“Why would they want to troth you? I mean, for the night, to be sure, who wouldn’t troth you cross-eyed? But permanently, I think not.”
“I’m a bloody princess, Pocket.”
“Precisely. What good are princesses? Dragon food and ransom markers—spoiled brats to be bartered for real estate.”
“Oh no, dear fool, you forget that sometimes a princess becomes a queen.”
“Ha, princesses. What worth are you if your father has to tack a dozen counties to your bum to get those French poofters to look at you?”
“Oh, and what worth a fool? Nay, what worth a fool’s second, for you merely carry the drool cup for the Natural.[10] What’s the ransom for a jester, Pocket? A bucket of warm spittle.”
I grabbed my chest. “Pierced to the core, I am,” I gasped. I staggered to a chair. “I bleed, I suffer, I die on the forked lance of your words.”
She came to me. “You do not.”
“No, stay back. Blood stains will never come out of linen—they are stubborned with your cruelty and guilt…”
“Pocket, stop it now.”
“You have kilt me, lady, most dead.” I gasped, I spasmed, I coughed. “Let it always be said that this humble fool brought joy to all whom he met.”
“No one will say that.”
“Shhhh, child. I grow weak. No breath.” I looked at the imaginary blood on my hands, horrified. I slid off a chair, to the floor. “But I want you to know that despite your vicious nature and your freakishly large feet, I have always—”
And then I died. Bloody fucking brilliantly, I’d say, too, hint of a shudder at the end as death’s chilly hand grabbed my knob.
“What? What? You have always what?”
I said nothing, being dead, and not a little exhausted from all the bleeding and gasping. Truth be told, under the jest I felt like I’d taken a bolt to the heart.
“You’re absolutely no help at all,” said Cordelia.
The raven landed on the wall as I made my way back to the common house in search of Drool. No little vexed was I by the news of Cordelia’s looming nuptials.
“Ghost!” said the raven.
“I didn’t teach you that.”
“Bollocks!” replied the raven.
“That’s the spirit!”
“Ghost!”
“Piss off, bird,” said I.
Then a cold wind bit at my bum and at the top of the stairs, in the turret ahead, I saw a shimmering in the shadows, like silk in sunlight—not quite in the shape of a woman.
And the ghost said:
“With grave offense to daughters three,
Alas, the king a fool shall be.”
“Rhymes?” I inquired. “You’re looming about all diaphanous in the middle of the day, puking cryptic rhymes? Low craft and tawdry art, ghosting about at noon—a parson’s fart heralds darker doom, thou babbling wisp.”
“Ghost!” cried the raven, and with that the ghost was gone.
There’s always a bloody ghost.
TWO
NOW, GODS, STAND UP FOR BASTARDS! [11]
I found Drool in the laundry resolving a wank, spouting great gouts of git-seed across the laundry walls, floors, and ceiling, giggling, as young Shanker Mary wagged her tits at him over a steaming cauldron of the king’s shirts.
“Put those away, tart, we’ve a show to do.”
“I was just giving ’im a laugh.”
“If you wanted to show charity you could have bonked him honest and there’d be a lot less cleaning to do.”
“That’d be a sin. Besides, I’d as soon straddle a gateman’s halberd as try to get a weapon that girth up me.”
Drool pumped himself dry and sat down on the floor splay-legged, huffing like a great dribbling bellows. I tried to help the lout repack his tackle, but getting him into a codpiece against his firm enthusiasm was like trying to pound a bucket over a bull’s head—a scenario I thought comical enough to perhaps work into the act tonight, should things get slow.
“Nothing stopping you from givin’ the lad a proper cleavage toss, Mary. You had ’em out and all soaped up, a couple of jumps and a tickle and he’d have carried water for you for a fortnight.”
“He already does. And I don’t even want that thing near me. A Natural, he is. There’s devils in his jizm.”
“Devils? Devils? There’s no devils in there, lass. Chock full o’ nitwits, to be sure, but no devils.” A Natural was either blessed or cursed, never just an accident of nature, as the name implied.