Why then would the ghost appear to this most irrelevant and powerless fool? I puzzled it, and fell far behind the column, and when I stopped to have a wee, was accosted by a brigand.
He came up from behind a fallen tree, a great bear of a fiend, his beard matted and befouled with food and burrs, a maelstrom of grey hair flying about under a wide-brimmed black hat. I may have screamed in surprise, and a less educated ear might have likened my shriek to that of a little girl, but be assured it was most manly and more for the fair warning of my attacker, for next I knew I had pulled a dagger from the small of my back and sent it flying. His miserable life was saved only by my slight miscalculation of his distance—the butt of my blade bounced off his behatted noggin with a thud.
“Ouch! Fuck’s sake, fool. What is wrong with you?”
“Hold fast, knave,” said I. “I’ve two more blades at the ready, and these I’ll send pointy end first—the quality of my mercy having been strained and my ire aroused by having peed somewhat upon my shoes.” I believed it a serviceable threat.
“Hold your blades, Pocket. I mean you no harm,” came the voice under the hat brim. Then, “Y Ddraig Goch ddyry gychwyn.”[22]
I wound up to send my second dagger to the scoundrel’s heart, “You may know my name, but that gargling with catsick that you’re doing will not stop me from dropping you where you stand.”
“Ydych chi’n cymryd cerdynnau credid?”[23] said the highwayman, no doubt trying to frighten me further, his consonants chained like anal beads strung out of hell’s own bunghole.
“I may be small, but I’m not a child to be afraid of a pretended demon speaking in tongues. I’m a lapsed Christian and a pagan of convenience. The worst I can do on my conscience is cut your throat and ask the forest to count it as a sacrifice come the Yule, so cease your nonsense and tell me how you know my name.”
“It’s not nonsense, it’s Welsh,” said the brigand. He folded back the brim of his hat and winked. “What say you save your wicked sting for an enemy true? It’s me, Kent. In disguise.”
Indeed, it was, the king’s old banished friend—all of his royal trappings but his sword gone—he looked like he’d slept in the woods the week since I’d last seen him.
“Kent, what are you doing here? You’re as good as dead if the king sees you. I thought you’d be in France by now.”
“I’ve no place to go—my lands and title are forfeit, what family I have would risk their own lives to take me in. I have served Lear these forty years, I am loyal, and I know nothing else. My thought is to affect accents and hide my face until he has a change of heart.”
“Is loyalty a virtue when paid to virtue’s stranger? I think not. Lear has misused you. You are mad, or stupid, or you lust for the grave, but there is no place for you, good greybeard, in the company of the king.”
“And there is for you? Or did I not see you restrained and dragged from the hall for that same offense: truth told boldly? Don’t preach virtue to me, fool. One voice can, without fear, call the king on his folly, and here he stands, piss-shoed, two leagues back from the train.”
Fuckstockings, truth is a surly shrew sometimes! He was right, of course, loudmouthed old bull. “Have you eaten?”
“Not for three days.”
I went to my horse and dug into my satchel for some hard cheese and an apple I had left from Bubble’s farewell gift. I gave them to Kent. “Come not too soon,” said I. “Lear still fumes about Cordelia’s honest offense and your supposed treason. Follow behind to Albany’s castle. I’ll have Hunter leave a rabbit or a duck beside the road for you every day. Do you have flint and steel?”
“Aye, and tinder.”
I found the stub of a candle in the bottom of my bag and handed it to the old knight. “Burn this and catch the soot upon your sword, then rub the black into your beard. Cut your hair short and blacken it, too. Lear can’t see clearly more than a few feet away, so keep your distance. And carry on with that ghastly Welsh accent.”
“Perhaps I’ll fool the old man, but what of the others?”
“No righteous man thinks you a traitor, Kent, but I don’t know all of these knights, nor which might reveal you to the king. Just stay out of sight and by the time we reach Albany’s castle I’ll have flushed out any knave who might betray your cause.”
“You’re a good lad, Pocket. If I’ve shown you disrespect in the past, I’m sorry.”