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man of woman born can harm Macbeth’ (which would have left open the chance that a woman , or child, of woman-born could kill him): they had specified none of woman born. That seemed safe enough. The other charm was even more heartening: Macbeth shall never vanquished be, they had said, until Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane castle shall come against him. Vanquished meant killed by an enemy; but it also, he reasoned, meant poisoned, killed by sickness, laid low by old age, or any of the consequences of mortal existence. Until the wood actually uprooted itself and travelled wholesale to his castle, none of these fates could befall him. That was indeed a powerful charm.
    After three months a second army came to beseige his castle. This time it was led by the English king Edward in person; and he brought with him, in addition to many soldiers, a huge assemblage of holy men,
wizards, magi, and people otherwise magically inclined who had promised to undo the charm that preserved Macbeth’s life.
    Macbeth rather welcomed the distraction. Life had settled into quite a tedious rut.
    He made sure, this time, to do all his killing outside the castle walls, so as not to leave himself the awkward job of clearing dead bodies out of his corridors, rooms and stairwells afterward. And he especially took pleasure in slaughtering the magicians, most of whom were armed with nothing more than wands, books of spells, and crucifixes. Macbeth found and killed King Edward himself on day four, but it took a whole week for the army as a whole to become discouraged. Eventually the whole force broke up and fled, apart from a few hardened types who threw themselves at Macbeth’s feet and pledged allegiance to him as the Witch King of the North. He swore them into his service.
    ACT IV
    Every now and again, over the ensuing hundred years or so, Macbeth would gather around him a band of followers—men either in awe of his magic immunity, or else simply prepared to follow any figure in authority if the financial inducements were strong enough. But these groupings never added up to an army, and since none of the people who followed him were gifted with his invulnerability, they tended to get slaughtered in battle. His initial plan—to reclaim the throne of Scotland by war and by the sword—was, he came to realize, unattainable. People feared him, and a few would do his will; but most shunned him, would not follow him. He found himself thoroughly isolated.
    Eventually he stopped accumulating bands of followers and struck out by himself.
    He roamed about for many years, searching Scotland for the witches in the hope of extracting from them some useful magical fillip that would enhance his fortunes. But they seemed to have departed the land.
His search was fruitless. He returned to Dunsinane castle to find that it had been claimed, in his absence, by the Thane of Aberdeen and his retinue. It didn’t take Macbeth long to kill off, or chase away, those interlopers.
    For several decades after this, he sat in his castle alone. The people in the local villages established a mode of uneasy coexistence with him: they brought him offerings of food, wine, books, and whatever else he asked for; but they otherwise left him alone and went about their own business. Macbeth grew accustomed to the solitude, and even came rather to relish it. He had learned to despise ordinary humanity, with their ridiculous fleshly vulnerability, their habit of dropping dead at the slightest scratch, the inevitability of their physical aging, decay, and death. He wondered why it was he had ever wanted to rule over such starveling creatures. It seemed to him now as a butcher sitting in a throne and gathering his swine around him as courtiers. Mortal glory was no longer of interest to him.
    The castle began to decay around him. He undertook some repairs himself, single-handed; but no amount of rampaging around the local villages like a fairy-story ogre—no amount of