An Heritor of Bliss

Richard has never admired anyone more, not his father, not the saints, not anyone. And it’s difficult to keep up a pose of monarchical indifference and perpetual unimpressedness when he’s around the boy who’s taught him like a brother to hunt and hawk and dress himself. When he’s around him he feels wild, and there’s a strange sort of lightness in his chest that makes him want to thrust his shoulders back and stand up a little taller. His tongue feels half-unstrung in his mouth and he says things he doesn’t mean; Robert doesn’t dare tease him when he tries to talk impressively and make speeches, but he feels like a lion cub croaking as he tries it on for size. He can already speak solemnly, if he does it very slowly and deliberately like reciting a vow, but he wants to find the words that will make him sound like the man he is and not a boy in a paper crown.

He wants to spend as much time with Robert as possible before Philippa comes to take him away again. He doesn’t understand why they can’t all spend time together like they used to, like a pack of thieves – he knows Philippa likes hunting and hawking almost as much as he does, and he doesn’t much mind the compromise. Mother’s always saying she likes seeing him and his cousins play together. Just as long as it meant Robert didn’t have to leave him here; the world’s a much less boisterous place when Robert’s not around.

All sorts of things can happen in forests. Richard hopes the best ones will.

He’s been chattering on about parliamentary proceedings and his Latin lessons for what feels like a quarter of an hour, pausing at intervals in the expectation that Robert will interject; all the facts come out easily enough, but it’s difficult to pace himself when any minute now the time will be right, they’ll reach a little clearing or some attractive natural scenery and Robert will look at him and he won’t be able to put it off any longer. His gloved hands twist nervously at the reins,

They are proceeding along as well as any horsemen, admiring the foliage and the fresh air.

Robert’s dark eyes do fall on him, with a wry look and a raised brow.

“Is something the matter?”

“Robin,” he says, after sucking in the deepest breath he can manage and martialing his face into seriousness, “do you enjoy my company?”

Robert laughs at him. Robert is laughing at him, and Richard shifts stiffly in the saddle, shoulders back.

“Do you see me spending my time with somebody I found dull? Don’t be ridiculous.”

It’s not ridiculous. RIchard’s stomach is one enormous snarl. “If you felt obliged, you would. I spend every Christmas listening to uncle John complain.”

“And I bet everyone sits around rolling their eyes and drinking themselves into a stupor. Which I am not doing, you may note.” This much is true, though they’ve drunk themselves silly these past few days and Richard fears his tutor may be putting two and two together with regard to his royal pupil’s complaints of pounding headaches whenever Robert is in town.

Richard stares at the backs of his hands, but not for very long. “Mostly they argue.”

“I’m not doing that either, am I?” Robert raises his chin, smiling his small smile. For a moment Richard has the overpowering desire to shove him off his horse.

“I’m serious – you have to tell me if I’m boring you, or I’ll be furious.”

**

In the fourth year of King Richard’s reign it feels like they’ve been trotting along aimlessly for aeons now, Richard bobbing along in bright green like an apple and leading Robert on a less than interesting chase. The past week has seen the young king grow increasingly tightly-wound, with an ever-present crowd of male relatives all too happy to whip him like a top with news of national considerations until he can’t think straight, let alone speak. Normally after any sustained period of that his diversions of choice involve killing small furry animals or whacking things with sticks. All this riding, hawkless and houndless with attendants shooed away to mind their own business, is a little sinister by that standard.

“Richard, is there any particular reason you’ve brought me all the way out here?”

“I decline to say,” Richard says, those heavy-lidded eyes cast downward. His eyes are pretty as a girl’s; Robert has never made a close study of their color but his sparse eyelashes make a neat pale fringe and give him the look of a carved angel. Maybe all boys of a certain age look like girls; maybe Robert is starting to find this train of thought distinctly uncomfortable, and he’s grateful when a cloud of startled birds shoots up from the brush, all crying, and distracts both their focus for a moment.

Once the swarm passes and Robert’s settled his own wits, he feels a bit bolder. He tries to sound playful, gentle enough not to bruise a friend’s pride.

“Is this a pretense for something, Richard? Are you leading me into an ambush? Do you have something you’d like to say without your mother breathing down your neck?”

“It can be whatever you want it to be,” Richard blurts, straightening out his sleeves. Color has shot up his cheeks for shame, and dyes his sun-browned face a worrying pink. “Do you ever feel obliged–”

He pauses to nervously twist the heads off some daisies, worrying the petals between his long fingers like a poet’s personification of lazy summer days – he doesn’t fidget often, but when he does he has some preoccupying theme in mind. Robert has seen him gnaw the hem of his sleeve in anticipation of a favorite story, which is – Richard would cringe to hear it called so – rather cute. Maybe Richard notices, because he turns his back and bends down to scrounge in the tall brush for more small plants to mutilate.

“–that is to say, if the imposition of–”

A peal of low lazy buzzing issues from the undergrowth before abruptly cutting off. Richard flails back with a high shout of disgust, not to mention surprise, and Robert just about jumps out of his skin.

(Robert pictures serpents in the grass, the first thing that occurs in his mind is something with poison fangs and regicidal intent. The next thing is, what is he going to tell the king’s mother?)

Richard recovers sooner than he does. The stream of profanity that follows would do proud any politician thrice his age. Before Robert can even ask what’s wrong, he thrusts forward a pink and already faintly swollen hand, upon which lies the swatted carcass of a fat round bumblebee. Beside it there’s a terrific pink welt starting up, and an ugly barb.

“Only that?” Robert smiles at him, trying to be disarming and showing too much teeth in the process. “I’d have thought you’d been stabbed. Looks like the creature got as well as it gave, though.”

Richard nods fiercely. His face has gone quite pink too, and his other hand clamps down on the site of the sting like a vise. “It’s nothing. It just surprised me, that’s all.”

Richard opts to throw himself against a perfectly inoffensive tree so hard the branches rattle, sulkishly letting his curses dwindle to a low buzz and clutching the offending appendage protectively. Whether it’s the terminal bubbling-over of the day’s brewing malaise, or some tactical measure to keep from making an ass of himself, or some combination of the two, he’s steaming mad now and the color in his cheeks has settled into two angry red patches like a painted player out of a mystery pageant. Maybe Isaac.

“Is it still in there?” Robert settles onto one knee beside him, mindful of getting grass smudges on preposterously tight hose.

The king of England sputters pinkly. “How the hell would I know–”

“Clearly an assassination attempt. Base treason and jealousy. Bee kings haven’t got anything to prick with, you know. They let everyone else do their pricking for them.”

Richard goes even pinker and elbows him in the ear.

“Be quiet.”

“It’s true, it’s true, the others all flock to his defense if they think his treasury is about to be plundered.” Robert flicks away the offending bee carcass off Richard’s embroidered sleeve into the underbrush, and makes a gingerly effort toward inspecting the site of the wound. The natural sweatiness of Richard’s hands can’t be helping.

“No one’s going to plunder anybody’s treasury,” Richard mumbles, aghast. “For God’s sake, let me be.”

He proceeds to smooth himself out, as if the state of his attire will elevate their current situation into something deliberately gallant. He really does cut a neat figure for a boy that age, even rumpled and in pain with a hand swelling up like a pig’s bladder.

Robert takes him by the hand – the hand that hasn’t just been savaged by a member of the local wildlife no bigger than a thumbnail. “You’ll be fine.” And again, because Richard is the only person who can effectively tell the king what to do besides his mother and might as well use it to the king’s advantage, he adds, “It just caught you by surprise, that’s all. It’s a wonder it hasn’t happened earlier. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”

If Robert de Vere says it, it must be true. His thumb swipes the side of Richard’s hand reassuringly, with the soft burr of leather on damp skin. Eyes downcast, the king heaves a nasty sigh, and Robert is suddenly terribly certain he’s miscalculated something. The pinkness is fading fast, but he’s winding up to make a pronouncement, and Robert can only hope it’s something about wanting to wrap up and go home and not something drastic.

“I’d wanted to find a nicer place, but I suppose this is as good a time as any–”

There’s some scuffling with his sleeves, and before Robert is certain what to do about it, Richard is tugging his gloves off of him and clasping him by the hand. By the time his hellishly tight grip releases, something is cutting into Robert’s palm; he unfolds his fingers (slightly sticky from Richard’s) to find he has pressed a ring into his hand.

The ring bears a thick sapphire bracketed by little diamonds – there’s something written in the band that he can’t make out without squinting and it really doesn’t matter anyway because it doesn’t take a jeweler to work out it’s some tender sentiment chiseled all around the inside. Robert catches a look at him as he peers through the clean gold loop and it gives him pause.

He’s come to recognize the look on Richard’s face by the crease between his straight yellow brows, the way he looks when he’s got something he wants to say and very strongly does not want to stutter. Sometimes he’ll go weeks without doing it at all, speaking more clearly and commandingly than any boy his age, but put him in a room with any given Angevin uncle and he’s snapping like a shamed schoolboy between choked pauses.

“Robert. You know I love you. And you know I’m going to be married soon, the same as you.”

Robert closes his hand around the bauble as if that will make it disappear and smooths his hair back, sighing. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. If you’re harboring uncertain feelings about taking a wife sight-unseen, you’d be better off talking to Sir Simon, not me. People get married all the time, you know.”

If Richard is experiencing doubts about the value of the sacrament of marriage, Robert is not the person to set him back on the right path, not when he’s spent the last five-odd years kicking himself in regret that he ever had to marry at all. But he can’t tell Richard that – not his wife’s cousin who is, coincidentally, the King of England, nor even as one friend to another. Chronicling his own difficulties might well frighten him off of the concept for good. If he’d spoken too strongly of what lawfully wedded union was really like, or might be like, within young Richard’s hearing, he’s certain he would; his word on some things as far as his friend is concerned is as good as the Gospel, and what else does a lonely boy know of the innermost workings of a grown-up marriage, the hundred different ways that kind of thing might go wrong? His Continental bride might be stupid, or cruel, or too willful, or too lustful; she might be embarrassingly rustic or a fanatic. But that’s not what the king of England needs to hear, and all the encouragements Robert could possibly offer him fall short.

“It’s not that. I know that, obviously, and I do want to have a wife. I just want to have friends, too, I want to have you, Robin.”

“Married men do keep their friends, you know. It’s your wife who’ll be forsaking her family and cleaving to yours – you’re not going anywhere, and neither am I.” Barring scandal, which is always a possibility for Robert and the scorched remains of his family life.

Richard bares his teeth, trying not to stammer. “What I meant was, I’m not going to abandon you now that I’m older. I’d like us to stay friends. And with you by my side in deeds of arms I’ll be the greatest king there’s ever been.”

“What deeds of arms?” Robert likes to think he’s as capable as the next fellow, but he’s never been too martially minded and there’s something in Richard’s tone – in his face, even, distressingly focused and distant all at once – that brings to mind the way people talk about his father. As if the past fifty years were all one great romp to be resumed as soon as possible. Sport is one thing. He cannot imagine King Richard at war.

“We’ll think of something. How would you like to war against the French with me? We’ll go down in history together, side by side. Two English heroes. The truest of friends.”

Now Robert’s the one who’s going red in the face. This is too much. This is all too much. “All right, all right–”

“You’ll owe me that, Robin.” His distressingly keen eyes glitter. They are not lit exclusively by martial fervor. “I expect you to make good on it.”

Robert drags a gloved hand down his face. Oh, God.

He sinks down among the grasses with Richard practically on top of him, his arms wrapped tightly around his middle. The young king carries something of the desperation of a dying man, and the unbearable brightness of the day – too green and too blue, the sun too hot – only compounds the feeling of claustrophobia.

“Robin, kiss me.”

“Richard.”

“For God’s sake, kiss me–”

God, Robert’s been so stupid. He’s been so stupid, he’d never even thought – but the ring is heavy on his finger, biting deep.

Richard bites his lip. His mouth is small and soft, and Robert puts out his hands to pull him off and finds himself circling a waist as narrow as a girl’s. Richard is already a head taller than him, and as slim as a reed, having yet to fill out to appropriately Plantagenet-like dimensions as far as width and depth; one of his legs has hooked around behind Robert’s and is scraping at his ankle.

Richard stammers. Robert can feel his throat and jaw jump with agitation beneath his own; he’s already got a sharp Adam’s apple but his chin’s as smooth as an egg. “I am your king. I’ll always be your king – you can’t hurt me. I love you, Robin, I do.”

Robert de Vere is a poor excuse for a gentleman, but his rank offers him the privilege of an occasional scruple, and he does not want to cop a thrill off of a boy who in his lessons cannot remember the difference between quam and quem.

“You know I won’t do that.”

Richard kisses him on the forehead, self-consciously imitative – of something he’s read, no doubt, Robert hasn’t the slightest idea what.

“Come back to the castle and I’ll read to you.”

“I can’t– I’ve got household matters to attend to. And you should be doing your lessons and ruling the country, not roaming the English countryside at liberty propositioning people. You’re too young to bother with any of that.”

(Novices of fourteen have certainly had plenty to do with women, in Robert’s own extensive experience, but they have no business getting wrapped up in ambitious married men. Robert is not entirely blind to his own qualities. He likes Richard’s company for its pure and wholesome virtues, but he also likes living well, and having money. He is not the kind of friend a man should have for life. He knows this now, and it’s dizzying, like falling – like a man fallen down a well, and up above the sky is blue and clear as noon but everything beneath is cold as death.)

“I won’t be this old forever.” Richard says it in a low, hard voice. From beneath his lashes, his stare is impudent – Robert was never like this as a younger boy, and it makes him grit his teeth.

“Yes, but you are right now, and you’ve got bigger things on your mind.”

“I’m going to go to war one day, and you’re coming with me. Do I have your word?”

“Richard–”

“Will you swear to us, or no?”

“You’re being unfair.”

His shoulders sag; he looks very tired, and very young, and very put-out. “All right, then. We’ll make our way back. If you tell anyone about the bee, though, I’ll have you thrown in prison with nothing but bread and water.”

“My discretion is assured.”

“Good.”

But Robert will keep the ring.

---

In the ninth year of King Richard’s reign, deep in the throes of winter with nothing much else to do, they’ve both had too much to drink. In the great trial that is stumbling back to is own suite of rooms before they can be spotted, King Richard himself can only voicelessly thank the Blessed Virgin for straightforward architectural planning.

What exactly makes this different from any other time he can’t say – they must have shared a bed hundreds of times before, a thousand times and it hasn’t been the slightest bit awkward. If it had to happen, it ought to happen in here. Robert is so close.

The door is scarcely barred before they’re slung around each other like a couple of brawlers. The tips of Richard’s fingers are tracing the embroidery on Robert’s collar with a lazy deliberation. He presses him against the doorway in a kiss that leaves his own lips smarting; in the moment after they break apart, Richard still clasps his shoulders. (He’s had to bend down to do it; he has to bend down to kiss most people. His mouth tastes like wine, and everything is maddeningly imprecise.)

“We can’t do this,” Robert says. “It isn’t like it was–”

“Exactly. And I still love you, so what do you make of that?”

They don’t take long to get to the bed, Richard clasping at his hands with a tipsy impreciseness and kissing his rings, Robert rubbing affectionately at his beard. He sinks down onto his back, hair falling on the bedcovers, and when he raises his eyes again Robert’s flushed and appealing face is all he sees.

He practically drags him down, such is his ardor, and it’s to Robert’s credit that he matches it move for move. Richard staggers a little, and only the bleak look of absolute hunger in Robert’s face keeps him from laughing. He can’t laugh at this.

He kisses him, and he scarcely waits until he has him unbuttoned and unlaced to get down to it – which is rather impolite but it’s not as if he can’t buy him new ones if these clothes are ruined in the heat of passion. He wants to see him without his winter clothes. Robert has him close, pressing a hand down from his navel to his groin, fingers straying through the abominably clumsy layers of his own garments. Richard focuses his efforts on touch and shape through rich material, as the guttering light threatens to fail them both, but he wants more than anything to look.

It feels like cheating somehow, since he already knows his body well – has already sealed it fast in his memory from three dozen-some other occasions that had conspired to present him his friend’s arms or back or naked legs. He’s kissed him and clasped him in his arms before, and felt his heart leap and his blood rise with it, but generally there had been more clothes on then and more of an audience present. He’s bloodied his own knuckles in Robert’s defense – this has been a long time coming. Richard wants to memorize him by touch – he wants to catalogue the whole of this as carefully as he can. The head of Robert’s cock is pressing against his belly and Richard feels faint with pleasure.

There are no words between them, which expedites the process, and the lamp blinks out just in time. Sometimes it’s quite nice not to have an audience.

**

Robert’s chin presses against his back, and Richard would be quite content to never move again if it means Robert won’t have to leave, the seamless soft shapes of his body fitting so well against his own. He’s pale, and dark where Richard is golden, Richard knows this even without a lamp to light him by; court doesn’t seem to have been doing much for his health, but he’s still the very pinnacle of manhood, the finest man Richard has ever seen. Richard idly strokes along the muscles of his leg, and a stab of sentimentality twists in his guts like a bellyache. The chamber’s only indifferently cold, courtesy of its location, but it’s as if he feels a chill.

He is lying belly-first on a splotch of cold come, which is really unappealing but not enough to move. If he’d been snug abed with Anne he’d have gallantly nudged her out of the way of any messes, and let her flop her head between his shoulder-blades. Robert is too heavy for that, and not as soft. He finds himself wishing Anne were here. She’s only a small woman; it wouldn’t be hard to fit her in along with all the hairy shins and scratchy beards. She’s snug in her own bed tonight. He can only hope she sleeps well.

Robert lifts his head, and Richard feels the sudden stripe of chill keenly. “Was it what you’d hoped it would be?”

“Yes.”

“All you’d ever dreamed of and more?”

Richard begins perceptibly to redden; he can feel it, as his throat tightens. Not for the first time, he is glad for the darkness.

“Yes.”

“Better than Anne, though?”

“Shut up –” Richard elbows him a little, but not hard. “You’re not allowed to ask that kind of question, you know, it’s terrifically rude.”

“What do you mean, that I can’t ask where I rate in the ranks of your many, many lovers?”

“It isn’t a competition, you insufferable ass, and even if it were you’d be winning on numbers alone. What did you think you were doing? The whole court knew.”

“Was I supposed to be celibate until such a time as His Majesty decided he had need of me?”

Robert’s hand snakes between his legs, highlighting what need, exactly. Richard rolls over irritably and buries his face against a pillow.

“Why didn’t you do this sooner? Why didn’t we?”

“The opportunity failed to present itself,” Richard says haughtily.

“You can’t really maintain that in the last six years there was never – no idle hour, no night, you managed to make time to steal away with Anne and you were married to her, for God’s sake, you didn’t need to.”

“I was – I’d thought you were only being polite back then. I didn’t want to press the issue and subject a true friend to my sodomitical whims without cause.”

“Don’t make it sound so serious! I’ve done it before, you know, it’s hardly an imposition. I’ve had no complaints, at least.”

Richard emits a strangled cry, muffled somewhat by the pillow, and rolls over irritably to face him. “With whom, exactly, have you done it before?”

“You know, people,” Robert says. “Men of low degree. Nobody important.”

His tongue is thick in his mouth, clumsy with more than wine, but he can still manage the question. “You mean you’ve had sex with men before and you never told me?”

“Should I have reported to my sovereign – yes, on the feast day of St. So-and-So I had a bit of a fumble with such-and-such a person at court, I pray His Majesty the King might forgive such indiscretion in the course of my campaign of buggery.”

“Robin, please, I thought you didn’t want to! I thought I was being beastly! Every time after that I thought you were giving me the eye, I convinced myself it couldn’t be true, that I was only being conceited–”

“I thought you didn’t want to. Like you felt pressed to provide some physical token of – I don’t know what I’d have done, Richard, honestly. You were about to be married, and besides, John of Gaunt would have skinned me.”

“I’m not his son, am I? It’s none of his business! Though I don’t know what business it is of yours, either, I know for a fact you don’t make romantic decisions on the basis of sound reason and good logic.”

Robert laughs nastily. “I do when it’s a matter of national importance. How do you think I’d feel if I singlehandedly drove England to its destruction, all because I couldn’t keep from whipping my cock out?”

“On a national scale you’re not that important, Robert.”

“Then go to hell.”

*

The bed feels considerably colder after that. Lumpier, too.

*

“…I do love you, Richard. You must know that.”

“Good.”

“And I hope I haven’t ruined it after all.”

Robert rubs at his belly, and Richard sighs in the dark.

“I need to tell Anne about this. It’s the least I can do.”

Robert’s surprise is audible, though not entirely unexpected. “Who says you need to? She’d be better off not knowing. Hell of a lot happier that way.”

“I won’t be the kind of husband who takes mistresses in secret.”

“You’d rather be the kind who keeps them right in front of her nose? You’ll only cause more trouble for both of us. Anne’s a sweet girl, but she isn’t going to understand this sort of – development. She’s not an especially worldly woman.”

“But she is excruciatingly well-read, so I fail to see what the trouble is. I already tell her everything. I don’t see why this is any different.”

“Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple major differences.”

Richard knees him a little in the dark. “Don’t be coarse about my wife.”

“Who do you think your wife is, exactly? She’s a very nice young woman, emphasis on nice – she’s not exactly a Messalina, is she.”

What’s that supposed to mean? “I wouldn’t want her that way, she’s from Prague, not – the moon. She isn’t dense. She knows I love you.”

“What? You’re joking.”

“We’re friends, everyone who’s heard of England knows it.” The insistence is heavy in his mouth; he can feel it rolling on his tongue. “That’s still different from the way a man loves his wife. It’s different.”

Robert’s resignation is tangible. “So it is, Richard.”

They can discuss the ins and outs of comradely sodomy in the clear light of day, instead of snug and heavy in an enormous bed. This isn’t a conversation for tonight; it may not even be a conversation for tomorrow morning. Tomorrow both of them will be shamefacedly sober, and they can give it another try if they absolutely must. Robert snags up the blankets without being asked, and Richard presses his face to the soft spot at the very back of Robert’s neck, breathing in the salt of his sweat. So it hadn’t been perfect. It had been enough.