Shakespeare for Squirrels

She flung the bolt against the wall and stepped before my cell. “Did you kill the Puck?”

“I did not, Your Grace. I am but a simple fool, set adrift by pirates to crash upon your shores but two days ago with my apprentice, Drool.”

“Oi,” said the dim giant through his window grate. “It were sad. We almost eated Jeff.”

“We’ve barely had time for a proper meal, let alone to make enemies—other than these scrofulous merkins.” I gestured in the general direction of Blacktooth and Burke.

“Tell me the truth, fool, or the watchmen will hold you while I cut a hole in you with your own dagger and slowly walk a trail of your entrails around the room while you watch.”

“Oh, you wicked little vixen,” I said with a grin. “This is not your first dungeon, is it?”

If she was going to kill me, better it not be dragged out, so to speak. If she wasn’t, and was indeed as fierce as her aspect and the reaction of the watch implied, she might be amused. This was not my first dungeon either.

She laughed. “All of you, out. Leave me to talk to this fool alone.”

The watchmen scrambled through the arch leading to the outside, weapons and armor rattling like pans on a tinker’s wagon. Blacktooth and Burke stood in the archway, arms folded, looking not defiant but embarrassed.

“Well?” she said. “Out! Out! Out!”

“We can’t, ma’am,” said Blacktooth.

“Weapons, ma’am,” said Burke. He nodded to a rack of spears and halberds against a wall.

“Your people are not permitted weapons, ma’am,” said Blacktooth, staring now at his shoes. “Even Your Most Superfluous Radiance.”

“I see,” she said. “And yet I am a queen and will be duchess of all of Athens in but three days?”

“’Tis so, ma’am.”

“And, good captain, if I commanded thee to kill all your men and then yourself, would you do it?”

“I would be duty-bound to do so, yes, Your Magnetized.”

“Majesty,” corrected Burke.

“So you see the burden of the crown. My only way to speak to this prisoner in private is to command you to put everyone to death, then fall on your sword. Does that seem about right?”

“Spot-on there, Your Municipal. Spot-on. I would be duty-bound to do it.”

“Or,” she said, “I could spare you and your men and instead command you to fuck off for a few minutes, and then call you back and you could go on with your miserable lives. Unless you think I can smuggle a halberd or a spear out under this gown?” She took a step so her bare leg emerged from her gown up to her hip.

Blacktooth looked to his scruffy leftenant, Burke to his commander. Both nodded enthusiastically with the bloody obviousness of it all.

“Well,” she said, “do fuck off, then. Please.”

“As you command, ma’am,” said Blacktooth, bowing his way out of the chamber. Burke curtsied and limped after his captain.

She turned to me. “Now, on your life, fool, the truth. Did you kill Robin Goodfellow?”

“Why would I kill him? He was smaller than me. A rare pleasure. One so misses having someone to look down upon besides children and monkeys.”

“Did you see who killed him?”

“I did not. I heard him scream and ran to the stream to help. By the time I reached him, his heart’s blood was pumping out onto the stones.”

“Did you see either of those two idiots take anything from the Puck’s body?”

“No, ma’am. The Puck had nothing.”

“He spoke to you? What did he say?”

She seemed rather more disturbed than would a queen be by the death of a simple fool. Then I remembered the Puck had bragged of having shagged two queens that very day. I gentled my tone, for perhaps her fierceness was covering grief.

“He said to remember his love to the queen, that is you, I presume.” A kind lie, what could it hurt?

“It is. I am Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons.”

“Well, that’s a wiggly wagonload of wench wank,” said I. “Amazons are mythology, fantasies penned by poets. What game are you about, madam?” Although, her chain mail and scars were not the usual decorations for a coddled class—

“Why would I lie to a prisoner with only a tick left on the clock of his life? Believe me, fool.”

“Lady, I am not like your watch captain, some dribbling fuckwit, although I do travel with one for emergencies.”

“’Ello,” said Drool, his face in the window grate across the chamber. He had begun a rhythmic thumping on the door, and a great goofy grin painted his features in the window.

“Drool, are you having a wank?”

“Just a wee one,” said the oaf. “She are right fit, Pocket.”

I grinned at Hippolyta. “Compliment, really, innit?”

She waved off the distraction. “We’ll kill him later. Now, you, fool, what else did the Puck say?”

“Just to remember him to the queen. Although I had seen him the day before and he was talking about putting a spell on some lovers for the shadow king. Did you know the Puck could turn a bloke invisible?”

“Fairy,” she explained. She shrugged, then turned, strode to the rack of weapons, and snatched up a halberd. “And you, fool, you were two nights in the forest?”

“I was.”

She carried the halberd before her as if advancing on an enemy and I hopped away from the bars. This had gone pear-shaped rather quickly.

“So you are not afraid to be in the forest at night?”

“I am, generally, an indoor fool, but no, I am not afraid of the forest.”

“The killer will be found in the forest.”

“How do you know? There were watchmen and tradesmen from town there as well.”

“The size of the bolt. It had to be a fairy. Wretched creatures.”

She thrust the blade of the halberd through the bars. “Come here. I’ll cut your bonds.”

“Fine, I have been dead twice in as many days, so I am well rehearsed and ready to hit my mark, milady.” I hopped forward, reticent, but truly, if she wanted to kill me there was no reason to do it herself, nor to be subtle about it. She sawed through the ropes on my hands and then my feet.

“Thank you,” I said, shaking the blood back into my extremities.

“You owe no fealty to king or country, then?” she asked.

“No, milady. All my kings and queens reign only over worms. I am a free lance.”

“You’ll have to do, then. I’ll have a passport made to give you safe passage among the watch and townsfolk. You are mine now—” She paused, leaned on the halberd. “You are called . . . ?”

“Pocket, ma’am. Pocket of Dog Snogging upon Ouze, all-licensed fool to Lear of Britain, consort and king to Cordelia of Britain, France, Burgundy—”

“Enough,” she said.

“He are a smashing pirate, too,” said Drool, who had finished his dread business. “Pocket are the dog’s bollocks.”

I bowed at the flattery.

“You are mine now, Pocket,” said Hippolyta. “You must return to the forest. I need to know where the Puck was, who he spoke to, what he said, what happened to what he was carrying, and yes, who killed him if that comes up.”