Shakespeare for Squirrels

by Christopher Moore

  She flung the bolt against the wall and stepped before my cell. “Did you kill the Puck?”

  “I did not, Your Grace. I am but a simple fool, set adrift by pirates to crash upon your shores but two days ago with my apprentice, Drool.”

  “Oi,” said the dim giant through his window grate. “It were sad. We almost eated Jeff.”

  “We’ve barely had time for a proper meal, let alone to make enemies—other than these scrofulous merkins.” I gestured in the general direction of Blacktooth and Burke.

  “Tell me the truth, fool, or the watchmen will hold you while I cut a hole in you with your own dagger and slowly walk a trail of your entrails around the room while you watch.”

  “Oh, you wicked little vixen,” I said with a grin. “This is not your first dungeon, is it?”

  If she was going to kill me, better it not be dragged out, so to speak. If she wasn’t, and was indeed as fierce as her aspect and the reaction of the watch implied, she might be amused. This was not my first dungeon either.

  She laughed. “All of you, out. Leave me to talk to this fool alone.”

  The watchmen scrambled through the arch leading to the outside, weapons and armor rattling like pans on a tinker’s wagon. Blacktooth and Burke stood in the archway, arms folded, looking not defiant but embarrassed.

  “Well?” she said. “Out! Out! Out!”

  “We can’t, ma’am,” said Blacktooth.

  “Weapons, ma’am,” said Burke. He nodded to a rack of spears and halberds against a wall.

  “Your people are not permitted weapons, ma’am,” said Blacktooth, staring now at his shoes. “Even Your Most Superfluous Radiance.”

  “I see,” she said. “And yet I am a queen and will be duchess of all of Athens in but three days?”

  “’Tis so, ma’am.”

  “And, good captain, if I commanded thee to kill all your men and then yourself, would you do it?”

  “I would be duty-bound to do so, yes, Your Magnetized.”

  “Majesty,” corrected Burke.

  “So you see the burden of the crown. My only way to speak to this prisoner in private is to command you to put everyone to death, then fall on your sword. Does that seem about right?”

  “Spot-on there, Your Municipal. Spot-on. I would be duty-bound to do it.”

  “Or,” she said, “I could spare you and your men and instead command you to fuck off for a few minutes, and then call you back and you could go on with your miserable lives. Unless you think I can smuggle a halberd or a spear out under this gown?” She took a step so her bare leg emerged from her gown up to her hip.

  Blacktooth looked to his scruffy leftenant, Burke to his commander. Both nodded enthusiastically with the bloody obviousness of it all.

  “Well,” she said, “do fuck off, then. Please.”

  “As you command, ma’am,” said Blacktooth, bowing his way out of the chamber. Burke curtsied and limped after his captain.

  She turned to me. “Now, on your life, fool, the truth. Did you kill Robin Goodfellow?”

  “Why would I kill him? He was smaller than me. A rare pleasure. One so misses having someone to look down upon besides children and monkeys.”

  “Did you see who killed him?”

  “I did not. I heard him scream and ran to the stream to help. By the time I reached him, his heart’s blood was pumping out onto the stones.”

  “Did you see either of those two idiots take anything from the Puck’s body?”

  “No, ma’am. The Puck had nothing.”

  “He spoke to you? What did he say?”

  She seemed rather more disturbed than would a queen be by the death of a simple fool. Then I remembered the Puck had bragged of having shagged two queens that very day. I gentled my tone, for perhaps her fierceness was covering grief.

  “He said to remember his love to the queen, that is you, I presume.” A kind lie, what could it hurt?

  “It is. I am Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons.”

  “Well, that’s a wiggly wagonload of wench wank,” said I. “Amazons are mythology, fantasies penned by poets. What game are you about, madam?” Although, her chain mail and scars were not the usual decorations for a coddled class—

  “Why would I lie to a prisoner with only a tick left on the clock of his life? Believe me, fool.”

  “Lady, I am not like your watch captain, some dribbling fuckwit, although I do travel with one for emergencies.”

  “’Ello,” said Drool, his face in the window grate across the chamber. He had begun a rhythmic thumping on the door, and a great goofy grin painted his features in the window.

  “Drool, are you having a wank?”

  “Just a wee one,” said the oaf. “She are right fit, Pocket.”

  I grinned at Hippolyta. “Compliment, really, innit?”

  She waved off the distraction. “We’ll kill him later. Now, you, fool, what else did the Puck say?”

  “Just to remember him to the queen. Although I had seen him the day before and he was talking about putting a spell on some lovers for the shadow king. Did you know the Puck could turn a bloke invisible?”

  “Fairy,” she explained. She shrugged, then turned, strode to the rack of weapons, and snatched up a halberd. “And you, fool, you were two nights in the forest?”

  “I was.”

  She carried the halberd before her as if advancing on an enemy and I hopped away from the bars. This had gone pear-shaped rather quickly.

  “So you are not afraid to be in the forest at night?”

  “I am, generally, an indoor fool, but no, I am not afraid of the forest.”

  “The killer will be found in the forest.”

  “How do you know? There were watchmen and tradesmen from town there as well.”

  “The size of the bolt. It had to be a fairy. Wretched creatures.”

  She thrust the blade of the halberd through the bars. “Come here. I’ll cut your bonds.”

  “Fine, I have been dead twice in as many days, so I am well rehearsed and ready to hit my mark, milady.” I hopped forward, reticent, but truly, if she wanted to kill me there was no reason to do it herself, nor to be subtle about it. She sawed through the ropes on my hands and then my feet.

  “Thank you,” I said, shaking the blood back into my extremities.

  “You owe no fealty to king or country, then?” she asked.

  “No, milady. All my kings and queens reign only over worms. I am a free lance.”

  “You’ll have to do, then. I’ll have a passport made to give you safe passage among the watch and townsfolk. You are mine now—” She paused, leaned on the halberd. “You are called . . . ?”

  “Pocket, ma’am. Pocket of Dog Snogging upon Ouze, all-licensed fool to Lear of Britain, consort and king to Cordelia of Britain, France, Burgundy—”

  “Enough,” she said.

  “He are a smashing pirate, too,” said Drool, who had finished his dread business. “Pocket are the dog’s bollocks.”

  I bowed at the flattery.

  “You are mine now, Pocket,” said Hippolyta. “You must return to the forest. I need to know where the Puck was, who he spoke to, what he said, what happened to what he was carrying, and yes, who killed him if that comes up.”

  “The Puck said he could put a girdle around the Earth in forty minutes. It may take me some time to retrace his path.”

  “You have three days. You must return before the third watch on the night of my wedding, three days hence. Come directly here, to the gendarmerie. Tell Blacktooth, and have him come only to me, not the duke.”

  “Blacktooth? Ma’am, if discretion is required . . .”

  “Quite right. Blacktooth is much too much the crashing ox for subterfuge and guile. Burke then.”

  “I’ll need my daggers,” said I. “Over there on the floor, by the chair.”

  She fetched my daggers and grabbed a great iron key from a hook on the wall by a rack of halberds. She tossed my bundled daggers through the bars. This da
ft tart was actually going to let me go. As I strapped on my daggers she turned the key in the lock. “I’ll need to take along my apprentice, as well,” I said.

  She threw the door open and stepped aside. “Three days or the giant dies.”

  I might have run then, bolted down the tunnel and out into the city, but she had, quite deftly, drawn one of my daggers from its sheath and put the point under my chin.

  “I will cut your throat where you stand,” she said. “Harken, fool, I do not trust the duke’s men or the watch. My warriors are confined to the castle, and the townsfolk are afraid to go into the forest at night. You are the only one who can do this, and not because I have any reason to trust you, but because I trust you know that I will kill both you and your great simple friend, slowly and painfully, if you do not do as I command. And if you think to turn to your dark magic, remember this mercy I extend to you now, your life.”

  “You fancy me, don’t you?”

  She grabbed me by the jerkin and threw me across the chamber into the rack of spears. They rattled down over me. I climbed out from under the weaponry.

  “A little bit?”

  Chapter 6

  Once a Hero

  As I made my way out of the gendarmerie I stepped lightly and sang a little song called “Blacktooth the Goat Blower,” which I composed as I went, my spirits lifted for the first time since my pirate wench had abandoned me to suffer among the salty dogs. I suppose it is a testament to my rebellious nature that I do not feel alive unless I am under threat of death by some poxy royal. I am a bit of a calamity whore, I figure, but with Hippolyta’s sword hanging o’er my head, I was absolutely giddy with the prospect of my task. I even encouraged the young, spot-faced watchman who escorted me out to join in on the “Goat Blower” chorus, but alas, he was too earnest in his duty.

  I made note of my path—locks, gates, and portals—as I went, should I need to return in stealth to extricate an enormous ninny and sneak him by a half-dozen watchmen and as many guards. (Drool’s forlorn farewells had shaken me as I left the dungeon, and I had promised him I would return.) At last the labyrinth opened into the bright, cobbled street bustling with peddlers, beggars, and bawds. I caught the aroma of peaches wafting from a basket on a passing merchant’s back, a perfume so sweet as to roil a starving fool’s stomach. But alas, I had no coin.

  “Buy us a peach, lad,” I said to Spot Face.

  Spot Face snatched a peach off the top of the basket and tossed it to me. “Watchmen don’t have to pay,” he said.

  “Wanker,” the merchant grumbled as he ambled away.

  I bit into the peach with such abandon that I nearly chipped a tooth on the pit, and as the juice streamed down my chin I thought I might swoon—I closed my eyes and sank into the sweet peachy oblivion of it—but before I could take a second bite I was caught up and lifted roughly by the armpits, and my peach, my gentle fuzzy friend, was dashed on the cobbles.

  “Duke wants to see you,” said Blacktooth, who had hooked me under my right arm.

  “Thought you were away, eh, wee pirate?” said Burke, who had me under the left arm.

  I made as if to struggle and when the watchmen braced against my efforts I swung my feet forward, then back over my head into a somersault, and slipped out of their grip, landing in a crouch in front of Spot Face with a dagger in each hand. Before Blacktooth and Burke had turned I was behind Spot Face with one dagger at his throat. The other I flipped and held by the blade, and held ready to send it to a happy home in Blacktooth’s eye.

  “Back! Another step and I’ll cut his throat.”

  Blacktooth looked to Burke, Burke to Blacktooth with a shrug, then to me said, “Go on then.”

  “I will,” said I. “I’ll spill his lifeblood out onto the cobbles.”

  “Get on with it, then,” said Blacktooth. “Then we’re off to see the duke.”

  I found it odd that neither drew a weapon. Burke’s crossbow remained slung across his back, Blacktooth’s sword in its scabbard.

  “Look there,” said I, nodding toward my fallen peach, “you’ve ruined a perfectly lovely peach and this lad will pay for it with his life.” Spot Face squirmed in my grip and I pressed the tip of my dagger into his neck to still him.

  “Oh, all right,” said Blacktooth. He ambled to where my peach had fallen, took a small knife from his belt and trimmed off the bit where I’d taken a bite, then spat on the fuzzy bit and wiped it on his sleeve. He held the peach out to me. “Here you be.”

  “Aye, slay the lad, take your peach, and we’ll be on our way,” said Burke. “The duke is waiting.”

  “Oh bugger,” said I. “I’m not going to kill this pup for the loss of a peach.” I shoved Spot Face away and sheathed one of my daggers. In the same motion I pulled a chit of wood from my belt, a royal seal was impressed upon it in sealing wax. “But I’ve this passport from Hippolyta, and I’ll wager if you cross her, she’ll decorate her bedposts with your heads merely for the music of the night wind whistling through your eye holes.”

  “Come along,” said Blacktooth. “Put up that pig sticker and follow us. You’re not a prisoner. Duke just wants a word.”

  “Fine,” said I.

  “Fine,” said Burke.

  “Fine!” said Spot Face, his voice breaking with impotent outrage. “Take your bloody puppet stick, then.” He pulled the puppet Jones from his belt and tossed him at me. “I hope the duke spears your liver.” He looked to his superiors as if to add them to his curse but stopped himself and stormed back into the tunnel.

  “Fine,” said Blacktooth, who, to my surprise, turned to lead us around the wall of the castle, rather than back into the gendarmerie.

  The duke’s castle was not the gleaming marble edifice with gobs of columns that I’d been led to expect from Greek etchings and pots, but a squat and sturdy fortress atop a plateau (the stone hill into which the dungeon and gendarmerie had been carved). Along the battlements stood a guard every two yards, and even as we passed through the halls a pair of guards stood outside every doorway—a heavy martial presence for a kingdom at peace. In the great hall—a soaring, well-windowed, Gothic chamber, built later than the thick outer walls and other buildings in the bailey—I saw the reason for so much military. Fighting men wearing the duke’s crest stood around the walls of the chamber and on the six balconies above, numbering perhaps fifty in all, but between each man-at-arms stood another warrior, a woman, and these soldiers, decked in leather, mail, and plate, as muscled and scarred as their male cohorts, were unarmed. Amazons. Hippolyta’s soldiers.

  “We’ll have them daggers,” said Burke. “Just while you’re seeing the duke. You’ll get them back.”

  What damage they thought a speck of a fool could do with throwing daggers when surrounded by a hundred soldiers, I could not figure, so I unstrapped the harness from under my jerkin and handed it to Burke.

  “Only two? Where’s the other blade, fool?”

  “Left it behind,” said I. “Needed the spot in the sheath for that bolt, there. Orders of Queen Hippolyta.” And indeed, the harness held only two of my knives, for in the third slot was snuggled the black bolt taken from the Puck’s ribs. Burke nodded as if he understood, not considering there might be an errant dagger wandering around his jail.

  They led me past a dais upon which sat a simple throne, to a door at the back of the chamber. A guard thumped the shaft of his spear on the floor twice. Burke shoved me through the door into a vaulted antechamber containing a long wooden table, at the head of which stood a rather road-worn chap of perhaps sixty hard summers, wearing an extravagant robe trimmed in gold and a thin golden crown fitted over iron-gray curls: Theseus, Duke of Athens.

  Blacktooth and Burke immediately took a knee and bowed their heads. The guards, spaced about the room, Amazon and Athenian alternating, a dozen in all, clicked their heels. Theseus sat, arms folded, as if waiting for something, then a tall old fellow in a silk robe and hat scampered out from behind an arras and unrolled a scroll.
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  “Egeus,” whispered Blacktooth.

  “Lord high steward,” whispered Burke.

  “Toady,” said I, sotto voce.

  Egeus, his head thrown back as if trying to stanch a nosebleed, read from the scroll: “His Grace, Theseus, beloved High Duke of Athens, who defeated Sinis, the pine bender, vanquished Procrustes of the tortuous bed, dispatched the fire-breathing bull of Marathon, slew the Minotaur of the Cretan labyrinth, who defeated Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, and did bring her kingdom under the loving protection of Attica.”

  “Well that’s a bubbly basin of bull bollocks,” said the puppet Jones.

  There were various gasps from around the chamber, even from Blacktooth and Burke. One of the Amazons behind Theseus giggled, then caught herself and looked stern. A scribe, sitting by Theseus with quill and parchment, paused in his scratching as if considering whether he should write down puppet-speak.

  I looked askance at Jones and shook him on his stick. “Beg pardon, Your Grace, the puppet’s been enchanted since yesterday.” It was I working Jones this time, because someone had to speak truth to power—and it was bollocks. The Theseus of legend, who had defeated the Minotaur, would have had to be a thousand years old now—but better the puppet lose his head than I, should Theseus prove less feeble than he appeared.

  “The fool and pirate Pocket of Dog Snogging,” announced Burke, pushing me forward so I stood at the end of the table opposite Theseus.

  “Enchanted?” asked Theseus.

  “Aye,” said I. The scribe scribbled and looked up, distressed.

  The duke said, “The captain of the watch tells me that Hippolyta gave you audience this morning. Of what did you speak?”

  “This and that, Your Grace. It is not my place to say, but if you ask the lady, I trust she will tell you.”

  “You will tell me. If you lie, your life is forfeit.”

  I drove a quick, sharp boot heel into Blacktooth’s shin. “You said he just wanted to chat!” Burke made as if to restrain me and I smacked him sharply on the bottom on the spot where I’d sent a dagger a day before. He yowled and limped in a tight circle.