Fool (6 page)

“Aye, I think you can count on it.”

“Smashing!” Drool clapped his hands and danced a little jig then, chanting, “Heinous fuckery most foul, heinous fuckery most foul-”

I looked to Edmund. “You’ve my word, bastard. But you’ve also my word that if any harm comes to the Natural, I’ll see to it that ghosts ride you into your grave.”

A flash of fear showed in Edmund’s eye then, but he fought it down and affected his usual swaggering smirk. “His life is on your word, little man.”

The bastard turned and strutted down the corridor. Drool looked back, a big tear welling in his eye as he realized what was happening. I waved him on.

“I’d have taken the other two if you’d dirked him,” said Curan. The other guard nodded in agreement. “Evil bastard was asking for it.”

“Well, now you fucking tell me,” said I.

Another guard hurried out of the hall then, and seeing it was only the fool with his captain, reported, “Captain, the king’s food taster. He’s dead, sir.”

Three friends had I.

SIX – FRIENDSHIP AND THE ODD

BONK

Life is loneliness, broken only by the gods taunting us with friendship and the odd bonk. I admit it, I grieved. Perhaps I am a fool to have expected Cordelia to stay. (Well, yes, I am a fool-don’t be overly clever, eh? It’s annoying.) But for most of my manly years she had been the lash on my back, the bait to my loins, and the balm of my imagination-my torment, my tonic, my fever, my curse. I ache for her.

There is no comfort in the castle. Drool gone, Taster gone, Lear gone mad. At best, Drool was little more company than Jones, and decidedly less portable, but I worry for him, great child that he is, stumbling about in the circle of so many villains and so much sharp metal. I miss his gape-toothed smile, filled as it was with forgiveness, acceptance, and often, cheddar. And Taster, what did I know of him, really? Just a wan lad from Hog Nostril on Thames. Yet when I needed a sympathetic ear, he provided, even if he was oft distracted from my woes by his own selfish dietary concerns.

I lay on my bed in the portislodge staring out the cruciform arrow loops at the grey bones of London, stewing in my misery, yearning for my friends.

For my first friend.

For Thalia.

The anchoress.

On a chill autumn day at Dog Snogging, the third time I was allowed to bring food to the anchoress, we became fast friends. I was still in awe of her, and merely being in her presence made me feel base, unworthy, and profane, but in a good way. I passed the plate of rough brown bread and cheese through the cross in the wall with prayers and a plea for her forgiveness.

“This fare will do, Pocket. It will do. I’ll forgive you for a song.”

“You must be a most pious lady and have great love for the Lord.”

“The Lord is a tosser.”

“I thought the Lord was a shepherd?”

“Well, that, too. But a bloke needs hobbies. Do you know ‘Greensleeves’?”

“I know ‘Dona Nobis Pacem.
’”

“Do you know any pirate songs?”

“I could sing ‘Dona Nobis Pacem’ like a pirate.”

“It means
give us peace,
in Latin, doesn’t it?”

“Aye, mistress.”

“Bit of a stretch then, innit, a pirate singing give us bloody peace?”

“I suppose. I could sing you a psalm, then, mistress.”

“All right, then, Pocket, a psalm it is-one with pirates and loads of bloodshed, if you have it.”

I was nervous, desperate for approval from the anchoress, and afraid that if I displeased her I might be struck down by an avenging angel, as seemed to happen often in scripture. Try as I might, I could not recall any piraty psalms. I cleared my throat and sang the only psalm I knew in English:

“The Lord is my tosser, I shall not want-”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said the anchoress. “Doesn’t it go, ‘the Lord is my shepherd’?”

“Well, yes, mistress, but you said-”

And she started to laugh. It was the first time I heard her truly laugh and it felt as if I was getting approval from the Virgin herself. In the dark chamber, just the single candle on my side of the cross, it seemed like her laughter was all around me, embracing me.

“Oh, Pocket, you are a love. Thick as a bloody brick, but such a love.”

I could feel the blood rise in my face. I was proud and embarrassed and ecstatic all at once. I didn’t know what to do, so I fell to my knees and prostrated myself before the arrow loop, pushing my cheek against the stone floor. “I’m sorry, mistress.”

She laughed some more. “Arise, Sir Pocket of Dog Snogging.”

I climbed to my feet and stared into the dark cross-shaped hole in the wall, and there I saw that dull star that was her eye reflecting the candle flame and I realized that there were tears in my own eyes.

“Why did you call me that?”

“Because you make me laugh and you are deserving and valiant. I think we’re going to be very good friends.”

I started to ask her what she meant, but the iron latch clanked and the door into the passageway swung slowly open. Mother Basil was there, holding a candelabra, looking displeased.

“Pocket, what’s going on here?” said the mother superior in her gruff baritone.

“Nothing, Reverend Mother. I’ve just given food to the anchoress.”

Mother Basil seemed reluctant to enter the passageway, as if she was afraid to be in view of the arrow loop that looked into the anchoress’s chamber.

“Come along, Pocket. It’s time for evening prayers.”

I bowed quickly to the anchoress and hurried out the door under Mother Basil’s arm.

As the sister closed the door, the anchoress called, “Reverend Mother, a moment, please.”

Mother Basil’s eyes went wide and she looked as if she’d been called out by the devil. “Go on to vespers, Pocket. I’ll be along.”

She made her way into the dead-end passageway and closed the door behind her even as the bell calling us to vespers began to toll.

I wondered what the anchoress would discuss with Mother Basil, perhaps some conclusion she had realized during her hours of prayer, perhaps I had been found wanting and she would ask that I not be sent to her again. After just making my first friend, I was sorely afraid of losing her. While I repeated the prayers in Latin after the priest, in my heart I prayed to God to not take my anchoress away, and when mass ended, I stayed in the chapel and prayed until well after the midnight prayers.

Mother Basil found me in the chapel.

“There are going to be some changes, Pocket.”

I felt my spirit drop into my shoe soles.

“Forgive me, Reverend Mother, for I know not what I do.”

“What are you on about, Pocket? I’m not scolding you. I’m adding duties to your devotion.”

“Oh,” said I.

“From now on, you are to take food and drink to the anchoress in the hour before vespers, and there in the outer chamber, shall you sit until she has eaten, but upon the bell for vespers you are to leave there, and not return until the next day. No longer than an hour shall you stay, do you understand?”

“Yes, mum, but why only the hour?”

“More than that and you will interfere with the anchoress’s own communion with God. Further, you are never to ask her about where she was before this, about her family, or her past in any way. If she should speak of these things you are to immediately put your fingers in your ears, and verily sing ‘la, la, la, la, I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you,’ and leave the chamber immediately.”

“I can’t do that, mum.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t work the latch to the outer door with my fingers in my ears.”

“Ah, sweet Pocket, I do so love your wit. I think you shall sleep on the stone floor this night, the rug shields you from the blessed cooling of your fevered imagination, which God finds an abomination. Yes, a light beating and the bare stone for you and your wit tonight.”

“Yes, mum.”

“And so, you must never speak with the anchoress about her past, and if you should, you shall be excommunicated and damned for all eternity with no hope for redemption, the light of the Lord shall never fall upon you, and you shall live in darkness and pain for ever and ever. And in addition, I shall have Sister Bambi feed you to the cat.”

“Yes, mum,” said I. I was so thrilled I nearly peed. I would be blessed by the glory of the anchoress every single day.

“Well that’s a scaly spot o’ snake wank,” said the anchoress.

“No, mum, it’s a cracking big cat.”

“Not the cat, the hour a day. Only an hour a day?”

“Mother Basil doesn’t want me to disturb your communion with God, Madame Anchoress.” I bowed before the dark arrow loop.

“Call me Thalia.”

“I daren’t, mum. And neither may I ask you about your past or from whence you come. Mother Basil has forbidden it.”

“She’s right on that, but you may call me Thalia, as we are friends.”

“Aye, mum. Thalia.”

“And you may tell me of your past, good Pocket. Tell me of your life.”

“But, Dog Snogging is all I know-all I have ever known.”

I could hear her laughing in the dark. “Then, tell me a story from your lessons, Pocket.”

So I told the anchoress of the stoning of St. Stephen, of the persecution of St. Sebastian, and the beheading of St. Valentine, and she, in turn, told me stories of the saints I had never heard of in catechism.

“And so,” said Thalia, “that is the story of how St. Rufus of Pipe-wrench was licked to death by marmots.”

“That sounds a most horrible martyring,” said I.

“Aye,” said the anchoress, “for marmot spit is the most noxious of all substances, and that is why St. Rufus is the patron of saliva and halitosis unto this day. Enough martyring, tell me of some miracles.”

And so I did. I told of the magic, self-filling milk pail of St. Bridgid of Kildare, of how St. Fillan, after his ox was killed by a wolf, was able to compel the same wolf to pull a cart full of materials for building a church, and how St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.

“Aye,” said Thalia, “and snakes have been grateful ever since. But let me apprise you of the most wondrous miracle of how St. Cinnamon drove the Mazdas out of Swinden.”

“I’ve never heard of St. Cinnamon,” said I.

“Well, that is because these nuns at Dog Snogging are base and not worthy to know such things, and why you must never share what you learn here with them lest they become overwhelmed and succumb to an ague.”

“An ague of over-piety?”

“Aye, lad, and you will be the one to have killed them.”

“Oh, I would never want to do that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. Did you know, in Portugal they canonize a saint by actually shooting him out of a cannon?”

And so it went, day in, day out, week in, week out, trading secrets and lies with Thalia. You might think that it was cruel of her to spend her only time in contact with the outside world telling lies to a little boy, but then, the first story that Mother Basil had told me was about a talking snake who gave tainted fruit to naked people, and the bishop had made her an abbess. All along what Thalia was teaching me was how to entertain her. How to share a moment in story and laughter-how you could become close to someone, even when separated from them by a stone wall.

Once a month for the first two years the bishop came from York to check on the anchoress, and she would seem to lose her spirit for a day, as if he were skimming it off and taking it away, but soon she would recover and our routine of chat and laughter would go on. After a few years the bishop stopped coming, and I was afraid to ask Mother Basil why, lest it be a reminder and the dour prelate resume his spirit-sucking sojourns.

The longer the anchoress was in her chamber, the more she delighted in my conveying the most mundane details from the outside.

“Tell me of the weather today, Pocket. Tell me of the sky, and don’t skip a single cloud.”

“Well, the sky looked like someone was catapulting giant sheep into the frosty eye of God.”

“Fucking winter. Crows against the sky?”

“Aye, Thalia, like a vandal with quill and ink set loose to randomly punctuate the very dome of day.”

“Ah, well spoken, love, completely incoherent imagery.”

“Thank you, mistress.”

While about my chores and studies I tried to take note of every detail and construct metaphors in my head so I might paint word pictures for my anchoress, who depended on me to be her light and color.

My days seemed to begin at four when I came to Thalia’s chamber, and end at five, when the bell rang for vespers. Everything before was in preparation for that hour, and everything after, until sleep, was in sweet remembrance.

The anchoress taught me how to sing-not just the hymns and chants I had been singing from the time I was little, but the romantic songs of the troubadours. With simple, patient instruction, she taught me how to dance, juggle, and perform acrobatics, and all by verbal description-not once in those years had I laid eyes on the anchoress, or seen more than her partial profile at the arrow loop.