Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(46)

He turned, made as if to sniff my finger, but with a closer look at his great maw of ragged teeth I withdrew the offer.

“Take my word for it,” said I. “We are sent, to see the shadow king. Take us to him immediately.”

The goblin regarded me, his cohort stopped worrying the trees and looked over.

“Do you have any silver?” he said, his voice a rat scratching in a tin bucket. I could see now that the shiny plates I had thought to be armor were, indeed, part of the goblin’s body, like the shell of a turtle, only segmented and articulated. Other than a small silver ring in his ear, the goblin wore only a ragged loincloth and a thin dusting of the loamy earth from which he’d emerged.

“I do, I do, I do,” called Nick Bottom, who had circled back at full gallop, leaving his two pursuers a hundred yards behind.

“Silver!” said the goblin with the earring. I assumed he was in charge, because when he held up his hand, thin fingers tipped with thick claws, the two chasing Bottom slowed to a limping walk, which was the way all of them seemed to ambulate—bit of a sideways crab stride, as if they had suffered some injury.

Nick Bottom had unbuttoned his fine waistcoat and was coming forward holding one lapel out. “This button is silver. It’s sulfured black, but that will polish off.”

I strode to the weaver, my dagger still in hand, the ranking goblin like a shadow behind me. I snipped the button from Bottom’s vest and held it away from the goblin, who had become as single-minded as a begging dog with the scent of roast beef in his nose.

“No,” said I. I polished the button against my jerkin and held it for the goblin to see the shining relief of a woven Celtic knot standing out silver against the black patina. His great yellow eyes rolled back in his head as he looked, and he reached for the button as if reaching for a dream. I pulled it away. “When we see Oberon.”

The head goblin looked at the others. “We take them to the shadow king.”

And so they did. Peaseblossom and Moth came down from their trees. Nick Bottom fell in behind them, muttering something like, “So this is why we weren’t to go into the forest at night. I knew it wasn’t the bloody fairies.” I walked side by side with Cobweb, the silver button tucked into my belt, and the goblins formed a stutter-stepping formation around us, the one with the silver earring leading.

“You lived among these goblins when Titania lived at the Night Palace?” I asked Cobweb.

“We tended her in the forest. She came to us. We only went into the Night Palace for ceremonies, and never during the day. Except for Puck and the one hundred.”

“The one hundred?”

“Oberon’s concubines. They are locked in a chamber in the palace all day and night.”

The head goblin began to drift back in the column until he marched at my side.

“I am Gritch,” he said.

“I am Pocket of Dog Snogging, all-licensed fool and onetime king of Britain.”

“Fool? Like the Puck?” said Gritch.

“Yes, like the Puck,” said Cobweb. “So mind your bloody manners, you scuttling dung beetle, or you’ll feel the fool’s wrath.”

We walked for a bit, the forest faded away to rocky scrubland, the foothills to mountains that rose like jagged fangs against the night. I carved a new stick for Jones from a green branch as we walked, Cobweb watching as if I were performing alchemy rather than whittling.

“So, love,” I whispered to Cobweb. “Not looking for a warm welcome back to the palace, then?”

Before she could answer, Gritch sidled up to me and said, “Suck your dick for silver?” with all the subtlety of a fishmonger calling out freshly caught cod.

“No, piss off,” said I.

“Fine,” he said. And he scuttled across the column and came up on Cobweb’s side. “Suck your dick for silver?”

“I don’t have any silver,” said Cobweb.

“Fine,” said Gritch. As we made our way up the mountain, he went to each member of our troop, offering the same service to each for the same price, pausing next to Peaseblossom, who appeared to be haggling.

“She knows she doesn’t have a dick, right?” I asked Cobweb.

“Doesn’t have any silver neither. Pease is simple as sand, but she’s the mongrel’s dongles at bargaining.”

When Gritch got to Bottom, the weaver looked at Gritch’s saw-toothed maw and audibly yelped with dismay before declining, as his only silver had been the button on his waistcoat. Gritch sulked and fell in beside me again.

“Gritch, mate, do you have any idea what you are offering?”

“I am told that if you say that to mortals, sometimes they will give you silver.”

“But you asked the fairies. Females.”

“They can have silver,” he reasoned.

“Quite right,” said I. “Carry on.”





Chapter 13

In the Night Palace




The palace rose into the night sky like a great pointed crown, nine ridiculously tall, angular towers constructed, it seemed, of the same smooth, black glass plates that armored the goblins. No man nor creature of forest had constructed this edifice, for there was no sign of joints nor mortar, nor even the mark of a stonecutter. It was a castle made by a demented jeweler, from pieces of polished night, which reflected every star in spectral brilliance and shone streaks of moonlight down its sides as if painted in molten silver.