I, Richard - Elizabeth George [74]
Bosworth Field is much the same as it was over five hundred years ago when the armies met in August 1485. It hasn't been plowed over for housing estates, and Wal-Mart hasn't managed to put an unsightly megastore anywhere near it. Thus, it remains a forsaken, windswept place marked only by flagpoles that show visitors where the various armies were encamped and by plaques that explain along an established route exactly what happened at each spot.
It was when I reached a plaque that directed my gaze toward the distant village of Sutton Cheney where King Richard prayed in St. James Church on the night before the battle that I saw my story take shape. And what happened to me as I stood before that plaque was something that had never happened before nor has it happened since. It was this:
I read the words that told me to look for the windmill some mile or so in the distance and to recognize this structure as marking the village of Sutton Cheney where King Richard had prayed the night before battle. And as I lifted my eyes and found that windmill, the entire short story that you will read here dropped into my mind. All of a piece. As simple as that.
All I had to do was recite the facts of the story into my handheld tape recorder as the wind buffeted me and the temperature challenged me to stay out of doors long enough to do so.
I came home to California and created the characters who would people the small world of “I, Richard.” Once I did that, the story virtually wrote itself.
The guilt or innocence of the parties in history is lost to all of us, pending the discovery of a document whose veracity cannot be disputed. Indeed, I wasn't interested in trying to prove anyone did anything. What I was interested in writing about was one man's obsession with a long-dead King and the extremes he was willing to go to in order to advance himself under the banner of that defeated white boar.
I, RICHARD
Malcolm cousins groaned in spite of himself. considering his circumstances, this was the last sound he wanted to make. A sigh of pleasure or a moan of satisfaction would have been more appropriate. But the truth was simple and he had to face it: No longer was he the performance artist he once had been in the sexual arena. Time was when he could bonk with the best of them. But that time had gone the way of his hair and at forty-nine years old, he considered himself lucky to be able to get the appliance up and running twice a week.
He rolled off Betsy Perryman and thudded onto his back. His lower vertebrae were throbbing like drummers in a marching band, and the always-dubious pleasure he'd just taken from Betsy's corpulent, perfume-drenched charms was quickly transformed to a faint memory. Jesus God, he thought with a gasp. Forget justification altogether. Was the end even worth the bloody means?
Luckily, Betsy took the groan and the gasp the way Betsy took most everything. She heaved herself onto her side, propped her head upon her palm, and observed him with an expression that was meant to be coy. The last thing Betsy wanted him to know was how desperate she was for him to be her lifeboat out of her current marriage—number four this one was—and Malcolm was only too happy to accommodate her in the fantasy. Sometimes it got a bit complicated, remembering what he was supposed to know and what he was supposed to be ignorant of, but he always found that if Betsy's suspicions about his sincerity became aroused, there was a simple and expedient, albeit back-troubling, way to assuage her doubts about him.
She reached for the tangled sheet, pulled it up, and extended a plump hand. She caressed his hairless pate and smiled at him lazily. “Never did it with a baldy before. Have I told you that, Malc?”
Every single time the two of them—as she so poetically stated—did it, he recalled. He thought of Cora, the springer spaniel bitch he'd adored in childhood, and the memory of the dog brought suitable fondness to his face. He eased Betsy's fingers down his cheek and kissed each one of them.
“Can't get enough, naughty