The Third Witch

We are back in the north of Scotland again, this time with the story of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth - who are, it turns out, Nettle, Mad Helga and Gillyflower. Nettle is middle-aged, a herbalist, and blessed with the Sight; and not only that, but on occasion the "Old Ones" speak through her:

Suddenly, [...] the room fills with a wave of smell, an odour both sweet and foul, like the stench of a body six days dead. I cover my nose with my hand but the smell is just as strong. I have to fight against gagging. What is happening? I don't understand it. I look to Nettle and I see that her lips are moving. Then I hear a voice coming out of her mouth, but it is not her voice. It is a voice I have never heard before, a voice that is gnarled and twisted and dry like the root of an ancient oak.

'You will find what you seek two leagues from Forres.'

Mad Helga is the crone of the trio, old, and "as bald as a new-laid egg". She is also, as her name implies, quite mad (or is that only when the wind blows from the north-north-west?); frequently she speaks in verse ("A drum, a drum, Macbeth doth come"), but when she does so the words she speaks are words of power: they take effect; or at least, come true.

And finally, with them in their hut on the edge of the great forest lives Gillyflower, known as Gilly. She was taken in by them seven years ago when she was seven and her home was destroyed and her father killed by Macbeth. Now, "grown up" at fourteen, and, though dressed in rags and living in a hovel, remembering still what her life had once been like ("I had forgotten how free and glorious it feels to fly across the countryside when you're perched atop a horse"), she seeks to avenge her father and herself: this book is the tale of that revenge.

When you have read it you will know all three of them as well as (better than, in most cases) you know your family and friends. In a good, a positive, sense, the play will never be the same again: it adds to the play.

Beautifully written, and often un-put-downable. Now I am looking forward to reading her next novel, which apparently lets us in on the hitherto well-kept secrets of another mysterious Shakespeare character: Ophelia.