The Murders of Richard III (8 page)

“Good morrow, brother Clarence, good morrow! How is it with you?”

Thomas rolled an eye toward the table, where Jacqueline sat in more than oriental splendor. The sunlight streaming through the bay windows made her hair glow like fire; she was wearing white slacks and a silky garment printed in shades of green, peacock blue, and gold. She looked up from the austere cup of tea and piece of toast on which she was breakfasting, and winked. Reassured, Thomas turned back to the rector, who was, he recalled, his Ricardian brother, Edward IV.

“Hail, my liege,” he said valiantly. “How is it with you?”

The doctor, who had just entered, clucked disapprovingly.

“No, no Thomas; ‘your Grace' would be more suitable.” He put a heaping spoonful of a pale-gray substance on his plate and studied the rector's pile of kidneys disparagingly. “As for my fellow king here, he isn't going to be at all well if he eats that frightful mess. I shudder, friend Edward, to think of the lining of your stomach.”

“Then don't think about it,” said Mr. Ellis cheerfully.
“Really, Rawdon—forgive me, King Henry—we ought to exchange roles. Not that I claim to be a saint, and there are those who believe poor mad Henry qualified for that position—”

“As a man of the cloth you are closer to the role of saint than I,” Rawdon admitted. “Actually, I believe Henry was a mental case, not a saint, but that may be a professional prejudice.”

“You may both be right,” said Thomas, helping himself to bacon. “Henry was a gentle, kindly man who was also considerably confused. I suspect your diet would appeal to him at that, Rawdon. What is that stuff?”

The doctor's long face brightened.

“Barley cereal, honey, malt, and a few other of nature's gifts to man. It's my own invention. Weldon is good enough to have it prepared for me when I come. Really, Thomas, you ought to try it. It would do wonders for your—”

“No, thanks,” Thomas said. He didn't want to hear what organs the revolting mess would do wonders for, much less eat it.

The rector chuckled.

“It's better than malmsey wine—eh, brother Clarence?”

Thomas acknowledged the witticism with a sour smile. He was getting tired of references to the famous butt of malmsey.

He retreated to the table and sat down beside Jacqueline, who turned emerald-green eyes upon him.

“Hail, brother George. I may call you brother, I hope? As the mother of Richard's bastard children—”

“Cut it out,” growled Thomas.

“Certainly not. I have decided to fling myself wholeheartedly into the spirit of the thing. Have I told you my name is Katherine? Nobody seems to know who Richard's mistresses were; I have formed a theory that one of them was Hastings' wife Katherine. That would explain why Richard was so hasty—” a flicker of long dark lashes emphasized the pun, and Thomas made a wordless grimace of disgust—“so hasty in executing Hastings. We know that Richard's illegitimate daughter was named Katherine; what would be more natural than for her to be named after her mother? Richard dedicated a chapel to Saint Katherine—”

She broke off as Kent came to join them. In the bright light of day the general's face looked like that of a well-preserved mummy, but his eyes were snapping with energy and appreciation as he surveyed Jacqueline's cool elegance. He put his plate down, and Jacqueline eyed it with consternation. Two white-eyed fish looked back at her.

“Very interesting idea,” Kent said, beginning to debone the nasty-looking specimens. “Don't believe I have ever heard it before. Would you give us a lecture, Jacqueline?”

“I was just joking,” Jacqueline said meekly. She seemed subdued by the fishy stare.

“Mustn't joke about serious matters.” Kent chuckled. “Do you know, the more I think about it, the more it attracts me. Lady Hastings as Richard's mistress…”

“Now wait a minute,” Thomas said. “That's a ridiculous idea. She was too old in the first place, and in the second place—”

Kent paid no attention. Turning to the rector, who had taken the chair beside him, he began to recapitulate Jacqueline's theory. Rawdon, eating with slow, well-chewed bites, also listened attentively. Jacqueline caught Thomas's eye and lifted her own eyes in pious resignation.

“Fascinating,” the rector said. “Indeed, Jacqueline, you must write an article for our little journal. Or—no! May I call you Katherine?”

“Oh, do,” said Jacqueline wildly. “Do.”

“Where are the others?” inquired Thomas, in an attempt to change the subject before Jacqueline waxed violent and profane.

“Let me see.” Ellis considered the question, as if it were an exercise in historical research, which it
did rather resemble. “Our good host and his lady have come and gone, as has my excellent spouse. Young Edward—your son, my dear doctor—has also breakfasted, as has the other young Edward, my son and heir. I do not know about the others.”

It took Thomas a few moments to sort out the aliases.

“Sir Richard, the two older ladies, Frank, and Percy,” he translated, for the benefit of Jacqueline, whose eyes were glazed. “I'll bet Percy was the first to come and the last to leave.”

“No doubt.” The idea seemed to distress the doctor. He put his fork down and considered his half-empty plate doubtfully. “The boy has an excellent appetite….”

“The boy is a menace,” Thomas said. “He won't live to grow up.”

“Being overweight is unhealthy,” the rector agreed innocently.

“I didn't mean that. I mean someone will kill him before he grows up. It might be me. Rawdon—what's the matter?”

The doctor was bent over his plate, his hands covering his mouth. Suddenly he leaped up, overturning his chair. Thomas caught a glimpse of his face as he bolted from the room. It was pale pea-green.

The remaining breakfasters stared at one another.

“Sick,” said Kent succinctly. “No wonder, that ghastly mess he's been eating—”

“He eats it every morning,” Thomas said. “I hope he isn't coming down with something—a virus—”

“I had better see if I can be of help,” said the rector. He popped the last kidney into his mouth. Thomas couldn't blame him for the smug look on his round face.

The rector trotted out. Jacqueline was staring at the doctor's plate.

“I wonder…”

“No time to wonder,” said Thomas briskly. “Come on, Jacqueline. If we're to be back by ten, we'd better get moving.”

Jacqueline went upstairs to get her gloves—“I can't possibly go to the village without
gloves,
Thomas!” Thomas took the statement in the spirit in which it was offered. He knew what Jacqueline was going to get. The Purse, in one of its giant manifestations.

As she started up, the butler approached Thomas. He proffered a note on a silver salver.

“This was found in your room, sir, by the maid.”

The envelope had Thomas's name on it in a hurried scrawl. Thomas opened it.

Jacqueline, on the landing, leaned over the banister. Her hair gleamed like an infernal aureole.

“What is it, Thomas?”

Thomas read the note again. It didn't take long; the message was brief.

“Come down to the wine cellar after breakfast. I think I've found something. Frank. P.S. Don't tell anyone. This could be dangerous.”

The word
anyone
was heavily underscored.

“Thomas, what does it say?”

Thomas looked up.

“Nothing much. I'll meet you here in five minutes.”

The cellar lights were on. This might have alerted Thomas or reassured him, depending on his state of mind; but in fact he didn't even notice. He was sure Frank had nothing of importance to show him, but he wanted to check it out before he went haring off to the village on what was probably a wild-goose chase. He was also moved by a less noble motive. Jacqueline was lovely and charming and witty, but she was also irritating, with her amused contempt and her air of omniscience. If he could find out something she didn't know…

Absorbed by these ignoble but satisfying thoughts, Thomas was taken unawares by the blow that struck him down. He saw stars, but that was all he saw, except for the blackness that swallowed him as he felt himself falling.

He came to his senses after an indeterminate period of time, and it took more time, equally impossible to calculate, before he figured out where he was. His position seemed to be the product of delirium or delusion; it couldn't be real. The growing congestion in his aching head finally convinced him. He was standing on that very head—upside down, to put it plainly. His arms were tightly bound to his sides and his legs were tied together. A gag covered his mouth. He was blind. Literally blind; his eyes were uncovered and open, but he could see nothing. He could smell, however. The smell filled his nostrils and increased the nausea which his position and his injury had instigated. One other sense, normally unused except by the genuinely blind, came feebly to his assistance—the generalized sense of location centered in the nerve cells of his face. Thomas's brief state of consciousness was fading again, but he was a man of considerable intelligence; his reeling brain put the data together and came up with an incredible answer. The smell of stale wine, the sense of enclosure in something narrow and confining, the absurd, humiliating position. Thomas tried to swear, choked, and fainted again.

When he regained consciousness the second time he opened one eye to check the stimuli before
deciding whether to retain his senses. The result was reassuring. He was prone and horizontal; his limbs ached, but they were free; light greeted his eyes, and there had been a fleeting suggestion of a face, haloed in flame and pale with what Thomas hoped was anguish on his behalf. He opened his mouth and croaked like a frog.

“What did you say?” The voice was Jacqueline's. It was cool and controlled and mildly querulous.

Hurt, Thomas opened both eyes and blinked them till they got used to the light. It seemed blinding after the darkness that had surrounded him earlier, but it was only the dim bulb in the ceiling of the wine cellar. He was lying flat on the dusty floor, and beside him, turned over on its side, was an empty barrel—a large barrel, fully five feet high when erect.

Someone put a glass to his dry lips. Thomas drank. The liquid tasted like vintage champagne to his dusty throat. He realized that it was champagne. Jacqueline had opened a bottle. Thomas swallowed, and repeated his question.

“I'm afraid so,” Jacqueline said regretfully.

“I was in a barrel?”

“That's the third time you've asked that.”

“I still can't believe it. I won't believe it. Oh,
God—” Thomas sat up and glared wildly. “Who else saw me?”

“This is no time to be worrying about your male ego,” Jacqueline said. She spread her knees and received Thomas's head neatly in her lap as he fell back. “Thomas, darling, you aren't hurt, you know. Only the classic bump on the head. But—you really did scare me for a minute!”

The wobble in her voice restored some of Thomas's battered vanity. Her lap felt comfortable—soft, cool, silky. He wriggled his head into an easier position and relaxed.

“It took you long enough,” he said grumpily. “It's a wonder I didn't die of congestion of the brain or something.”

“You were only in—in that thing for a couple of minutes.”

“How do you know? It felt like days.”

“I waited for ten minutes before I started to look for you. Considering the time it took to knock you out, truss you up, and—er—insert you…”

Jacqueline's voice was still unsteady, but Thomas suspected another emotion than concern. He squinted up at her, saw the corners of her mouth quiver, and suddenly smiled with the good humor that was one of his most endearing characteristics.

“I must have looked like an absolute fool,” he said. “My feet sticking up out of that thing…I don't blame you for laughing.”

“I'm not laughing,” said Jacqueline.

Thomas sat up. He garnered Jacqueline into his arms and for a time they sat in silence while she made gulping noises into his shirt front. Finally she detached herself and sat up on her heels. Her face was smudged with dust and her eyes were still damp; two tendrils of hair had come loose and curled wickedly over her ears.

“No,” she said, fending Thomas off as he reached for her again. “That's enough of that.”

“Is that all I get for being knocked on the head and stuck into a barrel upside down?” Thomas inquired plaintively. “If I lost an arm and a leg, I suppose you might—”

“You're drunk,” Jacqueline said coldly. “Thomas, be serious. I got something of a shock, that's why I acted so silly; but this is no joke. And I'm afraid your male ego is going to suffer, although I was the only one to see you
in situ.
We'll have to tell the others.”

Jacqueline's therapy had been amazingly successful. Except for a slight headache, Thomas felt fine. He reached for the champagne bottle, which was sitting on the floor beside him. After a long drink, he nodded.

“Yes, I see what you've got in mind. Oh, well. At least I won't have to hear Lady Isobel recite her poem about gallant King Richard.”

The emergency meeting was in full swing, and it was getting absolutely nowhere. Thomas's head was aching. He no longer felt like a kindly adult watching the antics of cute children; he felt like a lion tamer with a cageful of feline schizophrenics. People were pacing around the room shouting questions at each other. At the head of the table Weldon pounded his gavel. No one paid the slightest attention. The pounding only increased Thomas's headache.

As he had feared, the first reaction to the news of his misadventure had been hilarity. Outrage soon replaced the laughter, but this emotion was just as noisy and just as ineffectual. Frank was the most indignant; he kept insisting that he had not written the note that had lured Thomas to his doom. Thomas kept reassuring him, but Frank demanded paper and pencil and produced a specimen that was certainly quite unlike the handwriting Thomas remembered. He had to depend on his memory, for the note was no longer in his pocket.