[FICATHON] The White Boar, for the_gentleman
Title: The White Boar
Author: the_alchemist
Play: Richard III
Recipient: the_gentleman
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard III
Warnings: lots of swearing; characters being mean about members of the Richard III Society; explicit depictions of amateur dramatics.
Rating: 12
Summary:
" 'Three Richards the Third walk into a pub.' He enunciated each word with great precision.
'One,' continued Dickon, 'the hideous misbegotten monster who limped from the dark places which shadow the minds even of geniuses and saints.'
Hudde spoke over him. 'The other,' he said, 'the chivalrous knight who strode shining from the earnest yet woefully untalented pens of Horace Walpole and the many enthusiastic spinsters who followed in his wake.'
'And then there was the third Richard...' "
"...for... a... horse!"
And a one, and a two, and forward, and twist, and above my head, and back. Pause.
And one, two, three and charge, and up and "argh" and stagger. Start chewing the blood capsule. Damn, where did all my saliva go? Better put a bit more staggering in. And double up and fall, and half rise, and fall, and... there... time to spit blood, oh yes that was a satisfying gasp from the front row. Let's hope it was the lady from the Herald. And die.
Silence.
Good.
Silence is good.
Lights down. Applause. Applause? Oh my fucking God, it's not even the end and they're applauding. Oh yes. Oh yes. Right. Get up. My legs are shaking. Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Back to the green room. Wipe off some of the blood. Madge is sitting on her own, lips pursed, face like a soggy teabag. A soggy teabag with a grudge. Heart racing. Everyone except Madge grinning. Albion Players haven't had a press night like this since Harry took over. Thank God. It was worth it. It was worth it.
Curtain call. Madge 'accidentally' stamps on my foot. Audience titters. She widens eyes in mock horror, bows head, presses hands together, and mouths "sorry". Her eyes tell a different story. I smile ruefully in 'acceptance' of her mimed apology.
Bitch. I directed her generously, didn't I? She got almost as much applause as me, even though she only has three scenes. We smile at one another: my God we're both good - the audience loves the chemistry they think they see. She whispers in my ear: "You'll pay for this," she says.
And then it's over.
My heart is still racing as I stagger into the open air. Pub now. Pub.
I didn't feel joining everyone in the Rising Sun, and of course I wasn't welcome in the Red Rose with Madge and Harry and their crowd. So I thought I'd try out the new place - the White Boar, off one of the side streets by the river.
It was quiet. Nice leather seats, and a roaring fire. Books everywhere. A couple of blokes by the bar, a man and a woman finishing up their desserts in the snug - otherwise empty. Perfect.
"What's the Whiterose Ale like?" I asked the barman, pointing to one of the taps. The barman appeared to be dressed as a pirate, with a white floppy shirt and a black eyepatch with a few rhinestones in it.
"Good," he said, in one of the campest voices I've ever heard. "If you like it nice and hoppy." His salacious tone made me wonder whether "hoppy" was actually an adjective describing the feelings experienced during some sex act of unimaginable depravity.
"I'll have a pint, please," I said.
He gave me the kind of knowing smile that made me wonder whether I'd inadvertantly added: "...of your semen. Pumped into or smeared over body parts I didn't even know I possessed."
I must have looked at him for a bit too long. "You needn't worry," he said. "We're not one of those pubs. I mean, I am, if you're wondering, and particularly if you have any ulterior motives for wondering, but we're not. We're a nice family establishment."
"That's good," I said, out of my depth, and took a swig of beer. It was, indeed, good. Nice. And hoppy.
"...and I'll tell you another thing..." said the better looking of the blokes by the bar. I blinked. He was by far the better of the two blokes by the bar, with big, muscular shoulders, great cheekbones, and brown hair that flopped around in just the right way. I began to wish it were that kind of pub. I hadn't been that attracted to a man since college.
But that wasn't the thing I meant to tell you when I wrote "by far" and put it in italics so you'd know it was important. The thing I meant to tell you was about the other bloke. Who was not good looking at all. I can quite easily describe him, because I've been doing it every day for the past month, in the form of a speech we inserted into Richard III even though it really belongs in the prequel:
Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb:
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part,
Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp...
Yep. Withered arm - check. Hump - check. Unequal sized legs - check. I can't say I've ever seen a chaos or an unlick'd bear-whelp, but if I had to hazard a guess as to what they looked like it, would be exactly like him.
"Another one, sir?"
What? Where did all my beer go? I burped. A different barman this time. Much more normal looking.
"Have I seen you somewhere before?" he asked.
"You look vaguely familiar," I said.
He gestured to my t-shirt, a production one. "You an actor?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. " We're putting on Richard III. Albion Theatre at the West end of Europe Street, seven thirty pm, closes Saturday."
"Richard III?" said the good-looking man, turning round and fixing me with his sapphire blue eyes. "That Shakespeare crap? It's all lies, you know." His rugged face became wistful. "Wicked, slanderous lies about the best king this country has ever seen." Then he frowned. "If you'd bothered to find out the truth..."
God give me strength. Another one of them. The moment we announced we were doing the play, the Richard the Fucking Third Society (suspension of disbelief? what's that?) started harassing me. We got letters. My God did we get letters. In the end we scored them: two points for each "did you know..."; five for "loyaultie me lie"; ten for "very gentil parfait knight". And every single one thought they were telling us something we hadn't heard before.
Really. I mean really. What kind of arseholes manage to win a cultural war quite as thoroughly as they have, and not notice? Everyone on the planet thinks that Richard was a good bloke who got slandered by the Tudors. Why isn't that enough for them? Why do they have to wander round pretending their theory is edgy and new and countercultural?
Now the ugly man was speaking. "...but who comes off better in the play? Who has the audience's sympathy?"
The good-looking man tried to answer, but the ugly one interrupted him. "Richard. That's who. He's the only one - Margaret excepted - with brains or balls. We're with him every step of the way. There's not a man, woman or child in the audience who isn't rooting for him at the end."
"He's a monster."
"Better a monster than a milksop."
"Richmond isn't a milksop. He's..."
"I wasn't talking about Richmond, though he's one too," interrupted the ugly man. "I was talking about the namby-pamby, Mills and Boon, Walt Fucking Disney Richard that the Richard the Third Society invented and enlisted dozens of vacuous lady Novelists to publicise."
"That's sexist," said the good-looking man piously. "And while we're on our -isms, shall we say 'disablism'?"
"That's not even a word," said the ugly man. "And anyway, like you have any right to comment..."
The camp barman was back. "Now, now boys," he said, winking. "Play nicely."
"Another white wine," said the good-looking man. "Thanks, Chris."
"Another of the same," said the ugly man. Chris poured him a single malt from the top shelf. Glen something or other.
The ugly man turned to me. "I'm Hudde," he said, smiling a lop-sided smile.
"Dicky," I replied.
"Who are you playing?" he asked.
"Richard." I tried to hide my embarrassment.
"Good part," said Hudde. "I should have been there at audition time. It'd've been a shoe in. An orthopedic shoe." He waved his foot around, bearing, as it did, a very orthopedic looking shoe indeed.
I laughed nervously. The good looking man wrinkled his shapely nose. "Don't mind him," he said. "He always tried to embarrass people. I'm Dickon, by the way." He held out his hand, and I shook it. His handshake was as firm and manly as I'd imagined.
"I was the second choice for the part," I admitted. "It was supposed to be my mate Ed, but he got a job in Glasgow and had to move."
"Convenient," said Hudde, dark eyes twinkling through his squint. "I'm sure you offered him every help you could, being his 'mate' and all."
He couldn't have been more wrong, though he certainly wasn't the first to assume that Ed's news had pleased me. On the other hand, I mused, he could barely have been more right. But that was a story I'd never be telling anyone, let alone two strangers down the pub...
All five of us were sitting round a big table - me, Hudde, Dickon, Chris and the other barman, who turned out to be called Bill. Dickon was lying back with his hand behind his head and his feet on the table; Chris's hand was draped casually over his muscular thigh. Hudde was gnawing his own lower lip and looking cross.
"...so anyway," I continued, grasping for my pint, which was inexplicably difficult to get hold of, "it just got worse and worse and worse... ah, excuse me." I belched. "Audiences down, takings down, reviews just embarrassing."
"And this was because of Harry?" asked Bill, who was leaning forward: the only one of the four who showed any signs of listening.
"Yeah, Harry. Money slid through his fingers like water. We got left a hundred thousand pounds ten years ago, and by last year there wasn't a penny of it left. Bad investments, charitable projects that were never going to work... you name it. And the shows stopped making money because he always gave his friends the main parts even though they were shit. And Madge..."
"His wife?" said Bill.
"Yeah, his wife. She's good. I'll give her that. But she's too old. Lady Macbeth... well, maybe. She carried it off, just about. But Rosalind? And Viola?"
Chris snorted. "It was better in the days when all the women were played by boys." He lit a cigarette, and grinned. "What smoking ban?" he said. "It's my fucking pub.
"So me and Ed, right, we had to do something. At first it was just a joke. We were pissing around, drunk, and he said, wouldn't it be good if we invited him along to a fake audition for something big, a film, maybe, and offer him a part, and string him along so he'd let me direct Richard III, and then I could cast whoever I wanted? And we joked about it for days, and it was me who finally said, well, why not?
"So we got some of our old uni friends and set it up and it worked. My God, I'd never seen the old man so happy. It was like he was walking on air. He thought... finally, after sixty years, this is it, finally I'm getting the break I deserved. Even Madge believed, and by the time they worked it out, it was too late - we were three weeks into rehearsals.
"And then..." said Bill.
"And then Ed pissed off to Glasgow and ruined it all."
"Ruined?" said Bill. "You got to play Richard, and you've just told us how well it went. That doesn't sound ruined to me."
"It'd've been better with Ed." To my surprise, I found I was crying. Maudlin drunk. Great big salty tears plopping down into my beer. "All I wanted was to give him his big chance."
Suddenly they were all staring at me. There was a long silence.
"I think we have a winner," said Bill, a smile slowly creeping onto his face.
Chris shook his head. "No way," he said. "What? Richard is neither a hero nor a monster, just a human being who did some bad stuff, but for mostly good reasons, who loved his friends and hated his enemies. Boring. Bore-ring. You've lost your touch, Bill."
"What the are you talking about?" I was suddenly afraid, but I didn't know why.
Hudde laughed. "Three Richards the Third walk into a pub..." He enunciated each word with great precision.
"One," continued Dickon, "the hideous misbegotten monster who limped from the dark places which shadow the minds even of geniuses and saints."
"Wait a moment," said Chris. "Are you calling him a genius or a saint? Because in either case, I beg to differ..."
Hudde spoke over him. "The other," he said, "the chivalrous knight who strode shining from the earnest yet woefully untalented pens of Horace Walpole and the many enthusiastic spinsters who followed in his wake."
"And then there was the third Richard," said Bill, looking at me. "Who told us his story, and it's tangled, and human, and full of people doing bad things for good reasons, and good things for bad reasons. The Richard who saved Albion from foolish, weak Henry by an act of cruelty that broke the old man's heart..."
I opened my mouth to protest, but Bill didn't let me. "Yes it did," he said. "You know it did."
"So if," said Chris, "there just happened to be a couple of dead hacks who were very, very bored of bickering about quite how overrated one of them was, and decided instead to have a competition to see which of the three Richards belonged in history, then that third one would clearly win. Because Bill values ambiguity and complexity and all that shit, and I don't really give a fuck as long as the good looking one gets to stay here with me.
"Congratulations," said Hudde, grinning maliciously on one side of his face. "You get a one way ticket back to the fifteenth century. I hope you're not a fan of sanitation. Or adequate dentistry. Or of not having everyone you love die in horrible ways."
"Goodbye," said Bill quietly. "And good luck."
Dickon stood up and helped Hudde to stand too. He clapped me on the back. "Look on it as an adventure," he said.
Chris showed me to the door. He was impressively good at making it seem as though arse-fondling was a necessary part of the showing to the door process.
It was snowing. I took a moment to look up at the pale flakes drifting down, and to wonder, as drunks do, at the immensity of the universe.
Then all was chaos. Several men wearing heraldic tunics clustered around me, all speaking at once . "Your Grace, we've been looking for you!" "Where have you been?" "Come on, it's not safe!"
My mind was whirling. If Hudde had meant what I thought he meant, what it seemed he meant then... where was I? I realised I wanted to throw up, but I couldn't, not even when two of the men pulled me to the side of the road.
A lady was riding past on a white horse, surrounded by an armed guard. She wore a green velvet cloak, and a white fur hood framed her haughty face. I met her eyes. Madge.
Then I understood. It was a joke. A trick. They were just getting me back for the film thing. Relief came flooding into my heart. For a moment I almost believed... I shook my head, as though it would somehow shake out the horror of what I'd thought.
The snow was falling thicker now. I shivered, rubbing my bare arms, and envying Madge's cloak. A blast of cold air hit me, and something suspiciously like sobriety exploded into my head, bringing with it the realisation that it had been the twenty-second of August when I'd gone in, and a nice warm evening.
Madge smiled, and rode on.
Author: the_alchemist
Play: Richard III
Recipient: the_gentleman
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard III
Warnings: lots of swearing; characters being mean about members of the Richard III Society; explicit depictions of amateur dramatics.
Rating: 12
Summary:
" 'Three Richards the Third walk into a pub.' He enunciated each word with great precision.
'One,' continued Dickon, 'the hideous misbegotten monster who limped from the dark places which shadow the minds even of geniuses and saints.'
Hudde spoke over him. 'The other,' he said, 'the chivalrous knight who strode shining from the earnest yet woefully untalented pens of Horace Walpole and the many enthusiastic spinsters who followed in his wake.'
'And then there was the third Richard...' "
"...for... a... horse!"
And a one, and a two, and forward, and twist, and above my head, and back. Pause.
And one, two, three and charge, and up and "argh" and stagger. Start chewing the blood capsule. Damn, where did all my saliva go? Better put a bit more staggering in. And double up and fall, and half rise, and fall, and... there... time to spit blood, oh yes that was a satisfying gasp from the front row. Let's hope it was the lady from the Herald. And die.
Silence.
Good.
Silence is good.
Lights down. Applause. Applause? Oh my fucking God, it's not even the end and they're applauding. Oh yes. Oh yes. Right. Get up. My legs are shaking. Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Back to the green room. Wipe off some of the blood. Madge is sitting on her own, lips pursed, face like a soggy teabag. A soggy teabag with a grudge. Heart racing. Everyone except Madge grinning. Albion Players haven't had a press night like this since Harry took over. Thank God. It was worth it. It was worth it.
Curtain call. Madge 'accidentally' stamps on my foot. Audience titters. She widens eyes in mock horror, bows head, presses hands together, and mouths "sorry". Her eyes tell a different story. I smile ruefully in 'acceptance' of her mimed apology.
Bitch. I directed her generously, didn't I? She got almost as much applause as me, even though she only has three scenes. We smile at one another: my God we're both good - the audience loves the chemistry they think they see. She whispers in my ear: "You'll pay for this," she says.
And then it's over.
My heart is still racing as I stagger into the open air. Pub now. Pub.
I didn't feel joining everyone in the Rising Sun, and of course I wasn't welcome in the Red Rose with Madge and Harry and their crowd. So I thought I'd try out the new place - the White Boar, off one of the side streets by the river.
It was quiet. Nice leather seats, and a roaring fire. Books everywhere. A couple of blokes by the bar, a man and a woman finishing up their desserts in the snug - otherwise empty. Perfect.
"What's the Whiterose Ale like?" I asked the barman, pointing to one of the taps. The barman appeared to be dressed as a pirate, with a white floppy shirt and a black eyepatch with a few rhinestones in it.
"Good," he said, in one of the campest voices I've ever heard. "If you like it nice and hoppy." His salacious tone made me wonder whether "hoppy" was actually an adjective describing the feelings experienced during some sex act of unimaginable depravity.
"I'll have a pint, please," I said.
He gave me the kind of knowing smile that made me wonder whether I'd inadvertantly added: "...of your semen. Pumped into or smeared over body parts I didn't even know I possessed."
I must have looked at him for a bit too long. "You needn't worry," he said. "We're not one of those pubs. I mean, I am, if you're wondering, and particularly if you have any ulterior motives for wondering, but we're not. We're a nice family establishment."
"That's good," I said, out of my depth, and took a swig of beer. It was, indeed, good. Nice. And hoppy.
"...and I'll tell you another thing..." said the better looking of the blokes by the bar. I blinked. He was by far the better of the two blokes by the bar, with big, muscular shoulders, great cheekbones, and brown hair that flopped around in just the right way. I began to wish it were that kind of pub. I hadn't been that attracted to a man since college.
But that wasn't the thing I meant to tell you when I wrote "by far" and put it in italics so you'd know it was important. The thing I meant to tell you was about the other bloke. Who was not good looking at all. I can quite easily describe him, because I've been doing it every day for the past month, in the form of a speech we inserted into Richard III even though it really belongs in the prequel:
Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb:
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe,
To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an unequal size;
To disproportion me in every part,
Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp...
Yep. Withered arm - check. Hump - check. Unequal sized legs - check. I can't say I've ever seen a chaos or an unlick'd bear-whelp, but if I had to hazard a guess as to what they looked like it, would be exactly like him.
"Another one, sir?"
What? Where did all my beer go? I burped. A different barman this time. Much more normal looking.
"Have I seen you somewhere before?" he asked.
"You look vaguely familiar," I said.
He gestured to my t-shirt, a production one. "You an actor?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. " We're putting on Richard III. Albion Theatre at the West end of Europe Street, seven thirty pm, closes Saturday."
"Richard III?" said the good-looking man, turning round and fixing me with his sapphire blue eyes. "That Shakespeare crap? It's all lies, you know." His rugged face became wistful. "Wicked, slanderous lies about the best king this country has ever seen." Then he frowned. "If you'd bothered to find out the truth..."
God give me strength. Another one of them. The moment we announced we were doing the play, the Richard the Fucking Third Society (suspension of disbelief? what's that?) started harassing me. We got letters. My God did we get letters. In the end we scored them: two points for each "did you know..."; five for "loyaultie me lie"; ten for "very gentil parfait knight". And every single one thought they were telling us something we hadn't heard before.
Really. I mean really. What kind of arseholes manage to win a cultural war quite as thoroughly as they have, and not notice? Everyone on the planet thinks that Richard was a good bloke who got slandered by the Tudors. Why isn't that enough for them? Why do they have to wander round pretending their theory is edgy and new and countercultural?
Now the ugly man was speaking. "...but who comes off better in the play? Who has the audience's sympathy?"
The good-looking man tried to answer, but the ugly one interrupted him. "Richard. That's who. He's the only one - Margaret excepted - with brains or balls. We're with him every step of the way. There's not a man, woman or child in the audience who isn't rooting for him at the end."
"He's a monster."
"Better a monster than a milksop."
"Richmond isn't a milksop. He's..."
"I wasn't talking about Richmond, though he's one too," interrupted the ugly man. "I was talking about the namby-pamby, Mills and Boon, Walt Fucking Disney Richard that the Richard the Third Society invented and enlisted dozens of vacuous lady Novelists to publicise."
"That's sexist," said the good-looking man piously. "And while we're on our -isms, shall we say 'disablism'?"
"That's not even a word," said the ugly man. "And anyway, like you have any right to comment..."
The camp barman was back. "Now, now boys," he said, winking. "Play nicely."
"Another white wine," said the good-looking man. "Thanks, Chris."
"Another of the same," said the ugly man. Chris poured him a single malt from the top shelf. Glen something or other.
The ugly man turned to me. "I'm Hudde," he said, smiling a lop-sided smile.
"Dicky," I replied.
"Who are you playing?" he asked.
"Richard." I tried to hide my embarrassment.
"Good part," said Hudde. "I should have been there at audition time. It'd've been a shoe in. An orthopedic shoe." He waved his foot around, bearing, as it did, a very orthopedic looking shoe indeed.
I laughed nervously. The good looking man wrinkled his shapely nose. "Don't mind him," he said. "He always tried to embarrass people. I'm Dickon, by the way." He held out his hand, and I shook it. His handshake was as firm and manly as I'd imagined.
"I was the second choice for the part," I admitted. "It was supposed to be my mate Ed, but he got a job in Glasgow and had to move."
"Convenient," said Hudde, dark eyes twinkling through his squint. "I'm sure you offered him every help you could, being his 'mate' and all."
He couldn't have been more wrong, though he certainly wasn't the first to assume that Ed's news had pleased me. On the other hand, I mused, he could barely have been more right. But that was a story I'd never be telling anyone, let alone two strangers down the pub...
All five of us were sitting round a big table - me, Hudde, Dickon, Chris and the other barman, who turned out to be called Bill. Dickon was lying back with his hand behind his head and his feet on the table; Chris's hand was draped casually over his muscular thigh. Hudde was gnawing his own lower lip and looking cross.
"...so anyway," I continued, grasping for my pint, which was inexplicably difficult to get hold of, "it just got worse and worse and worse... ah, excuse me." I belched. "Audiences down, takings down, reviews just embarrassing."
"And this was because of Harry?" asked Bill, who was leaning forward: the only one of the four who showed any signs of listening.
"Yeah, Harry. Money slid through his fingers like water. We got left a hundred thousand pounds ten years ago, and by last year there wasn't a penny of it left. Bad investments, charitable projects that were never going to work... you name it. And the shows stopped making money because he always gave his friends the main parts even though they were shit. And Madge..."
"His wife?" said Bill.
"Yeah, his wife. She's good. I'll give her that. But she's too old. Lady Macbeth... well, maybe. She carried it off, just about. But Rosalind? And Viola?"
Chris snorted. "It was better in the days when all the women were played by boys." He lit a cigarette, and grinned. "What smoking ban?" he said. "It's my fucking pub.
"So me and Ed, right, we had to do something. At first it was just a joke. We were pissing around, drunk, and he said, wouldn't it be good if we invited him along to a fake audition for something big, a film, maybe, and offer him a part, and string him along so he'd let me direct Richard III, and then I could cast whoever I wanted? And we joked about it for days, and it was me who finally said, well, why not?
"So we got some of our old uni friends and set it up and it worked. My God, I'd never seen the old man so happy. It was like he was walking on air. He thought... finally, after sixty years, this is it, finally I'm getting the break I deserved. Even Madge believed, and by the time they worked it out, it was too late - we were three weeks into rehearsals.
"And then..." said Bill.
"And then Ed pissed off to Glasgow and ruined it all."
"Ruined?" said Bill. "You got to play Richard, and you've just told us how well it went. That doesn't sound ruined to me."
"It'd've been better with Ed." To my surprise, I found I was crying. Maudlin drunk. Great big salty tears plopping down into my beer. "All I wanted was to give him his big chance."
Suddenly they were all staring at me. There was a long silence.
"I think we have a winner," said Bill, a smile slowly creeping onto his face.
Chris shook his head. "No way," he said. "What? Richard is neither a hero nor a monster, just a human being who did some bad stuff, but for mostly good reasons, who loved his friends and hated his enemies. Boring. Bore-ring. You've lost your touch, Bill."
"What the are you talking about?" I was suddenly afraid, but I didn't know why.
Hudde laughed. "Three Richards the Third walk into a pub..." He enunciated each word with great precision.
"One," continued Dickon, "the hideous misbegotten monster who limped from the dark places which shadow the minds even of geniuses and saints."
"Wait a moment," said Chris. "Are you calling him a genius or a saint? Because in either case, I beg to differ..."
Hudde spoke over him. "The other," he said, "the chivalrous knight who strode shining from the earnest yet woefully untalented pens of Horace Walpole and the many enthusiastic spinsters who followed in his wake."
"And then there was the third Richard," said Bill, looking at me. "Who told us his story, and it's tangled, and human, and full of people doing bad things for good reasons, and good things for bad reasons. The Richard who saved Albion from foolish, weak Henry by an act of cruelty that broke the old man's heart..."
I opened my mouth to protest, but Bill didn't let me. "Yes it did," he said. "You know it did."
"So if," said Chris, "there just happened to be a couple of dead hacks who were very, very bored of bickering about quite how overrated one of them was, and decided instead to have a competition to see which of the three Richards belonged in history, then that third one would clearly win. Because Bill values ambiguity and complexity and all that shit, and I don't really give a fuck as long as the good looking one gets to stay here with me.
"Congratulations," said Hudde, grinning maliciously on one side of his face. "You get a one way ticket back to the fifteenth century. I hope you're not a fan of sanitation. Or adequate dentistry. Or of not having everyone you love die in horrible ways."
"Goodbye," said Bill quietly. "And good luck."
Dickon stood up and helped Hudde to stand too. He clapped me on the back. "Look on it as an adventure," he said.
Chris showed me to the door. He was impressively good at making it seem as though arse-fondling was a necessary part of the showing to the door process.
It was snowing. I took a moment to look up at the pale flakes drifting down, and to wonder, as drunks do, at the immensity of the universe.
Then all was chaos. Several men wearing heraldic tunics clustered around me, all speaking at once . "Your Grace, we've been looking for you!" "Where have you been?" "Come on, it's not safe!"
My mind was whirling. If Hudde had meant what I thought he meant, what it seemed he meant then... where was I? I realised I wanted to throw up, but I couldn't, not even when two of the men pulled me to the side of the road.
A lady was riding past on a white horse, surrounded by an armed guard. She wore a green velvet cloak, and a white fur hood framed her haughty face. I met her eyes. Madge.
Then I understood. It was a joke. A trick. They were just getting me back for the film thing. Relief came flooding into my heart. For a moment I almost believed... I shook my head, as though it would somehow shake out the horror of what I'd thought.
The snow was falling thicker now. I shivered, rubbing my bare arms, and envying Madge's cloak. A blast of cold air hit me, and something suspiciously like sobriety exploded into my head, bringing with it the realisation that it had been the twenty-second of August when I'd gone in, and a nice warm evening.
Madge smiled, and rode on.