Christopher Moore - Fool

“You’re but a pathetic dimwit,” said I. “You can’t be blamed.”

“My mum only had eight teats, but after that there was only seven of us, so I got two. It were lovely.”

He didn’t really seem that bothered by the whole experience. “Tell me, Drool, have you always known you were raised by wolves?”

“Aye. I want to go outside and have a wee on a tree, now, Pocket. You want to come?”

“No, you go, love, I’m going to stay here and shout at the old ladies.” Once the Natural was gone I turned on them again. “I’m finished doing your bidding. Whatever politics you want to engineer I’ll have no more part of it.”

The crones laughed at me in chorus, then coughed until finally Rosemary, the greenish witch, calmed her breath with a sip of wine. “No, lad, nothing so sordid as politics, we’re about vengeance pure and simple. We don’t give a weasel’s twat about politics and succession.”

“But you’re evil incarnate and in triplicate, aren’t you?” said I, respectfully. One must give due.

“Aye, evil is our trade, but not so deep a darkness as politics. Better business to dash a suckling babe’s brains upon the bricks than to boil in that tawdry cauldron.”

“Aye,” said Sage. “Breakfast, anyone?” She was stirring something in the cauldron, I assumed it was the leftover hallucination wine from the night before.

“Well, revenge, then. I’ve no taste left for it.”

“Not even for revenge on the bastard Edmund?”

Edmund? What a storm of suffering that blackguard had loosed upon the world, but still, if I never had to see him again, couldn’t I forget about his damage?

“Edmund will find his just reward,” said I, not believing it for a second.

“And Lear?”

I was angry with the old man, but what revenge would I have on him now? He had lost all. And I had always known him to be cruel, but so long as his cruelty didn’t extend to me, I was blind to it. “No, not even Lear.”

“Fine, then, where will you go?” asked Sage. She pulled a ladle of steaming liquid from the pot and blew on it.

“I’ll take the Natural into Wales. We can call at castles until someone takes us in.”

“Then you’ll miss the Queen of France at Dover?”

“Cordelia? I thought bloody fucking froggy King Jeff was at Dover. Cordelia is with him?”

The hags cackled. “Oh no, King Jeff is in Burgundy. Queen Cordelia commands the French forces at Dover.”

“Oh bugger,” said I.

“You’ll want to take them poisons we fixed for you,” said Rosemary. “Keep them on you at all times. A need for them will present itself.”

“Pocket,” said Cordelia, “have you ever heard of this warrior queen named Boudicca?” Cordelia was about fifteen at the time, and she had sent for me because she wished to discuss politics. She lay on her bed with a large leather volume open before her.

“No, lamb, who was she queen of?”

“Why, of the pagan Britons. Of us.” Lear had recently shifted back to the pagan beliefs, thus opening a whole new world of learning for Cordelia.

“Ah, that explains it. Educated in a nunnery, love, I’ve a very shallow knowledge of pagan ways, although I have to say, their festivals are smashing. Rampant drunken shagging while wearing flower wreaths seems far superior to midnight mass and self-flagellation, but then, I’m a fool.”

“Well, it says here that she kicked nine colors of shit out of the Roman legions when they invaded.”

“Really, that’s what it says, nine colors of shit?”

“I’m paraphrasing. Why do you think we’ve no warrior queens anymore?”

“Well, lamb, war requires swift and resolute action.”

“And you’re saying that a woman can’t move with swift resolve?”

“I’m saying no such thing. She may move with swiftness and resolve, but only after choosing the correct outfit and shoes, and therein lies the undoing of any potential warrior queen, I suspect.”

“Oh bollocks!”

“I’ll wager your Boudicca lived before they invented clothing. Easy days then for a warrior queen. Just hitch up your tits and start taking heads, it was. Now, well, I daresay erosion would take down a country before most women could pick out their invading kit.”

“Most women. But not me?”

“Of course not you, lamb. Them. I meant only weak-willed tarts like your sisters.”

“Pocket, I think I shall be a warrior queen.”

“Of what, the royal petting zoo at Boffingshire?”

“You’ll see, Pocket. The whole of the sky will darken with the smoke from my army’s fires, the ground will tremble under their horses’ hooves, and kings will kneel outside their city walls, crowns in hand, begging to surrender rather than feel the wrath of Queen Cordelia fall upon their people. But I shall be merciful.”

“Goes without saying, doesn’t it?”

“And you, fool, will no longer be able to behave like the right shit that you are.”

“Fear and trembling, love, that’s all you’ll get from me. Fear and bloody trembling.”

“As long as we understand each other.”

“So, it sounds as if you’re thinking of conquering more than just the petting zoo?”

“Europe,” said the princess, as if stating the unadorned truth.

“Europe?” said I.

“To start,” said Cordelia.

“Well, then you had better get moving, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose,” said Cordelia, with a great silly grin. “Dear Pocket, would you help me pick an outfit?”

“She’s already taken Normandy, Brittany, and the Aquitaine,” said Edgar, “and Belgium soils itself at the mention of her name.”

“Cordelia can be a bundle of rumpus when she sets her mind to something,” said I. I smiled at the thought of her barking orders to the troops, all fury and fire from her lips, but those crystal-blue eyes hinting laughter at every turn. I missed her.

“Oh, I did betray her love and flay her sweet heart with stubborn pride,” said Lear, looking madder and weaker than when I’d seen him last.

“Where is Kent?” I asked Edgar, ignoring the old king. Drool and I had found them above a cliff at Dover. They all sat with their backs to a great chalk boulder: Gloucester, Edgar, and Lear. Gloucester snored softly, his head on Edgar’s shoulder. We could see smoke from the French camp not two miles away in the distance.

“He’s gone to Cordelia, to ask her to accept her father into her camp.”

“Why didn’t you go yourself?” I asked Lear.

“I am afraid,” said the old man. He hid his head under his arm, like a bird trying to escape the daylight beneath its wing.

It was wrong. I wanted him strong, I wanted him stubborn, I wanted him full of arrogance and cruelty. I wanted to see those parts of him I knew were thriving when he’d thrown my mother on the stones so many years ago. I wanted to scream at him, humiliate him, hurt him in eleven places and watch him crawl in his own shit, dragging his bloody pride and guts behind him in the dirt. There was no revenge to be satisfied on this trembling shell of Lear.

I wanted no part of it.

“I’m going to go nap behind those rocks,” said I. “Drool, keep watch. Wake me when Kent returns.”

“Aye, Pocket.” The Natural went to the far side of Edgar’s boulder, sat, and stared out over the sea. If we were attacked by a ship, he’d be Johnny-on-the-spot.

I lay down and slept perhaps an hour before there was shouting behind me and I looked over my boulders to see Edgar holding his father’s head, steadying him as the old man stood on a rock, perhaps a foot above the ground.