We Speak No Treason Vol 1 by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

dripped before my face. And he knew it instantly—no fool, this fool—for he dropped the offal on the grass and bent close, asking: ‘What ails the little maid?’ his voice deeper than the high whine he gave his audience.
    ‘It’s a weakness,’ Agnes sounded vexed. ‘A certain delicacy.’ They were giving me wine. ‘And she hates cock-fights. And bear-baiting.’
    We had already passed the bear, with his poor burned feet, stamping a chained, ceaseless circle. And that was only a dancer.
    ‘Strange, but forgive me,’ said the fool. ‘’Twas a crude jest. Am I pardoned, fair one?’ This in a loud whine; the crowd was impatient for him to continue. I looked in his grey eyes, saw tenderness, touched his gay shoulder with a trembling hand. He sprang away, tipping himself on to his hands, and sped thus around the eager circle. The hobby-horse, gaudy-ribboned, chased the fool across the green as the Moorish dancers ran before us in a straggling file. They wore green and red fustian, dagged sleeves, bells. ‘Clack!’ went their staves as they feinted in the dance. The smell of trodden grass rose sweet and sour. But my joy in it was dulled by the fool’s nasty jest. Though I had forgiven him, the bad taste of it lay heavy in my mouth, and when he bounded back to us I looked upon him without pleasure. He had a bauble on a stick, a monstrous moon-face, gilded with a smile on one side, a frown on the other.
    ‘Ladies, follow me!’ he pleaded, and Agnes rose from the bench. The fool’s eyes travelled up her height.
    ‘By the Rood, maiden, you are lofty,’ he remarked.
    ‘’Tis you that is low,’ she said haughtily, but I could see he charmed her in the same way as did the young birds, the flowers. He stretched out a hand to me, as I sat motionless.
    ‘Marry! the little maid’s still wroth,’ he said. ‘Come, my honeycomb. We’ll find a friend of mine.’
    He skipped ahead, Agnes admonishing him, but smiling, for as he went he sang about a lustful friar, and most of the words were nonsense. I lagged behind; Agnes nudged me on, like a dog herding sheep. Patch prodded a passing belly with his bauble; an important, a fine belly at that, clothed in murrey and fur with a broad gold pouch. And the belly’s owner merely loosed a great guffaw and slapped Patch round the shoulders.
    ‘Jesu, Agnes!’ said I. ‘He’s bold.’
    She gave a knowing little grin. ‘Well ’tis the King’s fool, forget it not,’ she said; and I ran after him, eager at last, wanting to ask about the King, the unknown magnificences that were his daily fare. He threaded through the revellers, supple and broad in his motley, and once he turned with a grimace like some evil sprite leading me on to danger. I ran beneath the sun. Red and yellow, the day.
    I thought he might be taking us to meet a courtier, but he halted at an old man’s bench. Despite the fierce heat, this man was cowled to the ears in threadbare wool so that little of his face was visible. Across his knees he cradled a harp of most ancient design. Pale as lilies, his hands were translucent and veined. The fool stretched out a hand to pluck one string of the lyre. The sound was a drop of silver rain falling.
    ‘Old friend, how goes it?’ he said softly.
    The minstrel opened eyes clear as water. ‘’Tis you, rascal,’ he murmured. ‘Methought I felt a cold wind blowing then.’
    ‘Aged blood runs thin,’ said Patch cheerily. ‘How many summers, old one?’
    With a twitching smile, he said: ‘I know not. Yet I remember the second Richard, and the day Wat Tyler rode on London. Richard saved that day of blood. Sweet Richard, they called him.’
    This is truth: I felt a strange little pang. It would be easy for me to seek sensation, to say that in an instant the future showed itself to me, but it was naught like that... Only something in me which heard those words, and moved to tenderness.
    Patch pulled off his tight scarlet cap, and I saw that he was indeed young, no