Fool (7 page)

I grew older and fuzz sprouted on my cheek-my voice broke, making me sound as if a small goose was trapped in my gullet, honking for her supper. The nuns at Dog Snogging started to take notice of me as something other than their pet, for many were sent to the abbey when they were no older than I. They would flirt and ask me for a song, a poem, a story, the more bawdy the better, and the anchoress had taught me many of those. Where she had learned them, she would never say.

“Were you an entertainer before you became a nun?”

“No, Pocket. And I am not a nun.”

“But, perhaps your father-”

“No, my father was not a nun either.”

“I mean, was he an entertainer?”

“Sweet Pocket, you mustn’t ask about my life before I came here. What I am now, I have always been, and everything I am is here with you.”

“Sweet Thalia,” said I. “That is a fiery flagon of dragon toss.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“You’re grinning, aren’t you?”

She held the candle close to the arrow loop, illuminating her wry smile. I laughed, and reached through the cross to touch her cheek. She sighed, took my hand and pressed it hard against her lips, then, in an instant, she had pushed my hand away and moved out of the light.

“Don’t hide,” said I. “Please don’t hide.”

“Fat lot of choice I have about whether I hide or not. I live in a bloody tomb.”

I didn’t know what to say. Never before had she complained about her choice to become the anchoress of Dog Snogging, even if other expressions of her faith seemed-well-abstract.

“I mean don’t hide from me. Let me see you.”

“You want to see? You want to see?”

I nodded.

“Give me your candles.”

She had me hand four lit candles through the arrow loop. Whenever I performed for her she had me set them in holders around the outer chamber so she could see me dance, or juggle, or do acrobatics, but never had she asked for more than one candle in her own chamber. She placed the candles around her chamber and for the first time I could see the stone pallet where she slept on a mattress of straw, her meager possessions laid out on a heavy table, and Thalia, standing there in a tattered linen frock.

“Look,” she said. She pulled her frock over her head and dropped it on the floor.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She looked younger than I had imagined, thin, but womanly-her face was that of a mischievous Madonna, as if carved by a sculptor inspired more by desire than the divine. Her hair was long and the color of buckskin, catching the candlelight as if a single ray of sunlight might make it explode in golden fire. I felt a heat rise in my face, and another kind of rise in my trousers. I was excited and confused and ashamed all at once, and I turned my back on the arrow loop and cried out.

“No!”

Suddenly, she was right behind me, and I felt her hand on my shoulder, then rubbing my neck.

“Pocket. Sweet Pocket, don’t. It’s all right.”

“I feel like the Devil and the Virgin are doing battle in my body. I didn’t know you were like that.”

“Like a woman, you mean?”

Her hand was warm and steady, kneading the muscles in my shoulder through the cross in the wall and I leaned into it. I wanted to turn and look, I wanted to run out of the chamber, I wanted to be asleep, or just waking-ashamed that the Devil had visited me in the night with a damp dream of temptation.

“You know me, Pocket. I’m your friend.”

“But you are the anchoress.”

“I’m Thalia, your friend, who loves you. Turn around, Pocket.”

And I did.

“Give me your hand,” said she.

And I did.

She put it on her body, and she put her hands on mine, and pressed against the cold stone. Through the cross in the wall, I discovered a new universe-of Thalia’s body, of my body, of love, of passion, of escape-and it was a damn sight better than bloody chants and juggling. When the bell rang for vespers we fell away from the cross, spent and gasping, and we began to laugh. Oh, and I had chipped a tooth.

“One for the Devil, then, love?” said Thalia.

When I arrived with the anchoress’s supper the next afternoon she was waiting with her face pressed nearly through the center of the arrow cross-she looked like one of the angel-faced gargoyles that flanked the main doors of Dog Snogging, except they always seemed to be weeping and she was grinning. “So, didn’t go to confession today, did you?”

I shuddered. “No, mum, I worked in the scriptorium most of the day.”

“Pocket, I think I would prefer you not call me mum, if it’s not too much to ask. Given the new level of our friendship it seems-oh, I don’t know-unsavory.”

“Yes, m-uh-mistress.”

“Mistress
I can work with. Now, pass me my supper and see if you can fit your face in the opening the way that I have.”

Thalia’s cheekbones were wedged in the arrow loop, which was little wider than my hand.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I’d been finding abrasions on my arms and various bits all day from our adventure the night before.

“It’s not the flaying of St. Bart, but, yes, it stings a bit. You can’t confess what we did, or what we do, love? You know that, right?”

“Then am I going to have to go to hell?”

“Well-” She pulled back, rolled her eyes as if searching the ceiling for an answer. “-not alone. Give us our supper, lad, and get your face in the loop, I have something to teach you.”

And so it went for weeks and months. I went from being a mediocre acrobat to a talented contortionist, and Thalia seemed to regain some of the life that I had thought sure she’d lost. She was not holy in the sense that the priests and nuns taught, but she was full of spirit and a different kind of reverence. More concerned with this life, this moment, than an eternity beyond the reach of the cross in the wall. I adored her, and I wanted her to be out of the chamber, in the world, with me, and I began to plan her escape. But I was but a boy, and she was bloody barking, so it was not meant to be.

“I’ve stolen a chisel from a mason who passed by on his way to work on the minster at York. It will take some time, but if you work on a single stone, you might escape in summer.”

“You are my escape, Pocket. The only escape I can ever allow myself.”

“But we could run off, be together.”

“That would be smashing, except I can’t leave. So, hop up and get your tackle in the cross. Thalia’s a special treat for you.”

I never seemed to make my point once my tackle went in the cross. Distracted, I was. But I learned, and while I was forbidden confession-and to tell the truth, I didn’t feel that badly about it-I began to share what I had learned.

“Thalia, I must confess to you, I have told Sister Nikki about the little man in the boat.”

“Really? Told her or showed her?”

“Well, showed her, I reckon. But she seems a bit thick. She kept making me show her over and over-asked me to meet her in the cloisters to show her again after vespers tonight.”

“Ah, the joy of being slow. Still, it’s a sin to be selfish with one’s knowledge.”

“That’s what I thought,” said I, relieved.

“And speaking of the little man in the boat, I believe there is one on this side of the loop who has been naughty and requires a thorough tongue-lashing.”

“Aye, mistress,” said I, wedging my cheeks into the arrow loop. “Present the rascal for punishment.”

And so it went. I was the only person I knew who had calluses on his cheekbones, but I had also developed the arms and grip of a blacksmith from suspending myself with my fingertips wedged between the great stones to extend my bits through the arrow loop. And thus I hung, spread spiderlike across the wall, my business being tended to, frantic and friendly, by the anchoress, when the bishop entered the antechamber.

(The bishop entered the antechamber? The bishop entered the antechamber? At this point you’re going coy on us, euphemizing about parts and positions when you’ve already confessed to mutual violation with a holy woman through a bloody arrow slot? Well, no.)

The actual sodding Bishop of Bloody York entered the sodding antechamber with Mother sodding Basil, who bore a brace of sodding storm lanterns.

And so I let go. Unfortunately, Thalia did not. It appeared that her grip, too, had been strengthened by our encounters on the wall.

“What the hell are you doing, Pocket?” said the anchoress.

“What are you doing?” asked Mother Basil.

I hung there, more or less suspended to the wall by three points, one of them not covered by shoes. “Ahhhhhhhhh!” said I. I was finding it somewhat difficult to think.

“Give us a little slack, lad,” said Thalia. “This is meant to be more of a dance, not a tug-of-war.”

“The bishop is out here,” said I.

She laughed. “Well, tell him to get in the queue and I’ll tend to him when we’re finished.”

“No, Thalia, he’s really out here.”

“Oh toss,” said she, releasing my knob.

I fell to the floor and quickly rolled onto my stomach.

Thalia’s face was at the arrow loop. “Evening, your grace.” A big grin there. “Fancy a spot of stony bonking before vespers?”

The bishop turned so quickly his miter went half-past on his head. “Hang him,” he said. He snatched one of Mother Basil’s lanterns and walked out of the chamber.

“Bloody brown bread you serve tastes like goat scrotum!” Thalia called after. “A lady deserves finer fare!”

“Thalia, please,” I said.

“Not a comment on you, Pocket. Your serving style is lovely, but the bread is rubbish.” Then to Mother Basil. “Don’t blame the boy, Reverend Mother, he’s a love.”

Mother Basil grabbed me by the ear and dragged me out of the chamber.

“You’re a love, Pocket,” said the anchoress.

Mother Basil locked me in a closet in her chambers, then mid-way through the night, opened the door and handed in a crust of bread and a chamber pot. “Stay here until the bishop is on his way in the morning, and if anyone asks, you’ve been hung.”

“Yes, Reverend Mother,” said I.

She came to get me the next morning and hustled me out through the chapel. I’d never seen her so distraught. “You’ve been like a son to me, Pocket,” she said, fussing about me, strapping a satchel and other bits of kit on me. “So it’s going to pain me to send you off.”

“But, Reverend Mother-”

“Hush, lad. We’ll take you to the barn, hang you in front of a few farmers, then you’re off to the south to meet up with a group of mummers who will take you in.”

“Beggin’ pardon, mum, but if I’m hung, what will mummers do with me, a puppet show?”

“I’ll not really hang you, just make it look good. We have to, lad, the bishop ordered it.”

“Since when does the bishop order nuns to hang people?”

“Since you shagged the anchoress, Pocket.”

At the mention of her I broke away from Mother Basil, ran through the abbey, down the old corridor and into the antechamber. The arrow cross was gone, completely bricked up and mortared in. “Thalia! Thalia!” I called. I screamed and beat the stones until my fists bled, but not a sound came from the other side of the wall. Ever.

The sisters pulled me away, tied my hands, and took me to the barn where I was hanged.

SEVEN – A BROTHER TRAITOR

Am I to be forever alone? The anchoress told me it might be so, trying to comfort me when I felt pushed aside by the sisters of Dog Snogging.

“You’re gifted with wit, Pocket, but to cast jibe and jest you must stand separate from the target of your barbs. I fear you may become a lonely man, even in the company of others.”

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it is why I am such an accomplished horn-beast and eloquent crafter of cuckoldry. I seek only succor and solace beneath the skirts of the soft and understanding. And so, sleepless, did I make my way to the great hall to find some comfort among the castle wenches who slept there.

The fire still blazed, logs the size of oxen set in before bed. My sweet Squeak, who had oft opened her heart and whatnot to a wayfaring fool, had fallen asleep in the arms of her husband, who spooned her mercilessly as he snored. Shanker Mary was not to be seen, no doubt servicing the bastard Edmund somewhere, and my other standard lovelies had fallen into slumber in proximity too close to husbands or fathers to admit a lonely fool.

Ah, but the new girl, just in the kitchen a fortnight, called Tess or Kate or possibly Fiona. Her hair was jet and shone like oiled iron; milky skin, cheeks brushed by a rose-she smiled at my japes and had given Drool an apple without his asking. I am relatively sure that I adored her. I tiptoed across the rushes that lined the floor (I had left Jones in my chamber, his hat bells no help in securing stealthy romance), lay down beside her, and introduced my personage to the nether of her blanket. An affectionate nudge at the hip woke her.

“Hello,” said she.

“Hello,” said I. “Not a papist, are you, love?”

“Christ, no, Druid born and raised.”

“Thank God.”

“What are you doing under my blanket?”

“Warming up. I’m terribly cold.”

“No you’re not.”

“Brrrr. Freezing.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“All right, then. I’m just being friendly.”

“Would you stop prodding me with that?”

“Sorry, it does that when it’s lonely. Perhaps if you petted it.”

Then, praised be the merciful goddess of the wood, she petted it, tentatively, almost reverentially at first, as if she sensed how much joy it could bring to all who came in contact with it. An adaptable lass, not given to fits of hysteria or modesty-and soon a gentle surety in her grip that betrayed some experience in the handling of manly bits-simply lovely she was.

“I thought it would have a little hat, with bells.”

“Ah, yes. Well, given a private place to change, I’m sure that can be arranged. Under your skirt, perhaps. Roll to the side, love, we’ll be less obvious if we keep the cuddle on a lateral plane.” I popped her bosoms out of her frock, then, freed the roly-poly pink-nosed puppies to the firelight and the friendly ministries of this master juggler, and thought to burble my cheeks softly between them, when the ghost appeared.

The spirit was more substantial now, features describing what must have been a most comely creature before she was shuffled off to the undiscovered country, no doubt by a close relative weary of her irritating nature. She floated above the sleeping form of the cook Bubble, rising and falling on the draft of her snores.

“Sorry to haunt you while you’re rogering the help,” said the ghost.

“The rogering has not commenced, wisp, I have barely bridled the horse for a moist and bawdy ride. Now, go away.”

“Right, then. Sorry to have interrupted your attempted rogering.”

“Are you calling me a horse?” asked Possibly Fiona.

“Not at all, love, you pet the little jester and I’ll attend to the haunting.”

“There’s always a bloody ghost about, ain’t there?” commented Possibly, a squeeze on my knob for emphasis.

“When you live in a keep where blood runs blue and murder is the favored sport, yes,” said the ghost.

“Oh do fuck off,” said I. “Thou visible stench, thou steaming aggravation, thou vaporous nag! I’m wretched, sad, and lonely, and trying to raise a modicum of comfort and forgetting here in the arms of, uh-”

“Kate,” said Possibly Fiona.

“Really?”

She nodded.

“Not Fiona?”

“Kate since the day me da tied me belly cord to a tree.”

“Well, bugger. Sorry. Pocket here, called the Black Fool, charmed I’m sure. Shall I kiss your hand?”

“Double-jointed, then, are ye?” said Kate, a tickle to my tackle making her point.

“Bloody hell, would you two shut up?” said the ghost. “I’m haunting over here.”

“Go on,” said we.

The ghost boosted her bosom and cleared her throat, expecto-rating a tiny ghost frog that evaporated in the firelight with a hiss, then said:

“When a second sibling’s base derision,

Proffers lies that cloud the vision,

And severs ties that families bind,

Shall a madman rise to lead the blind.”

“What?” said the former Fiona.

“What?” said I.

“Prophecy of doom, innit?” said the ghost. “Spot o’ the old riddly foreshadowing from beyond, don’t you know?”

“Can’t kill her again, can we?” asked faux Fiona.

“Gentle spook,” said I. “If it is a warning you bring, state it true. If action you require, ask outright. If music you must make, play on. But by the wine-stained balls of Bacchus, speak your bloody business, quick and clear, then be gone, before time’s iron tongue licks away my mercy bonk with second thoughts.”

“You are the haunted one, fool. It’s your business I do. What do you want?”

“I want you to go away, I want Fiona to come along quietly, and I want Cordelia, Drool, and Taster back-now, can you tell me how to make those things come about? Can you, you yammering flurry of fumes?”

“It can be done,” said the ghost. “Your answer lies with the witches of Great Birnam Wood.”

“Or you could just fucking tell me,” said I.

“Nooooo,” sang the ghost, all ghosty and ethereal, and with that she faded away.

“Leaves a chill when she goes, don’t she?” said formerly Fiona. “Appears to have softened your resolve, if you don’t mind my sayin’.”

“The ghost saved my life last evening,” said I, trying to will life back into the wan and withered.

“Kilt the little one, though, didn’t she? Back to your bed, fool, the king’s leaving on the morrow and there’s a wicked lot of work to do in the morning to prepare for his trip.”

Sadly, I tucked away my tackle and sulked back to the portislodge to pack my kit for my final journey from the White Tower.

Well, I won’t miss the bloody trumpets at dawn, I can tell you that. And sod the bloody drawbridge chains rattling in my apartment before the cock crows. We might have been going to war for all the racket and goings-on at first light. Through the arrow loop I could see Cordelia riding out with France and Burgundy, standing in the stirrups like a man, like she was off to the hunt, rather than leaving her ancestral home forever. To her credit, she did not look back, and I did not wave to her, even after she crossed the river and rode out of sight.

Drool was not so fickle, and as he was led out of the castle by a rope round his neck, he kept stopping and looking back, until the man at arms to whom he was tethered would yank him back into step. I could not bear to let him see me, so I did not go out onto the wall. Instead I slunk back to my pallet and lay there, my forehead pressed to the cold stone wall, listening as the rest of the royals and their retinues clomped across the drawbridge below. Sod Lear, sod the royals, sod the bloody White Tower. All I loved was gone or soon to be left behind, and all that I owned was packed in a knapsack and hung on my hook, Jones sticking out the top, mocking me with his puppety grin.

Then, a knock at my door. Like dragging myself from the grave, was making my way to open it. There she stood, fresh and lovely, holding a basket.

“Fiona!”

“Kate,” said Fiona.

“Aye, your stubbornness suits you, even in daylight.”

“Bubble sends her sympathies over Taster and Drool, and sends you these sweet cakes and milk for your comfort, but says to be sure and remind you to not leave the castle without saying your farewells, and further that you are a cur, a rascal, and a scurvy patch.”

“Ah, sweet Bubble, when kindness shagged an ogre, thus was she sired.”

“And I’m here to offer comfort myself, finishing what was started in the great hall last night. Squeak says to ask you about a small chap in a canoe.”

“My my, Fi, bit of a tart, aren’t we?”

“Druish, love. My people burn a virgin every autumn-one can’t be too careful.”

“Well, all right, but I’m forlorn and I shan’t enjoy it.”

“In that we shall suffer together. Onward! Off with your kit, fool!”

What is it about me that brings out the tyrant in women, I wonder?

“The next morning” stretched into a week of preparation for departure from the White Tower. When Lear pronounced that he would be accompanied by one hundred knights it was not as if one hundred men could mount up and ride out of the gates at sunrise. Each knight-the unlanded second or third son of a noble-would have at least one squire, a page, usually a man to tend his horses, and sometimes a man at arms. Each had at least one warhorse, a massive armored beast, and two, sometimes three animals to carry his armor, weapons, and supplies. And Albany was three weeks’ journey to the north, near Aberdeen; with the slow pace set by the old king and so many on foot we’d need a crashing assload of supplies. By the end of the week our column numbered over five hundred men and boys, and nearly as many horses. We would have needed a wagon full of coin to pay everyone if Lear had not conscripted Albany and Cornwall to maintain his knights.

I watched Lear pass under the portislodge at the head of the column before going downstairs and climbing on my own mount, a short, swayback mare named Rose.

“Mud shall not sully my Black Fool’s motley, lest it dull his wit as well,” said Lear, the day he presented the horse. I did not own the horse, of course. She belonged to the king-or now his daughters, I suppose.

I fell in at the end of the column behind Hunter, who was accompanied by a long train of hounds and a wagon with a cage built on it, which held eight of the royal falcons.

“We’ll be raiding farms before we get to Leeds,” said Hunter, a stout, leather-clad man, thirty winters on his back. “I can’t feed this lot-and they’ve not enough stowed to last them a week.”

“Cry calamity if you will, Hunter, but I’m the one to keep them in good spirits when their bellies are empty.”

“Aye, I’ve no envy for you, fool. Is that why you ride back here with we catch-farts and not at the king’s side?”

“Just drawing plans for a bawdy song at supper without the clank of armor in my ear, good Hunter.”

I wanted to tell Hunter that I was not overburdened by my duties, but by my disdain for the senile king who had sent my princess away. And I wanted time to ponder the ghost’s warnings. The bit about daughters three and the king becoming a fool had come to pass, or at least was in the way of it. So the girl ghost had predicted the “
grave offense
” to “
daughter’s three
” even if all the daughters had not seen the offense yet-when Lear arrived at Albany with this rowdy retinue, offense would soon follow. But what of this:
“When a second sibling’s base derision, proffers lies that cloud the vision”
?

Did it mean the second daughter? Regan? What did it matter if her lies clouded Lear’s vision? The king was nearly blind as it was, his eyes milky with cataract-I’d taken to describing my pantomimes as I performed them so the old man would not miss the joke. And with no power, what tie could be severed that would make a difference now? A war between the two dukes? None of it about me, why do I care?

Why then would the ghost appear to this most irrelevant and powerless fool? I puzzled it, and fell far behind the column, and when I stopped to have a wee, was accosted by a brigand.