Violent Ends (Violent Delights Book 19)

Chapter 4: The Death according to Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester

"I am an executor with Arundal, I sent him the notice already and since I was involved he declined to act, I'll be far too busy to act as well so I'm declining, I think you're too busy to do it, uncle?" Hal asks, not looking up from his papers.
"Oh god yes, what even is it?" I ask.
"He's just going to leave a verbal will of selling his earthly goods for pious purposes. Naturally anything of real value will go towards the war effort," Henry says.
"Right then," I say, lining up my fingers as I stare at the ceiling.
"What?" John asks.
"Don't engage," Humphrey says, face down on the table.
"Here, have some breakfast you'll feel better," Courtenay says, putting more jellied eel on a plate.
"Oh, I was eating that, thank you," Hal says, even though his friend wasn't talking to him.
"No, no, are you really writing father's will right now?" John asks.
"Yes, merely his wishes, he's incoherent it's my duty," Hal says, calmly.
"It's his duty as Prince of Wales. The king is entirely lucky the prince is setting aside the time," Courtenay echoes, giving me a plate of food which I accept. Eel at this time of the morning? Whatever, I didn't sleep.
"You're writing father's will. Right now?" John asks.
"Yes, we did that," Hal says.
"We did do that—oh don't look at me like that you two," I say, when Humphrey and John glare at me, "He can't say it. This sounds rational—anyway who is doing the executor bit?"
"Ah, I'm putting down Bishop Langley, Pelham, and one other who d'you think?" Courtenay, clearly writing my brother's will.
"Ah, Leventhrope, should do, yes write him in," Hal says.
I laugh. Just what my brother deserves. His eldest son and that boy's paramour are here writing out his will to suit them. He should have left one. He should have been a better father. He should have been a better brother.
He was drunk. He probably doesn't remember that day. But I do. I think about it perhaps every week. I don't want to. Sometimes I think it's faded away. But a word. A look. And then it'll all come rushing back.
I'd just had my first real heartbreak. The woman, who would later become the mother of my daughter, was married to another and she'd broken things off with me. It hadn't been an affair yet. Just a series of stares across crowded rooms. The odd stolen word. Then letters. Nothing else. But it still hurt.
It was the Easter Holiday and I was home of course, we all were at Kenilworth. Henry was finally home from Jerusalem for a bit and was remembering what a tight leash our father had him on so he was sullen. Neither one of us were sober. But I can still hear his voice.
It was late, I'd gone to find wine, just weeping and feeling miserable with my broken heart and nothing to show for it.
"What have you got to cry about?" Henry found me, in the cellar, he was drunk too and also looking for wine. Our father only let us have so much in the rooms. I suppose he knew what we were about.
"Just go away, Harry," I said, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
"It's my house," he said, pushing past me to go and get the wine.
"It's father's house," I said, sniffing a bit.
"My father your—sire. You're nothing but a bastard, and you always will be. You've not even got a name of your own, Vex," he said, my boyhood nickname slipping poisonously off his tongue. Harry, with a bit of a stretch in Latin, vexare, to harry or literally tease or toss. A bit of joke, our parents never called either of us Henry. He was always Harry or sometimes something to do with his red hair, but that was largely with his friends.
"I have a name," I said.
"You really think he'll give you a name? That you'll be something other than the Bastard of Lancaster?" He laughed.
I hung my head, tears dripping down my face.
"You need to get a life of your own," he said.
"I am trying," I said.
"By fucking up more? You're pathetic, the only reason you have a place in the church is father paid them. You can't even have an affair properly," he scoffed.
"So what is to you? Just leave me alone," I said.
"Your mother's ashamed of you, you're not even going to give her grandchildren you didn't have the balls to become a knight so they hid you in the church and now you're spending the night getting drunk on our father's wine," he said, filling a flask, "You don't know what love is, let alone what loss is."
"Don't pretend you loved Mary," I said, angry, finally, "You don't know what it's like to really love anything."
"Don't speak my wife's name. You'll never know anything but whores," he said, grabbing me by the front of my tunic, "Take it back."
"You have never loved something like I did her," I said.
"You wanted the bed of a married woman. Because you're a fool. And if Alice had had you she'd be a whore as well," he said, coolly, almost laughing. Laughing at my pain.
I struggled to punch him and he easily pushed me against the wall. Of course he was very strong.
"Don't speak of her. Fine. Fine. You win. You always win Harry. Always. Are you enjoying yourself? You win, you have the name and the crusades, and six beautiful children, and if that's what winning is? I want to lose every goddamn day," I snarled, "I love her. And because I love her and I know what that love feels I would not ransom that love for any privilege or name or heirs."
"Well you shan't have it. You'll have nothing. In thirty years you'll still be brooding over the bed of a married woman. And I'll still be a great man," he said, dropping me.
I sank down, sobbing. Calling her a whore. Me a bastard, like I wasn't a part of his family. He made it clear that night. My mother was his mother. But I was nothing more than his father's bastard. And it had never stung worse. Plenty of people stared, and I got plenty of sneers, whispers, when I was first Bishop Beaufort. But none stung worse than my own brother.
And he didn't treat our other brothers like that. My full brothers, John and Thomas. Oh no. They were soldiers. They married. They were above rebuke.
I was easy prey and he leapt upon it.
About a decade later, I still had Alice, and I'd had her bed enough to get a child. Not at all a plan nor a good idea as we both had to hide it. But I knew no secret so beautiful. By then he was a usurper king of England struggling with multiple rebellions. And I was drinking the day away then slipping off to see my lover when it got dark. And when we couldn't realistically hide the pregnancy any longer hiding her away in the country.
"I'll take care of you both, I swear, whatever happens," I said, hand gently on Alice's swollen belly. My own bastard. Bastard of a bastard, that cancelled out someway clever I was sure. "If it's a boy he can be in the service of one of my nephews easy enough. Or he can go into the church if I've not turned him entirely off the idea."
"If it's a girl?" She asked, softly. She could not keep the child. And we didn't want it to be sold away.
"I'll look after her," I said. A girl with no name, was much harder to place. No simple knighthood, blending in among illegitimate and legitimate Lancaster boys. She could be in the service of a lady, sure, but it was harder to hide as fathers don't usually care for bastard daughters, and I had fewer female relatives to take her. but two sisters they'd do it perhaps but then I'd see less of her, we both would, than a boy who could soon scurry about doing odd jobs and being reasonably by my side. And my sisters and their ladies were more people who couldn't know. I had enough of my brother's secrets that the could keep mine well enough. My sisters would do it, but I couldn't mind the child so easily.
"I'll pray for a boy," she said, softly.
And of course it was a girl. My lovely Jane, a charming child. I got sufficiently less than sober, and ordered nurses set up in my own house. To hell with it. So far as the church was concerned it could go to hell. My daughter stayed in my care, indefinitely. Alice doubted my ability to keep the secret. She went back to normal life, once she was recovered from the pregnancy. And I finance our daughter's care under my roof. Her husband had died, he didn't like me, of course he knew of the affair. I just didn't really care was all.
I think about that night searching for wine, and my brother's words most anytime someone calls me the Bastard of Lancaster. Crudely reminding me of where I came from. I don't mind hearing it from anyone else but by god did it burn from my brother's lips. Letting me know, cruelly, that that was truly all I was to him. His bastard little brother, not family, not even a person. I was less than a person, just something to be abused.
My brother the king, still doesn't know about my illegitimate daughter. I've nothing to prove so I haven't told him. And my brother is the one dying, thirty years on. And his lovely irreverent children are sitting about drinking wine with me, only one of four boys married, not one legitimate child to show for the bunch, only one having a successful affair if that's what you call it when you find the other half of your soul. That's what I called it, an affair, but I'm irreverent. I spent my boyhood with my best epithet being 'bastard of' I get to be irreverent now and again.
"You know I'm glad we could all get to do this," I say.
"Are you?" Humphrey asks, miserably. That boy was born miserable bless him. Ill-natured as his sire, but some of his mother's sweetness if you're patient enough to wait for it.
"I mean, if he'd died any other way, falling off a horse or jousting, or actually going to war, we'd have had to drop what we were doing in a rush. I finished a glass of wine, kissed my daughter on the cheek, then eventually made my way here," I say, idly.
"Did you tell Jane the king's dying?" John asks.
"I did, she was quite enthused, apparently and I didn't know this, she's prayed for her cousin Henry to become king as she thinks he'd be rather good at it," I say, amused.
"We shall tell my critics," Hal says, with a note of humor.
"It was rather nice she wasn't upset," I say, sarcastically, "I thought she might fear for my own mortality with my brother dying but no. She just thought about how this might make Hal happy."
"An ideal servant of the crown—Richard did you cancel those goddamn ships—?"
"The ones your father commissioned, yes, two days ago," Courtenay says.
Hal looks up at him with a blank expression.
Courtenay smiles very very nicely.
Hal goes back to work without saying a word.
"Oh, those weren't very cost effective. Here, I've had enough wine to become interested in the conversation now," Humphrey says.
Courtenay passes him a stack, "Translate these we need a copy in Latin."
"I'll do something that doesn't take too much focus or directly inconvenience me," I say.
"If you got through that which I sent you yesterday then we're likely caught up—oh I did want to discuss with the group, father did express a few times that he wished Thomas to be buried at his feet and he's said it around other people and I don't care very much so I was just going to do it unless anyone has any thoughts?" Hal asks.
"Why does he want him buried at his feet?" Courtenay asks.
"Heaven is presumably rather broad so I assume he wishes to easily find his chosen companion in the afterlife and for whatever reason that chosen companion is Thomas. There's logic to it prior to the Thomas part," Hal says.
"Poor Thomas you can't do that," I laugh, "What, he wakes up on the other side and my brother staring down at him? He'd think he'd gone to hell."
Humphrey chokes on his wine.
"That's the idea behind husbands and wives being buried together, they wish to find one another. Sometimes there's someone you want to be certain is beside you," Hal says.
"You're not burying him with mother?" John asks, upset.
"Good lord no. Why would I do that? Have you not been paying attention to the theory?" Hal asks, "I'm redoing our mother's tomb though it should read 'mother of the king' and last we visited it wasn't very well kept up did you have my notes on that Richard—?"
"You took him to—never mind that's nice," I'm going to skip when on earth Hal took this boy to visit his mother's tomb that's nearly sweet. Wait no it's not. I sincerely hope that we do not look up from our graves upon the living and that poor Mary did not see these two standing there looking like they do constantly and come to several correct conclusions without the supplemental evidence of the fact that actually nobody else likes her precious boy.
"Yes, any of you can look at that if you wish after you answer the Thomas question," Hal says.
"Sure, I mean I guess do it if Thomas doesn't care. What if you die though and then we have to bury him and he argues it on his deathbed and you're not there to remind him he's doing it?" John asks.
"I don't know what makes you think Thomas can outlive me I fear him returning from France, god I gave Porter a list of instructions and I'm still not sure Thomas will come back in one piece," Hal says.
"That's very accurate," I say.
"Also he can't argue it he doesn't have to know. His executor will have to do it he doesn't have to be aware," Hal says.
"Who's Thomas' executor of his will you probably wrote?" Humphrey asks, tiredly.
Hal points at Courtenay who points at himself.
"Why's he doing it?" John asks.
"He's the executor of all of our wills, John, unless you have somebody else you expect to outlive us who won't hope to be named in the will who genuinely enjoys doing proverbial mountains of paperwork associated with death duties?" Hal asks.
"We're not paying him?" Humphrey asks.
"He gets to disappoint nobility by telling them they weren't named in the will it'll be like Easter and Epiphany Day for him," Hal says, confused at his brother's concern.
"That it will," Courtenay says, continuing his paperwork, "I'm probably going to have a prophetic vision at the Prince of Wales' funeral though. Something very dramatic. A saint will speak to me I'm sure."
"Please don't," I say, tiredly. He probably will. I hope I die before I see it. No, I don't, with the proper amount of wine it'll be funny.
"And our uncle is an executor but he may die, look at him, grey hairs already," Hal says, pointing at me.
"Ah yes, in my infirmity I'd best not be trusted with anything. Circling back to your Tom though, when's he due in?" I ask.
"Couple of weeks at best," Humphrey says.
"I'm going to have the body lay in state till he returns if possible, I really do have to be crowned by the ninth of April that's—,"
"Wait wait, stop, you're keeping the body?" Humphrey asks.
"Now the Prince of Wales didn't say that at all he was referring to a—shutting up we're in polite company," Courtenay says, shaking his head.
"Yes, fine start though, I'll do it," Hal says, just patting the top of the other man's head like he's one of his mastiffs. Courtenay just lays his head down on his arms and probably immediately falls asleep poor man.
"That's just automatic now you've trained him well Hal," John laughs.
"He came like this," Hal says, unaware his companion just passed out from being tremendously overworked, "Point being, no Humphrey I'm not just keeping the body. That's sick. I don't want it. We want to let Thomas see it."
"Thomas doesn't want to see that. That's disgusting," John says.
"Yes and I've had to look at it for days now Thomas has to look at it just once more he's not seen the state in months," Hal says.
I laugh, "There it is."
"You can't keep it for weeks. Bodies go all squishy," Humphrey says.
"No, they don't. Not if you embalm them," Hal says.
"Would that really work that well though? I mean last time I was in there things weren't going great," John says.
"Embalming preserves a corpse for perhaps a week," I put in.
"Exactly, myrrh, cotton, perhaps some mercury, put it in the mouth and throat and rub the corpse with white wine, it'll smell all right," Hal says.
"The rabbits you'd bring in would smell disgusting after a few hours, you can't get the smell of death out," Humphrey says.
"Look, it's different with people than rabbits certainly," John says.
"Anyway we're not talking a week could be two weeks. And I think it is relevant the body is not doing very well while there's life," Humphrey says.
"That—could be true honestly," I say.
"Well, I'd like to leave it for Thomas and we're not having the funeral for a while anyway I can't commission the coffin till he's dead," Hal says.
"I've read about embalming and it doesn't work that well I can smell death already from his flesh," Humphrey says.
"It will work for a few days at least Richard can explain it to you—-are you asleep?" Hal finally notices the poor priest has completed passed out, and proceeds to shake his friend's shoulder rather harshly.
"No, not at all, asleep, I agree completely and will speak on that," Courtenay says, sitting up, eyes half closed.
"Aw, that's how he wakes up now," I say, affectionately.
"I was not asleep I was merely recalling something," Courtenay says, rubbing his face, obviously groggy.
"We were discussing how quickly bodies go off or don't and if that body in particular will be receptive due to how off it is already," Humphrey fills him in.
"The embalming process is effective just past a week, with the proper mixture of herbs I've contact for the embalmers here I can provide it presently," Courtenay says, poor blue eyes half closed, trying to find a paper.
"He just said what you said, you sure he was asleep?" John asks.
"He said he wasn't are you accusing my clerk of a falsehood—hello Lady Joan, how is he?" Hal notices his step mother, the soon to be dowager, queen. Lady Joan. She likes me. I was one of the people who came to escort her to England in small doses women tend to like me I'm pleasant and it's my life mission to convince my brother's wives they did not get the superior brother in terms of polite conversation. This is not hard to accomplish and it took one conversation with her.
Anyway, she used to like me. Then she came in a room and found myself and her step sons eating jellied eel, and for an undetermined amount of time heard us discussing the state of the king's corpse. Oh and Courtenay's here but he's not doing anything but trying to fall back asleep.
"I was returning with a small speech prepared about how I am honored to be here. And how your dear mother would be proud of you. However, I will do it later," she says, returning to the table.
"We're attentive, he is not asleep you may proceed," Hal says, shaking poor Courtenay as if the exhausted priest is the most offensive part of our conversation.
Courtenay sits up rubbing his face again, and prepares to go back to work.
"I'll do it later," she says, so tiredly. Humphrey and John didn't actually stop eating.
"This is good early in the morning, who would have thought?" I ask, since I only briefly stopped eating.
She looks like she's avoiding smiling at my cheek. I'm barely a few years older than her first born children, math done right. She decided to find me amusing a long time ago.
"Well? How is the state of affairs?" Hal asks.
"He's mostly asleep, but he's asking for a 'Henry'," she says, resting her chin on her fist, tiredly.
"Which?" John asks, hesitantly, pointing between myself and Hal.
"I think you owe me a grout, bishop," Courtenay, waking up completely.
"Oh that wakes you up," I say, sorting for a coin. I was not sober and made the mistake of laying money with the devious boy that certain parties didn't recall my first name. He likely cheated in retrospect.
"Yes, it does," Courtenay says, catching the coin I tossed to him.
"Well? Which Henry was it?" Hal asks, ignoring the side conversation and just systematically prying open Courtenay's closed fingers, to take the coin. Courtenay is clearly trying not to laugh at this but he's used to deceit and keeps a straight face.
"I don't know which Henry he simply said Henry," she says, shrugging, "It did sound like a request anyway but it may not have been he's not very coherent."
"It's likely me, he doesn't call him 'Henry'," I point out, "He's been 'Hal' to family since he was born."
"Yeah, we call him Hal," Humphrey says.
"Also he'd not ask for him," John says.
"He'd not ask for me either, but he wouldn't call the Prince of Wales Henry," I point out. Hal has gone completely back to work while we have this conversation.
"I'll call him either one," our step mother says, "I call both of you Henry. Father Courtenay what do you call either of them?"
"Bishop Beaufort, high and mighty Prince of Wales my dread lord," Courtenay says, without pausing. He says it so quickly and genuinely I see Hal struggle not to react with amusement.
"He's not helpful we determined that last Christmas—no it's bound to be our uncle, he'd not call Hal, 'Henry'," John reasons.
"Well he'd not ask for him," Hal says, pointing to me.
"I mean, that is true I doubt if he wants to see me he doesn't like me," I say, "But why would he want to see you?"
"Give me the crown?" Hal asks.
We all stare at him.
"Yes, uncle best you go see which one he wants," Hal says, going back to work.
"Right then, I'll be back in a minute," I say, rising and moving my plate away from the table's edge where one of Hal's dogs sniffs at it.
"Do you want me to come?" Joan asks, "He wakes up for me."
"I do not wish your assistance," I say, making her nearly smile.
The Jerusalem chamber where my brother is laid before the fire is stark and cold. A few doctors and his confessor wait, in the shadows. For now he is laid on a bed, covered with a white sheet, which he's bleeding through. Skin in horrible disrepair and yes, the chamber quite smells of death.
"Brother?" I ask, kneeling by his side, and taking his hand, gently. The skin is peeling off of it.
"Who is that?" He asks, clearly struggling to wake.
"It's Henry, your brother," I say, very very nicely, "The bastard one, you remember."
"Where is my son?" He asks.
"Well one might be dead in France, that's the one you like isn't it? Or pretended to," I say. I did not plan that. I had no idea the affect my incapacitated elder brother would have on me.
"You're useless," he says.
"I know. And you're a usurper dying clutching a stolen crown," I whisper, in his ear.
"Get me my son," he says, grabbing for my tunic and getting the ties. They slip through his shaking hands, though.
"I'm useless, remember?" I ask, before straightening up and summoning appropriate tears. I weep a moment, whisper a prayer in Latin, while he mumbles cruses on my name.
Then I walk out of the chamber, into the light of the hall.
I didn't know how good that would feel. Freeing. He's truly almost gone. And for the first time in my life he cannot touch me. Not his words nor his rage.