“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.”
45
Weetabix—a British cereal biscuit whose taste and texture are generally thought to be improved by the addition of monkey come.