To Work And After, Holiday

Bolingbroke’s hands are war-rough, and his grim pig’s eyes are perfectly certain.

He brings him the headless bodies of Bushy and Green as a sort of wedding present. Both are unembalmed, both are filthy and wet with rot, they have been dragged through every ditch and by-way in England. Henry hopes by his response to see whether it is really in Richard to kiss the rod. Or to terrify him into submission, he isn’t sure.

Richard nearly crumples when he sees them; they are laid in the same box, close-propped in one another’s arms like a pair of wax dolls, until he gets close. He has to clasp a balled-up sleeve over his nose and mouth even to approach; it is not only grief that staggers him. But he channels his crumbling into crouching down beside them in their coffin and rubbing the material of what is left of their clothing between his fingers, clasping their hands. He quickly withdraws himself when his hands come away damp, greasy with fat, and he is gagging again. Bushy has been rather clumsily re-dressed, but the remains within the clothing scarcely look like they ever were a man at all. Their heads still adorn the Tower bridge; the stumps of their necks have rotted away. The rings have been plucked from their fingers, cut away where necessary unless the putrescent flesh has split and discolored on its own. Even their gloves have been stolen or cast away; he will have nothing to remember them by, and he cannot bring himself to kiss them their deserved farewells. His sweet friends are all spoiled.

Bolingbroke has killed all his boys, or proven those that survive to be faithless. (York has removed his son from court entirely; this is undoubtedly shrewd.) He jealously guards William Bagot from him, as if he has any desire to renew acquaintance with his betrayer; the sweetest gesture Henry could make him would be to remove him from his sight entirely, it is hell to see him alive and intact and scrubbed of all incriminating tokens of Richard’s company. Why should he survive and his fellows die? The bad are profiting and the friends Richard once had and cherished – the good, fair, sweet, glad, and true – are punished and destroyed.

Henry will strip him of everything that is his, or ruin those sweet things that he once had. This has all happened before, and it is happening again.

He rises gracelessly and fixes his sleeves with a shake; Henry as king has made much of adopting similar styles in dress, and today by laughable chance they happen to match. Their union now is like something for astrologers to puzzle at; either this coincidence is an emblem of their unity in affection and their shared purpose, or of their competition for the same birthright, or something of both and neither in the claim that Henry grows more like him by the day, made soft and inconstant. It’s a splendid insult that can do so badly by both of them; this comparison is enough for a good laugh, when he thinks of how they both must look these days.

He’s going to poison him. He wants to make sure he rots before he’s dead.

“Would you have them buried?” Bolingbroke says, as close as he ever is to conciliatory. How very good, how very kind of him to offer this up to Richard to decide.

“I would have them alive, were it all the same to you.”

He leans to kiss Henry on the mouth, feeling him jerk back and stiffen, and leaves a hand-print smudge of putrefied fluids against his cheek.