“Oh no, dear fool, you forget that sometimes a princess becomes a queen.”
“Ha, princesses. What worth are you if your father has to tack a dozen counties to your bum to get those French poofters to look at you?”
“Oh, and what worth a fool? Nay, what worth a fool’s second, for you merely carry the drool cup for the Natural.[10] What’s the ransom for a jester, Pocket? A bucket of warm spittle.”
I grabbed my chest. “Pierced to the core, I am,” I gasped. I staggered to a chair. “I bleed, I suffer, I die on the forked lance of your words.”
She came to me. “You do not.”
“No, stay back. Blood stains will never come out of linen—they are stubborned with your cruelty and guilt…”
“Pocket, stop it now.”
“You have kilt me, lady, most dead.” I gasped, I spasmed, I coughed. “Let it always be said that this humble fool brought joy to all whom he met.”
“No one will say that.”
“Shhhh, child. I grow weak. No breath.” I looked at the imaginary blood on my hands, horrified. I slid off a chair, to the floor. “But I want you to know that despite your vicious nature and your freakishly large feet, I have always—”
And then I died. Bloody fucking brilliantly, I’d say, too, hint of a shudder at the end as death’s chilly hand grabbed my knob.
“What? What? You have always what?”
I said nothing, being dead, and not a little exhausted from all the bleeding and gasping. Truth be told, under the jest I felt like I’d taken a bolt to the heart.
“You’re absolutely no help at all,” said Cordelia.
The raven landed on the wall as I made my way back to the common house in search of Drool. No little vexed was I by the news of Cordelia’s looming nuptials.
“Ghost!” said the raven.
“I didn’t teach you that.”
“Bollocks!” replied the raven.
“That’s the spirit!”
“Ghost!”
“Piss off, bird,” said I.
Then a cold wind bit at my bum and at the top of the stairs, in the turret ahead, I saw a shimmering in the shadows, like silk in sunlight—not quite in the shape of a woman.
And the ghost said:
“Rhymes?” I inquired. “You’re looming about all diaphanous in the middle of the day, puking cryptic rhymes? Low craft and tawdry art, ghosting about at noon—a parson’s fart heralds darker doom, thou babbling wisp.”
“Ghost!” cried the raven, and with that the ghost was gone.
There’s always a bloody ghost.
TWO
NOW, GODS, STAND UP FOR BASTARDS![11]
I found Drool in the laundry resolving a wank, spouting great gouts of git-seed across the laundry walls, floors, and ceiling, giggling, as young Shanker Mary wagged her tits at him over a steaming cauldron of the king’s shirts.
“Put those away, tart, we’ve a show to do.”
“I was just giving ’im a laugh.”
“If you wanted to show charity you could have bonked him honest and there’d be a lot less cleaning to do.”
“That’d be a sin. Besides, I’d as soon straddle a gateman’s halberd as try to get a weapon that girth up me.”
Drool pumped himself dry and sat down on the floor splay-legged, huffing like a great dribbling bellows. I tried to help the lout repack his tackle, but getting him into a codpiece against his firm enthusiasm was like trying to pound a bucket over a bull’s head—a scenario I thought comical enough to perhaps work into the act tonight, should things get slow.
“Nothing stopping you from givin’ the lad a proper cleavage toss, Mary. You had ’em out and all soaped up, a couple of jumps and a tickle and he’d have carried water for you for a fortnight.”
“He already does. And I don’t even want that thing near me. A Natural, he is. There’s devils in his jizm.”
“Devils? Devils? There’s no devils in there, lass. Chock full o’ nitwits, to be sure, but no devils.” A Natural was either blessed or cursed, never just an accident of nature, as the name implied.
Sometime during the week, Shanker Mary had gone Christian on us, despite being a most egregious slut. You never knew anymore who you were dealing with. Half the kingdom was Christian, the other half paid tribute to the old gods of Nature, who were always showing promise on the moonrise. The Christian God with his “day of rest” was strong with the peasants come Sunday, but by Thursday when there was drinking and fucking to be done, Nature had her kit off, legs aloft, and a flagon of ale in each hand, taking converts for the Druids as fast as they could come. They were a solid majority when the holiday was about, dancing, drinking, shagging the virgins, and sharing the harvest, but on the human sacrifice or burn-down-the-King’s-forest days, there was none but crickets cavorting ’round the Stonehenge—the singers having forsaken Mother Earth for Father Church.
“Pretty,” said Drool, trying to wrestle back control of his tool. Mary had commenced to stirring the laundry but had neglected to pull her dress up. Had the git’s attention hostage, she did.
“Right. She’s a bloody vision of loveliness, lad, but you’ve buffed yourself to a gleam already and we’ve work to do. The castle’s awash in intrigue, subterfuge, and villainy—they’ll be wanting-comic relief between the flattery and the murders.”
“Intrigue and villainy?” Drool displayed a gape-toothed grin. Imagine soldiers dumping hogsheads of spittle through the crenellations atop the castle wall—thus is Drool’s grin, as earnest in expression as it is damp in execution—a slurry of good cheer. He loves intrigue and villainy, as they play to his most special ability.
“Will there be hiding?”
“There will most certainly be hiding,” said I, as I shouldered an escaped testicle into his cod.
“And listening?”
“Listening of cavernous proportions—we shall hang on every word as God on Pope’s prayers.”
“And fuckery? Will there be fuckery, Pocket?”
“Heinous fuckery most foul, lad. Heinous fuckery most foul.”
“Aye, that’s the dog’s bollocks,[12] then!” said Drool, slapping his thigh. “Did you hear, Mary? Heinous fuckery afoot. Ain’t that the dog’s bollocks?”
“Oh yeah, the dog’s bloody B. it is, love. If the saints are smilin’ on us, maybe one of them nobles will hang your wee mate there like they been threatening.”
“Two fools well-hung we’d have then, wouldn’t we?” said I, elbowing my apprentice in the ribs.
“Aye, two fools well-hung, we’d have, wouldn’t we?” said Drool, in my voice, tone to note coming out his great maw as like he’d caught an echo on his tongue and coughed it right back. That’s the oaf’s gift—not only can he mimic perfectly, he can recall whole conversations, hours long, recite them back to you in the original speakers’ voices, and not comprehend a single word. He’d first been gifted to Lear by a Spanish duke because of his torrential dribbling and the ability to break wind that could darken a room, but when I discovered the Natural’s keener talent, I took him as my apprentice to teach him the manly art of mirth.
Drool laughed. “Two fools well-hung—”
“Stop that!” I said. “It’s unsettling.” Unsettling indeed, to hear your own voice sluicing pitch-perfect out of that mountain of lout, stripped of wit and washed of irony. Two years I’d had Drool under my wing and I was still not inured to it. He meant no harm, it was simply his nature.
The anchoress at the abbey had taught me of nature, making me recite Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated man, and a tribute to his culture, that he look for precision in a thing only as its nature allows.” I would not have Drool reading Cicero or crafting clever riddles, but under my tutelage he had become more than fair at tumbling and juggling, could belch a song, and was, at court, at least as entertaining as a trained bear, with slightly less proclivity for eating the guests. With guidance, he would make a proper fool.
10
A Natural—the “Natural” jester was one who had some physical deformity or anomaly, a hunchback, a dwarf, a giant, Down’s syndrome, etc. Naturals were thought to have been “touched” by God.
12
The dog’s bollocks! — excellent! The bee’s knees! The cat’s pj’s. Literally, the dog’s balls, which doesn’t seem to be that great a thing, yet, there you are.