Fool: A Novel - Hardcover

Moore, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060590319 ISBN 13: 9780060590314

Publisher: William Morrow, 2009

Synopsis

“Hilarious, always inventive, this is a book for all, especially uptight English teachers, bardolaters, and ministerial students.”
—Dallas Morning News

Fool—the bawdy and outrageous New York Times bestseller from the unstoppable Christopher Moore—is a hilarious new take on William Shakespeare’s King Lear…as seen through the eyes of the foolish liege’s clownish jester, Pocket. A rousing tale of “gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity,” Fool joins Moore’s own Lamb, Fluke, The Stupidest Angel, and You Suck! as modern masterworks of satiric wit and sublimely twisted genius, prompting Carl Hiassen to declare Christopher Moore “a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word.”

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Moore is the author of eighteen previous novels, including Razzmatazz, Shakespeare for Squirrels, Noir, Secondhand Souls, Sacré Bleu, Fool, and Lamb. He lives in San Francisco, California.

From the Back Cover

"This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as nontraditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank . . . If that's the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!"

Verily speaks Christopher Moore, much beloved scrivener and peerless literary jester, who hath writteneth much that is of grand wit and belly-busting mirth, including such laurelled bestsellers of the Times of Olde Newe Yorke as Lamb, A Dirty Job, and You Suck (no offense). Now he takes on no less than the legendary Bard himself (with the utmost humility and respect) in a twisted and insanely funny tale of a moronic monarch and his deceitful daughters—a rousing story of plots, subplots, counterplots, betrayals, war, revenge, bared bosoms, unbridled lust . . . and a ghost (there's always a bloody ghost), as seen through the eyes of a man wearing a codpiece and bells on his head.

Fool

A man of infinite jest, Pocket has been Lear's cherished fool for years, from the time the king's grown daughters—selfish, scheming Goneril, sadistic (but erotic-fantasy-grade-hot) Regan, and sweet, loyal Cordelia—were mere girls. So naturally Pocket is at his brainless, elderly liege's side when Lear—at the insidious urging of Edmund, the bastard (in every way imaginable) son of the Earl of Gloucester—demands that his kids swear their undying love and devotion before a collection of assembled guests. Of course Goneril and Regan are only too happy to brownnose Dad. But Cordelia believes that her father's request is kind of . . . well . . . stupid, and her blunt honesty ends up costing her her rightful share of the kingdom and earns her a banishment to boot.

Well, now the bangers and mash have really hit the fan. The whole damn country's about to go to hell in a handbasket because of a stubborn old fart's wounded pride. And the only person who can possibly make things right . . . is Pocket, a small and slight clown with a biting sense of humor. He's already managed to sidestep catastrophe (and the vengeful blades of many an offended nobleman) on numerous occasions, using his razor-sharp mind, rapier wit . . . and the equally well-honed daggers he keeps conveniently hidden behind his back. Now he's going to have to do some very fancy maneuvering—cast some spells, incite a few assassinations, start a war or two (the usual stuff)—to get Cordelia back into Daddy Lear's good graces, to derail the fiendish power plays of Cordelia's twisted sisters, to rescue his gigantic, gigantically dim, and always randy friend and apprentice fool, Drool, from repeated beatings . . . and to shag every lusciously shaggable wench who's amenable to shagging along the way.

Pocket may be a fool . . . but he's definitely not an idiot.

Reviews

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Michael Dirda In "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," Tom Stoppard had the clever idea of retelling "Hamlet" from the point of view of two of its minor characters. Even before that, James Thurber addressed the problem of "The Macbeth Murder Mystery," treating Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy as if it were an Agatha Christie whodunit. It turns out that Macbeth and his good lady were falsely blamed for the death of King Duncan, the real murderer being absolutely the least likely character. Similarly, the 1950s film "Forbidden Planet" gave a science-fiction twist to "The Tempest," even as the musical "West Side Story" copied and updated the plot of "Romeo and Juliet." As the king of dramatists, Shakespeare has long invited every form of pastiche, parody and general lèse-majesté. But to turn the darkly depressing "King Lear" into a comedy requires more than ordinary chutzpah. Yet who better to give it a try than Christopher Moore, author of the famously outrageous and funny Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal? As Moore's prefatorial "Warning" to Fool explicitly states, the result is "a bawdy tale." Very bawdy. We're talking country matters here, the beast with two backs, coxcombs and poxes, scullions and cullions, all the most intimate body fluids and exudations. In truth, Fool is exuberantly, tirelessly, brazenly profane, vulgar, crude, sexist, blasphemous and obscene. Compared to Moore's novel, even Mel Brooks's hilariously tasteless film "Blazing Saddles" appears a model of stately 18th-century decorousness. To quote carelessly from Fool would strain the forbearance of this family newspaper. Suffice it to say that variants of the f-word and its English cousins -- the marginally more acceptable, because less familiar "shag" and "bonk" -- appear on every page, not only as intensifiers and expletives but also as apt descriptions for what is happening right before our eyes on the tapestried divan with Princess Goneril or behind the arras with her sister Regan. Virtually every woman in this novel -- from the cook and the laundress to a holy anchoress and three witches -- demonstrates what Moore calls, in one of his rare euphemisms, "a generous spirit in the dark." Our narrator and hero is Pocket, King Lear's jester or fool. Originally a foundling reared by nuns and once a traveling mummer (actor/acrobat/clown), he is a young man of multiple talents: Pocket can forge letters, throw knives with deadly accuracy, caper with equal ease among the high and the low and, most of important all, make the melancholy Cordelia laugh. He even boasts an apprentice named Drool, a man-mountain of limited intelligence but spaniel-like loyalty and a not-too-distant cousin of Mongo from "Blazing Saddles." As the novel opens, old Lear has been persuaded to divvy up his kingdom among his three daughters and in return expects arias of impassioned devotion and gratitude, which the hypocritical (but very sexy) Goneril and Regan enthusiastically deliver. Cordelia refuses to exaggerate her affection for her father and is duly sent packing, married off without a dowry to the king of France. Ye Olde Britain is then divided between the two lying-through-their-teeth sisters, the medieval equivalents of Vampirella and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. Before long, Lear's darling daughters are cuckolding their ducal husbands while conspiring against each other and with the sleekly wicked Edmund, the bastard son of the Duke of Gloucester. Once fully heart-broken and divested of his retainers, the now howling-mad Lear is driven from his castle into the raging storm, with only Pocket left to set matters right. Can he do it? So many things are rotten in the state of Britain, and a fair number of them involve cold-blooded murder, madness, sexual frenzy and rape and, of course, torture (up to and including the plucking out of eyes), not that one should discount the occasional ghostly visitation, a bit of sorcery and witchcraft, and all-out war. Needless to say, Pocket turns out to be much more than just your ordinary fool in motley. All comedies approach the tragic, avoiding it at the last minute through some fateful revelation or convenient deus ex machina. In Fool Moore takes a tragedy -- after all, "Lear" ends with almost everybody dead -- and plays it for laughs, largely through the exuberance of the novel's shaggy, slangy diction. Pocket spiels like a music-hall comedian, with a relentless spate of winking and blatant sexual banter and a constant patter of quips, japes and backtalk. Take this confrontation with the satinly evil Edmund: "I said, 'Thou scaly scalawag of a corpse-gorged carrion worm, cease your feast on the bodies of your betters and receive the Black Fool before vengeful spirits come to wrench the twisted soul from your body and drag it into the darkest depths of hell for your treachery.' " 'Oh, well spoken, fool,' said Edmund. " 'You think so?' " 'Oh yes, I'm cut to the quick. I may never recover.' " 'Completely impromptu,' said I. 'With time and polish -- well, I could go out and return with a keener edge on it.' " 'Perish the thought,' said the bastard." I suspect that such deadly politeness owes more than a little to the similarly elegant sarcasm found in films like "The Princess Bride" and comparable fractured fairytales. While much of the humor of Fool is Rabelaisian and full of priapic gusto, Moore will stoop to any form of joking. Virtually every geographical location is a bad pun of the groan-inducing variety, my favorite being the city of Lint-upon-Tweed. The three witches are named Parsley, Sage and Rosemary, and when the old knight Kent naturally asks, "What, no Thyme?" witch Rosemary answers with a badabing: "Oh, we've the time if you've the inclination, handsome." An ambitious troupe of traveling mummers hopes to stage the classic but ever-fresh "Green Eggs and Hamlet." The king of France is named Jeff. There are, naturally, more than a few pokes at modern-day politics and religion. On the very first page we are told that a thousand years ago "George II, idiot king of Merica, destroyed the world." We also learn that "after the Thirteenth Holy Crusade," it was decided that to avoid future strife "the birthplace of Jesus would be moved to a different city every four years." Less welcome, indeed an artistic misjudgment, is the steady dog-trot of word-notes and definitions at the bottom of the page. These interrupt the narrative flow for no discernibly good reason. They're not funny, so they can't be sending up the kind of annotation found in scholarly editions of Shakespeare, but neither are they particularly useful. Does it really matter to tell the reader, without even a glint of humor, that a chamberlain is "usually a servant in charge of running a castle or household" and that an iamb is "a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable"? While usually a merry prankster, at times Pocket grows as melancholy as Jaques in "As You Like It" and then speaks with a somber, if slightly tongue-in-cheek, Shakespearean majesty: "Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair." Sometimes our hero even grows sentimental: "Ah, Goneril, Goneril, Goneril -- like a distant love chant is her name. Not that it doesn't summon memories of burning urination and putrid discharge, but what romance worth the memory is devoid of the bittersweet?" But before long, Pocket shucks off such unprofessional wistfulness and is back to his usual self, as in this typical riposte: " 'Shall I disrobe for my punishment?' I offered. 'Flagellation? Fellation? Whatever. I am your willing penitent, lady.' " While Fool is certainly amusing -- especially when read while snowbound in Ohio during late January -- its blithe crudity can grow a little tiresome at times, no matter how much one generally admires Moore's copious and almost Bard-like razzmatazz. I also wondered if anybody, except Drool, could fail to guess the identities of the various mysterious or ghostly personages, let alone have any trouble in foreseeing Pocket's eventual destiny. No matter. If you like Benny Hill's leering music-hall routines or Terry Pratchett's satirical Discworld novels, or George MacDonald Fraser's rumbustious Flashman adventures, not to overlook the less well known comic fiction of, say, Tom Holt and Tom Sharpe, you're almost certain to enjoy Christopher Moore's latest romp. Besides, its hero prances around with bells on. No fooling.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Starred Review. Here's the Cliff Notes you wished you'd had for King Lear—the mad royal, his devious daughters, rhyming ghosts and a castle full of hot intrigue—in a cheeky and ribald romp that both channels and chides the Bard and all Fate's bastards. It's 1288, and the king's fool, Pocket, and his dimwit apprentice, Drool, set out to clean up the mess Lear has made of his kingdom, his family and his fortune—only to discover the truth about their own heritage. There's more murder, mayhem, mistaken identities and scene changes than you can remember, but bestselling Moore (You Suck) turns things on their head with an edgy 21st-century perspective that makes the story line as sharp, surly and slick as a game of Grand Theft Auto. Moore confesses he borrows from at least a dozen of the Bard's plays for this buffet of tragedy, comedy and medieval porn action. It's a manic, masterly mix—winning, wild and something today's groundlings will applaud. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In Moore’s randy alternate Britain, in which Lear is a thirteenth-century monarch rather than the fourth-century BCE figure he most probably was (if he was real, not legendary), the fool doesn’t disappear in the third-act storm. Indeed, he sets the ball rolling that eventually crushes the king, his ingrate elder daughters, and most of the others that perish in Shakespeare’s most devastating tragedy. He and Cordelia survive, though, as well they might, since the fool loves Cordelia. How’s that for a new wrinkle? Others include a horny, dumbbell, giant apprentice fool, named Drool after his chronic propensity; all manner of hot-to-trot supernumeraries; and more or less wall-to-wall, farcical fornicating and fighting. While a jolly good time can be had, the horror and high pathos of the basic plot frequently douse the comic and sexual fires like so much ice water in the face, or lower. King Lear is one tough play to parody, at least at this length, and the book feels like something Moore had to get out of his system. His legion of fans will forgivingly enjoy it, while newcomers should be quickly steered toward The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (1999) or The Stupidest Angel (2004) for a giddy taste of Moore at his ludicrous best. --Ray Olson

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Fool

By Christopher Moore

William Morrow

Copyright © 2009 Christopher Moore
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-059031-4

Chapter One

Always a Bloody Ghost

"Tosser!" Cried the raven.

There's always a bloody raven.

"Foolish teachin' him to talk, if you ask me," said the sentry.

"I'm duty-bound foolish, yeoman." said I. I am, you know? A fool. Fool to the court of Lear of Britain. "And you are a tosser," I said.

"Piss off!" said the raven.

The yeoman took a swipe at the bird with his spear and the great black bird swooped off the wall and went cawing out over the Thames. A ferryman looked up from his boat, saw us on the tower, and waved. I jumped onto the wall and bowed - at your fucking service, thank you. The yeoman grumbled and spit after the raven.

There have always been ravens at the White Tower. A thousand years ago, before George the 2nd, idiot King of Merica, destroyed the world, there were ravens here. The legend says that as long as there are ravens at the Tower, England will stand strong. Still, it may have been a mistake to teach one to talk.

"The Earl of Gloucester approaches!" Cried a sentry on the west wall. "With his son Edgar and the bastard Edmund!"

The yeoman by me grinned. "Gloucester, eh? Be sure you do that bit where you play a goat and Drool plays the Earl mistaking you for his wife."

"That would be unkind," said I. "the Earl is newly widowed."

"You did it the last time he was here and she was still warm in the grave."

"Well, yes. A service that - trying to shock the poor wretch out of his grief, wasn't I?"

"Good show, too. The way you was bleatin' I thought ol' Drool was givin' it to you right proper up the bung."

I made a note to shove the guard off the wall when opportunity presented.

"Heard he was going to have you assassinated, but he couldn't make a case to the King."

"Gloucester's a noble, he doesn't need a case for murder, just a whim and a blade."

"Not bloody likely," the yeoman said, "everyone knows the King's got a wing o'er you."

That was true. I enjoy a certain license.

"Have you seen, Drool? With Gloucester here, there'll be a command performance." My apprentice, Drool - a beef-witted bloke the size of a draught horse.

"He was in the kitchen before the watch," said the yeoman.

The kitchen buzzed - the staff preparing for a feast.

"Have you seen Drool?" I asked Taster, who sat at the table staring sadly at a bread trencher laid out with cold pork, the King's dinner. He was a thin, sickly lad, chosen, no doubt, for his weakness of constitution, and a predisposition toward dropping dead at the slightest provocation. I liked to tell him my troubles, sure that they would not travel far.

"Does this look poisoned to you?"

"It's pork, lad. Lovely. Eat up. Half the men in the England would give a testicle to feast thus, and it only mid-day. I'm tempted myself." I tossed my head - gave him a grin and a bit of a jingle on the ol' hat bells to cheer him. I pantomimed stealing a bit of his pork. "After you, of course."

A knife thumped into the table by my hand.

"Back, Fool," said Bubble, the head cook. "That's the King's lunch and I'll have your balls before I'll let you at it."

"My balls are yours for the asking, milady," said I. "Would you have them on a trencher, or shall I serve them in a bowl of cream, like peaches?"

Bubble harrumphed, yanked her knife from the table and went back to gutting a trout at the butcher block, her great bottom rolling like thunderclouds under her skirt as she moved.

"You're a wicked little man, Pocket," said Squeak, waves of freckles riding o'er her shy smile. She was second to the cook, a sturdy, ginger-haired girl with a high giggle and a generous spirit in the dark. Taster and I often passed pleasant afternoons at the table watching her wring the necks of chickens.

Pocket is my name, by the way. Given to me by the Abbess who found me on the nunnery doorstep when I was a tiny babe. True, I am not a large fellow. Some might even say I am diminutive, but I am quick as a cat and nature has compensated me with other gifts. But wicked?

"I think Drool was headed to the princess's chambers," Squeak said.

"Aye," said Taster, glumly. "The lady sent for a cure for melancholy."

"And the git went?" Jest on his own? The boy wasn't ready. What if he blundered, tripped, fell on the princess like a millstone on a butterfly? "Are you sure?"

Bubble dropped a gutless trout into a bushel of slippery cofishes. "Chanting, 'off to do ma duty', he was. We told him you'd be looking for him when we heard Princess Goneril and the Duke of Albany was coming."

"Albany's coming?"

"Ain't he sworn to string your entrails from the chandelier?" Asked Taster.

"No," corrected Squeak, "That was Duke of Cornwall. Albany was going to have his head on a pike, I believe. Pike, wasn't it, Bubble?"

"Aye, have his head on a pike. Funny thing, thinkin' about it, you'd look like a bigger version of your puppet-stick there."

"Jones," said Taster, pointing to my jester's scepter, Jones, who is, indeed, a smaller version of my own handsome countenance, fixed atop a sturdy handle of hardened hickory. Jones speaks for me when even my tongue needs to exceed safe license with knights and nobles, his head pre-piked for wrath of the dull and humorless. My finest art is oft lost in the eye of the subject.

"Yes, that would be right hilarious, Bubble - ironic imagery - like the lovely Squeak turning you on a spit over a fire, an apple up both your ends for color - although I daresay the whole castle might conflagrate in the resulting grease fire, but until then we'd laugh and laugh."

I dodged a well-flung trout then, and paid Bubble a grin for not throwing her knife instead. Fine woman, she, despite being large and quick to anger. "Well, I've a great drooling dolt to find if we are to prepare an entertainment for the evening."

Cordelia's chambers lay in the north tower, the quickest way there atop the outer wall. As I crossed over the great main gate house, a young spot-faced yeoman called. "Hail, Earl of Gloucester!" Below, the greybeard Gloucester and his retinue were crossing the drawbridge.

"Hail, Edmund, you bloody bastard!" I called over the wall.

The yeoman tapped me on the shoulder. "Beggin' your pardon, sirrah, but I'm told that Edmund is sensitive about his bastardy."

"Aye, yeoman," said I. "No need for prodding and jibe to divine that prick's tender spot, he wears it on his sleeve." I jumped on the wall and waved Jones at the bastard, who was trying to wrench a bow and quiver from a knight who rode beside him. "You whoreson scalawag!" Said I. "You flesh-turd dropped stinking from the poxy arsehole of a hare-lipped harlot!"

The Earl of Gloucester glowered up at me as he passed under the portcullis.

"Shot to the heart, that one," said the yeoman.

"Too harsh then, you reckon?"

"A bit."

"Sorry. Excellent hat though, bastard," I called, by way of making amends. Edgar and two knights were trying to restrain the bastard Edmund below. I jumped down from the wall. "Haven't seen Drool, have you?"

"In the great hall this morning," said the yeoman. "Not since."

A call came around the top of the wall, passing from yeoman to yeoman until we heard, "The Duke of Cornwall and Princess Regan approach from the South."

"Fuckstockings!" Cornwall: polished greed and pure born villainy; he'd dirk a nun for a farthing, and short the coin, for the fun.

"Don't worry, little one, the King 'ill keep your hide whole."

"Aye, yeoman he will, and if you call me little one in company, the King 'ill have you walking watch on the frozen moat all winter."

"Sorry, Sir Jester, Sir," said the yeoman. He slouched then as not to seem so irritatingly tall. "Heard that tasty Princess Regan's a right bunny cunny, eh?" He leaned down to elbow me in the ribs, now that we were best mates and all.

"You're new, aren't you?"

"Just two months in service."

"Advice, then, young yeoman: When referring to the King's middle daughter, state that she is fair, speculate that she is pious, but unless you'd like to spend your watch looking for the box where your head is kept, resist the urge to wax ignorant on her naughty bits."

"I don't know what that means, sir."

"Speak not of Regan's shaggacity, son, Cornwall has taken the eyes of men who have but looked upon the princess with the spark of lust."

"The fiend! I didn't know, sir. I'll say nothing."

"And neither shall I, good yeoman. Neither shall I."

And thus are alliances made, loyalties cemented. Pocket makes a friend.

The boy was right about Regan, of course. And why I hadn't thought to call her bunny cunny myself, when I of all people should know - well, as an artist, I must admit , I was envious of the invention.

Cordelia's private solar lay at the top of the North Tower on the outer wall, up a narrow spiral staircase lit only with the crosses of arrow loops. I could hear giggling as I topped the stairs.

"So I am of no worth if not on the arm and in the bed of some buffoon in a cod piece?" I heard Cordelia say.

"You called," said I, stepping into the room, codpiece in hand.

The ladies in waiting giggled, young Lady Jane, who is but thirteen, shrieked at my presence - disturbed no doubt, by my overt manliness, or perhaps by the gentle clouting on the bottom she received from Jones.

"Pocket!" Cordelia sat at the center of the circle of girls - holding court, as such - her hair down, blond curls to her waist, a simple gown of lavender linen, loosely laced . She stood and approached me. "You honor us, Fool. Did you hear rumors of small animals to hurt, or were you hoping to accidently surprise me in my bath again?"

I tipped my hat, a slight, contrite jingle there. "I was lost, milady."

"A dozen times?"

"If you want a navigator I'll send for him, but I'll not lend him Jones or my coxcomb. And hold me blameless should your melancholy triumph and you drown yourself in the brook, your gentle ladies weeping damply around your pale and lovely corpse. Let them say, 'She was not lost in the map, confident as she was in her navigator, but lost in heart for want of a fool.'"

The ladies gasped as if I'd cued them. I'd have blessed them if I were still on speaking terms with God.

"Out, out, out, ladies," Cordelia said. "Give me peace with my fool so that I might devise some punishment for him."

The ladies scurried out of the room.

"Punishment?" I asked. "For what?"

"I don't know yet," she said, "but by the time I've thought of the punishment, I'm sure there'll be an offense."

"I blush at your confidence."

"And I at your humility," said the princess. She grinned, a crescent too devious for a maid of her tender years. Cordelia is not ten years my junior (I'm exactly not sure of my own age), seventeen summers has she seen, and as the youngest of the king's daughters, she's always been treated as if fragile as spun glass. But, sweet thing, her bark could frighten a mad badger.

"Shall I disrobe for my punishment?" I offered. "Flagellation? Fellation? Whatever. I am your willing penitent, lady.

"No more of that, Pocket. I need your counsel, or at least your commiseration. My sisters are coming to the castle."

"Unfortunately, they have arrived."

"Oh, that's right, Albany and Cornwall want to kill you. Bad luck, that. Anyway, they are coming to the castle, as is Gloucester and his sons. Goodness, they want to kill you as well."

"Rough critics," said I.

"Sorry. And a dozen other nobles as well as the Earl of Kent are here. Kent doesn't want to kill you, does he?"

"Not that I know of. But it is only lunch time."

"Right. And do you know why they are all coming?"

"To corner me like a rat in a barrel?"

"Barrels do not have corners, Pocket."

"Does seem like a lot of bother for killing one small, if tremendously handsome fool."

"It's not about you, you dolt! It's about me."

"Well, even less effort to kill you. How many can it take to snap your scrawny neck? I worry that Drool will do it by accident some day. You haven't seen him, have you?"

"Father is marrying me off !"

"Nonsense. Who would have you?"

The lady darkened a bit, then, blue eyes gone cold. Badgers across Blighty shuddered. "Edgar of Gloucester has always wanted me and the Prince of France and Duke of Burgundy are already here to pay me troth."

"Troth about what?"

"Troth!"

"About what?"

"Troth, troth, you fool, not truth. The princes are here to marry me."

"Those two? Edgar? No." I was shaken. Cordelia? Married? Would one of them take her away? It was unjust! Unfair! Wrong! Why, she had never even seen me naked.

"Why would they want to troth you? I mean, for the night, to be sure, who wouldn't troth you cross-eyed? But permanently, I think not."

"I'm a bloody princess, Pocket."

"Precisely. What good are princesses? Dragon food and ransom markers - spoiled brats to be bartered for real estate."

"Oh no, dear fool, you forget that sometimes a princess becomes a queen."

"Ha, princesses. What worth are you if your father has to tack a dozen counties to your bum to get those French poofters to look at you."

"Oh, and what worth a fool? Nay, what worth a fool's second, for you merely carry the drool cup for the Natural. What's the ransom for a jester, Pocket? A bucket of warm spittle."

I grabbed my chest.. "Pierced to the core, I am," I gasped. I staggered to a chair. "I bleed, I suffer, I die on the forked lance of your words."

She came to me. "You do not."

"No, stay back. Blood stains will never come out of linen - they are stubborned with your cruelty and guilt ..."

"Pocket, stop it now."

"You have kilt me, lady, most dead." I gasped, I spasmed, I coughed. "Let it always be said that this humble fool brought joy to all whom he met."

"No one will say that."

"Shhhh, child. I grow weak. No breath." I looked at the imaginary blood on my hands, horrified. I slid off a chair, to the floor. "But I want you to know that despite your vicious nature and your freakishly large feet, I have always-"

And then I died. Bloody fucking brilliantly, I'd say, too, hint of a shudder at the end as death's chilly hand grabbed my knob.

"What? What? You have always what?"

I said nothing, being dead., and not a little exhausted from all the bleeding and gasping. Truth be told, under the jest I felt like I'd taken a bolt to the heart.

"You're absolutely no help at all," said Cordelia.

The raven landed on the wall as I made my way back to the common house in search of Drool. No little vexed was I by the news of Cordelia's looming nuptials.

"Ghost!" said the raven.

"I didn't teach you that."

"Bollocks!" Replied the Raven.

"That's the spirit!"

"Ghost!"

"Piss off, bird," said I.

Then a cold wind bit at my bum and at the top of the stairs, in the turret ahead, I saw a shimmering in the shadows, like silk in sunlight - not quite in the shape of a woman.

And the ghost said:

"With grave offense to daughters three, "Alas the King a fool shall be."

"Rhymes? You're looming about all diaphanous in the middle of the day, puking cryptic rhymes? Low craft and tawdry art, ghosting about at noon - a parson's fart heralds darker doom, thou babbling wisp."

"Ghost!" Cried the raven, and with that the ghost was gone.

There's always a bloody ghost.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Foolby Christopher Moore Copyright © 2009 by Christopher Moore. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060590319
• ISBN 13: 9780060590314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 311