You thought when he died, Hotspur would come with you. It’s what happened with Richard, after all. But maybe being the killing blow makes things different. Hotspur dies with his honors. No matter how hard you look, you can’t see him in any of the gazes you meet on the battlefield, in either the enemy’s army or your own. Honor is air, and there he is: lost between the inhale and the exhale, slipping through the bellows of the morning fog, for worms, for worms, buried deep within the muck of the earth, burnt out of oxygen and never to rise in another’s breath ever again.
When your father caused Richard’s death, the payment was such that Richard still lives in you, your father’s son. When Hotspur dies, the payment, you suppose, is the reminder of his entirely permanent and unchanging absence; an end you fear to meet.
