Grant Me the Carving of My Name: An anthology of short fiction inspired by King Richard III Page 9

  An odd hat, perhaps of velvet, upon the man’s head, a brooch of blue and red jewels pinned to its side. His hair was brown and long, hanging wet to his shoulders, and framed a pale face. Strong chin, firm nose, blue eyes edged by lines as he peered at me through the veil of snow.

  ‘Well, now you are awake, I see you have greater need of this.’

  His voice was gentler now, less abrupt, as he raised the arm with the fur. Then he dropped the reins and plunged the brand, flame uppermost, into the snow.

  ‘Here, boy. I would not have you freeze to death so close to our royal hunting tent. I’m sure with Florette’s help we shall find it before long.’

  He held out his hand to me. Without thinking, I put out mine to grasp it. Encased in a long gauntlet of deepest blue leather, it hauled me up, out of my hiding place, into the full force of the storm once more.

  I gasped as the wind tore away my breath and shooting stars of ice dashed against my face.

  That short laugh again. In a moment the huge coal-black fur was swung around my shoulders and my cheeks were nestled in the softness of its hood. The man deftly fastened it somehow, then stood back to view me at arm’s length, blinking away the snowflakes from his own face.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘now you will live. You may thank the noble Rus bear that gave up her pelt for you. Would that I had another here, but I see that your clothes are less fit for this winter’s day than my own.’

  His keen eyes held mine for a moment.

  Looked me up and down.

  ‘It is not a page’s livery. And I do not recall your face. Are you not one of the household at the castle?’

  I shook my head, not sure what he meant, my thoughts still confused.

  He seemed to be waiting for something more, as he watched me, the flickering light catching a half-smile playing around his lips.

  Thinking of the politeness required at senior school, I added,

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You may address me as “Your Grace”. Have not your tutors instructed you? Yet, your speech is rough. Perhaps you are a village lad? But now is not the time for talking. We must get you to warmth and meat and drink before you perish. Here, I think perhaps you may ride – maybe our progress will be swifter.’

  ‘Your Grace’? Who was called that? I racked my brain.

  Was he a judge? No, that was ‘Your Honour’ in all the TV programmes. A Member of Parliament? A bishop?

  Before I could think any more, he had caught me by the shoulders, propelled me towards his horse, leant down and grabbed my leg, pushing me upwards.

  Memories of long-ago riding lessons kicked in, though this was unlike any riding school pony, and I lifted my right leg to edge it across the wide saddle. In a moment I was astride the horse, gazing down at the man’s face, shielded from the snow by one hand as he returned my look. I wondered at his strength for so small a man.

  ‘There. No page perhaps, yet you have ridden before. But I will take the reins and guide Storm – you look fit to do no more than cling to him. And he is no doubt a finer mount than you have known before, and more like to throw you if you handle him ill.’

  He whistled to the dog, sniffing now around my hiding place, its greyhound shape shaggy with long damp fur. The man rested a hand on its head, breathed a few words I could not catch, then stooped to pluck up the flaming brand. As the hound nosed a path away from the gnarled hawthorn, I wound my stiff fingers into the horse’s soaking-wet mane and hoped I could indeed cling on.

  The ride seemed to last for ever – the white dog, barely visible as it led the way, head down, tail aquiver, into the onrushing hail of snowflakes; the man striding after, hefting the comforting flare of the torch, the reins again loose in his gauntleted hand; the horse stepping delicately, picking its careful way through the deepening snow; me, leaning more and more towards its proud, curving neck, as I tired, and my back began to ache at the jolt, jolt, jolt of the horse’s walk, and I tried to keep out of the pelting snow, and away from the thoughts rushing to haunt me.

  Back at the hospital. The surgeon’s consulting room. Disney pictures on every wall. Mostly ‘Frozen’, of course. Ice princesses, snowmen, brave princes. Not really for twelve-year-old boys.

  Breaking the news.

  Seeing the tears spring in Mum’s eyes.

  Watching Dad, there for once, his knuckles white, fists clenching.

  Looking down.

  My chest hollow, heavy weight in my stomach.

  What did it all mean?

  ‘You’ll be able to lead a normal life, of course. Be able to do most things other kids can. The same, probably, when you’re older. But –’

  There’s always a ‘but’.

  ‘But it will get worse. It may become disabling – it’s likely to be a severe curve if it’s not corrected. You’ve seen the scans.’

  Then the final blow.

  ‘It may even affect your breathing.’

  Looking down.

  Bitten-down nails. Picking at the strap of my school bag across my knees. We’d come straight from classes.

  ‘But –’

  Another ‘but’.

  ‘ – of course the operation is very successful nowadays. We’ve come a long way with the treatments even since I’ve been a doctor. Most people opt for it.’

  Most people? Even those as afraid of it as they were of the problem it solved?

  ‘Sooner rather than later is best.’

  I was jolted out of my memory – dream? – by a sharp bark. Opening my eyes, I lifted my head a little off the great grey neck.

  Groggy, I heard my voice say, ‘I heard that before.’

  The man turned, a flicker of concern in his eyes.

  ‘What say you, lad?’

  ‘That bark. I heard it when – when I was lying in the snow. Before the wolf howled.’

  ‘Wolf?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Nay, lad, there are no wolves in this realm of England. Not since the time of my great-grandsire, Edward.’

  ‘But I heard it.’

  ‘Like as not it was the boarhounds, or the alaunts, baying at the scent. I should not have let them slip after the snow came. And my gentlemen . . .’ He was thoughtful a moment, casting his glance around into the snowy murk. ‘My gentlemen I have not seen. No matter. That bark was Florette’s to tell me she has found something. As here. In time – thanks be to the Saviour – before you slip again into delirium.’

  Had I been delirious?

  Had I heard boarhounds, or wolves – or a werewolf? The Beastie?

  I blinked, dislodging crumbs of ice from my eyelashes.

  Saw before us, through the curtain of snowfall, a large shadowy shape. Twice as high as the horse, several times as long, it looked like a huge tent, a marquee perhaps – somehow still standing in the gale, though the sides were billowing and a long red and blue flag flapped furiously on its topmost point. Upon the flag was stitched a white boar with massive tusks amid white roses and the red cross of England.

  And I remembered what the man had said earlier.

  ‘So close to our royal hunting tent.’

  Royal?

  And remembered the local tales of the ghost hound of a long-dead king. A king who had once lived at Middleham castle and whose spirit was thought to haunt the moors.

  He halted before the tent, stroked the horse’s nose, then offered his hand to me.

  I looked down.

  The wind blew strands of wet hair across his clear eyes.

  His mouth smiled up at me.

  His hand . . .

  I grasped it. It was solid. As before.

  This was no ghost.

  Surely.

  He helped me to dismount, and bundling the fur about me again, hurried me through overlapping flaps into the tent. He thrust the burning brand into a pile of sticks and logs on the floor before us, then turned to fasten the entrance.

  ‘The horse, Your . . . Your Grace?’ I asked, stumbling over the words.

  ‘Storm will be attended t
o,’ he said, turning back to the fire, now crackling, flames throwing dancing shadows on the canvas walls.

  Upon those walls were hung shining tapestries of fantastical beasts – unicorns, gryphons, winged lions – pursued by hunters and huntresses in classical and colourful robes. All around were fine-carved oak chairs and stools with tasselled cushions, iron-bound chests, small tables, set ready with silver jugs and cups and dishes of pastries, fruit, nuts. In a corner a couch or camp-bed, swathed with red fabrics that reflected the firelight, and another huge black bear-skin.

  The man guided me to a low stool by the fire and poured deep red liquid into a silver cup he placed on a nearby table. A dish of food followed.

  ‘Eat, drink, warm yourself inside. Then you can remove those wet clothes when . . . when my pages come. They will have a change for you.’

  He glanced about him, as though confused for a moment, then went to the red-shrouded bed and sat to take off his boots.

  I watched him, taking a sip from the cup. Wine. Rich and smooth, and warming in my throat.

  The dog came to lie at my feet, stretching out, her pointed nose towards the fire. I stroked her head. It was solid.

  But I thought again about what I had heard.

  About that king.

  In a history lesson at school, months ago, our first weeks of year seven. Something on the news had prompted a question.

  An archaeological dig somewhere. A grave had been found. Maybe a king’s grave.

  ‘Who was he, Sir?’ a girl asked.

  The teacher, surprised by such interest, said, ‘If it is him – and they’re not sure until they do some scientific tests – it’s King Richard the Third. He died more than five hundred years ago, but, you probably know, for much of his life he lived not far from here, in Middleham.’

  ‘Why’s he so interesting, Sir?’

  ‘Apart from the local angle? Well, he was king for only two years. Some say he’s only interesting because William Shakespeare wrote a play about him.’

  ‘Oh, Shakespeare.’

  ‘Bor-ring.’

  ‘But why, Sir?’ persisted the girl.

  ‘We don’t actually know that much about his reign, though we know that he passed good laws and had them written in English, not French, for the first time, so everyone could understand them. But a hundred years later Shakespeare painted him as the blackest villain possible – a monster really. Who committed the worst of crimes. But some people say that was just lies, told to please Queen Elizabeth the First, whose grandfather stole the throne from him.’

  ‘What crimes, Sir?’

  ‘What sort of monster?’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Well, Shakespeare said he was born with a hunchback, and a withered arm, and that he murdered his way to stealing the throne, including killing his own wife and his two little nephews.’

  ‘His little nephews, Sir? Did he eat them too?’

  The girl next to me went pale at that so-innocent question, but there were sniggers at the back of the class.

  The teacher very calmly said, ‘No, Ryan,’ he already knew his name, ‘even Shakespeare didn’t claim that. We don’t really know whether they were murdered at all – they just seemed to disappear from the Tower of London. King Richard was killed in battle against Henry Tudor, who then claimed the throne. But it’s said that Henry was always afraid the two boys would come back again – because they had a better claim to be king than he did – and he didn’t know for sure whether they were dead or alive, despite all the later talk of murder.’

  And that had been all. On with the Tudors – so much more to grab twelve-year-olds’ attention. All those wives, beheadings, burnings at the stake, the Armada, Shakespeare himself. One king of only two years, who might or might not have murdered people, was never going to be so interesting – even if he was a local boy.

  But who would be called ‘Your Grace’? Not a king, surely. He would be ‘Your Majesty’, wouldn’t he?

  The man had now shrugged off his thick outer jacket, which hung dripping from a chair back. He stood for a moment in a pale, thin shirt, rubbing one shoulder, his glance flicking to every corner of the dry, warm tent. Then a smile tugged at a corner of his mouth and he said to me,

  ‘It seems not just my gentlemen, but pages and squires also are lost in this wild night. My back is sore from riding so long today. Lad, will you do me a small service?’

  From his gesture, I saw what he wanted, and leaving the bear-skin cloak behind, I hurried to help. I gripped the hem of his long, soft shirt and hauled it upwards. But it became caught around his shoulders. As I struggled to free it, from the depths of the fabric I heard again his short bark of a laugh.

  ‘Lost also, it seems, is a king with no attendants about him.’

  At last I managed to ease the shirt up and over his head. I pulled it away from him, stunned by what I’d heard.

  Who was he? A madman, with delusions of grandeur? But with a horse, a hound, a tent hung with beautiful tapestries . . . ?

  Or –?

  As I dropped the damp shirt next to the jacket, he reached across to fetch a dry one from a chest. And I saw his back, bare in the warm fire-glow – and the deep shadows cast by the curve in his spine, dancing in the flickering light of the flames.

  I looked, and could not tear my eyes away.

  Until he slipped the clean, dry shirt over his head, and the fabric fell like a curtain over the scene.

  I had seen that sight before. In the hospital.

  The surgeon passing Mum, Dad, me, photos. Of other people’s backs. White, black, brown, boys, girls, older than me, none perhaps younger.

  What my back would look like in a year, two years, five, ten.

  If I didn’t have the operation.

  My voice stuttered out without permission.

  ‘But – but you can ride!’

  He swung round, still fastening the neck of his shirt, a questioning frown upon his face.

  ‘Ride? Aye, lad, of course. Why –?’

  Then his eyes cleared and the ghost of a smile returned.

  ‘My back? Aye, it does not stop me riding – though it grows more painful year by year. And my armour seems to weigh more heavily every season. But I bear it, by God’s mercy. A king must do no less. It has never stopped me riding into battle or dispensing justice.’

  And it was not a hunchback.

  He drew a dark red jacket from the same chest and pulled it on, thanking me as I eased the second sleeve over his arm and shoulder. Then waved me to another chest across the tent.

  ‘As it seems we must fend for ourselves tonight, find such dry clothes for yourself as you may in there. Then return to the fire if you will. We have no minstrels or mummers to entertain us here. Perhaps we should gather round the flames and tell ghost stories as we hear the villagers do on long winter’s nights.’

  The faint smile remained.

  Did he know?

  Then a thought struck me.

  If he were a ghost . . . was I?

  A cold wet muzzle pushed against my hand. The hound, Florette. Her trusting brown eyes stared up at me.

  I patted the coarse fur of her head before going to the second chest to see what I could find.

  In a few minutes, my wet school uniform was draped across various chairs and I had dressed again in leggings, shirt and tunic – halved in deep red and blue – with soft shoes upon my feet.

  He sat now by the fire, gazing into its depths, nursing a silver cup in both hands. Florette lay across his feet, muzzle upon her outstretched forepaws.

  The dish of food lay untouched at his elbow. I didn’t feel like eating either. What if I couldn’t feel it, taste it?

  Yet I remembered the comforting warmth of the wine.

  I picked up a small, bright-skinned orange before returning to my seat.

  I sat across the dancing flames from him, sitting straight and tall on the low stool as I watched him. Somehow I found my voice again.

  ‘Doe
s it still hurt – Your Grace?’

  He looked up at me. The firelight glittered in the depths of his eyes.

  ‘Not so much now, I thank you. Now, did you ever hear tell of the great wild ghostly beast that men say roams far and wide across these, our windswept, snow-clad moors? On winter’s nights, when good folk are safe around their firesides, and they hear the howl of the wind, or is it that of the beast . . .?’

  Long tales and many he knew, and told me that night, that chilled me to the bone and made me laugh out loud by turns. I thought of the minstrels who had told them to him and the people of his household, and the mummers who had acted them out, and as time passed, and the wine warmed, and his voice quietened, and the flames died, I must have slipped at last into sleep.

  *

  They found me just after first light. It wasn’t a large area of moor to search, they said. The Mountain Rescue, in their high-viz outdoor gear, with their two-way radios and their Land-rovers.

  I was curled up next to a strange white dog in a hollow at the foot of an old gnarled hawthorn. Among the dips and dells and humps left by ancient quarrymen on our windswept, snow-clad moor.

  They took me straight to hospital to check me for hypothermia, frostbite, pneumonia, all the big words they could think of. They thought I was delirious, with my tales of the Beastie and the long-dead king.

  Perhaps I was.

  Mum and Dad were both there waiting for me. The Rescuers had called to let them know I’d been found. Callum would come to see me later, said Mum. So would Sue, said Dad. When I’d been given the all clear.

  They hugged me as they always used to. Fully and properly, as if there were no twist, no curve, lurking beneath my clothes.

  My clothes. My dry school uniform, just a little wet and frosty at the edges.

  The dog had run off, the Rescuers said. It hadn’t had a collar, they said. They couldn’t catch it.

  Must have belonged to one of the farms scattered across the moor.

  Lucky it had been there. That it had been enough to keep me warm and save my life during the freezing cold, stormy night.

  Dad drove us both home. I sat in silence in the back as they talked – as always – about the divorce. Lawyers, fees, court dates, custody.

  We drove through the newly gritted marketplace, past the ancient stone cross with its cap of white, the broken tower of the castle rising high above the snowy roofs, pulled up at the wooden gate. I let myself in at the front door. They finished their conversation outside, despite the freezing morning.