“Oh, that is up to you, good fool, for he was turned by the Puck, and only the Puck may turn him back, or someone with his powers.”
“Come then,” I said to Bottom, who had begun to weep in great honking sobs.
Chapter 10
Fancy a Frolic?
The fairies led us on a path wide enough that moonlight could find the forest floor and it was easy going. Moth and Peaseblossom were in the front, each holding one of Bottom’s hands, leading him as he wept and whined all along the way. Cobweb and I brought up the rear, some twenty paces behind the others.
“Well you got a set of bollocks on you, I’ll say that,” said Cobweb. “Just told her, ‘if you didn’t live up a fucking tree,’ like she was some common wood wench. I thought you were done for.”
“Gentle fairy, when I was young I was jester to a feeble old man who called himself the Dragon of Britain. He raged day and night about the fury of his wrath, the sum of which was bluster and betrayal. Since then, I have seen a real sodding dragon—a more fearsome creature than has ever walked upright on two legs—and yet I survived. For most of my life in service, my pillow has been the headman’s block, the axe always a royal whim away, and yet I learned to sleep, and now, with the loves of my life in the tomb or gone on a pirate wind, I simply do not care. I am not afraid. It affords me some license.”
“Good on you, then. Don’t know when I’ve seen her so rattled.”
“I am somewhat disturbed that she didn’t try to shag me as you predicted.”
“That’s because I saved you—threw Mustardseed to her as a sacrifice, didn’t I?” She winked, did a little skip of a dance step.
“Heartless way to treat a mate, especially one who is a bit simple.”
“I have seen how you treat your mate, who is a bit simple, if ‘a bit’ is a bull-sized barrel of bloody simple.”
“Drool is not my mate, he is my apprentice,” said I. “And I do try to do my best by the great ninny.”
“As I did for Mustardseed. He’ll get to shag the queen, do you think he’s not willing? If he survives he’ll never stop talking about it.”
“You may have saved Bottom as well. She was quite cross with him, and if she’s dangerous—”
“She is dangerous enough,” said Cobweb. “But she doesn’t kill her lovers. Although they do disappear from time to time. I think they might be hiding.”
“She has a lot of lovers?”
“Like a cup at the public well she is—well used and always ready for the next thirsty bloke. It was forbidden, for a long, long time—shag a goddess, burst into flame and all that—but when she went mad, it was game on.”
“And the shadow king does not object?”
“Has his own appetites, I hear. Haven’t seen much of him for a while.”
“What about Puck? He said he’d shagged two queens in one day.”
“She used to meet with the Puck all the time. Made like it was some affair of court. Secret and all. Wouldn’t let any of us follow. Or watch.”
I counted on my fingers as we walked. “So, Puck was shagging Hippolyta, and Titania, but also working for Theseus, and he’s jester to Oberon. And he was taking a love potion to Theseus, for Titania. Which only he could fetch. What did Titania get out of it?”
“Roll in the hay with Long Ears, there.” Cobweb pointed ahead at Bottom. “That’s the Puck’s trickery if I ever seen it, and I seen it.”
“And she said so,” said I.
“Aye, and you can bet Puck gave her a sample of that love potion. Should have seen her doting on Bottom while you was getting scrubbed up. Like he hung the moon for her, two ticks later she wouldn’t piss on him if he was afire.”
“She had herself enchanted to love Bottom? For the night? Why?”
“Love-sweetened bonk, methinks,” said Cobweb. “It gentles her bitterness over Oberon.”
We’d entered a bit of the forest where the canopy obscured the moon and walked a bit in silence, just the soft padding of our feet, and once, the distant hoot of an owl, at which the fairies jumped. Poor primitives, probably some omen of doom for them. I, on the other hand, had spent years among the ravens that dwelt above my quarters in the barbican at the White Tower, and I had befriended Hunter, the falconer at the castle, and sometimes passed afternoons watching his raptors rend rats into tasty strips, so birds held no menace for me. I felt, as we moved along, part of the forest. Perhaps I was not an indoor fool after all, but a more rugged creature, suited for these great green environs.
I was about to mention my leafy epiphany to Cobweb when I caught the toe of my boot upon something in the dark, a root I suppose, and I tumbled bum over eyebrows into a patch of nettles.
“Pocket,” said Cobweb, who came to my aid and began testing my limbs for breaks. “What happened?”
“Well it’s dark as the devil’s dirty dick hole out here, isn’t it?”
“Are you all right?”
“Trees! Bloody buggering branchy bastards! The Druids had the right idea: burn the whole lot to the ground and have a celebratory bonk by the light of the fire.”
Bottom and the other fairies had heard my call and tracked back to join us.
“He all right?” asked Moth.
“Took a tumble,” said Cobweb. “Nest up, shall we? Before the mayflies surrender their ghosts due to bloody darkness.”
“Mayflies?” inquired Bottom.
“What we call mortals,” said Moth.
“On account of you lot dying at the touch of a slight breeze,” said Peaseblossom.
“Hardly worth learning your names, really,” said Moth.
“Mates!” called Cobweb. “You’ll want to make a nest for Long Ears if you fancy a frolic before dawn.”
In a blink Moth and Peaseblossom were in the branches of a small oak, weaving together the platform for a nest.
“Come on then,” said Cobweb, offering a hand up. “We’ve a nest to build.”
I let her pull me to my feet and dust me off while I surveyed the branches above. “What’s a suitable tree?” I asked.
“Methinks a nice nest safe on the ground is best for you. I’ll build it. If you still have your flint and steel we could use a fire.”
ENTER RUMOUR, PAINTED FULL OF TONGUES
“And so, the clumsy and awkward fool, alive only by the grace and kindness of the dimwitted fairies, was no closer to solving the mystery of the Puck’s murder, even as his apprentice languished in the dungeon, the executioner’s blade poised above his brutish neck.”
“Oh do fuck off,” said I. Rumour had just appeared, it seemed, on the trail, an uncanny and annoying light shone around him.
“Whosat?” asked Moth, looking down from her prospective nest tree.
“And who you calling dimwitted?” said Cobweb. “I’ll have your nuts in a knot, tosser.”
“Though she be but little, she is fierce,” quoted the puppet Jones. I had drawn the puppet from down my back as a misdirection. I was not so nonplussed as I had been upon my first encounter with the unctuous chorus, and despite his blazing speed, I thought to gain an advantage, perhaps compel him to tell me his secrets, or at least visit a soupçon of humility on him by way of a calming wallop to the noggin.
“This loony’s got tongues all over his frock,” said Peaseblossom. She’d dropped out of her tree and was twiddling the tongues on Rumour’s cloak.
“So he does,” said Moth, who dropped to the other side of the narrator and began twiddling the tongues on that side. “On his hat, too. Bend down, love, let us have a wee squeeze.”
“Fancy a frolic?” said Peaseblossom, snuggling against Rumour’s leg, at which point Cobweb giggled in a tone much more high and girlish than her nine hundred years would have suggested.
“Stop that,” said Rumour.
Moth grasped one of the tongues and held it tight between her fingers. “Say something now. See if you can.”
Rumour snatched his cloak away from the fairies and in an instant was three yards down
the path, leaving Moth and Peaseblossom grasping at empty air. “Enough!”
“I believe I’m stuck up here,” said Bottom, wedged between branches of the nest tree.
Startled, Rumour looked up and squeaked a girlish scream himself. “A horse!”
“Ass-man, we call him,” said I. “I thought you were seer of schemes, teller of tales, planner—what was it?”
“Planner of plots,” said Rumour. “But that fellow has the head of a donkey.”
“A future you didn’t see coming, I’ll wager,” said I. It appeared that I was relieved of the need to conk Rumour in the head to bring him down a notch. “Why are you here?”
“To correct your path, to point out your errors before you completely cock up the narrative.” Rumour swiped at the fairies, who had resumed twiddling his tongues. “Stop it.”
“Well get on with it,” said I. “We’re knackered and the ladies need to finish their nest building so they can frolic the bloody daylights out of old Bottom here.”
“Thank you, good sir,” said Moth with a curtsy.
“Pocket is a fucking gent, he is,” said Peaseblossom.
“Why are you glowing?” asked Cobweb, approaching Rumour now. “Are you having a self-frolic under that frock?”
“Does it have tongues on the inside, too?” asked Moth excitedly.
“May I wear it?” asked Peaseblossom.