Fool(8)

 

“Wait!” I leapt back to the lip of the cauldron, reaching to the small of my back with my free hand. “Wait. He’s being punished. By the king. For attacking me.”

 

“Punished? For attacking a fool?”

 

“‘Boil him alive,’ the king said.” I jumped down to Edmund’s side of the cauldron—moved toward the doorway. I’d needed a clear line of sight, and should he move, I didn’t want the blade to hit Mary.

 

“Everyone knows how fond the king is of his dark little fool,” said Mary, nodding enthusiastically.

 

“Bollocks!” shouted Edmund, as he pulled the sword back to slash.

 

Mary screamed. I flipped a dagger in the air, caught it by the blade, and was readying to send it to Edmund’s heart when something hit him in the back of the head with a thud and he went bum over eyebrows into the wall, his blade clanging across the floor to my feet.

 

Drool had stood up in the cauldron and was holding Mary’s laundry paddle—a bit of dark hair and bloody scalp clung to the bleached wood.

 

“Did you see that, Pocket? Smashing fall he did.” All of it a pantomime to Drool.

 

Edmund was not moving. As far as I could see, he was not breathing either.

 

“God’s bloody balls, Drool, you’ve kilt the earl’s son. We’ll all be hung, now.”

 

“But he were going to hurt Mary.”

 

Mary sat on the floor by Edmund’s prostrate body and began stroking his hair on a spot where there was no blood. “I was going to shag him docile, too.”

 

“He would have killed you without a thought.”

 

“Ah, blokes have their tempers, don’t they? Look at him, he’s a fair form of a fellow, innit he? And rich, too.” She took something from his pocket. “What’s this?”

 

“Well done, lass, not so much as a comma between grief and robbery, and much the better when he’s still so fresh his fleas have not sailed to livelier ports. The Church wears well on you.”

 

“No, I’m not robbing. Look, it’s a letter.”

 

“Give it here.”

 

“You can read?” The tart’s eyes widened as if I had confessed the ability to turn lead into gold.

 

“I was raised in a nunnery, wench. I am a walking library of learning—bound in comely leather and suitable for stroking—at your service, should you fancy a bit of culture to go with your lack of breeding, or vice versa, of course.”

 

Then Edmund gasped and stirred.

 

“Oh fuckstockings. The bastard’s alive.”

 

 

 

 

 

THREE

 

 

OUR DARKER PURPOSE [15]

 

 

 

 

“Well this is a downy lot of goose toss if I’ve ever read it,” said I. I sat on the bastard’s back, cross-legged, reading the letter he’d written to his father. “‘And my lord must understand how unjust it is that I, the issue of true passion, is shorn of respect and position while deference is given my half brother, who is the product of a bed made of duty and drudgery.’”

 

“It’s true,” said the bastard. “Am I not as true of shape, as sharp of mind, a—”

 

“You’re a whiny little wanker,[16] is what you are,” said I, my brashness perhaps spurred by the weight of Drool, who was sitting on the bastard’s legs. “What did you think you would possibly gain by giving this letter to your father?”

 

“That he might relent and give me half my brother’s title and inheritance.”

 

“Because your mother was a better boff than Edgar’s? You’re a bastard and an idiot.”

 

“You could not know, little man.”

 

It was tempting then, to clout the knave across the head with Jones, or better, slit his throat with his own sword, but as much as the king might favor me, he favors the order of his power more. The murder of Gloucester’s son, no matter how deserved, would not go unpunished. But I was fast on my way to fool’s funeral anyway if I let the bastard up before his anger cooled. I’d sent Shanker Mary away in hope that any wrath that fell might pass her by. I needed a threat to stay Edmund’s hand, but I had none. I am the least powerful of all about the court. My only influence is raising others’ ire.

 

“I do know what it is to be deprived by the accident of birth, Edmund.”

 

“We are not the same. You are as common as field dirt. I am not.”

 

“I could not know then, Edmund, what it is to have my title cast as an insult? If I call you bastard, and you call me fool, can we answer as men?”