Sometime during the week, Shanker Mary had gone Christian on us, despite being a most egregious slut. You never knew anymore who you were dealing with. Half the kingdom was Christian, the other half paid tribute to the old gods of Nature, who were always showing promise on the moonrise. The Christian God with his “day of rest” was strong with the peasants come Sunday, but by Thursday when there was drinking and fucking to be done, Nature had her kit off, legs aloft, and a flagon of ale in each hand, taking converts for the Druids as fast as they could come. They were a solid majority when the holiday was about, dancing, drinking, shagging the virgins, and sharing the harvest, but on the human sacrifice or burn-down-the-King’s-forest days, there was none but crickets cavorting ’round the Stonehenge—the singers having forsaken Mother Earth for Father Church.
“Pretty,” said Drool, trying to wrestle back control of his tool. Mary had commenced to stirring the laundry but had neglected to pull her dress up. Had the git’s attention hostage, she did.
“Right. She’s a bloody vision of loveliness, lad, but you’ve buffed yourself to a gleam already and we’ve work to do. The castle’s awash in intrigue, subterfuge, and villainy—they’ll be wanting-comic relief between the flattery and the murders.”
“Intrigue and villainy?” Drool displayed a gape-toothed grin. Imagine soldiers dumping hogsheads of spittle through the crenellations atop the castle wall—thus is Drool’s grin, as earnest in expression as it is damp in execution—a slurry of good cheer. He loves intrigue and villainy, as they play to his most special ability.
“Will there be hiding?”
“There will most certainly be hiding,” said I, as I shouldered an escaped testicle into his cod.
“And listening?”
“Listening of cavernous proportions—we shall hang on every word as God on Pope’s prayers.”
“And fuckery? Will there be fuckery, Pocket?”
“Heinous fuckery most foul, lad. Heinous fuckery most foul.”
“Aye, that’s the dog’s bollocks,[12] then!” said Drool, slapping his thigh. “Did you hear, Mary? Heinous fuckery afoot. Ain’t that the dog’s bollocks?”
“Oh yeah, the dog’s bloody B. it is, love. If the saints are smilin’ on us, maybe one of them nobles will hang your wee mate there like they been threatening.”
“Two fools well-hung we’d have then, wouldn’t we?” said I, elbowing my apprentice in the ribs.
“Aye, two fools well-hung, we’d have, wouldn’t we?” said Drool, in my voice, tone to note coming out his great maw as like he’d caught an echo on his tongue and coughed it right back. That’s the oaf’s gift—not only can he mimic perfectly, he can recall whole conversations, hours long, recite them back to you in the original speakers’ voices, and not comprehend a single word. He’d first been gifted to Lear by a Spanish duke because of his torrential dribbling and the ability to break wind that could darken a room, but when I discovered the Natural’s keener talent, I took him as my apprentice to teach him the manly art of mirth.
Drool laughed. “Two fools well-hung—”
“Stop that!” I said. “It’s unsettling.” Unsettling indeed, to hear your own voice sluicing pitch-perfect out of that mountain of lout, stripped of wit and washed of irony. Two years I’d had Drool under my wing and I was still not inured to it. He meant no harm, it was simply his nature.
The anchoress at the abbey had taught me of nature, making me recite Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated man, and a tribute to his culture, that he look for precision in a thing only as its nature allows.” I would not have Drool reading Cicero or crafting clever riddles, but under my tutelage he had become more than fair at tumbling and juggling, could belch a song, and was, at court, at least as entertaining as a trained bear, with slightly less proclivity for eating the guests. With guidance, he would make a proper fool.
“Pocket is sad,” said Drool. He patted my head, which was wildly irritating, not only because we were face-to-face—me standing, him sitting bum-to-floor—but because it rang the bells of my coxcomb in a most melancholy manner.
“I’m not sad,” said I. “I’m angry that you’ve been lost all morning.”
“I weren’t lost. I were right here, the whole time, having three laughs with Mary.”
“Three?! You’re lucky you two didn’t burst into flames, you from friction and her from bloody thunderbolts of Jesus.”