“Sex and cuckoldry
You’ve mastered those jokes
For a more challenging jape
A new seal should be broke.”
“What?” said I. Whenever Jones has spoken before it has been in my own voice—smaller and muted sometimes, from the art of throwing it, but my voice alone, unless Drool is mimicking the puppet. And it is I who works the little ring and string that move Jones’s mouth. But this was not my voice, and I had not moved the puppet. It was the voice of the girl ghost from the White Tower.
“Don’t be tedious, Pocket,” said Albany. “I’ve no patience for puppets and rhymes.”
Jones said:
“A thousand rough nights
To call the lady a whore,
Only today may a fool,
Jest the land into war?”
And like a shooting star cutting brilliant across the ignorant night of my mind, I saw the ghost’s meaning.
I said: “I know not what the lady sends to Cornwall, good Albany, but while I was this last month in Gloucester, I heard soldiers talk of Cornwall and Regan gathering forces by the sea.”
“Gathering an army? Whatever for? With gentle Cordelia and Jeff now on the throne in France, it would be folly to cross the channel. We’ve a safe ally there.”
“Oh, they aren’t gathering forces against France, they are gathering forces against you, my lord. Regan would be queen of all of Britain. Or so I heard said.”
“You heard this from soldiers? Under whose flag, these soldiers?”
“Mercenaries, lord. No flag but fortune for them, and the word was there is coin aplenty for a free lance fighter in Cornwall. I have to be off. The king will need someone to whip for your lady’s rude announcements.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” said Albany. He had a spark of decency in him, really, and somehow Goneril had not yet been able to smother it. Plus, he seemed to have forgotten about accidentally hanging me.
“Don’t worry for me, good duke. You have worries of your own. Someone must take a hit for your lady, let it be this humble fool. Pray, tell her I said that someone must always hit it. Fare thee well, duke.”
And merrily I was off, bottom stinging, to let slip the dogs of war. Hi ho!
Lear sat on his horse outside Castle Albany, howling at the sky like a complete lunatic.
“May Nature’s nymphs bring great lobster-sized vermin to infest the rotted nest of her woman bits, and may serpents fix their fangs in her nipples and wave there until her poisoned dugs[33] go black and drop to the ground like overripe figs!”
I looked at Kent. “Built up a spot of steam, hasn’t he?” said I.
“May Thor hammer at her bowels and produce flaming flatulence that wilts the forest and launches her off the battlements into a reeking dung heap!”
“Not really adhering to any particular pantheon, is he?” said Kent.
“Oh, Poseidon, send your one-eyed son to stare into her bituminous heart and ignite it with flames of most hideous suffering.”
“You know,” said I, “the king seems to be leaning rather heavily on curses, for someone with his unsavory history with witches.”
“Aye,” said Kent. “Seems to have steered his wrath toward the eldest daughter, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Oh, you don’t say?” said I. “Sure, sure, that could be it, I suppose.”
We heard horses galloping and I pulled Kent back from the drawbridge as two riders, leading a train of six horses, thundered across.
“Oswald,” said Kent.
“With extra horses,” said I. “He’s gone to Cornwall.”
Lear broke with his cursing and watched the riders take out across the moor. “What business has that rascal in Cornwall?”
“He carries a message, nuncle,” said I. “I heard Goneril order him to report her mind to her sister, and for Regan and her lord to go to Gloucester and not to be in Cornwall when you arrive.”
“Goneril, thou foul monstress!” said the king, clouting himself on the forehead.
“Indeed,” said I.
“Oh, evil monstress!”
“To be sure,” said Kent.
“Oh, pernicious monstress, perfect in her perfidy!”
Kent and I looked at each other, knowing not what to say.
“I said,” said Lear, “most pernicious monstress, perfect in her perfidy!”
Kent mimed a set of generous bosoms on himself and raised an eyebrow as if to ask, “Boobs?”