Fool (11 page)

“Yes!” Goneril was becoming breathless now, excited. I’d seen it before. It wasn’t always a good sign.

“Quickly,” said I, “send Oswald to Regan while the sun is high.”

“No!” Goneril sat forward quickly, her bosom nearly spilling out of her gown, which captured my attention more than her fingernails digging into my arm.

“What?” said I, the bells of my coxcomb but a finger’s breath from jingling her
decolletage.

“There is no peace for Lear in Gloucester. Haven’t you heard? The earl’s son Edgar is a traitor.”

Had I heard? Had I heard? Of course, the bastard’s plan was afoot. “Of course, lady, where do you think I’ve been?”

“You’ve been all the way to Gloucester?” She was panting now.

“Aye. And back. I’ve brought you something.”

“A present?” She showed the delighted, wide grey-green eyes she’d had when she was a girl. “Perhaps I won’t hang you, but punishment is due you, Pocket.”

Then the lady grabbed me and pulled me across her lap, face-down. Jones rolled to the floor beside me. “Lady, perhaps-”

Smack! “There, fool, I’ve hit it. Hit it. Hit it. Hit it. So give it. Give it. Give it.” A smack with every iamb.

“Bloody hell, you insane tart!” I squirmed. My ass burned with her handprint.

Smack! “Oh good God!” said Goneril. “Yes!” She wiggled under me now.

Smack!

“Ouch! It’s a letter! A letter,” said I.

“I’ll see your little bum as red as a rose!”

Smack!

I squirmed in her lap, turned, grabbed her bosoms and pulled myself upright until I was sitting in her lap. “Here.” I pulled the sealed parchment out of my jerkin and held it out.

“Not yet!” said she, trying to roll me over and get back to smacking my bum.

She honked my codpiece.

“You honked my codpiece.”

“Aye, give it up, fool.” She tried to get a hand under my codpiece.

I reached into the silk purse and retrieved one of the puffballs as I tried to keep my manhood out of her grasp. I heard a door open.

“Surrender the willie!” said the duchess.

She had it then, there was nothing I could do. I squoze the puffball under her nose.

“It’s from Edmund of Gloucester,” said I.

“Milady?” said Oswald, who was standing in the doorway.

“Let us down, pumpkin,” said I. “The catch-fart needs his task set.”

It all smacked of history.

The game had progressed further that first day, when Oswald first interrupted us, all those years ago, but it had begun, as always, with one of Goneril’s query sessions.

“Pocket,” said she, “since you were raised in an abbey, I should think you know much about punishment.”

“Aye, lady. I had my share, and it didn’t end there. I still endure an inquisition almost daily in these very chambers.”

“Gentle Pocket, surely you jest?”

“That
is
part of the job, mum.”

She stood then, and dismissed the ladies from her solar with a minor tantrum. When they were gone she said, “I’ve never been punished.”

“Aye, lady, well, you’re Christian, there’s always time.” I’d left the Church with a curse after they walled up my anchoress and I was leaning heavily pagan at the time.

“No one is allowed to strike me, so there’s always been a girl to take my punishment for me. My spankings.”

“Aye, mum, as it should be. Spare the royal withers and all.”

“And I feel funny about it. Just last week I mentioned during mass that Regan might be a bit of a cunt, and my whipping girl was soundly spanked for it.”

“Might as well have whipped her for your calling the sky blue, eh? A beating for talking truth, of course you felt funny about it.”

“Not that kind of funny, Pocket. Funny like when you taught me about the little man in the boat.”

It had been a verbal lesson only, shortly after she’d insisted I teach her about manly bits. But it had kept her amused, on and off, for a fortnight. “Oh, of course,” said I. “Funny.”

“I need to be spanked,” said Goneril.

“A constant, I’d agree, lady, but again we’re declaring the sky blue, aren’t we?”

“I
want
to be spanked.”

“Oh,” said I, eloquent and quick-witted rascal that I am. “
That’s
different.”

“By you,” said the Princess.

“Fuckstockings,” I thus declared my doom.

Well, by the time Oswald came into the room that first time, both the princess and I were as red-bottomed as Barbary monkeys, quite naked (except for my hat, which Goneril had donned) and administering rhythmically to each other’s front sides. Oswald was somewhat less than discreet about it all.

“Alarm! Alarm! My lady is ravaged by a fool! Alarm!” said Oswald, fleeing from the room, to raise the alarm through the castle.

I caught up to Oswald as he entered the great hall, where Lear was sitting on his throne, Regan sitting at his feet to one side, doing needlepoint, Cordelia at the other, playing with a doll.

“The fool has violated the princess!” Oswald announced.

“Pocket!” said Cordelia, dropping her doll and running to my side, sporting a great, goofy grin. She was perhaps eight then.

Oswald stepped in front of me. “I found the fool rutting the princess Goneril like a rapacious goat, sire.”

“’Tis not true, nuncle,” said I. “I was called to the lady’s solar this morning only to jest her out of a morning funk, which can be smelt upon her breath if you have doubts.”

At that point Goneril came running into the room, trying to arrange her skirts as she moved. She stopped beside me and curtsied before her father. She was breathless, barefoot, and one breast peeked Cyclopean out the bodice of her gown. I snatched my coxcomb off her head with a jingle and concealed it behind my back.

“There, fresh as a flower,” said I.

“Hello, sister,” said Cordelia.

“Morning, lamb,” said Goneril, blindfolding the pink-eyed Cyclops with a quick tuck.

Lear scratched his beard and glared at his eldest daughter.

“What ho, daughter,” said he. “Hast thou shagged a fool?”

“Methinks any wench who shags a man hath shagged a fool, Father.”

“That was a distinct no,” said I.

“What is shagged?” asked Cordelia.

“I saw it,” said Oswald.

“Shag a man and shag a fool, one is the same as another,” said Goneril. “But this morning I have your Fool shagged, righteous and rowdy. I bonked him until he cried out for gods and horses to pull me off.”

What was this? Was she hoping for more punishment?

“That is so,” said Oswald. “I heard the call.”

“Shagged, shagged, shagged!” said Goneril. “Oh, what is this I feel? Tiny bastard fools stirring in my womb. I can hear their tiny bells.”

“You lying tart,” said I. “A fool is no more born with bells than a princess with fangs, both must be earned.”

Lear said, “If that were true, Pocket, I’d have a halberd run up your bum.”

“You can’t kill Pocket,” said Cordelia. “I’ll need him to cheer me when I’m visited by the red curse, and a horrible melancholy comes over me,” said Cordelia.

“What are you on about, child?” said I.

“All women get it,” said Cordelia. “They must be punished for Eve’s treachery in the garden of evil. Nurse says it makes you ever so miserable.”

I patted the child’s head. “For fuck’s sake, sire, you’ve got to get the girls some teachers who aren’t nuns.”

“I should be punished!” said Goneril.

“I’ve had my curse for simply months,” said Regan, not even bothering to look up from her needlepoint. “I find that if I go to the dungeon and have some prisoners tortured I feel better.”

“No, I want my Pocket,” said Cordelia, starting to whine now.

“You can’t have him,” said Goneril. “He’s to be punished, too. After what he’s done.”

Oswald bowed for no particular reason. “May I suggest his head on a pike on the London Bridge, sire, to discourage any more debauchery?”

“Silence!” said Lear, standing. He came down the steps, walked past Oswald, who fell to his knees, and stood before me. He put his hand on Cordelia’s head.

The old king locked his hawk’s gaze upon me. “She didn’t speak for three years before you came,” he said.

“Aye, sire,” said I, looking down.

He turned to Goneril. “Go to your quarters. Have your nurse tend to your illusions. She will see that there is no issue from it.”

“But, Father, the fool and I-”

“Nonsense, you’re a maid,” said Lear. “We have agreed to deliver you thus to the Duke of Albany and so it is true.”

“Sire, the lady has been violated,” said Oswald, desperate now.

“Guards! Take Oswald to the bailey and flog him twenty lashes for lying.”

“But, sire!” Oswald squirmed as two guards seized his arms.

“Twenty lashes to show my mercy! Another word of this, ever, and
your
head will decorate London Bridge.”

We watched, stunned, as the guards dragged Oswald away, the unctuous footman weeping and red-faced from trying to hold his tongue.

“May I go watch?” Goneril asked.

“Go,” Lear said. “Then to your nurse.”

Regan was on her feet now and had skipped to her father’s side. She looked at him hopefully, up on her toes, clapping her hands lightly in anticipation.

“Yes, go,” said the king. “But you may only watch.”

Regan streamed out of the hall after her older sister, her raven hair flying behind her like a dark comet.

“You’re my fool, Pocket,” said Cordelia, taking my hand. “Come, help me. I’m teaching Dolly to speak French.” The little princess led me away. The old king watched us go without another word, one white eyebrow raised and his hawk eye burning under it like a distant frozen star.

ELEVEN – A SWEET AND BITTER

FOOL

Goneril dumped me on the floor as if she’d suddenly found a bag of drowned kittens in her lap. She snapped open the letter and began reading without even bothering to tuck her bosoms back into her gown.

“Milady,” said Oswald again. He’d learned from that first whipping. He acted as if he didn’t even see me. “Your father is in the great hall, asking after his fool.”

Goneril looked up, irritated. “Well, then, take him. Take him, take him, take him.” She waved us away like flies.

“Very well, milady.” Oswald turned on his heel and marched away. “Come, fool.”

I stood and rubbed my bum as I followed Oswald out of the solar. Yes, my backside was bruised, but there was pain in my heart as well. What a bitter bitch to cast me out while my bum still burned with the blows of her passion. The bells on my coxcomb drooped in despair.

Kent fell in beside me in the hall. “So, is she smitten with you?”

“With Edmund of Gloucester,” said I.

“Edmund? She’s smitten with the bastard?”

“Aye, the fickle whore,” said I.

Kent looked startled and folded back the brim of his hat to better see me. “But you bewitched her to do so, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I suppose I did,” said I. So, she was only immune to my charms by means of dark and powerful magic. Ha! I felt better. “She reads the letter I forged in his hand even now.”

“Your fool,” Oswald announced as we entered the hall.

The old king was there, with Captain Curan and a dozen other knights who looked like they’d just returned from the hunt-for me, no doubt.

“My boy!” Lear called, throwing his arms wide.

I walked into his embrace, but did not return it. I found no tenderness in my heart at the sight of him, but my anger boiled still.

“Oh joy,” said Oswald, his disdain dripping like venom in his voice. “The prodigal git returns.”

“See here,” said Lear. “My men have yet to be paid. Tell my daughter I will see her.”

Oswald did not acknowledge the old man, but kept walking.

“You, sir!” roared the king. “Did you hear me?”

Oswald turned slowly, as if he’d heard his name carried in faintly on the wind. “Aye, I heard you.”

“Do you know who I am?”

Oswald picked a front tooth with the nail of his small finger. “Aye, my lady’s father.”

He smirked. The rascal had cheek, that I will give him, that or a burning desire to be catapulted cod over cap into the afterlife.

“Your lady’s father!” Lear pulled off his heavy leather hunting gauntlet and backhanded it across Oswald’s face. “You knave! You whoreson dog! You slave! You cur!”

The metal studs on Lear’s glove were beginning to draw blood where they struck Oswald. “I am none of these things. I will not be struck by you.” Oswald was backing toward the great double doors as Lear worried at him with the glove, but when the steward turned to run Kent threw out a leg and swept him off his feet.

“Or tripped, neither, you tosser!” said Kent.

Oswald rolled into a heap at the foot of one of Goneril’s guards, then scrambled to his feet and ran out. The guards pretended they’d seen nothing.

“Well done, friend,” said Lear to Kent. “Are you the one who brought my fool home?”

“Aye, he is, nuncle,” said I. “Rescued me from the darkest heart of the forest, fought off brigands, pygmies, and a brace of tigers to bring me here. But don’t let him talk his Welsh at you, one tiger was vanquished in a sluice of phlegm and mortally beaten with consonants.”

Lear looked closely now at his old friend, then shivered-guilt’s chill claws scuttling across his spine, no doubt. “Welcome, then, sir. I thank thee.” Lear handed Kent a small purse of coin. “Earnest payment for your service.”

“My thanks and my sword,” said Kent, bowing.

“What is your name?” asked Lear.

“Caius,” said Kent.

“And whence do you hail?”

“From Bonking, sire.”

“Well, yes, lad, as do we all,” said Lear, “but from what town?”

“Bonking Ewe on Worms Head,” I offered with a shrug. “Wales-”

“Fine, then, join my train,” said Lear. “You’re hired.”

“Oh, and allow me to hire you as well,” said I, removing my hat and handing it to Kent with a jingle.

“What’s this?” asked Kent.

“Who but a fool would work for a fool?”

“Watch your tongue, boy,” said Lear.

“You’ll have to get your own hat, fool,” said I to the king. “Mine is already promised.”

Captain Curan turned to conceal a smile.

“You call me a fool?”

“Oh, should I not call you fool? All your other titles you have given away, along with your land.”

“I’ll have you whipped.”

I rubbed my burning bottom. “That is the only legacy you have left, nuncle.”

“You’ve become a bitter fool in your absence,” said the king.

“And you the sweet one,” said I. “The fool who makes a jest of his own fate.”

“The boy is not altogether fool,” said Kent.

Lear turned on the old knight, but not in anger. “Perhaps,” said he, weakly, his eye drifting to the stones of the floor as if searching for an answer there. “Perhaps.”

“The lady, Goneril, Duchess of Albany!” announced one of the guards.

“Craven hose-beast!” I added, relatively certain the guard would forget that part.

Goneril breezed into the room, no notice of me, she went right to her father. The old man opened his arms but she stopped short, a sword-length away.

“Did you strike my man for chiding your fool?” Now she scowled at me.

I rubbed my bum and blew her a kiss.

Oswald peeked through the doors to the hall, as if waiting for the answer.

“I struck the knave for being impudent. I but asked him to fetch you. My fool has only just returned from being lost. This is not a time for frowns, daughter.”

“There’re no smiles for you, sire,” said I. “Not now that you’ve nothing to offer. The lady has only bile for fools and those with no title at all.”

“Quiet, boy,” said the king.

“You see,” said Goneril. “Not just your all-licensed fool, but your whole train treats my palace like a tavern and a brothel. They fight and eat all day, drink and carouse all night, and you care for nothing but your precious fool.”

“As it should be,” said Jones, albeit softly-when royal ire is raging, even the spittle sprayed from their lips can rain down death on the common puppet or person.

“I care for much, and my men are the best in the land. And they have not been paid since we left London. Perhaps if you-”

“They will not be paid!” said Goneril, and suddenly all the knights in the hall came to attention.

“When I gave you all, ’twas on the condition of you maintaining my retinue, daughter.”

“Aye, Father, and they shall be maintained, but not in your charge, and not in their full number.”

Lear was growing red-faced now, and shaking with anger as with palsy. “Speak clearly, daughter, these old ears deceive.”

Now Goneril went to her father and took his hand. “Yes, Father, you are old. Very old. Really, really, extraordinarily, mind-bogglingly-” She turned to me for a cue.

“Dog-fuckingly,” I suggested.

“-dog-fuckingly old,” said the duchess. “You are feebly, incontinently, desiccatedly, smelling-of-boiled-cabaggely old. You are brain-rottingly, balls-draggingly-”

“I’m fucking old!” said Lear.

“We’ll stipulate that,” said I.

“And,” continued Goneril, “while you, in your dotage, should be revered for your wisdom and grace, you piss on your legacy and reputation by keeping this train of ruffians. They are too much for you.”

“They are my loyal men and you have agreed to maintain them.”

“And I shall. I shall pay your men, but half will stay here at Albany, under my charge, under my orders, in soldiers’ quarters, not running about the bailey like marauders.”

“Darkness and devils,” cursed Lear. “It shall not be! Curan, saddle my horses, call my train together. I have another daughter.”

“Go to her, then,” said Goneril. “You strike my servants and your rabble makes servants of their betters. Be gone, then, but half your train shall remain.”

“Prepare my horses!” said Lear. Curan hurried out of the hall, followed by the other knights, passing the Lord Albany as he entered, the duke looking more than somewhat confused.

“Why does the king’s captain exit with such urgency?” asked the duke.

“Do you know of this harpy’s intent to strip me of my train?” asked Lear.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” said Albany. “Pray, be patient, sire. My lady?” Albany looked to Goneril.

“We do not strip him of his knights. I have offered to maintain them here, with our own force, while Father goes on to my sister’s castle. We shall treat his men as our own, with discipline, as soldiers, not as guests and revelers. They are out of the old man’s control.”

Albany turned back to Lear and shrugged.

“She lies!” said Lear, now wagging a finger under Goneril’s nose. “Thou detested viper. Thou ungrateful fiend. Thou hideous-uh-”

“Slag!” I offered. “Thou piteous prick-pull. Thou vainglorious virago. Thou skunk-breathed licker of dog scrotums. Do jump in, Albany, I can’t go on forever, no matter how inspired. Surely you’ve years of suppressed resentment to vent. Thou leprous spunk-catch. Thou worm-eaten-”

“Shut up, fool,” said Lear.

“Sorry, sirrah, I thought you were losing your momentum.”

“How could I have given preference to this villainess over my sweet Cordelia?” asked Lear.

“Doubtless that question was lost worse in the wood than I, seeing as it has only caught up with you now, sire. Shall we take cover against the impact of the revelation that you’ve awarded your kingdom to the best liars of your loins?” Who would have thought it, but I’d felt more charity toward the old man before he realized his folly. Now-

He turned his eyes skyward and began to invoke the gods:

“Hear me, nature, dear goddess hear.

Convey sterility onto this creature,

Dry up her womb

And never let a babe spring from

Her body to honor her.

Instead create in her a child of spleen and bile.

Let it torment her, and stamp wrinkles in her youthful brow

Let it turn all of her mother’s benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth

It is to have a thankless child!”

With that the old man spat at Goneril’s feet and stormed out of the hall.

“I think he took that as well as could reasonably be expected,” said I. I was ignored, despite my positive tone and sunny smile.

“Oswald!” called Goneril. The smarmy steward slithered forth. “Quickly, take the letter to my sister and Cornwall. Take two of the fastest horses and alternate them. Do not rest until it is in her hand. And then take you to Gloucester and deliver that other message as well.”

“You have given me no other message, lady,” said the worm.

“Yes, right, come with me. We shall draft a letter.” She led Oswald out of the great hall leaving the Duke of Albany looking to me for some sort of explanation.

I shrugged. “She can be a whirlwind of tits and terror when she puts her mind to a purpose, can’t she, sir?”

Albany didn’t seem to notice my comment, somewhat forlorn, he looked. His beard seemed to be greying with worry as he stood there. “I don’t approve of her treatment of the king. The old man has earned more respect. And what of these messages, to Cornwall and Gloucester?”