Fool (english)

ecstasy.
    “Drool, what are you doing?”
    “Pretty,” said Drool, a great joyous, goofy grin on him.
    “Aye, she’s a vision, lad, but you’re knobbing a ghost.”
    “No.” The dim giant paused in his upward thrusting, lifted her by her waist and looked closely at her as if he’d found a flea in his bed.

    “Ghost?”
    She nodded.
    Drool tossed her aside and with a long shuddering scream ran to the window and dove through, shattering the shutters as he went. The scream trailed off and ended with a splash.
    The ghost pulled her gown down, tossed her hair out of her face, and grinned. “Water in the moat,” she said. “He’ll be fine. Guess I’ll be going away half-cocked, though.”
    “Well, yes, but jolly good of you to take time from chain rattling and delivering portents of bloody doom to shag the beef-brained boy.”
    “Not up for a spirity tumble yourself, then?” She made as if to lift her gown above her hips again.
    “Piss off, wisp, I’ve got to go fish the git out of the moat. He can’t swim.”
    “Not keen on flight, neither, evidently?”
    No time for this. I sheathed my dagger, wheeled on my heel and started out the door.
    “Not your war, fool,” said the ghost.
    I stopped. Drool was slow at most things, perhaps he would be so at drowning. “The bastard has his own war?”
    “Aye.” The ghost nodded, fading back to mist as she moved.
    “A fool’s best plan
    Plays out to chance,
    But a bastard’s hope,
    Arrives from France.”
    “Thou loquacious fog, thou nattering mist, thou serpent-tongued steam, for the love of truth, speak straight, and no sodding rhyme.”
    But in that moment she was gone.
    “Who are you?” I shouted to the empty tower.

FOURTEEN – ON TENDER HORNS
    I shagged a ghost,” said Drool, wet, naked, and forlorn, sitting in the laundry cauldron under Castle Gloucester.
    “There’s always a bloody ghost,” said the laundress, who was scrubbing the lout’s clothes, which had been most befouled in the moat. It had taken four of Lear’s men, along with me, to pull the great git from the stinking soup.
    “No excuse for it, really,” said I. “You’ve the lake on three sides of the castle, you could open the moat to the lake and the offal and stink would be carried away with the current. I’ll wager that one day they find that stagnant water leads to disease. Breeds hostile water sprites, I’ll wager.”
    “Blimey, you’re long-winded for such a wee fellow,” said the laundress.
    “Gifted,” I explained, gesturing grandly with Jones. I, too, was naked, but for my hat and puppet stick, my own apparel having taken a glazing of oozy moat mess during the rescue as well.

    “Sound the alarm!” Kent came storming down the steps into the laundry, sword unsheathed and followed closely by the two young squires he’d trounced not an hour before. “Bolt the door! To arms, fool!”
    “Hello,” said I.
    “You’re naked,” said Kent, once again feeling the need to voice the obvious.
    “Aye,” said I.
    “Find the fool’s kit, lads, and get him into it. Wolves are loosed on the fold and we must defend.”
    “Stop!” said I. The squires stopped thrashing wildly around the laundry and stood at attention. “Excellent. Now, Caius, what are you on about?”
    “I shagged a ghost,” said Drool to the young squires. They pretended they couldn’t hear him.
    Kent shuffled forward, held back some by the alabaster grandeur of my nakedness. “Edmund was found with a dagger through his ear, pinned to a high-backed chair.”
    “Bloody careless eater he is, then.”
    “’Twas you who put him there, Pocket. And you know it.”
    “Moi? Look at me? I am small, weak, and common, I could never-”
    “He’s called for your head. He hunts the castle for you even now,” said Kent. “I swear I saw steam coming out his nostrils.”
    “Not going to spoil the Yule celebration, is he?”
    “Yule! Yule! Yule!” chanted Drool. “Pocket, can we go see Phyllis? Can we?”
    “Aye, lad, if there’s a pawnbroker in Gloucester, I’ll take you soon as your kit is dry.”
    Kent raised a startled porcupine of an eyebrow. “What is he on about?”
    “Every Yule I take Drool down to Phyllis Stein’s Pawnshop in London and let him sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Jesus, then blow the candles out on the menorah.”

    “But the Yule’s a pagan holiday,” said one of the squires.
    “Shut up, you twat. Do you want to ruin the twit’s fun? Why are you here, anyway?