The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III (55 page)

“No,” she said. “In all honesty, I didn’t.”

He shook his head in frustration. “I thought it was plain that – I thought we both understood… How could you think I’d let you go without a word?” He came forward and grasped her left wrist, making her start. “Did you really think I’d not come after you? I forsook my duties when I could least afford to do so, to come here. All I could think of was finding you. If you set out to bewitch me, it’s worked.”

“I haven’t bewitched you. No more than you have me.”

“And what did that night mean? I thought we shared the same feelings. If I was wrong, you gave a display of passion so remarkable that I mistook it for love.”

She lowered her chin. “You didn’t mistake anything. We spent years forbidden to touch each other…”

He put his fingertips to her cheek.

“Is it forbidden again?”

“No.” She caught his hand to keep it pressed to her face. To go through this again, when she’d thought it was over, was torture.

“If you thought I only took advantage of you and would have discarded you at dawn, you deal me a great insult.”

“I didn’t think that,” she stammered.

“Then why run away? Is the idea of marrying me so abhorrent? Of course, I poisoned my wife so I could marry my niece. What sane woman would have me? Still, I should like the courtesy of an explanation.”

“That’s unfair! You know full well I despised those rumours. But you asked with your heart – if not with an organ somewhat lower down. By morning you would have had to consider the idea with your intellect. You would have realised it’s not possible.”

He dropped her hand and paced the flagstones. A huge shadow spread from his feet and moved on the wall.

“Tell me why it’s not possible.”

“They – they won’t allow it.”

“Who?”

“Oh, your councillors, your bishops, all those to whom you must answer! What happened when your brother told Warwick he’d married for love? Outrage and war. They won’t risk it happening again. They’ll dissuade you in the end. You must do your duty – marry a foreign princess or whatever is best for your kingdom.”

He came towards her again and stopped, arms folded.

“I told you, I don’t want a stranger in my bed, some poor girl torn from her homeland and probably as reluctant as I am. I want you, Kate. In this one thing I’ll do as Edward did and marry as I desire.”

She tried to blink away the scratch of tears. “And they’ll tell you that equal disaster will follow. I’ll be no more popular than Elizabeth.”

“Do you have a vast family waiting to seize wealth and power? I only see you, and Robin.”

“But what if they find out…”

“That you were a foundling?” His face was stony. “There is no evidence that you’re anything but a woman of perfectly sound lineage. And if rumours start, I’ll deny them.”

“You’ve certainly had plenty of practice.”

That hit home. He flinched and his eyes darkened. “Then I can hardly make things any worse.”

“I’m sorry.” she said helplessly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

His eyebrows flicked upwards. “Truth is cruel.”

“In fact, there’s nothing to find out. Lord and Lady Lytton are my true parents.”

He shouted, making her jump. “Then why tell me–?”

“I didn’t. I said, what if I
were
to tell you? My mother took in so many unwanted babes, I often suspected I might be one of them. But she assures me that I am her true daughter. She wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I’m glad, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Test me if you must, but there’s no need.”

“I’m still of lower birth than Elizabeth Woodville.”

“That’s untrue, and if you compare yourself once more to that woman, I shall leave. Not that I blame her for seizing all she could – I’ve done the same myself, laying claim to Anne’s inheritance because, God knows, if we don’t stake our claim, someone else will seize it. We’re all as bad as each other – but you are different. That’s why I trust you. The very suggestion of wearing a crown made you flee like a startled colt.”

“Yes, I was afraid,” she said. “But I was also being realistic. If you were a knight or a shepherd, I’d not hesitate; but then you wouldn’t be the same person, so who can say…”

“I’m damned either way, then. Tell me the worst. Are you still in love with Raphael Hart? Have you made some promise to him, a pre-contract of marriage?”

She shook her head. Tears almost got the better of her.

“No, we never made a formal promise. All that was between us ended once he learned about Robin. Raphael is a good, gentle soul; but he isn’t you. In another life I could have been content with him, if I had never met you. But I did meet you. And that’s why I never married him.”

She heard Richard breathe softly in and out. “I feared you fled because you could not love me after all. You couldn’t live with all the accusations against me. Yet you don’t seem to be telling me that.”

“No, I’m not. I love you so much I’m terrified.”

“Kate, are you intent on making me beg? Stay with me, please.” He sounded desolate “For what reason have I defeated the Welsh pretender, if I lose you?”

“You’ve forgotten the greatest obstacle of all. I’m not an ordinary woman. I’m a witch, a sorceress – not in rumour, but in reality. I’m bound to the Dark Mother and one day I’ll replace Eleanor as head of the Motherlodge. I can’t give that up. It’s what I am.”

The look on his face told her that he hadn’t considered this for a second. Her heart fell. Although she’d never admitted it, some obscure part of her had hoped he would have an answer.

“The king must marry a good, biddable Christian woman, and I am none of those things,” she said. “Not good, not biddable, not Christian. Not that I disbelieve in your Creator. If the Church says he’s there, who am I to argue? But I follow a different way. Your parliament and bishops won’t approve of me anyway, but they’d certainly expect me to forsake all I am and play the pious queen.” She shuddered. “Perhaps they’ll demand some horrible ceremony of repentance and conversion.”

“Kate…”

“I can’t do it. I can’t take an oath to God at my coronation. I can’t submit myself to ‘churching’ when I’ve had a child, since I don’t believe that childbirth makes women unclean. I can’t do any of it. That’s why it’s impossible for us to marry. I have duties too! I came home to take up my responsibilities.”

Richard said quietly, “God Almighty.”

For a long time, neither of them spoke. He moved about the hall with his shadow looming behind him. She leaned on the back of his chair, which was all that kept her on her feet.

Eventually he said, “You’re right. I should have let you go. It would have been cleaner, less painful.”

“Yes.”

“What am I to do, then? Go back to London and face a pragmatic, political marriage, while you and I never meet again? I would have done that once, but not now.”

“I won’t be your mistress.”

“I wouldn’t ask it.”

“At last you see I’m right.” Kate tasted salt trickling into her mouth. Richard sat down on a bench by the far wall. The light cast great black wings behind him.

“Yes.” His voice was hollow. “Everything you’ve said is true, but it’s worse. We’ve cheated fate, so we cannot be happy. You’re right to decline, Kate, but not for the reasons you’ve given. I’m not loved as a king and I doubt I ever will be.”

“That’s not true!”

“Let me finish. The hidden world claimed me long ago. I suppose that is why I’m drawn to you. I’ve resisted all my life with devotion and prayer, but nothing I do defeats the darkness. Each time I try, it comes back in greater strength. I sold my soul to the Devil in order to seize power and keep it. Everything Raphael dreamed of me was true, or at least held a seed of truth. That’s why I was never angry with him, never sent him away or accused him of treason.”

“Raphael loves you,” she said faintly.

“I know. He showed me love by telling me the truth. According to him, I should have died, my corpse been stripped naked, defiled and spat upon, my name blackened for all time: then my debt would have been paid. If God sent a messenger, it was Raphael, not Henry Tudor. Instead, I have an even greater punishment waiting in the afterlife. If this is all I am – deceiver, usurper, murderer – I don’t glory in it. I’m cursed, cast out of heaven with Lucifer.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I’m not sure ‘believe’ is the right word. But I give it serious consideration in my darkest moments.”

“Are you afraid?”

She moved towards him. His phantom wings flared. He looked as darkly beautiful as Lucifer, dignified in damnation, untouchable. Yet she touched him. She knelt at his feet and laid her hands along his forearm.

Richard turned his head and looked down at her. “Any other woman would have fled my presence by now. Yet you ask if I’m afraid?”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Terrified. Never of battle; only of what lies in the hidden world, and what will happen when it claims me at last.”

“You’ve entered the hidden world by chance, twice at least, and have been fleeing ever since.”

“Did Raphael tell you that? Nothing stays secret.”

“No. I was there, remember?”

Anxiety etched lines in his blanched face. “By chance? I doubt it. And yes, I know it was you and your mother I met there. I was a child, utterly undone by fear. I thought the Church would shield me, but it’s been a ragged veil against the shadow. I suspect my loathing of the Woodvilles and my punishment of Jane Shore were attempts to purge the darkness inside myself. Fruitless.”

“There’s nothing to fear,” Kate said with feeling.

“Easy for you to say. You were so confident there.”

“You’re not frightened of us now, surely? You know us.”

“Sometimes, sweet Morgana. I don’t fear you in the outer world, but I still fear what you may become in that other place. That time we met and lay together, didn’t you wonder why I left so abruptly?”

Her lips formed a thin smile. “Not really.”

“You took me into that godless realm again. The land of faeries and demons. And it was so seductively so sweet, until I woke and realised I’d been bewitched.”

“Or thought you had,” she said sourly. “Yet you have protected the Motherlodge?”

“That was to appease the darkness, I think. Also, to uphold the law.”

“Only that? Not out of secret sympathy with us, that you dare not even confess to yourself? Love, admit it. You are one of us.”

He turned away. “I grew to manhood and learned to mask the fear,” he said quietly. “It took me years to trust you. Now, I wonder. Do I want you with me only to tame you, to feel that I control the demons that haunt me? Do I love you because only a faerie wife could love me in return? You recognised one of your own, after all. My soul was marked for the Devil and you claimed me when I was seven. And I may be talking superstitious nonsense, I know; but deep inside, I feel it to be true. As you say, our union is impossible.”

He rose. She stood up with him, her heart beating in painful alarm.

“Where are you going?”

“To rouse my men, and leave. Thank your mother for her hospitality.”

“You can’t go.” She’d spent all this time persuading him to leave her; now he was doing just that, she was horrified. “The hour is too late.”

“If I stay, I’ll not be able to sleep.”

“Don’t sleep, then.”

In response, he rested his cheek against her hair. “What do you mean?”

“Let there be one last night.”

He groaned. She felt the tremor go right through him. “Worsen the torment? After the confession I’ve just made, you’d still lie with me? You are a witch, for certain.”

“Of course I would. I’m the Whore of Babylon.” She pushed her hands into his hair and clenched her fingers, holding him. “But I didn’t mean that. You’ve misunderstood everything. Face your fear. Spend the night with me in the hidden world.”

All this, and I still haven’t touched the truth. I’ve touched something, though, if only inside myself. The mystery is beautiful.

I’m here at Bosworth Field again. Nothing has changed; the same steady wind breathes through me, and the same brooding peace lies over the landscape. The history books still tell the same story.

I place a white rose upon the stone where Richard fell. Tears choke me; I don’t know why. He fought to the death with no thought for his own safety; he was hideously betrayed; he was so young, barely given a chance to begin his reign. They trussed his body naked and spat upon him as he was carried without dignity into Leicester. Thus revealing more about themselves than they did about Richard. Almost alone among English kings, he has no grave.

We try to atone.

Perhaps in another world, they place red roses on the spot where the pretender fell. I doubt it. For them, the name ‘Tudor’ would have made no greater mark on history than Warbeck, or Simnel; just a name to make schoolchildren groan.

Shakespeare’s play has to end as it does. Such glorious wickedness cannot go unpunished. But oh, because the character is to be punished, he is granted full license to be so gloriously wicked.

And reality. The fascination is not because he was a devil or a saint, but because he
was
. I mean, simply because he existed at all, fated to be cloaked in mystery. Richard is seen through a prism, flowing and changing. Different colours float over him according to the angle of view, ruby and violet and indigo… Good or bad or just a typical noble of his time, he remains an enigma. Enticing, but never quite clear.

Someone is coming towards me. Over the shoulder of the hill and down the broad quilt of grass he comes, blurred and shimmering as if he moves through the mirage barrier of the otherworld. He looks about, bemused. The wind lifts his hair. He’s dressed strangely but that doesn’t mark him out. People only smile, thinking he’s part of some medieval re-enactment group.

I rise, white roses falling from my lap, to greet him. At last.