Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(57)

“What are you up to, fool? I know, of course, but I’m just checking to see if you’re even capable of telling the truth.”

“I would embrace you, but alas, you are a horrid, hollow creature and the idea rather shrivels my wedding tackle, but nevertheless, welcome to our band of jolly travelers. What delicious trifle of narrative do you bring to us today?”

“Are you having me on?”

“Yes.”

“Well it doesn’t work if you just tell me you’re having me on.”

I made as if to put my arm around his shoulders, to take him into my confidence, but then, he was covered with tongues, so I merely mimed the gesture, allowing my arm to hover a handbreadth above his shoulders. Nevertheless, his cloak tried to lick me.

“You see, good Rumour, we have found your hat of many tongues, and you need only meet us at the head of this trail in Athens, at dusk, with a blossom from a purple love potion flower in hand, and we shall return it to you. You know of this flower, I presume, as you know everything twice more than everyone?”

“I’m not going to do that. Oh, I will have my hat, but I will not bring you your flower.”

“Why not? Why would you not fetch a simple flower that would save my apprentice, who is a good-hearted if profoundly thick lad—an innocent in this heinous fuckery?”

“Because you are complete rubbish at following clues.”

“I don’t follow,” said I.

“Exactly. I told you the key was the lovers. Nothing. I told you about the Puck’s three words, you still know nothing. I told you the key to his passion lies with the prince. Nothing. Methinks you are a fool, fool.”

“That is not true, I know the meaning of all of those clues, I simply have not had opportunity to reveal them.”

“Oh,” said Rumour.

“So help me release my mate.”

“No, but the key to your revelation is the play. The play’s the thing, wherein you’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. ‘The play’s the thing’?”

“Aye, there’s the rub,” he said, and with a whoosh he was off again.

“Well that’s a soggy sack of squirrel spooge,” said I.

“But now how will you get your friend out of the dungeon without the flower?” asked Bottom.

“I suspect we are going to have to craft a plan for his escape. First, I will shave Cobweb’s tail and rub ashes on her, so rather than a red squirrel, she appears to be a large rat. Then—”

At that point Cobweb ran down the tree I stood by, stopped at eye level, scratched, tapped her paw, twitched her tail violently, and let loose a rather angry fusillade of barks, screeches, and several noises I was not aware a squirrel could make.

“I don’t think she’s keen on the bit about having her tail shaved.”

Cobweb made several barks of affirmation and tried to bite one of the tentacles of my hat.

“But you can sneak in by the guards as a rat, then at dusk, you will return to your most fit and comely woman form, not that you are not the loveliest of squirrels, to be sure, but then you can free Drool from his cell and perhaps provide him with a weapon.”

At which point Cobweb leapt from her tree onto my head, relieved me of my hat, and began to remove my scalp in squirrel-bite-sized patches, until I snatched her by her tail and flung her affectionately back into the tree from whence she came.

“Fuck’s sake, sprite!” said I.

“You keep making her cross, she’s never going to shag you again,” said Bottom.

“It was just an idea,” said I.

Cobweb chittered angrily from the tree.

“She says that plan will not do,” said Bottom. “The play’s the thing. We must hurry and find my mates.”

“Just because you are covered with fur, it doesn’t mean you are suddenly able to translate from the squirrel,” I replied, but he had galloped away.

*

“Two households, both alike in dignity,” read Peter Quince, the gray-haired carpenter, from his scroll. “Two families, equal in stature—”

“Oh, well done,” called Bottom as we emerged from the wood into the clearing where the Mechanicals were rehearsing. “Well done!”

“Bottom!” cried Tom Snout, the tinker, who was still annoyingly tall and still wore the stupid bunny-eared doeskin hat. “You have returned, and in fancy dress too.”

“What has happened to you?” said Peter Quince. “You have the voice and clothing of my friend Nick Bottom, but what is this mask?”

“He is enchanted,” said I.

“And you have with you the elf!” said Robin Starveling, the balding, bad-mannered wankpuffin who seemed eager to be beaten about the head with a puppet stick.

“Not an elf,” I replied.

“Fear not,” said Nick Bottom, his muzzle on a swivel as his friends gathered around him to examine the changes he had suffered. “This countenance is but a temporary spell, put upon me by the Puck, but soon to be lifted by Oberon, the king of the night and the goblins.”

“Oh woe, oh woe, oh woe,” said the young lad whom I had last seen playing Thisby, and who again wore the veil and spoke in falsetto. “Our Bottom has gone quite mad. He is ruined, a lunatic who must wander the forest, living upon rocks and tadpoles, oh woe, oh goodbye, sweet sanity! Farewell, sensibility! Adieu! Adieu! Adieu!” And he collapsed to the forest floor in a heap.