Christopher Moore - Fool

“Draw your weapon, fool!” said Edmund.

“Sadly, sir, I have none,” said I. Jones shook his head in unarmed woe.

We both were lying, of course. Across the small of my back I wore three wickedly-pointed throwing daggers—fashioned for me by the armorer to be used in our entertainments—and while I had never used them as weapons, truly flung they had spitted apples off the head of Drool, nipped plums from his outstretched fingers, and yea, even speared grapes out of the air. I had little doubt that one might find its way into Edmund’s eye and thus vent his bitter mind like a lanced boil. If he needed to know he would know soon enough. If not, well, why trouble him?

“If not a fight, then a murder it is,” said Edmund. He lunged, his blade aimed for my heart. I sidestepped and knocked his blade away with Jones, who lost a bell from his coxcomb for his trouble.

I hopped up onto the lip of the cauldron.

“But, sir, why spend your wrath on a poor, helpless fool?”

Edmund slashed. I leapt. He missed. I landed on the far side of the cauldron. Drool moaned. Mary hid in the corner.

“You shouted bastard at me from the battlements.”

“Aye, they announced you as bastard. You, sir, are a bastard. And a bastard most unjust to make me die with the foul taste of truth still on my tongue. Allow me a lie before you strike: You have such kind eyes.”

“But you spoke badly of my mother as well.” He put himself between me and the door. Bloody bad planning, building a laundry with only one exit.

“I may have implied that she was a poxy whore, but from what your father says, that, too, is not breaking the bonds of verity.”

“What?” asked Edmund.

“What?” asked Drool, a perfect parrot of Edmund.

“What?” inquired Mary.

“It’s true, you git! Your mother was a poxy whore!”

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, poxiness ain’t so bad,” said Shanker Mary, shining a ray of optimism on these dark ages. “Unfairly maligned, the poxy are. Methinks a spot o’ the pox implies experience. Worldliness, if you will.”

“The tart makes an excellent point, Edmund. But for the slow descent into madness and death with your bits dropping off along the way, the pox is a veritable blessing,” said I, as I skipped just out of blade’s reach from the bastard, who stalked me around the great cauldron. “Take Mary here. In fact, there’s an idea. Take Mary. Why spend your energy after a long journey murdering a speck of a fool when you can enjoy the pleasures of a lusty wench who is not only ready, but willing, and smells pleasantly of soap?”

“Aye,” said Drool, expelling froth as he spoke. “She’s a bloody vision of loveliness.”

Edmund let his sword point drop and looked at Drool for the first time. “Are you eating soap?”

“Just a wee sliver,” bubbled Drool. “They weren’t saving it.”

Edmund turned back to me. “Why are you boiling this fellow?”

“Couldn’t be helped,” said I. (How dramatic, the bastard, the water was barely steaming. What appeared to be boiling was Drool venting vapors.)

“Common fuckin’ courtesy, ain’t it?” said Mary.

“Speak straight, both of you.” The bastard wheeled on one heel and before I knew what was happening, he had the point of his blade at Mary’s throat. “I’ve been nine years in the Holy Land killing Saracens, killing one or two more makes no difference to me.”

“Wait!” I leapt back to the lip of the cauldron, reaching to the small of my back with my free hand. “Wait. He’s being punished. By the king. For attacking me.”

“Punished? For attacking a fool?”

“‘Boil him alive,’ the king said.” I jumped down to Edmund’s side of the cauldron—moved toward the doorway. I’d needed a clear line of sight, and should he move, I didn’t want the blade to hit Mary.

“Everyone knows how fond the king is of his dark little fool,” said Mary, nodding enthusiastically.

“Bollocks!” shouted Edmund, as he pulled the sword back to slash.

Mary screamed. I flipped a dagger in the air, caught it by the blade, and was readying to send it to Edmund’s heart when something hit him in the back of the head with a thud and he went bum over eyebrows into the wall, his blade clanging across the floor to my feet.

Drool had stood up in the cauldron and was holding Mary’s laundry paddle—a bit of dark hair and bloody scalp clung to the bleached wood.

“Did you see that, Pocket? Smashing fall he did.” All of it a pantomime to Drool.

Edmund was not moving. As far as I could see, he was not breathing either.

“God’s bloody balls, Drool, you’ve kilt the earl’s son. We’ll all be hung, now.”

“But he were going to hurt Mary.”

Mary sat on the floor by Edmund’s prostrate body and began stroking his hair on a spot where there was no blood. “I was going to shag him docile, too.”

“He would have killed you without a thought.”

“Ah, blokes have their tempers, don’t they? Look at him, he’s a fair form of a fellow, innit he? And rich, too.” She took something from his pocket. “What’s this?”

“Well done, lass, not so much as a comma between grief and robbery, and much the better when he’s still so fresh his fleas have not sailed to livelier ports. The Church wears well on you.”

“No, I’m not robbing. Look, it’s a letter.”

“Give it here.”

“You can read?” The tart’s eyes widened as if I had confessed the ability to turn lead into gold.

“I was raised in a nunnery, wench. I am a walking library of learning—bound in comely leather and suitable for stroking—at your service, should you fancy a bit of culture to go with your lack of breeding, or vice versa, of course.”

Then Edmund gasped and stirred.

“Oh fuckstockings. The bastard’s alive.”

“Well this is a downy lot of goose toss if I’ve ever read it,” said I. I sat on the bastard’s back, cross-legged, reading the letter he’d written to his father. “‘And my lord must understand how unjust it is that I, the issue of true passion, is shorn of respect and position while deference is given my half brother, who is the product of a bed made of duty and drudgery.’”

“It’s true,” said the bastard. “Am I not as true of shape, as sharp of mind, a—”

“You’re a whiny little wanker, [16] Wanker—one who wanks, a tosser. is what you are,” said I, my brashness perhaps spurred by the weight of Drool, who was sitting on the bastard’s legs. “What did you think you would possibly gain by giving this letter to your father?”

“That he might relent and give me half my brother’s title and inheritance.”

“Because your mother was a better boff than Edgar’s? You’re a bastard and an idiot.”

“You could not know, little man.”

It was tempting then, to clout the knave across the head with Jones, or better, slit his throat with his own sword, but as much as the king might favor me, he favors the order of his power more. The murder of Gloucester’s son, no matter how deserved, would not go unpunished. But I was fast on my way to fool’s funeral anyway if I let the bastard up before his anger cooled. I’d sent Shanker Mary away in hope that any wrath that fell might pass her by. I needed a threat to stay Edmund’s hand, but I had none. I am the least powerful of all about the court. My only influence is raising others’ ire.

“I do know what it is to be deprived by the accident of birth, Edmund.”

“We are not the same. You are as common as field dirt. I am not.”

“I could not know then, Edmund, what it is to have my title cast as an insult? If I call you bastard, and you call me fool, can we answer as men?”