A girl stumbled down the street, a pretty little thing, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, with a tiny babe in arms. She stopped at every booth and showed them the babe, then the villagers would reward her with rude laughter and send her to the next booth.
“He’s a prince,” she said. “His father was a prince.”
“Go away, girl. You’re mad. No wonder no one will have you, tart.”
“But he’s a prince.”
“He looks to be a drowned puppy, lass. You’ll be lucky if he lives the week out.”
From one end of the village to the other she was laughed at and scorned. One woman, who must have been the girl’s mother, simply turned away and hid her face in shame.
I floated overhead as the girl ran to the edge of town, across the bridge where she’d been raped, and up to a compound of stone buildings, one with a great soaring steeple. A church. She made her way to the wide double door, and there, she lay her baby on the steps. I recognized those doors, I’d seen them a thousand times. This was the entrance to the abbey at Dog Snogging. The girl ran away and I watched, as a few minutes later, the doors opened and a broad-shouldered nun bent and picked up the tiny, squalling baby. Mother Basil had found him.
Suddenly I was at the river again, and the girl, that pretty little thing, stood on the wide stone rail of the bridge, crossed herself, and leapt in. She did not swim. The green water settled over her.
My mother.
When I awoke the witches were gathered around me like I was a sumptuous pie just out of the oven and they were ravenous pie whores.
“So, you’re a bastard then,” said Parsley.
“And an orphan,” said Sage.
“Both at once,” said Rosemary.
“Surprised, then?” said Parsley.
“Lear not quite the kind old codger you thought him, eh?”
“A royal bastard, you are.”
I gagged a bit, in response to the crones’ collective breath, and sat up. “Would you back off you disgusting old cadavers!”
“Well, strictly speakin’, only Rosemary’s a cadaver,” said the tall witch, Parsley.
“You drugged me, put that nightmare vision in my head.”
“Aye, we did drug you. But you was just looking through a window to the past. There was no vision except what happened.”
“Got to see your dear mum, didn’t you?” said Rosemary. “How lovely for you.”
“I had to watch her raped and driven to suicide, you mad hag.”
“You needed to know, little Pocket, before you went on to Dover.”
“Dover? I’m not going to Dover. I have no desire to see Lear.” Even as I said it I felt fear run down my spine like the tip of a spike. Without Lear, I was no longer a fool. I had no purpose. I had no home. Still, after what he had done, I would have to find some other means to make my way. “I can rent out Drool for plowing fields and hoisting bales of wool and such. We’ll make our way.”
“Maybe he wants to go on to Dover.”
I looked over to Drool, who I thought to still be asleep by the fire, but he was sitting there, staring at me wide-eyed, as if someone had frightened him and he’d forgotten how to talk.
“You didn’t give him the same potion you gave me, did you?”
“It was in the wine,” said Sage.
I went to the Natural and put my arm around his shoulder, or, as far around as I could reach, anyway. “Drool, lad, you’re fine, lad.” I knew how horrified I had been, with my superior mind and understanding of the world. Poor Drool must have been terrified. “What did you wicked hags show him?”
“He had a window on the past just like you.”
The great oaf looked up at me then. “I was raised by wolfs,” said he.
“Nothing can be done now, lad. Don’t be sad. We’ve all things in our past we were better not remembering.” I glared at the witches.
“I ain’t sad,” Drool said, standing up. He had to stoop to avoid hitting his head on the roof beams. “My brother nipped at me ’cause I didn’t have no fur, but he didn’t have no hands, so I throwed him against a tree and he didn’t get up.”
“You’re but a pathetic dimwit,” said I. “You can’t be blamed.”
“My mum only had eight teats, but after that there was only seven of us, so I got two. It were lovely.”
He didn’t really seem that bothered by the whole experience. “Tell me, Drool, have you always known you were raised by wolves?”
“Aye. I want to go outside and have a wee on a tree, now, Pocket. You want to come?”
“No, you go, love, I’m going to stay here and shout at the old ladies.” Once the Natural was gone I turned on them again. “I’m finished doing your bidding. Whatever politics you want to engineer I’ll have no more part of it.”
The crones laughed at me in chorus, then coughed until finally Rosemary, the greenish witch, calmed her breath with a sip of wine. “No, lad, nothing so sordid as politics, we’re about vengeance pure and simple. We don’t give a weasel’s twat about politics and succession.”
“But you’re evil incarnate and in triplicate, aren’t you?” said I, respectfully. One must give due.
“Aye, evil is our trade, but not so deep a darkness as politics. Better business to dash a suckling babe’s brains upon the bricks than to boil in that tawdry cauldron.”
“Aye,” said Sage. “Breakfast, anyone?” She was stirring something in the cauldron, I assumed it was the leftover hallucination wine from the night before.
“Well, revenge, then. I’ve no taste left for it.”
“Not even for revenge on the bastard Edmund?”
Edmund? What a storm of suffering that blackguard had loosed upon the world, but still, if I never had to see him again, couldn’t I forget about his damage?
“Edmund will find his just reward,” said I, not believing it for a second.
“And Lear?”
I was angry with the old man, but what revenge would I have on him now? He had lost all. And I had always known him to be cruel, but so long as his cruelty didn’t extend to me, I was blind to it. “No, not even Lear.”
“Fine, then, where will you go?” asked Sage. She pulled a ladle of steaming liquid from the pot and blew on it.
“I’ll take the Natural into Wales. We can call at castles until someone takes us in.”
“Then you’ll miss the Queen of France at Dover?”
“Cordelia? I thought bloody fucking froggy King Jeff was at Dover. Cordelia is with him?”
The hags cackled. “Oh no, King Jeff is in Burgundy. Queen Cordelia commands the French forces at Dover.”
“Oh bugger,” said I.
“You’ll want to take them poisons we fixed for you,” said Rosemary. “Keep them on you at all times. A need for them will present itself.”
TWENTY-ONE
AT THE WHITE CLIFFS
“Pocket,” said Cordelia, “have you ever heard of this warrior queen named Boudicca?” Cordelia was about fifteen at the time, and she had sent for me because she wished to discuss politics. She lay on her bed with a large leather volume open before her.
“No, lamb, who was she queen of?”
“Why, of the pagan Britons. Of us.” Lear had recently shifted back to the pagan beliefs, thus opening a whole new world of learning for Cordelia.
“Ah, that explains it. Educated in a nunnery, love, I’ve a very shallow knowledge of pagan ways, although I have to say, their festivals are smashing. Rampant drunken shagging while wearing flower wreaths seems far superior to midnight mass and self-flagellation, but then, I’m a fool.”
“Well, it says here that she kicked nine colors of shit out of the Roman legions when they invaded.”
“Really, that’s what it says, nine colors of shit?”
“I’m paraphrasing. Why do you think we’ve no warrior queens anymore?”