Fool

TWENTY A PRETTY LITTLE THING

Drool and I slogged through the cold rain for a day, across hill and dale, over unpaved heath and roads that were little more than muddy wheel ruts. Drool affected a jaunty aspect, remarkable considering the dark doings he had just escaped, but a light spirit is the blessing of the idiot. He took to singing and splashing gaily through puddles as we traveled. I was deeply burdened by wit and awareness, so I found sulking and grumbling better suited my mood. I regretted that I hadn’t stolen horses, acquired oilskin cloaks, found a fire-making kit, and murdered Edmund before we left. The latter, among many reasons, because I could not ride upon Drool’s shoulders, as his back was still raw from Edmund’s beatings. Bastard.

I should say here, that after some days in the elements, the first I’d spent there since my time with Belette and the traveling mummer troupe many years ago, I determined that I am an indoor fool. My lean form does not fend off cold well, and it seems no better at shedding water. I fear I am too absorbent to be an outdoor fool. My singing voice turns raspy in the cold, my japes and jokes lose their subtlety when cast against the wind, and when my muscles are slowed by an unkind chill, even my juggling is shit. I am untempered for the tempest, unsuited for a storm—better fit for fireplace and featherbed. Oh, warm wine, warm heart, warm tart, where art thou? Poor, cold Pocket, a drowned and wretched rat is he.

We traveled in the dark for miles before we smelled meat-smoke on the wind and spotted the orange light of an oil-skinned window in the distance.

“Look, Pocket, a house,” said Drool. “We can sit by the fire and maybe have a warm supper.”

“We’ve no money, lad, and nothing to trade them.”

“We trade ’em a jest for our supper, like we done before.”

“I can think of nothing amusing to do, Drool. Tumbling is out of the question, my fingers are too stiff to work Jones’s talk string, and I’m too weary even for the simple telling of a tale.”

“We could just ask them. They might be kind.”

“That’s a blustery bag of tempest toss, innit?”

“They might,” insisted the oaf. “Bubble once give me a pie without I ever jested a thing. Just give it to me, out of the kindness of her heart.”

“Fine. Fine. We shall prevail upon their kindness, but should that fail, prepare yourself to bash in their brains and take their supper by force.”

“What if there’s a lot of ’em? Ain’t you going to help?”

I shrugged and gestured to my fair form: “Small and weary, lad. Small and weary. If I’m too weak to perform a puppet show, I think the brain-bashing duties will, by necessity, fall upon you. Find a sturdy stick of firewood. There, there’s a woodpile over there.”

“I don’t want to bash no brains,” said the stubborn nitwit.

“Fine, here, take one of my daggers.” I handed him a knife. “Give a good dirking to anyone who requires it.”

At that point the door opened and a wizened form stepped into the doorway and raised a storm lantern. “Who goes there?”

“Beggin’ pardon, sirrah,” said Drool. “We was wondering if you required a good dirking this evening?”

“Give that to me.” I snatched the dagger away from the git and fitted it into the sheath at my back.

“Sorry, sir, the Natural jests out of turn. We are looking for some shelter from the storm and perhaps a hot meal. We’ve only bread and a little cheese, but we will share it for the shelter.”

“We are fools,” said Drool.

“Shut up, Drool, he can see that by my kit and your empty gaze.”

“Come in, Pocket of Dog Snogging,” said the bent figure. “Mind your head on the doorjamb, Drool.”

“We’re buggered,” said I, pushing Drool through the door ahead of me.

Witches three. Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary. Oh no, not in the Great Birnam Wood where they are generally kept, where one might fairly expect to encounter them, but here in a warm cabin off the road between the Gloucestershire villages of Tossing Sod and Bongwater Crash? A flying house, perhaps? It’s rumored that witches are afraid of such structures.

“I thought you was an old man but you is an old woman,” said Drool to the hag who had let us in. “Sorry.”

“No proof, please,” said I, afraid that one of the hags might confirm her gender by lifting her skirts. “The lad’s suffered enough of late.”

“Some stew,” said the crone Sage, the warty one. A small pot hung over the fire.

“I’ve seen what you put in your stew.”

“Stew, stew, true and blue,” said the tall witch, Parsley.

“Yes, please,” said Drool.

“It’s not stew,” said I. “They call it stew because it rhymes with bloody blue, but it’s not stew.”

“No, it’s stew,” said Rosemary. “Beef and carrots and the lot.”

“Afraid it is,” said Sage.

“Not bits of bat wing, eye of lecher, sweetbreads of newt, and the lot, then?”

“A few onions,” said Parsley.

“That’s it? No magical powers? No apparitions? No curse? You appear out here in the middle of nowhere—nay, on the very fringe of the tick’s knickers that sucks the ass of nowhere—and you’ve no agenda except to feed the Natural and me and give us a chance to chase the chill?”

“Aye, that’s about it,” said Rosemary.

“Why?”

“Couldn’t think of nothin’ that rhymes with onions,” said Sage.

“Aye, we were right fucked for spell casting once the onions went in,” said Parsley.

“Truth be told, beef put us against the wall, didn’t it?” said Rosemary.

“Yeah, fief, I suppose,” mused Sage, rolling her good eye toward the ceiling. “And teef, although strictly speaking, that ain’t a proper rhyme.”

“Right,” said Parsley. “No telling what kind of dodgy apparition you’ll conjure you cock up the rhyme like that. Fief. Teeth. Pathetic, really.”

“Stew, please,” said Drool.

I let the crones feed us. The stew was hot and rich and mercifully devoid of amphibian and corpse bits. We broke out the last of the bread Curan had given us and shared it with the witches, who produced a jug of fortified wine and poured it for all. I warmed both inside and out, and for the first time in what seemed days, my clothes and shoes were dry.

“So, it’s going well, then?” asked Sage, after we’d each had a couple of cups of wine.

I counted out calamities on my digits: “Lear stripped of his knights, civil war between his daughters, France has invaded, Duke of Cornwall murdered, Earl of Gloucester blinded, but reunited with his son, who is a raving loony, the sisters enchanted and in love with the bastard Edmund—”

“I shagged ’em proper,” added Drool.

“Yes, Drool boffed them until both walked unsteady, and, let’s see, Lear wanders across the moors to find sanctuary with the French at Dover.” Handfuls of happenings.

“Lear suffers, then?” asked Parsley.

“Greatly,” said I. “He’s nothing left. A great height from which to fall, being king of the realm reduced to a wandering beggar, gnawed from the inside by regret for deeds he did long ago.”

“You feel for him, then, Pocket?” asked Rosemary, the greenish, cat-toed witch.

“He rescued me from a cruel master and brought me to live in his castle. It’s hard to hold hatred with a full stomach and a warm hearth.”

“Just so,” said Rosemary. “Have some more wine.”

She poured some dark liquid into my cup. I sipped it. It tasted stronger, warmer than before.

“We’ve a gift for you, Pocket.” Rosemary brought out a small leather box from behind her back and opened it. Inside were four tiny stone vials, two red and two black. “You’ll be needing these.”

“What are they?” My vision began to blur then. I could hear the witches’ voices, and Drool snoring, but they seemed distant, as if down a tunnel.

“Poison,” said the witch.

That was the last I heard from her. The room was gone, and I found myself sitting in a tree near a quiet river and a stone bridge. It was autumn, I could tell, as the leaves were turning. Below me a girl of perhaps sixteen was washing clothes in a bucket on the riverbank. She was a tiny thing, and I would have thought her a child by her size, but her figure was quite womanly—perfectly proportioned, just a size smaller in scale than most.

The girl looked up, as if she heard something. I followed her gaze down the road to a column of soldiers on horseback. Two knights rode at the head of the train, followed by perhaps a dozen others. They rode under my oak tree and paused their horses on the bridge.

“Look at that,” said the heavier of the two knights, nodding toward the girl. I heard his voice as if it were in my own head. “Pretty little thing.”

“Have her,” said the other. I knew the voice immediately, and with it I saw the face for who it was. Lear, younger, stronger, not nearly so grey, but Lear as sure as I’d ever seen him. The hawk nose, the crystal-blue eyes. It was him.

“No,” said the younger man. “We need to make York by nightfall. We’ve no time to find an inn.”

“Come here, girl,” called Lear.

The girl came up the bank to the road, keeping her eyes to the ground.

“Here!” barked Lear. The girl hurried across the bridge until she stood only a few feet from him.

“Do you know who I am, girl?”

“A gentleman, sir.”

“A gentleman? I am your king, girl. I am Lear.”

The girl fell to her knees and stopped breathing.

“This is Canus, Duke of York, Prince of Wales, son of King Bladud, brother to King Lear, and he would have you.”

“No, Lear,” said the brother. “This is madness.”

The girl was trembling now.

“You are brother to the king and you may have whom you want, when you want,” said Lear. He climbed off his horse. “Stand up, girl.”

The girl did, but stiffly, as if she were bracing for a blow. Lear took her chin in his hand and lifted it. “You are a pretty thing. She’s a pretty thing, Canus, and she is mine. I give her to you.”

The king’s brother’s eyes were wide and there was hunger there, but he said, “No, we haven’t time—”

“Now!” boomed Lear. “You’ll have her now!”

With that Lear grabbed the front of the girl’s frock and ripped it, exposing her breasts. When she tried to cover up he pulled her arms away. Then he held her and barked commands while his brother raped her on the wide stone rail of the bridge. When Canus had finished and fell breathless between her legs, Lear shouldered him aside then lifted the girl by the waist and threw her over the rail into the river.

“Clean yourself!” he shouted. Then he patted his brother’s shoulder. “There, she’ll not haunt your dreams tonight. All subjects are property of the king, and mine to give, Canus. You may have any woman you want except one.”

They mounted their horses and rode away. Lear hadn’t even looked to see if she could swim.

I couldn’t move, I couldn’t cry out. All during the attack on the girl I felt as if I’d been lashed to the tree. Now I watched her crawl naked from the river, her clothes in tatters behind her, and she curled into a ball on the riverbank and sobbed.

Suddenly I was whisked out of the tree, like a feather on an errant wind, and I settled on the roof of a two-story house in a village. It was market day, and everyone was out, going from cart to cart, table to table, bargaining for meat and vegetables, pottery and tools.

A girl stumbled down the street, a pretty little thing, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, with a tiny babe in arms. She stopped at every booth and showed them the babe, then the villagers would reward her with rude laughter and send her to the next booth.

“He’s a prince,” she said. “His father was a prince.”

“Go away, girl. You’re mad. No wonder no one will have you, tart.”

“But he’s a prince.”

“He looks to be a drowned puppy, lass. You’ll be lucky if he lives the week out.”

From one end of the village to the other she was laughed at and scorned. One woman, who must have been the girl’s mother, simply turned away and hid her face in shame.

I floated overhead as the girl ran to the edge of town, across the bridge where she’d been raped, and up to a compound of stone buildings, one with a great soaring steeple. A church. She made her way to the wide double door, and there, she lay her baby on the steps. I recognized those doors, I’d seen them a thousand times. This was the entrance to the abbey at Dog Snogging. The girl ran away and I watched, as a few minutes later, the doors opened and a broad-shouldered nun bent and picked up the tiny, squalling baby. Mother Basil had found him.

Suddenly I was at the river again, and the girl, that pretty little thing, stood on the wide stone rail of the bridge, crossed herself, and leapt in. She did not swim. The green water settled over her.

My mother.

When I awoke the witches were gathered around me like I was a sumptuous pie just out of the oven and they were ravenous pie whores.

“So, you’re a bastard then,” said Parsley.

“And an orphan,” said Sage.

“Both at once,” said Rosemary.

“Surprised, then?” said Parsley.

“Lear not quite the kind old codger you thought him, eh?”

“A royal bastard, you are.”

I gagged a bit, in response to the crones’ collective breath, and sat up. “Would you back off you disgusting old cadavers!”

“Well, strictly speakin’, only Rosemary’s a cadaver,” said the tall witch, Parsley.

“You drugged me, put that nightmare vision in my head.”

“Aye, we did drug you. But you was just looking through a window to the past. There was no vision except what happened.”

“Got to see your dear mum, didn’t you?” said Rosemary. “How lovely for you.”

“I had to watch her raped and driven to suicide, you mad hag.”

“You needed to know, little Pocket, before you went on to Dover.”

“Dover? I’m not going to Dover. I have no desire to see Lear.” Even as I said it I felt fear run down my spine like the tip of a spike. Without Lear, I was no longer a fool. I had no purpose. I had no home. Still, after what he had done, I would have to find some other means to make my way. “I can rent out Drool for plowing fields and hoisting bales of wool and such. We’ll make our way.”

“Maybe he wants to go on to Dover.”

I looked over to Drool, who I thought to still be asleep by the fire, but he was sitting there, staring at me wide-eyed, as if someone had frightened him and he’d forgotten how to talk.

“You didn’t give him the same potion you gave me, did you?”

“It was in the wine,” said Sage.

I went to the Natural and put my arm around his shoulder, or, as far around as I could reach, anyway. “Drool, lad, you’re fine, lad.” I knew how horrified I had been, with my superior mind and understanding of the world. Poor Drool must have been terrified. “What did you wicked hags show him?”

“He had a window on the past just like you.”

The great oaf looked up at me then. “I was raised by wolfs,” said he.

“Nothing can be done now, lad. Don’t be sad. We’ve all things in our past we were better not remembering.” I glared at the witches.

“I ain’t sad,” Drool said, standing up. He had to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the roof beams. “My brother nipped at me ’cause I didn’t have no fur, but he didn’t have no hands, so I throwed him against a tree and he didn’t get up.”

“You’re but a pathetic dimwit,” said I. “You can’t be blamed.”

“My mum only had eight teats, but after that there was only seven of us, so I got two. It were lovely.”

He didn’t really seem that bothered by the whole experience. “Tell me, Drool, have you always known you were raised by wolves?”

“Aye. I want to go outside and have a wee on a tree, now, Pocket. You want to come?”

“No, you go, love, I’m going to stay here and shout at the old ladies.” Once the Natural was gone I turned on them again. “I’m finished doing your bidding. Whatever politics you want to engineer I’ll have no more part of it.”

The crones laughed at me in chorus, then coughed until finally Rosemary, the greenish witch, calmed her breath with a sip of wine. “No, lad, nothing so sordid as politics, we’re about vengeance pure and simple. We don’t give a weasel’s twat about politics and succession.”

“But you’re evil incarnate and in triplicate, aren’t you?” said I, respectfully. One must give due.

“Aye, evil is our trade, but not so deep a darkness as politics. Better business to dash a suckling babe’s brains upon the bricks than to boil in that tawdry cauldron.”

“Aye,” said Sage. “Breakfast, anyone?” She was stirring something in the cauldron, I assumed it was the leftover hallucination wine from the night before.

“Well, revenge, then. I’ve no taste left for it.”

“Not even for revenge on the bastard Edmund?”

Edmund? What a storm of suffering that blackguard had loosed upon the world, but still, if I never had to see him again, couldn’t I forget about his damage?

“Edmund will find his just reward,” said I, not believing it for a second.

“And Lear?”

I was angry with the old man, but what revenge would I have on him now? He had lost all. And I had always known him to be cruel, but so long as his cruelty didn’t extend to me, I was blind to it. “No, not even Lear.”

“Fine, then, where will you go?” asked Sage. She pulled a ladle of steaming liquid from the pot and blew on it.

“I’ll take the Natural into Wales. We can call at castles until someone takes us in.”

“Then you’ll miss the Queen of France at Dover?”

“Cordelia? I thought bloody fucking froggy King Jeff was at Dover. Cordelia is with him?”

The hags cackled. “Oh no, King Jeff is in Burgundy. Queen Cordelia commands the French forces at Dover.”

“Oh bugger,” said I.

“You’ll want to take them poisons we fixed for you,” said Rosemary. “Keep them on you at all times. A need for them will present itself.”

TWENTY-ONE AT THE WHITE CLIFFS

“Pocket,” said Cordelia, “have you ever heard of this warrior queen named Boudicca?” Cordelia was about fifteen at the time, and she had sent for me because she wished to discuss politics. She lay on her bed with a large leather volume open before her.

“No, lamb, who was she queen of?”

“Why, of the pagan Britons. Of us.” Lear had recently shifted back to the pagan beliefs, thus opening a whole new world of learning for Cordelia.

“Ah, that explains it. Educated in a nunnery, love, I’ve a very shallow knowledge of pagan ways, although I have to say, their festivals are smashing. Rampant drunken shagging while wearing flower wreaths seems far superior to midnight mass and self-flagellation, but then, I’m a fool.”

“Well, it says here that she kicked nine colors of shit out of the Roman legions when they invaded.”

“Really, that’s what it says, nine colors of shit?”

“I’m paraphrasing. Why do you think we’ve no warrior queens anymore?”

“Well, lamb, war requires swift and resolute action.”

“And you’re saying that a woman can’t move with swift resolve?”

“I’m saying no such thing. She may move with swiftness and resolve, but only after choosing the correct outfit and shoes, and therein lies the undoing of any potential warrior queen, I suspect.”

“Oh bollocks!”

“I’ll wager your Boudicca lived before they invented clothing. Easy days then for a warrior queen. Just hitch up your tits and start taking heads, it was. Now, well, I daresay erosion would take down a country before most women could pick out their invading kit.”

“Most women. But not me?”

“Of course not you, lamb. Them. I meant only weak-willed tarts like your sisters.”

“Pocket, I think I shall be a warrior queen.”

“Of what, the royal petting zoo at Boffingshire?”

“You’ll see, Pocket. The whole of the sky will darken with the smoke from my army’s fires, the ground will tremble under their horses’ hooves, and kings will kneel outside their city walls, crowns in hand, begging to surrender rather than feel the wrath of Queen Cordelia fall upon their people. But I shall be merciful.”

“Goes without saying, doesn’t it?”

“And you, fool, will no longer be able to behave like the right shit that you are.”

“Fear and trembling, love, that’s all you’ll get from me. Fear and bloody trembling.”

“As long as we understand each other.”

“So, it sounds as if you’re thinking of conquering more than just the petting zoo?”

“Europe,” said the princess, as if stating the unadorned truth.

“Europe?” said I.

“To start,” said Cordelia.

“Well, then you had better get moving, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose,” said Cordelia, with a great silly grin. “Dear Pocket, would you help me pick an outfit?”

“She’s already taken Normandy, Brittany, and the Aquitaine,” said Edgar, “and Belgium soils itself at the mention of her name.”

“Cordelia can be a bundle of rumpus when she sets her mind to something,” said I. I smiled at the thought of her barking orders to the troops, all fury and fire from her lips, but those crystal-blue eyes hinting laughter at every turn. I missed her.

“Oh, I did betray her love and flay her sweet heart with stubborn pride,” said Lear, looking madder and weaker than when I’d seen him last.

“Where is Kent?” I asked Edgar, ignoring the old king. Drool and I had found them above a cliff at Dover. They all sat with their backs to a great chalk boulder: Gloucester, Edgar, and Lear. Gloucester snored softly, his head on Edgar’s shoulder. We could see smoke from the French camp not two miles away in the distance.

“He’s gone to Cordelia, to ask her to accept her father into her camp.”

“Why didn’t you go yourself?” I asked Lear.

“I am afraid,” said the old man. He hid his head under his arm, like a bird trying to escape the daylight beneath its wing.

It was wrong. I wanted him strong, I wanted him stubborn, I wanted him full of arrogance and cruelty. I wanted to see those parts of him I knew were thriving when he’d thrown my mother on the stones so many years ago. I wanted to scream at him, humiliate him, hurt him in eleven places and watch him crawl in his own shit, dragging his bloody pride and guts behind him in the dirt. There was no revenge to be satisfied on this trembling shell of Lear.

I wanted no part of it.

“I’m going to go nap behind those rocks,” said I. “Drool, keep watch. Wake me when Kent returns.”

“Aye, Pocket.” The Natural went to the far side of Edgar’s boulder, sat, and stared out over the sea. If we were attacked by a ship, he’d be Johnny-on-the-spot.

I lay down and slept perhaps an hour before there was shouting behind me and I looked over my boulders to see Edgar holding his father’s head, steadying him as the old man stood on a rock, perhaps a foot above the ground.

“Are we at the edge?”

“Aye, there are fishermen on the beach below that look like mice. The dogs look like ants.”

“What do the horses look like?” asked Gloucester.

“There aren’t any horses. Just fishermen and dogs. Don’t you hear the sea crashing below?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Farewell, Edgar, my son. I am sorry. Gods, do your will!” With that the old man leaped off the rock, expecting to plummet hundreds of feet to his death, I reckon, so he was somewhat surprised when he met the ground in an instant.

“Oh my lord! Oh my lord!” said Edgar, trying to use a different voice and failing completely. “Sir, you have duly fallen from the cliffs above.”

“I have?” said Gloucester.

“Aye, sir, can you not see?”

“Well, no, you git, my eyes are bandaged and bloody. Can you not see?”

“Sorry. What I saw was you fall from a great height and land as softly as if you were a feather floating down.”

“I am dead, then,” said Gloucester. He sank to his knees and seemed to lose his breath. “I am dead, yet I still suffer, my grief is manifest, my eyes ache even though they are not there.”

“That’s because he’s fucking with you,” said I.

“What?” said Gloucester.

“Shhhh,” said Edgar. “’Tis a mad beggar, pay him no heed, good sir.”

“Fine, you’re dead. Enjoy,” said I. I lay back on the ground, out of the wind, and pulled my coxcomb over my eyes.

“Come, come sit with me,” said Lear. I sat up and watched Lear lead the blind man to his nest beneath the great boulders. “Let the cruelties of the world slide off our bent backs, friend.” Lear put his arm around Gloucester and held him while he spoke to the sky.

“My king,” said Gloucester. “I am safe in your mercy. My king.”

“Aye, king. But I have no soldiers, no lands, no subject quakes before me, no servants wait, and even your bastard son hath treated you better than my own daughters.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said I. But I could see that the old blind man was smiling, and for all his suffering, he found comfort in his friend the king, no doubt having been blinded to his scoundrel nature long before Cornwall and Regan took his eyes. Blinded by loyalty. Blinded by title. Blinded by shoddy patriotism and false righteousness. He loved his mad, murdering king. I lay back down to listen.

“Let me kiss your hand,” said Gloucester.

“Let me wipe it first,” said Lear. “It smells of mortality.”

“I smell nothing, and see nothing evermore. I am not worthy.”

“Art thou mad? See with your ears, Gloucester. Have you never seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar, and thus chase him off? Is that dog the voice of authority? Is he better than the many for denying the man’s hunger? Is a sheriff righteous who whips the whore, when it is for his own lust he punishes her? See, Gloucester. See who is worthy? Now we are stripped of finery, see. Small vices show through tattered clothes, when all is hidden beneath fur and fine robes. Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice breaks on decoration. Blessed are you, that you cannot see—for you cannot see me for what I am: wretched.”

“No,” said Edgar. “Your impertinence comes from madness. Do not weep, good king.”

“Do not weep? We weep when we first smell the air. When we are born, we cry, that we come to this great stage of fools.”

“No, all shall be well again, and—”

And there was a thump, followed by another, and a yowl.

“Die, thou blind mole!” came a familiar voice.

I sat up in time to see Oswald standing over Gloucester, a bloodied stone in one hand, his sword driven down through the old earl’s chest. “You’ll not poison my lady’s cause further.” He twisted the blade, and blood bubbled up out of the old man, but no sound did he make. He was quite dead. Oswald yanked his blade free and kicked Gloucester’s body across Lear’s lap, as the king cowered against the boulder. Edgar lay unconscious at Oswald’s feet. The vermin drew back as if to drive his sword into Edgar’s spine.

“Oswald!” I shouted. I stood behind my boulders as I drew a throwing knife from the sheath at my back. The worm turned to me, and pulled his blade up. He dropped the bloody stone he’d used to brain Edgar. “We have an arrangement,” said I. “And further slaughter of my cohorts will cause me to doubt your sincerity.”

“Sod off, fool. We’ve no arrangement. You’re a lying cur.”

“Moi?” said I, in perfect fucking French. “I can give you your lady’s heart, and not in the unpleasant, eviscerated, no-shagging-except-the-corpse way.”

“You have no such power. You’ve not bewitched Regan’s heart, neither. ’Tis she who sent me here to kill this blind traitor who turns minds against our forces. And to deliver this.” He pulled a sealed letter from his jerkin.

“A letter of mark, giving you permission in the name of the Duchess of Cornwall to be a total twatgoblin?”

“Your wit is dull, fool. It is a love letter to Edmund of Gloucester. He set out for here with a scouting party to assess the French forces.”

“My wit is dull? My wit is dull?”

“Yes. Dull,” said Oswald. “Now, en garde,” said he in barely passable fucking French.

“Yes,” said I, with an exaggerated nod. “Yes.”

And with that, Oswald found himself seized by the throat and dashed several times against the boulders, which relieved him of his sword, his dagger, the love letter, and his coin purse. Drool then held the steward up and squeezed his throat, slowly but sternly, causing wet gurgling noises to bubble from his foul gullet.

I said,

Oswald seemed somewhat surprised by the turn of events, so much so, that both his eyes and tongue protruded from his face in a wholly unhealthy way. He then began to surrender his various fluids and Drool had to hold him away to keep from being fouled by them.

“Drop him,” said Lear, who still cowered by the boulders.

Drool looked to me and I shook my head, ever so slightly.

“Die, thou badger-shagging spunk monkey,” said I.

When Oswald stopped kicking and simply hung limp and dripping, I nodded to my apprentice, who tossed the steward’s body over the cliff as easily as if it were an apple core.

Drool went down on one knee over Gloucester’s body. “I were going to teach him to be a fool.”

“Aye, lad, I know you were.” I stood by my boulders, resisting the urge to comfort the great murderous git with a pat on the shoulder. There was a rustling from over the top of the hill and I thought I heard the sound of metal on metal through the wind.

“Now he’s blind and dead,” said the Natural.

“Bugger,” said I, under my breath. Then to Drool, “Hide, and don’t fight, and don’t call for me.”

I fell flat to the ground as the first soldier topped the hill. Bugger! Bugger! Bugger! Bloody bollocksing buggering bugger! I reflected serenely.

Then I heard the voice of the bastard Edmund. “Look, my fool. And what’s this? The king? What good fortune! You’ll make a fine hostage to stay the hand of the Queen of France and her forces.”

“Have you no heart?” said Lear, petting the head of his dead friend Gloucester.

I peeked out between my rocks. Edmund was looking at his dead father with the expression of someone who has just encountered rat scat in his toast for tea. “Yes, well, tragic I suppose, but with succession of his title determined and his sight gone, a timely exit was only polite. Who’s this other deader?” Edmund kicked his unconscious half brother in the shoulder.

“A beggar,” said Drool. “He were trying to protect the old man.”

“This is not the sword of a beggar. Neither is this purse.” Edmund picked up Oswald’s purse. “These belong to Goneril’s man, Oswald.”

“Aye, milord,” said Drool.

“Well, where is he?”

“On the beach.”

“On the beach? He climbed down and left his purse and sword here?”

“He was a tosser,” said Drool. “So I tossed him over. He kilt your old da.”

“Oh, quite right. Well done, then.” Edmund threw the purse to Drool. “Use it to bribe your jailer for a bread crust. Take them.” The bastard motioned for his men to seize Drool and Lear. When the old man had trouble standing, Drool lifted him to his feet and steadied him.

“What about the bodies?” asked Edmund’s captain.

“Let the French bury them. Quickly, to the White Tower. I’ve seen enough.”

Lear coughed then, a dry, feeble cough like the creaking of Death’s door hinges, until I thought he might collapse into a pile of blue. One of Edmund’s men gave the old man a sip of water, which seemed to quell the coughing, but he couldn’t stand or support his weight. Drool hoisted him up on one shoulder and carried him up the hill—the old man’s bony bottom bouncing on the great git’s shoulder as if it was the cushion of a sedan chair.

When they were gone I scrambled out of my hiding place and over to Edgar’s prostrate body. The wound on his scalp wasn’t deep, but it had bled copiously, as scalp wounds are wont to do. The resulting puddle of gore had probably saved Edgar’s life. I got him propped against the boulder and brought him around with some gentle smacking and a stout splashing from his water skin.

“What?” Edgar looked around, and shook his head to clear his vision, a motion he clearly regretted immediately. Then he spotted his father’s corpse and wailed.

“I’m sorry, Edgar,” said I. “’Twas Goneril’s steward, Oswald, knocked you out and killed him. Drool strangled the scurvy dog and tossed him over the cliff.”

“Where is Drool? And the king?”

“Taken, by your bastard brother’s men. Listen, Edgar, I need to follow them. You go to the French camp. Take them a message.”

Edgar’s eyes rolled and I thought he might pass out again, so I threw some more water in his face. “Look at me. Edgar, you must go to the French camp. Tell Cordelia that she should attack the White Tower directly. Tell her to send ships up the Thames and bring a force through London over land as well. Kent will know the plan. Have her sound the trumpet three times before they attack the keep. Do you understand?”

“Three times, the White Tower?”

I tore the back off of the dead earl’s shirt, wadded it up, and gave it to Edgar. “Here, hold this on your noggin to staunch the blood.”

“And tell Cordelia not to hold for fear for her father’s life. I’ll see to it that it’s not an issue.”

“Aye,” said Edgar. “She’ll not save the king by holding the attack.”

TWENTY-TWO AT THE WHITE TOWER

“Tosser!” cried the raven.

No help was he in my stealthy entry to the White Tower. I’d packed my bells with clay, and darkened my face with the same, but no amount of camouflage would help if the raven raised an alarm. I should have had a guard bring him down with a crossbow bolt long before I left the Tower.

I lay in a shallow, flat-bottomed skiff I’d borrowed from a ferryman, covered with rags and branches so I might appear just another mass of jetsam floating in the Thames. I paddled with my right hand, and the cold water felt like needles until my arm went numb. Sheets of ice drifted in the water around me. Another good cold night and I might have walked into the Traitor’s Gate, rather than paddled. The river fed the moat, and the moat led under a low arch and through the gate where English nobility had been bringing their family members for hundreds of years on the way to the chopping block.

Two iron-clad gates fit together at the center of the arch, chained in the middle below the waterline, and they moved ever-so-slightly in the current. There was a gap there, at the top, where the gates met. Not so wide that a soldier with weapons could fit through, but a cat, a rat, or a spry and nimble fool on the slim side might easily pass over. And so I did.

There were no guards at the stone steps inside, but twelve feet of water separated me from them, and my skiff would not fit through the gap at the top of the gate where I was perched. A fool was getting wet, there was no way around it. But it seemed to me that the water was shallow, only a foot or two deep. Perhaps I could keep my shoes dry. I took them off and tucked them into my jerkin, then slid down the gate into the cold water.

Great dog-buggering bollocks it was cold. Only to my knees, but cold. And I would have made it undiscovered, methinks, if I hadn’t let slip a rather emphatic whisper of, “Great dog-buggering bollocks, that’s cold!” I was met at the top of the stairs by the pointy part of a halberd, leveled malevolently at my chest.

“For fuck’s sake,” said I. “Do your worst, but get it done and drag my body inside where it’s warm.”

“Pocket?” said the yeoman at the other end of the spear. “Sir?”

“Aye,” said I.

“I haven’t seen you for months. What’s that all over your face?”

“It’s clay. I’m in disguise.”

“Oh right. Why don’t you come in and warm up. Must be dreadful cold in your wet stocking feet there.”

“Good thought, lad,” said I. It was the young, spot-faced yeoman whom I’d chastised on the wall when Regan and Goneril were first arriving to gain their inheritance. “Shouldn’t you stay at your post, though? Duty and all that?”

He led me across the cobbled courtyard, into a servants’ entrance to the main castle and down the stairs into the kitchen.

“Nah, it’s the Traitor’s Gate, innit? Lock on it as big as your head. Ain’t no one coming through there. Not all bad. It’s out of the wind. Not like up on the wall. Y’know the Duchess Regan is living here at the Tower now? I took your advice about not talking about her boffnacity,[43] even with the duke dead and all, can’t be too careful. Although, I caught sight of her in a dressing gown one day she was up on the parapet outside her solar. Fine flanks on that princess, despite the danger of death and all for sayin’ so, sir.”

“Aye, the lady is fair, and her gadonk as fine as frog fur, lad, but even your steadfast silence will get you hung if you don’t cease with the thinking aloud.”

“Pocket, you scroungy flea-bitten plague rat!”

“Bubble! Love!” said I. “Thou dragon-breathed wart farm, how art thou?”

The ox-bottomed cook tried to hide her joy by casting an onion at me, but there was a grin there. “You’ve not eaten one full plate since you were last in my kitchen, have you?”

“We heard you was dead,” said Squeak, a crescent of a smile for me beneath her freckles.

“Feed the pest,” said Bubble. “And clean that mess off his face. Rutting with the pigs again, were you, Pocket?”

“Jealous?”

“Not bloody likely,” said Bubble.

Squeak sat me down on a stool by the fire and while I warmed my feet she scrubbed the clay from my face and out of my hair, mercilessly battering me with her bosoms as she worked.

Ah, home sweet home.

“So, has anyone seen Drool?”

“In the dungeon with the king,” said Squeak. “Although the guard ain’t supposed to know it.” She eyed the young yeoman who stood by.

“I knew that,” he said.

“What of the king’s men, his knights and guards? In the barracks?”

“Nah,” said the yeoman. “Castle guard was a dog’s breakfast until Captain Curan came down from Gloucester. He’s got a noble-born knight as captain of every watch and the old guard man for man with any new ones. Crashing huge camps of soldiers outside the walls, forces of Cornwall to the west and Albany on the north. They say the Duke of Albany is staying with his men at camp. Won’t come to the Tower.”

“Wise choice, with so many vipers about the castle. What of the princesses?” I asked Bubble. Although she seemed never to leave her kitchen, she knew what was going on in every corner of the fortress.

“They ain’t talking,” said Bubble. “Taking meals in their old quarters they had when they was girls. Goneril in the east tower of the main keep. Regan in her solar on the outer wall on the south. They’ll come together for the midday meal, but only if that bastard Gloucester is there.”

“Can you get me to them, Bubble. Unseen?”

“I could sew you up in a suckling pig and send it over.”

“Yes, lovely, but I did hope to return undiscovered, and trailing gravy might draw the attention of the castle’s cats and dogs. Regrettably, I’ve had experience with such things.”

“We can dress you as one of the serving lads, then,” said Squeak. “Regan had us bring in boys instead of our usual maids. She likes to taunt and threaten them until they cry.”

I regarded Bubble with steely recrimination. “Why didn’t you suggest that?”

“I wanted to see you sewed up in a suckling pig, you oily rascal.”

Bubble has struggled with her deep affection for me for years.

“Very well, then,” said I. “A serving boy it is.”

“You know, Pocket,” said Cordelia, age sixteen. “Goneril and Regan say that my mother was a sorceress.”

“Yes, I’d heard that, love.”

“If that’s so, then I’m proud of it. It means she didn’t need some mangy man for her power. She had her own.”

“Banished then, wasn’t she?”

“Well, yes, that or drowned, no one will really say. Father forbids me to ask about it. But my point is that a woman should come to her power on her own. Did you know that the wizard Merlin gave up his powers to Vivian in exchange for her favors, and she became a great sorceress and queen, and put Merlin to sleep in a cave for a hundred years for his trouble?”

“Men are like that, lamb. You give them your favors and next thing you know they’re snoring away like a bear in a cave. Way of the world, it is.”

“You didn’t do that when my sisters gave you their favors.”

“They did no such thing.”

“They did, too. Many times. Everyone in the castle knows it.”

“Vicious rumors.”

“Fine, then. When you have enjoyed the favors of women, who shall remain nameless, did you fall asleep afterward?”

“Well, no. But neither did I give up my magical powers or my kingdom.”

“But you would have, wouldn’t you?”

“Say, enough talk of sorcerers and such. What say we go down to the chapel and convert back to Christianity? Drool drank all the communion wine and ate all the leftover host when the bishop was ousted, so I’ll wager he’s blessed enough to bring us into the fold without clergy. Burped the body of Christ for a week, he did.”

“You’re trying to change the subject.”

“Curses! Discovered!” exclaimed the puppet Jones. “That’ll teach you, you sooty-souled snake. Have him whipped, princess.”

Cordelia laughed, liberated Jones from my grasp, and clouted me on the chest with him. Even when she was grown she bore a weakness for puppety conspiracy and Punch-and-Judy justice.

“Now, fool, speak truth—if the truth in you hasn’t died starving from your neglect. Would you give up your powers and your kingdom for a lady’s favor?”

“That would depend on the lady, wouldn’t it?”

“Say me, for example?”

“Vous?” said I, my eyebrows raised in the manner of the perfectly fucking French.

“Oui,” said she, in the language of love.

“Not a chance,” said I. “I’d be snoring before you had time to declare me your personal deity, which you would, of course. It’s a burden I bear. Deep sleep of the innocent, I’d have. (Or, you know, the deep sleep of the deeply shagged innocent.) I suspect, come morning, you’d have to remind me of your name.”

“You didn’t sleep after my sisters had you, I know it.”

“Well, threat of violent, post-coital death will keep you on the alert, won’t it?”

She crawled across the rug until she was close then. “You are a dreadful liar.”

“What was your name?”

She clouted me on the head with Jones and kissed me—quickly, but with feeling. That was the only time.

“I’d have your power and your kingdom, fool.”

“Give me back my puppet, thou nameless tart.”

Regan’s solar was bigger than I remembered it. A fairly grand, round room, with a fireplace and a dining table. Six of us brought in her supper and set it out on the table. She was all in red, as usual, snowy shoulders and raven hair warmed to the eye by orange firelight.

“Wouldn’t you rather lurk behind the tapestry, Pocket?”

She waved the others out of the room and closed the door.

“I kept my head down. How did you know it was me?”

“You didn’t cry when I shouted at you.”

“Blast, I should have known.”

“And you were the only serving boy wearing a codpiece.”

“Can’t hide one’s light under a bushel, can one?” She was infuriating. Did nothing surprise her? She spoke as if I’d been sent for and she’d been expecting me at any moment. Rather took the joy out of all the stealth and disguise. I was tempted to tell her she’d been duped and Drool-shagged just to see her reaction, but alas, there were still guards who were loyal to her, and I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have me killed as it was. (I’d left my knives with Bubble in the kitchen, not that they’d help against a platoon of yeomen.) “So, lady, how goes the mourning?”

“Surprisingly well. Grief suits me, I think. Grief or war, I’m not sure which. But I’ve had good appetite and my complexion’s been rosy.” She picked up a hand mirror and regarded herself, then caught my reflection and turned. “But, Pocket, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, loyalty to the cause and all. With the French at our bloody doors, thought I’d come back to help defend home and hearth.” It was probably best we not pursue the reasons why I was there, so I pressed on. “How goes the war, then?”

“Complicated. Affairs of state are complicated, Pocket. I wouldn’t expect a fool to understand.”

“But I’m a royal, now, kitten. Didn’t you know?”

She put down her mirror and looked as if she might burst out laughing. “Silly fool. If you could catch nobility by touch you’d have been a knight years ago, wouldn’t you? But alas, you’re still common as cat shit.”

“Ha! Yes, once. But now, cousin, blue blood runs in my veins. In fact, I’ve a mind to start a war and shag some relatives, which I believe are the prime pastimes of royalty.”

“Nonsense. And don’t call me cousin.”

“Shag the country and kill some relatives, then? I’ve been noble less than a week, I don’t have all the protocol memorized yet. Oh, and we are cousins, kitten. Our fathers were brothers.”

“Impossible.” Regan nibbled at some dried fruit Bubble had laid out on the tray.

“Lear’s brother Canus raped my mother on a bridge in Yorkshire while Lear held her down. I am the issue of that unpleasant union. Your cousin.” I bowed. At your bloody service.

“A bastard. I might have known.”

“Oh, but bastards are vessels of promise, are they not? Or didn’t I watch you slay your lord the duke, to run to the arms of a bastard—who is, I believe, now the Earl of Gloucester. By the way, how goes the romance? Torrid and unsavory, I trust.”

She sat down then and ran her fingernails through her jet hair as if raking thoughts out of her scalp. “Oh, I fancy him fine—although he’s been a bit disappointing since that first time. But the intrigue is bloody exhausting, what with Goneril trying to bed Edmund, and he not being able to show me deference for fear of losing Albany’s support, and bloody France invading in the midst of it all. If I’d known all that my husband had to tend to I’d have waited a while before killing him.”

“There, there, kitten.” I moved around behind her and rubbed her shoulders. “Your complexion is rosy and your appetite good, and you are, as always, a veritable feast of shagability. Once you’re queen you can have everyone beheaded and take a long nap.”

“That’s just it. It’s not like I can just put on the crown and go sovereigning merrily along—God, St. George, and the whole rotting mess into history. I have to defeat the fucking French, then I’ve got to kill Albany, Goneril, and I suppose I’ll have to find Father and have something heavy fall on him or the people will never accept me.”

“Good news on that, love. Lear’s in the dungeon. Mad as a hatter, but alive.”

“He is?”

“Aye. Edmund just returned from Dover with him. You didn’t know?”

“Edmund is back?”

“Not three hours ago. I followed him back.”

“Bastard! He hasn’t even sent word that he’s returned. I sent a letter to him in Dover.”

“This letter?” I took the letter that Oswald had dropped. I’d broken the seal, of course, but she recognized it and snatched it out of my hand.

“How did you get that? I sent that with Goneril’s man, Oswald, to give to Edmund personally.”

“Yes, well, I sent Oswald to vermin Valhalla before delivery was secured.”

“You killed him?”

“I told you, kitten, I’m nobility now—a murderous little cunt like the rest of you. Just as well, too, that letter’s a flitty bit o’ butterfly toss, innit? Don’t you have any advisers to help you with that sort of thing? A chancellor or a chamberlain, a bloody bishop or someone?”

“I’ve no one. Everyone is at the castle in Cornwall.”

“Oh, love, let your cousin Pocket help.”

“Would you?”

“Of course. First, let’s see to sister.” I took two of the vials from the purse at my belt. “This red one is deadly poison. But the blue one is only like a poison, giving the same signs as if one is dead, but they will but sleep one day for each drop they drink. You could put two drops of this in your sister’s wine—say, when you are ready to attack the French—and for two days she would sleep the sleep of the dead while you and Edmund did your will, and without losing the support of Albany in the war.”

“And the poison?”

“Well, kitten, the poison may not be needed. You could defeat France, take Edmund for your own, and come to an agreement with your sister and Albany.”

“I have an agreement with them now. The kingdom is divided as father decreed.”

“I’m only saying that you may fight the French, have Edmund, and not have to slay your sister.”

“And what if we don’t defeat France?”

“Well, then, you have the poison, don’t you?”

“Well, that’s bollocks counseling,” said Regan.

“Wait, cousin, I haven’t told you the part where you make me Duke of Buckingham yet. I’d like that dodgy old palace, Hyde Park. St. James’s Park, and a monkey.”

“You’re daft!”

“Named Jeff.”

“Get out!”

I palmed the love letter from the table as I exited.

Quickly through the corridors, across the courtyard, and back to the kitchen where I traded my codpiece for a pair of waiter’s breeches. It was one thing to leave Jones and my coxcomb with the ferryman, another to secret my blades away with Bubble, but giving up my codpiece was like losing my spirit.

“I was nearly undone by its enormity,” said I to Squeak, to whom I handed the portable den of my manly inequity.

“Aye, a family of squirrels could nest in the extra space,” Squeak observed, dropping a handful of the walnuts she’d been shelling into the empty prick pouch.

“Wonder you didn’t rattle like a dried gourd when you walked,” said Bubble.

“Fine. Cast aspersions on my manhood if you will, but I’ll not protect you when the French arrive. They’re unnaturally fond of public snogging and they smell of snails and cheese. I will laugh—ha! — as you both are mercilessly cheese-snogged by froggy marauders.”

“Don’t really sound that bad to me,” said Squeak.

“Pocket, you’d better be off, lad,” said Bubble. “Goneril’s supper is going up now.”

“Adieu,” said I, a preview of the Frenchy future of my former friends and soon to be frog-snogged traitorous tarts. “Adieu.” I bowed. I feigned fainting with a great wrist-to-brow flourish, and I left.

(I admit it, one does like to lubricate his recurrent entrances and exits with a bit of melodrama. Performance is all to the fool.)

Goneril’s quarters were less spacious than Regan’s, but luxurious, and there was a fire going. I hadn’t set foot here since she’d left the castle to marry Albany, but upon returning I found I was simultaneously aroused and filled with dread—memories simmering under the lid of consciousness, I suppose. She wore cobalt with gold trim, daringly cut. She must have known Edmund was back. “Pumpkin!”

“Pocket? What are you doing here?” She waved the other servers and a young lady who had been braiding her hair out of the room. “And why are you dressed in that absurd outfit?”

“I know,” said I. “Poncy breeches. Without my codpiece I feel defenseless.”

“I think they make you look taller,” she said.

A dilemma. Taller in breeches or stunningly virile in a cod? Both illusions. Each with its advantage. “Which do you think makes a better impression on the fairer sex, love, tall or hung?”

“Isn’t your apprentice both?”

“But he’s—oh—”

“Yes.” She bit into a winter plum.

“I see,” said I. “So, what is it with Edmund? All the black kit?” What it was, was she was bewitched, was what it was.

“Edmund.” She sighed. “I don’t think Edmund loves me.”

And I sat down, with all of Goneril’s luncheon repast set before me, and considered cooling my forehead in the tureen of broth. Love? Sodding, bloody, tossing, bloody, sodding, bloody love? Irrelevant, superfluous, bloody, ruddy, rotten, sodding love? What ho? Wherefore? What the fuck? Love?

“Love?” said I.

“No one has ever loved me,” said Goneril.

“What about your mother? Surely your mother?”

“I don’t remember her. Lear had her executed when we were little.”

“I didn’t know.”

“It was not to be spoken of.”

“Jesus, then? Comfort in Christ?”

“What comfort? I’m a duchess, Pocket, a princess, perhaps a queen. You can’t rule in Christ. Are you daft? You have to ask Christ to leave the room. Your very first war or execution and you’re right fucked for forgiveness, aren’t you? There’s Jesusy disapproval and scowling at least and you have to act like you don’t see it.”

“He’s infinite in his forgiveness,” said I. “It says so somewhere.”

“As should we all be, it also says. But I don’t believe it. I’ve never forgiven our father for killing our mother and I never shall. I don’t believe, Pocket. There’s no comfort or love there. I don’t believe.”

“Me, either, lady. So, sod Jesus. Surely Edmund will fall in love with you when you become closer and he’s had a chance to murder your husband. Love needs room to grow, like a rose.” Or a tumor.

“He’s passionate enough, although never so enthusiastic as that first night in the tower.”

“Have you introduced him to your—well—special tastes?”

“Those will not win his heart.”

“Nonsense, love, a black-hearted prince like Edmund verily starves to have his bum smacked by a fair damsel like yourself. Probably what he’s craving, just too shy to ask.”

“I think another has caught his eye. I think he fancies my sister.”

No, that’s his father’s eye she caught, well, speared, really, I thought, but then I thought better. “Perhaps I can help you resolve the conflict, pumpkin.” And at that, I produced the red and blue vials from my purse. I explained how one was for death-like sleep, and the other afforded more permanent rest. And as I did so, I cradled the silk purse that still held the last puffball the witches had given me.

What if I were to use it on Goneril? Bewitch her to love her own husband? Surely Albany would forgive her. He was a noble chap, despite being a noble. And with that, Regan could have that villain Edmund for herself, the conflict between the sisters would be settled, Edmund would be satisfied with his new role as Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Gloucester, and all would be well. Of course there were the issues of France attacking, Lear in the dungeon, and a wise and comely fool whose fate was uncertain…

“Pumpkin,” said I, “perhaps if you and Regan came to an understanding. Perhaps if she were put to sleep until her army had done its duty against France. Perhaps mercy—”

And that was as far as I got, as the bastard Edmund came through the door at that moment.

“What is this?” demanded the bastard.

“Don’t you fucking knock?” said I. “Bloody common bastard!” You’d have thought, now that I, too, was a half-noble bastard, that my disdain for Edmund might have diminished. Strangely, no.

“Guard. Take this worm to the dungeon until I have time to deal with him.”

Four guards, not of the old Tower force, came in and chased me around the solar several times before I was tripped up by the constrained step of my waiter breeches. The lad they’d been made for must have been smaller even than I. They pinned my arms behind me and dragged me out of the room. As I went backward through the door, I called, “Goneril!”

She held up her hand and they stopped there and held me.

“You have been loved,” said I.

“Oh, take him out and beat him,” said Goneril.

“She jests,” said I. “The lady jests.”

TWENTY-THREE DEEP IN THE DUNGEON

“My fool,” said Lear, as the guards dragged me into the dungeon. “Bring him here, and unhand him.” The old man looked stronger, more alert, aware. Barking orders again. But with the command he commenced a coughing fit that ended with a spot of blood on his white beard. Drool held a water skin for the old man while he drank.

“We’ve a beating to deliver, first,” said one of the guards. “Then you’ll have your fool, well striped as well as checkered.”

“Not if you want any of these buns and ale,” said Bubble. She’d come down another stairway and was carrying a basket covered with cloth and steaming the most delectable aroma of freshly baked bread. A flask of ale was slung over her shoulder and a bundle of clothes tucked under her free arm.

“Or we’ll beat the fool and take your buns as well,” said the younger of the two guards, one of Edmund’s men and obviously not aware of the pecking order at the White Tower. Bugger God, St. George, and the white-bearded king if you must, but woe unto you if you crossed the cantankerous cook called Bubble, for there’d be grit and grubs baked into all you’d ever eat until the poison finally took you.

“You’ll not want to press that bargain, mate,” said I.

“The fool’s wearing the kit of one of my servers,” said Bubble, “and the boy’s shivering naked in my kitchen.” Bubble threw a bundle of black clothing through the bars into the cell with Drool and Lear. “Here’s the fool’s motley. Now strip, you rascal, and let me get back to my business.”

The guards were laughing now. “Well, go on, little one, get your kit off,” said the older guard. “We’ve hot buns and ale waiting.”

I undressed in front of the lot of them, old Lear protesting from time to time, like anyone gave a hot bootful of piss what he had to say anymore. When I was radiant naked, the guards unlocked the door and I crept over to the bundle. Yes! My knives where there, secreted in with the rest. With a bit of sleight o’ hand and a distraction from Bubble handing out buns and ale, I was able to secure them inside my jerkin when I dressed.

Two other guards joined the two outside of our cell and shared the bread and ale. Bubble waddled back up the stairs, shooting me a wink as she went.

“The king are melancholy, Pocket,” said Drool. “We should sing him a song and cheer him up.”

“Sod the sodding king,” said I, looking directly into Lear’s hawk eye.

“Watch yourself, boy,” said Lear.

“Or what? You’ll hold my mother down while she’s raped, then throw her in the river? Have my father killed later, then? Oh, wait. Those threats are no longer valid, are they, uncle? You’ve carried them out already.”

“What are you on about, boy?” The old man looked fearsome, as if he’d forgotten he’d been treated like so much chattel and thrown in a cage full of clowns, but instead faced a fresh affront.

“You. Lear. Do you remember? A stone bridge in Yorkshire, some twenty-seven years ago? You called a farm girl up from the riverbank, a pretty little thing, and held her down while you commanded your brother to rape her. Do you remember, Lear, or have you done so much evil that it all blends into a great black swath in your memory?”

His eyes went wide then, I could tell he remembered.

“Canus—”

“Aye, your poxy brother sired me then, Lear. And when no one would believe my mother that her son was the bastard of a prince, she drowned herself in that same river where you threw her that day. All this time I have called you nuncle—who would have thought it true?”

“It is not true,” he said, his voice quivering.

“It is true! And you know it, you decrepit old poke[44] of bones. A warp of villainy and a woof of greed are all that hold you together, thou desiccated dragon.”

The four guards had gathered at the bars and peered in as if they were the ones who were imprisoned.

“Blimey,” said one of the guards.

“Cheeky little tosser,” said another.

“No song, then?” asked Drool.

Lear shook his finger at me then, so angry was he that I could see blood moving in the veins of his forehead. “You shall not speak to me in this way. You are less than nothing. I plucked you from the gutter, and your blood will run in the gutter on my word before sundown.”

“Will it, nuncle? My blood may run but it will not be on your word. On your word your brother may have died. On your word your father may have died. On your word your queens may have died. But not this princely bastard, Lear. Your word is but wind to me.”

“My daughters will—”

“Your daughters are upstairs, fighting over the bones of your kingdom. They are your captors, you ancient nutter.”

“No, they—”

“You sealed this cell when you killed their mother. They’ve both just told me as much.”

“You’ve seen them?” He seemed strangely hopeful, as if I might have forgotten to bring the good news from his traitorous daughters.

“Seen them? I’ve shagged them.” Silly, really, that it should matter, after all his dark deeds, all his slights and cruelties, that a fool should shag his daughters, but it did matter, and it was a way to unleash a little of the fury I felt toward him.

“You have not,” said Lear.

“You have?” asked one of the guards.

I stood then, and strutted a bit for my audience, plus it was a better position for grinding my heel into Lear’s soul. All I could see was the water closing over my mother’s head, all I could hear was her screams as Lear held her. “I shagged them both, repeatedly, and with relish. Until they screamed, and begged and whimpered. I shagged them on the parapets overlooking the Thames, in the towers, under the table in the great hall, and once, I shagged Regan on a platter of pork in front of Muslims. I shagged Goneril in your own bed, in the chapel, and on your throne—which was her idea, by the way. I shagged them while servants watched and in case you were wondering, because they asked, and as any princess should be shagged, for the pure sweet nasty of it. And they—they did it because they hate you.”

Lear had been wailing while I ranted, trying to drown me out. Now he growled, “They do not. They love me all. They have said.”

“You murdered their mother, you decrepit loony! They’ve put you in a cell in your own dungeon. What do you need, a written decree? I tried to shag the hate out of them, nuncle, but some cures lie beyond a jester’s talents.”

“I wanted a son. Their mother would give me none.”

“I’m sure if they had known that they wouldn’t have despised you so deeply and done me so well.”

“My daughters wouldn’t have you. You didn’t have them.”

“Oh, I did, on my black heart’s blood, I did. And when it first started, each of them would shout Father when she came. I wonder why. Oh yes, nuncle, I did indeed. And they wanted you to know—that’s why they accused me before you. Oh yes, I bonked them both.”

“No,” wailed Lear.

“Me, too,” said Drool, with a great juicy grin. “Beggin’ your pardon,” he quickly added.

“But not today?” asked one of the guards. “Right?”

“No, not today, you bloody nitwit. Today I killed them.”

The French marched overland from the southeast and sailed ships up the Thames from the east. The lords of Surrey on the south showed no resistance and since Dover lay in the County of Kent, the forces of the banished earl not only offered no resistance, but joined the French in the assault on London. They’d marched and sailed across England without firing a single bolt or losing a single man. From the White Tower the guards could see the fires of the French drawing a great orange crescent in the night that illuminated the sky to the east and south.

When the captain made the call to arms at the castle, one of Lear’s old knights or squires, under the command of Captain Curan, put a blade to the throat of any of Edmund’s or Regan’s men, demanding they yield or die. The personal guard forces within the castle had all been drugged by the kitchen staff with some mysterious non-lethal poison that mimicked the symptoms of death.

Captain Curan sent a message to the Duke of Albany from the French queen that if he stood down, in fact, stood with her, that he could return to Albany with his forces, his lands, and his title intact. Goneril’s forces from Cornwall, and Edmund’s from Gloucester, camped on the west side of the Tower, found they were flanked on the south and east by the French, and on the north by Albany. Archers and crossbowmen were dispatched to the Tower walls above the Cornwall army and a herald fought his way through the panicked forces to a commander, carrying the message that the forces of Cornwall were to lay down their weapons on the spot or death would rain down upon them such as they could not imagine.

No one was willing to die for the cause of Edmund, bastard of Gloucester, or the dead Duke of Cornwall. They laid down their weapons and marched three leagues to the west as instructed.

In two hours it was all over. Out of nearly thirty thousand men who took the field at the White Tower, barely a dozen were killed—all of those, Edmund’s castle guards who refused to yield.

The four guards lay spread about the dungeon in various awkward positions, looking quite dead.

“Dodgy sodding poison,” said I. “Drool, see if you can reach the one with the keys.”

The Natural stretched through the bars, but the guard was too far away.

“I hope Curan knows we’re down here.”

Lear looked around wild-eyed again, as if his madness had returned. “What is this? Captain Curan is here? My knights?”

“Of course Curan is here. From the sound of the trumpets I’d say he’s taken the castle, as was the plan.”

“All your theater was misdirection, then?” said the king. “You’re not angry?”

“Burning, you old twat, but I was growing weary with keeping the tirade up while the bloody poison took hold. You’re no less a turd in the milk of human kindness than I have said.”

“No,” said the old man, as if my anger actually mattered to him. He began coughing again and caught a handful of blood for his effort. Drool propped him up and wiped his face. “I am king. I will not be judged by you, fool.”

“Not just a fool, nuncle. Your brother’s son. Did you have Kent murder him? The only decent bloke in your service and you turned him into an assassin, eh?”

“No, not Kent. It was another, not even a knight. A cutpurse who had come before the magistrate. It was he who Kent killed. I sent Kent after the assassin.”

“He is vexed by it still, Lear. Did you have a cutpurse kill your father as well?”

“My father was a leper and necromancer. I could not bear his misshapen form ruling Britain.”

“In your place, you mean?”

“Yes, in my place. Yes. But I did not send an assassin. He was in a cell at the temple at Bath. Out of the way, where no one might ever see him. But I could not take the throne until his death. I did not kill him, though. The priests there simply walled him up. Was time that killed my father.”

“You walled him up? Alive?” I was shaking now, I thought I might have forgiven the old man, seeing him suffer, but now I could hear my blood in my ears.

The sound of boots on stone echoed in the dungeon and I looked up to see the bastard Edmund walk into the torchlight.

He kicked one of the unconscious guards and looked at them like he’d just discovered monkey come in his Weetabix.[45] “Well, that’s a spot of bother, isn’t it?” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to kill you myself, then.” He stooped and took a crossbow from one of the guards’ back, fit his foot in the stirrup, and cocked the string.

INTERMISSION (Backstage with the Players)

“Pocket, you rascal, you’ve trapped me in a comedy.”

“Well, for some, it is, yes.”

“When I saw the ghost I thought tragedy was assured.”

“Aye, there’s always a bloody ghost in a tragedy.”

“But the mistaken identity, the vulgarity, the lightness of theme and paucity of ideas, surely it’s a comedy. I’m not dressed for comedy, I’m all in black.”

“As am I, yet here we are.”

“So it is a comedy.”

“A black comedy—”

“I knew it.”

“For me, anyway.”

“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:

“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[46] 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 béarnaise 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.”