The Murders of Richard III - Elizabeth Peters [45]
The drawing room was also lit by candles. Sir Richard had a certain flare for the theatrical. He was King Richard to the life as he raised a tall beaker to greet the newcomers—Richard as he might have been in the happy days when he lorded it over the north, before the deaths of brother, son, and wife. On his smooth brown head he wore a circlet of gold; and Thomas was reminded of the famous story of the crown plucked from the thornbush after the Battle of Bosworth. Richard had worn it into battle, disdaining the warnings of his friends that he would thus be marked out for the fiercest attacks of his enemies.
Thomas forgot Bosworth as the smiling host handed him a goblet—a high, carved beaker of gold flashing with fake jewels. Or were they fake? Thomas shrugged. He took a hearty swallow, and almost choked. Weldon was going all out for authenticity. The drink was not gin or Scotch or brandy, but a heady mixture of spiced wine.
Someone smacked him on the back—a misguided gesture that brought on the fit of coughing he had thus far managed to avoid. When Thomas had cleared his streaming eyes, he saw Kent grinning at him. The bronzed soldier was the only one in the group who was not wearing a wig or long hair. Thomas saw him, not as the eventually ineffectual Buckingham, but as the product of an era far removed from the fifteenth century. Kent’s very features resembled those of certain hawk-nosed Roman busts.
“Take it slowly,” Kent warned, as Thomas raised his cup. “It tastes like treacle gone bad, but it’s powerful stuff.”
Thomas ignored him and drank again. Once you got used to it, the stuff wasn’t half bad.
When he lowered the goblet, Kent had gone. Thomas blinked at the vacant space. Someone moved in to fill it. A white moustached…O’Hagan. Thomas studied the moustache. Amazing appendage, he thought; you don’t see a face at all, you just see a moustache.
“Who’re you?” he asked amiably. “I mean, I know who you are. Glad to see you. Who’re you s’posed to be?”
O’Hagan was wearing a nondescript garment that might have passed as a medieval robe. Thomas rather suspected it was the man’s bathrobe, but that was none of his business.
“Oh, I don’t have a part,” O’Hagan said. He started to walk away, but Thomas grabbed his arm.
“You must be somebody,” he insisted. “Everybody’s somebody.”
He waved his goblet. There was a soft splashing sound and Thomas glanced around to see Wilkes refilling his glass. The sight almost sobered him. Wilkes was wearing a doublet and hose in Gloucester’s livery colors, white and red. Richard’s badge, the white boar, was embroidered on the left breast of the doublet. In his normal attire the butler’s air of dignity overcame his physical deficiencies; Thomas now observed, with pained surprise, that Wilkes was bowlegged as well as spindle-shanked. The dignity was gone too. Wilkes’s narrow shoulders slumped, but his face wore an expression of grim endurance.
“Thank you, Wilkes,” Thomas said sympathetically.
Wilkes bowed his head.
“Thank you, your Grace.”
Thomas drank.
“Amazing stuff,” he remarked to O’Hagan, who had emerged from a refreshing dip into his own goblet.
“It would be a sensation at an office Christmas party,” O’Hagan agreed. He giggled.
“No, but le’ssee,” Thomas insisted. “You gotta be somebody. Wanna be Lord Stanley?”
“All you’ve got left are the unsympathetic parts,” O’Hagan complained. “Stanley was a lousy traitor. Even I—I mean, nobody thinks much of him.”
This seemed reasonable to Thomas, who had emptied his glass.
“You can be Lovel,” he offered generously. “Richard’s bes’ friend.”
“He met a sticky end, too. No, I think I’ll be Henry the Seventh. At least he survived Richard.”
He moved away. Thomas watched him critically. The man was drunk. He was swaying.
The whole room was swaying.
Thomas shook his