“Not yet!” said she, trying to roll me over and get back to smacking my bum.
She honked my codpiece.
“You honked my codpiece.”
“Aye, give it up, fool.” She tried to get a hand under my codpiece.
I reached into the silk purse and retrieved one of the puffballs as I tried to keep my manhood out of her grasp. I heard a door open.
“Surrender the willie!” said the duchess.
She had it then, there was nothing I could do. I squoze the puffball under her nose.
“It’s from Edmund of Gloucester,” said I.
“Milady?” said Oswald, who was standing in the doorway.
“Let us down, pumpkin,” said I. “The catch-fart needs his task set.”
It all smacked of history.
The game had progressed further that first day, when Oswald first interrupted us, all those years ago, but it had begun, as always, with one of Goneril’s query sessions.
“Pocket,” said she, “since you were raised in an abbey, I should think you know much about punishment.”
“Aye, lady. I had my share, and it didn’t end there. I still endure an inquisition almost daily in these very chambers.”
“Gentle Pocket, surely you jest?”
“That is part of the job, mum.”
She stood then, and dismissed the ladies from her solar with a minor tantrum. When they were gone she said, “I’ve never been punished.”
“Aye, lady, well, you’re Christian, there’s always time.” I’d left the Church with a curse after they walled up my anchoress and I was leaning heavily pagan at the time.
“No one is allowed to strike me, so there’s always been a girl to take my punishment for me. My spankings.”
“Aye, mum, as it should be. Spare the royal withers and all.”
“And I feel funny about it. Just last week I mentioned during mass that Regan might be a bit of a cunt, and my whipping girl was soundly spanked for it.”
“Might as well have whipped her for your calling the sky blue, eh? A beating for talking truth, of course you felt funny about it.”
“Not that kind of funny, Pocket. Funny like when you taught me about the little man in the boat.”
It had been a verbal lesson only, shortly after she’d insisted I teach her about manly bits. But it had kept her amused, on and off, for a fortnight. “Oh, of course,” said I. “Funny.”
“I need to be spanked,” said Goneril.
“A constant, I’d agree, lady, but again we’re declaring the sky blue, aren’t we?”
“I want to be spanked.”
“Oh,” said I, eloquent and quick-witted rascal that I am. “That’s different.”
“By you,” said the Princess.
“Fuckstockings,” I thus declared my doom.
Well, by the time Oswald came into the room that first time, both the princess and I were as red-bottomed as Barbary monkeys, quite naked (except for my hat, which Goneril had donned) and administering rhythmically to each other’s front sides. Oswald was somewhat less than discreet about it all.
“Alarm! Alarm! My lady is ravaged by a fool! Alarm!” said Oswald, fleeing from the room, to raise the alarm through the castle.
I caught up to Oswald as he entered the great hall, where Lear was sitting on his throne, Regan sitting at his feet to one side, doing needlepoint, Cordelia at the other, playing with a doll.
“The fool has violated the princess!” Oswald announced.
“Pocket!” said Cordelia, dropping her doll and running to my side, sporting a great, goofy grin. She was perhaps eight then.
Oswald stepped in front of me. “I found the fool rutting the princess Goneril like a rapacious goat, sire.”
“’Tis not true, nuncle,” said I. “I was called to the lady’s solar this morning only to jest her out of a morning funk, which can be smelt upon her breath if you have doubts.”
At that point Goneril came running into the room, trying to arrange her skirts as she moved. She stopped beside me and curtsied before her father. She was breathless, barefoot, and one breast peeked Cyclopean out the bodice of her gown. I snatched my coxcomb off her head with a jingle and concealed it behind my back.
“There, fresh as a flower,” said I.
“Hello, sister,” said Cordelia.
“Morning, lamb,” said Goneril, blindfolding the pink-eyed Cyclops with a quick tuck.
Lear scratched his beard and glared at his eldest daughter.
“What ho, daughter,” said he. “Hast thou shagged a fool?”
“Methinks any wench who shags a man hath shagged a fool, Father.”
“That was a distinct no,” said I.
“What is shagged?” asked Cordelia.
“I saw it,” said Oswald.
“Shag a man and shag a fool, one is the same as another,” said Goneril. “But this morning I have your Fool shagged, righteous and rowdy. I bonked him until he cried out for gods and horses to pull me off.”
What was this? Was she hoping for more punishment?
“That is so,” said Oswald. “I heard the call.”
“Shagged, shagged, shagged!” said Goneril. “Oh, what is this I feel? Tiny bastard fools stirring in my womb. I can hear their tiny bells.”
“You lying tart,” said I. “A fool is no more born with bells than a princess with fangs, both must be earned.”
Lear said, “If that were true, Pocket, I’d have a halberd run up your bum.”
“You can’t kill Pocket,” said Cordelia. “I’ll need him to cheer me when I’m visited by the red curse, and a horrible melancholy comes over me,” said Cordelia.
“What are you on about, child?” said I.
“All women get it,” said Cordelia. “They must be punished for Eve’s treachery in the garden of evil. Nurse says it makes you ever so miserable.”
I patted the child’s head. “For fuck’s sake, sire, you’ve got to get the girls some teachers who aren’t nuns.”
“I should be punished!” said Goneril.
“I’ve had my curse for simply months,” said Regan, not even bothering to look up from her needlepoint. “I find that if I go to the dungeon and have some prisoners tortured I feel better.”
“No, I want my Pocket,” said Cordelia, starting to whine now.
“You can’t have him,” said Goneril. “He’s to be punished, too. After what he’s done.”
Oswald bowed for no particular reason. “May I suggest his head on a pike on the London Bridge, sire, to discourage any more debauchery?”
“Silence!” said Lear, standing. He came down the steps, walked past Oswald, who fell to his knees, and stood before me. He put his hand on Cordelia’s head.
The old king locked his hawk’s gaze upon me. “She didn’t speak for three years before you came,” he said.
“Aye, sire,” said I, looking down.
He turned to Goneril. “Go to your quarters. Have your nurse tend to your illusions. She will see that there is no issue from it.”
“But, Father, the fool and I—”
“Nonsense, you’re a maid,” said Lear. “We have agreed to deliver you thus to the Duke of Albany and so it is true.”
“Sire, the lady has been violated,” said Oswald, desperate now.
“Guards! Take Oswald to the bailey and flog him twenty lashes for lying.”
“But, sire!” Oswald squirmed as two guards seized his arms.
“Twenty lashes to show my mercy! Another word of this, ever, and your head will decorate London Bridge.”
We watched, stunned, as the guards dragged Oswald away, the unctuous footman weeping and red-faced from trying to hold his tongue.
“May I go watch?” Goneril asked.
“Go,” Lear said. “Then to your nurse.”
Regan was on her feet now and had skipped to her father’s side. She looked at him hopefully, up on her toes, clapping her hands lightly in anticipation.
“Yes, go,” said the king. “But you may only watch.”
Regan streamed out of the hall after her older sister, her raven hair flying behind her like a dark comet.
“You’re my fool, Pocket,” said Cordelia, taking my hand. “Come, help me. I’m teaching Dolly to speak French.” The little princess led me away. The old king watched us go without another word, one white eyebrow raised and his hawk eye burning under it like a distant frozen star.