Christopher Moore - Fool

I took the kitten from my doublet and held it out to Cordelia. “Kitty’s had quite an adventure. Perhaps you should take her to her mum for a nap.” Cordelia took the kitten from me and ran out of the room.

“We can have you beheaded, fool,” said Regan, shaking off her shock.

“Anytime we want,” said Goneril, with less conviction than her sister.

“Shall I send in a maid to tie back the tapestry, mum?” I asked, with a grand wave to the tapestry I’d loosed from the wall when I leapt.

“Uh, yes, do that,” commanded Regan. “This instant!”

“This instant,” barked Goneril.

“Right away, mum.” And with a grin and a bow, I was gone from the room.

I made my way down the spiral stairs clinging to the wall, lest my heart give out and send me tumbling. Cordelia stood at the bottom of the stairs, cradling the kitten, looking up at me as if I were Jesus, Zeus, and St. George all back from a smashing day of dragon slaying. Her eyes were unnaturally wide and she appeared to have stopped breathing. Bloody awe, I suppose.

“Stop staring like that, lamb, it’s disturbing. People will think you’ve a chicken bone caught in your throat.”

“Thank you,” she said, with a great, shoulder-shaking sob.

I patted her head. “You’re welcome, love. Now run along, Pocket has to fish his hat from the moat and then go to the kitchen and drink until his hands stop shaking or he drowns in his own sick, whichever comes first.”

She backed away to let me pass, never taking her eyes from mine. It had been thus since the night I arrived at the tower—when her mind first crept out from whatever dark place it had been living before my arrival—those wide, crystal-blue eyes looking at me with unblinking wonder. The child could be right creepy.

“Do not make yourself a maid to surprise, nuncle,” said I. I held the reins of my and the king’s horse as they drank from an ice-laced stream some hundred miles north of Gloucester. “Regan is a treasure to be sure, but she may have the same mind as her sister. Although they will deny it, it’s often been the case.”

“I cannot think it so,” said the king. “Regan will receive us with open arms.” There was a racket behind us and the king turned. “Ah, what is this?”

A gaily painted wagon was coming out of the wood toward us. Several of the knights reached for swords or lances. Captain Curan waved for them to stand at ease.

“Mummers, sire,” said the Captain.

“Aye,” said Lear, “I forgot, the Yule is nearly on us. They’ll be going to Gloucester as well, I’ll wager, to play for the Yule feast. Pocket, go tell them that we grant them safe passage and they may follow our train under our protection.”

The wagon creaked to a stop. Happening upon a train of fifty knights and attendants in the countryside would put any performer on guard. The man driving the wagon stood at the reins and waved. He wore a grand purple hat with a white plume in it.

I leapt the narrow stream, and made my way up the road. When the driver saw my motley he smiled. I, too, smiled, in relief—this was not the cruel master from my own days as a mummer.

“Hail, fool, what finds you so far from court and castle?”

“I carry my court with me and my castle lies ahead, sirrah.”

“Carry your court? Then that white-haired old man is—”

“Aye, King Lear himself.”

“Then you are the famous Black Fool.”

“At your bloody service,” said I, with a bow.

“You’re smaller than in the stories,” said the big-hatted weasel.

“Aye, and your hat is an ocean in which your wit wanders like a lost plague ship.”

The mummer laughed. “You give me more than my due, sirrah. We trade not in wit like you, wily fool. We are thespians!”

With that, three young men and a girl stepped out from behind the wagon and bowed gracefully and with far too much flourish than was called for.

“Thesbians,” said they, in chorus.

I tipped my coxcomb. “Well, I enjoy a lick of the lily from time to time myself,” said I, “but it’s hardly something you want to paint on the side of a wagon.”

“Not lesbians,” said the girl, “thesbians. We are actors.”

“Oh,” said I. “That’s different.”

“Aye,” said big hat. “We’ve no need of wit—the play’s the thing, you see. Not a word passes our lips that hasn’t been chewed thrice and spat out by a scribe.”

“Unburdened by originality are we,” said an actor in a red waistcoat.

The girl said, “Although we do bear the cross of fabulously shiny hair—”

“Blank slates, we are,” said another of the actors.

“We are mere appendages of the pen, so to speak,” said big hat.

“Yeah, you’re a bloody appendage, all right,” I said under my breath. “Well, actors then. Smashing. The king has bade me tell you that he grants you safe passage to Gloucester and offers his protection.”

“Oh my,” said big hat. “We are only going as far as Birmingham, but I suppose we could double back from Gloucester if his majesty wishes us to perform.”

“No,” said I. “Please, do pass through and on to Birmingham. The king would never impede the progress of artists.”

“You’re certain?” said big hat. “We’ve been rehearsing a classic from antiquity, Green Eggs and Hamlet, the story of a young prince of Denmark who goes mad, drowns his girlfriend, and in his remorse, forces spoiled breakfast on all whom he meets. It was pieced together from fragments of an ancient Merican manuscript.”

“No,” said I. “I think it will be too esoteric for the king. He is old and nods off during long performances.”

“Shame,” said big hat. “A moving piece. Let me do a selection for you. ‘Green eggs, or not green eggs? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to eat them in a box, with a fox—’”

“Stop!” said I. “Go now, and quickly. War has come to the land and rumor has it that as soon as they’ve finished with the lawyers, they’re going to kill all the actors.”

“Really?”

“Aye,” I nodded most sincerely. “Quick, on to Birmingham, before you are slaughtered.”

“Everyone jump on,” said big hat, and the actors did as directed. “Fare thee well, fool!” Then he snapped the reins and drove off, the wagon’s wheels bouncing in the ruts of the road.

Lear’s train parted and watched as the team pulled the wagon by at a gallop.

“What was that?” asked Lear when I returned.

“Wagonload of knobs,” said I.

“Why do they hurry, so?”

“We commanded it so, nuncle. Half their troupe is ill with fever. We want them nowhere near your men.”

“Oh, good show, then, lad. I thought you might be missing the life and were going to join their troupe.”

I shuddered at the thought. It had been a cold December day like this when I’d first come to the White Tower with my mummer troupe. We were decidedly not thespians, but singers, jugglers, and acrobats, and I a special asset because I could do all three. Our master was a crooked Belgian named Belette, who bought me from Mother Basil for ten shillings and the promise to feed me. He spoke Dutch, French, and a very broken English, so I don’t know how he managed to secure the White Tower for a performance that Christmas, but I was told later that the troupe that was supposed to have performed had suddenly taken ill with stomach cramps and I suspect that Belette poisoned them.

I had been with Belette for months, and except for the beatings and cold nights sleeping under a wagon, I had received little but my daily bread, the occasional cup of wine, and the skills of knife-throwing and sleight of hand as it could be applied to purse cutting.

We were led into the great hall at the tower, which was filled with nobles reveling and feasting on platters of food such as I had never seen. King Lear sat at the center of the main table, flanked by two beautiful girls about my age, who I would later find out were Regan and Goneril. Beside Regan sat Gloucester, his wife, and their son Edgar. The intrepid Kent sat on the other side next to Goneril. Under that table, at Lear’s feet, a little girl was curled up, watching the celebration—wide-eyed, like a frightened animal, clinging to a rag doll. I must confess, I thought the child might be deaf or even simpleminded.