“I’ll have the scribe make you a passport with my seal. It will give you my protection in the city, and with Titania’s servants, but I cannot guarantee your protection from other forest dwellers. Return here before my wedding, three days hence. If you accomplish your task, bring me what I require, you shall be the royal jester and your friend will be set free.”

“I will be honored to put my awesome and terrible powers in your service, Your Grace. But I’ll need money, for food and provisions. I’ve not had a decent meal for days.”

“Very well, give him money for food,” Theseus said to the guards. “Egeus will reimburse you. And call the scribe.”

The tall, blond Amazon grinned as she pulled a silver coin from her nut-sack and threw it to me across the table. The scribe was summoned and he constructed a passport on a thin shingle of wood and applied to it the duke’s seal in hard wax. I tucked it in my belt with its brother. I was dismissed and Egeus, the high steward, restored my daggers to me and led me out of the castle.

“So you will go to the forest?” asked the steward.

“Aye,” said I. “Secret quest and whatnot.”

Egeus leaned down to me. “My daughter, Hermia, ran away into the forest two nights ago. If you bring her back with you I will see that you are richly rewarded. I am a wealthy man.”

“And she will come willingly, will she? I am but a speck of a fool and not suited for taking prisoners.”

“Tell her all is forgiven and I will allow no harm to come to her. You will find her with a young rascal called Lysander. If you kill him in the process there will be a bonus in it for you.”

“Just like that? Kill the lad, fetch the girl, gold and glory in the castle?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I bring you the lad’s head?”

“No, that might upset Hermia. She is mistakenly in love with him. Just bring a swath of his shirt stained in blood. That and my daughter’s tears will be proof enough.”

“Lovely,” said I, strapping on my daggers. “Now point me toward the city gate, toady, and give me a route that takes me by a market, I’ll need a hearty meal if I’m to spend the evening murdering and kidnapping.”

Act II

And that distilled by magic sleights

Shall raise such artificial sprites

As by the strength of their illusion

Shall draw him on to his confusion.

—Hecate, Macbeth, 3:5

Chapter 7

The Slow and the Quick

“RAWR!”

“Shut up!”

“RAWR!”

“Shut up!”

“RAWR!”

“Snug, if you roar one more time I shall lop off your knob while you sleep.”

“Rrrrr, rrrrrr—”

“Snug!” I called to the joiner, who was outside of his shop on the edge of Athens, having a discussion with his wife. She was a round and sunny woman, in contrast to her husband’s gangly dimness.

“Master Pocket,” said Snug. “We thought you were killed in the forest.” He turned to his wife. “This is him, Bess, the master of theater I told you about. High jester of Dog Tosser, he was. Tell her, Master Pocket, how I got to rehearse so I can be a proper fierce lion.”

Snug made as if he was going to roar again and his wife put a hand in his face for silence as she rolled by him to look me over.

I bowed extravagantly, hat in hand for the flourish. “Enchanté, Madam Snug,” I said in perfect fucking French.

“He’s right tiny,” she said, inspecting me from head to toe, pausing a moment to regard my codpiece. “Say, you ain’t an elf, are you?” She winked at me hard enough to approximate a seizure, with all the subtlety of a head wound.

“It’s not real,” said Snug. “And he ain’t an elf. And don’t you think about it again. Go make us some lunch, woman.”

“I thought you was having lunch with your mates in the forest.”

“Go,” said Snug, a stern finger pointed to the shop doorway.

Madam Snug rumbled off into the shop. Snug turned to me, affecting the aspect of a whipped dog. “Apologies. She’s been like that since that rascal Puck touched her up by the millpond. Ruined, she is. You’ll have lunch with us, I hope. Just bread and cold mutton.”

At the market I’d purchased a loaf and some cheese and a skin of wine, which I had slung over my back in a flour sack, but before I set out into the forest on a quest to find a killer and buy release of Drool, perhaps a chat with one of the only people I knew in this land who did not wish to imprison or murder me was in order—even if he was bone simple and possessed of a wandering wife.

“We was supposed to rehearse at lunchtime in the forest, but Bottom never came home yesterday. I reckon he’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Aye, overnight in the forest. Probably kilt by elfs or lions. You wouldn’t want to play Pyramus for the duke’s wedding, would you?”

“Aren’t you even going to look for him?”

“Not me. If the elfs got Bottom, clever as he is, I got no chance at all.”

“I’m heading into the forest,” said I. “I’ll keep out a look for him.”