Fool(62)

“You’ve a deeply wicked side, Pocket.”

 

“Truth has a deeply wicked side, Kent.”

 

“There’s the king,” said Kent. “No one attends him. I should go to him.”

 

Lear shuffled into the courtyard wearing his heavy fur cape.

 

“Like looking down on a lubricious chess set, isn’t it? The king moves in tiny steps, with no direction, like a drunkard trying to avoid the archer’s bolt. The others work their strategies and wait for the old man to fall. He has no power, yet all power moves in his orbit and to his mad whim. Do you know that there’s no fool piece on the chessboard, Kent?”

 

“Methinks the fool is the player, the mind above the moves.”

 

“Well, that’s a scratchy spot of cat wank.” I turned to the old knight. “But bloody well said. Go to Lear, then. Edmund won’t dare molest you, and Cornwall must pretend some contrition for throwing you into the stocks. The princesses will be burning bright for Edmund’s eye, and Gloucester—well, Gloucester proffers hospitality before jackals, he is well occupied.”

 

“What will you do?”

 

“I seem to have rendered myself undesirable, as impossible as that sounds. I need to find us a spy—someone more stealthy, devious, and underhanded than my own sweet nature allows.”

 

“Good luck with that,” said Kent.

 

 

 

“I loathe you, I despise you, I curse your existence and the foul demons that spawned you. You sicken me with anger and bilious hatred.”

 

“Oswald,” said I. “You’re looking well.” Drool and I had intercepted him in a corridor.

 

There is an unwritten edict, that when negotiating with an enemy, one does not reveal his knowledge of that enemy’s agenda, even unto death. It’s a point of honor, of sorts, but I see it as petty play-acting, and I had no intention of indulging in it with Oswald. Yet, I had need of his spidery talents, so some finesse was required.

 

“I would give an arm to see you hang, fool,” said Oswald.

 

“Oh, an excellent starting point,” said I. “Don’t you think, Drool?”

 

“Aye, Pocket,” said Drool, who loomed between Oswald and me, a thick table leg unsuccessfully concealed behind his back. Oswald might make as to draw his sword, but Drool would have beaten his brains into bloody marmalade before the blade cleared its scabbard. Unspoken, but understood. “Smashing good start,” said the giant.

 

“So, Oswald, let us go from there. Say you get what you want. Say you lose an arm, and I am hanged, how then is life better for your fine self? Your quarters more comfortable? Wine taste better, will it?”

 

“It’s unlikely, but let’s explore the possibilities, shall we?”

 

“Very well,” said I. “You first. Sever an arm and Drool here will hang me. You have my word.”

 

“You have my word,” said Drool, in my voice.

 

“Stop wasting my time, fool. My lady is arriving and I need to go to her.”

 

“Ah, there’s the rub, Oswald. What you want. What do you really want.”

 

“You could never know.”

 

“Your lady’s approval?”

 

“I have that.”

 

“Ah, that’s right, your lady’s love.”

 

Oswald became still then, as if I had taken the breath from the corridor in which we stood. To prove such was not the case, I pressed on.

 

“You want your lady’s love, her respect, her power, her submission, her bottom in the air before you, her begging for satisfaction and mercy—that about it?”

 

“I am not so base as you, fool.”

 

“And yet the very reason you hate me is that I have been to that place.”

 

“You have not. She has not loved you, nor respected you, nor given you power. You were an amusement at best.”

 

“Yet I know the way there, my coal-hearted friend. I know the way a servant might find such favor.”

 

“She could never. I am of common blood.”

 

“Oh, I’m not saying I could make you duke, only that you would be her lord in body, heart, and mind. You know her weakness for scoundrels, Oswald. Did you yourself not pimp your lady to Edmund?”

 

“I did not. I only delivered a message. And Edmund is heir to an earldom.”

 

“Just this bloody week he is. And don’t act as if you don’t know what was in that message. I have the power, Oswald, given me by three witches in the Great Birnam Wood, to put a spell upon your lady so she will adore and desire you.”