Edmund hears from a household servant that Cornwall and Regan are arriving at Gloucester's castle that night: unexpectedly, and in haste. His reaction is immediate: "The Duke be here tonight? The better! best! This weaves itself perforce into my business." The arrival is not part of his plan. It becomes part of his plan.
He summons Edgar from hiding and stages a fight. He tells his brother to draw his sword and seem to defend himself, then shouts for torches and servants while Edgar flees into the night. Before Gloucester arrives, Edmund wounds his own arm. "Some blood drawn on me," he notes, "would beget opinion of my more fierce endeavour."
When Gloucester appears, Edmund builds the lie carefully. Edgar, he says, was "mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon" and tried to persuade him to help kill their father. When Edmund refused, Edgar attacked him. He then does something particularly calculated: he quotes Edgar supposedly mocking his illegitimacy; claiming Edgar told him that no one would ever believe the word of an "unpossessing bastard" over a legitimate son. This invented insult does two things at once. It makes Edgar sound guilty and contemptible. And it lets Edmund perform the hurt of being called a bastard in a way that earns his father's sympathy rather than his contempt.
Gloucester disowns Edgar on the spot. "I never got him," he says: the same casual cruelty with which he once introduced Edmund to Kent, now turned against the legitimate son.
Cornwall and Regan arrive and immediately take Edmund's side. Cornwall folds him into his own service: "Natures of such deep trust we shall much need; you we first seize on." Gloucester promises to make Edmund his heir.
Regan connects Edgar's supposed plot to Lear's knights, suggesting they encouraged Edgar to kill Gloucester for his money. It is a convenient lie that serves her own agenda: she has come to Gloucester's castle specifically to avoid being at home when Lear arrives. Every thread of deceit in this scene tightens around the same two honest men: Edgar, now hunted, and Gloucester, now entirely in Edmund's hands.
Coming Up in Chapter 7
At Gloucester's castle, two unlikely figures are about to cross paths in the darkness. One seeks shelter, the other seeks revenge, and neither knows how dramatically their meeting will reshape the game.
