Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(7)

“Impudent,” corrected Burke.

Blacktooth then turned to us, doffed his bronze officer’s helmet, which looked like it might have been used recently for boiling beans, and said, “Beggin’ your pardon, gents, Burke is under training these two years and is yet a nematode in the ways of the watch.”

“Neophyte,” corrected Burke.

“Take the shot, ya scurvy coward,” said the puppet Jones from his spot lying in the dirt. “Or haven’t you the stones for a fight?”

How? It was my smaller voice but not from me. Drool, perhaps . . . “Drool, stop that!” I called.

The great ninny opened his mouth and an avalanche of half-chewed bread tumbled down his front. Not Drool. What trickery was this?

Then four more watchmen with spears stepped out of the wood and the notion of a fight or escape sizzled like a butterfly in a firestorm.

“Halt!” said the captain. The watchmen stopped. Blacktooth turned and stepped up to me—loomed, as it were.

The ferrety archer slung his crossbow onto his back by a leather strap and scampered past me. “Show your passports, citizens,” he commanded.

Each of the Mechanicals produced a wooden chit from his pocket or from a lanyard around his neck, each chit bearing a wax seal and burnt inscription of some sort.

Burke read aloud from each chit before moving to the next. “Peter Quince, Joiner’s Guild. Nick Bottom, Weaver’s Guild. Francis Flute, Bellows Mender’s Guild.”

“You have enough broken bellows to support a guild of menders?” I asked Flute.

“There’s just me and another fellow,” said Flute from the modesty of his veil.

“Where is your stamp, little one?” Blacktooth asked me. “It is unlawful to be indignant in Athens.”

“Indigent,” said Burke. “Unlawful to be indigent.”

Blacktooth glared at his second; turned back to me. “Art thou a knave?”

I stood to meet his gaze and fell short only by a foot or so. “I am no knave, sir, but I’m most certainly indignant, thou putrid toss-toad, thou—”

“Master Pocket,” said Nick Bottom, jumping between me and Blacktooth just as I was about to launch into a crushing recitation of the captain’s ancestry, beginning with the syphilitic rat that impregnated a dusty boot to produce his mother.

“Master Pocket,” said Bottom, “is our new ma?tre du théatre.”

“Sounds suspiciously fucking French,” said the puppet Jones. “I say fillet the rascal.”

Did they all hear the puppet speak, or was the puppety voice a phantom born of my fatigue and a blow to the head?

Blacktooth loosened his sword in its scabbard, which served to capture my attention.

“I am a traveling actor,” said I, the very ideal of a penitent player. “Here to serve the king.”

“The duke,” corrected Burke with a growl.

“Indeed,” said I. “The duke.”

Blackfoot looked me up and down, shot a glance at my puppet stick, then looked back to me. “You wouldn’t be Robin Goodfellow, would you?”

I sighed. “I am not.”

“Yet you wear the motley of a fool . . .” Blacktooth bent over, put a finger under one eye to better examine me. “Are you sure? If you are, the duke has sent us to fetch you.”

Burke raised his crossbow and trained it upon me. The four spearmen lowered their spears and stepped forward.

“We are fools,” said Drool, climbing to his feet. And they all turned to look at the dim giant, who stepped up to the four spearmen, puffed his chest, and said in a voice borrowed from Blacktooth, “And pirates.”

“Drool, no,” I called.

“Bloody viscous pirates, ya scurvy dogs!” Drool continued in the borrowed voice.

“Vicious,” corrected Burke, by habit. He swung his crossbow toward Drool and raised it to aim.

“I think fucking not,” said I. In a single motion I pulled a dagger from the small of my back and flung it underhanded at Burke, where it buried its point a thumb’s length into his bum cheek. The watchman screamed as he let fly his bolt, which sailed well over Drool’s head into the forest.

Meanwhile, Blacktooth had drawn his sword and made a mighty swipe that would have relieved me of my head had I not leaned away. I could hear the blade whistle through the air as it passed by my nose. I scuttled away from Blacktooth, readying myself for a second dodge, but the captain held his sword fast at en garde, then looked around it, as if the blade might be blocking his vision.

“Where did he go?” He swung his sword harmlessly through the air in front of him as if searching for a spirit. Behind me, the Mechanicals cowered together in a huddle.

He looked to Drool, who stared at me, more gap jawed than normal, a bit of dribble spilling down his chin. “Pocket?”

“Seize him,” said the captain, and the spearmen fell on Drool, wrestling him to the ground. Burke was limping in a circle, trying to get a grip on my dagger, which wagged in his bum like the tail of a friendly dog.

“Run, you bloody idiot,” called the puppet Jones, from his place in the dirt. “Run!”

There was no helping Drool, the spearmen were clearly better fighters than their commander and already had the great git pinned, a man on each limb.