VIII (5 page)

Trapped in my terror, barely breathing, I listen to the words. They seem eerily beautiful.

“The one who has been prophesied will come, full of power, full of good devotion and good love. Oh blessed ruler, I find that you are the one so welcome that many acts will smooth your way. You will extend your wings in every place; your glory will live down the ages…”
My mother sighs. “That sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? It makes me shiver.”

The boy is still whimpering. I reach out my hand towards him. He has to be real – he looks so real, he sounds so real…

Father Christopher says, “It is wonderful, ma’am, but entirely unspecific. No names or dates, you’ll notice, nothing to tie it to a particular country, even.”

My hand is shaking. I watch my fingertips edging forwards through the air, as warily as if the boy might at any moment turn and bite them off.

“Oh lord,” my mother says.

“What is it?”

“You want specifics? Then here – listen to this one.
York will be king
.”

But just as my fingers reach him, he is no longer there. The darkness somehow seeps into the space he occupies and rubs him out.

Father Christopher says, “What else does it say?”

“He will begin as a lamb and end as a lion.”
My mother sounds shaken. “That’s it.”

I feel forward as far as I can. My fingers meet nothing but empty shadows.

“The Pretender calls himself Duke of York, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” my mother says quietly, “he does. So… if
York will be king
is correct, it means he will invade, and seize the crown… and, no doubt,
the soil will be drenched with more blood than rain…
”

I hear rapid footsteps. Looking out through the holes in the cupboard door, I see that my mother has crossed to Father Christopher and is clutching his hand. She says, “I must warn my husband!”

“How? Without revealing that you have been reading these?” Father Christopher indicates the papers.

“I don’t know. I could say I have had a bad dream – a premonition… Oh, God…” She covers her face, the papers scrunched in her fist.

“Calm yourself, ma’am. Do any of the other prophecies make any mention of York?”

“No – no. I’ve looked at them all.”

“Then it’s just one. One scrap of grubby paper. The King, your husband, has many enemies. Any one of them could have written this with no more divine revelation than a clerk has, copying out an account book. It could simply be political agitation – the Pretender’s supporters could have sent it into London to try to persuade people to join them. Nothing mystical in that. No need to say anything – no need to endanger yourself.”

My mother takes a shaky breath. “You’re right. Of course.” She folds the scrunched papers and hands them back to Father Christopher. “I shouldn’t have asked to see them, should I? What a fool I am.” Her voice is clipped. “Be sure to burn them all, won’t you? Straight away. Filthy things.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Father Christopher bows. “I’ll go and do it now.”

I’m vaguely aware of them leaving the room – Father Christopher through the door by which I entered, my mother through the other one. For several minutes I’m completely motionless – stunned, very scared, and wondering if I’m about to be sick. But there’s something else too: something small that’s tugging at my attention like an annoying pageboy tugging my sleeve. At first I ignore it – my heart is racing and I can’t move and I need to move: I need to get out of here.

Tug, tug.
What
?

A picture comes to me: my mother in the orchard. Her strong fingers snap straight; an arrow flies; she says, “You’re the true Duke of York.”

I take in a slow, shaky breath. I sense that something delicious is unfolding in my mind even before I know what it is.

What did my mother say, just before the boy – the thing, the vision – disappeared?

York will be king
.

And now, in my head, I can hear her reading from that other paper:

The one who has been prophesied will come… Oh blessed ruler, you are the one so welcome that many acts will smooth your way… your glory will live down the ages…

I feel a warmth spreading from the centre of my chest,
tingling through my limbs. It’s as if an invisible sun has come out from behind a cloud and is shining down upon me.

Pushing forward against the cupboard doors, I stumble out into the room and fall to my knees. I lay my forehead on the bare dusty boards of the floor.

Nothing has ever been clearer to me or more obvious.
York will be king
and
Your glory will live down the ages
– those two prophecies are talking about the same person. I know it in every inch of my being. And it’s not the man waiting abroad, this Pretender.

It’s me.

I have only one thought now: I must speak to
my mother.

It’s the end of the day when my chance comes. After evensong and supper, I go looking for her, and find her alone in a chamber near her bedroom. The soft light of the summer evening shows through the half-drawn curtains, but the thick stone walls keep out any warmth, and the only other light in the room comes from a fire, blazing in the hearth.

My mother doesn’t hear me enter; she’s facing away from the door, sitting in a high-backed chair. The bonnet she wore in the orchard this morning has been replaced by a gable hood and veil – from behind I see the long black cloth crushed against the chair-back where she’s resting her head.

I approach hesitantly, fidgeting with my belt-buckle, my dagger-hilt, scrunching my toes inside my shoes. The fire hisses and cracks. The figures carved on the ornate fireplace, lit from below, seem to grin demonically. My mother doesn’t move – I wonder if she is asleep.

Moving round the chair to stand before her, I see that her eyes are open, but she stirs and looks confused for a moment, as if I’ve woken her from a dream. “Mama!” I blurt. I probably look crazy – bright-eyed and barely able to stand still. “You don’t have to worry, I’ve realised what they meant!”

“What, sweetheart?” With an obvious effort, she is smiling at me, trying to look interested.

“Those prophecies from the City.” The smile is gone: my mother is instantly alert, aghast. I hurry on. “I was hiding in the room. I know I shouldn’t have been, I’m sorry – I just happened to be there. Anyway,
York will be king
– it’s not him, the one they call the Pretender. It’s me. Mama – aren’t I Duke of York too? Aren’t I the proper one? It’s me who will be king!”

The blow reaches me before I know what is happening. Her left hand, ringed and surprisingly heavy, slams across my face with the force of a leather strap. I find myself twisted round, looking suddenly at the floor.

There is a moment of silence.

One of the tiny claws holding the stone of her ring has caught the skin below my right eye. My fingers drift up to it, absently – I look at my hand and see blood.

The next moment she has bundled me to her. I am pressed, too hard, into her bodice, my cheek rammed against the jewelled border of her neckline, so that the stones make painful pits in my skin.

She is weeping – huge shuddering sobs. I think:
I have made her weep
. And she is rocking me. “Hush, hush,” she says at last, when her breathing has steadied. “Hush… hush.” But I am making no noise.

At last she puts me at arm’s length, her hands on my shoulders. Her face is blotched, her eyes puffy. “You must
never say such a thing again, Hal,” she says, shaking me slightly. “Understand?”

I am the one crying now. I nod, gulping.

“Those prophecies were complete nonsense. The ravings of charlatans, agitators, enemies of the crown. They’ve been burned. Your father is king and – God willing – your brother will one day succeed him. Listen carefully.” I can’t bear the way she’s looking at me: it’s ferocious, piercing – like nothing I’ve seen before. “Never mention those prophecies to anyone. Lives depend on it. My life. Maybe yours too. This is a time of danger: rebels are approaching London; your father is leading an army to meet them; foreign rulers are trying to stir up trouble… Ridiculous prophecies are always circulated when there is unrest like this. Do you understand?”

I nod energetically, and press my knuckles against my eyes. I can’t speak.

“If ever you do mention the prophecies – to anyone – I will deny all knowledge of them. I will say you have made them up. And you will be flogged for it. Understand?”

I nod a second time.

“Don’t spy on me ever again, will you? Will you?” She peels my hands from my eyes – makes me meet her gaze.

I shake my head miserably. My cheek is throbbing now where she hit me. I want to run away.

“Oh God, look at you. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” She searches in her purse for her handkerchief, wets it on her tongue and wipes the blood from my cheek. “There. Better now. Aren’t we?” And she smiles at me valiantly. It is so vulnerable, that smile. It makes my heart lurch inside my ribcage, like I’ve missed a tread on the stairs.

So I mumble, “Yes,” and do my best to smile back.

The jewels round my mother’s neck wink in the firelight as she takes a deep breath and opens her eyes wide. “Oh! Aren’t
we silly sometimes?” She is brushing herself down now, finding a clean corner of handkerchief to blot her eyes. I know what she is thinking – that if my grandmother sees her, she must not look as if she has been crying.

That night in bed I hide under the covers, clutching Raggy tightly. I feel that the world has jumbled itself up: shattered into pieces and reformed, like a broken jug that’s been mended. And though on the surface it looks as it always did, I know that underneath everything has changed.

Sometimes – I have learned – appearances are no more than masks. And that knowledge terrifies me as much as anything I have seen here at the Tower.

The following day – the day after my mother
hits me for announcing my glorious future – five hundred of my father’s best spearmen, commanded by Lord Daubeney, meet the rebel army at Gill Down and drive them into retreat. The rebels regroup and make camp by Deptford Bridge, near the River Ravensbourne. Three days later, my father’s army attacks at dawn, taking the rebels by surprise.

By two o’clock that afternoon, my father is entering the City of London on a magnificent war horse, a livid scar showing fresh on his cheek and one of the rebel leaders lying, shackled, over the saddle of a horse led behind him. Unlike the thousands of dead even now being dragged from the field, this man has been saved for a slower and more public end.

A battle is a test of God’s favour – I know that. A battle proves who is the rightful king. So, now, God has shown His favour, not to the rebels, or the Pretender – whoever he might really be – but to my father.

That same afternoon, as my father parades through the City streets in triumph, I suddenly turn hot and shivery. My joints ache and my legs feel like jelly and the women servants put me to bed. I stay in bed for days and days – I have no idea how long. And when my mother leaves the Tower to join my father for the thanksgiving at Westminster, I have to stay behind. I’m in a cocoon of sickness. If my mother comes to say goodbye, I’m too ill to know.

During those feverish days in the Tower I have an odd dream.

In the dream, I am lying in the dark, underneath something – it is like lying under the covers in bed. Except that I am cold. I don’t mind. It’s restful. Perhaps I am asleep. And then it occurs to me: I’m not sleeping, I am dead. Covered by a layer of earth. Of course! How silly that I didn’t notice it before.

And I am just thinking: so
this
is what it is like and it’s quite all right really, why do people worry about dying so much? – I must tell my mother when I see her – when a black dot appears in the darkness. Or rather, a black dot that has light all around it.

And the dot rises up and gets bigger as I watch it, until it’s as big as a sun, and the light from it is beaming down like strange sunlight on a clear day.

And at first I think there’s just the dot, and something about the dot is moving, but then I see that the moving thing is a little boy, coming down the beams towards me, walking on the light as if it is a road. He gets nearer and nearer.

As the boy draws close to me, I see that he is very pale, with a halo of straw-coloured hair; he looks like the Christ
child in an old painting, except that his eyes are so deep-set they’re completely hidden in shadow. It looks as if he has strange dark hollows instead of eyes. And the golden hair and the shadow-eyes make a contrast of light and dark like the brilliant black sun, and I am chilled and I shiver.

The boy stretches out his hands to me – pudgy hands, the hands of a toddler – but when I put my own hands in his, the grip is strong, like a grown-up’s.

And the moment he touches me, being dead isn’t restful any more. I’m drenched in terror, and I grip the boy desperately, as if he can keep me safe.

All at once, too, we’re no longer in darkness. I see that we’re in a field on the edge of a gorge. The spot where I’ve been lying is right by the drop. Somewhere far below I can hear rushing water.

The boy pulls me to my feet. He’s smaller than I am, and dressed in a coarse gown like a poor man’s child, but there’s something fierce and powerful about him.

At that moment I hear a terrible noise from the gorge. I turn to see a huge serpent hauling itself up over the cliff-edge. Its legs are short and muscular, and from its back vast wings unfold, with skin stretched across them like a bat’s. Its eyes are red, its nostrils wide; with a terrible swinging motion of its head it seems to be searching for something, roaring in pain and rage. The smell from its open jaws is rank – of rotting flesh. Step by relentless step it comes, dark water sliding off its scales.

The boy tugs me sharply, pulling me away. He breaks into a run and I stumble after. Up ahead, a horse appears. The boy must somehow have grown taller, because it’s a large horse and he mounts it with no problem, and hauls me up in front of him into the saddle, just as the serpent’s teeth snap the air where I stood. However close I am to the boy, still I can’t see his eyes.

His arms reach round me as he holds the reins and spurs the horse into a gallop. I grip the front of the saddle; against my back I think I can feel the sliding metal of a mail-coat, as if the boy is wearing armour under his peasant’s gown.

Away we speed through open country, across scrubby moorland, fields and ditches, so fast that we lose the serpent; there is no sign of it following. Soon the great dark mass of a forest looms before us. As the horse slows to a trot, we dip under a canopy of low branches, immersing ourselves in the cool, moss-green light. Far above us, brighter light shines in a dappled, broken pattern – beneath, I hear the horse’s hooves crushing soft bracken underfoot.

The cool of the forest, the dark green shadows, the welcoming, delicious safety; how I would love to lose myself in here.

I wake with such happiness. Somehow, days have passed. The fever is lifting.