Shakespeare for Squirrels

Chapter 19

Act 2

A knock on the antechamber door.

“They’ve come to take us to the gallows,” said Peter Quince.

“And they’ve decided to knock first?” said I. “So as not to surprise us out of costume?”

“True,” said Quince. He opened the door a crack. The girl Hermia stood outside.

“When is my father going to return?” she asked.

I stepped over her dead father to a spot where I could peek out the open door. “In a bit, love. Still cleaning the beet juice—stage blood—off of him. After act two, methinks.”

“It looked so real,” said Hermia.

“We are using the master’s method,” said Peter Quince. He shut the door and turned to grin at me.

“What creature of dark snark have I borne?” said I.

Before Quince could answer, another knock. He cracked the door. Looked out.

“Suck your dick for silver,” came a gravelly voice.

Quince closed the door and looked back to me. “It’s for you.”

I looked around at my players, Drool, and the fairies, one of whom, Moth, was petting my monkey, and strangely, he was letting her. I said: “Drag Egeus further away from the door—put him in that corner. And someone get my dagger out of his melon, if you would be so kind. Mechanicals, do not be alarmed, but you are about to meet a goblin. If you scream I will dirk you in the gonads to give you good reason.” (I looked at Robin Starveling then, who would likely have denied goblins existed even as one was gnawing off his knob.) “At our last meeting, this goblin was an ally, we shall assume he remains so. Drool, we do not have any silver. Give Jeff the tongue hat for a bit to keep him distracted.”

With the company moving at my instruction, I opened the door just wide enough to accommodate a goblin, reached out, grabbed Gritch by the arm, and dragged him in.

The goblin was wearing one of the same black hooded robes that the fairies of the harem wore, and with the hood up, he looked like a short, shiny monk, if you didn’t look too closely.

“Gritch, where were you?”

“Here,” said the goblin. “I told you we were coming here.”

“Then all those black robes on the periphery of the hall, your soldiers?”

“Yes.”

“Blacktooth and Burke let you in through the gendarmerie, the dungeon?”

“Yes.”

I looked to Nick Bottom. “That’s why only the one young guard, and I’ll wager he was sent off on an errand when the goblins came in.”

“Yes,” said Gritch.

“How many?”

“A hundred. Twenty in the hall. The rest around the doors and balconies.”

“Goblins are very good at counting,” said Peaseblossom in admiration.

The Mechanicals, except for Bottom, who was beyond being surprised, all stared at Gritch with various levels of curiosity and horror. I put my arm around Gritch’s shoulders and walked him into the corner, where, yes, we were standing over Egeus’s corpse, but also, there was some privacy.

“Gritch, mate, what’s the plan here with your one hundred soldiers?”

“To take the castle.”

“On Oberon’s command?”

“No, on command from the warrior queen.”

“Hippolyta?”

“Yes. She gave us silver.”

“Bottom,” I called. “Bring me that armlet.”

Bottom brought me the Medusa armlet, the match to the one Gritch was already wearing. I took it and placed it in the goblin’s hand. He almost went to his knees in ecstasy at its touch.

“Don’t kill any of us,” said I. I gestured to everyone in the room. “Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, carry on then. We’ve a show to do.” I patted his shoulder, which

was very much like patting a millstone.

Gritch started to head out the door, then stopped, turned, and looked to the three fairies, who now stood together against the wall, all wearing the same garment as the goblin. “We let them go,” said Gritch.

“Pardon?” said Moth.

“We let the fairies go.” Gritch looked back to me. “All the sodding fairies.”

“Where are they?” asked Cobweb.

“At the castle of leaves with the other fairies.”

“How did you get them out?” asked Cobweb. “They were too afraid to move. Did you hurt them?”

“Squirrels,” said Gritch. “We caught them when they were squirrels and took them in cages to the castle of leaves. There was sun. We needed robes.” He tugged at his black hood.

Moth’s disturbingly large eyes filled with disturbingly large tears. She ran to Gritch, threw her arms around him, and snogged his disturbingly smooth forehead, making a disturbingly wet smacking sound. Gritch looked to me, as if I might rescue him from his pale attacker, which, of course, I did not.

Then Moth pushed away from him. “Wait. Squirrels? Did you eat my brother? Any of our friends?”

“No,” said Gritch. “But they were afraid. They ran when we let them go.”

Cobweb took Moth by the shoulders and walked her away from the goblin. “They’ll be fine. The others would have found them at sundown. They’ll take care of them.” Cobweb looked past Moth to Gritch. “Thanks, mate.”

“Yes,” said Gritch. He went to the door, opened it a crack, peeked out. “They are waiting,” he said. Then he pulled his hood down over his face and slipped out into the hall.

“Players, we shall need to improvise a bit. Cobweb, you will need to pretend to be Hippolyta, the Amazon queen. And Peaseblossom, you shall be Titania.”

The fairy looked on the edge of panic. “I can’t read.”

“You shan’t need to read, love, just prance around acting mad until I pretend to shag you, then make all manner of moaning and sounds of ecstasy.”

“Like Cobweb did with you?”

“You mean you shagged this ginger fairy who was a squirrel but a few hours ago?” said Robin Starveling.