“Called Robin Goodfellow.” He bowed deeply. “Jester to the shadow king.”
“The shadow king?” The consort, I guessed, to Cobweb’s mistress, the night queen.
“The shadow king, Oberon. I craft clever japes in his court, trick and transform and make good sport. Bring him laughs and hoots and smiles—provide sweet respite for a while. Take the form of winsome filly and beguile the stallion horse’s willy. I can put a girdle round the Earth in forty minutes—fetch a flower from every land I visit. Take the form of a three-legged stool, when auntie sits, dump her bum-bruised like a fool. I am the merry wanderer Puck, a player of jest, a changer of luck.”
“And plagued by rhyme, evidently,” said I.
“And you are a meager ghost. No station nor skills.”
I stepped up. “I know a thousand songs in seven languages and ten thousand bawdy jokes in a thousand voices. I can throw a dagger and pierce a plum thrown in the air, then spear two more before the first one lands. I can juggle bottles, plates, clubs, swords, mooring pins, and fire, in odds, evens, and all at once if need be. I can scale a rope to the height of the battlements without using my feet, and descend it headfirst without using my hands. I can leap to a man’s shoulders and do a double somersault off them, backward, laid out, to land as soft as a cat. I can play a lute, lyre, drum, or pipe, compose a song extempore with a verse to every lord or lady at court. I can stand on a bareback horse at full gallop, while juggling and singing a song. I can pick any lock ever made, recite Homer in Greek, Petrarch in Latin, and throw my voice to a vase or puppet without moving my lips. I have bloody skills, Goodfellow.”
“Well the puppet can do his own talking, can’t he?” said Puck.
“He’s got a point there,” said the puppet Jones from his spot on the forest floor.
“So, just mortal tricks?” said Puck. “No real talents? Powers?”
“Waste of a good hat, really,” said Jones.
Suddenly, it occurred to me why others had always found the puppet so annoying—with a will of his own he was a right prickthorn. I jumped from the log, snatched Jones up, and shook him at the Puck.
Jones said, “Give the stick a bit of a buffing while you’re at it, would you, mate?”
“How is this wooden-headed ninny speaking without aid?”
“Perhaps you have but slumbered here and this is all a dream.”
“It’s not a bloody dream, thou barking dongfish. What goes?”
“Magic, I reckon,” said Puck. “Shame you never learned.”
“There is no bloody magic!”
“Said the bloody ghost.” Puck giggled.
“I am not a ghost.” I tossed the puppet away. “If I am a ghost, why do I not see my deceased loved ones? How is it I can move objects corporeal?”
“Buggered if I know,” said Puck. “Issues unresolved? Wrongs to be righted? Revenges to be taken? Perhaps you’ve a bit of haunting to do before you drift into the eternal never-again. I don’t make the rules. The Puck deals in jests, japes, and magic.”
“There is no magic,” said I, my conviction somewhat drained by the sight of Puck’s leaping from the log and descending slowly to the forest floor as if lowered by a crane. “Bollocks,” I muttered.
“Even now I am sent by the shadow king to cast a spell on young lovers.” He dug into the pouch at his hip and retrieved a funnel-shaped flower blossom and held it up to the light streaming down through the forest canopy as if trying to catch sight of a spirit hiding in there. “The potion, squeezed from this purple roofie flower collected in the west, if dropped upon the eyelid of a sleeper, shall cause them to fall deeply in love with the next creature they see.”
“Bollocks,” I repeated, with some incredulity.
Puck sniffed the funnel tip of the blossom, as if to test the aroma of the potion. “I have two, if you’d like to give it a go. Oh, but no one can see you . . . Oh, that won’t do, will it? Sorry.”
“Perhaps a drop or two on some unsuspecting victim for yourself?”
“Oh, I have no need of such potions, as I am an excellent lover. Of great renown. Very much in demand, is the Puck. What only today I have seen two queens, a joiner’s wife, and a marmot shagged.”
“A marmot?”
“Yes, rather like a large squirrel. Lovely creatures. Live in burrows.”
“I know what a marmot is. You shagged a marmot?”
“Went right to the rodent without a proper ‘well done, lad’ for the other lot. That’s just disrespectful of a fellow fool’s work.”
“A woodchuck, you shagged a woodchuck.”
“Unfriendly,” said Puck.
“Fine, well done with the two queens and the other tart.”
“Better,” said Puck. “Sure you don’t want me to use a flower on you? Might help someone see past your sour aspect.”
“Still a ghost.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“But if you know a way I might help my apprentice . . .”
“You have an apprentice. I never had an apprentice. Want to trade for him? I have these smashing love potion flowers. I know a lovely marmot I could introduce you to.”
“He’s been taken by the captain of the watch.”
“Oh, Blacktooth, there’s a nasty bit of business. And his leftenant, Burke, twice as bad.”
“Drool’s a great empty-headed giant, but gentle, and loyal as a spaniel—he won’t do well in a den of blackguards. Help me, good Robin.”
“Would that I could,” said Puck. He tipped the roofie flower as if toasting me with a tiny chalice. “Duty yet due to the shadow king. But I can send you the right way. I know where they’ll take him.”
“Where?”
“I’ll have the hat.” He stowed his magic flower and held out a hand.
It wasn’t as if I would need it. Would I even last on this mortal plane long enough to help Drool? I pulled off my coxcomb and handed it to him.
He fitted it over his curls and began to march in a tight circle, singing:
“Up and down, up and down,
“I will lead them up and down,
“I am fear’d in field and town,
“Goblin, lead them up and down.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Puck!”
He stopped, pulled the hat off. “What?”
“Where do I find my apprentice?”
“I’ll have one of them daggers at your back, too.”
&nbs
p; “In your arse, you will. I’m down one already.” I snatched one of my daggers out of its sheath, flashed it by his nose.
“Fine,” said the Puck. “Just I never had a knife before. They’ll be taking your friend to the gendarmerie in the city. It’s under the duke’s palace. Go west with the sun. You’ll not reach there by dusk, so it’s another night in the forest for you, but keep west, you’ll see the spires of the palace when first you break out of the wood, from there it’s a piece of piss.”
“You haven’t any food, have you?” I asked.
“The forest is full of food,” said the Puck. He pulled my hat back on and grinned. “Be dark soon, you best head west. I’ve lovers to find. Goodbye, stingy ghost.”
With a giggle, he was gone. He didn’t run off, or dance, or leap, he was simply gone, a bit of green dust settled where he had been standing.
“So, you waiting for your funeral procession or shall we be on our merry way?” said the puppet Jones from the spot where I had tossed him.
“I could have traded you for a marmot,” said I. “At least I could have eaten the marmot. You won’t even make a good fire.”
“You don’t frighten me,” said the puppet. “You’re a shit ghost, really.”
I snatched up the puppet and smacked him smartly against a tree as I headed west, toward the dying light, a vengeful ghost on the march. Evidently.
“Tosser,” said the puppet.
Chapter 4
There’s Always a Bloody Ghost
What Puck and the puppet Jones didn’t realize about my death, despite how clever and magical they thought themselves, was just how knob-twistingly lonely it was. If only I could hover ethereal over Jessica when she heard the news of how her cold rejection brought me to a violent end. Her tears would be like balm unto my soul, her regret like a lover’s sweet whispers in my ear. My friends, my subjects, my lovers, my family—the bundle of nuns who raised me—my apprentice, my monkey, even my enemies, who were legion, and many deceased for their trouble: none were there to grieve, gloat, or glower at my passing. Dead and alone, was I, at the same time. They don’t tell you that bit in the churches and temples.