“I’ll go get help to crank up the gate,” said Kent.
“Not to worry. You look after the Natural, and watch your back for Edmund and Oswald. I’ll return with the old man when I can.” And with that I shoved Jones down the back of my jerkin, ran and leapt onto the massive chain, spidered up it hand over hand, swung up onto one of the beams that protruded from the stone above, then hopped from beam to beam until I could find a handhold in the stone—and scurried up another story to the top of the wall. “Sorry sodding fortress,” I shouted to Kent with a wave. In a wink I was over the wall and down the drawbridge chains on the other side to the ground below.
The old man was already at the gates of the walled village, nearly disappearing amid the rain, tottering out onto the heath in his fur cape, looking like an ancient sodden rat.
ACT III
Jesters do oft prove prophets.
— King Lear, Act V, Scene 3, Regan
SEVENTEEN
REIGNING FOOLS, HAILING NUTTERS
“Blow, wind, crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!” thundered Lear.
The old man had perched himself on the top of a hill outside Gloucester and was shouting into the wind like a bloody lunatic, even as lightning raked the sky with white-hot claws and thunder shook me to my ribs.
“Come in from there, you bloody decrepit old looney!” said I, huddled under a holly bush nearby; drenched and cold and at the end of my patience with the old man. “Come back to Gloucester and ask shelter from your daughters.”
“Oh, ye heartless gods! Send your oak-cleaving thunderbolts down on me!
Burn me with your sulfurous and life-ending fires!
Singe my white head and reduce me to a pillar of ash!
Strike me dead! Let your wrath take fiery form and smite me!
Take me, spare no violence!
I do not blame thee, thou art not my daughters!
I’ve given you nothing and expect no quarter!
Do your horrible pleasure direct,
To a poor, infirm, despised old man!
Crack the sky! Strike me dead!”
The old man paused as a thunderbolt split a tree on the heath with blinding fire and a noise that would send statues to shitting themselves. I ran out from under my bush to the king’s side.
“Come in, nuncle. Take some shelter under a shrub, if only to take the sting out of the rain.”
“I need no shelter. Let nature take her naked revenge.”
“Fine, then,” said I. “Then you won’t be needing this.” I took the old man’s heavy fur cape, tossed him my sodden woolen cloak, and retreated to my shrubbery and the relative shelter of the heavy animal skin.
“Hey?” said Lear, bewildered.
“Go on,” said I. “Crack the sky, fry your old head, mash your balls, et cetera, et cetera. I’ll prompt you if you lose your place.”
And off he went again:
“Mighty Thor, send your thunderbolts to cease this weary heart!
Neptune’s waves, beat these limbs from their joints!
Hecate’s claws, tear my liver and sup upon my soul!
Baal, blast my bowels from their unhealthy home!
Jupiter, strew the land with my shredded muscle!”
The old man stopped his tirade for a moment and the madness went out of his eyes. He looked to me. “It’s really fucking cold out here.”
“Like being struck by a bolt of the bloody obvious on the road to Damascus, innit, nuncle?” I held open the great fur cloak and nodded for the old man to join me in it under my shrubbery. He crept down the hill, careful not to slip in the rivulets of mud and water that cascaded by, and ducked under the cover with me.”
The old man shuddered and put his skeletal arm around my shoulders. “Rather closer than we’re accustomed to, eh, boy?”
“Aye, nuncle, did I ever tell you that you are a very attractive man?” said Jones, poking his puppety head out of the cloak.
And the old man began to laugh, and he laughed until his shoulders shook and the laughter broke into a jarring cough, and that continued until I thought he might expectorate vital organs. I caught some freezing rain in my cupped hand and held it for him to sip.
“Don’t make me laugh, boy. I’m mad with grief and rage and I’ve no stomach for jests. You should stand clear, lest a thunderbolt scorch you when the gods heed my challenge.”
“Nuncle, begging pardon, but, you arrogant old tosser! The gods aren’t going to strike you down with a thunderbolt simply because you asked them. Why would they accommodate you with a thunderbolt? More likely a carbuncle, festered and gone fatal, or perhaps a thankless child or two, being how the gods love their irony.”
“The cheek!” said Lear.
“Oh yes, cheeky gods they are,” said I. “And you named off a bushel of them, too. Now if you are struck down we won’t even know who to blame unless lightning brands a signature in your old hide. You should have dared one, then waited an hour perhaps before calling fire down from the whole lot at a go.”
The king wiped rain out of his eyes. “I’ve set a thousand monks and nuns to pray for my forgiveness and the pagans slaughter goats by the herd for my salvation, but I fear it is not enough. Not once did I act in the interest of my people, not once did I act in the interest of my wives or my daughters’ mothers—I have served myself as god and I find I am little forgiving. Be kind, Pocket, lest you one day face the darkness as I do. Or, in absence of kindness, be drunk.”
“But, nuncle,” said I. “I do not need to be cautious for the day when I become frail. I am frail now. And on the bright side, there may be no God at all, and the evil deeds you’ve done will be their own reward.”
“Perhaps I don’t even rate a righteous slaughtering,” sobbed Lear. “The gods have sent these daughters to suck out my life blood. It is punishment for how I treated my own father. Do you know how I became king?”
“Pulled a sword out of a stone and slayed a dragon with it, didn’t you?”
“No, that never happened.”
“Sodding convent education. Buggered if I know then, nuncle. How did Lear become king?”
“My own father, I murdered him. I do not deserve a noble death.”
I was speechless. I had been in service of the king over a decade and never had I heard of this. The story went that old King Bladud had handed the kingdom over to Lear and went to Athens, where he learned to be a necromancer, then returned to Britain and died from the plague in service of the goddess Minerva at the temple at Bath. But before I could gather my wits for a reply, lightning cracked the sky, illuminating a hulking creature that was making its way across the hillside toward us.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A demon,” said the old man. “The gods have sent a monster to take their revenge on me.”
The thing was covered in slime, and walking as if it had just been constructed from the very earth over which it slogged. I felt for the daggers at the small of my back and pulled one from its sheath. There’d be no knife throwing in this downpour—I wasn’t even sure I could hold the blade steady for a thrust.
“Your sword, Lear,” said I. “Draw and defend.” I stood and stepped out of the shelter of the shrubbery. I spun Jones so his stick end was at the ready, and drew a flourish in the air with my dagger.
“Come hither, demon! Pocket’s got a coach ride back to the underworld for thee.”
I crouched, thinking to leap aside as the thing lunged. Although it described the shape of a man, I could see long slimy tendrils dragging from it, and mud oozing off of it. Once it stumbled I’d leap on its back and see if I could cause it to fall and slide down the hillside, away from the old king.