Turn The Scales

Ned Poins stabs a man at the tennis-courts until he dies, for insulting his sister Nell. There’s more to it than that, of course, but in the end that’s all it is and that is the end of his story.

There’s nothing to be done now save to wait for morning; he might be able to make a break for it if he really felt like it, but he has no weapon and his head’s been cracked against the stones with enough force that everything is muzzy and he can’t keep his balance. He wonders if it will abate as he sobers up, or if he’s stuck like this. The blood has dried between his fingers; it had gotten in his mouth, and it stains between his teeth still, Poins worries them with his tongue. He still stinks of ale and guts.

He’s sent for his brothers, but they haven’t disdained to visit the place where he’s held; Ellen Poins has come, and been, and fled, and now he is alone.

So when Henry comes, he comes to him like an apparition. All the bile in him rises, the way his blood once rallied at the sight of him; they make eye contact, once he’s close to the bars, and Poins has to turn to spit.

The prince is dressed in the way Poins is accustomed to seeing him, but underneath it he is combed and scrubbed in such a way as he never was; these clothes now look on him like a disguise he’s donned for cover. He’s obviously had a hard ride, and at first it’s mildly flattering, enough to elicit the first prickings of rising hopes, to think of him discarding his responsibilities and hurrying to his prison as soon as he heard of his friend’s predicament. Flattering but implausible. The old king is near-dead; his trial (such that it is) has taken place in the awkward lurching turn-about of the preparation for the transition. Surely Hal has invoked his title to gain unmolested admittance, and yet nothing in his bearing savors of rescue, or release, or mercy, or pardon.

Poins greets him with a boneless shrug and a gesture that does not disturb his bruises. “I suppose it’s safe to assume you aren’t here to ransom me.”

Henry’s face is mirthless.

“No, Ned, that I will not do. Have you no kinsmen to pay the price for you?”

Poins shakes his head, dislodging a filthy lock that now falls in front of his eye. He must look quite the mad dog, and the fate of mad dogs who can no longer be said to fawn is quite well-determined. He will not beg, he will not plead with the prince, he will not fall down on his knees and entreat him with tears on his cheeks and a desperate man’s words in his mouth.

“What have you come to see me for, then, if you don’t have it in mind to pardon me?” A pardon for what he plainly has done. “Are you here for the saving of my soul?”

Anything would suffice: I only wanted to know if it was really you, my Ned, and not some misunderstanding; I’ve come to gawk at what what ills befall the wicked as a consequence of their own evils; I’ve come to see your face one last time before I am king. Even one last fling before justice is done. (The virtuous character of the prince had had its part in the nature of the fatal insult, and perhaps this is what’s served to turn his head – a shrewd sense for his own reputation.) A prison cell is no place for a teary reconciliation; Justice is blind, but even she could hardly turn her eye from the number of things he’d want to do to Hal if he got near him now.

In the register of grave sins, they’ve covered the gamut, their naughtiness (or Hal’s naughtiness, rather, Ned was born steeped in sin and never to shake it off) has flowered and now admits to murder. If he came even to ensure him a real trial, that’d be plenty; he knows he is unlikely to be found anything but flagrantly guilty of the crime he did indeed commit with great vigor, but his life seems so short, with the prospect of its end so near, and he is too dulled to be frightened. This business has gone so fast; he seems to have gotten under the skin of someone fairly important. One of life’s great understatements.

Hal says nothing, while his eyes are drinking up Ned’s guilt; he’s seen a fair deal of blood before, being a brawler and a ruffian with the worst of them, but seldom Poins’. His eyes (murky pits, in the dying light) are indifferent. He deserves this.

“I’m wanted at Westminster,” Henry says. “I cannot stay.” His hands are folded behind his back.

“Not even for an old friend?” He means it to be wry but there’s no color in it, and no wit, “For God’s sake, Hal, if you love me–” but he is already leaving. There is sorrow in his golden brow and remorse in the turn of his lip and none of it is any fucking use.

“I’m to be hanged tomorrow,” he calls out, but Henry doesn’t turn back.