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The Duke of Buckingham comes to Richard bearing his brother's love, and that which Richard more warmly welcomes: news of the king's failing health.
Richard is lately come from Whitefriars, and the scent of incense still clings to his clothes; it will perfume the air around him when he confronts his brother's overreaching wife, lending a holy righteousness to his pose of ire. He has dressed soberly for the confrontation, prepared a speech to deliver upon entrance as though in the passion of the moment--and yet, when he bursts through the doors of the audience chamber with Hastings and Dorset following close behind, he notices at once that his enemy is not alone.
It will not do to be caught in observation, in calculation. He cannot pause or falter. He turns to his nephew while Hastings looks anxiously on, and he demands to know who has slandered him.
The queen and her brother are watching, and he turns to include them in the performance. Turning, after all, gives him a chance to size up Derby and Buckingham.
The long-faced Lord Stanley of Derby, he knows well: a would-be peacemaker, king of the rough Manx crags, a man with little to gain and much to lose.
Of the second Duke of Buckingham, Richard knows nothing. Only that his title is new and that he has family committed both to York and (still, treasonously) to Lancaster. He could say as much of half the noblemen in England.
Buckingham is an ill-shaven young ox of a man, the grandson of the first Buckingham and one of Anne's innumerable Neville cousins. Richard vaguely remembers that his uxorious uncle, the elder Henry Stafford, had livid red cheeks touched with ignis sacer. At the Battle of Barnet, Richard had once clasped his hand in friendship.
When Richard catches his eye, Buckingham greets him with a courteous bow. He straightens slowly, as though unaccustomed to bending his knee.
What manner of creature is he? wonders Richard. A peacemaker, like his grandfather? A soldier, like his uncle? Is he that rarest of beasts, the good man at court? The queen is rounding on him, though, and he must at least pretend to offer her his full attention.
"My Lord of Gloucester, I have too long borne your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs," she snaps; her high, plucked brow makes her eyes look wild and animal. "By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty with those gross taunts I often have endured--"
When old Queen Margaret peels herself from the shadows at the new Queen Elizabeth's back, though, Richard cannot even pretend to listen.
Before she can so much as speak, Buckingham steps forward as though to bar her passage. His hand is on his blade (his broad trencher of a hand, ridiculous upon the slim and elegant hilt), although he does not bare it.
It says all that Richard needs to know of Buckingham's character, that his first impulse is to protect those whom he serves.
Richard recognizes, in some abstracted part of himself that does not dream of a crown, that he longs to set Buckingham between himself and the world.
* * *
"I've buried one husband already," she says, which is no answer at all.
Richard wraps the braid in on itself until it will stay where he has set it, and he kisses her softly beneath her ear. She does not move, either to lean into the kiss or to flinch away. She knows that she has been won--that she offered herself like a prize to a conquering king, and that like all conquerors, I have sacked her citadel and set a torch to her home.
Not for the first time, he wonders what their marriage might have been, if he had instead offered her a crown and pledged his fealty.
He lets his hand fall to her waist, seeking the slight hollow beneath the vaulting arch of her rib, and she does not deny him the touch. "I gave you a blade once. What would you do, if I gave you another?"
At last, she turns to look at him. Her eyes are ice.
"I'd drive it into my own breast, you heartless bastard."
* * *
"Tell me truly, did they order your brother's death?" asks Buckingham. There is something desperately earnest in his voice; he is not, Richard thinks, seeking truth so much as seeking guidance.
"If they didn't order it, they were the cause of it nonetheless," he answers, which is true in its own way. "And my brother the king's health has failed so rapidly, with that viper Rivers whispering poison in his ear ..."
Buckingham pauses, and for a moment, he seems ready to turn around and throw down a gage at Rivers's feet. Richard lays a hand upon his arm, stilling him. "It is too late for the king," he says. "We must look to the future of England. My nephews must be pried free of the vipers' nest. I only hope the queen's poison hasn't corrupted them."
"I'll help you," Buckingham answers, as though it can really be that simple. As though there is nothing in the world that Buckingham wants, or no reason to imagine that he should be denied it.
He clasps Richard's arm in return. His heavy hand is as strong as Richard has always imagined, like a manacle about Richard's wrist.
It should trouble him more, that he has imagined Buckingham's hands binding him.
* * *
Anne wrenches out of his grip and twists away. "What is there to celebrate, when my crown was bought with the freedom of my two nephews? Your nephews, one of them your rightful king!"
"Thy crown, I gave thee when I chose thee for my wife," Richard laughs, and he drops to his knees at her feet. "Wouldst have a king for thy servant, my queen? Wouldst make me bow and scrape?"
"I would have you give me a knife," she answers, and flies from him.
He is still upon his knees. The goblet is empty.
* * *
"My sweet, noble lord," says Buckingham, and kneels to Richard. His broad face is still shining, earnest--but there is a touch of the shark to his smile, a touch of hardness to his eyes that Richard did not mark in them before the imprisonment of the young princes. He touches Buckingham's cheek, and it feels hot beneath his hand. "What service would you have of me?"
Gently, Richard urges him to rise, and kneels in Buckingham's stead. "For one night," he says, "I would have you be my lord, and use me as you choose. For this, you will be duly rewarded."
"My lord--"
"I would have this," Richard says again, and snatches at Buckingham's hand. "I will kiss your hand, my lord. I suffer your kicks and beg at your feet for scraps, as though I am the hound they paint me in the streets."
There is something like fear in Buckingham's eyes, although he does not draw back his hand. "My lord, thou needst not atone to me for thy kingship. What we did, we did for England."
"I do not ask this of you to atone, Your Grace," whispers Richard, and with his eyes downcast, he kisses Buckingham's ring.
Whether it is the kiss or the title that breaks him, Buckingham makes a sound like shattering and seizes Richard by the hair, forcing him to the ground.
His boots taste of leather and dust and repletion.
* * *
Richard hands Anne his knife, as she has always begged him to do. "Rumour it abroad," he tells Catesby, "That Anne, my wife, is sick and like to die. I will take order for her keeping close."
Anne's fingers fold one by one over the hilt as he goes on, declaring a marriage for Clarence's daughter, mocking a foolish boy. For a moment, he really believes that she will raise that dagger to his throat, and a part of him thrills at the promise of sharp steel upon his skin. (Another part is already deciding how he will persuade her to spare him.)
Catesby watches them both with the kind of horror that men wear when they see a soldier's belly slit upon a stage. In his eyes, Richard can almost see the butcher's cast-off entrails slop onto the boards as the actor gapes fishlike for air.
It's a horror that's at least half delight.
"Look, how thou dream'st!" Richard chides. "I say again, give out that Anne my wife is sick, and like to die."
Catesby meets Anne's eyes, and she nods once.
She has always known that this day would come. Perhaps it is even a relief for her.
Buckingham returns to him with a face like milk gravy, panting, "My Lord, I have considered in my mind the late demand that you did sound me in--" and Richard can scarcely bear to look at him.
I humbled myself before this man because I thought him an innocent that I could corrupt, and lo, like a devil, I have corrupted him. And now I have no further use for him.
"My lord," Buckingham goes on, oblivious, "I claim your gift, my due by promise, for which your honor and your faith is pawned. The earldom of Hereford and the moveables, the which you promised I should possess--"
Anne, at least, will be granted the dignity of death by her own hand. Buckingham, he will offer no such honor.
To be a king, he understands now, is to know that all the world is against him. If a king must not prostrate himself before his rivals, then he cannot permit himself to kneel to anyone at all.
* * *
Despair, and die, she tells him, and in her hands there is a dagger wet with her blood.
He begins to weep; he clutches his face in his hands as sobs wrack him, as a torrent of words spills from his unresisting lips. He despises himself. He despises himself, and he despises all the world, and he has never known a more profound feeling of powerlessness.
When a hand brushes his shoulder, he nearly shrieks, but then there are strong arms around his chest, Ratcliffe's familiar voice in his ear, and he lets himself be rocked as Ratcliffe chivvies him to rise and arm himself.
"Oh, Ratcliffe," he chokes out, between heaving breaths, "I fear, I fear--"
Without the least contempt, Ratcliffe smiles against his cheek and answers, "Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows."
The tears are still wet on his cheeks, and his chest is still aching-tight, and yet the relief of being comforted is as close to contentment as Richard has ever known.