Authors: Christopher Moore
Tags: #Lear, #Kings and Rulers, #Fools and jesters, #Historical Fiction, #Humorous, #Fiction, #Fiction - General, #Humorous Fiction, #Popular American Fiction, #Inheritance and Succession, #King (Legendary character), #Britons, #General, #Great Britain
Fool
Christopher Moore
Fool
CONTENTS
TWO – NOW, GODS, STAND UP FOR BASTARDS!
FOUR – THE DRAGON AND HIS WRATH
SIX – FRIENDSHIP AND THE ODD BONK
EIGHT – A WIND FROM FUCKING FRANCE
TEN – ALL YOUR DREAD PLEASURES
ELEVEN – A SWEET AND BITTER FOOL
SEVENTEEN – REIGNING FOOLS, HAILING NUTTERS
NINETEEN – SHALL A MADMAN RISE
TWENTY – A PRETTY LITTLE THING
TWENTY-ONE – AT THE WHITE CLIFFS YEARS AGO-
TWENTY-TWO – AT THE WHITE TOWER
TWENTY-THREE – DEEP IN THE DUNGEON
TWENTY-FIVE – THE KING SHALL BE A FOOL
WARNING
This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as non-traditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank. If that sort of thing bothers you, then gentle reader pass by, for we endeavor only to entertain, not to offend. That said, if that’s the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!
Cast Of Characters
Goneril-oldest daughter of Lear, Duchess of Albany. Wife of the Duke of Albany.
Regan-second daughter of Lear, Duchess of Cornwall. Wife of the Duke of Cornwall.
Cordelia-youngest daughter of Lear, Princess of Britain.
Cornwall-Duke of Cornwall, Regan’s husband.
Albany-Duke of Albany, Goneril’s husband.
Gloucester-Earl of Gloucester, a friend of King Lear.
Edgar-eldest son of Gloucester, the heir to the earldom.
Edmund-bastard son of Gloucester.
The Anchoress-a holy woman.
Kent-Earl of Kent, close friend of King Lear.
Pocket-a fool.
Burgundy-Duke of Burgundy, a suitor to Cordelia.
France-Prince of France, a suitor to Cordelia.
Curan-captain of Lear’s guard.
Drool-an apprentice fool.
A Ghost-there’s always a bloody ghost.
The Stage
The stage is a more or less mythical thirteenth-century Britain, with vestiges of British culture reaching back to pre-Roman times still loitering about. Britain encompasses what is now modern Great Britain, including England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, of which Lear is king. Generally, if not otherwise explained, conditions may be considered damp.
ACT I
When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools.
–
King Lear
, Act IV, Scene 5
Tosser!” cried the raven.
There’s always a bloody raven.
“Foolish teachin’ him to talk, if you ask me,” said the sentry.
“I’m duty-bound foolish, yeoman,” said I. I am, you know? A fool. Fool to the court of Lear of Britain. “And you
are
a tosser,” I said.
“Piss off!” said the raven.
The yeoman took a swipe at the bird with his spear and the great black bird swooped off the wall and went cawing out over the Thames. A ferryman looked up from his boat, saw us on the tower, and waved. I jumped onto the wall and bowed-at your fucking service, thank you. The yeoman grumbled and spat after the raven.
There have always been ravens at the White Tower. A thousand years ago, before George II, idiot king of Merica, destroyed the world, there were ravens here. The legend says that as long as there are ravens at the Tower, England will stand strong. Still, it may have been a mistake to teach one to talk.
“The Earl of Gloucester approaches!” cried a sentry on the west wall. “With his son Edgar and the bastard Edmund!”
The yeoman by me grinned. “Gloucester, eh? Be sure you do that bit where you play a goat and Drool plays the earl mistaking you for his wife.”
“That would be unkind,” said I. “The earl is newly widowed.”
“You did it the last time he was here and she was still warm in the grave.”
“Well, yes. A service that-trying to shock the poor wretch out of his grief, wasn’t it?”
“Good show, too. The way you was bleatin’ I thought ol’ Drool was givin’ it to you right proper up the bung.”
I made a note to shove the guard off the wall when opportunity presented.
“Heard he was going to have you assassinated, but he couldn’t make a case to the king.”
“Gloucester’s a noble, he doesn’t need a case for murder, just a whim and a blade.”
“Not bloody likely,” the yeoman said, “everyone knows the king’s got a wing o’er you.”
That was true. I enjoy a certain license.
“Have you seen Drool? With Gloucester here, there’ll be a command performance.” My apprentice, Drool-a beef-witted bloke the size of a draught horse.
“He was in the kitchen before the watch,” said the yeoman.
The kitchen buzzed-the staff preparing for a feast.
“Have you seen Drool?” I asked Taster, who sat at the table staring sadly at a bread trencher laid out with cold pork, the king’s dinner. He was a thin, sickly lad, chosen, no doubt, for his weakness of constitution, and a predisposition toward dropping dead at the slightest provocation. I liked to tell him my troubles, sure that they would not travel far.
“Does this look poisoned to you?”
“It’s pork, lad. Lovely. Eat up. Half the men in England would give a testicle to feast thus, and it only mid-day. I’m tempted myself.” I tossed my head-gave him a grin and a bit of a jingle on the ol’ hat bells to cheer him. I pantomimed stealing a bit of his pork. “After you, of course.”
A knife thumped into the table by my hand.
“Back, Fool,” said Bubble, the head cook. “That’s the king’s lunch and I’ll have your balls before I’ll let you at it.”
“My balls are yours for the asking, milady,” said I. “Would you have them on a trencher, or shall I serve them in a bowl of cream, like peaches?”
Bubble harrumphed, yanked her knife from the table and went back to gutting a trout at the butcher block, her great bottom rolling like thunderclouds under her skirt as she moved.
“You’re a wicked little man, Pocket,” said Squeak, waves of freckles riding o’er her shy smile. She was second to the cook, a sturdy, ginger-haired girl with a high giggle and a generous spirit in the dark. Taster and I often passed pleasant afternoons at the table watching her wring the necks of chickens.
Pocket is my name, by the way. Given to me by the abbess who found me on the nunnery doorstep when I was a tiny babe. True, I am not a large fellow. Some might even say I am diminutive, but I am quick as a cat and nature has compensated me with other gifts. But wicked?
“I think Drool was headed to the princess’s chambers,” Squeak said.
“Aye,” said Taster, glumly. “The lady sent for a cure for melancholy.”
“And the git went?” Jest on his own? The boy wasn’t ready. What if he blundered, tripped, fell on the princess like a millstone on a butterfly? “Are you sure?”
Bubble dropped a gutless trout into a bushel of slippery cofishes. “Chanting, ‘Off to do ma duty,’ he was. We told him you’d be looking for him when we heard Princess Goneril and the Duke of Albany was coming.”
“Albany’s coming?”
“Ain’t he sworn to string your entrails from the chandelier?” asked Taster.
“No,” corrected Squeak. “That was Duke of Cornwall. Albany was going to have his head on a pike, I believe. Pike, wasn’t it, Bubble?”
“Aye, have his head on a pike. Funny thing, thinkin’ about it, you’d look like a bigger version of your puppet-stick there.”
“Jones,” said Taster, pointing to my jester’s scepter, Jones, who is, indeed, a smaller version of my own handsome countenance, fixed atop a sturdy handle of polished hickory. Jones speaks for me when even my tongue needs to exceed safe license with knights and nobles, his head pre-piked for the wrath of the dull and humorless. My finest art is oft lost in the eye of the subject.
“Yes, that would be right hilarious, Bubble-ironic imagery-like the lovely Squeak turning you on a spit over a fire, an apple up both your ends for color-although I daresay the whole castle might conflagrate in the resulting grease fire, but until then we’d laugh and laugh.”
I dodged a well-flung trout then, and paid Bubble a grin for not throwing her knife instead. Fine woman, she, despite being large and quick to anger. “Well, I’ve a great drooling dolt to find if we are to prepare an entertainment for the evening.”
Cordelia’s chambers lay in the North Tower; the quickest way there was atop the outer wall. As I crossed over the great main gatehouse, a young spot-faced yeoman called, “Hail, Earl of Gloucester!” Below, the greybeard Gloucester and his retinue were crossing the drawbridge.
“Hail, Edmund, you bloody bastard!” I called over the wall.
The yeoman tapped me on the shoulder. “Beggin’ your pardon, sirrah, but I’m told that Edmund is sensitive about his bastardy.”
“Aye, yeoman,” said I. “No need for prodding and jibe to divine that prick’s tender spot, he wears it on his sleeve.” I jumped on the wall and waved Jones at the bastard, who was trying to wrench a bow and quiver from a knight who rode beside him. “You whoreson scalawag!” said I. “You flesh-turd dropped stinking from the poxy arsehole of a hare-lipped harlot!”
The Earl of Gloucester glowered up at me as he passed under the portcullis.
“Shot to the heart, that one,” said the yeoman.
“Too harsh, then, you reckon?”
“A bit.”
“Sorry. Excellent hat, though, bastard,” I called, by way of making amends. Edgar and two knights were trying to restrain the bastard Edmund below. I jumped down from the wall. “Haven’t seen Drool, have you?”
“In the great hall this morning,” said the yeoman. “Not since.”
A call came around the top of the wall, passing from yeoman to yeoman until we heard, “The Duke of Cornwall and Princess Regan approach from the south.”
“Fuckstockings!” Cornwall: polished greed and pure born villainy; he’d dirk a nun for a farthing,
7
and short the coin, for the fun.
“Don’t worry, little one, the king’ll keep your hide whole.”
“Aye, yeoman, he will, and if you call me
little one
in company, the king’ll have you walking watch on the frozen moat all winter.”
“Sorry, Sir Jester, sir,” said the yeoman. He slouched then as not to seem so irritatingly tall. “Heard that tasty Princess Regan’s a right bunny cunny, eh?” He leaned down to elbow me in the ribs, now that we were best mates and all.
“You’re new, aren’t you?”
“Just two months in service.”
“Advice, then, young yeoman: When referring to the king’s middle daughter, state that she is fair, speculate that she is pious, but unless you’d like to spend your watch looking for the box where your head is kept, resist the urge to wax ignorant on her naughty bits.”
“I don’t know what that means, sir.”
“Speak not of Regan’s shaggacity, son. Cornwall has taken the eyes of men who have but looked upon the princess with but the spark of lust.”
“The fiend! I didn’t know, sir. I’ll say nothing.”
“And neither shall I, good yeoman. Neither shall I.”
And thus are alliances made, loyalties cemented. Pocket makes a friend.
The boy was right about Regan, of course. And why I hadn’t thought to call her
bunny cunny
myself, when I of all people should know-well, as an artist, I must admit, I was envious of the invention.
Cordelia’s private solar lay at the top of a narrow spiral staircase lit only with the crosses of arrow loops. I could hear giggling as I topped the stairs.
“So I am of no worth if not on the arm and in the bed of some buffoon in a codpiece?” I heard Cordelia say.
“You called,” said I, stepping into the room, codpiece in hand.
The ladies-in-waiting giggled. Young Lady Jane, who is but thirteen, shrieked at my presence-disturbed, no doubt, by my overt manliness, or perhaps by the gentle clouting on the bottom she received from Jones.
“Pocket!” Cordelia sat at the center of the circle of girls-holding court, as such-her hair down, blond curls to her waist, a simple gown of lavender linen, loosely laced. She stood and approached me. “You honor us, Fool. Did you hear rumors of small animals to hurt, or were you hoping to accidentally surprise me in my bath again?”
I tipped my hat, a slight, contrite jingle there. “I was lost, milady.”
“A dozen times?”
“Finding my way is not my strong suit. If you want a navigator I’ll send for him, but hold me blameless should your melancholy triumph and you drown yourself in the brook, your gentle ladies weeping damply around your pale and lovely corpse. Let them say, ‘She was not lost in the map, confident as she was in her navigator, but lost in heart for want of a fool.’”
The ladies gasped as if I’d cued them. I’d have blessed them if I were still on speaking terms with God.
“Out, out, out, ladies,” Cordelia said. “Give me peace with my fool so that I might devise some punishment for him.”