Fool (english)

her away? It was unjust! Unfair! Wrong! Why, she had never even seen me naked.
    “Why would they want to troth you? I mean, for the night, to be sure, who wouldn’t troth you cross-eyed? But permanently, I think not.”
    “I’m a bloody princess, Pocket.”
    “Precisely. What good are princesses? Dragon food and ransom markers-spoiled brats to be bartered for real estate.”
    “Oh no, dear fool, you forget that sometimes a princess becomes a queen.”
    “Ha, princesses. What worth are you if your father has to tack a dozen counties to your bum to get those French poofters to look at you?”
    “Oh, and what worth a fool? Nay, what worth a fool’s second, for you merely carry the drool cup for the Natural. What’s the ransom for a jester, Pocket? A bucket of warm spittle.”

    I grabbed my chest. “Pierced to the core, I am,” I gasped. I staggered to a chair. “I bleed, I suffer, I die on the forked lance of your words.”
    She came to me. “You do not.”
    “No, stay back. Blood stains will never come out of linen-they are stubborned with your cruelty and guilt…”
    “Pocket, stop it now.”
    “You have kilt me, lady, most dead.” I gasped, I spasmed, I coughed. “Let it always be said that this humble fool brought joy to all whom he met.”
    “No one will say that.”
    “Shhhh, child. I grow weak. No breath.” I looked at the imaginary blood on my hands, horrified. I slid off a chair, to the floor. “But I want you to know that despite your vicious nature and your freakishly large feet, I have always-”
    And then I died. Bloody fucking brilliantly, I’d say, too, hint of a shudder at the end as death’s chilly hand grabbed my knob.
    “What? What? You have always what?”
    I said nothing, being dead, and not a little exhausted from all the bleeding and gasping. Truth be told, under the jest I felt like I’d taken a bolt to the heart.
    “You’re absolutely no help at all,” said Cordelia.
    The raven landed on the wall as I made my way back to the common house in search of Drool. No little vexed was I by the news of Cordelia’s looming nuptials.
    “Ghost!” said the raven.
    “I didn’t teach you that.”
    “Bollocks!” replied the raven.
    “That’s the spirit!”
    “Ghost!”

    “Piss off, bird,” said I.
    Then a cold wind bit at my bum and at the top of the stairs, in the turret ahead, I saw a shimmering in the shadows, like silk in sunlight-not quite in the shape of a woman.
    And the ghost said:
    “With grave offense to daughters three,
    Alas, the king a fool shall be.”
    “Rhymes?” I inquired. “You’re looming about all diaphanous in the middle of the day, puking cryptic rhymes? Low craft and tawdry art, ghosting about at noon-a parson’s fart heralds darker doom, thou babbling wisp.”
    “Ghost!” cried the raven, and with that the ghost was gone.
    There’s always a bloody ghost.

TWO – NOW, GODS, STAND UP
    FOR BASTARDS!
    I found Drool in the laundry resolving a wank, spouting great gouts of git-seed across the laundry walls, floors, and ceiling, giggling, as young Shanker Mary wagged her tits at him over a steaming cauldron of the king’s shirts.
    “Put those away, tart, we’ve a show to do.”
    “I was just giving ’im a laugh.”
    “If you wanted to show charity you could have bonked him honest and there’d be a lot less cleaning to do.”
    “That’d be a sin. Besides, I’d as soon straddle a gateman’s halberd as try to get a weapon that girth up me.”
    Drool pumped himself dry and sat down on the floor splay-legged, huffing like a great dribbling bellows. I tried to help the lout repack his tackle, but getting him into a codpiece against his firm enthusiasm was like trying to pound a bucket over a bull’s head-a scenario I thought comical enough to perhaps work into the act tonight, should things get slow.
    “Nothing stopping you from givin’ the lad a proper cleavage toss, Mary. You had ’em out and all soaped up, a couple of jumps and a tickle and he’d have carried water for you for a fortnight.”
    “He already does. And I don’t even want that thing near me. A Natural, he is. There’s devils in his jizm.”
    “Devils? Devils? There’s no devils in there, lass. Chock full o’ nitwits, to be sure, but no devils.” A Natural was either blessed or cursed, never just an accident of nature, as the name implied.
    Sometime during the week, Shanker Mary had gone Christian on us, despite being a most egregious slut. You never knew