Fool (english)

could only watch. But Albany moved quickly down the table and stayed the king’s hand, pushing his sword back down into the scabbard.
    Kent grinned then, the old bear, and I saw that he wouldn’t have drawn blade on the old man at all. He would have died to make his point to the king. What’s more, Lear knew it, too, but there was no mercy in his eye and the madness had gone cold. He shook himself free of Albany’s grasp, and the duke backed away.
    When Lear spoke again his voice was low, restrained, but palsied with hate: “Hear me, thou traitorous ferret. No one challenges my authority, my decisions, or my vows-to do so on British land is death, and in the rest of the known world is war. I’ll not have it. Your years of service noted, I give you your life, but only your life, and never again in my sight. You have five days, Kent, to provision yourself, and on the sixth day, turn your back on our kingdom forever. If twelve days pass and you are still in the land, your life is forfeit. Now go, this is my decree and it shall not be revoked.”

    Kent was shaken. This was not the blade he had braced for. He bowed then. “Fare thee well, king. I go, for I dare to question a power so high that you give it away for a flattering tongue.” He turned to Cordelia then: “Take heart, girl, you’ve spoken truly and done nothing wrong. May the gods protect you.” He turned on a heel, putting his back to the king, something I’d never seen him do before, and marched out, pausing only a second to look at Regan and Goneril. “Well lied, you spiteful bitches.”
    I wanted to cheer the old brute, write a poem for him, but the hall had fallen silent and the sound of the great oaken door closing behind Kent echoed through the hall like the first thunder of a world-breaking storm.
    “Well,” said I, dancing to the middle of the floor. “I think that went about as well as could be expected.”

FIVE – PITY THE FOOL
    K ent banished, Cordelia disinherited, the king having given away his property and power, but most important, my home, the White Tower; the two older sisters insulted by Kent, the dukes ready to cut my throat, well-getting a laugh might be a challenge. Royal succession, it seemed, would not be a prudent subject to broach, and I was lost for a transition to slapstick or pantomime after Lear’s high drama, so Drool was but a millstone on comedy’s neck. I juggled apples and sang a little song about monkeys while I pondered the problem.
    The king was, of late, leaning decidedly pagan, while the elder sisters favored the Church. Gloucester and Edgar were devout to the Roman pantheon, and Cordelia, well, she thought the whole lot was shit and England should have her own church with women in the clergy. Quaint. So the high-minded comedy of religious satire it would be…
    I tossed my apples around the table and said, “Two popes are shagging a camel behind a mosque, when this Saracen comes up-”
    “There is only one, true pope!” shouted Cornwall, great tower of malignant smegma that he is.
    “It’s a jest, you wanker,” said I. “Suspend fucking disbelief for a bit, would you?”
    He was right, in a way (although not for the purpose of the camel bit). For the last year there had only been one pope, in the holy city of Amsterdam. But for the prior fifty years there had been two popes, the Retail Pope and the Discount Pope. After the Thirteenth Holy Crusade, when it was decided that to avoid future strife, the birthplace of Jesus would be moved to a different city every four years, holy shrines lost their geographical importance. There arose a great price war in the Church, with shrines offering pilgrims dispensation at varying competitive rates. Now there didn’t need to be a miracle declared on the spot; anywhere could basically be declared a holy site, and often was. Lourdes would still sell dispensation coupons with the healing waters-but also some bloke in Puddinghoe could plant some pansies and hawk, “Jesus had a wee right on this very spot when he was a lad-two pennies and a spliff of Cardiff chronic ’ill get you out o’ purgatory for an eon, mate.”
    Soon a whole guild of low-priced shrine keepers around Europe named their own Pope-Boldface the Relatively Shameless, Discount Pope of Prague. The price war was on. If the Dutch pope would give you a hundred years out of purgatory for a shilling and a ferryman’s ticket, the Discount Pope would let you out for two hundred years and send you