wielded infirmly. When a hundred had fallen and Macbeth was still unscathed, the heart rather went out of the advance party. A few tried upping the general mood of heroic battle by yelling war cries and running at Macbeth. Many more retreated precipitously through the main gate.
Macbeth followed them.
The carnage that ensued passed rapidly through various stages, being by turns astonishing, distressing, and, ultimately, frankly, rather boring. Wherever Macbeth walked, his sword brought death to dozens. When its blade was too chipped to cut effectively, he simply threw it aside and picked up a sword from one of the many corpses he had created.
At the beginning of this assault by one single attacker, Malcolm ordered
a general charge. But from his vantage point of being on horseback on the hill, he realizedâthough he could scarcely credit itâthat not one of the swords, maces, arrows, or spears aimed at Macbeth was able to pierce his skin. His casualties began to mount up. He changed tactics: ordering a phalanx of men to press forward in the hopes of tramping or crushing the singleton enemy. But that was equally ineffective, and after two score men or more had been slain the phalanx as a whole broke up. Malcolm issued another order for a general crush, and the entire armyâtens of thousands of menâsurrounded Macbeth and tried to press in. There followed a quarter of an hour of uncertain alarum. But Malcolm soon became aware that a great circular wall of his own dead soldiers was being piled around Macbeth.
By the end of the day Macbeth had single-handedly killed over eight hundred men. This slaughter had tired him out, and he made his way back into the castleâwhich was, of course, wholly overrun by Malcolmâs soldiersâmounted the stairs to his chamber, and went to sleep in his bed. âNow!â cried Malcolm, when this news was relayed to him. âKill him in his bed! Stab him! Smother him while he snores!â
But no matter how they tried, none of the men under Malcolmâs command were able to force the life out of the supine body of Macbeth. Blades skittered harmlessly off his skin. The pillow placed over his face, and even partially stuffed into his mouth, prevented him from breathing; but the lack of air in no way incommoded the sleeping man. They piled great stones on him, but no matter how great the weight Macbethâs body was uncrushable.
Finally the dawn came and Macbeth awoke, yawning and stretching. After a little light breakfast of poisoned bread and adulterated kippers (neither malign substance having any effect upon him) he resumed killing. He took it easier on this second day, careful not to wear himself out; and accordingly he worked longer and more efficiently: by dusk he had killed over a thousand men. Malcolmâs army, hugely discouraged, was starting to melt away; deserters slinking back to Birnam Wood and away to the south.
On the third day Macbeth killed another thousand, along with Malcolm himself. After that it was a simple matter to either kill off or else chase away the remnants of the army, and by dusk of this day the place was his.
It fell to Macbeth himself to clear away all the corpses. He had, after all, no servantsâSeyton had been hanged from a gibbet on the first dayâs battleâand he could not command any. So over a period of a week or so he dug a large pit at the rear of the castle and dragged the thousands of bodies into it.
ACT III
Life settled down a bit after that. He found that he didnât need to eat; although he was still aware of hunger, and still capable of deriving sensual pleasure from good food. So he scavenged the nearby countryside and occupied himself with wandering about the empty castle, cooking himself food, heating himself bath water, thinking, sleeping.
He pondered the charms that protected him, meditating the precise limits the witches had established. They had not, for instance, said that âno