Elizabeth George - I, Richard

Bosworth Field is much the same as it was over five hundred years ago when the armies met in August 1485. It hasn't been plowed over for housing estates, and Wal-Mart hasn't managed to put an unsightly megastore anywhere near it. Thus, it remains a forsaken, windswept place marked only by flagpoles that show visitors where the various armies were encamped and by plaques that explain along an established route exactly what happened at each spot.

It was when I reached a plaque that directed my gaze toward the distant village of Sutton Cheney where King Richard prayed in St. James Church on the night before the battle that I saw my story take shape. And what happened to me as I stood before that plaque was something that had never happened before nor has it happened since. It was this:

I read the words that told me to look for the windmill some mile or so in the distance and to recognize this structure as marking the village of Sutton Cheney where King Richard had prayed the night before battle. And as I lifted my eyes and found that windmill, the entire short story that you will read here dropped into my mind. All of a piece. As simple as that.

All I had to do was recite the facts of the story into my handheld tape recorder as the wind buffeted me and the temperature challenged me to stay out of doors long enough to do so.

I came home to California and created the characters who would people the small world of “I, Richard.” Once I did that, the story virtually wrote itself.

The guilt or innocence of the parties in history is lost to all of us, pending the discovery of a document whose veracity cannot be disputed. Indeed, I wasn't interested in trying to prove anyone did anything. What I was interested in writing about was one man's obsession with a long-dead King and the extremes he was willing to go to in order to advance himself under the banner of that defeated white boar.

Malcolm cousins groaned in spite of himself. considering his circumstances, this was the last sound he wanted to make. A sigh of pleasure or a moan of satisfaction would have been more appropriate. But the truth was simple and he had to face it: No longer was he the performance artist he once had been in the sexual arena. Time was when he could bonk with the best of them. But that time had gone the way of his hair and at forty-nine years old, he considered himself lucky to be able to get the appliance up and running twice a week.

He rolled off Betsy Perryman and thudded onto his back. His lower vertebrae were throbbing like drummers in a marching band, and the always-dubious pleasure he'd just taken from Betsy's corpulent, perfume-drenched charms was quickly transformed to a faint memory. Jesus God, he thought with a gasp. Forget justification altogether. Was the end even worth the bloody means?

Luckily, Betsy took the groan and the gasp the way Betsy took most everything. She heaved herself onto her side, propped her head upon her palm, and observed him with an expression that was meant to be coy. The last thing Betsy wanted him to know was how desperate she was for him to be her lifeboat out of her current marriage-number four this one was-and Malcolm was only too happy to accommodate her in the fantasy. Sometimes it got a bit complicated, remembering what he was supposed to know and what he was supposed to be ignorant of, but he always found that if Betsy's suspicions about his sincerity became aroused, there was a simple and expedient, albeit back-troubling, way to assuage her doubts about him.

She reached for the tangled sheet, pulled it up, and extended a plump hand. She caressed his hairless pate and smiled at him lazily. “Never did it with a baldy before. Have I told you that, Malc?”

Every single time the two of them-as she so poetically stated-did it, he recalled. He thought of Cora, the springer spaniel bitch he'd adored in childhood, and the memory of the dog brought suitable fondness to his face. He eased Betsy's fingers down his cheek and kissed each one of them.

“Can't get enough, naughty boy,” she said. “I've never had a man like you, Malc Cousins.”

She scooted over to his side of the bed, closer and closer until her huge bosoms were less than an inch from his face. At this proximity, her cleavage resembled Cheddar Gorge and was just about as appealing a sexual object. God, another go-round? he thought. He'd be dead before he was fifty if they went on like this. And not a step nearer to his objective.

He nuzzled within the suffocating depths of her mammaries, making the kinds of yearning noises that she wanted to hear. He did a bit of sucking and then made much of catching sight of his wristwatch on the bedside table.

“Christ!” He grabbed the watch for a feigned better look. “Jesus, Betsy, it's eleven o'clock. I told those Aussie Ricardians I'd meet them at Bosworth Field at noon. I've got to get rolling.”

Which was what he did, right out of bed before she could protest. As he shrugged into his dressing gown, she struggled to transform his announcement into something comprehensible. Her face screwed up and she said, “Those Ozzirecordians? What the hell's that?” She sat up, her blonde hair matted and snarled and most of her makeup smeared from her face.

“Not Ozzirecordians,” Malcolm said. “Aussie. Australian. Australian Ricardians. I told you about them last week, Betsy.”

“Oh, that.” She pouted. “I thought we could have a picnic lunch today.”

“In this weather?” He headed for the bathroom. It wouldn't do to arrive for the tour reeking of sex and Shalimar. “Where did you fancy having a picnic in January? Can't you hear that wind? It must be ten below outside.”

“A bed picnic,” she said. “With honey and cream. You said that was your fantasy. Or don't you remember?”

He paused in the bedroom doorway. He didn't much like the tone of her question. It made a demand that reminded him of everything he hated about women. Of course he didn't remember what he'd claimed to be his fantasy about honey and cream. He'd said lots of things over the past two years of their liaison. But he'd forgotten most of them once it had become apparent that she was seeing him as he wished to be seen. Still, the only course was to play along. “Honey and cream,” he sighed. “You brought honey and cream? Oh Christ, Bets…”A quick dash back to the bed. A tonguely examination of her dental work. A frantic clutching between her legs. “God, you're going to drive me mad, woman. I'll be walking round Bosworth with my prong like a poker all day.”

“Serves you right,” she said pertly and reached for his groin. He caught her hand in his.

“You love it,” he said.

“No more'n you.”

He sucked her fingers again. “Later,” he said. “I'll trot those wretched Aussies round the battlefield and if you're still here then… You know what happens next.”

“It'll be too late then. Bernie thinks I've only gone to the butcher.”

Malcolm favoured her with a pained look, the better to show that the thought of her hapless and ignorant husband-his old best friend Bernie-scored his soul. “Then there'll be another time. There'll be hundreds of times. With honey and cream. With caviar. With oysters. Did I ever tell you what I'll do with the oysters?”

“What?” she asked.

He smiled. “Just you wait.”

He retreated to the bathroom, where he turned on the shower. As usual, an inadequate spray of lukewarm water fizzled out of the pipe. Malcolm shed his dressing gown, shivered, and cursed his circumstances. Twenty-five years in the classroom, teaching history to spotty-faced hooligans who had no interest in anything beyond the immediate gratification of their sweaty-palmed needs, and what did he have to show for it? Two up and two down in an ancient terraced house down the street from Gloucester Grammar. An ageing Vauxhall with no spare tyre. A mistress with an agenda for marriage and a taste for kinky sex.