Filippa laced her fingers through mine. I squeezed her hand, grateful for something to hold on to.
“We are here,” Holinshed said, “to honor the memory of a remarkable young man, whom all of you knew.” He cleared his throat, folded his hands behind his back, and for a moment looked down at the ground. “How best to remember Richard?” he asked. “He is not the sort of person who will soon fade from your memories. He was, you might say, larger than life. It does not seem far-fetched to think that he is larger than death also. Of whom does this remind you?” He paused again, chewed on his lip. “It is impossible not to think of Shakespeare when one thinks of Richard. He has appeared on our stage many times, in many roles. But there is one role we never had the opportunity to see him play. Those of you who knew him well will likely agree he would have made a fine Henry Five. I, for one, feel cheated.”
Gwendolyn’s bangles jingled as she lifted her hand to her mouth. Tears rolled down her face, dragging long streaks of smeared mascara with them.
“Henry the Fifth is one of Shakespeare’s best beloved and most troublesome heroes, much as Richard was one of ours. They will, I think, be similarly lamented.” Holinshed reached into the deep pocket of his overcoat, feeling for something. As he searched for it, he said, “Before I read this, I must ask Richard’s fellow thespians to forgive me. I have never pretended to be an actor, but I wish to pay my respects, and I hope that, given the circumstances, both you and he will find it in your hearts to forgive me for my poor delivery.” There was a breathy murmur of laughter. Holinshed unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket. I heard a rustle of fabric and looked sideways. Alexander had taken Filippa’s other hand. He stared straight forward, jaw jutting out.
Holinshed: “Hung be the heavens with black: yield, day, to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry’s death.
England ne’er lost a king of so much worth.”
He frowned, crumpled the paper and returned it to his pocket.
“Dellecher never lost such a student,” he said. “Let us remember Richard well, as he would have wanted. It is my honor to unveil for you his portrait, which from today forward will hang in the lobby of the Archibald Dellecher Theatre.”
He reached over to pull the limp black cloth off the easel. Richard’s face emerged from behind it—it was his Caesar portrait, what it had looked like before it was recolored and resized—and my heart leapt up into my throat. I felt myself step off the dock again, plunge down into the frigid water of the lake. He glared across the beach at us—imperious, enraged, in some abhorrent way alive. I gripped Filippa’s hand so hard her knuckles went white. Holinshed was wrong: Richard didn’t want to be remembered well—he had never been so forgiving. He wanted to wreak havoc on the rest of us.
“I can only say so much on Richard’s behalf,” Holinshed went on, but I barely heard him. “I did not have the privilege of knowing him as well as many of you. So I will step aside, and let someone nearer and dearer speak for him now.”
He finished without any grander gesture and retreated from the podium. I glanced down the bench in dismay, but Meredith hadn’t moved. She sat, ashen-faced, with Alexander’s left hand in her lap, clutched tightly between both of hers. Four of us were linked now, like dolls in a paper chain. I could feel Filippa’s pulse between my fingers and loosened my grip.
A soft susurration made me look the other way. Wren was on her feet and moving toward the podium. When she got there she was barely visible, a pale face and fine blond hair hovering just above the microphone.
“Richard and I never had siblings, so we were closer than most cousins,” she said. “Dean Holinshed was right to say that he was larger than life. But not everybody liked that about him. I know actually that a lot of you didn’t like him at all.” She looked up, but not at any of us. Her voice was small and unsteady, but her eyes were dry. “To be perfectly honest with you, sometimes I don’t—didn’t—like him either. Richard wasn’t an easy person to like. But he was an easy person to love.”
On the bench across from ours Mrs. Stirling cried silently, one hand clutching the collar of her coat. Her husband sat with his fists balled up between his knees.
“Oh, God,” Alexander muttered. “I can’t do this.”
Meredith dug her fingernails into his wrist. I bit my tongue, clenched my teeth so tight I thought they would crack.
“The idea that I would have to … let go of him, before we were old and falling to bits, never even occurred to me,” Wren went on, picking her words one by one, like a child stepping from stone to stone to cross a stream. “But it doesn’t just feel like I’ve lost a cousin. It feels like I’ve lost part of myself.” She let out a tragic sort of laugh.