*this is an abandoned piece written about a year ago

The feast was done. Beneath the boards, the hounds fell out upon the bones of swans, and wine stole through the rushes where a serving-woman knelt to gather what her betters had destroyed. A thin whine rose among the shattered crystal. The fool watched her take up a broken cup. Not three hours past, he had made merry with her tears; now in her palm there opened a red mouth.

He knew his deed. There lay his excellence, he thought: to walk within his wickedness and know each chamber of the house. Other men sinned blindfold; he could name the hour his heart first turned, the hunger that attended it, the sweetness of persuading a whole room to scorn one soul - and then endure their scorn himself, as though disgrace were water and might wash him clean.

“Mark me,” he said, and crouched beside her in the wine.

“How cheaply do I buy their love with thy sorrow.”

She pressed her wounded hand against her breast. Above them, some great lord laughed in his sleep.

He waited. Surely there should follow some small lifting of her face; some wonder that a man could turn so keen a blade upon his own breast and bear to watch it enter. But as she reached beneath the bench for another shard, he rose with a stiffness that hadn't been there when he knelt.

By winter he had wrought himself a newer sport. Before the hearth he stood and preached the canker underneath his paint. Vain, he called himself; a coward; a starveling in a coat of borrowed mirth. The ladies lowered their embroidery. The king leaned forward. How strange, they murmured, to hear a fool speak thus.

When they applauded, he bowed until his bells lay jingling on the stones.

Thereafter, no man brought a charge against him but found it lodged already in some finer phrase upon his tongue. Call him cruel, and he would sigh: “Aye, there thou hast the very sickness of my soul.” Name those whom he had wounded, and he answered with the wounds that made him so. Soon they stood round him like poor suitors at a gate, each with his grievance in his hand, whilst he unfolded, yard by silken yard, the rich-wrought chronicle of his afflictions.

He would not claim that he was innocent. Innocence was a milk-white thing, the virtue of a child that had not yet been tried. His was the sterner grace: to know himself corrupt, and take the measure of the whole corruption.

In spring, the woman passed him in a narrow gallery, bearing folded linen. Across the hollow of her palm there lay a scar. He saw it, and remembered: the swans, the wine, his own voice made gentle in the dark.

Before he spoke, a page came through the arch. His Grace required the fool within the hall.

He set the bells straight at his throat and followed, turning already in his mind what use the scar might serve. The court sat gathered round the leavings of a meal. His place beside the hearth was vacant still. He took it with a bow, and once again began upon the wretched thing beneath his motley: how vanity had built her nest within his breast; how readily his tongue--

“We know,” the king said.

The fool smiled. A pause might yet be put to service. He knew how long a silence must hang upon the bough before a man might pluck it.

“Your Grace, I fear you know the lesser part.”

"Then spare us the greater."

A hound stirred underneath the board. The king turned his cup between his hands.

“This half-year hast thou brought us one same wicked knave. Thou hast searched his purse, confessed his appetites, shown us every stain upon his coat. Yet here he stands, dressed for another telling.”

The fool bowed down his head. Already came the answer: some confession deeper than the last, some nakedness so pitiful the room must needs take mercy.

“Ay, my good lord. For even now I seek

To make a virtue of-”

The king held up his hand.

“Canst thou do nothing but thou must behold

Thyself in the doing?”

The fool stood still, his mouth yet fashioned to receive the words.

"Go," said the king. "Thou hast worn the jest through."