Fool (english)

me. Not my cup of tea. But Drool, now he’d shag the night if he wasn’t afraid of the dark. And hung like an ox, that one is. I suspect you’ll extrude stools untapered for a fortnight once Drool’s laid the bugger to ya. Supper’ll dump through you like a cherry pit out a church bell.”
    Drool was returning now carrying a wooden bucket and a dipper across the courtyard.
    “No! Stop!” shouted Kent. “Villainy! Violation! Stop these fiends!”
    Guards were looking down from the walls. I scooped a dipper of water from the bucket and threw it in Kent’s face to calm him. He sputtered and struggled against the stocks.
    “Easy, good Kent, I was just having you on. We’ll get you out of there as soon as the king arrives.” I held the dipper for the knight and he drank deeply.
    When he finished he gasped, “Christ’s codpiece, Pocket, why’d you go on like that?”
    “Pure evil incarnate, I reckon.”
    “Well, stop it. It doesn’t suit you.”
    “I’m working on the fit,” said I.
    Lear came through the gatehouse seconds later, flanked by Captain Curan and another older knight. “What’s this?” asked the king. “My messenger in stocks! How came this to be? Who put you here, man?”
    “Your daughter and son-in-law, sire,” said Kent.
    “No. By Jupiter’s beard, I say, no,” said Lear.

    “Aye, by St. Cardomon’s scaly feet I say, aye,” said Kent.
    “By the flapping foreskin of Freya, I say, bugger all!” said Jones.
    And they looked at the puppet, confident on his stick.
    “Thought we was swearing by whatever we could come up with,” said the puppet. “Do go on.”
    “I say no,” continued Lear. “’Tis worse than murder, to treat a messenger of the king so. Where is my daughter?”
    The old king stormed through the inner gate, followed by Captain Curan and a dozen other knights from his train who had come into the castle.
    Drool sat down in the dirt, splay-legged, his face even with Kent’s, and said, “So, how’ve you been?”
    “I’m in the stocks,” said Kent. “Locked like this overnight.”
    Drool nodded, starting a string of his namesake down his chin. “So, not so good, then?”
    “Nay, lad,” said Kent.
    “Better now that Pocket is here to save us, innit?”
    “Aye, I’m a rescue in progress. Didn’t see any keys in there when you were getting the water?”
    “No. No keys,” said Drool. “They’ve a laundress with smashing knockers works by the well sometimes, but she won’t have a laugh with you. I asked her. Five times.”
    “Drool, you mustn’t just go asking that sort of thing without some prelude,” said I.

    “I said [please],” said Drool.
    “Well done, then, glad you’ve kept your manners in the face of so much villainy.”
    “Thank you, kind sir,” said Drool in Edmund the bastard’s voice, pitch-perfect, dripping with evil.
    “That’s un-bloody-settling,” said Kent. “Pocket, think you could see about liberating me? I lost feeling in my hands a good hour ago and it won’t go well for holding a sword if they have to be cut off from gangrene.”
    “Aye, I’ll see to it,” said I. “Let Regan vent some venom on her father, then I’ll go see her for the key. She quite fancies me, you know?”
    “You’ve weed on yourself, ain’t ya?” said Drool, back in his own voice, but with a bit of a Welsh accent, no doubt to comfort the disguised Kent.
    “Hours ago, and twice since,” said Kent.
    “I does that sometime in the night, when it’s cold or it’s too far to the privy.”
    “I’m just old and my bladder’s shrunk to the size of a walnut.”
    “I’ve started a war,” said I, since we seemed to be sharing privacies.
    Kent struggled in the stocks to look at me. “What’s this? From key-to wee-to, ‘I’ve started a bloody war,’ without so much as a by-your-leave? I’m bewildered, Pocket.”
    “Aye, which concerns me, as you lot are my army.”
    “Smashing!” said Drool.
    The Earl of Gloucester came himself to release Kent. “I’m sorry, good man. You know I would not have allowed this, but once Cornwall has set his mind…”
    “I heard you try,” said Kent. The two had been friends in a former life, but now, Kent, lean and dark-haired, looked younger and more than a measure dangerous, while the weeks had weighed like years on Gloucester. He was near feeble, and struggled with the heavy key to the stocks. I took it from him gently and worked the lock.
    “And you, fool, I’ll not have you chiding