The Murders of Richard III - Elizabeth Peters [43]
Thomas peeked out into the corridor. It was deserted. Picking up his skirts, he went to Philip’s room and knocked on the door.
It was not until he felt the prick of a sword point at the base of his throat that he realized Philip might misinterpret his motives.
“Hey,” he croaked, looking down the shining blade at Philip’s grim face. “It’s only me.”
“Oddly enough, that doesn’t reassure me.” Philip stepped back a pace, but the sword remained in position. “Come in, if you like. Sit down over there.”
Walking very lightly, Thomas crossed the room and took the indicated chair. He smiled. “It’s only me,” he repeated.
Philip lowered his point. He was wearing a costume similar to the one he had worn the day before, but even more striking. His doublet of black velvet was trimmed with ermine and had enormous padded sleeves. Across his broad chest hung a heavy chain of silver suns and roses—the Yorkist collar. Black and silver made a somber dress, Hamletian rather than Ricardian; Frank had probably borrowed it from a colleague’s theatrical wardrobe. The actor’s coloring echoed the cold shades. His silver-gilt hair shone pallidly, and his gray eyes were as hard as the steel of the sword blade.
“I didn’t recognize you at first,” he admitted. “Where the hell did you get that wig?”
“Costumer’s in London.” Thomas adjusted his coronet, which had slipped sideways. “Don’t you like it?”
“Absolutely love it, dear boy,” Philip said viciously.
Thomas leaned back in the chair, but he was not feeling happy. The other man was not merely tense; he was a mass of jangled nerves.
“What are you worried about?” Thomas asked. “The jokes are probably finished. They were easy to arrange when no one was suspicious, but now that we’ve been alerted to the danger, the unknown can’t hope to catch you off guard. You can handle yourself pretty well, even without that sword. And there’s no cause for alarm. At worst, just a joke; a little embarrassing, maybe, but…”
His voice died as he saw the other man’s eyes.
He could not entirely blame himself. It had been a long time since he had been that young. Maybe he had never been that young; an average bumpkin, with no particular vanities, he had taken the inevitable jokes of his contemporaries with equanimity. But the prickly years of adolescence are always painful. It is a period of mental imbalance; every glance silently criticizes you, every whisper concerns your secret weaknesses.
But, Thomas reminded himself, you grow out of it. You learn, with mingled relief and chagrin, that people are too absorbed in themselves to care much about you; you discover that you are no more and no less comical than any other man. Your doings are just as trivial in the vast web of the universe, and the only way to endure your own insignificance is to laugh at it before the last great joke is played upon you.
This boy had never learned any of these things. He was still a boy, whatever his actual age, and his acquired facade was as smooth and as brittle as an eggshell. He could suffer pain, but he could not endure humiliation.
The moment of communication had been mutual. Philip looked away. He straightened up, lowering his blade. He knew his trade; even when he was intensely preoccupied his movements were graceful and economical.
“Let’s have a drink.”
“I’ve already had one.”
“So have I. I’m about to have another.”
Sheathing his sword, he crossed to the bureau, took out a bottle, and splashed liquid lavishly into a glass.
“I know it’s ill-bred to carry one’s own booze,” he said sarcastically, handing the glass to Thomas. “But I’m not an aristocrat by birth, and it unnerves me to have servants popping in and out. Cheers.”
He raised the bottle to his lips and kept it there so long that Thomas was moved