THE REAPER'S JEST

My Father was the court's embalmer and my Mother, the Nobles' mistreated fool.

Born in the year of our Lord 1740, my Mother gave me the name of Narr.

I knew of morbid flesh and dancing jests and naught else.

I also entered the court of the King a fool.

A jesting childe, the age of 9.

I was destined only ever for pickling the dead or tickling the living the Lords 

would guffaw as they patted my red bell'd cap,

My world was the open floor encircling the feast from whence succulent meats

and dainties were flung at my hot curled feet.

It was a golden orb of excess and fattening into which I was the piebald pup, 

tolerated, and yes, sometimes cheered but thank the Lord, not yet drooled upon

 like my Mother, who, dragged to chambers by every Earl, fooled gradually no

more.

But I, Narr the cherub, for now, lived solely for the loud applause of the gorging

 King as I frolicked like a Harlequin round sweating brutes.

But the darkest Lord himself was roused; his pets, disease and pestilence, our

 stark remuneration.

The Black Death bowed.

My Mother, already agonised from the cruelest of servitudes, died syphilitic yet

 the best of fools; my Father torn before his tortured end half-embalmed me in

 hope of defusing Doom's practised advances.

Contorting in formalin I fooled before my court one final time, vowing

 vengeance on my Mother's wigged tormentors, lamenting my Father's fractured

 heart.

I half-died as the Pest invaded, my salted brain aware of every ruin enacted on

 my tender veins and vessels, an impasto of oozing as I slipped into a jester's

 death.

I was hastily buried the third September 1752 on Thor's Day in an unmarked

 grave outside the City in unclean earth. A boulder holds me down as a lid on a

 cold meat stew.

Alas, my day of dying did not exist. The King decreed this the fourteenth day

 instead, in accordance with Pope Gregory, who's new calendar had come in

 England.

And so I lived another eleven days.

I shrank and leathered like a dried frog.

My grave became a cooking cell from where whispered Death to me of raw

 parole and succulence.  Always the fool, I humoured him with jokes and

 doggeral.

On the twelfth night my demise was stayed.

With a mortgage of decay my soul astray,

I was freed for eternity .... 

but only to feed it would seem on the recent dead.

The Reaper's little jest for me, his infant worm.

A ghoul.

I left my hole seized with wrath

and found the sewer to the court.

I first came across the regal hound.

Not recognising its old friend, he snarled as I padded by.

I chanced upon the cherub now humouring the King afresh with odes and

 juggling. 

I had no quarrel with him and spidered the shadows.

I sought high revel and debauchery and found it.

From the Gods I spied the swilling Earls and Barons, the very same who broke my Mother.

I could not wait for wise old age to claim them nor the sable death on their lips.

Fresh slaughter is what I craved

Blood-stopped tissues and shocked muscle.

I sought carnage.

I knew of naught else and chose my quarry, the loudest of them all.

I need not eat. That can wait.

I hid in his red boudoir.

I emerged slowly.

My maw widened

The fat Duke screamed as I reduced him.

My leeched mouth squelched into living flesh over and over ..... but I could not eat it.

His Excellence though will not disgrace the court again.

I choked and prayed for my Parents.

I removed his ring and put it on my own long wet finger.

Avenged for today I became furiously ravenous.

I must have corpses.

I skulked beyond the citadel, a shrivelled troll, snouting loudly in the new graves piled soft like pudding.

Slurping, I smile at my Duke's ring and savour the thought of his own arrival.

Tomorrow I rise from the shadows and revisit the Court once more.

I wish to reacquaint myself with the taste of excellence as soon as possible.

I enjoy my new audience.

I am Narr, corruption's secret clown.

I know of morbid flesh and dancing jests and naught else.