Christopher Moore - Fool

“I thought it would have a little hat, with bells.”

“Ah, yes. Well, given a private place to change, I’m sure that can be arranged. Under your skirt, perhaps. Roll to the side, love, we’ll be less obvious if we keep the cuddle on a lateral plane.” I popped her bosoms out of her frock, then, freed the roly-poly pink-nosed puppies to the firelight and the friendly ministries of this master juggler, and thought to burble my cheeks softly between them, when the ghost appeared.

The spirit was more substantial now, features describing what must have been a most comely creature before she was shuffled off to the undiscovered country, no doubt by a close relative weary of her irritating nature. She floated above the sleeping form of the cook Bubble, rising and falling on the draft of her snores.

“Sorry to haunt you while you’re rogering the help,” said the ghost.

“The rogering has not commenced, wisp, I have barely bridled the horse for a moist and bawdy ride. Now, go away.”

“Right, then. Sorry to have interrupted your attempted rogering.”

“Are you calling me a horse?” asked Possibly Fiona.

“Not at all, love, you pet the little jester and I’ll attend to the haunting.”

“There’s always a bloody ghost about, ain’t there?” commented Possibly, a squeeze on my knob for emphasis.

“When you live in a keep where blood runs blue and murder is the favored sport, yes,” said the ghost.

“Oh do fuck off,” said I. “Thou visible stench, thou steaming aggravation, thou vaporous nag! I’m wretched, sad, and lonely, and trying to raise a modicum of comfort and forgetting here in the arms of, uh—”

“Kate,” said Possibly Fiona.

“Really?”

She nodded.

“Not Fiona?”

“Kate since the day me da tied me belly cord to a tree.”

“Well, bugger. Sorry. Pocket here, called the Black Fool, charmed I’m sure. Shall I kiss your hand?”

“Double-jointed, then, are ye?” said Kate, a tickle to my tackle making her point.

“Bloody hell, would you two shut up?” said the ghost. “I’m haunting over here.”

“Go on,” said we.

The ghost boosted her bosom and cleared her throat, expecto-rating a tiny ghost frog that evaporated in the firelight with a hiss, then said:

“What?” said the former Fiona.

“What?” said I.

“Prophecy of doom, innit?” said the ghost. “Spot o’ the old riddly foreshadowing from beyond, don’t you know?”

“Can’t kill her again, can we?” asked faux Fiona.

“Gentle spook,” said I. “If it is a warning you bring, state it true. If action you require, ask outright. If music you must make, play on. But by the wine-stained balls of Bacchus, speak your bloody business, quick and clear, then be gone, before time’s iron tongue licks away my mercy bonk with second thoughts.”

“You are the haunted one, fool. It’s your business I do. What do you want?”

“I want you to go away, I want Fiona to come along quietly, and I want Cordelia, Drool, and Taster back—now, can you tell me how to make those things come about? Can you, you yammering flurry of fumes?”

“It can be done,” said the ghost. “Your answer lies with the witches of Great Birnam Wood.”

“Or you could just fucking tell me,” said I.

“Nooooo,” sang the ghost, all ghosty and ethereal, and with that she faded away.

“Leaves a chill when she goes, don’t she?” said formerly Fiona. “Appears to have softened your resolve, if you don’t mind my sayin’.”

“The ghost saved my life last evening,” said I, trying to will life back into the wan and withered.

“Kilt the little one, though, didn’t she? Back to your bed, fool, the king’s leaving on the morrow and there’s a wicked lot of work to do in the morning to prepare for his trip.”

Sadly, I tucked away my tackle and sulked back to the portislodge to pack my kit for my final journey from the White Tower.

Well, I won’t miss the bloody trumpets at dawn, I can tell you that. And sod the bloody drawbridge chains rattling in my apartment before the cock crows. We might have been going to war for all the racket and goings-on at first light. Through the arrow loop I could see Cordelia riding out with France and Burgundy, standing in the stirrups like a man, like she was off to the hunt, rather than leaving her ancestral home forever. To her credit, she did not look back, and I did not wave to her, even after she crossed the river and rode out of sight.

Drool was not so fickle, and as he was led out of the castle by a rope round his neck, he kept stopping and looking back, until the man at arms to whom he was tethered would yank him back into step. I could not bear to let him see me, so I did not go out onto the wall. Instead I slunk back to my pallet and lay there, my forehead pressed to the cold stone wall, listening as the rest of the royals and their retinues clomped across the drawbridge below. Sod Lear, sod the royals, sod the bloody White Tower. All I loved was gone or soon to be left behind, and all that I owned was packed in a knapsack and hung on my hook, Jones sticking out the top, mocking me with his puppety grin.

Then, a knock at my door. Like dragging myself from the grave, was making my way to open it. There she stood, fresh and lovely, holding a basket.

“Fiona!”

“Kate,” said Fiona.

“Aye, your stubbornness suits you, even in daylight.”

“Bubble sends her sympathies over Taster and Drool, and sends you these sweet cakes and milk for your comfort, but says to be sure and remind you to not leave the castle without saying your farewells, and further that you are a cur, a rascal, and a scurvy patch.”

“Ah, sweet Bubble, when kindness shagged an ogre, thus was she sired.”

“And I’m here to offer comfort myself, finishing what was started in the great hall last night. Squeak says to ask you about a small chap in a canoe.”

“My my, Fi, bit of a tart, aren’t we?”

“Druish, love. My people burn a virgin every autumn—one can’t be too careful.”

“Well, all right, but I’m forlorn and I shan’t enjoy it.”

“In that we shall suffer together. Onward! Off with your kit, fool!”

What is it about me that brings out the tyrant in women, I wonder?

“The next morning” stretched into a week of preparation for departure from the White Tower. When Lear pronounced that he would be accompanied by one hundred knights it was not as if one hundred men could mount up and ride out of the gates at sunrise. Each knight—the unlanded second or third son of a noble—would have at least one squire, a page, usually a man to tend his horses, and sometimes a man at arms. Each had at least one warhorse, a massive armored beast, and two, sometimes three animals to carry his armor, weapons, and supplies. And Albany was three weeks’ journey to the north, near Aberdeen; with the slow pace set by the old king and so many on foot we’d need a crashing assload of supplies. By the end of the week our column numbered over five hundred men and boys, and nearly as many horses. We would have needed a wagon full of coin to pay everyone if Lear had not conscripted Albany and Cornwall to maintain his knights.

I watched Lear pass under the portislodge at the head of the column before going downstairs and climbing on my own mount, a short, swayback mare named Rose.

“Mud shall not sully my Black Fool’s motley, lest it dull his wit as well,” said Lear, the day he presented the horse. I did not own the horse, of course. She belonged to the king—or now his daughters, I suppose.