“No pressure, pumpkin,” I whispered.
“I have this, fool,” she snapped, and with a great smile and no little grace, she made her way around the outside of the round table and to the opening at the center, bowing to each of the guests as she went. She is shorter and rather more round than her sisters, more generously padded in bosom and bustle, her eyes a grey sky short of emerald, her hair a yellow sun short of ginger. Her smile falls on the eye like water on the tongue of a thirst-mad sailor.
I slid into her chair. “A handsome creature is she,” I said to the Duke of Albany. “That one breast, the way it juts a bit to the side—when she’s naked, I mean—does that bother you at all? Make you wonder what it’s looking at over there—bit like a wall-eyed man you think is always talkin’ to someone else?”
“Hush, fool,” Albany said. He is nearly a score years older than Goneril, goatish and dull, methinks, but somewhat less of a scoundrel than the average noble. I do not loathe him.
“Mind you, it’s obviously part of the pair, not some breast-errant off on a quest of its own. I like a bit of asymmetry in a woman—makes me suspicious when Nature’s too evenhanded—fearful symmetry and all. But it’s not like you’re shaggin’ a hunchback or anything—I mean, once she’s on ’er back it’s hard to get either one of them to look you in the eye, innit?”
“Shut up!” barked Goneril, having turned her back on her father—which one is never supposed to do—in order to scold me. Bloody clumsy etiquette that.
“Sorry. Go on,” said I, waving her on with Jones, who jingled gaily.
“Sir,” she addressed the king, “I love you more than words can say. I love you more than eyesight, space, and liberty. I love you beyond anything that can be valued, rich or rare. No less than life itself, with grace, health, beauty, and honor. As much as any child or father has loved, so I love thee. A love that takes my breath away and makes me scarcely able to speak. I love you above all things, even pie.”
“Oh bollocks!”
Who had said it? I was relatively sure it was not my voice, as it hadn’t come from the normal hole in my face, and Jones had been silent as well. Cordelia? I scooted out of Goneril’s chair and scampered to the junior princess’s side, staying low to avoid attention or flying cutlery.
“Bloody buggering bollocks!” said Cordelia.
Lear, refreshed from his shower of flowered bullshit, said, “What?”
I stood then. “Well, sirrah, lovable as thou art, the lady’s profession strains credibility. It’s no secret how much the bitch loves pie.” I crouched again quickly.
“Silence, fool! Chamberlain, bring me the map.”
The distraction had worked, the king’s ire had turned from Cordelia to me. She took the opportunity to poke me in the ear-lobe with her fork.
“Ouch!” Whispered, yet emphatic. “Tart.”
“Knave.”
“Harpy.”
“Rodent.”
“Whore.”
“Whoremonger.”
“Do you have to pay to be a whoremonger? Because strictly speaking—”
“Shhh,” she said, grinning. She poked me in the ear again, then nodded toward the king, that we should pay attention.
The king pointed to the map with a bejeweled dagger. “All these lands, from here to here, with rich farmlands, bounteous rivers, and deep forests, I do grant to Goneril and her husband, Albany, and to their offspring in perpetuity. Now, we must hear from our second daughter. Dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall. Speak.”
Regan made her way to the center floor, looking down at her older sister, Goneril, as she passed, as if to say, “I’ll show you.”
She raised her arms out to her sides, trailing the long, velvet sleeves down to the floor so she described the shape of a grand and bosomy crucifix. She looked to the ceiling as if drawing inspiration from the heavenly orbs themselves, then pronounced: “What she said.”
“Huh?” said the king, and verily “huh” was echoed around the room.
Regan seemed to realize that she should probably go on. “My sister has expressed my thoughts exactly—as if she may have looked at my notes even before we here entered. Except I love thee more. In the list of all senses, all fall short, and I am touched by nothing but your love.” She bowed then, looking up a bit to see if anyone was buying it.
“I’m going to be sick,” said Cordelia, probably louder than was really necessary, as were the coughing and gagging noises she perpetrated thereafter.
Deflecting, I stood and said, “She’s been touched by a bit more than his majesty’s love, I dare say. I mean, in this very room I can name—”
The king shot me his best Must I chop off your head? look and I fell silent. He nodded and looked to the map. “To Regan and Cornwall I leave this third of the kingdom, no smaller or less valuable than that bestowed upon Goneril. Now, Cordelia, our joy, who is courted by so many eligible young nobles, what can you say to receive a third more opulent than your sisters?”
Cordelia stood at her chair, not making her way to the middle of the room as her sisters had. “Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?” asked the king.
“Nothing.”
“You’ll get nothing for nothing,” said Lear. “Speak again.”
“Well, you can’t blame her, really, can you?” I interjected. “I mean you’ve given all the good bits to Goneril and Regan, haven’t you? What’s left, a bit of Scotland rocky enough to starve a sheep and this poxy river near Newcastle?” I’d taken the liberty of going over to the map. “I’d say nothing is a fair start for bargaining. You should counter with Spain, majesty.”
Now Cordelia moved to the center of the room. “I’m sorry, Father, that I can’t heave my heart into my mouth like my sisters. I love you according to my bond as a daughter, no more, no less.”
“Be careful what you say, Cordelia,” said Lear. “Your dowry is draining away with every word.”
“My lord, you have sired me, raised me, and loved me. I return those duties back, as is proper: I obey you, love you, and most honor you. But how can my sisters say they love you above all? They have husbands. Don’t they have to reserve some love for them?”
“Yes, but have you met their husbands?” said I. There was growling from various points around the table. How can you call yourself a noble if you’ll just start growling for no reason. Uncivilized, it is.
“When I shall marry, you can rest assured that my husband will get at least half my care and half my love as well. To say anything else I’d be lying to you.”
This was Edmund’s doing, I was sure of it. Somehow he’d known that Cordelia would answer this way and had convinced the king to ask the question. And she did not know that her father had been wrestling with his own mortality and worth for the week. I hopped over to the princess and whispered, “Lying now would be the better part of valor. Repent later. Throw the old gent a bone, lass.”
“So this is how you feel?” asked the king.
“Aye, my lord. It is.”
“So young and so untender,” said Lear.
“So young, my lord, and true,” said Cordelia.
“So young, and so bloody stupid,” said the puppet Jones.
“Fine, child. So be it. Let your truth be your dowry, then. For by the radiance of the sun, the dark of the night, all the saints, the Holy Mother, the orbs of the sky, and Nature herself, I disown you.”
In his spirituality Lear is—well—flexible. When pressed for a curse or a blessing he will sometimes invoke gods from a half-dozen pantheons, just to be sure to catch the ear of whichever might be on watch that day.
“No property, land, or title shall be yours. Cannibals of darkest Merica, who would sell their own young in the meat market, shall be closer to me than you, my used-to-be daughter.”
I wondered about that. No one had ever seen a Merican, being as they are mythical. Legend goes that in the name of profit they did sell the limbs of their own children as food—that was before they burned the world, of course. Since I didn’t expect a state visit from the merchant cannibals of the apocalypse anytime soon, it appeared my liege was either herniating the metaphor or speaking the tongue of a frothing nutter.