FIC: Not With the Empty Hollowness (Shakespeare Richard II, PG-13)
Title: Not With the Empty Hollowness
Play: Richard II
Characters/Pairing: Richard/Anne, Richard/Aumerle, Richard/Robert de Vere, with reference to Richard/Isabel and Richard/minions
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1876
Warnings: Somewhat graphic illness and decay; medieval English attitudes toward the Irish; gratuitous vomit; inexplicit sex
Summary: Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine / It sends some precious instance of itself / After the thing it loves.
Notes: Written for speak_me_fair in the 2010 Histories Ficathon. Some details are clarified in endnotes. Where history diverges from Shakespeare, I have followed Shakespeare throughout. Many thanks to everyone who offered input and encouragement during the writing of this fic.
Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand,
Thou map of honour, thou King Richard's tomb,
And not King Richard!
-- Richard II 5.1.11-13
There were once three kings out hunting when they became separated from their retainers. As they wandered through the woods, seeking the rest of the hunting party, they met three more kings, crowned as they were, but as withered and decayed as these three were young and fair. Their bodies were mere skin and bone, their tattered flesh wrung about with worms; the three living kings recoiled in horror and dismay.
"We must flee this place," they said, "and the Lord save us from these demons before us!"
But the most decayed of the dead kings stepped forward and said, "We are no demons, but men who were once as you are now; repent therefore, for someday you shall be as we are now."
Sometimes this story makes its way into Richard's dreams, and his father and grandfather and great-grandfather come from their tombs at Canterbury and Westminster and Gloucester to confront him. It is only in these dreams that he can clearly see the faces of his father and his grandfather; he holds the faces of the dead in his memory and they ache in the place behind his eyes. In these dreams he feels the weight of the crown bowing his head; the oil with which he was anointed scorches, and his flesh is marked with ashes like that of a penitent. Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris!
When he wakes he is tangled in the sheets like grave-cloths.
***
The wooden effigy made for Anne's funeral appears somber and lifeless, her eyes dull and her cheeks sallow. It is a fine rendering of how she looks now, lying serenely in state, but when he looks upon it he cannot picture her smile, or hear her voice, or remember what her hair smelled like; it is only dimly that he can see her kneeling before him to intercede for the London guildsmen, or the crease of her brows as Master Chaucer reads of his Criseyde, or sitting beside him at tournaments as they laugh together, trying to discern which of the competitors cuts the finest figure in his armor -- and it is like a half-remembered dream, fleetingly and painfully grasped upon waking, when he recalls the soft warmth of her skin against his, her hands flexing on his back and her body arching beneath him --
Richard is afraid he will never remember any of that, that it will pass from his remembrance and when he calls Anne's image to his memory -- and every time he closes his eyes -- hereafter he will see only her ashen face and hollow eyes, her lips colorless but for the red froth that stains them. They would not let him too near her, for fear of the pestilence. In her illness she had lost her English, and much of her French; sometimes she would sing deliriously to herself in her native tongue:
Otep myrrhy miet' mój milý
milujet' mì své všie síly...
Once she had cried out for him, and he would have gone to her, would have pressed her to him and kissed her pale lips until the contagion had taken him as well, if Edward of Rutland had not held him back, his voice rough and pleading in Richard's ear -- please, Richard, England can't lose you too -- and he clutched unthinkingly at Edward's shoulder to stay upright. One of Anne's attendants spoke softly to her, gesturing in Richard's direction; he can still feel her eyes, fever-bright, fixed upon him at a distance, the words don't leave me lodged uselessly in his throat, and then, at the last, she smiled weakly at him --
When the craftsmen look to him for approval, Richard nods briefly, and then rises on unsteady legs to dismiss them. Edward is already at his side; once they have gone, he wraps a protective arm around his king's shoulders as he sinks to his knees and vomits on the stone floor.
***
Ireland has been a triumph; with four thousand knights and thirty thousand archers he has crossed the sea and brought to obedience the four kings of Ireland, sworn to take up English manners and, on this coming Lady Day, English knighthoods. None of Richard's forefathers, since the days of Henry the Second, have seen such success in Ireland -- let his uncle Thomas mutter as much as he wants about the unprofitability of the venture -- nor have the Irish seen so great an English army.
Richard would gladly leave this accursed island to its filthy shaggy-haired inhabitants, or let them go hang in their new linen breeches, for all he cared, if it could bring Anne back for even a moment, or raise Robert de Vere from his lonely grave in Louvain.
It is not as though Richard had really thought that his expedition to Ireland would take him away from his grief, not when that grief is lodged within his breast -- not like Philomel's poetic thorn, but like a great stone laid upon his heart. The very name of the place rings out what he has lost.
Memento, homo...
Tomorrow he will leave Drogheda for Dublin where he will grant knighthoods to four Irish kings and there will be feasting and accolades and endless tedium. Once he would have reveled in such an occasion; now Richard has lost his taste for such things, and the ever-present ache will not be numbed by stultifying boredom.
It is Edward who comes to tell him that all things are ready against tomorrow's journey. He has been a constant presence at Richard's side, and, so far as anything can afford him comfort, a comforting one.
Since his arrival in Ireland Richard has been haunted by the memory of a week in Bristol, nearly ten years gone. He had meant to see Robert off to Ireland, to keep him out of the reach of his encroaching uncles, for Gloucester and Arundel and their confederates were determined to set snares for all who loved the king.
It had been oppressively hot that summer, the kind of heat that envelops the body like a leaden wrap, yet Richard still shivers at the memory of the feverish nights in Bristol Castle, his body and Robert's entwined and slick with sweat; even when they were spent and exhausted they could not bear to pull apart, in spite of the heat.
"I don't know how I'll manage in Ireland," Robert murmured into the hollow of Richard's shoulder. "I'm not certain I'll ever recover from tonight."
-- and Richard had tried to laugh, but it came out all wrong; there was a hot choking feeling in his throat as though he had swallowed a glede, and by the time the sound left his lips he was sobbing brokenly, and the knowledge that this was utterly unsuitable behavior for a youth of nineteen even if he weren't a king served only to sharpen the agony.
"...oh, God, Richard, please don't," Robert had pleaded; his own eyes were red-rimmed and wet, and his voice sharp. "I can't bear it, please, it's bad enough as it is -- " and then he'd leaned in for a kiss, at once gentle and desperate, and Richard could taste his own tears on Robert's lips. "It won't be long -- a year at most, and they'll find something else to storm about -- "
"I can't send you away, Robbie," he'd said, finally, gasping for breath; it felt as if every muscle and every nerve in his body had been wound too tightly. "I can't. No matter what they do to me. I'll fight them first. We'll raise men in Cheshire -- "
"If you bid me remain in England," Robert had said, "I will."
Richard had been so young then, to think a year was any time at all, and so Robert had remained at his side, and in a year he was gone, driven into exile at last, and Richard would never see him again. For his want of one year's patience, he had paid with the rest of his life.
In those dark days, Anne had been his mainstay; now the old grief rushes back to support the new.
Edward is not really very much like Robert; he is earnest where Robert was guarded, but Richard can see something of Robert in his dark hair and easy smile -- and something of Anne, in the way he looks at Richard, and perhaps it is that that moves Richard most, that unconditional but not unseeing devotion.
He finishes talking about something Richard hasn't been paying attention to, and Richard thanks him, and would dismiss him, but when he extends his hand to be kissed, Edward's lips linger just an instant too long against his fingers, and Richard clasps his hand and presses their joined hands to his chest.
Nearly a year now he has lived as chastely as a canon. He curses himself for reckoning the months even as Edward's lips part against his own.
Afterwards they lie close among tangled sheets, Edward's hands slowly tracing every line and every angle of Richard's body, and Richard closes his eyes and abandons himself to Edward's touch, until Edward finally twines his fingers in Richard's hair and kisses him. When they draw apart at last Edward's dark eyes are wide and enraptured and his lips barely parted; he looks for all the world like a saint who has seen a vision, or --
Richard wonders how Eve looked after the Fall.
***
The tomb Richard has had built for Anne -- and for himself on that day that cannot come soon enough -- is splendidly crafted in gilt bronze; their figures lie side by side in robes cunningly wrought with knots and suns, harts and ostriches, and their hands are joined, a detail that Richard had insisted upon, but to see it realized is like pins in his heart.
The features of his own figure look pinched and miserable. He wonders about the artisans' ability to see into his heart.
Shene palace is in ruins now, and Robert lies among his ancestors in Earls Colne. Richard knows what men say about him for that; he needs no intelligencers to bring him word. But it is a poor love that cannot look upon the beloved even in death.
Anne's effigy seems, almost, to be smiling. He lays his hand gently upon her cheek, and the metal warms to his touch.
***
In the final years of his reign Richard surrounds himself with beauty, artists and poets and fine-featured young men to share his bed; sometimes he thinks poor Edward disapproves of the latter, but he says nothing. When Richard marries again it is to the French king's daughter, who is scarcely more than a child. She is innocent, and so she adores him.
Richard's new father-in-law is truly mad, so much so that he knows himself only rarely. Sometimes Richard envies his condition.
***
Richard has not dreamed of the three dead kings in years. But now one of them is his uncle Thomas, and Thomas opens his twisted mouth and laughs at him.
***
Richard of Bordeaux, once called King Richard the second, is buried in the friary at King's Langley, far from his beloved Anne: even his final and fondest hope is denied him.
King Henry does not attend the burial.
__________
Notes
The story of the Three Living and the Three Dead is a common motif in medieval art and poetry; it appears frequently in church-wall paintings and books of hours in the fourteenth and fifteenth century (though the only English poetic example, an alliterative poem sometimes attributed to John Audelay) is later than Richard II's reign). Many English examples can be seen here.
Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris: "Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return" (Genesis 3:19) -- the priest says this when distributing ashes during Lent, or, at least, would have at the time this fic is set (nowadays they say it in English even if they use this particular text; they don't always).
A photograph of Anne of Bohemia's funeral effigy can be seen here.
Anne's frowning at Troilus and Criseyde refers to the distaste of her poetic double Alceste in The Legend of Good Women for the poem.
Otep myrrhy is a medieval Bohemian ballad; the text is adapted from the Song of Songs. You can hear it here.
Details of Richard's Irish expedition are taken from Froissart
The very name of the place rings out what he has lost: Robert de Vere was named Duke of Ireland in 1387.
Play: Richard II
Characters/Pairing: Richard/Anne, Richard/Aumerle, Richard/Robert de Vere, with reference to Richard/Isabel and Richard/minions
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1876
Warnings: Somewhat graphic illness and decay; medieval English attitudes toward the Irish; gratuitous vomit; inexplicit sex
Summary: Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine / It sends some precious instance of itself / After the thing it loves.
Notes: Written for speak_me_fair in the 2010 Histories Ficathon. Some details are clarified in endnotes. Where history diverges from Shakespeare, I have followed Shakespeare throughout. Many thanks to everyone who offered input and encouragement during the writing of this fic.
Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand,
Thou map of honour, thou King Richard's tomb,
And not King Richard!
-- Richard II 5.1.11-13
There were once three kings out hunting when they became separated from their retainers. As they wandered through the woods, seeking the rest of the hunting party, they met three more kings, crowned as they were, but as withered and decayed as these three were young and fair. Their bodies were mere skin and bone, their tattered flesh wrung about with worms; the three living kings recoiled in horror and dismay.
"We must flee this place," they said, "and the Lord save us from these demons before us!"
But the most decayed of the dead kings stepped forward and said, "We are no demons, but men who were once as you are now; repent therefore, for someday you shall be as we are now."
Sometimes this story makes its way into Richard's dreams, and his father and grandfather and great-grandfather come from their tombs at Canterbury and Westminster and Gloucester to confront him. It is only in these dreams that he can clearly see the faces of his father and his grandfather; he holds the faces of the dead in his memory and they ache in the place behind his eyes. In these dreams he feels the weight of the crown bowing his head; the oil with which he was anointed scorches, and his flesh is marked with ashes like that of a penitent. Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris!
When he wakes he is tangled in the sheets like grave-cloths.
***
The wooden effigy made for Anne's funeral appears somber and lifeless, her eyes dull and her cheeks sallow. It is a fine rendering of how she looks now, lying serenely in state, but when he looks upon it he cannot picture her smile, or hear her voice, or remember what her hair smelled like; it is only dimly that he can see her kneeling before him to intercede for the London guildsmen, or the crease of her brows as Master Chaucer reads of his Criseyde, or sitting beside him at tournaments as they laugh together, trying to discern which of the competitors cuts the finest figure in his armor -- and it is like a half-remembered dream, fleetingly and painfully grasped upon waking, when he recalls the soft warmth of her skin against his, her hands flexing on his back and her body arching beneath him --
Richard is afraid he will never remember any of that, that it will pass from his remembrance and when he calls Anne's image to his memory -- and every time he closes his eyes -- hereafter he will see only her ashen face and hollow eyes, her lips colorless but for the red froth that stains them. They would not let him too near her, for fear of the pestilence. In her illness she had lost her English, and much of her French; sometimes she would sing deliriously to herself in her native tongue:
Otep myrrhy miet' mój milý
milujet' mì své všie síly...
Once she had cried out for him, and he would have gone to her, would have pressed her to him and kissed her pale lips until the contagion had taken him as well, if Edward of Rutland had not held him back, his voice rough and pleading in Richard's ear -- please, Richard, England can't lose you too -- and he clutched unthinkingly at Edward's shoulder to stay upright. One of Anne's attendants spoke softly to her, gesturing in Richard's direction; he can still feel her eyes, fever-bright, fixed upon him at a distance, the words don't leave me lodged uselessly in his throat, and then, at the last, she smiled weakly at him --
When the craftsmen look to him for approval, Richard nods briefly, and then rises on unsteady legs to dismiss them. Edward is already at his side; once they have gone, he wraps a protective arm around his king's shoulders as he sinks to his knees and vomits on the stone floor.
***
Ireland has been a triumph; with four thousand knights and thirty thousand archers he has crossed the sea and brought to obedience the four kings of Ireland, sworn to take up English manners and, on this coming Lady Day, English knighthoods. None of Richard's forefathers, since the days of Henry the Second, have seen such success in Ireland -- let his uncle Thomas mutter as much as he wants about the unprofitability of the venture -- nor have the Irish seen so great an English army.
Richard would gladly leave this accursed island to its filthy shaggy-haired inhabitants, or let them go hang in their new linen breeches, for all he cared, if it could bring Anne back for even a moment, or raise Robert de Vere from his lonely grave in Louvain.
It is not as though Richard had really thought that his expedition to Ireland would take him away from his grief, not when that grief is lodged within his breast -- not like Philomel's poetic thorn, but like a great stone laid upon his heart. The very name of the place rings out what he has lost.
Memento, homo...
Tomorrow he will leave Drogheda for Dublin where he will grant knighthoods to four Irish kings and there will be feasting and accolades and endless tedium. Once he would have reveled in such an occasion; now Richard has lost his taste for such things, and the ever-present ache will not be numbed by stultifying boredom.
It is Edward who comes to tell him that all things are ready against tomorrow's journey. He has been a constant presence at Richard's side, and, so far as anything can afford him comfort, a comforting one.
Since his arrival in Ireland Richard has been haunted by the memory of a week in Bristol, nearly ten years gone. He had meant to see Robert off to Ireland, to keep him out of the reach of his encroaching uncles, for Gloucester and Arundel and their confederates were determined to set snares for all who loved the king.
It had been oppressively hot that summer, the kind of heat that envelops the body like a leaden wrap, yet Richard still shivers at the memory of the feverish nights in Bristol Castle, his body and Robert's entwined and slick with sweat; even when they were spent and exhausted they could not bear to pull apart, in spite of the heat.
"I don't know how I'll manage in Ireland," Robert murmured into the hollow of Richard's shoulder. "I'm not certain I'll ever recover from tonight."
-- and Richard had tried to laugh, but it came out all wrong; there was a hot choking feeling in his throat as though he had swallowed a glede, and by the time the sound left his lips he was sobbing brokenly, and the knowledge that this was utterly unsuitable behavior for a youth of nineteen even if he weren't a king served only to sharpen the agony.
"...oh, God, Richard, please don't," Robert had pleaded; his own eyes were red-rimmed and wet, and his voice sharp. "I can't bear it, please, it's bad enough as it is -- " and then he'd leaned in for a kiss, at once gentle and desperate, and Richard could taste his own tears on Robert's lips. "It won't be long -- a year at most, and they'll find something else to storm about -- "
"I can't send you away, Robbie," he'd said, finally, gasping for breath; it felt as if every muscle and every nerve in his body had been wound too tightly. "I can't. No matter what they do to me. I'll fight them first. We'll raise men in Cheshire -- "
"If you bid me remain in England," Robert had said, "I will."
Richard had been so young then, to think a year was any time at all, and so Robert had remained at his side, and in a year he was gone, driven into exile at last, and Richard would never see him again. For his want of one year's patience, he had paid with the rest of his life.
In those dark days, Anne had been his mainstay; now the old grief rushes back to support the new.
Edward is not really very much like Robert; he is earnest where Robert was guarded, but Richard can see something of Robert in his dark hair and easy smile -- and something of Anne, in the way he looks at Richard, and perhaps it is that that moves Richard most, that unconditional but not unseeing devotion.
He finishes talking about something Richard hasn't been paying attention to, and Richard thanks him, and would dismiss him, but when he extends his hand to be kissed, Edward's lips linger just an instant too long against his fingers, and Richard clasps his hand and presses their joined hands to his chest.
Nearly a year now he has lived as chastely as a canon. He curses himself for reckoning the months even as Edward's lips part against his own.
Afterwards they lie close among tangled sheets, Edward's hands slowly tracing every line and every angle of Richard's body, and Richard closes his eyes and abandons himself to Edward's touch, until Edward finally twines his fingers in Richard's hair and kisses him. When they draw apart at last Edward's dark eyes are wide and enraptured and his lips barely parted; he looks for all the world like a saint who has seen a vision, or --
Richard wonders how Eve looked after the Fall.
***
The tomb Richard has had built for Anne -- and for himself on that day that cannot come soon enough -- is splendidly crafted in gilt bronze; their figures lie side by side in robes cunningly wrought with knots and suns, harts and ostriches, and their hands are joined, a detail that Richard had insisted upon, but to see it realized is like pins in his heart.
The features of his own figure look pinched and miserable. He wonders about the artisans' ability to see into his heart.
Shene palace is in ruins now, and Robert lies among his ancestors in Earls Colne. Richard knows what men say about him for that; he needs no intelligencers to bring him word. But it is a poor love that cannot look upon the beloved even in death.
Anne's effigy seems, almost, to be smiling. He lays his hand gently upon her cheek, and the metal warms to his touch.
***
In the final years of his reign Richard surrounds himself with beauty, artists and poets and fine-featured young men to share his bed; sometimes he thinks poor Edward disapproves of the latter, but he says nothing. When Richard marries again it is to the French king's daughter, who is scarcely more than a child. She is innocent, and so she adores him.
Richard's new father-in-law is truly mad, so much so that he knows himself only rarely. Sometimes Richard envies his condition.
***
Richard has not dreamed of the three dead kings in years. But now one of them is his uncle Thomas, and Thomas opens his twisted mouth and laughs at him.
***
Richard of Bordeaux, once called King Richard the second, is buried in the friary at King's Langley, far from his beloved Anne: even his final and fondest hope is denied him.
King Henry does not attend the burial.
__________
Notes
The story of the Three Living and the Three Dead is a common motif in medieval art and poetry; it appears frequently in church-wall paintings and books of hours in the fourteenth and fifteenth century (though the only English poetic example, an alliterative poem sometimes attributed to John Audelay) is later than Richard II's reign). Many English examples can be seen here.
Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris: "Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return" (Genesis 3:19) -- the priest says this when distributing ashes during Lent, or, at least, would have at the time this fic is set (nowadays they say it in English even if they use this particular text; they don't always).
A photograph of Anne of Bohemia's funeral effigy can be seen here.
Anne's frowning at Troilus and Criseyde refers to the distaste of her poetic double Alceste in The Legend of Good Women for the poem.
Otep myrrhy is a medieval Bohemian ballad; the text is adapted from the Song of Songs. You can hear it here.
Details of Richard's Irish expedition are taken from Froissart
The very name of the place rings out what he has lost: Robert de Vere was named Duke of Ireland in 1387.