Ultima Forsan

They’ve got a reprieve only for as long as it takes to dredge up a priest; this is what Green strongly suspects. The relief it gives his soul, absurd as it seems under the circumstances, is chased just as soon by mortal dread for the body. The due observation of other aspects of the sentencing process would hardly have been a reassurance – the state of his immortal soul aside, better for a man to have his throat cut in his bed, better for him to drown in a Gloucestershire ditch than to live long enough to see his guts in front of him on a stick. And if their deaths haven’t been handed down immediately, it was not for any excess of good will; Henry Bolingbroke must want to deliver the killing blow himself. There will be no trial, and yet both of them will have the dignity of hearing their supposed sins enumerated in front of Bolingbroke’s men, as if meddling with the king in bed could be worse treason than wrangling to kill him on the battlefield.

Bushy had fled, and Green had drawn his sword, and fought, and lost. Bristol Castle is a snare and a pit and a tomb, and in the damp of Bolingbroke’s encampment, amid the grass torn up by horses’ hoofs, he’s suffocating. His shoes have been lost somewhere on the forced march down – good luck to the man that finds them – and he’s left his second-most lavish coat behind, soggy with blood. The one ornament they haven’t stripped from him is the cross he wears, and it dangles uselessly against his chest. A deep gash in his side seeps blood steadily, and the pain of it keeps him awake through the gray fog of dullness that accompanies his terror. He listens.

Green had fought, and Bushy had fled. It hadn’t taken long to apprehend him unarmed and on foot; his screams are difficult to mistake.

It’s possible for a man to have a last-moment change of heart, when by God’s grace an acute sense of his own sins lends him the force of will to repent and throw it all away, to disavow all he once was – and Green doesn’t know what he’s done wrong, it seems ver possible that he hasn’t done anything wrong at all, and for those long moments he still thinks he would confess to nearly anything if it would make the screams stop.

Green is a politician at heart and knows how allegiances are made, how they’re paid for. The price had seemed agreeable enough on a summer day with wine in his mouth and the king’s lips against his throat, but ever since, he’s known: some day he’d be paying in full, and that day is now, and he isn’t ready. There are catechisms and scriptures that tell a man how to live decently and die well, and he doesn’t need a book to tell him he’s going to botch it. His estates aren’t in order – no doubt the traitor Henry will seize those too, he who would rather raze the forest woods to ashes than see poor men cut boughs for fuel from his own hunting grounds. Green leaves behind no spouse and no children, only a house and mews filled with mute beasts and half-trained falcons, clothes he’s never worn and ledgers he’s never written in, unanswered letters from brothers and sisters he’ll never see again. He hasn’t confessed. His debts still stand. He’s going to die and no one will dare to say a Mass for his soul. There’s so much left he hasn’t done. Where is Bagot? Where is York? Who will tell the king his favorites are dead, and what will happen to Richard when they do? What happens to the king now, more deeply condemned than he may ever recognize – he must escape, it doesn’t matter to where, so long as it isn’t England. Better if he doesn’t come ashore at all.

The thought of the king’s place in all this – unguarded, deserted to the uses of unfriendly men and innocent of what they’re planning – is another stab of terror in itself, but the thought of how the king’s enemies mean to capitalize on this turns the churning fear in his breast to livid hate. Chief among them is Bolingbroke, without the decency to die in exile, who reappeared like a pestilence to perpetrate this outrage when the state was at its most vulnerable and commons at their most spiteful. Richard will butcher him like an animal for this. He must. This can’t be allowed to stand.

His bruised lungs ache, and like a vengeful boy he wants to utter curses, to spit venom fitting to make these men and their captain blush. He wants to die loyal to the Crown. He wants to die having done something good.

The muddy pavilion is crowded with armed men and Green sits with his arms around his knees. He is attempting to gauge if he’ll vomit again and unsure if he’ll be able to keep it off of himself this time. Northumberland’s son had struck him so hard that he can still feel his eyes rattling in his head – the others had flushed them out of hiding like animals with swords and jeers but the younger Percy’s abuses carry the special contempt of a frightened boy. He knows what they are; he knows what they are and hates them.

When they’re finished they haul him in by the back of his neck like a puppy, and let him drop. Bushy falls against Green’s feet and doesn’t shift much from there. It hurts Green’s head to lean forward, more than the sum of all his other wounds combined, and his head throbs sharply at what the thin light from the fire will illuminate. Bushy’s small neat body is ruined by dirt and blood. He, too, wears chains about his wrists.

“John,” he whispers as sharply and carryingly as he can, though his voice sounds alien even to himself. “You’re all right. I’m here too, John–”

Bushy emits a strangled cough that might have been a laugh. Yes, Green is there too, and they’re both fucked.

The others rearrange themselves around the elder Percy; Green can barely make out distinct features of faces, but to his horror realizes many of their voices are familiar to him. At court and out of armor, Northumberland may act like a man bored of it all, but he’s gotten in his fair share of blows with the others, and he can’t conceal that his blood’s up. He can’t restrain himself from coarse good humor, greeting his son first and one of the others as if they were standing around before a joust and not presiding over an execution. Northumberland’s bare hands are bloody, and one of the soldiers is tying up his laces, without looking at either of them.

“No wonder Richard likes him so well. Though I can’t say what usage he’ll get off the pair of you without your heads,” Northumberland says affably. His son shifts uneasily, and spits; the bulk of it must pass them by but it leaves a wet speckled track on the side of Bushy’s neck and provokes a raw sob. Someone moves to kick him in the ribs and he shuts up.

“Rot in hell,” Green says, through the blood in his teeth.

Northumberland tugs on his gloves. “Don’t worry, lads, it won’t be long.”

Green’s head is buzzing, the blood sticks to his temple and paints his side beneath his clothes. The light is wrong and gray. His bound hands reach out blindly and find Bushy’s. His fingers are slick with blood and the soft palms of his hands are pocked with flakes of stone. He shakes with the tremor of small sobs; Green helps him up to his knees, holding on all the tighter to counterbalance how he himself lurches uncertainly. They’re both going to die the death for what they’ve done. They can at least go out like real conspirators, together and not apart.

Bushy pulls himself up, shaking even worse now like a frightened hare, and they huddle close side by side. It won’t be long until they’re on their feet again, being herded to some convenient place of execution. They are like drowning men, here at Bristol Castle; the waves will force them apart again and they will lose their grip on one another permanently.

Green begins to pray for both their souls. Bushy is too hoarse to speak, and only nods his head.