I opened my eyes, and all I saw was James, one knee bent in genuflection, staring up at Richard with bold contempt in his face.
“Speak hands, for me!” I shouted, and leapt at Richard, thrusting my blade under his upstage arm. The other conspirators came suddenly to life and swarmed on us like wasps. Richard glared at me, teeth bared and grinding hard together. I wrenched my knife away and made to move back, but he seized me by the collar, crushing the fabric so tightly around my throat that I couldn’t breathe. I dropped the knife, groping at his wrist with both hands as his thumb jabbed into my carotid artery.
My vision was already swimming when Richard released me, with a roar of pain—Alexander had grabbed him by the hair and yanked him backward. I fell heavily on my tailbone, one hand flying to my neck. Someone had Richard’s arm bent behind his back and the other half-dozen conspirators lunged to take their stabs at him, all blocking abandoned. In the confusion he lashed out wildly and hit Filippa right in the stomach, hard enough to knock her sprawling. She landed in a heap on the stairs—I’d made it to my feet just in time to watch her fall, and an inarticulate sound of outrage stuck in my throat. I shoved Cinna aside and dropped to my knees beside her. She lifted her head, clutching her stomach, gulping futilely, all the wind knocked out of her.
Suddenly the bedlam subsided, and I turned halfway around, kneeling over Filippa, who was quiet but gripping my leg hard. Richard stood surrounded by panting conspirators, arms pinned to his sides, Alexander’s fist still clenched in his hair. James stood just out of his reach, suit disheveled, knife clutched tightly in his hand.
Richard’s words were thick with hatred as he said, “Et tu, Bruté?”
James took one step forward and placed the blade against his neck.
Richard: “Then fall, Caesar.”
James’s face was unnervingly blank. He slid the knife quickly forward—Richard made a short choking sound, then let his head loll against his chest. Alexander and the rest of the conspirators released him one by one, and he slumped to the floor. When they straightened up again, the second-and third-years looked from me to James to Alexander, wide-eyed, painfully aware of the audience and the fact that the scene had spiraled completely out of control. One of them had a line, but she must have forgotten, because nobody spoke. Alexander waited as long as he could, then spoke for her.
“Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!” He gave the nearest second-year a small shove. “Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.” The rest shifted, exhaled, relieved. Filippa gasped as the air rushed into her lungs again. I helped her sit halfway up while Alexander continued barking orders. “Some to the common pulpits, and cry out, / ‘Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!’”
“People and senators, be not affrighted,” James said to the conspirators, and his calmness seemed to reassure them. “Fly not; stand still; ambition’s debt is paid.”
We relaxed into the text again, as if nothing at all unusual had happened. But as Filippa and I climbed to our feet, I couldn’t help glancing down at Richard. He lay motionless except for the angry twitch of his eyelids, a vein bulging and throbbing in his throat.
SCENE 8
My head cleared as Brutus and Cassius’s coup collapsed. Richard had disappeared out the door during intermission, and no one saw him again until Act IV when he returned as Caesar’s ghost—an apparition doubly sinister for its stony solemnity. The final curtain fell at ten thirty, and my body ached with fatigue, but the layered drama of the assassination scene and anticipation for the party kept me awake and alert. By the time I’d washed my face, gotten my costume off, and dressed myself again, most of the second-and third-years had gone. James and Alexander were waiting in the crossover with four fat spliffs rolled already (one for each of us and one for Filippa, who had already gone back to the Castle to change). We left the FAB and strolled down the path through the woods with our hands in our pockets. We didn’t mention the Three-One incident, except for Alexander saying simply, “I hope he’s learned his lesson.”
When we were only thirty feet from the Castle, the sultry party light began to soak through the thick shadows of the trees. We stopped to finish smoking and stamped the roaches down in the damp pine needles. Alexander turned to us and said, “We’ve had a long week. I plan to make a long night of it, and if you two aren’t royally fucked by midnight I will take it upon myself to see that you are fucked, royally or otherwise, by morning. Understand?”
Me: “You make it sound a lot like date rape.”
Alexander: “Do as I’ve said and it won’t come to that.”
James: “You’re both of you going to hell.”
Alexander: “Directly.”
Me: “Posthaste.”
Alexander: “Every man put himself into triumph; some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what sport and revels his addiction leads him. Go.”
Obediently, we went.