Christopher Moore - Fool

“Oh, but bastards are vessels of promise, are they not? Or didn’t I watch you slay your lord the duke, to run to the arms of a bastard—who is, I believe, now the Earl of Gloucester. By the way, how goes the romance? Torrid and unsavory, I trust.”

She sat down then and ran her fingernails through her jet hair as if raking thoughts out of her scalp. “Oh, I fancy him fine—although he’s been a bit disappointing since that first time. But the intrigue is bloody exhausting, what with Goneril trying to bed Edmund, and he not being able to show me deference for fear of losing Albany’s support, and bloody France invading in the midst of it all. If I’d known all that my husband had to tend to I’d have waited a while before killing him.”

“There, there, kitten.” I moved around behind her and rubbed her shoulders. “Your complexion is rosy and your appetite good, and you are, as always, a veritable feast of shagability. Once you’re queen you can have everyone beheaded and take a long nap.”

“That’s just it. It’s not like I can just put on the crown and go sovereigning merrily along—God, St. George, and the whole rotting mess into history. I have to defeat the fucking French, then I’ve got to kill Albany, Goneril, and I suppose I’ll have to find Father and have something heavy fall on him or the people will never accept me.”

“Good news on that, love. Lear’s in the dungeon. Mad as a hatter, but alive.”

“He is?”

“Aye. Edmund just returned from Dover with him. You didn’t know?”

“Edmund is back?”

“Not three hours ago. I followed him back.”

“Bastard! He hasn’t even sent word that he’s returned. I sent a letter to him in Dover.”

“This letter?” I took the letter that Oswald had dropped. I’d broken the seal, of course, but she recognized it and snatched it out of my hand.

“How did you get that? I sent that with Goneril’s man, Oswald, to give to Edmund personally.”

“Yes, well, I sent Oswald to vermin Valhalla before delivery was secured.”

“You killed him?”

“I told you, kitten, I’m nobility now—a murderous little cunt like the rest of you. Just as well, too, that letter’s a flitty bit o’ butterfly toss, innit? Don’t you have any advisers to help you with that sort of thing? A chancellor or a chamberlain, a bloody bishop or someone?”

“I’ve no one. Everyone is at the castle in Cornwall.”

“Oh, love, let your cousin Pocket help.”

“Would you?”

“Of course. First, let’s see to sister.” I took two of the vials from the purse at my belt. “This red one is deadly poison. But the blue one is only like a poison, giving the same signs as if one is dead, but they will but sleep one day for each drop they drink. You could put two drops of this in your sister’s wine—say, when you are ready to attack the French—and for two days she would sleep the sleep of the dead while you and Edmund did your will, and without losing the support of Albany in the war.”

“And the poison?”

“Well, kitten, the poison may not be needed. You could defeat France, take Edmund for your own, and come to an agreement with your sister and Albany.”

“I have an agreement with them now. The kingdom is divided as father decreed.”

“I’m only saying that you may fight the French, have Edmund, and not have to slay your sister.”

“And what if we don’t defeat France?”

“Well, then, you have the poison, don’t you?”

“Well, that’s bollocks counseling,” said Regan.

“Wait, cousin, I haven’t told you the part where you make me Duke of Buckingham yet. I’d like that dodgy old palace, Hyde Park. St. James’s Park, and a monkey.”

“You’re daft!”

“Named Jeff.”

“Get out!”

I palmed the love letter from the table as I exited.

Quickly through the corridors, across the courtyard, and back to the kitchen where I traded my codpiece for a pair of waiter’s breeches. It was one thing to leave Jones and my coxcomb with the ferryman, another to secret my blades away with Bubble, but giving up my codpiece was like losing my spirit.

“I was nearly undone by its enormity,” said I to Squeak, to whom I handed the portable den of my manly inequity.

“Aye, a family of squirrels could nest in the extra space,” Squeak observed, dropping a handful of the walnuts she’d been shelling into the empty prick pouch.

“Wonder you didn’t rattle like a dried gourd when you walked,” said Bubble.

“Fine. Cast aspersions on my manhood if you will, but I’ll not protect you when the French arrive. They’re unnaturally fond of public snogging and they smell of snails and cheese. I will laugh—ha! — as you both are mercilessly cheese-snogged by froggy marauders.”

“Don’t really sound that bad to me,” said Squeak.

“Pocket, you’d better be off, lad,” said Bubble. “Goneril’s supper is going up now.”

“Adieu,” said I, a preview of the Frenchy future of my former friends and soon to be frog-snogged traitorous tarts. “Adieu.” I bowed. I feigned fainting with a great wrist-to-brow flourish, and I left.

(I admit it, one does like to lubricate his recurrent entrances and exits with a bit of melodrama. Performance is all to the fool.)

Goneril’s quarters were less spacious than Regan’s, but luxurious, and there was a fire going. I hadn’t set foot here since she’d left the castle to marry Albany, but upon returning I found I was simultaneously aroused and filled with dread—memories simmering under the lid of consciousness, I suppose. She wore cobalt with gold trim, daringly cut. She must have known Edmund was back. “Pumpkin!”

“Pocket? What are you doing here?” She waved the other servers and a young lady who had been braiding her hair out of the room. “And why are you dressed in that absurd outfit?”

“I know,” said I. “Poncy breeches. Without my codpiece I feel defenseless.”

“I think they make you look taller,” she said.

A dilemma. Taller in breeches or stunningly virile in a cod? Both illusions. Each with its advantage. “Which do you think makes a better impression on the fairer sex, love, tall or hung?”

“Isn’t your apprentice both?”

“But he’s—oh—”

“Yes.” She bit into a winter plum.

“I see,” said I. “So, what is it with Edmund? All the black kit?” What it was, was she was bewitched, was what it was.

“Edmund.” She sighed. “I don’t think Edmund loves me.”

And I sat down, with all of Goneril’s luncheon repast set before me, and considered cooling my forehead in the tureen of broth. Love? Sodding, bloody, tossing, bloody, sodding, bloody love? Irrelevant, superfluous, bloody, ruddy, rotten, sodding love? What ho? Wherefore? What the fuck? Love?

“Love?” said I.

“No one has ever loved me,” said Goneril.

“What about your mother? Surely your mother?”

“I don’t remember her. Lear had her executed when we were little.”

“I didn’t know.”

“It was not to be spoken of.”

“Jesus, then? Comfort in Christ?”

“What comfort? I’m a duchess, Pocket, a princess, perhaps a queen. You can’t rule in Christ. Are you daft? You have to ask Christ to leave the room. Your very first war or execution and you’re right fucked for forgiveness, aren’t you? There’s Jesusy disapproval and scowling at least and you have to act like you don’t see it.”

“He’s infinite in his forgiveness,” said I. “It says so somewhere.”

“As should we all be, it also says. But I don’t believe it. I’ve never forgiven our father for killing our mother and I never shall. I don’t believe, Pocket. There’s no comfort or love there. I don’t believe.”