Fool (26 page)

“Tragedy, then?”

“Bloody ghost
is
foreshadowing, innit?”

“But all the gratuitous shagging and tossing?”

“Brilliant misdirection.”

“You’re having me on.”

“Sorry, no, it’s pikeman’s surprise for you in the next scene.”

“I’m slain then?”

“To the great satisfaction of the audience.”

“Oh bugger!”

“But there’s good news, too.”

“Yes?”

“It remains a comedy for me.”

“God, you’re an annoying little git.”

“Hate the play, not the player, mate. Here, let me hold the curtain for you. Do you have any plans for that silver dagger? After you’re gone, I mean.”

“A bloody comedy-”

“Tragedies always end with tragedy, Edmund, but life goes on, doesn’t it? The winter of our discontent turns inevitably to the spring of a new adventure. Again, not for you.”

“I’ve never killed a king,” said Edmund. “Do you think I’ll be famous because of it?”

“You’ll not garner favor with your duchesses by killing their father,” said I.

“Oh, those two. Like these guards, quite dead, I’m afraid. They were sharing some wine over maps as they planned strategy for the battle and fell down foaming. Pity.”

“These guards aren’t dead. Merely drugged. They’ll come around in a day or so.”

He lowered the crossbow. “Then my ladies are only sleeping?”

“Oh no, they’re quite dead. I gave them each two vials. One with poison, the other with brandy. Bubble used the knockout poison on the guards, so brandy was our non-lethal substitute. If either of them had decided to show mercy for the other, at least one would be alive. But, as you said, pity.”

“Oh, well played, fool. But, that said, I’ll have to throw myself on Queen Cordelia’s mercy, let her know that I was brought into this horrid conspiracy against my will. Perhaps I’ll retain the Gloucester title and lands.”

“My daughters? Dead?” said Lear.

“Oh shut up, old man,” said Edmund.

“They was fit,” said Drool sadly.

“But when Cordelia hears of what you’ve really done?” I asked.

“Which brings us to our apex, doesn’t it? You won’t be able to tell Cordelia what has transpired.”

“Cordelia, my one true daughter,” wailed Lear.

“Shut the fuck up,” said Edmund. He raised the crossbow, sighted through the bars at Lear, then stepped back and seemed to lose his aim, as one of my throwing daggers sprouted out of his chest with a thud.

He lowered the crossbow and looked at the hilt of the knife. “But you said pikeman’s surprise?”

“Surprise,” said I.

“Bastard!” snarled the bastard. He pulled the crossbow up to fire, this time at me, and I sent the second dagger into his right eye. The crossbow twanged and the heavy bolt rattled off the stone ceiling as Edmund spun and fell onto the pile of guards.

“That were smashing,” said Drool.

“You’ll be rewarded, fool,” said Lear, his voice rattling with blood. He coughed.

“Nothing, Lear,” said I. “Nothing.”

Then there was a woman’s voice in the chamber: “Ravens cry pork from the battlements, there’s dead Edmund on the wind and bird beaks water at his scoundrel scent!”

The ghost. She stood over Edmund’s body outside our cell, rather more ethereal and less solid than she’d been when last I’d seen her. She looked up from the dead bastard and grinned. Drool whimpered and tried to hide his head behind Lear’s white mane.

Lear tried to wave her away, but the ghost floated to the bars in front of him. “Ah, Lear, walled up your father, did you? And?”

“Go away, spirit, do not vex me.”

“Walled up your daughter’s mother, didn’t you?” said the ghost.

“She was unfaithful!” cried the old man.

“No,” said the ghost. “She was not.”

I sat down on the cell floor, feeling light-headed now. Killing Edmund had made me queasy, but this. “The anchoress at Dog Snogging was your queen?” I asked, my voice sounding faraway in my own ears.

“She was a sorceress,” said Lear. “And she consorted with my brother. I did not kill her. I could not bear it. I had her imprisoned at the abbey in Yorkshire.”

“Well you damn well killed her when you had her walled up!” I shouted.

Lear cowered at my veracity. “She was unfaithful, having dalliance with one of the local boys. I could not bear the thought of her with another.”

“So you ordered her walled up.”

“Yes! Yes! And the boy was hanged. Yes!”

“You heinous monster!”

“She did not give me a son, either. I wanted a son.”

“She gave you Cordelia, your favorite.”

“And she was true to you,” said the ghost. “Up to the time you sent her away.”

“No!” The old king tried to wave the ghost away again.

“Oh yes. And you had your son, Lear. For years you had your son.”

“I had no son.”

“Another farm girl you took near another battlefield, this one in Iberia.”

“A bastard? I have a bastard son?”

I saw hope rise in Lear’s cold hawk eye and I wanted to strike it out the way that Regan had taken Gloucester’s. I unsheathed the last of my throwing daggers.

“Yes,” said the ghost. “You had a son, these many years, and you lie in his arms now.”

“What?”

“The Natural is your son,” said the ghost.

“Drool?” said I.

“Drool?” said Lear.

“Drool,” said the ghost.

“Da!” said Drool. And he gave his newfound father a great, arm-rippling hug. “Oh Da!” There was a cracking of bones and the sickly sound of air escaping wet, crushed lungs. Lear’s eyes bulged out of his head and his parchment-dry skin began to go blue as Drool gave him a lifetime of son’s love all in a moment.

When the whistling sounds stopped coming out of the old man I went to Drool and pried his arms off, then lowered Lear’s head to the floor. “Let loose, lad. Let him go.”

“Da?” said Drool.

I closed the old man’s crystal-blue eyes. “He’s dead, Drool.”

“Tosser!” said the ghost. She spat, a tiny gob of ghost spit that came out as a moth and fluttered away.

I stood then and spun on the ghost. “Who are you? What injustice has been done that can be undone so your spirit may rest, or will at least make you go away, thou ether-limbed irritation?”

“The injustice has been undone,” said the ghost. “At last.”

“Who are you?”

“Who am I? Who am I? Your answer is in a knock, good Pocket. Knock upon your coxcomb, and ask that trifling machine of thought wherefrom comes his art. Knock upon your cod, and ask the small occupant who wakes him in the night. Knock upon your heart, and ask the spirit there who woke it to the warmth of its home fire-ask that tender ghost who is this ghost before you.”

“Thalia,” said I, for I could, at last see her. I fell to my knees before her.

“Aye, lad. Aye.” She put her hand on my head. “Arise, Sir Pocket of Dog Snogging.”

“But, why? Why did you never say you were a queen? Why?”

“He had my daughter, my sweet Cordelia.”

“And you always knew of my mother?”

“I heard stories, but I didn’t know who your father was, not while I lived.”

“Why didn’t you tell me of my mother?”

“You were a little boy. That’s not the sort of story for a little boy.”

“Not so little you wouldn’t have me off through an arrow loop.”

“That was later. I was going to tell you, but he had me walled up.”

“Because we were caught?”

The ghost nodded. “He always had a problem with the purity of others. Never his own.”

“Was it horrible?” I had tried not to think of her, alone in the dark, dying of hunger and thirst.

“It was lonely. I was always lonely, except for you, Pocket.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re a love, Pocket. Good-bye.” She reached through the bars and touched my cheek, like the slightest brush of silk it was. “Care for her.”

“What?”

She started to float toward the far wall where the body of Edmund lay.

She said:

“After grave offense to daughters three,

Soon the king a fool shall be.”

“Nooooooo,” wailed Drool. “My old da is dead.”

“No he isn’t,” said Thalia. “Lear wasn’t your father. I was having you on.”

She faded away and I started to laugh and she was gone.

“Don’t laugh, Pocket,” said Drool. “I are an orphan.”

“And she didn’t even hand us the bloody keys,” said I.

Heavy footsteps fell on the stairs and Captain Curan appeared in the passage with two knights. “Pocket! We’ve been looking for you. The day is ours and Queen Cordelia approaches from the south. What of the king?”

“Dead,” said I. “The king is dead.”

TWENTY-FOUR – BOUDICCA

RISING

All my years as an orphan, only to find that I had a mother, but she killed herself over cruelty from the king, the only father I had ever known…

To find I had a father, but he, too, was murdered by order of the king…

To find the best friend I’d ever known was the mother of the woman I adored, and she was murdered, horribly, by order of the king, because of what I had done…

To go from being an orphan clown to a bastard prince to a cutthroat avenger for ghosts and witches in less than a week, and from upstart crow to strategist general in a matter of months…

To go from telling bawdy stories for the pleasure of an imprisoned holy woman to planning the overthrow of a kingdom…

It was bloody disorienting, and not a little tiring. And I’d built quite an appetite. A snack was in order-perhaps even a full meal, with wine.

I watched from the arrow loops in my old apartment in the barbican as Cordelia entered the castle. She rode a great white warhorse, and both she and the horse were fitted with full plate armor, fashioned in black with gold trim. The golden lion of England was emblazoned on her shield, a golden fleur-de-lis of France on her breastplate. Two columns of knights rode behind her, carrying lances with the banners of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Normandy, France, Belgium, and Spain. Spain? She’d conquered bloody Spain in her spare time? She was rubbish at chess before she left. Real war must be easier.

She reined up her horse in the middle of the drawbridge, stood in the stirrups, pulled off her helmet and shook out her long golden hair. Then she smiled up at the gatehouse. I ducked out of sight-I’m not sure why.

“Mine!” she barked, then she laughed and led the column into the castle.

Yes, I know, love, but bad form, isn’t it, to march about with your own bloody army laying claim to random property, innit? Unladylike.

She was bloody glorious.

Yes, a snack would do nicely. I laughed a bit myself and danced my way to the great hall, indulging in the odd somersault along the way.

Perhaps going to the great hall in search of food wasn’t the best idea, and perhaps it wasn’t my real intention, which was just as well, since instead of a repast, the bodies of Lear and his two daughters were laid out on three high tables, Lear on the dais where his throne sat, Regan and Goneril below, on either side, on the main floor.

Cordelia stood over her father, still in her armor, her helmet tucked under her arm. Her long hair hung in her face, so I couldn’t tell if she was crying.

“He’s a good deal more pleasant now,” said I. “Quieter. Although he moves about the same speed.”

She looked up and smiled, a great dazzling smile, then seemed to remember she was grieving and bowed her head again. “Thank you for your condolences, Pocket. I see you have managed to fend off pleasantness in my absence.”

“Only by keeping you constantly in my thoughts, child.”

“I’ve missed you, Pocket.”

“And I you, lamb.”

She stroked her father’s hair. He wore the heavy crown that he’d thrown on the table before Cornwall and Albany what seemed so long ago.

“Did he suffer?” Cordelia asked.

I considered my answer, which I almost never do. I could have vented my ire, cursed the old man, made testament to his life of cruelty and wickedness, but that would serve Cordelia not a bit, and me very little. Still, I needed to temper my tale with some truth.

“Yes. At the end, he suffered greatly in his heart. At the hands of your sisters, and under the weight of regret for doing wrong to you. He suffered, but not in his body. The pain was in his soul, child.”

She nodded and turned from the old man. “You shouldn’t call me child, Pocket. I’m a queen now.”

“I see that. Smashing armor, by the way, very St. George. Come with a dragon, did it?”

“No, an army, as it turns out.”

“And an empire, evidently.”

“No, I had to take that myself.”

“I told you your disagreeable nature would serve you in France.”

“That you did. Right after you told me that princesses were only good for-what was it-‘dragon food and ransom markers’?”

There it was, that smile again, sunshine on my frozen heart, it felt. And like a frostbitten limb, there were pins and needles as the feeling returned. Suddenly I felt the small purse with the witch’s puffball heavy on my belt.

“Yes, well, one can’t be right all the time, it would undermine one’s credibility as a fool.”

“Your credibility is already in question in that regard. Kent tells me that the kingdom fell before me so easily because of your doing.”

“I didn’t know it was you, I thought it was bloody Jeff. Where is Jeff, anyway?”

“In Burgundy with the duke-well, the Queen of Burgundy. They both insist on being referred to as the Queen of Burgundy. Turns out you were right about them, which again counts against your standing as a fool. I caught them together at the palace in Paris. They confessed that they’d fancied each other since they were boys. Jeff and I came to an arrangement.”

“Aye, there’s usually an arrangement in those situations-the arrangement of the queen’s head and body at different addresses.”

“Nothing like that, Pocket. Jeff is a decent chap. I didn’t love him, but he was a good fellow. Saved me when Father threw me out, didn’t he? And by the time this happened I’d won the guard and most of the court to my sympathies-if anyone was going to lose his head, it wasn’t me. France took some territories, Toulouse, Provence, and some bits of the Pyrenees with him, but considering the territories I’ve taken, overall it’s more than fair. The boys have a crashingly large palace in Burgundy that they perpetually redecorate. They’re quite happy.”

“The boys? Bloody Burgundy buggering froggy France? By the dangling ovaries of Odin, there’s a song in there somewhere!”

She grinned. “I’ve purchased a divorce from the Pope. Bloody dear it was, too. If I’d known Jeff was going to insist on sanction of the Church I’d have pushed to reinstate the old Discount Pope.”

The sound of the great doors opening echoed through the hall and Cordelia turned, fierce fire in her eyes. “I said I was to be left alone!”

But then Drool, who had lumbered through, pulled up as if he’d seen a ghost, and started to back away. “Sorry. Beggin’ your pardons. Pocket, I got Jones and your hat.” He held up the puppet stick and my coxcomb, forgot for a second that he’d been shouted at, then resumed backing out the doors.

“No, come, Drool,” said Cordelia. She waved him in and the guards closed the door behind him. I wondered what the knights and other nobles might think that the warrior queen would admit no one to the hall except two fools. Probably that she was merely another in a long line of family nutters.

Drool paused as he passed Regan’s body and lost his sense of purpose. He lay Jones and my hat on the table next to her, then pinched the hem of her gown and began to raise it for a peek.

“Drool!” I barked.

“Sorry,” said the Natural. Then he spotted Goneril’s body and moved to her side. He stood there, looking down. In a moment his shoulders began to shake and soon he broke into great, rib-wrenching sobs and proceeded to drip tears upon Goneril’s bosom.

Cordelia looked at me with pleading in her eyes, and I, at her, with something that must have seemed similar. We were shits, together, we were, that we didn’t grieve for these people, this family.

“They was fit,” said Drool. Soon he was petting Goneril’s cheek, then her shoulder, then both her shoulders, then her breasts, then he climbed on the table on top of her and commenced a rhythmic and unseemly sobbing that approximated in timbre and volume a bear being shaken in a wine cask.

I retrieved Jones from Regan’s side and clouted the oaf about the head and shoulders until he climbed off the erstwhile Duchess of Albany and slipped through the drape and hid under the table.

“I loved them,” Drool said.

Cordelia stayed my hand and bent down and lifted the drapery. “Drool, mate,” she said. “Pocket doesn’t mean to be cruel, he doesn’t understand how you feel. Still, we have to keep it to ourselves. It’s not proper to dry-hump the deceased, love.”

“It ain’t?”

“No. The duke will be here soon and he’d be offended.”

“What ’bout the other one. Her duke is dead.”

“Just the same, it’s not proper.”

“Sorry.” He hid his head under the drape.

She stood and looked at me, turning away from Drool and rolling her eyes and smiling.

There was so much to tell her, that I’d shagged her mother, and we, technically, were cousins, and, well, things might get awkward. It was my instinct, as a performer, to keep the moment light, so I said, “I killed your sisters, more or less.”

She stopped smiling. “Captain Curan said they poisoned each other.”

“Aye. I gave them the poison.”

“Did they know it was poison?”

“They did.”

“Couldn’t be helped, then, could it? They were right vicious bitches anyway. Tortured me through my childhood. You saved me the effort.”

“They just wanted someone to love them,” I said.

“Don’t make the case with me, fool. You’re the one that killed them. I was just going to take their lands and property. Maybe humiliate them in public.”

“But you just said-”

“I loved them,” said Drool.

“Shut up!” I chorused with Cordelia.

The doors cracked open then and Captain Curan peeked his head through. “Lady, the Duke of Albany has arrived,” said he.

“Give me a moment, then send him in,” said Cordelia.

“Very well.” Curan closed the doors.

Cordelia stepped up to me then, she was only a little taller than me, but in armor, somewhat more intimidating than I’d remembered her-but no less beautiful.

“Pocket, I’ve taken quarters in my old solar. I’d like you to visit after supper tonight.”

I bowed. “Does my lady require a story and a jest before bedtime to clear her head of the day’s tribulations?”

“No, fool, Queen Cordelia of France, Britain, Belgium, and Spain is going to shag the bloody bells off you.”

“Pardon?” said I, somewhat nonplussed. But then she kissed me. The second time. With great feeling, and she pushed me away.

“I invaded a country for you, you nitwit. I’ve loved you since I was a little girl. I came back for you, well, and for revenge on my sisters, but mostly for you. I knew you would be waiting for me.”

“How? How did you know?”

“A ghost came to me at the palace in Paris months ago. Scared the bearnaise out of Jeff. She’s been advising the strategy since.”

Enough talk of ghosts, I thought. Let her rest. I bowed again. “At your bloody beckoning service, love. A humble fool, at your service.”

ACT V

How I would make him fawn and beg and seek

And wait the season and observe the times

And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes

And shape his service wholly to my hests And make him proud to make me proud that jests!

So perttaunt-like would I o’ersway his state

That he should be my fool and I his fate.

–
Love’s Labour’s Lost,
Act V, Scene 2, Rosaline