Fool(27)

 

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.

 

I fell in at the end of the column behind Hunter, who was accompanied by a long train of hounds and a wagon with a cage built on it, which held eight of the royal falcons.

 

“We’ll be raiding farms before we get to Leeds,” said Hunter, a stout, leather-clad man, thirty winters on his back. “I can’t feed this lot—and they’ve not enough stowed to last them a week.”

 

“Cry calamity if you will, Hunter, but I’m the one to keep them in good spirits when their bellies are empty.”

 

“Aye, I’ve no envy for you, fool. Is that why you ride back here with we catch-farts and not at the king’s side?”

 

“Just drawing plans for a bawdy song at supper without the clank of armor in my ear, good Hunter.”

 

I wanted to tell Hunter that I was not overburdened by my duties, but by my disdain for the senile king who had sent my princess away. And I wanted time to ponder the ghost’s warnings. The bit about daughters three and the king becoming a fool had come to pass, or at least was in the way of it. So the girl ghost had predicted the “grave offense” to “daughter’s three” even if all the daughters had not seen the offense yet—when Lear arrived at Albany with this rowdy retinue, offense would soon follow. But what of this: “When a second sibling’s base derision, proffers lies that cloud the vision”?

 

Did it mean the second daughter? Regan? What did it matter if her lies clouded Lear’s vision? The king was nearly blind as it was, his eyes milky with cataract—I’d taken to describing my pantomimes as I performed them so the old man would not miss the joke. And with no power, what tie could be severed that would make a difference now? A war between the two dukes? None of it about me, why do I care?