Henriad (History Plays, Book 5)

12: Small time, but in that small most great lived this star

Kate

The morning of Harry's funeral dawns bright like any other. I think it should not. I think the world should weep and mourn, but the sun that shown so proudly on him defiantly rises.
My bed, as usual, is cold as I did not go to it. Instead I wake in a chair by my infant son's cradle. Not nine months old, and loath to smile for me without his father's usual admiration. His father who would lift him every morning, kiss his plump cheeks, and whisper to him "You are my Harry, named for the greatest man that ever lived, my perfect son and heir, I'm proud of you already handsome boy." He was talking of himself of course. The greatest man who ever lived. And I did not deny him, even if it was a joke to him. It wasn't to me.
"Are you ready?" Rey stands in the doorway to the nursery, black suit, crosslet about his neck. His copper hair slicked back from his now solemn face. He's a man now, not the fresh faced boy who once dined with my parents and played with his brothers in the penalty box of a hockey game.
"It's like it means he's really gone," I say, quietly, holding my son in my arms and not moving to leave.
"Harry could always do everything for me," Rey says, coming in and sitting down at the foot of the bed. It's his task to convey me to the church, he picked it I know, for he loved Harry best, as a second father, due to his age when their father passed, and he promised Harry he would look after me and our son.
"So why should illness take him?" I ask, quietly, "It seems so stupid."
My brave Harry. Stronger than anyone. Able to lift me so easily into his arms. Horse back riding daily, able to skate as fast as I. He had a fever not two days, and it barely stopped him. He didn't even go to a doctor. We assumed it was a passing cold. Then he collapsed on his morning walk. Incoherent, whispering only my name. Internal bleeding was the not at all sensitive term the doctors used. I don't know what I expected them to say, except that my Harry who'd never lost a battle, was alive. Cancer, as claimed his father, had ravaged his insides. His intestines were open and bleeding out into his abdomen when they finally did open him up. He never woke back up. We all spoke to him. But he who would never sleep could not rise again for us.
"He always said, life holds no promises for us," Rey says, quietly, "It never has for us Lancasters. We're not a lucky lot."
"But we are a happy one, you know how cross he'd be if he saw us weeping?" I ask, blinking tears out of his eyes, "Around his son who is only ever allowed to be cheerful?"
"Yeah, I know we're supposed to be grateful for the time we did have with him but—-I don't know. I can't help but think, his greatest trick would be to rise from the dead," Rey says, blinking back his own tears as he looks at our small, fatherless Harry in my arms.
"He would be clever enough to defy the fates," I say, "And perhaps he shall. We do have to give him time."
"Harry, immediately prior to working a miracle, 'don't look at me like that, I'm not a saint, I can't provide us with a miracle', and then of course he would, 'cause he was Harry," he says, shaking his head, "And now he's gone."
"But we did have him, for as long as god let us, and we'll have him again someday," I say, reaching out a hand.
"We shall," he takes my fingers tightly in his own, "Come, let's go to the church. We shouldn't keep our Harry waiting."

The End