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Shene Palace is a thing of beauty.
It isn’t sparkling and doesn’t so clearly speak of the grandeur of the Kings of England like Westminster, neither is it essential but majestic all the same as Middleham is; but there’s a quiet grace about the elegant shape of its buildings that lies in between, a more subdued charm to this royal residence that matches so strangely with the boasting image of mightiness of the great Henry V who had it rebuilt.
However, it is not thoughts of Henry the Great, whose fame every next sovereign of England has to measure up to, that keep Richard awake tonight, send him in restless walking in the beautiful moonlit gardens overlooking the Thames.
His mind should be at rest: it has been another beautiful day of early spring, and he is getting to enjoy the start of the season with Anne away for a small while from the chaos and complications and constant, wearing gossip of his London court. In short time, they will be riding north to Middleham and to their son, their precious little prince, and probably finally take him back with them to court for a while, to take his place as Prince of Wales; and while he worries, always worries for his beloved Ned’s shifty health in hectic London, Richard also can’t wait – and knows Anne can’t either – to have his son by their side every day, and make up for time lost.
He guesses Ned would like it here in Shene, with its fields and woods calling for horse-riding, in which his namesake, his uncle Edward the King, liked to organize hunting expeditions surrounded by those closest to him.
A pang of loss and longing reappears, never quite silenced, as his memory wanders to the first of those very occasions, shortly before leaving for his Middleham training years, when he was just about Ned’s age and there were just two newly-made young Dukes and a newly-made golden King, riding together with their falcons as the brothers they were. After growing up amidst conflict and the excruciating loss of their father and brother, that time had seemed so strangely carefree, and Richard’s biggest worry that day had been having to go retrieve his own inexperienced bird, who had disappeared into the darkest part of the wood.
He could still remember George’s ready mocking.
“What now, Dickon? Afraid old King Richard will come haunting you in there?”
“Leave me be, George. What has King Richard got to do with anything?” he had huffed, annoyed at his brother’s antics.
“They say he loved it here, you know. But also that he cursed this place after his wife died, and that’s why he razed it to the ground. I saw one of Ned’s servants trembling with fear before, talking about his ghost haunting this place forever.” The older boy had scoffed at the thought, and turned suddenly serious. “I should be King - then I would teach those peasants to fear sprouting such nonsense, instead.”
George, like with many other things, had been wrong. King Richard II’s lingering presence there, real or not, never had reason to be a cause of disconcert to Richard, Duke of Gloucester…but the thought of him is quite unsettling to Richard, King of England.
He has always shared a name with his distant relative, and now he shares his title, as well. But that isn’t all, and he finds himself wishing it wasn’t so, as a strange sense of foreshadowing fills him while being here, in the place that still bears little signs of that king’s desperation; like the forgotten section of ruined wall he stops by now, half-hidden amidst the timidly blossoming flowery bushes. Ivy and wild grass threaten to engulf it; but the low relief on it is still noticeable to those who know where to look, and Richard immediately finds the two stony effigies that had disquieted him that very afternoon.
Richard II’s English rampant lion, and next to it, its wing closely entwined with the beast’s paw, the Holy Roman Empire’s eagle for Anne of Bohemia, his first tragic Queen who was gone too soon, stare back at him under the moonlight.
King Richard and Queen Anne. Both not meeting a good ending…
He knows his brother, if he could see him now, would deem him a fool no better than that superstitious servant that day; but he can’t help but feel a shiver rattling through his uneven spine as he, almost subconsciously, stretches his hand to stroke the pale, ruined stone. It is as if the sudden coldness of the material beneath his fingers makes him realize how real his namesake’s pain was, how lasting the effects of a grief so blinding that all that remained after it of a place of great happiness were ashes, ashes not even the later work of the most shining King of all could entirely hide.
He thinks he can almost see him, with his mind’s eye, this Richard who frantically burns and destroys and falls on his knees, crown suddenly too heavy on his head and the taste of salty tears in his mouth, as he watches his most beloved home crumble into nothingness; and yet it is better this way, for behind every corner he would only see Anne’s smiling face, and be unable to reach for it, now that illness has taken her away forever.
The burning ruins shift and change shape as they fall crackling between the flames, and, for a blinding moment, it is not Shene that Richard sees in his mind but Middleham; and the now downturned, streaked face the puddles on the ground reflect back is not the other king’s, but his own.
Richard blinks and flinches heavily away from the ruined wall, and finds that a lone tear is tracking his cheek.
He and Anne are not and will not be anything like them. Why would he even think of it? They are making their own destiny in a much different England, and they have their Ned, while old Richard and his Anne had no children; and he won’t let anything happen to his family, not ever.
He cannot think anything will, for if it were the case…he doesn’t think he’d have much more sanity left to him than this king who rests at Westminster, but whose heart was buried here many years before.
“Richard…”
His name, softly whispered in the moonlit darkness of the garden, makes him jump, and when he turns he half-expects to see Anne of Bohemia’s ghost staring at him with sad eyes; but it is another Anne’s worried gaze he meets, his own Anne’s beautiful, expressive eyes, doubling in concern in seeing him so shaken.
She has hastily put on a robe on her nightgown to go look for him, her hair tumbling down in soft curls over her lightly-covered shoulders, and this state of dressing makes her look especially tiny; and he feels a surge of ferocious, protective tenderness rise within him.
“Richard, what be wrong? Why are you…”
But she can never finish her question, for Richard grabs her face and kisses her hard, lips lingering as if she were to disappear before him, as the stony lion and eagle seem to look at them in approval, but also in sad knowing of what’s to come.
Richard kisses her until they’re both breathless, and when they finally part there’s a faint confused smile on her swollen lips and an even bigger question in her eyes.
“Just…don’t ever leave me, Anne.”
That night, he makes love to her with a sort of sweet fury, hands roaming and learning her body all over again, inch by creamy inch, his eyes never leaving hers until they can touch the stars and he buries his face in her neck, his name frantically on her lips in choked sighs.
Their hands entwine and stubbornly cling together as they lose themselves in one another, and lie entangled on their bed much the same as a lion and an eagle’s carved limbs on a fallen wall down in the gardens; and, as their feverish heartbeats gradually slow, and Richard holds her sleepy form close with tender possessiveness, he thinks that maybe they can make this a happy place for a King Richard and Queen Anne again, and when they turn old and grey he will laugh at his own foolish musings.
If only he knew.