Shakespeare for Squirrels

by Christopher Moore

  The fairies around the green bowed or averted their eyes. Those who had been working in the ribs of the growing dome clung close to their branches as if trying to become unseen, and while all attention was upon the fairy queen, all pretended to attend to other quiet occupations to create a privacy in the midst of a crowd. I had seen such behavior before, in the mobs about the pagan henges, when the Druids searched for the suitable sacrifice. Fear. Even cheeky Cobweb had folded herself into a stand of tall ferns and grabbed only furtive glances at her fairy queen through the parted fronds.

  “Help,” Bottom whispered, but alas, no plan of action came to mind. I was here to see the queen and it appeared that I was doing quite well at it.

  Titania moaned softly as she stroked Bottom’s ears, her eyes closed, head thrown back as if in an ecstatic trance, running one hand up his ear, the other down the leg of his trousers, her cheek to his bristly muzzle, even as he nuzzled tighter against my shoulder to escape her. The queen pressed her breasts against Bottom’s arm as he pulled closer to me. She took a long ear in each hand and pulled herself hard against Bottom’s leg; he turned to keep the great growing donkey dong snaking down his trousers away from her, me trying to escape both, which resulted in the three of us doing a rather slow turn in the middle of the forest, until Titania, in renewing her grip upon Bottom’s ear, caught one of the tentacles of my hat, yanking it off my head, at which time she ceased moaning, opened her eyes, and looked at the black and silver hat in her hand, half expecting, I suppose, to find a severed donkey ear, but alas, no. She slid down Bottom’s leg to her feet and peeked around the cringing ass-man’s head to look me in the eye.

  “Hello,” said I.

  “Who are you?”

  “Pocket of Dog Snogging,” I said. “Royal fool, onetime king, and current emissary of Theseus of Athens.” As Cobweb had suggested, I pulled Theseus’s passport from my belt and held it out so she could see the seal. “I have been sent,” said I. I bowed, as much as I could with Bottom clinging to me.

  She looked at the seal, looked at me, looked at the seal, looked at Bottom, cowering against my shoulder, shook her head in what appeared to be disgust, looked at me again, then turned and walked through one of the arches into the makeshift palace. Over her shoulder, she called, “Wash the cheese stink off of him and bring him to me.”

  A rather small boy of perhaps eight, naked, brown, and scrawny, peeked out of Titania’s litter, then, seeing that the path was clear, padded after her into the green palace.

  * * *

  The fairy queen reclined in a raised nest under the domed chamber lit by lamps full of fireflies and a portal in the ceiling open to the moon. I stood before her, naked but for my puppet stick and a vine-belted loincloth the fairies had wrapped me in, and, except for my face and hands, nearly as pale as the fairy queen herself (no one wins the war of the wan against a sun-starved son of England), if a bit pink from the sand scrubbing the fairies had given me at the stream to remove the odor of cheese. (And I had shared my sack of victuals with them to boot, ungrateful, dog-eared vermin.) Cobweb and Moth attended Titania in her nest, weaving fresh blossoms into her hair. Bottom cowered in the far side of the nest, where Peaseblossom scratched his ears with a forked green stick. The other fairies I knew had blended back into the multitude. Some busied themselves with trussing up the last few branches on the dome, others slowly crept away into the forest. It had been no different in the stone castles and palaces where I’d lived and attended; one served as quickly as possible and left the court to their own dirty dealings, except Titania had no court, no clerks or guards. When the scene settled, there were only the servants who waited on her, fewer than a dozen, none armed. Somewhere out of sight, someone played softly on a pan flute.

  “So, fool,” said Titania, “what is the message you have brought me from Theseus?”

  “Not so much a message as questions, ma’am. First, when was the last you saw the Puck?”

  Titania sat up and waved Cobweb and Moth away. Cobweb was shaking her head furiously at me as she retreated to the back of the nest with Bottom, Peaseblossom, and the small brown boy, who was curled into a ball as if trying to disappear up his own bum. “Just that?” said the queen. “Theseus wants to know when I last saw the Puck? Just that?”

  “No, there are others, ma’am, but I’m not to ask them until you answer the first.”

  “I am the queen of the night, fool. Ruler of all the fields, forests, and fairies. Only with the dances of my fairies do the grains ripen, the apple trees blossom, the clouds bring life-giving rain. Only by my command do tides turn and the moon bless the fertile fruit of babies to be born. You stand before me, in my palace, and dare to ask trifling questions? You would hold messages from a king hostage under condition of my answers? In my palace?”

  “So, last evening, I’m told, was when last you saw the Puck?”

  The night queen leapt to her feet, leaving her garlands in a pile, and although I was still heartbroken and not attuned to such tastes, she was right fit for an ancient fucking fairy, and if Cobweb was right, and the queen was to have her way with me, I would try to savor my suffering.

  “Insolent fool, on your life now, deliver Theseus’s message or suffer my wrath.”

  “Will you be especially wrathful, then?” I inquired.

  “I will.” She seemed less sure than when she’d first spoken. “Probably.”

  “Well then, I should get to it. Theseus wondered if you received the message he sent by way of the Puck.”

  “I did,” said the night queen.

  “Aha!” said I, storming up to the very edge of her nest, which was built upon some small tree, higher than my head, so I backed up a bit so I could look the queen in the eye. “Aha!” I repeated. “So you did see the Puck last evening?”

  “Yes, I just saw no reason to tell you.”

  “And what was that message?”

  “Theseus sent you, and Theseus knows, does he not?”

  “He forgot, so I was to ask again.”

  “He did not forget, fool. Must I have you seized and scrubbed again?”

  Truth be told, I hadn’t been so much seized as the fairies had asked me to come along, and they were so enthusiastic and annoying that I accompanied them to the stream and submitted to their scrubbing on the condition that my kit was kept close at hand, except for my codpiece, of course, with which Mustardseed had absconded into the wood. Still, if Titania felt a good sand scrubbing was a viable threat, who was I to disabuse her of the notion?

  “Oh no, ma’am, not that. But the duke was expecting you to send something to him with the Puck and he wonders if you sent it.”

  “He does not know?”

  “Well, no, since nothing was found with the Puck when they found his body.”

  And everything paused, as if everyone in earshot were gathering a breath for a song.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Pocket!” said Cobweb, which came out rather louder than I think she expected. Titania and all the fairies turned to regard Cobweb, and the girl fairy slid her bycocket hat down over her face and attempted to hide behind Bottom, who had folded his long ears down over his eyes and was pretending to sleep.

  “Which you knew because you killed him,” said the puppet Jones, in my voice, as I was working his string. And suddenly everyone’s attention turned from Cobweb to the puppet, as had been my intent.

  “Apologies, ma’am,” said I. “Your fairies gave the puppet a good scrubbing as well and he’s surly when he’s damp.”

  “Aye,” said the puppet Jones. “Cross as a cat when wet, I am.”

  “Aye,” said I.

  “Aye,” said Jones.

  Titania’s mad green eyes went wider. “What sorcery is this?”

  “Simple fool craft, ma’am. Nothing any extraordinarily talented jester could not do.”

  “Like the Puck?” she said.

  Behind the queen Cobweb had peeked out from behind Bottom and was nodding at me hard enough to shake her eyeballs
free of their sockets.

  “Aye, ma’am. Just like the Puck, who is, if I had not made it clear, quite dead.”

  “Dead?” said she.

  “Quite.”

  Whispering commenced in the ferns and shadows—fairy voices trying to hush alarm and disbelief. Heart-shaped faces peeked out from the branches above, one fairy, who must have been hiding in the green dome, lost his grip and plummeted into the middle of Titania’s nest, then, before anyone could react, jumped to his feet and swung out the far side of the nest and out of sight. The odd sob and sniffle sounded out of the dark. The pan flute ceased.

  “Murdered, ma’am,” said I. “With—” I looked for my clothes and weapons. “Where’s my kit?” I called to the gallery.

  Mustardseed popped up out of a stand of ferns and strutted forward, codpiece on his prow rigged for ramming, carrying a bundle of my clothes, the harness with my daggers draped over the top. He set the bundle at my feet and stepped back, grinning like a loony, first at me, then at the queen, then at me again.

  “Thank you. Well done,” said I. “Fuck off, then.”

  Mustardseed proceeded to fuck off back to his hiding place, but Titania called him back. “Wait, you.”

  Mustardseed waited, turned, grinned, basked in the attention of his queen.

  “What is your name?” asked Titania.

  “Mustardseed, ma’am,” said the prong-donged fairy.

  “Mustardseed, join my personal attendants tonight.” She beckoned him up into the nest, then shooed him to the back with Bottom and the others. She turned to me. “So, the Puck is slain?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. Murdered last morning with this.” I held up the black crossbow bolt.

  “He was a . . .” Titania seemed to be searching for a tribute to the fallen jester, searched the air before her as if it might be written in fireflies, then sighed and gave up. “And who did this dread deed?”

  “That is what I am to find out.” I tried my thumb on the point of the bolt. “By Theseus’s order. So, Your Grace, if I may, did you give something to the Puck?”

  “I did. A potion, a flower really. But I haven’t another. They grow it in a faraway land, and the Puck was the only one who could fetch it and return before it lost its power. Unless you would like to fetch another for your master, Theseus.”

  Cobweb peeked out again from behind Bottom and gave me a stern look I took to mean, “If you give up the game now, you jabbering jizzwhistle, I will murder you in your sleep.” A look I had learned to recognize over my many years of dealing with the more delicate sex.

  “Oh, I could shag a brace of queens and put a girdle around the Earth in thirty minutes, if I so desired, but Theseus seemed rather determined I find out who killed the Puck. However, if you are the killer, I’ll have my answer and can fetch your flower and perform whatever other Puckish duties you require.”

  She did seem rather unmoved by the demise of a fellow she’d bonked only the day before—if the Puck was to be believed—but royals can be fickle fucks in affairs of the heart, or that has been my experience.

  “Me? Of course not. Robin Goodfellow was in my service, I would not harm any in my charge, for I love them as my own children. I see to the change of tides and the warm winds that bring fertile fruit to the valleys. I command the moon and—”

  “Right, right, right, you can roll road apples into gold, and I would be in slack-jawed awe at your power and splendor if you didn’t live up a fucking tree, so, if I may, where were you at dawn today, and was there anyone with you at the time?”

  “I was here, in my nest, until late morning, watching the sweet creatures of the forest lick the morning dew from the leaves.”

  “You weren’t here when I woke up,” brayed Bottom. He’d climbed to his feet and come to the fore of the nest. “I looked everywhere for you. Was still looking for you when I ran into this lot in the evening.”

  Titania’s face hid a storm full of clouds as anger, and fear, and confusion passed over her.

  “Tits are flushing, ma’am,” said I. Well they were! If she was going to run around in the altogether, she needed to get control over her bubbly bits or she’d never master proper royal subterfuge and guile. “Bit of a tell, love, the pinkening of the knockers, on someone as fair as thou.”

  “Oberon!” she blurted out. “The shadow king killed the Puck, or he will know who did. That arrow is from his people.”

  “Don’t you have the same people?”

  “No, I am queen of the fairies, he, well, his is a darker lot.”

  “Goblins,” said Bottom.

  “How do you fucking know?” I said. “Yesterday you thought I was a bloody elf.”

  “It has been a strange day’s night. I have seen things. Horrible things.”

  Titania glared at the ass-man and he retreated to the back of the nest with Cobweb, Peaseblossom, and the brown boy. Evidently the queen’s infatuation with Bottom had come to an end.

  “So, goblins?” I prompted Titania.

  “Oberon’s goblins have such weapons,” she said. “You’ll find your answer at the Night Palace.”

  Her knockers had gone snowy again, so I presumed she was not lying.

  “And why, lady, do you not reside with the shadow king? He is your consort, I presume.”

  “Oberon and I are quarreling. He wished to take my young charge as a squire and I will not have it. I was ejected from the palace and he has forbidden my fairies from dancing until I relent, which shall be forevermore, for I will not surrender my boy.”

  “You split the kingdom over a slave?”

  “The boy is not a slave. Come here, young master. Come, Raj.” She waved for the boy to come forward. He scurried to her side and hugged her hip as she tousled his hair. “His mother was a priestess of my order in India. And in the spiced Indian air, often she gossiped by my side. She would sit with me on Neptune’s yellow sands and we would laugh to see the sails conceive and grow big bellied with the wanton wind; even as my lady did grow big bellied with my squire. But being mortal, she did die of the boy, and for her sake do I rear him up, and for her sake I will not part with him. She was my friend.”

  “Well, children are a fucking blessing, aren’t they?” said I. “Especially if you get them when they’re grown and not so damp and leaky all the time. True joy. So, the potion you had the Puck fetch, what was it for?”

  She looked to the side, suddenly coy. “A little love potion. You drop the liquor from a small purple flower into the intended’s eyes, and upon awaking, they fall in love with the first creature they lay eyes on, be it man, woman, or beast.”

  “And who did he intend to use this potion upon?”

  “I know not. Perhaps, as he is your master, you should ask him. Perhaps if you find who wanted to stop the Puck from delivering it, you will find who it was for. Ask Oberon.”

  “That I will,” said I.

  “Then away to the Night Palace with you, fool.” She turned to her retinue. “Fairies, prepare me a bath.”

  The fairies, including Cobweb, Peaseblossom, and Mustardseed, scrambled upon her order.

  “Your Grace,” I called. “While I am the very model of the magical fucking fool, in this strange land I do not have my finding spells sorted, so if I may borrow one of your fairies to lead me to the Night Palace? A Mistress Cobweb who led me here was quite a competent navigator, and she is indifferent to my cheese odor.”

  “Poor thing,” said the queen. “Very well, Cobweb, go with this fool. Lead him to Oberon’s castle.”

  Cobweb scrambled out from behind the nesting tree, came to my side, and wetly whispered, “Get the others,” in my ear.

  “And, ma’am,” said I, “for some of my magics I will require others to attend, mainly to gather my scattered bits if something goes wrong. Might I borrow Peaseblossom, Moth, and Mustardseed as well?” The queen’s mad eyes were darting at the request, so I quickly added, “You’ll want as many fairy eyes in the Night Palace as possible, if the shadow king has tak
en to murder, don’t you think? I’ve played in a multitude of courts, and once the killing has started it seldom stops until everyone is dead. It would be wise to be informed of conditions.”

  “Very well.” She called the three fairies, and they scampered from various parts of the green cathedral and joined Cobweb and me, except Mustardseed, whom the queen called back. “Not you. I’ll need you to attend me in my bath.”

  Mustardseed winked at me, honked his codpiece (for certainly it was his now, as he was about to earn it), and swung himself back up into the nest.

  “You’ll need a passport, beyond that of Theseus’s, or Oberon’s goblins may slay you while you’re still in the wood.” She reached into her hair and plucked a small white flower. “Raj?” Without looking back the little Indian boy came forward, took the flower from her, leapt to the ground, and gave it to me.

  “It’s a flower,” said I.

  “Yes, Oberon and his people will know it is mine and that you are under my protection.”

  “But it’s a flower. A tender one at that. It will wilt.”

  “Then you had better hurry, hadn’t you? And when you are finished, before you return to Theseus, return here and tell me what you found. Take note of any mortals in the Night Palace.”

  I bowed. “As you wish, ma’am.”

  Cobweb was already headed into the woods, the other fairies right behind her. I picked up my kit, tucked Titania’s passport flower in my hat, and started to follow.

  “Master Pocket!” called Bottom. “Please, I am transformed and we have a play to do and I must get home or Mrs. Bottom will be very cross.”

  I shrugged. I knew not how I could pry the weaver-turned-ass away from the fairy queen. “Can you help him, ma’am? When you are no longer in need of his services, that is. He is expected to perform at the duke’s wedding.”

  “Take him. I am finished with him,” she said. “Go, creature. Go with him.”

  “And could you turn him back to Nick Bottom the weaver, so as not to detract from his performance?”