Falstaff

by Robert Nye

  ‘My Lord Chief Justice,’ he said, ‘speak to that vain man.’

  Gascoigne, that prick, pushed his nag forward and looked down at me. ‘Are you out of your wits?’ he hissed.

  I wasn’t going to be gascoigned.

  I used my belly again. I butted his nag. The startled creature danced aside. I snatched at the King’s foot.

  ‘My King!’ I cried. ‘My Jove!’

  The King, that Jove, quite deliberately moved his boot through the stirrup so that the spur dug into my hand.

  I let my arm fall.

  I looked up at him. His eyes looked over my head.

  I looked down at my hand. Blood welled from the star-shaped wound in it.

  I said, ‘Harry.’

  I said, ‘I speak to you, my heart.’

  King Henry V lowered his gaze. He consented to look at me. He saw.

  What did those cold eyes see? What did those King’s eyes find before them in the London Street?

  A fat man.

  Standing.

  Bleeding.

  In the snow.

  The King’s lips moved. King Henry V spoke:

  ‘I know you not, old man,’ he said. ‘Fall to your prayers.’

  My hand stung from that wound.

  The King went on: ‘I have long dreamt of such a man as you. But, being awake, I now despise my dream.’

  Those eyes observed my belly with distaste.

  ‘Know,’ said the King, ‘that the grave gapes for you, with a mouth three times wider than it gapes for other men.’

  Seven, I thought. Damn it, SEVEN TIMES WIDER. I opened my mouth. King Henry V cut me short:

  ‘No fool-born jest!’

  I could look at His Majesty no more. I watched the blood drip from my hand onto the ground. It stained the snow.

  ‘Do not presume,’ the King went on inexorably, ‘that I am the thing I was. God knows, and soon the world shall see, that I have turned away my former self. In the same way, I turn from those who kept me company.’

  He paused. Someone sniggered in the crowd. I remember Gascoigne’s nag starting to piss.

  ‘You are banished,’ said King Henry V.

  Steam rose from that horse-piss where it hit the snow.

  ‘Do not come near our person by ten miles,’ said King Henry V.

  ‘Set on!’ said King Henry V.

  The black horse lunged at me. I fell aside.

  The glorious procession passed on its way.

  ‘Mr Shallow,’ I said, ‘I owe you a thousand pounds.’

  Poor Shallow thought I meant him. I did not.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Sir John Fastolf’s review of his banishment

  23rd July

  Well, things could have been worse. I could have been burnt in seven barrels.

  Here I was –

  Banished.

  But only from the King’s immediate company. Banished, as it were, to the whole world as that world held good in a ten-mile limit from the person of Harry Monmouth. And I can tell you, Worcester, that in my mood of that moment, he could have set the bounds at double his ten and I would not have minded.

  I confess I was a little stunned at first. I did not know then, you see, what Clio and Harry the Prig’s own publicity have since made common knowledge. Namely, that Hal had taken the Leper King’s advice most seriously to heart. The very night of his father’s death, before the disembowellers had moved in, almost before a cloth of gauze had been drawn across that noseless, ruined face, Harry had gone under cover of dark to a recluse of holy life at Westminster. On his knees before this hermit, in the secrecy of the Sacrament of Penance, he had unpacked his heart, poured out his sins, confessed his every wickedness and guilt.

  They say that confession took him all the hours till dawn. And that then, washed in the laver of true repentance, and receiving the antidote of absolution against the poison which he had swallowed before, Hal came out a new man.

  Madam, I am not laughing.

  Madam, I was never further from laughter in my life. I, I, I, John Fastolf, knowing the great benefits of the Sacrament of Penance as well or better than any man now living – having stood in at least as much need of it as the Prince of Wales can ever have stood – and – well, but it would hardly do to boast in such a context! Suffice it then to say that I do not condemn Harry Monmouth his contrition – nor do I doubt for a moment that he detested his past sins, and that he promised amendment of life, and that he performed his penance as a man should, and that he was released from his guilt by that Power of the Keys which our Lord gave to St Peter and his Church.

  All I condemn is the priggishness.

  All I dislike is the vanity which assumes that human nature (a man’s whole being, madam) is so simple that you can, as it were, walk in one door wearing a mantle of vice and come out of another decently adorned in a cloak of virtue. And, even then –

  Because we are suddenly become virtuous, shall there be no more cakes and ale?

  But I must bite my tongue. And leave it for the reader to decide for himself whether there was evidence of true virtue in the later career of King Henry V.

  Things, as I say, could have been worse. As it was, I and my company were escorted to the Fleet Prison by the Lord Chief Justice, where we underwent a little temporary detention, in the usual style, for the purpose of my giving my word that I would abide by the King’s conditions regarding the banishment.

  That done – the ten miles, in other words, being agreed to – I was told by Gascoigne that I was to be allowed a small but regular competence of money by the King, to assist me, as he put it, in seeing that ‘lack of means did not enforce me to evils.’ I was also told, by the same Lord Chief Justice, that the King was even prepared to ‘give me advancement’ according to my ‘strengths and qualities’ if he heard that I was (as they called it) reforming myself.

  No comment.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  About the marrying of Sir John Fastolf

  24th July

  I celebrated my banishment by marrying. It seemed at the time a sensible thing to do. It seemed at the time the only thing to do. Probably I didn’t choose to anyway. As a whore said to me once in Harfleur, while making both ends of me blush, ‘Les marriages se font an ciel et se consomment sur la terre.’ Which means, more or less, that these matters are arranged in heaven, and it’s just up to us to consummate them on earth. As well as we can.

  I was married on the Feast of St Hilary, 13th January, which as everyone knows is always the coldest day of the year.

  My wife was Milicent, daughter of Robert, third Lord Tibetot. More significantly, Milicent came to me also as the widow of Sir Stephen Scrope. This same Scrope was the right hand of Thomas, Duke of Clarence, in managing the Irish. I think I touched again on that old rivalry between Hal and his second brother, in thus betrothing myself (as it were) to the glove that had just lately been on the second brother’s right hand. The Scropes were a family known for double dealing. Dead Sir Stephen had been straight enough, but his brother Richard was that queer Archbishop of York who ended up kissing Lord Hastings on London Bridge. And there was another Scrope, Henry, who took huge bribes in France and joined the conspiracy of the Earl of Cambridge to murder Hal on the eve of his embarkation. For which he had his head chopped off at Southampton.

  Milicent brought with her from her marriage to the decent Scrope one son, Stephen, that ingrate, my stepson, who refuses all the time to write here. (But I will get him yet, one Day, you see.) This Stephen was from the start a poxy mandrake, I could tell that. He was fitter to be worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. What a pretty boy! What a pansy! Even now, when he is old, he has no beard. I know that a beard will grow in the palm of my hand before he ever gets one on his face.

  The hell with the family Scrope.

  Milicent, though. My Milicent was another matter. She was a sweet and wealthy hag. She owned property near Doncaster, and also the estate of Castle Combe in Wiltshire. All this be
sides what she had gained through her first marriage.

  Milicent, my shrew. (Don’t be jealous, Desdemona.)

  Milicent loved me well.

  Milicent had a quick eye.

  Milicent prayed a good deal, which is always a good sign in a woman. Dame Milicent prayed like a windmill.

  Milicent had a tongue like a whetted sword.

  Milicent had thighs like a triumphal arch.

  Thanks to the competence settled upon me by King Henry V, in return for the pleasure of avoiding his company by ten miles, I was able to bring to Milicent a little in return for the money and estates which she brought to me.

  I delay until tomorrow the account of our nuptials concocted by Mrs Quickly. As I have said, the sacrament was celebrated on the Feast of St Hilary, Hilary of Poitiers, that Athanasius of the West and great enemy of the Arians. (I once met a man in Poitiers who married a calf. The trouble there was that he’d been advised by his mother to lengthen and strengthen his penis by dipping it in milk every day and getting a calf to suck it. ‘After a month of that,’ he told me, ‘no one in his right mind would settle for a woman.’)

  The fact of this winter wedding ran riot in Nell Quickly’s tickle-brain fancy, and she created for my friends an amazing version of its consummation. I daresay this is no more fiction than many another account of coupling – for I have noted that there is no other subject on which men so willingly deceive themselves than in stories of their love-making. They lie when they are at it, and they lie the more when they are not.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Mrs Quickly’s account of the nuptials of Sir John Fastolf

  St Anne’s Eve

  O Jesu. O et cetera. This was an infinitive focative. This was an act and an acture. An angling. An amorous impleachment. This was some husbandry. Some pricking usury. O cock. O St Venus.

  All dally day it had snowed, it had seminared snowflakes, and in bright afternoon light, hard time for a deed of darkness, Sir John took Dame Milicent into the garden. To fox her. To fox his dear, his doe with the black scut. The gold fish all were frozen in the ponds. Long purples. Like dead men’s fingers, or priests’ pricks. There were bare bushes and black statues. Those newly married, those marrow birds, the man and his mammets, stood by the fountain thick with icicles. There was a marble terrace and a quivering thigh. Dame Milicent was his demesnes now. And Sir John dominus. Dame Milicent in lace and russet velvet. Sir John in his round hose and with that king of codpieces.

  Sir John’s hands roamed under her dress, about her ruff and rudder. Sir John’s great hands roamed where they liked, and that Dame Milicent she liked where they roamed. The bridal two ran hand in hand down a snowy path. Dame Milicent’s slippers made marks like little bird’s feet in the snow, but Sir John’s boots went in deep, so vast a man he was. He comes continuantly, when he comes. O her low countries. O his privates.

  Sir John and Dame Milicent fell over feasts and favours in the snow. Dame Milicent fell first and Sir John fell on her. He fell to her and she fell to him. Her hair was in his mouth. She felt his thing.

  Sir John tore the dress from Dame Milicent’s back, and her shift he ripped off also. Her dens and commodities lay open now to a most potent regiment. O goats and monkeys. Sir John started rubbing and scrubbing at Dame Milicent’s hot breasts with fistfuls of snow. O Jesu, he fingered her, he tickled her, he paddled her, he pinched her and he fondled her, he cherished and he stirred. Dame Milicent loved it. Dame Milicent squealed as the rude snow made her nipples hard and horny. Sir John cried out because she looked so wanton sweet, so virgin patent, his wife, Dame Milicent, naked to the waist, snow trickling down to melt like milk or marrow at the kissing of her tits. Dame Milicent scooped up snow also, the moist mischief. She rubbed it in her master’s eyes. And when he stumbled, her husband, Sir John, blinded, confused, and roaring like a bullcalf, Dame Milicent had his prick out in a trice. Dame Milicent’s hands moved happily. They worked busily. She turned him on. She tossed him off. Love’s labour’s lost. But no, that clever widow, Dame Milicent, put a handful of stark snow to Sir John Fastolf’s cock. Sir John chased Dame Milicent round the snow-drowned sundial. Dame Milicent tripped. Dame Milicent was down on her face. Dame Milicent’s breasts bit deep into the drift. O luxury. O ruffian lust.

  Now then he gave her measure for measure.

  Sir John Fastolf had her sprawled in the snow, across his spermy lap, her Netherlands upmost, and he slapped and he smacked and he spanked at her bottom, Dame Milicent’s, the widow of love’s diets – not hard, his slapping, not at first, his smacking, but just enough to tickle those white half-moons, his spanking, those tender, unplumbed buttocks.

  And it was as she liked it.

  It was without doubt the lusty oversight of Dame Milicent’s plum growing rosy under his great hand’s dominion – the contrast of the white flesh of her secret parts, the red marks made by his tasty punishings, and the shining, pricky splendour of the snow – that made Sir John roar out the more with longing. Besides which, he cares not what mischief he does, if his weapon be out. (My own case is openly known to the world.)

  Sir John took a handful of snow, so softly, so soft and so softly his lady Dame Milicent had no dream of the getting-up fate now in store for her. Sir John paused then a moment, to savour the sweet steam yielding from Dame Milicent’s hot body there in the freezing air, gazing at those hillocks, that ravine, those forfended places he had so lately spanked and drubbed until they blushed …

  Then Sir John plunged with his potency of snow!

  Dame Milicent bucked.

  Dame Milicent kicked.

  Dame Milicent wrestled.

  Dame Milicent rolled in the snow like a scalded cat.

  But O now Sir John, he would give her no quarter.

  But O now Sir John, he would show her no mercy.

  He broached that proud Dame.

  Sir John impaled Dame Milicent on his great icicle.

  Sir John made love to his lady like an avalanche.

  He had her.

  He joyed her.

  He manned her.

  He managed her.

  He picked her lock.

  He pleased her, he ploughed her, and O how he possessed her.

  He rammed her.

  He rode her.

  He scaled her.

  He served her.

  He stabbed her.

  He stuffed her.

  He foined her.

  He tupped her.

  She took him upwards and downwards and sideways and everyways.

  She took him in her belly, and wagging her tail.

  O Jesu, O my lord, but how he fucked her!

  Fixed her and foxed her and fetched her and fexed her.

  Figged her and firked her and ferred her and fired her.

  Forked her, all frosty, and brought her to fruition.

  Of function.

  Of junction.

  Of conversation, copulation, much ado, the taming of the shrew.

  Of carnal stings and spendings and sweet spicery.

  She was his Juliet. He her Romeo.

  She was his Cressida. He her Troilus.

  She was his Cleopatra. He her Antony, bestriding her

  Like a Colossus.

  And all was well that ended well. And all this glory ended with an O,

  Foaming.

  Oes and eyes.

  So deep an O.

  So full an O.

  So overflown, so fucked

  an O. And O. And

  O. An

  o

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  How Sir John Fastolf went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land

  (1st Note by Stephen Scrope)

  Lammas

  Scrope writes this.

  N.B.: Not him saying ‘Scrope writes this.’

  He is saying something else altogether. He is boasting about some pilgrimage he claims to have made to the Holy Land with his man ‘Bardolph’.

  Lies!

  I do not wri
te that.

  I do not write lies.

  I do not write Fastolf.

  These dolls, these pawns, these puppets – they do what he tells them. They write what he tells them. Worcester & Hanson & Nanton & Bussard & Even (may God forgive him) Friar John Brackley.

  They write him.

  I write me.

  I write Scrope.

  It is time for the Truth!

  Scrope will tell you the Truth.

  Scrope will go through his monstrous lies one by one and kill them for ever.

  I cannot kill him.

  (God knows I have tried. But he cannot be killed.)

  His lies, though, they can be killed. His lies and his dreams and his wicked stories.

  Scrope will kill them all. Every one. Wait and see.

  ‘John Fastolf.’

  Who is he?

  To be the author of such a Hellish pack of lies …

  How old is he?

  I saw with my own eyes he was already old in the days of Henry Five …

  I think he is that One who is always the same age.

  I think he is the devil himself!

  I think the others here are ghosts.

  I think that this is Cobweb Castle.

  And that this Fastolf is King Liar.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  About some merry tricks of Sir John Fastolf’s

  Feast of the Transfiguration

  of our Blessed Lord

  It occurs to me tonight that I have now got myself married, and made my pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and consulted the three Popes, and that it will soon be time to set forth on my wars in France – and all before justice has been done to my days of knavery. Paper and inkhorn, then, must now be devoted to calling up again the memory of one or two of my more merry tricks.

  Light more candles here.