The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III

by Freda Warrington

  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.”

  Inset: White Rose

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-one. 1485: Muse

  Don’t you see yon narrow, narrow road

  So thick beset with thorns and briars?

  That is the road to righteousness

  Though after it but few enquir
e.

  Don’t you see yon broad, broad road

  That lies across the lily leaven?

  That is the road to wickedness

  Though some call it the road to heaven.

  Don’t you see yon bonnie, bonnie road

  That lies across the ferny brae?

  That is the road to fair Elfland

  Where you and I this night must go.

  Thomas the Rhymer, Anon

  Richard recognised the cave: the low, rounded mouth, overhung by grass and foliage, the misty black interior. This cavern had featured in many dreadful dreams. He had always been drawn towards it, his heart pulsing harder the closer he went; and then running, fleeing for his life while the woman and the child stood like spectres, watching him. Never, in the dream, had he been able to face what lay inside.

  Now his skin felt icy. He noted the familiar rise of dread. A hundred battles held not a shred of fear to compare with this. Yet it was only a peaceful walk by night along a river bank, with the moon and stars bleaching the pale limestone around them. A gentle climb, then the arch of stone received them like an ancient gateway.

  Katherine went ahead, graceful as a goddess with her hair hanging down her back. This was her domain. Following her, he felt as vulnerable as a child. He had no knights around him, no attendants. No one even knew where he was. With all the trappings of kingship stripped away, he was only a man, his soul naked.

  The cave was a temple. Katherine went straight in, ducking through the low entrance. The lantern she carried illuminated a bleached-gold space with a stump of rock in the centre. A primitive, pagan altar. Not allowing himself to hesitate, Richard followed her.

  She began to light candles on the rough altar. Flame writhed on a lump of pitted rock set in a niche on the rear wall. He saw it was a crude black statue; all female curves with a terrible, featureless visage set on its shoulders.

  “She is Auset,” said Kate. “Isis, Tara, Cailleach, the Black Virgin. She has many names, but if it makes you easier in your mind, address her as the Mother of God.”

  “She bears little resemblance to the Madonna.” The cave echoed, making their soft whispers sound loud.

  “More than you think, perhaps.” Kate lit amber resin in a censer. Fragrant clouds wreathed around her. “In the beginning, as our legend goes, there was only the Dark Mother. She is complete in herself, able to give birth without a male counterpart. Think of it like this. Her son is the one who goes out into the world, fiery and wrathful, smiting unbelievers. The Mother remains in her seat of earth, biding her time and occasionally rolling her eyes at his excesses.”

  There was amusement in her tone. Richard half-smiled. In other circumstances, her words would have been gross heresy. Here, though, he was in another world. This was her realm, where her theology was solid and true.

  He said quietly, “Kate, the first time I entered the hidden world, I saw this cave, or one so like it I can see no difference. But I wasn’t here. I was in Ludlow.” The memory still disturbed him. “Many days’ ride from here!”

  Unperturbed, she looked at him with her large, wondrous eyes; just as when he’d thought her an elf-child. Chills seeped through him.

  “As I told you before, the hidden world is not only in one place. It’s everywhere. It has no map, and no logic. If you were fated to meet us, it’s perfectly feasible that we were here and you were in Ludlow.”

  “As if we met in a dream.”

  “Yes, but a dream as solid as reality.”

  “I think I expect too much, to understand what happened.”

  As he spoke, something entered the cave.

  A whirl of cold air, nothing visible, but he was transfixed by the feel of eyes upon him: an intense, mocking scrutiny. Despite his efforts to stay calm, his breathing became quick and shallow.

  “It’s nothing,” Kate said easily. “A nosy elemental. We will attract them, but they’ll protect us, so it’s a fair exchange. They’re friends.”

  Richard stood chilled and shaking, watching her arrange the small altar to her satisfaction. This was against all his beliefs. When elementals crept in from the godless faerie realm, priests were always called to drive them out. Yet Kate and her sisterhood welcomed them.

  “I don’t know if this is proof that you worship the Devil,” said Richard, “or simply proof that we don’t understand you.”

  “Unfortunately, people’s fear of what they don’t understand leads them to destroy it. And to justify their destruction, they condemn it as evil.” She shrugged. “Come, sit down. Forget any notion of good or evil.” She placed two age-worn tapestry cushions on the rock floor before the altar. One showed a graylix, one a silver pard. “Don’t kneel. We don’t abase ourselves.” Grinning, she added, “Only in the direst circumstances.”

  Hesitantly he sat cross-legged beside her. “I don’t see what this will achieve.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “You’re as tense as a priest forced to walk down Cock’s Lane.”

  He laughed out loud. “Your analogy is perfect: the horror of depravity and the temptation of falling into it.”

  “That’s it. Horror and temptation. Don’t look away. Trust yourself. Have you something to give as an offering?”

  “Offering?”

  “I don’t mean a slaughtered lamb. Just a gift, a token. A thread from your doublet; anything.” Leaning forward, she opened a pouch and tipped a handful of walnuts into a small gold bowl. “Auset, great mother of all, we bring you these tokens of our love and we ask you to stand before us, as we stand before you, in perfect love and trust.”

  Richard paused, uncertain. Then he took a chain from around his neck. From it hung a silver cross, its pointed arms curled around rubies. It looked like a little sword. He set the cross upon the walnuts and let the chain pour in after it. There it lay, shining.

  “What should I ask of her?”

  “Ask for clear sight,” said Kate.

  He did so, silently. Closing his eyes, he made a wordless invocation to the dark mother. Let the darkness come and do its worst. I ask no protection of God. If the Devil claims me, so be it: I’ll pay my debts without fear. Only let me see the truth.

  When he opened his eyes, the world had turned slate-blue and Kate had vanished.

  Richard rose to his feet in confusion. If he was nervous before, that was nothing to the terror he felt now. Not fear of losing his life, but of losing his sanity. His soul. The candle flames on the altar burned dim and blue. The landscape was swathed in a limpid blue mist. He was in the hidden world.

  He’d thought Kate would be with him. He hadn’t expected to find himself here alone. She had given no instructions for escaping this dream. He looked for his cross, meaning to take it for protection, but the offering bowl was empty.

  Ice-cold, he went to the cave mouth. Blue twilight awaited him. As he stepped out he saw no river bank below; instead, a marsh spread before him, the marsh of countless nightmares, gleaming, waiting. Wan lights danced here and there. Shadows moved between the tussocks, prowling. Smoke and eyes. The whole place was softly alive and watching him.

  Raising his head he walked steadily forward, passing beneath the arch of Briganta’s Bridge, until the ground began to squelch under his feet. He stood on the very edge of the marsh…

  In which, in another life, Henry Tudor’s men had butchered him. He felt the echo of memory; the last brutal blows and his last words bursting harshly out of him, “Treason, treason!”

  Richard felt he was dead, after all, and in the underworld.

  This was the place he’d dreaded all his life. Here he was again, bone-cold and desolate; but knowing he could not be anywhere else. This was inevitable. Accepting that, his fear retreated to a dull background ache.

  A shape moved out on the marsh. Something huge was gliding towards him. He watched in wonder. A charcoal bulk with spars and spider webs of rigging, sailing the marsh as if through clear sea.

  A huge black ghost ship. Coming for him.

 
He thought it would plough him down where he stood, yet he was powerless to move out of its path. As it came closer, he saw that it was not a ship at all but a living creature; a gigantic sea-monster, a leviathan. It veered broadside on and he saw moisture coursing down the dark, sheened sides. Its spars were the spines of bony fans that splayed from its neck, with cobweb membranes stretched between them. Its head was a wedge poised high in the gloom. Tar black, it loomed above him and he tried to back away, only to find himself sinking thigh deep in the ooze.

  He stumbled back into the sucking mud. Between them, marsh and serpent would consume him. He struggled to breathe. Then his feet touched a resilient surface and he was being dragged forward, lifted. The monster had forced her paw beneath him and he had no choice but to cling to the plated limb. She lurched, turning. He climbed as if scaling the side of a ship, gained her shoulder and then the broad span of her ridged spine and ribs.

  Her fins cracked like sails, folding and unfolding. The leviathan completed her ponderous half-circle and began to take him away from shore. Away from Kate. Looking back, he couldn’t even see the cave.

  There was open sea around him. A disc of calm rippling water, black in the night, encircled by a wall of fog. No boundaries. Above, the moon was a dull green eye staring down.

  He was on the English Channel, going into exile. That had been their life: his and his brothers’. Fleeing in defeat, storming back to triumph. Washing in and out like the tide. A strange life, but all he knew. It seemed a thousand years ago.