Fool(95)

 

“He is vexed by it still, Lear. Did you have a cutpurse kill your father as well?”

 

“My father was a leper and necromancer. I could not bear his misshapen form ruling Britain.”

 

“In your place, you mean?”

 

“Yes, in my place. Yes. But I did not send an assassin. He was in a cell at the temple at Bath. Out of the way, where no one might ever see him. But I could not take the throne until his death. I did not kill him, though. The priests there simply walled him up. Was time that killed my father.”

 

“You walled him up? Alive?” I was shaking now, I thought I might have forgiven the old man, seeing him suffer, but now I could hear my blood in my ears.

 

The sound of boots on stone echoed in the dungeon and I looked up to see the bastard Edmund walk into the torchlight.

 

He kicked one of the unconscious guards and looked at them like he’d just discovered monkey come in his Weetabix.[45] “Well, that’s a spot of bother, isn’t it?” he said. “I suppose I’ll have to kill you myself, then.” He stooped and took a crossbow from one of the guards’ back, fit his foot in the stirrup, and cocked the string.

 

 

 

 

 

INTERMISSION

 

 

(Backstage with the Players)

 

 

 

 

“Pocket, you rascal, you’ve trapped me in a comedy.”

 

“Well, for some, it is, yes.”

 

“When I saw the ghost I thought tragedy was assured.”

 

“Aye, there’s always a bloody ghost in a tragedy.”

 

“But the mistaken identity, the vulgarity, the lightness of theme and paucity of ideas, surely it’s a comedy. I’m not dressed for comedy, I’m all in black.”

 

“As am I, yet here we are.”

 

“So it is a comedy.”

 

“A black comedy—”

 

“I knew it.”

 

“For me, anyway.”

 

“Tragedy, then?”

 

“Bloody ghost is foreshadowing, innit?”

 

“But all the gratuitous shagging and tossing?”

 

“Brilliant misdirection.”

 

“You’re having me on.”

 

“Sorry, no, it’s pikeman’s surprise for you in the next scene.”

 

“I’m slain then?”

 

“To the great satisfaction of the audience.”

 

“Oh bugger!”

 

“But there’s good news, too.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“It remains a comedy for me.”

 

“God, you’re an annoying little git.”

 

“Hate the play, not the player, mate. Here, let me hold the curtain for you. Do you have any plans for that silver dagger? After you’re gone, I mean.”

 

“A bloody comedy—”

 

“Tragedies always end with tragedy, Edmund, but life goes on, doesn’t it? The winter of our discontent turns inevitably to the spring of a new adventure. Again, not for you.”

 

 

 

“I’ve never killed a king,” said Edmund. “Do you think I’ll be famous because of it?”

 

“You’ll not garner favor with your duchesses by killing their father,” said I.

 

“Oh, those two. Like these guards, quite dead, I’m afraid. They were sharing some wine over maps as they planned strategy for the battle and fell down foaming. Pity.”

 

“These guards aren’t dead. Merely drugged. They’ll come around in a day or so.”

 

He lowered the crossbow. “Then my ladies are only sleeping?”

 

“Oh no, they’re quite dead. I gave them each two vials. One with poison, the other with brandy. Bubble used the knockout poison on the guards, so brandy was our non-lethal substitute. If either of them had decided to show mercy for the other, at least one would be alive. But, as you said, pity.”

 

“Oh, well played, fool. But, that said, I’ll have to throw myself on Queen Cordelia’s mercy, let her know that I was brought into this horrid conspiracy against my will. Perhaps I’ll retain the Gloucester title and lands.”

 

“My daughters? Dead?” said Lear.

 

“Oh shut up, old man,” said Edmund.

 

“They was fit,” said Drool sadly.

 

“But when Cordelia hears of what you’ve really done?” I asked.

 

“Which brings us to our apex, doesn’t it? You won’t be able to tell Cordelia what has transpired.”

 

“Cordelia, my one true daughter,” wailed Lear.

 

“Shut the fuck up,” said Edmund. He raised the crossbow, sighted through the bars at Lear, then stepped back and seemed to lose his aim, as one of my throwing daggers sprouted out of his chest with a thud.