

“Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

And thrice again, to make up nine.”

July-August

“When shall we three meet again

In Thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

“When the hurlyburly’s done,

When the battle’s lost and won.”

“That will be ere the set of sun.”

“Where the place?”

“Upon the heath.”

“There to meet with Macbeth.”

Lieutenant Green interrupted from the prompt box, “Destiny, you are supposed to be a witch – a ‘secret, black and midnight hag’ – you are not about to invite Macbeth to dinner. So, can we have a little more ‘menace’ in the speech, please?”

“How do you put menace into two lines?” Destiny pouted, brushing her blonde hair back with an angry gesture. “Besides, I do not know what is this hurlyburly…”

“And if you call us hags just once more, Seymour Griffiths, I swear, I will hit you with my broomstick,” Symphony threatened as she stretched to her full height. She added, “I don’t even want to play the witch this way. This image is outdated and erroneous.”

“Adam tells you that?” Destiny grinned.

Symphony stuck her chin out stubbornly. “I wanna be a modern, sexy witch.”

“Shakespeare did not write about sexy witches! Forget the TV re-runs and get wicked!” Green thundered. “Now once more if you please, and Symphony, please remember, again is supposed to rhyme with rain. You were not bad, Flaxen, a little more screeching and you’ve got it nailed.”

With deep sighs the witches began again.

“A drum! A drum!

Macbeth doth come,” Flaxen chanted.

Scarlet and Blue, out of uniform and casually dressed in jeans and T-shirts, entered on their cue and walked down to centre stage ignoring the fact that the one of the witches was standing with her hands on her hips. She nodded a curt welcome.

“What are these,

So wither’d and so wild in their attire,

That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ the earth.

And yet are on’t?” Blue began,

“Speaking of wild attire, Adam, did you check that… sack-bag of a witch’s costume Green’s devised, as I asked you to? I’ll probably come out in a rash if I wear it. I really don’t see why we three witches can’t wear nice clothes,” Symphony complained. “So I want you to tell him what you told me about outdated and erroneous images.”

“Vraiment,” said the second witch, also getting to her feet and stretching her back, “I too cannot have the harsh clothes.”

“Aw, come on girls, now is not the time for this,” Green pleaded climbing from the p