“I’m a funny man?”

“We hope so.”

“Aye. Aweel, it’s a fine idea, I’ll gie it that. Och, aye. A bonny notion,” said the Porter.

He chuckled and mouthed and Peregrine wished he wouldn’t but he was a good Scots actor.

He waited for a moment, wondering how much he had gained of their confidence. Then he turned to the designs and explained how they would work and then to the costumes.

“I’d like to say here and now that these drawings and those for the sets — Jeremy has done both — are, to my mind, exactly right. Notice the suggestion of the clan tartans: a sort of primitive pre-tartan. The cloak has a distinctive check affair. All Macbeth’s servitors and the murderers wear it. We’re in the days when the servitors of royal personages wear their badges and the livery of their masters. Lennox, Angus, Ross, Seyton, wear the distinctive cloaks with the family plaid. Banquo and Fleance have particularly brilliant ones, blood-red with black and silver borders. For the rest, trousers, fur jerkins, and thonged sheepskin chaps. Massive jewelry. Great jeweled bosses, heavy necklets, and heavy bracelets, in Macbeth’s case reaching up to the elbow and above it. The general effect is heavy, primitive, but incidentally extremely sexy. Gauntlets, fringed and ornamented. And the crowns! Macbeth’s in particular. Huge and heavy, it must look.”

“ ‘Look,’ ” said Macdougal, “being the operative word, I hope.”

“Yes, of course. We’ll have it made of plastic. And Maggie… do you like what you see, darling?”

What she saw was a skin-tight gown of dull metallic material, slit up one side to allow her to walk. A crimson, heavily furred garment was worn over it, open down the front. She had only one jewel, a great clasp.

“I hope I’ll fit it,” said Maggie.