Great dog-buggering bollocks it was cold. Only to my knees, but cold. And I would have made it undiscovered, methinks, if I hadn’t let slip a rather emphatic whisper of, “Great dog-buggering bollocks, that’s cold!” I was met at the top of the stairs by the pointy part of a halberd, leveled malevolently at my chest.
“For fuck’s sake,” said I. “Do your worst, but get it done and drag my body inside where it’s warm.”
“Pocket?” said the yeoman at the other end of the spear. “Sir?”
“Aye,” said I.
“I haven’t seen you for months. What’s that all over your face?”
“It’s clay. I’m in disguise.”
“Oh right. Why don’t you come in and warm up. Must be dreadful cold in your wet stocking feet there.”
“Good thought, lad,” said I. It was the young, spot-faced yeoman whom I’d chastised on the wall when Regan and Goneril were first arriving to gain their inheritance. “Shouldn’t you stay at your post, though? Duty and all that?”
He led me across the cobbled courtyard, into a servants’ entrance to the main castle and down the stairs into the kitchen.
“Nah, it’s the Traitor’s Gate, innit? Lock on it as big as your head. Ain’t no one coming through there. Not all bad. It’s out of the wind. Not like up on the wall. Y’know the Duchess Regan is living here at the Tower now? I took your advice about not talking about her boffnacity,[43] even with the duke dead and all, can’t be too careful. Although, I caught sight of her in a dressing gown one day she was up on the parapet outside her solar. Fine flanks on that princess, despite the danger of death and all for sayin’ so, sir.”
“Aye, the lady is fair, and her gadonk as fine as frog fur, lad, but even your steadfast silence will get you hung if you don’t cease with the thinking aloud.”
“Pocket, you scroungy flea-bitten plague rat!”
“Bubble! Love!” said I. “Thou dragon-breathed wart farm, how art thou?”
The ox-bottomed cook tried to hide her joy by casting an onion at me, but there was a grin there. “You’ve not eaten one full plate since you were last in my kitchen, have you?”
“We heard you was dead,” said Squeak, a crescent of a smile for me beneath her freckles.
“Feed the pest,” said Bubble. “And clean that mess off his face. Rutting with the pigs again, were you, Pocket?”
“Jealous?”
“Not bloody likely,” said Bubble.
Squeak sat me down on a stool by the fire and while I warmed my feet she scrubbed the clay from my face and out of my hair, mercilessly battering me with her bosoms as she worked.
Ah, home sweet home.
“So, has anyone seen Drool?”
“In the dungeon with the king,” said Squeak. “Although the guard ain’t supposed to know it.” She eyed the young yeoman who stood by.
“I knew that,” he said.
“What of the king’s men, his knights and guards? In the barracks?”
“Nah,” said the yeoman. “Castle guard was a dog’s breakfast until Captain Curan came down from Gloucester. He’s got a noble-born knight as captain of every watch and the old guard man for man with any new ones. Crashing huge camps of soldiers outside the walls, forces of Cornwall to the west and Albany on the north. They say the Duke of Albany is staying with his men at camp. Won’t come to the Tower.”
“Wise choice, with so many vipers about the castle. What of the princesses?” I asked Bubble. Although she seemed never to leave her kitchen, she knew what was going on in every corner of the fortress.
“They ain’t talking,” said Bubble. “Taking meals in their old quarters they had when they was girls. Goneril in the east tower of the main keep. Regan in her solar on the outer wall on the south. They’ll come together for the midday meal, but only if that bastard Gloucester is there.”
“Can you get me to them, Bubble. Unseen?”
“I could sew you up in a suckling pig and send it over.”
“Yes, lovely, but I did hope to return undiscovered, and trailing gravy might draw the attention of the castle’s cats and dogs. Regrettably, I’ve had experience with such things.”
“We can dress you as one of the serving lads, then,” said Squeak. “Regan had us bring in boys instead of our usual maids. She likes to taunt and threaten them until they cry.”
I regarded Bubble with steely recrimination. “Why didn’t you suggest that?”