Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(49)
“Oi, king of the night!” said Cobweb. She snatched up the shadow king’s cape and gave a good yank, causing Oberon to slip and barely catch himself before falling on his arse. The black crown tumbled off his head to the stones. As it turned out, one could get the attention of Oberon’s guards, it simply required yanking the king back by his cape like a fast dog finding the end of a short leash. Four spearmen, two from either side of the lower stage, came up the stairs looking quite determined to ventilate Cobweb. She jumped up, caught the edge of the upper stage, and swung up to her feet above the guards. Oberon was kneeling, having retrieved his crown, he rubbed his throat as one does after being suddenly and violently choked. Four more spearmen came out of the door at the back of the stage. I quickly measured the damage I might do with my two daggers and a volley of cutting insults against a platoon of leather-skinned spearmen, and I determined that it might be time to take a hostage.
I leapt to the upper stage with a single bound. (There was more than trifling magic in a fucking frolic, and I felt it boiling in my limbs.) I made to draw one of my daggers, thinking the point to the shadow king’s throat might persuade his guards to hold. Then, like a shooting star across a night sky of my mind, an idea . . .
“I have silver!” said I, pulling Bottom’s silver button from my belt and holding it aloft.
And the guards stopped in place, every yellow eye trained on the button. I looked over at the still-kneeling Oberon. “Really?”
“That is mine,” Gritch called.
I flipped the button in the air, caught it, showed it to them all, then made it appear to disappear. If they’d had lips, the goblins would have pouted. I made the button reappear from behind Cobweb’s ear. The goblins’ saw-toothed gobs fell open in wonder.
“You missed the part about him being a fool,” Cobweb said to Oberon, but the shadow king was following my antics with the button, as rapt as his guards.
“Oi! Shadow king,” said Cobweb, shouting in Oberon’s face. “He’s a bloody jester. Like the Puck. LIKE. THE. PUCK. He knows the Puck’s three words.”
Oberon’s attention seemed to return to the scene at hand, even as I was popping the button from foot to foot to elbow to forehead.
He stood. “Enough!” Oberon waved off the guards. I caught the button and tucked it into my belt.
The shadow king was furious but seemed to have no idea how to vent his wrath. He did not know who I was, but he suspected what I was, and I could see there was doubt, if not fear, in his eyes.
“There ye be,” said Cobweb.
Oberon appeared to see the fairy for the first time, standing in front of him, defiant and not a little angry herself.
“You have sticks and leaves in your hair,” he said.
“Your queen has sticks and leaves in her hair,” said Cobweb. “You live in this shining palace made of shards of midnight while your queen lives up a fucking tree in the forest. So pardon the bloody sticks in my hair, but that is the royal way, where we live.”
“Aye,” said Moth, running to the edge of the upper stage, then backing up so she could see Cobweb.
“Aye,” said Peaseblossom, who ran to the edge of the upper stage and stayed below sight, no doubt wondering where everyone had gone.
Oberon looked to me, as if I might provide some guidance in how to deal with this situation. “She’s got you there, mate, the bitch does, indeed, live up a tree.”
“And she has to shag the donkey-donged chap while you have a harem of one hundred fairies,” added Cobweb, bringing Bottom reluctantly into the scene.
That seemed to yank Oberon’s attention back to the fore. He looked over the courtyard. Some of the goblins had stopped running for the towers and were watching, drifting back toward the stage. “Take the fairies to the harem. Have them washed and deloused.”
The guards moved toward Cobweb and she ran and threw herself into my arms. “Oh, save me, good Pocket!” She buried her face in my neck and whispered frantically, “Play him. Then lose him. Bring the dead goblin to the harem before dawn. Do not tell Oberon the three words.”
“I don’t know the three words,” I whispered back.
“Well don’t let him know that, you git,” she said as two of the guards pulled her away.
The guards dragged her off. Moth and Peaseblossom climbed up on the stage and followed along behind, chatting and cheerily negotiating with the guards, as they went, how much silver they would give to have their dicks sucked.
“Bottom,” I called. “With me.” I pulled the ass-man up on the stage and introduced him. “This is Nick Bottom, Majesty. He was a weaver, a mortal, before a magical misadventure with the Puck. Now he is my valet and he wears the head of an ass.”
“Enchanté,” said Bottom with a bow.
“Go keep an eye on our fairies,” I told Bottom, once I was sure Oberon had gotten a good look at him. Let the shadow king stew in jealousy’s emerald bile at the thought of his queen taking her time with the long-eared weaver. Bottom hurried out the door after Cobweb and her co-squirrels.
*
“You may watch me dine,” said Oberon, sitting at the head of a long table that could have seated a hundred yet had only two chairs, one at each end, high-backed, thronelike rascals, upholstered in blood-red velvet, one of the few nonblack things I’d seen at the Night Palace. “Stand there,” said the shadow king, pointing a silver-tipped finger at a spot beside him from where goblins were serving some sort of roasted bird.