The Murders of Richard III (12 page)

He raised the bottle to his lips and kept it there so long that Thomas was moved to remonstrate. “Take it easy. If our mystery man is gunning for you, you'll need all your wits about you.”

Philip lowered the bottle—but only, Thomas thought, because he needed to breathe. The theatrical profession was not noted for sobriety, but surely, in this case, getting drunk was contraindicated. Philip was no fool….

And maybe he wasn't worried, for the best of all possible reasons. The man was an actor, Thomas reminded himself. The display of nerves could be pretense. If Philip was the joker, he could drink himself insensible, knowing himself to be safe.

Thomas drank. He had been born with a constitutionally weak head and ordinarily was careful about imbibing, but now he felt the need to steady his nerves.

“Did Jacqueline send you along to protect me?” Philip asked suddenly.

“What makes you think that?”

“She read me a long lecture about drinking.” Philip smiled. “That is quite a woman, Thomas.”

The smile and the narrowed eyes were offensive, but Thomas refused to rise to the bait. After a moment Philip went on,

“Yes. A shrewd and sexy woman. She makes Liz look like a scrappy schoolgirl.”

“Well, I wouldn't—”

“Not that I give a damn about the wench.”

“You have been rather—”

“Oh, well, one has to keep one's hand in. Give the girl a thrill. That poor stick she's engaged to—can't imagine what she sees in him.”

Thomas smiled to himself. The stock phase almost constituted a declaration of love. Then the smile faded as he contemplated Philip's classic profile. The pose was probably unconscious, but the words…You couldn't believe a thing the man said.

“No,” he snapped, as Philip reached for the bottle. “Leave that alone, you've had enough.
Frank's a pleasant-enough lad. Why don't you lay off him?”

“Oh, he won't last,” Philip said. “Not with Sir Richard the Third in the running. Liz would never have accepted Honest Frank if Mum hadn't been so dead set against him.”

“Why should Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones be against it? I should think Frank would be considered a good match.”

“Ho,” Philip said derisively. “He's as poor as the proverbial church mouse, old boy. And not well thought of by his firm. There was some talk of a forged check while he was at Oxford….”

“Where did you pick up garbage like that?”

Philip smiled. “I can tell you equally jolly tidbits about the others. Isobel is a lush, of course. She'll end up in a Haven for Alcoholics one day. And she'll continue writing her ghastly books; her readers will never know the difference. You know about Sir General ‘Bloody' Kent, I suppose; they let him retire, to save the good name of the service, but if he hadn't done so he'd have ended up in the dock. One of his junior officers is still rather badly scarred….”

Thomas exclaimed in horror. Philip went on, with growing relish. “Dear old Mum is a gambler. She's heavily in debt. Her son is peculiar, to say the least. Rawdon has killed half a dozen patients
since he got on this natural-food-kick, by prescribing wheat germ instead of penicillin—”

“And you?” Thomas inquired drily. Philip was baiting him, of course, and doing a good job of it. Face and voice were trained to carry conviction.

“Why should I incriminate myself? Ask Fearless Frank; I expect he has my dossier at his fingertips.”

The bell rang before Thomas could think of an appropriate reply. He rose, wary of his skirts, and followed Philip out. The actor's face was as bland as butter. Thomas wondered how many of the scurrilous stories were true. He also regretted his virtuous interruption. It would have been interesting to hear what Philip had on the saintly looking rector.

At the head of the stairs Philip stopped, catching his breath. There were no electric lights below. The hallway was dark except for the pale flare of candles. Across the polished floor a figure moved with the smooth silence of a ghost. It wore robes of apple green, trimmed with silver. The long gauzy veil lifted like a cloud from the tip of the tall cap.

Liz looked up and laughed at their startled faces. She sank to the floor in a lower curtsy as the two men descended the staircase. Thomas replied with a bow that in his opinion didn't compare too
unfavorably with Philip's courtly gesture. It was easier to play the game in semidarkness. Thomas was no longer self-conscious, but he found it increasingly difficult to keep track of which century he was living in.

The drawing room was also lit by candles. Sir Richard had a certain flare for the theatrical. He was King Richard to the life as he raised a tall beaker to greet the newcomers—Richard as he might have been in the happy days when he lorded it over the north, before the deaths of brother, son, and wife. On his smooth brown head he wore a circlet of gold; and Thomas was reminded of the famous story of the crown plucked from the thornbush after the Battle of Bosworth. Richard had worn it into battle, disdaining the warnings of his friends that he would thus be marked out for the fiercest attacks of his enemies.

Thomas forgot Bosworth as the smiling host handed him a goblet—a high, carved beaker of gold flashing with fake jewels. Or were they fake? Thomas shrugged. He took a hearty swallow, and almost choked. Weldon was going all out for authenticity. The drink was not gin or Scotch or brandy, but a heady mixture of spiced wine.

Someone smacked him on the back—a misguided
gesture that brought on the fit of coughing he had thus far managed to avoid. When Thomas had cleared his streaming eyes, he saw Kent grinning at him. The bronzed soldier was the only one in the group who was not wearing a wig or long hair. Thomas saw him, not as the eventually ineffectual Buckingham, but as the product of an era far removed from the fifteenth century. Kent's very features resembled those of certain hawk-nosed Roman busts.

“Take it slowly,” Kent warned, as Thomas raised his cup. “It tastes like treacle gone bad, but it's powerful stuff.”

Thomas ignored him and drank again. Once you got used to it, the stuff wasn't half bad.

When he lowered the goblet, Kent had gone. Thomas blinked at the vacant space. Someone moved in to fill it. A white moustached…O'Hagan. Thomas studied the moustache. Amazing appendage, he thought; you don't see a face at all, you just see a moustache.

“Who're you?” he asked amiably. “I mean, I know who you are. Glad to see you. Who're you s'posed to be?”

O'Hagan was wearing a nondescript garment that might have passed as a medieval robe. Thomas rather suspected it was the man's bathrobe, but that was none of his business.

“Oh, I don't have a part,” O'Hagan said. He started to walk away, but Thomas grabbed his arm.

“You must be somebody,” he insisted. “Everybody's somebody.”

He waved his goblet. There was a soft splashing sound and Thomas glanced around to see Wilkes refilling his glass. The sight almost sobered him. Wilkes was wearing a doublet and hose in Gloucester's livery colors, white and red. Richard's badge, the white boar, was embroidered on the left breast of the doublet. In his normal attire the butler's air of dignity overcame his physical deficiencies; Thomas now observed, with pained surprise, that Wilkes was bowlegged as well as spindle-shanked. The dignity was gone too. Wilkes's narrow shoulders slumped, but his face wore an expression of grim endurance.

“Thank you, Wilkes,” Thomas said sympathetically.

Wilkes bowed his head.

“Thank
you,
your Grace.”

Thomas drank.

“Amazing stuff,” he remarked to O'Hagan, who had emerged from a refreshing dip into his own goblet.

“It would be a sensation at an office Christmas party,” O'Hagan agreed. He giggled.

“No, but le'ssee,” Thomas insisted. “You gotta be somebody. Wanna be Lord Stanley?”

“All you've got left are the unsympathetic parts,” O'Hagan complained. “Stanley was a lousy traitor. Even I—I mean, nobody thinks much of him.”

This seemed reasonable to Thomas, who had emptied his glass.

“You can be Lovel,” he offered generously. “Richard's bes' friend.”

“He met a sticky end, too. No, I think I'll be Henry the Seventh. At least he survived Richard.”

He moved away. Thomas watched him critically. The man was drunk. He was swaying.

The whole room was swaying.

Thomas shook his head at Wilkes, who was advancing upon him with a full pitcher and a look of concentrated malevolence. He went to Weldon.

“Wonderful party,” Thomas said. “But aren't you asking for it, Dick?”

“What d'you mean?”

“Darkness,” Thomas said. “Intoxicating liquors. Perfect for the comedian.”

“Nonsense,” Weldon said shortly. “There will be no more jokes.”

“How do you know?”

“It was Percy, of course. Who else could it be? I gave the boy a lecture. He won't dare go on.”

“But Percy couldn't—”

“Use your head, Thomas. None of the tricks required any particular physical strength—except perhaps the one played on you. But with a pulley arrangement of some sort, using the hooks in the ceiling of the wine cellar, a child could have managed that as well. No, it was Percy. The boy isn't…We've had trouble with him before this.”

“I'm sorry,” Thomas said.

“Don't be sorry. Don't let regret spoil this.” Weldon faced him squarely. He said softly, “This is important to me, Thomas. More important than you realize.”

The red glow in his eyes might have been reflected firelight. To Thomas it looked like the glow of fanaticism.

“What's important?” he asked. “A reconstruction of a medieval banquet, or—”

“Richard.” The glow became a steady light. “Richard's good name. Tomorrow is important, Thomas. I won't let anything interfere with what is going to happen. Anything! If I told you—”

He broke off. Lady Isobel had arrived.

Her costume was even more elaborate than the one she had worn the previous day, a black gown that blended with the shadows and left the wearer's powdered bust and face hanging in
midair. The woman looked horrible, like a waxen effigy. The long flaxen hair steaming over her shoulders was as dry as an untended wig. The thin lips were set in a smirk.

“My lords and lieges,” exclaimed Lady Isobel. She curtsied. There was a sharp cracking sound. Thomas was reminded of dry bones snapping.

Thomas reached for a glass—any glass, he didn't care whose. Damn it, the charades were becoming unnerving. He began to understand the old obsession about possession, the danger of opening one's mind to invasion by the dead. He had a hideous vision of the group yielding to their various alter egos and wallowing in the treachery and blood that had marked the end of the fifteenth century. Personally he didn't feel the slightest empathy with the unpleasant Duke of Clarence, but…He put his beaker back, scarcely tasted. Possession was as a superstition, but there was danger in identifying too strongly with another personality.

Lady Isobel made the circuit of the room, exchanging archaic greetings and allowing the men to kiss her hand. Thomas told himself he wouldn't kiss it, but when the woman greeted him he found he had to. It was right under his nose.

He got a whiff of mixed spirits that momentarily stupefied him as Lady Isobel laughed gaily up into his face.

“Dear brother Clarence,” she chirped.

“Ah, yes,” Thomas mumbled. “Elizabeth.”

“Your Grace, if you please. Elizabeth was always on her dignity, remember? Oh, isn't this fun? Have some more malmsey, Clarence!”

“Fun,” Thomas said hollowly.

The bony fingers, still clinging to his, suddenly contracted. The long nails dug in like claws. Thomas turned.

Jacqueline stood in the doorway.

Thomas's second reaction was one of amusement. Jacqueline had upstaged the other women and made the best entrance of all. His initial reaction could not have been expressed in words. It was a long, shaken breath of pure lechery.

Of course he had warned Jacqueline, in London, that they would be wearing costume. This gown had never been wrenched from a costumer's musty racks; it was a sweeping, full-sleeved garment of ivory and gold threads. In fact, it was no more medieval than any of the other “at home” outfits popular for parties, but Jacqueline wore it royally. It was cut very low in front, and the evocative light that had picked out Lady Isobel's sharp bones made warm and pleasing contrasts with Jacqueline's curves. The real glory, however, was her hair. Thomas had never
seen it unbound. It rippled in a coppery stream over her shoulders almost to her waist.

He watched while Jacqueline advanced on the group consisting of the rector, the doctor, and O'Hagan. She cut the latter neatly out of the group, removed him to a cozy sofa near the window, and sat down beside him.

Thomas was aroused from thoughts that did not become him by Weldon's impatient exclamation. “Where are Percy and his mother? It's late; we must begin.”

Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones may have delayed her entrance in order to be the last to appear, but something had happened to distract her. She trotted into the room without pausing to strike a pose.

“Where is Percy? Liz, have you seen your brother?”

Liz turned.

“No, I came down some time ago.”

“He's not in his room,” said Percy's mother.

Jacqueline stood up and began to run. She crossed the room doing a solid six miles an hour, and vanished out the door.

It was a ludicrous sight, but Thomas was not amused. He was still hypnotized by history. Jacqueline's streaming hair and pale face, her golden gown conjured up visions out of England's past—visions of queens and royal ladies
fleeing for their lives. Catherine Howard, Henry VIII's next-to-last wife, whose wailing ghost is still seen rushing down the corridors of Hampton Court; Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, Lady Jane Grey. All Tudor victims…