Chapter Two

Author's notes: Any direct quotes from William Shakespeare's play "Macbeth" are in double quotation marks.

As the dusk began to fall across the moor the three witches dropped the charms they had cast across the entrance to their dwelling, and one by one they ducked inside, taking Merlin with them, until Severus was left alone outside with just the Fey.

'Well, Severus,' she said, breaking her silence at last, letting her pink tongue run across her top lip, and he remembered her throaty voice, and the way she hissed his name. 'Is even now your cock aloft?'

As he turned to face her, an owl swooped low across the space between them, like an early huntress searching for the unwary. The Fey pulled back in superstitious dread, and drew a fist to her mouth. 'Harbinger of doom,' she moaned, stumbling away to where the others had disappeared.

Harbinger of doom, my arse, Severus snorted to himself, as he watched Minerva waft back towards him to perch on his shoulder for a moment, before floating to the ground and changing form to his red-haired beauty.

'Worry not about the Fey, Mage Lord,' she whispered. 'From dawn tomorrow she will have lost the taste for your cock.'

Severus squinted at her in suspicion. 'What do you mean, witch?' he asked.

'We have seen to it that you will be troubled no more, Mage Lord,' Minerva replied, a smile of mischief, which Snape didn't like at all, creasing her face and crinkling her eyes. 'She will have grown a cock all of her own.' She drew back in feigned shock as he slapped her. 'A jest, a jest,' she cried. 'Naught but jest.'

He rubbed his hand down her smooth white cheek, his finger marks disappearing with his touch. 'Perhaps,' he purred. 'Yet you have given me the idea, so perhaps I shall let you all grow your own too.'

'Into what would you thrust your dagger then, Mage Lord?' she asked archly, as she took his arm to duck into the shelter. 'Aricanthe?' She looked down to where Snape's familiar hissed up at her in indignation.

*****

The cave was filled with the smell of smoke and the scent of roasted rabbits. Severus watched the way the Fey gave Minerva a suspicious look, as though wondering how Minerva had preceded her inside the cave, and yet had just accompanied him inside. He doubted she would she unable to work out who the owl had been; after all, had Minerva's namesake, the goddess of old, not favoured the bird of wisdom?

Bellatrix brought his trencher of rabbit and dark rough bread, and a cup of warmed mead, and sat down beside him, close enough for him to scent the woman of her over the smell of the rabbit, close enough to see down the front of her bodice almost to where he knew her nipples had perked up at the contact. Perhaps he would lap at Bella's bosom tonight instead. Choices, choices, he sighed to himself. All three of his women had dropped their charms again, and he feasted his eyes as he filled his belly, smiling wryly to himself in the knowledge that they only did so to blot out the beauty of the Fey. Double, double toil and trouble indeed, he snorted to himself; he could smell trouble a mile off, even over the smell of wood smoke and rabbit and his beloved Bella's lovejuice.

They had finished their meal, and Snape had just thrown some herbs onto the fire pit so he and Merlin could inhale the fumes, when Bellatrix stood from beside him, her head cocked to the side as her raven hair spilled across her shoulders.

She went to the fire and threw a handful of dirt from the ground into it, before turning to Luna and Minerva.

'Raise thy charms, my sisters,' she said, and all three donned the façades they showed the world. Each took another handful of dirt from the floor, and threw it into the fire, as bright green sparks gobbled it up.

They stood listening at the entrance of the cave for many moments as Snape and Merlin and the Fey watched on. At last Minerva looked to the fire, to where it had returned to nothing more than a red and grey smouldering heap.

"A drum, a drum!" Luna hissed into the heavy silence. "Macbeth doth come." She glanced to the fire too. "Peace! The charm's wound up." And with that she followed her sisters out.

*****

Severus had edged to the entrance of the cavern to where he could hear the three witches. They were cackling and squabbling like old crones, throwing the heads of the rabbits they had dined on into the cauldron. In the light of the fire he could make out two men approaching the clearing, as he felt Merlin draw close to him, the Fey at his other side.

"What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire?" the first man asked the second, as they passed close to the cave mouth.

''Tis Banquo who speaks,' Severus murmured, his voice charmed away from those who should not hear it.

'The other is Macbeth?' Merlin asked.

Snape only had time to nod, as Macbeth drew up to almost where the three witches still pranced about the cauldron like madwomen.

"Speak if you can! What are you?" Macbeth called across to them.

"All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis!" Minerva shrieked.

"All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!" Luna cried.

"All hail, Macbeth! That shalt be king hereafter," Bellatrix finished on a note of triumph.

'What sayeth thy beldam?' Merlin hissed, as Severus closed his eyes briefly. The old wizard turned back to the entrance though before Snape could reply, as Minerva crossed to Banquo.

"Lesser than Macbeth, and greater," she said, sketching a blessing in the air in front of him.

"Not so happy, yet much happier," Luna added, drawing away, as Macbeth shot Banquo an uneasy look.

"Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none," Bellatrix added her own cryptic message to the clearly confused Banquo.

'Severus,' Merlin said. 'Carest thee to enlighten an old man?'

'I was about to explain, Lord Merlin,' Snape said much more smoothly than he felt. 'It is not such a long term plan to get Banquo's sons onto the throne as it may seem. I sought only to hedge our wagers, so to speak.'

'Speakest thee of Fleance, my boy?' Merlin asked in a way that made Snape think he didn't actually need the answer, that he had already seen through the woods to whatever trees hid beyond. 'Or usest thee the term "sons" more loosely.'

Luna ducked back into the cavern, leaving Bellatrix and Minerva to see off the two bemused fighting men, their cries of 'Hail! Hail!' raining on their retreating backs.

'Severus,' Merlin said with a weighty sigh, when it became apparent that Snape had not yet formulated a reply. 'I care not to wait yet four more centuries.'

'Not that long, Lord Merlin,' Luna interjected, one eye holding his, whilst the other wandered off to seek the Fey where she sat back at the remains of the cook fire, her own dark eyes a mystery. 'Macbeth will have no sons. My Mage Lord only seeks to placate Narcissa by letting her play with the crown of Scotland for a while.'

'Thou art sure of thy facts, Child of the Moon?' Merlin asked. 'I care not for this plan to go anymore awry that it seemeth to have gone thus far.'

'Oh yes, Lord Merlin,' Luna replied, and Severus noticed that she forgot to catch his eye along with all the others she met, as Minerva and Bella stepped back into the shelter too. 'Narcissa tells us that the strumpet the mighty warrior Macbeth now visits has a hairy arse and balls like a bullock. He cannot get his own up for her at all, and soon her poor cunt will shrivel up and die for lack of a manly cock,' she added with a sigh of sympathy.

'This seemeth rather complicated a plan, Severus,' Merlin murmured, letting his shaggy eyebrow rise again. 'Mayhap ill-conceived too?'

Severus sighed; it was beginning to become somewhat complicated to him too. 'Not at all, Lord Merlin,' he replied. 'Narcissa the Black has matters in hand.'

'And?' Merlin invited.

'And King Duncan dines with the Macbeths three days from now. Four days from now he will fail to wake up.'

'And?' Merlin asked again.

Severus didn't care to be interrogated in this way; he didn't care to feel under the pressure he had lived under in Camelot. He tried to shut that particular debacle from his mind, and concentrate on the fiasco in hand. 'And Duncan's two sons, Donalbain and Malcolm, will take the blame, leaving a vacant throne.'

For just a moment Severus thought he had pulled the wool over Merlin's eyes, a very short moment as it turned out.

'I see,' Merlin murmured, and Severus realised that indeed he did. 'And thinkest thee for one moment that any, save the thane of Glamis, will ascend the throne?'

'Not for long, Merlin,' Snape said, dropping the affectation of the "Lord" from his name, doubting though that the old man would even notice. 'Macbeth will leave no heirs; when he dies, his claim to Scotland's throne dies too.'

'Perhaps I am wrong, Severus; cruel eld maketh my wits less sharp than once they were,' Merlin said, as Snape waited for the rest with his teeth gritted. 'But I hear no mention of Banquo's name in all of this. Prithee, how gets he to the throne?'

That was the tricky bit; Severus knew that.

*****