“Hear ye, hear ye. Let it be known that King Philip the Twenty-seventh of France is dead. God rest his soul. Long live France. Long live the king!”
No one “long lived the king” back at him and he seemed disappointed. Although one knight did murmur “So?” and another, “Good bloody riddance.”
“Well, you British pig dogs, Prince Jeff is now king,” said the herald.
We all looked at each other and shrugged.
“And Princess Cordelia of Britain is now Queen of France,” the herald added, rather huffy now.
“Oh,” said many, realizing at last at least a glancing relevance.
“Jeff?” said I. “The bloody frog prince is called Jeff?” I strode to the herald and snatched the scroll out of his hand. He tried to take it back and I clouted him with Jones.
“Calm, lad,” said Kent, taking the scroll from me and handing it back to the herald. “Merci,” said he to the messenger.
“He took my bloody princess and my monkey’s name!” said I, taking another swing with Jones, which missed its mark as Kent was dragging me away.
“You should be pleased,” said Kent. “Your lady is the Queen of France.”
“And don’t think she’s not going to rub my nose in that when I see her.”
“Come, lad, let’s go find your witches. We’ll want to be back by morning in time for Albany to accidentally hang you.”
“Oh, she’d like that, wouldn’t she?”
NINE
TOIL AND TROUBLE
So why is it that we are going to Great Birnam Wood to look for witches?” asked Kent as we made our way across the moor. There was only a slight breeze but it was bloody cold, what with the mist and the gloom and my despair over King Jeff. I pulled my woolen cape around me.
“Bloody Scotland,” said I. “Albany is possibly the darkest, dampest, coldest bloody crevice in all of Blighty. Sodding Scots.”
“Witches?” reminded Kent.
“Because the bloody ghost told me I’d find my answers here.”
“Ghost?”
“The girl ghost at the White Tower, keep up, Kent. Rhymes and riddles and such.” I told him of the “grave offense to daughters three” and the “madman rising to lead the blind.”
Kent nodded as if he understood. “And I’m along because…”
“Because it is dark and I am small.”
“You might have asked Curan or one of the others. I’m reticent about witches.”
“Nonsense. They’re just like physicians, only without the bleeding. Nothing to fear.”
“In the day, when Lear was still Christian, we did not do well by witches. I’ve had a cartload of curses cast on me.”
“Not very effective, though, were they? You’re child-frighteningly old and still strong as a bull.”
“I am banished, penniless, and live under the threat of death upon discovery of my name.”
“Oh, good point. Brave of you to come, then.”
“Aye, thanks, lad, but I’m not feeling it. What’s that light?”
There was a fire ahead in the wood, and figures moving around it.
“Stealthy, now, good Kent. Let us creep up silently and see what is to be seen before revealing ourselves. Now, creep, Kent, you crashing great ox, creep.”
And with but two steps my strategy revealed its flaw.
“You’re jingling like a coin purse possessed of fits,” said Kent. “You couldn’t creep up on the deaf nor dead. Silence your bloody bells, Pocket.”
I placed my coxcomb on the ground. “I can leave my hat, but I’ll not take off my shoes—we’ll surrender all stealth if I’m screaming from trodding tender-footed across lizards, thorns, hedgehogs, and the lot.”
“Here, then,” said Kent, pulling the remains of the pork shoulder from his satchel. “Dampen your bells with the fat.”
I raised an eyebrow quizzically—an unappreciated and overly subtle gesture in the dark—then shrugged and began working the suet into the bells at my toes and ankles.
“There!” I shook a leg to the satisfying sound of nothing at all. “Forward!”
Creep we did, until we were just outside the halo of firelight. Three bent-backed hags were walking a slow circle around a large cauldron, dropping in twisted bits of this and that as they chanted.
“Double, double, toil and trouble: