“If she will have me back,” said Bottom, his crest beginning to fall.
“But you shan’t be able to play Romeo,” said Quince. “Even with superb makeup by Snout.”
“I have been practicing on the wife,” said the tall tinker with the stupid hat.
“My performance shall overcome my form,” said Bottom, a finger thrust aloft as if balancing an idea. “I shall play Romeo as so dashing, so romantic, that all ladies in the audience will be in love with a man of prodigious ears and muzzle, and yearn to—”
“No,” said Peter Quince. “If the duke finds displeasure in our play we shall all be hanged. We cannot risk it. I myself have learned the part of Romeo and shall perform it as well as the chorus.”
“Hold,” said I. “Didst thou say that if the duke finds displeasure with your play you will be hanged?”
Quince nodded gravely. “Oh yes, for offending his sensibilities upon his wedding day.”
“It is part of the honor of being chosen,” said Francis Flute, in his demure damsel falsetto.
“Bloody hanging you if your play is shit?” said I. “You? Tradesmen, ninnies at best, who have never before taken the stage, are going to perform with your lives in the balance?”
“After all, it is his right. Our lives and labor belong to the duke,” said Robin Starveling.
I hit him then—spun the puppet Jones from out of the back of my jerkin and brought the green stick down on Starveling’s bald crown with a crack. But it was not enough, and as the tailor yowled and rubbed his head I swung the puppet around in various directions, growling and hissing and doing a more-than-adequate impression of a madman with apoplexy. “That is as buggering a basket of badger bonk as I have ever heard! That is as slithering a satchel of snake spooge as has ever been spoken! Your lives are not the duke’s.” I waved Jones around a bit more until I began to tire and Robin Starveling ran and hid behind a tree.
“So we don’t have to give him three-quarters of our labors?” said Quince.
“Three-quarters? You give him three-quarters? Of everything?”
“Not everything,” said Bottom. “I was spared him having right of first night with the missus, as she is possessed of a birthmark on her throat everyone in the village thought the mark of a dark spirit.”
“Shagged my Bess before me,” said Snug, “but she is forbidden to talk about it.”
“But Bess is a bit of a slut,” said Starveling from behind his tree. “Respectfully.”
“She was not always, not in those days. Robin Goodfellow turned her,” said Snug.
“Which is why he had to murder the Puck,” explained Quince.
“Yes,” said Snug. “Couldn’t be helped. It was my Bess’s honor.”
Which was when I hit Snug. I do not, generally, go about hitting people. I have traveled, lo these many years, with an oaf of profound dimness in my company, and had I hit him every time he did or said something stupid he would have been little more than large shoes piled with a tower of bruises. But no, other than being imprisoned and probably tortured, he was perfectly healthy. But this lot! This lot of ninnies, these Mechanicals, were a collective of such profound empty-headedness I was not sure that I was not becoming more stupid in their presence, my cleverness drained just by proximity, and thus I was frustrated and rather angry. I flailed around a bit with my puppet stick, cursing in various vernaculars, until the squirrel chirped at me.
“Look, it’s the squirrel again,” said Robin Starveling, who was wisely keeping a safe distance, although I could have speared him in the knee with a thrown dagger if I wished, the thought of which calmed me somewhat.
Cobweb ran down a nearby tree trunk to my eye level and barked at me again, evidently having appointed herself my conscience. The Mechanicals stared at her in wonder, and I almost set into another tirade before I remembered that only three days ago I had tried to talk Snug out of modeling his performance of a lion upon a chicken. So the fauna of the forest held more fascination for these fellows than most.
And Cobweb was right. It was not the Mechanicals with whom I was aggrieved, it was the circumstances in which I’d found them. The conditions under which they lived. Them, the fairies, the goblins, everyone in this godforsaken land. It was then that it occurred to me how to address the puzzle of the Puck and perhaps his three magic fucking words.
“Lads,” said I. “The play’s the thing.”
“Aye,” said Peter Quince. “Which is why we are here rehearsing.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said I, waving him off. “First, Snug, you did not kill the Puck.”
“I did,” said Snug. “With a crossbow from my shop.”
“You didn’t,” said I. “He was already dead and cooling in the duke’s dungeon when I shared lunch with you and your wife and you thought him still alive at the time.”
“I did. I avenged my Bess’s honor. Shot that rascal right in the chest, I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“In the neck. Put a bolt right in his throat.”
“No, you didn’t.” I patted his shoulder, rubbing that spot where I had only recently smacked him with my puppet, hoping to bring him some comfort. “The Puck was shot in the back. By a goblin, who did it for silver.”
“They’ll kill anyone for silver,” said Bottom. “But the goblin was only the weapon.”
“There ain’t no such thing as goblins,” said Robin Starveling.
“I will kill you where you stand,” said I to the tailor with a smile, one hand behind my back on the hilt of a throwing dagger. Three words, I said to calm myself.
“Around here, I mean,” said Starveling meekly. “Maybe where you blokes have been . . .”
“Just so,” said I. “Peter Quince, have you quill, ink, and parchment with you?”
“I do, Master Pocket.”
“Then we shall write a new play, a variation on your themes, and we will rehearse it until sundown and you shall perform it for the duke at his wedding and be brilliant.”
“Do you think . . . ,” said Bottom. “Do you think you could write a part for me? A horse part, perhaps? I would be an excellent Pegasus, I think. No, a unicorn. Quince, write me a unicorn part and I shall be such a unicorn as will make the men weep and the ladies dampen their chairs with excitement.”
I went to the bedonkeyed weaver and put my arm around his shoulders, for truly our fate had made us brothers in arms. “Oh, there will be a horse part for you, good Bottom. Such a horse part that before your hooves the world shall wither.”
Chapter 17
Maps for Squirrels
I confess, a wall of worry rises for even the most confident fool when he realizes that his plot for saving the day lies with three squirrels, a troupe of earnest nitwits, a donkey-headed weaver, a silver-thirsty goblin, a notoriously unreliable narrator, and a hat-shagging monkey. And the narrator and goblins hadn’t even arrived yet!
Therein, perhaps, lay the flaw in my quickly formulated plan to meet at the trailhead at dusk. For even with Rumour’s hat retrieved—as Cobweb, Peaseblossom, and Moth had managed to somehow lure monkey Jeff and the hat of many tongues to the rendezvous, although they could not explain how, because they were still fucking squirrels—Rumour had not yet arrived at the trailhead, and even if he did, he had not agreed to retrieve the love potion flower to give to Theseus to secure Drool’s release, and the backup plan, if he did not appear or agree, depended upon the fairies’ still being fucking squirrels, which they would cease to be at dusk, the aforementioned meeting time. Therefore, I found myself drawing maps in the dirt for the squirrels, who, perched on Bottom’s shoulders, looked on, along with a troupe of well-meaning ninnies, and monkey Jeff, who sat on a branch above, eating a fig and making lascivious eyes at the hat of many tongues, which Bottom was wearing.
“I will try to stay with you, but I suspect they may not let me in, so you’ll need a plan.” I pointed with a small stick. “This is the gate into the gendarmerie, which leads to the dungeon down this cor
ridor.” I drew a map of the corridor from memory, glad that I’d taken note of all the doors and passages on my way out. “You’ll pass four heavy doors and you’ll come to a passageway, where you will go left.”
I looked up to make sure everyone was following along. “Nod if you understand. Wait, do squirrels nod?”
The white and red squirrels twitched their tails, while the brown squirrel stood motionless on Bottom’s shoulder, as if trying to conceal herself from a hawk. Of course, Peaseblossom the squirrel was also simple.
“How many doors?” asked Snug the joiner.
“Never mind how many doors. There’s no counting. My mistake. Just go until you run into the first junction of a passageway and go left. Left. Do you get that?” Three tails twitched.
I drew a plan of the rest of the dungeon, including the large central chamber that Drool’s cell opened on. “There’s a great iron key on a hook here.” I pointed on the diagram to the spot. “Here there’s a chair where I suspect the guard will be sitting, if there even is one. On the night of the duke’s wedding, I suspect they’ll either be on guard in the streets or making merry themselves.
“Next to the key is a rack of weapons, mostly poleaxes—halberds. One of you grab the key and run and hand it through the bars of Drool’s cell. Cobweb, Drool knows you, so you go through the bars into his cell and be there when you turn. You open the lock for him and tell him to fight. One of you grab one of the poleaxes from the rack and give it to him as soon as the cell door opens, then get out of his way. If there are three or fewer guards, he will make quick work of them. Then you lead him out the way you came and bring him back here.”
“But they’ll be naked,” said Bottom. “Even if they free your mate, people will notice three girls running naked through the city streets chased by a giant with a poleaxe.”
“We’ll have Drool drop the poleaxe,” said I.
“Oh yes, that quite solves the problem,” said Peter Quince. “No one will notice if he’s not armed.”
“Good Quince,” said I. “I know you are new to the theater, so you have not learned its many secrets, but among professional thespians, anyone who uses sarcasm in that manner is thought to be a twat.”
“I did not know,” said Quince.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Robin Starveling. “The elf is lying again. These are just common squirrels, and that is a common monkey, and that a common hat covered with tongues which are wagging in a most common way. Pish-posh and balderdash.”
“Just so,” said I, having resolved to treat my cast with respect and a minimum of head bashing. “Which is why you lot will stay here and rehearse your lines while you wait for a tar-black goblin with a grin like a mill saw and a hollow man who moves like lightning and has a coat to match that very common hat.”
* * *
“No, sir,” said the spot-faced guard. “You may not enter the gendarmerie.”
“But I have this passport, given me by the duke,” said I, holding out the chip of wood with the duke’s seal.
“Be that as it may, sir, I am on orders to report anything suspicious to the captain of the guard and your horse is suspicious.”