Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(44)

“Oh, no. No elephants either, then. Just she and the Puck.”

“Oh, bollocks. I should have never left Puck in the grotto that morning,” said I. “I would have seen he had been followed.”

“I do not think I care for elephants,” said Cobweb. “Wait, which grotto?”

“I don’t know, a great tree and rock hole, with a great stone in the stream shaped like a turtle.”

“Turtle Grotto?” said Cobweb.

“That would seem an entirely appropriate name for such a place.”

“That’s where Titania would meet Theseus,” said Peaseblossom.

“What?” said I, and verily “What” was repeated among our merry band as we stopped and turned our attention to the simple fairy.

“That’s where the night queen bonked the day duke,” said Peaseblossom. “Watched from a tree. I will say, a mortal will take his time in the day, when he’s a mind to. Not like a fairy bloke, quick poke under the tail and they’re off to the next tree without so much as a by-your-leave.”

“Titania was also shagging Theseus?” I asked.

The fairies all nodded.

“Can’t blame her, really,” said Moth. “After you two last night, thinking of giving a human mortal a go myself.”

“Me too,” said Peaseblossom.

“In all this time, you two have never shagged a mortal?” I said.

“Mortal man,” said Moth.

“All what time?” asked Peaseblossom.

“Well, all of your hundreds of years—how old are you, anyway?”

“Seven,” said Peaseblossom, not sounding entirely sure of her answer.

“Seven? Seven?” I turned to Cobweb. “You’re nine hundred years old and your mate is seven?”

“We are not good at counting,” said Moth.

“Nine hundred was an estimate,” said Cobweb.

“The point,” said I, “despite your appalling aptitude with figures, is Theseus and Titania were meeting at the very place where the Puck was killed. It could have been either of them, or both of them in concert.”

“Except that Theseus sent you to find the killer, did he not?” asked Cobweb.

“Yes. No. Oh balls. So did Titania. Let us bugger on to the bloody Night Palace and ask the bloody shadow king to transform bloody Bottom back into a man, fetch us the bloody love potion flower, and confess to the killing of his bloody jester. Should be a piece of piss.”

“You seem bothered,” said Cobweb. “Shall I build a nest and we’ll have a bit of a rest before going on?” She leaned in and whispered in my ear breathily and with no stealth whatsoever, “A wee nap to rejuvenate the humors.”

“And to bonk his boots off,” said Peaseblossom, deftly reading the subtext through her intrepid thickness.

“I am sorely tempted to nap, but I think it best we get to the Night Palace, then rest.” Truth be told I was knackered from the day’s marching and I was not ambivalent about the fairy’s charms.

Cobweb said, “If you and Bottom need to get to Oberon tonight, then to Athens before Theseus hangs your friend, you’ll need to travel all night tonight and all day tomorrow. We fairies will be fine, but you two will need to rest.”

“You sleep during the day, then?”

“No, safer to sleep at night, like this. Less chance of being eaten by a cat.”

“Right, hadn’t thought of that.”

“Fancy a frolic, then?” asked Peaseblossom.

Cobweb put her arm around my waist. I allowed it. “It will sustain you, you being a living thing. You felt it last night, didn’t you?”

I had. The strength and speed I’d felt while chasing Demetrius’s killer—of course, the dance. I didn’t know they had known. “I thought you were forbidden to dance. Isn’t that Titania’s grievance with Oberon?”

“It is. And we are forbidden. But the Puck told us to dance as we please as long as Titania and Oberon do not see us.”

“It feels ever so naughty when it’s forbidden,” said Moth.

“A frolic it is, then,” said I. And without any ceremony or prelude, the three fairies shed their frocks and began to dance.

*

Bottom and I walked light after the frolic, this one in close proximity, washed us with an uncanny vigor. I felt again like I could run the rest of the way to the Night Palace, with a fairy or two on my back. I was barely able to resist adding a dance step to my cadence as we marched along the trail and I even taught the fairies the chorus to that alehouse standard “I Give Your Sweet Mum a Spot o’ the Pox.”

“She bonked me right proper, out of my sox,” sang the fairies as we went.

“She’s a friend indeed, to a thousand cocks,” sang Bottom, because the fairies weren’t good at counting.

And I filled my bellows to belt out, “Oh, I give your sweet mum—”

Which is when the monkey swung down from a rather twisted cedar tree and snatched the hat of many tongues off of Moth’s head, then scampered to higher branches, where he screeched down at us.

“Jeff!” I called. “You cheeky monkey, you!”

“Why does that monkey have the same outfit as you, Pocket?” asked Cobweb.