Fool (15 page)

“His lordship will receive only you, fool,” said the squire.

Kent looked ready to bully the boy but I held up a hand to stay him. “I’ll see that the door is left unlatched, good Caius. If I should call, please enter and dispatch the bastard with lethal vigor.”

I grinned at the spot-faced squire. “Unlikely,” said I. “Edmund holds me in very high esteem and I him. There will be little time between compliments to discuss business.” I breezed by the young knight and into the chamber where Edmund was alone, sitting at a writing desk.

I said, “Thou scaly scalawag of a corpse-gorged carrion worm, cease your feast on the bodies of your betters and receive the Black Fool before vengeful spirits come to wrench the twisted soul from your body and drag it into the darkest depths of hell for your treachery.”

“Oh, well spoken, fool,” said Edmund.

“You think so?”

“Oh yes, I’m cut to the quick. I may never recover.”

“Completely impromptu,” said I. “With time and polish-well, I could go out and return with a keener edge on it.”

“Perish the thought,” said the bastard. “Take a moment to catch your breath and revel in your rhetorical mastery and achievement.” He gestured toward a high-backed chair across from him.

“Thank you, I will.”

“Still tiny, though, I see,” said the bastard.

“Well, yes, Nature being the recalcitrant twat that she is-”

“And still weak, I presume?”

“Not of will.”

“Of course not, I referred simply to your willowy limbs.”

“Oh yes, in that case, I’m a bit of a soggy kitten.”

“Splendid. Here to be murdered then, are you?”

“Not immediately. Uh, Edmund, if you don’t mind my saying, you’re being off-puttingly pleasant today.”

“Thank you. I’ve adopted a strategy of pleasantness. It turns out that one can perpetrate all manner of heinous villainy under a cloak of courtesy and good cheer.” Edmund leaned over the desk now, as if to take me into his most intimate confidence. “It seems a man will forfeit all sensible self-interest if he finds you affable enough to share your company over a flagon of ale.”

“So you’re being pleasant?”

“Yes.”

“It’s unseemly.”

“Of course.”

“So, you’ve received the dispatch from Goneril?”

“Oswald gave it to me two days ago.”

“And?” I asked.

“Evidently the lady fancies me.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Well, who could blame her, really? Especially now that I’m both pleasant
and
handsome.”

“I should have cut your throat when I had the chance,” said I.

“Ah, well, water under the bridge, isn’t it? Excellent plan, with the letter to discredit my brother Edgar, by the way. Went smashingly. Of course I embellished somewhat. Improvised, if you will.”

“I know,” said I. “Implied patricide and the odd self-inflicted wound.” I nodded toward his bandaged sword arm.

“Oh yes, the Natural talks to you, doesn’t he?”

“Curious, then. Why is that bloody great oaf still drawing breath, knowing what he does about your plans. Fear of ghosts, is it?”

For the first time Edmund let his pleasant and insincere grin falter. “Well, there is that, but also, I quite enjoy beating him. And when I’m not beating him, having him around makes me feel more clever.”

“You simple bastard, Drool makes anvils feel more clever. How bloody common of you.”

That did it. Pretense of pleasantness fell when it came to questions of class, evidently. Edmund’s hand dropped below the table and came up with a long fighting dagger. But alas, I was already in the process of swinging down hard with Jones’s stick end and struck the bastard on his bandaged forearm. The blade went spinning in such a way that I was able to kick the hilt as it hit the floor and flip it up into my own waiting weapon hand. (To be fair, that is right or left, whether it was the juggling or the pickpocket training of Belette, I am agile with either hand.)

I flipped the blade and held it ready for a throw. “Sit! You’re exactly a half-turn from hell, Edmund. Do twitch. Please do.” He’d seen me perform with my knives at court and knew my skill.

The bastard sat, cradling his hurt arm as he did so. Blood was seeping through the bandage.

He spat at me, and missed. “I’ll have you-”

“Ah, ah, ah,” said I, brandishing the blade. “Pleasant.”

Edmund growled, but stopped as Kent stormed into the room, knocking the door back on its hinges. His sword was drawn and two young squires were drawing theirs as they followed him. Kent turned and smashed the lead squire in the forehead with the hilt of his own weapon, knocking the boy backward off his feet, quite unconscious. Then Kent spun and swept the feet out from under the other with the flat of his sword and the lad landed on his back with an explosion of breath. The old knight drew back to thrust through the squire’s heart.

“Hold!” said I. “Don’t kill him!”

Kent held and looked up, assessing the situation for the first time.

“I heard a blade clang. I thought the villain was murdering you.”

“No. He gave me this lovely dragon-hilted dagger as a peace offering.”

“That is not true,” said the bastard.

“So,” said Kent, paying particular attention to my readied weapon, “you’re murdering the bastard, then?”

“Merely testing the weapon’s balance, good knight.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“No worries. Thank you. I’ll call you if I need you. Take that unconscious one with you, would you?” I looked at the other, who trembled on the floor. “Edmund, do instruct your knights to be pleasant toward my ruffian. He
is
a favorite of the king.”

“Let him alone,” grumbled Edmund.

Kent and the conscious squire dragged the other one out of the chamber and closed the door.

“You’re right, this being pleasant is the dog’s bollocks, Edmund.” I flipped the dagger and caught it by the hilt. When Edmund made as if to move, I flipped it again and caught it by the blade. I raised a suspicious eyebrow at him. “So, you were saying about how well my plan had worked.”

“Edgar is branded a traitor. Even now my father’s knights hunt him. I will be lord of Gloucester.”

“But, really, Edmund, is that enough?”

“Exactly,” said the bastard.

“Uh, exactly what?” Had he already set his sights on Albany’s lands, not even having spoken with Goneril? Now I was doubly unsure of what to do. My own plan to pair the bastard with Goneril and undermine the kingdom was the only thing keeping me from sending the dagger to his throat, and when I thought of the lash marks on poor Drool’s back my hand quivered, wanting to loose the knife to its mark. But what had he set his sights on?

“The spoils of war can be as great as a kingdom,” said Edmund.

“War?” How knew he of war? My war.

“Aye, fool. War.”

“Fuckstockings,” said I. I let the knife fly and ran out of the room, bells jingling.

As I approached our tower, I heard what sounded like someone torturing an elk in a tempest. I thought that Edmund might have sent an assassin for Drool after all, so I came through the door low, with one of my daggers at the ready.

Drool lay on his back on a blanket, a golden-haired woman with a white gown spread around her hips was riding him as if competing in the nitwit steeplechase. I’d seen her before, but never so solid. The two were wailing in ecstasy.

“Drool, what are you doing?”

“Pretty,” said Drool, a great joyous, goofy grin on him.

“Aye, she’s a vision, lad, but you’re knobbing a ghost.”

“No.” The dim giant paused in his upward thrusting, lifted her by her waist and looked closely at her as if he’d found a flea in his bed.

“Ghost?”

She nodded.

Drool tossed her aside and with a long shuddering scream ran to the window and dove through, shattering the shutters as he went. The scream trailed off and ended with a splash.

The ghost pulled her gown down, tossed her hair out of her face, and grinned. “Water in the moat,” she said. “He’ll be fine. Guess I’ll be going away half-cocked, though.”

“Well, yes, but jolly good of you to take time from chain rattling and delivering portents of bloody doom to shag the beef-brained boy.”

“Not up for a spirity tumble yourself, then?” She made as if to lift her gown above her hips again.

“Piss off, wisp, I’ve got to go fish the git out of the moat. He can’t swim.”

“Not keen on flight, neither, evidently?”

No time for this. I sheathed my dagger, wheeled on my heel and started out the door.

“Not your war, fool,” said the ghost.

I stopped. Drool was slow at most things, perhaps he would be so at drowning. “The bastard has his own war?”

“Aye.” The ghost nodded, fading back to mist as she moved.

“A fool’s best plan

Plays out to chance,

But a bastard’s hope,

Arrives from France.”

“Thou loquacious fog, thou nattering mist, thou serpent-tongued steam, for the love of truth, speak straight, and no sodding rhyme.”

But in that moment she was gone.

“Who are you?” I shouted to the empty tower.

FOURTEEN – ON TENDER HORNS

I shagged a ghost,” said Drool, wet, naked, and forlorn, sitting in the laundry cauldron under Castle Gloucester.

“There’s always a bloody ghost,” said the laundress, who was scrubbing the lout’s clothes, which had been most befouled in the moat. It had taken four of Lear’s men, along with me, to pull the great git from the stinking soup.

“No excuse for it, really,” said I. “You’ve the lake on three sides of the castle, you could open the moat to the lake and the offal and stink would be carried away with the current. I’ll wager that one day they find that stagnant water leads to disease. Breeds hostile water sprites, I’ll wager.”

“Blimey, you’re long-winded for such a wee fellow,” said the laundress.

“Gifted,” I explained, gesturing grandly with Jones. I, too, was naked, but for my hat and puppet stick, my own apparel having taken a glazing of oozy moat mess during the rescue as well.

“Sound the alarm!” Kent came storming down the steps into the laundry, sword unsheathed and followed closely by the two young squires he’d trounced not an hour before. “Bolt the door! To arms, fool!”

“Hello,” said I.

“You’re naked,” said Kent, once again feeling the need to voice the obvious.

“Aye,” said I.

“Find the fool’s kit, lads, and get him into it. Wolves are loosed on the fold and we must defend.”

“Stop!” said I. The squires stopped thrashing wildly around the laundry and stood at attention. “Excellent. Now, Caius, what are you on about?”

“I shagged a ghost,” said Drool to the young squires. They pretended they couldn’t hear him.

Kent shuffled forward, held back some by the alabaster grandeur of my nakedness. “Edmund was found with a dagger through his ear, pinned to a high-backed chair.”

“Bloody careless eater he is, then.”

“’Twas you who put him there, Pocket. And you know it.”

“Moi?
Look at me? I am small, weak, and common, I could never-”

“He’s called for your head. He hunts the castle for you even now,” said Kent. “I swear I saw steam coming out his nostrils.”

“Not going to spoil the Yule celebration, is he?”

“Yule! Yule! Yule!” chanted Drool. “Pocket, can we go see Phyllis? Can we?”

“Aye, lad, if there’s a pawnbroker in Gloucester, I’ll take you soon as your kit is dry.”

Kent raised a startled porcupine of an eyebrow. “What is he on about?”

“Every Yule I take Drool down to Phyllis Stein’s Pawnshop in London and let him sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jesus, then blow the candles out on the menorah.”

“But the Yule’s a pagan holiday,” said one of the squires.

“Shut up, you twat. Do you want to ruin the twit’s fun? Why are you here, anyway? Aren’t you Edmund’s men? Shouldn’t you be trying to put my head on a pike or something?”

“They’ve changed allegiance to me,” said Kent. “After the thrashing I gave them.”

“Aye,” said squire one. “We’ve more to learn from this good knight.”

“Aye,” said squire two. “And we were Edgar’s men, anyway. Lord Edmund is a scoundrel, if you don’t mind me saying, sir.”

“And, dear Caius,” said I. “Do they know that you are a penniless commoner and can’t really maintain a fighting force as if you were, say-oh, I don’t know-the Earl of Kent?”

“Excellent point, Pocket,” said Kent. “Good sirs, I must release you from your service.”

“So we won’t be paid, then?”

“My regrets, no.”

“Oh, then we’ll take our leave.”

“Fare thee well, keep your guard up, lads,” said Kent. “Fighting’s done with the whole body, not only the sword.”

The two squires left the laundry with a bow.

“Will they tell Edmund where we’re hiding?” I asked.

“I think not, but you better get your kit on just the same.”

“Laundress, how progresses my motley?”

“Steamin’ by the fire, sir. Dry enough to wear indoors, I reckon. Did I hear it right that you put a dagger through Lord Edmund’s ear?”

“What, a mere fool? No, silly girl. I’m harmless. A jab from the wit, a poke to the pride are the only injuries a fool inflicts.”

“Shame,” said the laundress. “He deserves that and worse for how he treats your dim friend-” She looked away. “-and others.”

“Why
didn’t
you just kill the scoundrel outright, Pocket?” asked Kent, kicking subtlety senseless and rolling it up in a rug.

“Well, just shout it out, will you, you great lummox.”

“Aye, like you’d never do such a thing, ‘Top of the morning; grim weather we’re having; I’ve started a bloody war!’”

“Edmund has his own war.”

“See, you did it again.”

“I was coming to tell you when I found the girl ghost having a go at Drool. Then the lout leapt out the window and the rescue was on. The ghost implied that the bastard might be rescued by France. Maybe he’s allied with bloody King Jeff to invade.”

“Ghosts are notoriously unreliable,” said Kent. “Did you ever consider that you might be mad and hallucinating the whole thing? Drool, did you see this ghost?”

“Aye, I had a half a laugh wif her before I got frightened,” said Drool, sadly, contemplating his tackle through the steamy water. “I fink I gots deaf on me willie.”

“Laundress, help the lad wash the death off his willie, would you?”

“Not bloody likely,” said she.

I held the tip of my coxcomb to stay any jingling and bowed my head to show my sincerity. “Really, love, ask yourself,
What would Jesus do?”

“If he had smashing knockers,” added Drool.

“Don’t help.”

“Sor-ry.”

“War? Murder? Treachery?” reminded Kent. “Our plan?”

“Aye, right,” said I. “If Edmund has his own war it will completely bollocks up our plans for civil war between Albany and Cornwall.”

“All well and good, but you didn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you just slay the bastard?”

“He moved.”

“So you meant to kill him?”

“Well, I hadn’t thought it through completely, but when I sent his dagger at his eye socket I believed that there might be a fatal outcome. And I must say, although I didn’t stay to revel in the moment, it was very satisfying. Lear says that killing takes the place of bonking in the ancient. You’ve killed a multitude of chaps, Kent. Do you find that to be the case?”

“No, that’s a disgusting thought.”

“And yet, with Lear lies your loyalty.”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Kent, sitting down now on an overturned wooden tub. “Who do I serve? Why am I here?”

“You are here, because, in the expanding ethical ambiguity of our situation, you are steadfast in your righteousness. It is to you, my banished friend, that we all turn-a light amid the dark dealings of family and politics. You are the moral backbone on which the rest of us hang our bloody bits. Without you we are merely wiggly masses of desire writhing in our own devious bile.”

“Really?” asked the old knight.

“Aye,” said I.

“I’m not sure I want to keep company with you lot, then.”

“Not like anyone else will have you, is it? I need to see Regan before my bastard ear piercing poisons our cause. Will you take her a message, Kent-er, Caius?”

“Will you put on your trousers, or at least your codpiece?”

“Oh, I suppose. That had always been part of the plan.”

“Then I will bear your message to the duchess.”

“Tell her-no, ask her-if she still holds the candle she promised for Pocket. Then ask her if I may meet her somewhere private.”

“I’m off, then. But try to manage not to get murdered while I’m gone, fool.”

“Kitten!” said I.

“You poxy little vermin,” said Regan, in glorious red. “What do you want?”

Kent had led me to a chamber far in the bowels of the castle. I couldn’t believe that Gloucester would house royal guests in an abandoned dungeon. Regan must have somehow found her own way here. She had an affinity for such places.

“You received the letter from Goneril, then?” I asked.

“Yes. What is it to you, fool?”

“The lady confided in me,” said I, bouncing my eyebrows and displaying a charming grin. “What is your thought?”

“Why would I want to dismiss father’s knights, let alone take them into my service? We have a small army at Cornwall.”

“Well, you’re not at Cornwall, are you, love?”

“What are you saying, fool?”

“I’m saying that your sister bade you come to Gloucester to intercept Lear and his retinue, and thus stop him from going to Cornwall.”

“And my lord and I came with great haste.”

“And with a very small force, correct?”

“Yes, the message said it was urgent. We needed to move quickly.”

“So, when Goneril and Albany arrive, you will be away from your castle and nearly defenseless.”

“She wouldn’t dare.”

“Let me ask you, lady, where do you think the Earl of Gloucester’s allegiance lies?”

“He is our ally. He has opened his castle to us.”

“Gloucester, who was nearly usurped by his eldest son-you think he sides with you?”

“Well, with Father, then, which is the same thing.”

“Unless Lear is aligned with Goneril against you.”

“But she relieved him of his knights. He ranted about it for an hour after his arrival, called Goneril every foul name under the sun, and praised me for my sweetness and loyalty, even overlooking my throwing his messenger into the stocks.”

I said nothing. I removed my coxcomb, scratched my head, and sat on some dusty instrument of torture to observe the lady by torchlight and watch her eyes as the rust ground off the twisted gears of her mind. She was simply lovely. I thought about what the anchoress had said about a wise man only expecting so much perfection in something as its nature allows. I thought that I might, indeed, be witnessing the perfect machine. Her eyes went wide when the realization hit.

“That bitch!”

“Aye,” said I.

“They’ll have it all, she and Father?”

“Aye,” said I. I could tell her anger didn’t arise from the betrayal, but from not having thought of it first. “You need an ally, lady, and one with more influence than this humble fool can provide. Tell me, what do you think of Edmund the bastard?”

“He’s fit enough, I suppose.” She chewed a fingernail and concentrated. “I’d shag him if my lord wouldn’t murder him-or come to think of it, maybe because he would.”

“Perfect!” said I.

Oh Regan, patron saint of Priapus, the most slippery of the sisters: in disposition preciously oily, in discourse, deliciously dry. My venomous virago, my sensuous charmer of serpents-thou art truly perfection.

Did I love her? Of course. For even though I have been accused of being an egregious horn-beast, my horns are tender, like the snail’s-and never have I hoisted the horns of lust without I’ve taken a prod from Cupid’s barb as well. I have loved them all, with all my heart, and have learned many of their names.

Regan. Perfect. Regan.

Oh yes, I loved her.

She was a beauty to be sure-there was none in the kingdom more fair; a face that could inspire poetry and a body that inspired lust, longing, larceny, treachery, perhaps even war. (I am not without hope.) Men had murdered each other in competition for her favors-it was a hobby with her husband, Cornwall. And to her credit, while she could smile as a bloke bled to death with her name on his lips, she was not tight-fisted with her charms. It only added to the tension around her that
someone
was going to be shagged silly in the near future, and how much more thrilling if his life hung by a thread as he did the deed. In fact, the promise of violent death might be to the princess Regan like the nectar of Aphrodite herself, now that I think of it.