Fool (english)

and a wagon with a cage built on it, which held eight of the royal falcons.
    “We’ll be raiding farms before we get to Leeds,” said Hunter, a stout, leather-clad man, thirty winters on his back. “I can’t feed this lot-and they’ve not enough stowed to last them a week.”
    “Cry calamity if you will, Hunter, but I’m the one to keep them in good spirits when their bellies are empty.”
    “Aye, I’ve no envy for you, fool. Is that why you ride back here with we catch-farts and not at the king’s side?”
    “Just drawing plans for a bawdy song at supper without the clank of armor in my ear, good Hunter.”
    I wanted to tell Hunter that I was not overburdened by my duties, but by my disdain for the senile king who had sent my princess away. And I wanted time to ponder the ghost’s warnings. The bit about daughters three and the king becoming a fool had come to pass, or at least was in the way of it. So the girl ghost had predicted the “ grave offense ” to “ daughter’s three ” even if all the daughters had not seen the offense yet-when Lear arrived at Albany with this rowdy retinue, offense would soon follow. But what of this: “When a second sibling’s base derision, proffers lies that cloud the vision” ?
    Did it mean the second daughter? Regan? What did it matter if her lies clouded Lear’s vision? The king was nearly blind as it was, his eyes milky with cataract-I’d taken to describing my pantomimes as I performed them so the old man would not miss the joke. And with no power, what tie could be severed that would make a difference now? A war between the two dukes? None of it about me, why do I care?
    Why then would the ghost appear to this most irrelevant and powerless fool? I puzzled it, and fell far behind the column, and when I stopped to have a wee, was accosted by a brigand.
    He came up from behind a fallen tree, a great bear of a fiend, his beard matted and befouled with food and burrs, a maelstrom of grey hair flying about under a wide-brimmed black hat. I may have screamed in surprise, and a less educated ear might have likened my shriek to that of a little girl, but be assured it was most manly and more for the fair warning of my attacker, for next I knew I had pulled a dagger from the small of my back and sent it flying. His miserable life was saved only by my slight miscalculation of his distance-the butt of my blade bounced off his behatted noggin with a thud.
    “Ouch! Fuck’s sake, fool. What is wrong with you?”
    “Hold fast, knave,” said I. “I’ve two more blades at the ready, and these I’ll send pointy end first-the quality of my mercy having been strained and my ire aroused by having peed somewhat upon my shoes.” I believed it a serviceable threat.

    “Hold your blades, Pocket. I mean you no harm,” came the voice under the hat brim. Then, “ Y Ddraig Goch ddyry gychwyn .”
    I wound up to send my second dagger to the scoundrel’s heart, “You may know my name, but that gargling with catsick that you’re doing will not stop me from dropping you where you stand.”
    “Ydych chi’n cymryd cerdynnau credid? ” said the highwayman, no doubt trying to frighten me further, his consonants chained like anal beads strung out of hell’s own bunghole.
    “I may be small, but I’m not a child to be afraid of a pretended demon speaking in tongues. I’m a lapsed Christian and a pagan of convenience. The worst I can do on my conscience is cut your throat and ask the forest to count it as a sacrifice come the Yule, so cease your nonsense and tell me how you know my name.”
    “It’s not nonsense, it’s Welsh,” said the brigand. He folded back the brim of his hat and winked. “What say you save your wicked sting for an enemy true? It’s me, Kent. In disguise.”
    Indeed, it was, the king’s old banished friend-all of his royal trappings but his sword gone-he looked like he’d slept in the woods the week since I’d last seen him.
    “Kent, what are you doing here? You’re as good as dead if the king sees you. I thought you’d be in France by now.”
    “I’ve no place to go-my lands and title are forfeit, what family I have would risk their own lives to take me in. I have served Lear these forty years, I am loyal, and I know nothing else. My thought is to affect accents and hide my face until he has a change of heart.”
    “Is loyalty a virtue when paid to virtue’s stranger? I think not. Lear has misused you. You are mad, or stupid, or you lust