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

by Alex Marchant

‘Open your cloak and show the captain your weapon,’ he ordered. The man complied and fortunately he was one who had removed his surcoat. The Breton examined his cuirass and tugged at the man’s belt, noting the sword and dagger he carried there.

  ‘These are light arms to fight a king’s army with,’ declared Henri.

  ‘We have our horses tethered nearby along with our spears and axes,’ drawled Tyrell. ‘We hadn’t thought to greet the Earl of Richmond armed to the teeth.’

  ‘No, perhaps not.’ Henri surveyed the men before him and looked towards those ranged along the headland. ‘And where is King Richard right now?’

  ‘Chased away into Scotland,’ blurted out Tyrell before Laurence could answer.

  ‘That’s right,’ he interrupted before Henri could ask Tyrell any more questions. ‘His queen is at Lincoln and from there he will get up to Middleham, then hence to Scotland.’

  Henri Vasson kept his face straight, betraying nothing of his thoughts. If he suspected their story was being hurriedly concocted, he was not showing it.

  ‘I think I have seen enough,’ he grunted with a nod of his head. ‘If I might go back to the beach, I shall return to the Earl of Richmond and recommend he comes ashore.’

  Laurence put out an arm, steering him towards the pathway. He hoped that the Breton had not noticed the brief flash of triumph in Tyrell’s eyes at his words.

  They stumbled their way down the rough pathway and walked across the tide line to where the ship’s boat was located, its stern bobbing up and down as each wave broke on the sand. Henri Vasson walked with Laurence by his side while David Morgan trailed somewhat behind. Henri shouted to his men to ready their oars. Two shoved the boat into the sea and held it while Henri stood, his boots awash and one hand on the gunwale ready to leap aboard.

  ‘I know little of English affairs, my friend,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘but one thing I do know: Richard Plantagenet will hardly be welcome as an exile in Scotland having been the one who has subdued that nation.’

  ‘Captain James is hardly in a position to know King Richard’s plans,’ responded Laurence desperately. ‘We should not take his words too literally.’

  ‘Yes, I think I agree with you. Perhaps we shall meet again, in our homeland?’

  With that he swung his legs over the gunwale of the boat and his oarsmen leapt aboard with him. Together they backed water and managed to turn the boat bow in to the waves. Soon they were pulling beyond the breakers at the beach and heading for their ship. Laurence and David looked disconsolately at each other, both feeling a hollow sinking of their hopes.

  Tyrell was furious when he saw the ships make sail and set off across the grey wilderness of sea, clearly heading away from England.

  ‘You have let the Tudor slip through your fingers,’ he railed at Laurence.

  ‘I believe it was you who mentioned Scotland thoughtlessly,’ he retaliated.

  ‘Why did you have to tell him the king had fled to Lincoln? If you had left the talking to me we would have the Tudor in our grip by now.’

  ‘Since when did you speak Breton?’ retorted Laurence.

  Tyrell clenched his fists and, raising his arms, shook them furiously at the rapidly vanishing vessels. David Morgan was standing behind his master, not in a position to argue in Laurence’s defence, but simply gestured with a hopeless shrug only Laurence could see. Presently Tyrell stamped away to where the horses were tethered, followed closely by David. The rest of the men came down from the headland ready to form up and follow their captain, each one glad that he was not the one who must make report of Tudor’s escape.

  Laurence stood alone on the headland and looked out across the stormy seas. The Breton vessels could hardly be seen now as they merged into the murk that obliterated the horizon. At least Henry Tudor had been driven away from England, his attempt at invasion in tatters. Hopefully his ambition would soon assume the same condition and England might live in peace under its rightful king. He felt a tight drawing of the scar on his face as the rain began to strike, driven across the land by the wind that had come from Brittany. The thought came to him that England, too, had received some scars in dispute with the Tudor, whose insignificant and bastard claim to the throne had brought such misery, and left a prince exiled anonymously abroad in fear of his life. He turned and trudged through the hillocks that backed the beach. It seemed to him at that moment his future was as bleak as Henry Tudor’s. The two women he loved most in his life were lost to him, yet he still had a son from each of them. Perhaps now, under a king whose rule promised to be based on equity and justice, and with the Tudor gone, they could rest more easily. For sure, after the latter wars England needed a time of peace. He might go home to Brittany, a thought he instantly dismissed. His business was here in England and this is where he would remain, at least until his boys were grown and secure in their lives.

  Suddenly, a blinding flash illuminated the sky followed by a long, rolling growl of thunder that shook the very air. He raised his damaged face to the clouds, seeing them sweep in from the sea, dark and menacing. He crossed himself and, searching beneath his cloak, found the reliquary at his neck. Grasping it in his fingers, he prayed to St Barbara, protector from lightning strike and patron saint of armourers.

  About the author

  Richard Unwin is a retired technical author who lives in Manchester, England. He has written a series of fictional books set in the Middle Ages with a strong Ricardian theme. As a member of the Manchester branch of the Richard III Society, he has written and given talks on themes set in the fifteenth century with a particular interest in examining and debunking orthodox historical verisimilitude.

  Richard’s non-fiction works include an analysis of the bones in the urn at Westminster Abbey, supposedly the remains of two Plantagenet princes, a short biography of the eighteenth-century ironmaster John Wilkinson, and a critical look at the life of the Elizabethan spy, Christopher Marlowe.

  Website: http://www.quoadultra.net/

  Amazon:​ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-Unwin/e/B0045XWWMM

  Abduction

  Joanne R. Larner

  Eddshiran’s skin flushed a deep red, his angry gaze burning into them.

  ‘This is the start of a very important phase of the research mission and you are not taking it seriously enough.’ He turned his eyes towards the tallest one. ‘Broonomarz, if you will not obey my directives, it will be the time-loser for you. Oh yes, the time loser it will be.’

  ‘I take your directives most seriously, Monitor Eddshiran. It is just that I fear we may be interfering too much in the aliens’ life pathway.’ His skin flushed red, then olive. ‘We have taken and examined over one thousand of the yellowheads and almost as many brownheads and blackheads. We even have several orangeheads. The Dominion must have found out everything there is to know by now. Why do we need to take more? And now we are told we must take some juveniles back home to study and never release them back to their clans. It seems harsh.’

  ‘To question the Dominion’s orders is not your place.’ Eddshiran paused and looked down at the ground while they waited quietly. ‘However, since you do so, I will inform you of the reason. Our life-giving odour is becoming less and less concentrated. You have surely noticed our powers are becoming depleted?’

  ‘Of course, but the aliens have no such powers.’

  ‘No, although we have found small traces in some of them – those who have a diet high in what they call “fish”. The scientists think they can isolate the active molecules, but we must use specimens with the strongest life force we can find, which are the juveniles!’ His cold, bloodshot eyes narrowed as he stared at each of them in turn. ‘So, this is your last warning! And you too, Bayonsay, Dollipartonn. I have been too soft with you, too soft, I say. Well, no more. You must take two yellowhead juveniles this night and we shall take them home to Orbb, along with the brownheads, orangeheads and blackheads we already have. Two of each as the Dominion has said. You are dismissed – dismissed, I s
ay!’ He flicked his antennae at them irritably.

  The three Moins waved their feelers in the air in a gesture of respect and obedience and withdrew from the chamber of their Honourable Monitor, progressing backwards, smoothly gliding until they were outside the perimeter and the gateway slid shut with a whoosh of liquid.

  ‘Well, we got away with it that time, we did,’ said Bayonsay. He had turned an unhealthy bright yellow whilst they had been undergoing Eddshiran’s reprimand. Even Broonomarz, the bravest of the three, was a pale lemon colour. ‘We must be more careful in the future, more careful. They will accept no more excuses. We must obey the directive now, we must. I do not wish to go in the time-loser. Last time I lost five Orbb centuries, I did.’

  ‘You are right, I suppose,’ said Broonomarz. ‘I, too, wish not to lose any more of my time. The aliens are not so important that we should sacrifice life-time.’ His tentacles writhed as he wrestled with his misgivings. ‘I still think it is not right, though, not right. They are living creatures, even if they are quite repulsive.’

  His skin turned a little green as he pictured them.

  ‘I have studied them here for decades already and got to know a little of their ways. They are totally savage and warlike, and yet strangely they do bear a great love for their children. Our actions will cause much suffering, much suffering.’ He shook both his heads sadly.

  ‘So where should we go to find the two juvenile yellowheads, where?’ Dollipartonn wiggled his heads questioningly. ‘The rival Moin-clans have already got their quota of black, brown and orangeheads. We are late, we are! We should try to get some really good specimens.’

  ‘We should fly down to the most populated community and then we will have more choice, so we will.’

  ‘In that case we must don our light-absorbing shields so the aliens cannot see us.’

  ‘Come, Moins mine, let us go!’

  *

  ‘What is that?’ hissed Geoffrey to his elder brother, John. He pointed to the shadowed archway of the main entrance. ‘A shadow moved … or something!’

  ‘What? I see nothing.’

  His brother was far more experienced and acted nonchalantly. He couldn’t let his little brother think he was afraid.

  ‘I smell something too. There’s a horrible fishy smell.’

  ‘Must be old Rob’s supper. He will eat anything, you know.’

  ‘It doesn’t smell like food, though.’

  ‘Well, not to you, maybe. Robert has singular tastes, doesn’t he? He –’

  John’s mouth snapped shut as he clasped his hand desperately over his nose, before keeling over, unconscious.

  ‘John! John!’ Geoffrey turned towards his brother as he fell, but had no time to utter anything more as he, too, collapsed on to the cobblestones.

  The air next to the two brothers shimmered in three separate sections, appearing something like a heat haze.

  ‘Where are the yellowheads, did you say?’ Dollipartonn turned to Broonomarz and quivered his antennae.

  ‘They are through that archway and up the stairs, they are.’ Broonomarz indicated the way with his main feeler and drifted smoothly ahead with the other two ‘shimmers’ following. They floated by several more of the aliens but, luckily, they had no need to disable them physically: their own natural odour did that very effectively. Each one they passed, passed out – in silence, with no upset, no violence and no one noticing what had happened. They were like an invisible, toxic gas.

  They glided silently through the stone archway, aliens dropping like flies as they caught a whiff of their special scent. Up the stairs they went – slowly because their tentacles were not used to climbing such structures, but their progress was steady. They neared the top of the staircase and turned the corner, keeping close together.

  Two aliens were standing guard outside a wooden entrance. They held lethal-looking, sharp-edged weapons in their hands and wore a metallic covering over their bodies. As the three shimmering shadows approached, one of the guards began to fidget, sniffing suspiciously, his face screwing up in distaste.

  ‘Will! What is that stench? I –’

  He collapsed in a heap of clattering metal, followed closely by Will.

  The three paused before the door. Broonomarz approached it, producing a shiny, silver-coloured, pistol-shaped implement. He took a deep inhalation of the alien air, then held his breath as he aimed the gadget at the metalwork of the door. The metal began to melt instantly and then disappeared, sucked into the nozzle of the ‘atomizer’, without damaging the wood of the door at all. The constituent atoms were deposited in the storage compartment of the device, the space between them removed so that the volume was reduced to almost nothing.

  Broonomarz pressed his feelers on to the door, with a soft sucking sound. Then he lifted the door out of its frame and moved it quietly to one side.

  They glided into the chamber.

  Broonomarz gazed down at the two juvenile yellowheads, all his eyes sad. He had discovered that these two juveniles were considered very important. That was why they were so carefully guarded, and he had witnessed several people bending themselves in two in the juveniles’ presence, which he thought must be a mark of respect. This should mean they were well fed and had partaken of a diet high in fish. He hoped the guards would not lose too much of their life-time when the two youngsters’ disappearance was discovered.

  He waved his scent bristles around and they told him he had been correct in his assumption that the high-bred juveniles had eaten much fish. The two were obviously unconscious, because of the proximity of the three Moins and their odour. They would have to mask this once they arrived home with them, so that the experiments could be undertaken while the juvenile aliens were conscious. But for now, the effect of their smell was useful.

  They quickly bundled the two into the fabrics they were huddled under and Broonomarz waved his antennae at his two colleagues, who each scooped up a yellowhead, rolled up in their covering, and left the chamber.

  He paused outside to replace the door in the frame and took out the atomizer again, reversing the polarity of the contraption so that its disintegrator function became a reintegrator. All the metallic parts flowed out of the nozzle and reformed into the door’s metalwork exactly as it had been before their arrival, so that there was no evidence the three Moins had ever been there.

  *

  ‘What do you mean they have disappeared? I thought I told you to guard them closely at all times!’

  Will and Miles, the two guards, shuffled their feet and glanced at each other.

  ‘We did, Your Grace.’ Will bravely met the king’s angry gaze. ‘Sir Robert Brackenbury made all the arrangements and approved them. We do not know what happened. It seems almost everyone in the Tower was rendered unconscious, but nobody saw anything. The door was still locked when we awoke, but the princes were gone.’ He hesitated as the king’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘Nobody was wounded or killed, although we all have a terrible headache. And none of us can abide the smell of fish. It makes us all feel nauseous. Young Geoffrey, the new guard, reckons he smelt fish just before he passed out. Perhaps the Lancastrians have a new weapon?’

  ‘We searched every part of the Tower and they are nowhere to be found.’ Miles flushed red as the king turned his frown on him. ‘The guards outside the gates of the Tower heard and saw nothing. Nobody arrived or left who cannot be accounted for. The keys were never out of Sir Robert’s possession. It is a mystery, Sire. Something fishy is going on – pardon the pun.’

  The king paced up and down, his hands balled into fists and a scowl darkening his noble brow.

  ‘How can two royal children, my nephews, disappear from the Tower of London without anyone seeing a thing? What will I tell their mother, Elizabeth? There are already rumours that I have murdered them to safeguard my possession of the throne. If they are not found, I shall never be able to prove my innocence.’

  King Richard III pursed his lips and sighed. He had a terribl
e feeling about this…

  About the author

  Joanne Larner lives in Rayleigh, Essex, with her husband, John, and two dogs, Jonah, the black lab cross and Hunter, the miniature dachshund. She has worked as an osteopath for more than twenty years, but is interested in many subjects and people. Her latest inspiration is Richard III, who fired her interest when she saw the Channel 4 documentary, The King in the Car Park.

  Joanne has since read every book she can find on the subject of the last Plantagenet king, but became tired of knowing how they would end, so she finally decided to write her own - a time-travel alternative history called Richard Liveth Yet, the 'book she wanted to read'. This then multiplied to a trilogy with the addition of Richard Liveth Yet (Book II): A Foreign Country and Richard Liveth Yet (Book III): Hearts Never Change. She has also collaborated on two humorous books about Richard with Susan Lamb: Dickon’s Diaries and Dickon’s Diaries 2 – a madcap mixture of medieval and modern, a cross between the humour of the Carry On films and The Two Ronnies.

  Joanne is currently completing a new novel about Richard, Distant Echoes, due out for Christmas 2018.

  Website: ​https://www.joannelarner.wordpress.com

  Amazon: ​https://www.amazon.co.uk/Joanne-R-Larner/e/B00XO1IC4S

  Facebook: ​https://www.facebook.com/JoanneRLarner

  https://www.facebook.com/RichardLivethYet

  Twitter: ​​https://www.twitter.com/JetBlackJo

  The Beast of Middleham Moor

  Alex Marchant

  I shouldn’t have done it. Gone that way. It was a stupid thing to do.

  A short cut, yes. In the summer. Not the winter.

  Not even when it was what Mum called ‘early spring’, when snowdrops nodded in the shelter of drystone walls and buds of primroses glimmered yellow, nestled among hawthorn roots.

  But they’d been at it again. On the bus. The year eights. So old, so superior, they thought themselves.