Ch. 595: SCENE III. Pomfret. Before the Castle

SCENE III. Pomfret. Before the Castle****

Enter Sir Richard Ratcliffe, with Halberds, carrying the nobles Rivers, Grey and Vaughan to death at Pomfret.

RIVERS.

Sir Richard Ratcliffe, let me tell thee this:

Today shalt thou behold a subject die

For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.

GREY.

God bless the Prince from all the pack of you!

A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers.

VAUGHAN

You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter.

RATCLIFFE

Dispatch. The limit of your lives is out.

RIVERS.

O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,

Fatal and ominous to noble peers!

Within the guilty closure of thy walls

Richard the Second here was hacked to death;

And, for more slander to thy dismal seat,

We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink.

GREY.

Now Margaret’s curse is fall’n upon our heads,

When she exclaimed on Hastings, you, and I,

For standing by when Richard stabbed her son.

RIVERS.

Then cursed she Richard, then cursed she Buckingham,

Then cursed she Hastings. O, remember, God,

To hear her prayer for them, as now for us!

And for my sister and her princely sons,

Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood,

Which, as thou know’st, unjustly must be spilt.

RATCLIFFE.

Make haste. The hour of death is expiate.

RIVERS.

Come, Grey, come, Vaughan, let us here embrace.

Farewell, until we meet again in heaven.

[_Exeunt. _]