The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III (39 page)

“Oh, God,” Buckingham moaned. “Richard…”

“Don’t lament, my lord. He betrayed you. He’s not the man you thought he was. He’s impulsive, ambitious, violent – a Yorkist, through and through. And you, I know, are still a Lancastrian at heart. Look at your angelic hair, your fine lineaments, your noble blood. Your own claim to the throne is equal to his, is it not? A case could certainly be made.”

My claim to the throne, Harry thought, electrified.

“Think what fate will befall you if Richard remains on the throne. Think of poor Hastings, who counted Richard a friend. Don’t hesitate until the same happens to you. Seize the initiative. Ride the flood that will sweep him away.”

“Yes, but, my claim? You speak as if the princes were already dead.”

“King Henry the Seventh. Good King Harry.” Morton gave his closed-mouth laugh. “The crown would look very fair upon your golden head. The portraits will be striking.”

“This is all very well,” Buckingham said, rising to his feet to escape the stroking hands, “but what of your friendship with Margaret Beaufort, and your known support for her son, Tudor? A rebellion needs a figurehead. No one will accept me in that role!”

“It will be Henry Tudor, of course; but he’s weak. Let him lead. Support him. Later, you will become the real power. And in time, the only power. Will you help us?”

Buckingham felt caught up a wild fever. He would never get what he wanted from Richard. If Richard were cast down, why shouldn’t he, Harry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, rise in his place? Tudor was nothing, a straw man who’d be washed away in the autumn rain.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Creator forgive me for loving that Yorkist devil who led me astray. Let me be loyal to my Lancastrian blood.”

“That is my true, good son,” Morton said, and embraced him. “I’ll trust you now with some information. It’s up to your conscience whether you use it to help the Yorkist hog, or to aid God’s chosen, the rising House of Lancaster.”

###

Raphael had expected to be in York, amid the festivities to celebrate King Richard’s arrival. Instead he was on the road with Sir James Tyrell, riding back towards London.

Tyrell was a taciturn man, a good head taller than him and of menacing aspect. Raphael knew Tyrell well enough now to feel easy with him. Behind his facade was a plain, honest nature, which the King had recognized at once.

Richard had dispatched them to procure fine materials from the royal wardrobe to make robes for his son. Edward of Middleham was to be invested as Prince of Wales. No fabric fine enough could be found York, it seemed. Raphael endured the exhausting journey; anything for King Richard.

Dreams came to him on the road. For once, they were not distressing. They were all of Richard and Anne’s arrival in York: citizens crowding all along the roads and the walls; banners, flowers, deafening roars of joy. The king and queen and prince rode among their own people; at home, adored and, for once, truly happy.

He and Tyrell had barely arrived in London when a messenger came to them. They were in the royal stables, pulling off their gloves and stretching to ease their aching limbs, thinking fondly of hot baths and a tavern supper, when a man arrived, whey-faced and as nervous as a spy. Robert Brackenbury requested them to come with all speed to the Tower of London.

In stark lamplight in the doorway to the Garden Tower, Brackenbury waited for them. He was a formidable man, but now looked ashen and terrified.

“Sir James, Sir Raphael; I heard you were due on an errand from the king. There’s no one else I trust. Since you are so close with the king… Please, come with me.”

Within, lamps made chill pools of light. The ascent of the stairs took an age, like climbing into a grey tunnel that pressed down with it massive weight of stone and age. The other two did not speak. Raphael was shaking so violently – from cold or fear – that it was all he could do to lift one foot after the other.

This was so like one of his nightmares, he could not tell if he were awake or asleep.

Brackenbury led them to a pleasant enough chamber. A fair size, with tapestries hung on the stone walls and a huge bed with thick curtains to keep out the cold. Candle flames painted the walls with nervous light. The room smelled of sweat, of the musty reek of urine, of pus and sickness. The air was thick with smoky elementals.

In the bed lay two boys. The elder was dead, his face ghostly blue against the pillow. His lower jaw was grossly swollen and there were bruises around his eyes. The eyes were half-open and held a look of sorrowful resignation. The younger boy was still breathing. Each breath came with a shallow, wheezing effort. The bloom of a rash was turning black beneath his skin. He was frowning, but when Raphael touched his wrist, he didn’t react. He was unconscious.

Two male servants, the boys’ attendants, stood looking on in helplessness.

“Where’s the doctor?” Tyrell asked. “Where’s the priest?”

“The chaplain was so distressed he wouldn’t stay,” whispered Brackenbury. “What in heaven’s name am I to do?”

The younger boy gave up his spirit as they watched. Raphael saw the tiny spectral lights of other elementals gathering, like flecks of dandelion down, attracted by the escape of his soul.

The men crossed themselves. No one spoke. The only sound was a sobbing gasp from Brackenbury. Raphael looked round at their faces and saw that they were all stricken and mortally terrified.

After a long time, Brackenbury spoke. “They’re dead. Creator have mercy on their souls. And on ours!”

“How,” Raphael attempted, “how did this happen?”

Brackenbury spoke in a creaky whisper, as if frightened he would be overheard.

“The elder, Edward, was ill when he came here; with an abscess in his jaw. The physician bled him, did everything he could, but he only got worse. A few days ago he succumbed to a fever and grew weaker until he faded. His brother had been ill with stomach pains before he was let out of sanctuary. He seemed better at first, but the disease came back. I believe they took a fever on top of their afflictions, and both were too weak to fight it.”

“Are you sure?” Tyrrell said sharply.

Brackenbury flinched. “I was here with them every day; I or their attendants.”

“What about visitors?”

“No one came but priests, and Dr Argentine.”

“Where’s the physician now?” Raphael asked.

“Fled, days ago. He claimed the king had withdrawn him, but I don’t believe it. I think he saw the boys were going to die, and fled out of fear.”

“And where’s this damned chaplain?” Tyrell asked.

“I’ve sent for him again. Until he comes, gentleman, will you pray with me?” Brackenbury broke down in tears.

Between them they mumbled prayers over the bodies. The two faces on the pillows looked pitiful. Raphael stood dry-eyed and shuddering in the chamber of quiet horrors. He knew this image would haunt him for the rest of his life. He prayed to wake up suddenly in lodgings miles from London – but he didn’t. The scene went on and on, with no awakening.

At last they crossed the boys’ hands on their chests, pulled the covers over their faces, and drew the curtains around the bed. Tyrell took charge.

“We must keep this between ourselves,” he said. “It’s not up to us what we may or may not say about this. Only one man can decide, and that’s the king himself. Until he knows, we keep silent. Every man present must swear himself to secrecy in God’s name, on pain of eternal damnation.”

All swore.

“Who can bear to break this news to King Richard?” Brackenbury said desperately. “They were in my care!”

“Someone must,” said Tyrrell. “We’re away back to York at daybreak, Raphael and me. We’ll tell him.”

“Is it possible,” I ask, “that there’s a whole layer of history that’s been lost, not recorded anywhere?”

“What layer?” My tutor glares at me over his glasses.

“Well, for example, that some form of pagan practice survived into the fifteenth century? I don’t mean remnants of folk tradition, but an official, organised temple?”

“Good God, what the devil have you been reading now?”

“Not reading,” I say. “At least, I’m not sure. I feel as if I’ve read it somewhere, but in a book or manuscript I can’t find, that no one else recalls either.” I honestly don’t know how to explain myself. There is no way to phrase this that will not bring the full weight of his mockery down on my head.

“Then you probably dreamed it, rather than read it.” He doodles with a ballpoint pen on a notepad.

“No. It’s like deja vu; I recall things I’m sure I’ve learned, but when I go to look them up, I can find no reference to them. I feel as if I’m seeing a history that might have happened if events in our world had taken a slightly different path. For example, if Isis worship had survived in Britain…”

I cannot describe my tutor’s expression as I try to explain. It’s worth broaching the subject, just to see his face. He looks as if he’s about to ask if I have “women’s problems” and propose a visit to the campus doctor.

Finally he leans forward, clasping his hands on the desk. “Are you sure you’re on the right course? Might I suggest a transfer to theoretical physics?”

I give him the puzzled look he was no doubt expecting.

“If it’s alternative universes you want, they’ve got a million of ’em.”

And that’s all. He doesn’t, after all, try to talk me out of my mad ideas. I’m starting to like him. Even though I tried to talk around it, he seems to know what I’m getting at. He knows. I suspect the leathery layers of cynicism are too thick to be chipped away; but at least I’m not afraid of him anymore.

It was a probably a mistake to broach this. What can the poor man say? But the story of Kate and Raphael is so vivid, so pressing, that I have to share it with someone.

That night, curled up on Fin’s sofa with several glasses of red wine inside me, I finally tell her everything.

There is some raising of eyebrows to begin with but soon she is listening intently, interrupting only to ask pertinent questions. We talk and talk.

“You must think I’m utterly insane.”

“It’s a bit off-the-wall, like a past-life experience,” she says. “But the way you tell it is very nearly completely rational.”

I grimace. “Thanks.”

“And this is why you said to me, ‘It’s happening now?’”

“Yes. Because it is. To Raphael, and to me. Not in real time, obviously, because his story has gone on for years and I’m experiencing it over a few weeks. But the feeling is unshakeable that in his world, it’s happening to Raphael now. And to Kate, and to Richard.”

“Wow,” said Fin. “I’m almost envious.”

“Don’t be. I’m scared.”

She refills my glass. “Why?”

“Because I know how the story ends. Richard tries to save the day by making a last, bold charge against Henry Tudor. Men who should have fought with him turn against him and he’s cut down and slaughtered. Almost all his loyal followers are killed with him.” I’m shaking.

“And there’s no point in me repeating that this was five hundred…”

“No. It’s taking place here.” I raise my hand in front of my face, touching my nose. “In a world just a breath away from ours, but which we can never touch. I feel helpless, thinking there must be something I can do to change things, but knowing I can’t.”

“You and Raphael can touch events with your minds, in some way. You said he’s having visions of the way Richard will be remembered in our world?”

“I can’t be sure. I expect there’ll be hostile historians and a Shakespeare in his reality too. But yes, I always feel he’s picking up fragments from our past, rather than from his own future. The thing is…”

“Yes?”

“None of Raphael’s visions ever goes beyond the history of the Richard that we know. The same iron wall slams down.”

Fin leans forward, frowning, chin resting on her fingers. “Don’t take this wrong, but couldn’t that be proof that it’s your imagination generating all this?”

“It probably is, but…” I tell her about my exchange with the tutor. “According to theoretical physics, no less, it might just be real.”

“Well, don’t be scared, Gus. I’ll be here.” She gives me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. As she does so, we both jump.

Something passes through the room; a winged, grey malevolent rag. Not a ghost of any living creature, but thing formed of malevolence and rumour so strong that it’s taken on a life of its own. I catch the briefest glimpse of its cold, grinning skull.

Fautherer.

“Tell your King Richard that I made him King of a nation of perjurers and he must not blame me if I was no better than my fellow subjects. Tell him it is a rotten carcase he has to rule.”

Patrick Carleton, Under the Hog

“Here all is well and truly determined, for to resist the malice of him that had best cause to be true, the Duke of Buckingham, the most untrue creature living.”

King Richard III, letter to Bishop Russell

Along the length of the Isis went Dr Fautherer, a deathly figure in the greenish mists, the ferryman upon the Styx. From palace to palace he slid silently in his barge, whispering softly to nobles and courtiers. He passed from cathedrals to taverns to monasteries, from one secret meeting to another, spreading rumours like tar.

Dr Fautherer was industrious. Scurrying like a mole through its secret burrows, he carried messages between Elizabeth Woodville and her son the Marquis of Dorset, to Buckingham and Bishop Morton and thence to Margaret Beaufort. He transmitted their letters and passionate wishes to Lady Margaret’s son, Henry Tudor, the self-styled Earl of Richmond, exiled in Brittany. The time is right. Come home. All God-fearing men are ready to rise with you and unseat the Hog.

Discontent stirred, whirling its way in cloudy streams throughout the kingdom. Rumours rose like the stink of the Isis, like fog creeping up the walls of the Tower. The princes had vanished. They were dead, murdered by their own uncle.

Dr Fautherer looked upon the web he had woven, and was pleased.

###

“I can say nothing.” Richard sat immobile. He was a statue of limestone, draped in crimson and black. “I can say nothing at all.”

They were in York, in an upstairs chamber of the Mayor’s house. The room was close and dark, panelled with cherry wood and hung with royal blue banners. Apart from Tyrell and Raphael, only Ratcliffe and Lovell were there.

“Still, you must do something to…” Lovell began.

“What announcement could possibly be made?” Richard’s voice was low and distant. The room was too hot. “If I announce that my nephews were taken by natural causes, none will believe me. They are all too willing to believe the worst.”

His face, shadowed by raven-feather hair, looked hollow and haunted. Tyrell had broken the news in his usual plain-spoken way; the only way it could be told. Richard’s reaction had been silence. No words, no anger; only the deathly shock that now lay on them all.

Francis Lovell had wept, and turned away to hide his tears from the king.

“These rumours began long ago, while the boys were still alive,” Richard went on. “I could have produced them then. I chose not to, because to do so would have lent credence to the rumour-mongers.”

“You can’t react to every spiteful tale,” said Ratcliffe. “It’s beneath a king’s dignity.”

“I ignored the rumours, and they grew wilder. It seems to me that I’m damned, whatever I do. But who knows the boys are dead? Only we few in this room, and their attendants, who were sworn to secrecy. Yet the rumours continue to spread like the plague.” He sat back, fingertips pressing into the table edge. His face was immobile, his eyes full of restless light. “I cannot answer them. If I were to say, alas, my brother’s sons have died of fever, I would still be blamed, and called a liar as well as a murderer. And who’s to say they are wrong?”

“What?” said Lovell, angry.

Richard folded his hands. His eyelids fell, making dark crescents against his cheeks. His voice was raw.

“I knew the boys were ill. They were in my care. There was always a chance they might die. I sent the best physician in London, for all the good he did. Perhaps sun, fresh air and freedom might have effected a cure, but I couldn’t take the risk of setting them free. And there: the Tower itself consumed them.”

Raphel saw the long fingers compressing, turning bloodless.

“No point in worrying who’s to blame,” Ratcliffe said gruffly. “The lads were ill, as you said. It’s over and done.”

“But not forgotten. Never forgotten. I shall be damned for it.”

“Tell the truth, then!” exclaimed Raphael.

“I can’t,” Richard said patiently. “They will not believe me, any more than they wanted to believe the boys were bastards. I killed them. I wished them dead.” He looked up, his eyes liquid fire. “We should be careful what we wish for, in case it is granted.”

The silence was unbearable. Fire elementals rushed up out of the grate, turned to smoke and clustered around the king like an army of tiny demons. Raphael had to stifle a cry. He blinked hard, and the elementals vanished.

“There will be no announcement,” Richard said at last. “I’ll write only to Buckingham; he’ll keep the news close and secret. It may even please him.” He exhaled. “At there is dignity in silence, and perhaps the benefit of the doubt. Raphael, you’re frowning at me.”

“Not at you, sire. At those who would refuse to believe your word. How can they be so perverse?”

“You can’t believe they’d dare to think ill of me? That’s touching, but you can’t be so innocent.” King Richard met Raphael’s eyes. His gaze seemed to fall from a high, chill place, not of Earth. “I have often cursed their existence. Alive, they were a focus of unrest; dead, they are still a focus of unrest. I cannot win. Will their deaths make my reign easier, or infinitely harder? I wonder.”

Raphael’s head swam with sudden disorientation. He felt that this had all happened before. He’d gone through this same wretched scene a dozen times, each time slightly different, but as terrible. The room echoed with phantoms.

“We are all agreed, then?” Richard said, quiet and stern. “Once we leave this room, we never speak of this again.”

###

York was a sweet illusion, with its pageants and banners and celebrations. Richard was adored there. He always trod easily in the city, as if chains had lifted from him. His young son, Edward of Middleham, shone on the cathedral steps, glorious in robes made from the rich materials that Raphael and James Tyrell had brought from London. He stood bewildered and happy between his proud parents, bearing all their hopes: the new Prince of Wales.

Not for him the destiny of his cousins, fading to skin and bone in the Tower.

Raphael’s heart shrivelled. Not for him that fate – as long as Richard was secure on the throne. Nothing was certain. The wheel of fortune lifted men up and cast them down.

After their visit to York, the queen returned to Middleham with her son, taking Kate and her other ladies with her. Raphael was lonely then, but relieved. He couldn’t tell Kate about the princes’ deaths. Something had turned dark inside him. It was all he could do to look her in the eyes, let alone tell her the truth.

Richard, meanwhile, continued on his royal progress. True to his word, he did not speak of his nephews again. He was self-controlled, calm, even cheerful, as if nothing had happened. But there was a shadow upon him. Sometimes Raphael could physically see it.

In Lincoln, where the breeze blew the tang of the sea across the wide, bleak fens, devastating news arrived. It was everything Richard and his supporters had been dreading. Richard’s face blanched with anger – as stark as the stone walls of the inn where they lodged – as he received the urgent messages sent by his loyal friend, John Howard, Duke of Norfolk.

Treason. A large number of knights and gentlemen – former servants of Edward IV, disaffected with Richard – had formed an unnatural alliance with the Woodvilles and the pretender, Henry Tudor. Uprisings were planned across the kingdom.

“Buckingham?” said Richard. His voice became a hoarse whisper. “The Duke of Buckingham is involved in this?”

The messenger, haggard and nervous, nodded. “It is so, sire. Buckingham himself wrote the letter to Henry Tudor. They’ve invited Tudor to invade the kingdom, to deliver it – pardon me, sire, these are not my words – to deliver it from tyranny. To claim the throne, on condition that Tudor takes an oath, as agreed between his mother Lady Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville, to marry King Edward’s eldest daughter…”

“Over my dead body will he marry her,” Richard interrupted. “But Harry Buckingham?”

“The story goes about, as my lord of Norfolk has gleaned, that when the duke heard of the deaths of the two princes, he repented with many salt tears that he had ever supported you.”

“He’s a bloody liar!” Richard shouted. His voice rang off the walls. The messenger jumped. “The last time I saw Harry there was no hint…” He stopped in thought for a moment, then gave an ice-cold grin. “I gave him a gift… Oh God. The Earl of Warwick’s sword.”

“This is Morton’s doing,” said Ratcliffe.

“More fool me, for taking Harry’s honeyed friendship at face value. For imagining he was strong enough to resist Morton’s wiles.”

Raphael saw his eyes turn silver with misery. He’d never seen Richard look so alone, and so silently furious and impenetrable.

“Margaret Beaufort, who ingratiated herself with Anne and myself deeply enough to carry my wife’s train at our coronation, repays me by entering a devilish pact with Dame Grey. Beaufort’s precious son! He’s a penniless fugitive, a nobody descended from two lines of bastards. By what reasoning does he claim the throne of England?”

Lovell looked sideways at Raphael. His face was as grim at the king’s.

“No doubt Buckingham is egging him on in hopes of claiming the throne for himself.”

“Yes, Buckingham,” Richard said acidly. Betrayal was the one thing he could not endure. Raphael saw the thorn go deep into him. “He who swore the utmost devotion of his entire being to me. Tell me, what is the worth of his loyalty?”

Richard turned away and began to dictate the first of many letters to his secretary; only to seize the letter and finish it himself, in a savage untidy hand, the pen a tiny dagger spilling black blood.

###

Katherine helped to peel Anne out of her robes. Underneath, her skin was pale and cold, marked by the indentations of seams. She’d lost weight, Kate realised, noticing suddenly how thin she was. Although the chamber was baking in the roar of a stoked fire, Anne was shivering.

“Oh, Kate, it never feels real to wear those garments. Not real at all to be called queen. I feel like a cookmaid dressed up.”

She smiled. The effect, on a face that was bloodless and smudged brown with exhaustion around the eyes, was ghastly.

“Your father wouldn’t like to hear you say so.” Kate wrapped Anne in a thick fleece-lined mantle and sat her down near the fire.

“My father got what he wanted, a daughter upon the throne, even though it was not as he planned.” Anne’s voice had a bitter edge Kate had never heard before.

“My lady, you’re not well.”

“A little fever, that’s all. Ah, I would keep Edward at my side forever if I could. My son, Prince of Wales. Why are men so eager to be king, when it brings nothing but anguish? Must he go through years of trouble, such as Richard endures constantly?”

Kate paused in combing her hair. “What trouble?”

Anne unfolded a letter and held it flat, so that Kate could read it as Anne related the contents. “An uprising, by the man we thought his dearest ally: the Duke of Buckingham!”

Kate stared at the letter in disbelief. Rebellions were fermenting all over the country, an unbelievable coalition between Buckingham, the Woodvilles and Henry Tudor. Richard wrote in such despair that she could almost hear black laughter in his tone.

“I never trusted Harry Stafford,” Anne said quietly. “He came from nowhere, promising Richard the world.”

“I didn’t think much of him,” said Kate. “Too fond of his own looks. Barely spoke a word to me. He was full of himself, and resentful of everything and everyone else. But he did seem devoted to Richard.”

“Richard gave him all he asked for, which was far more than he deserved.”

“Then why’s he doing this? Has he gone mad?”

“I doubt it.” Anne ran her pallid fingers over Richard’s scrawled, angry handwriting. “I think that the moment he saw Richard crowned, Harry was jealous of him. He thought being Kingmaker would be enough; but when it came to the point, it wasn’t. My father was the same. Harry has a slight claim to the throne; better than Tudor’s, whose ancestors’ marriages are in such doubt. However, they both forget that the throne is already occupied.”

“Then why ally himself with Henry Tudor?” Kate was outraged. She couldn’t understand why Anne was so calm, then realised from her next words that she was not calm at all.

“Because Harry Buckingham’s no better than a whore.” The letter’s wax seal snapped in two between Anne’s fingers. “He will lie with anyone he thinks might give him the power he covets. I know our Creator meant us to turn the other cheek, and to accept everything that befalls us as His will; but I have a confession. I hate Buckingham, and I’m afraid.”

Kate was suddenly full of energy. What she must do was plain, and there was no time to argue. “My lady, will you give me leave to go to York?”

Anne was silent so long that Kate was sure she would refuse. Eventually she said, “You are fortunate indeed, being free to come and go as you please. I almost envy you.”

###

York was a city of spectres. Warm, golden October had been swallowed by damp mists. The buildings were dark with dew, dripping with the condensed breath of fog elementals, brooding. Kate trod the streets as if walking the bottom of deep gullies, small as a mouse. High grey walls towered around her. Window slits peered down from crenellated heights. The cathedral floated above the rooftops, yet she felt blessedly invisible. Even the Church could not object to her mission, since it was to aid the King of England.