The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III (17 page)

Kate felt a stirring of discomfort, almost humiliation. She read his expression as judgement. How dare he stand and judge her, when they’d both been equals in – no, she wouldn’t call it sin – in impetuous misbehaviour. Her unease became anger. The injustice of his cold look made her harden in self-defence, becoming as imperious as Eleanor.

“My lady, a word with you?” he said eventually.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Raphael’s curiosity. Understandably, he expected the duke to address him, not Kate. Richard drew her into an alcove a few feet from Raphael’s pallet. There she could see nothing of him but points of rushlight in his eyes, a dusting of light on his black hair.

“Have you taken holy orders?” he asked, looking at her headdress.

She gave a soft, grim laugh. “No, your Grace. It’s so I can go about my business without being pestered quite so much.”

“Your business?”

“As a healer,” she said tersely.

“Then I’m glad of your attendance upon my friend Raphael. Do you know him well?”

“Only a little. Our mothers were friends.” She added, “He says he has you to thank for saving his life as a child. For which I’m grateful.”

He breathed in and out in the darkness. “It was only what any Christian would do. I’m glad to have found him again, after all this time.”

“I hope these friars know what they’re doing,” she said. “The most trivial of wounds can turn mortal if treated wrongly.”

“He’ll be taken from here on the morrow and given the best of care, as will all my knights and esquires injured today,” Richard answered with cool courtesy. She perceived no trace of the fear he’d shown the last time they met. No tenderness, either. He’d matured beyond recognition.

“Thank you for telling me,” she replied. “Is this why you wished to speak to me?”

Another pause. “I didn’t expect to meet you again,” he said with a trace of discomfort. “I almost hoped you were a dream.”

“Likewise,” retorted Kate. “I still have your white boar badge, if you want it back.”

“No, I meant you to keep it,” he said, almost rueful. “I have others.”

“I’m quite sure you do.”

“Forgive me. This is unspeakably awkward. I’d give anything to undo what happened, but I can’t, so…”

“We shall conduct ourselves as if nothing happened,” Kate said firmly. “I’ll never refer to it again, if you do not.”

“Yes,” he said very quietly, and sighed. “Thank you, Katherine of Lytton Dale.”

His use of her name was a shock. “So you found out who I am? Not a fey of the woods, after all.”

“Sometimes this entire kingdom seems no bigger than a gossiping market town. Edward met you, and couldn’t resist telling me.”

“I knew I couldn’t trust him!”

He gave her a sharp, sideways look. “I’m aware that you are my sister-in-law’s lady-in-waiting and I marvel that you’re not at her side, rather than wandering a battlefield at great risk to your life. I know what you were doing for Edward.”

The last words held menace. “Do you, my lord?”

She turned to face him he stared at her, his face all hard lines of disapproval. “I saw you. My lady, it’s no secret that my brother uses sorcerers. He’s consorted with that damned Friar Bungay for years.”

“The gentle friar is a friend of my mother,” Kate said softly, but he went on as if she hadn’t spoken.

“There are many evil influences around my brother. It’s well-known that Elizabeth Woodville snared him by witchcraft. The worst thing is that he knows, and doesn’t care! I fear he’s on the road to damnation and it’s hard to watch, harder to bear. I cannot make him hear me. But I’d sell my own soul to save his.” His fierce whisper shocked her. She turned hot. “All I can do is fight for him.”

“You’d fight for him, yet deny him a little elemental influence to aid him?”

“I’ll support him to the very death!” said Richard. “Do you know what would happen if his enemies should triumph? They’d have grounds to execute him as a witch.”

“King Edward?” Kate said, disbelieving.

“And the Friar, and you, and all his other sorcerers along with him.”

“Execution is not a penalty permitted for sorcery,” she said. “We are protected by law. Since Henry the Second––”

“Don’t lecture me on the law. Magic is forbidden. They won’t scruple to change the penalty, believe me, to destroy Edward. It should have been changed long ago, then he might never have been tempted.”

A shiver of heat and anger went through her. “Your loyalty to your brother does you credit, but you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

“Have I not?” She saw his teeth, a white and dangerous gleam.

“You’re making the same mistake as his enemies. This concept of evil is meaningless. Edward isn’t evil. I’ve met him. No doubt he has his faults but he is a good-hearted, amiable man and at least my mother and our sisters know we have nothing to fear from his rule!”

“All fair women find him amiable,” Richard said wearily. “I didn’t say he was evil. Only too susceptible to the honey voices that whisper in his ears, and to taking the easiest option. I’d do anything to sever him from such influences before they destroy him.”

“So you begin with one inconsequential sorceress?” Kate folded her arms, trembling with anger and nascent fear.

“I can’t stop you, Kate. But if Edward goes on flaunting his witchery, someone will stop all of you. Take this as a gentle warning.”

Kate stood rigid, so outraged she didn’t trust herself to move. “Good, well, thank you, your Grace. Now it’s clear why you wanted to speak to me; not to make peace, but to make an enemy.”

“No. No,” he said softly. “I meant what I said but, Lamb’s blood, I wish you no harm. I can’t bear to see the Devil using people I love. Today…” He rubbed his forehead. “A man was killed whom I once loved as a father.”

“The Earl of Warwick,” she said.

Raw pain bled through Richard’s self-control, turning him grey and pallid. “I loved him as a father, but he turned on us and I had to help destroy him.”

Katherine was quiet. He wouldn’t want to know that she had heard the Earl’s dying bellow. Had Warwick seen a witch in the mist, and blamed her for his demise? If this was power, it was perilous, and not always welcome.

Part of her bled for Richard, but she couldn’t offer him sympathy, any more than she would put her arms around a wounded graylix.

“And I must go home and comfort Isabel for the same complaint,” she said.

Gloucester took a long breath, looked at her more calmly. “How – how is her sister, Anne?”

“I don’t know, my lord.” It was suddenly easy to be as cool and thorny as he’d been to her. “We haven’t seen her for months. She’s in the charge of Queen Marguerite, and dutifully married to Marguerite’s son Prince Eduoard. I shouldn’t imagine she knows much pleasure, but who can tell?”

Richard left the alcove without another word. Obviously he knew about the marriage, but Katherine’s words seemed to rub venom into the wound. She watched as he exchanged a few words with Raphael then left, swift and preoccupied.

Kate went slowly back to Raphael’s bedside. She hated being at odds with people, but even Richard’s high birth did not give him the right to speak so brusquely to her.

What have I done to offend him, she thought, except once to offer him a night of pleasure in the hidden world? Ah, that must be my crime, then. I tempted him. Bad Kate, harlot and witch.

“What did you say to him?” Raphael asked. “He looked like a ghost.”

“I didn’t realise he was so fond of his cousin Anne.”

“I didn’t know you knew him.” Raphael sounded startled, almost indignant.

“I don’t,” said Kate. “But he saw me in the fog. He disapproves of Edward’s tactics and chose to berate me for them. Raphael, dear, are you truly sure you want to serve him?”

His mouth dropped. “Of course.”

“I’m companion to the Duchess of Clarence. Why not serve her husband instead? Then we’ll see each other. I know he’d be glad of you.”

And why, she wondered, couldn’t it have been George who pulled you from the ditch instead? She had nothing against the Duke of Gloucester… except that he’d crossed her path like some dark spirit of the forest, then had the gall to reject her, like a priest renouncing a witch. Nothing, except that he was taking Raphael away from her.

“Kate, I don’t want us to be apart, but I can’t change my mind. One lord isn’t interchangeable for another. Clarence? You might as well say a mule is as fine as a destrier. I’m sworn to the Duke of Gloucester and that will never change.”

“Why?”

“There’s something about him,” said Raphael. “A light, true and pure, like diamond. Did you not hear how valiantly he fought today? Yet he is the gentlest man I’ve ever met.”

“Well, then, you must follow your heart.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to offend you. He’s concerned about King Edward, that’s all. And upset about Warwick’s death.”

She rose, then bent impulsively to kiss his hand. “Gods, Raphael, I hope you’re right. He needed someone on whom to vent his anger, and since our paths happened to cross, it was me. I’ll survive. I will bring you that salve tomorrow.”

“I’ll be gone tomorrow,” he said. “Shall I see you again?”

“I hope so.” Katherine turned, wrapped the head cloth carefully to half-conceal her face, and walked out into the night.

###

Less than a month later they met again, and stood in Tewkesbury market place to watch the beheading of the Lancastrian traitors.

Queen Marguerite had arrived with her dread army under her commander, Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. King Edward’s forces had outwitted hers and turned defeat into a massacre. They called it the Bloody Meadow, the place where most of her soldiers were butchered. Edward and Clarence made very sure that her precious son, Prince Edouard, was among the dead. As revenge for their own young brother, Edmund, it could not have been sharper.

Raphael had fought alongside Richard. He’d come through cut and bruised but whole, full of tales that Kate would have preferred not to hear.

The commanders who’d sought sanctuary in the abbey had been dragged out bodily, tried and condemned by the Duke of Gloucester. Marguerite’s dreams were dead. Kate had caught a glimpse of her, taken prisoner. She’d been amazed how tiny Marguerite looked, a birch twig, pride crushed to its raw, tough essence. She had no love for the ex-queen but sympathised with her all the same, for she’d fought so passionately, and still lost.

Crowds gathered to watch the axe fall. Great Lancastrian lords went one after another, trembling, eyes drooping, hair beaded with sweat. Their lips moved in prayer. Katherine wondered if any prayed secretly to Dark Mother Auset, who was there at the beginning and at the end, rather than to the distant Father. She watched transfixed, feeling as if all the fibres of her body and soul would come apart, yet unable to spare herself the horror.

Worst of all were the sounds. The thick gathered hush as the next one was hustled to the butcher’s block. The grunt as he was pushed down, the ghastly struggle between dignity and terror. The heavy swish of iron through air and then the thick collision, like a cleaver into a joint of meat. One by one they were gone, the great lords; Beaufort of Somerset and the rest. The crowd gasped and uttered ragged, shocked cheers.

The Duke of Gloucester, judge and executioner, stood apart. He looked graceful, impassive, his dress and demeanour all economical restraint; the very image of Death. His soot-black cloak with sable edges hung like the folded wings of a raptor. His eyes looked black and calm, overseeing the event without emotion.

Kate stood with her hand through Raphael’s arm. She was numb. There was horror in this, and hypnotic fascination. She couldn’t take her eyes off Richard; could not believe she had ever been so close to him. She tried to hate him for this cold brutality but failed.

She’d heard a tale from the battle. One of Somerset’s commanders, Lord Wenlock, had failed to join battle, and Somerset had ridden across to him in fury and split his skull with an axe.

Lord Wenlock was the man who had refused to let their ship land at Calais even though Isabel had been in labour, in the most extreme and wretched state. Now Kate couldn’t condemn Richard or turn away from his severity. For when she’d heard of the manner of Wenlock’s death, she had laughed.

I sit in the cafe with Fin, watching her play with the foam on her cappuccino, her teaspoon trailing marbled patterns. “So what’s with this fascination with old King Dick, then, August?” she says, flicking a glance at my stack of books.

“It’s your fault.” I grin. “It started when we watched that film.”

“Oh, my fault? Hope it’s not interfering with your course work…”

“Completely fucked it,” I say softly. “But I can’t stop, until I get to the end.”

“What d’you mean, the end?”

I can’t explain about my encounters with people who are long-dead, or perhaps never existed at all, not even to Fin. I hope the fact that I’m afraid it will sound mad proves that I’m not yet actually mad.

I’m looking for something I’ve lost. That’s how it feels.

A story is unfolding to me. The story of a young woman called Katherine and a young man called Raphael. I can’t find their names in any history book but that isn’t to say they didn’t exist. How many other names have been lost?

It’s hard to explain. I’m not inventing it. I’m not dreaming it. It comes to me in episodes, in long waking daydreams as if I were watching a film, but more real; like being there on set, as an invisible witness. The clothes aren’t quite right for the period; not as I’ve seen them portrayed in countless illustrations. They are more extravagant, more structured, more elegant. The men wear tight-fitting trousers, not hose, sometimes laced down the sides. The women’s headgear is flimsy, tantalisingly designed to reveal the hair rather than hide it. There are strange buildings, strange animals I’ve never seen in any book, but still distinctly medieval in flavour.

It’s deeper and more vivid than anything I could invent. It is like suddenly remembering an evocative dream from years ago. Like a memory of a lost book.

When I go home to visit my family one weekend, I actually search their bookshelves and the loft to find this phantom book. For a time I’m convinced it exists, and I’m frustrated when my parents look blank and shake their heads. I almost recall how it felt and looked, its weight in my hands and its musty odour, the magic it contained. But the book itself is not to be found.

Or I might be mistaking my visions for a folk legend I thought I knew inside out – but now, when I try to refresh my memory, I can find no reference to the tale anywhere, and anyone I ask denies all knowledge. Or a dusty old manuscript, miraculously rediscovered, full of wondrous revelation, and then misplaced.

Maddening.

Kate and Raphael will not tell me who they are, or were. Still, I travel with them blindly, gladly. I don’t know why this channel opened between me and Raphael, perhaps because we were both searching for an anchor and so found each other in the void? What convinces me it’s real is this: there are many things the characters never reveal, either in action or in thought. So much is going on beneath the surface. Kate’s iron will, a child hinted at but never seen. In other words, I feel I’m not making it up, but catching glimpses of other people’s real lives.

“Trance alert,” says Fin. “It must be absolutely fascinating in there.”

“Sorry,” I say, mentally shaking myself. “I was thinking. It’s so unfair that Richard is still seen as an evil king. I was listing all the things he hasn’t been accused of. Brutality, genocide? Henry the Fifth. Torture and attempted rape? Edward the Fourth. Cutting the heads off his wives? Henry the Eighth.”

“And red-hot pokers,” says Fin. “Who was that?”

“The point is that those kings are still remembered in a heroic light. Richard was actually a good king. He did his job well. I’m not saying he was a saint, but why single him out as a particular example of evil?”

“Because we need a villain,” Fin says darkly. “We love a villain.”

I think she has put her finger on it precisely.

“Villains are interesting.”

“Villains are sexy!” Fin laughs. “Admit it. Didn’t Shakespeare do him a huge favour?”

“It’s a point of view,” I say, and wonder again about Raphael. Kate needs nothing from me, but Raphael, I sense, does. Raphael is descending into the vale of shadows and doesn’t even know it.

“August,” Fin says carefully, “this happened over five hundred years ago, you know.”

“No. For me, it’s happening now.”