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

by Alex Marchant

  When Mum came in, I was sitting with her laptop on my knees. I had already googled ‘King Richard the Third’. To my surprise, not Wikipedia, but something else came up first.

  A news broadcast.

  Men and women sitting in a line behind desks, in front of hoardings full of logos. Smiles on their faces. People with cameras crouching in front of them.

  A close-up of a dark-haired woman.

  Her name on the caption.

  Dr King.

  Was that why Google had directed me to this?

  Before I could click away, her words caught my ears, before cheers and clapping began.

  ‘. . . beyond all reasonable doubt, we have found King Richard the Third.’

  Behind her now, I saw a large projection of a skeleton in a grave. The curve in its back was clear to see. Next came a photo of a man’s back. The word ‘reconstruction’ beneath it.

  Another photo.

  That curve.

  Pale skin, not cast in shadows by flickering firelight.

  A blonde woman now, a half-smile upon her face. Asked questions, answering them.

  I could hardly concentrate, my mind was so full of strange thoughts.

  But two sentences stood out.

  ‘We now know King Richard was not a hunchback, despite what Shakespeare wrote. We know now instead that he had scoliosis, a lateral curvature of the spine, and though he would probably have been in a great deal of pain, it would not have prevented him riding and fighting, and being the brave warrior king that the real history has always told us.’

  ‘Jack, love?’

  Mum stood in the doorway, an opened letter in her hand. On it, the logo of the hospital we’d just left.

  ‘The date for the operation has come. I know we’ve already discussed it, and I know you weren’t keen, but do you think we could talk about it again? I know it’ll mean you’ll have to be very brave.’

  I looked up at her and smiled.

  ‘It’s OK, Mum. I’ve thought about it some more. You can tell Dr Lovell I think I’ll do it.’

  Relief washed across her face.

  Would she let me do what I wanted to now?

  ‘Could I have some money to go to the castle, please?’

  ‘The castle? I’m not sure it’s open. Why?’

  I couldn’t explain. Just handed her the laptop where the news broadcast was still talking about King Richard.

  She gave me a fiver from her purse, wrapped me in my thickest coat – and scarf and hat – and waved me off at the door.

  A minute or two and I’d trudged across the marketplace and was winding up the snowy lane to the main gate.

  The huge grey-stone gatehouse loomed above me as I crossed the icy bridge over the moat. The modern wooden gate was closed, but as I walked up, a flash of white passed me and slipped easily between the bars.

  Beyond, a woman flung herself to her knees, despite the thick snow, and caught it in a hug.

  ‘At last,’ I heard her gasp.

  The flash was a shaggy, white, long-nosed dog.

  The woman saw me watching and straightened up.

  ‘Hello. Can I help you? I’m afraid we’re not open yet. But I’m the new manager here.’

  ‘Here?’ I said. ‘At King Richard’s castle?’

  ‘That’s right. Do you know its history then?’

  She must have thought me daft, or mad, standing there, knee-deep in snow, staring past her at the dog. But she saw where I was looking and said simply,

  ‘That’s my dog. She went missing last night in the snow as I was locking up here. I was worried sick. She’s only just come back. Do you like her? Her name’s –‘

  ‘Florette.’

  She looked at me strangely for a moment, then gave a short laugh.

  ‘Yes, it is. How did you know?’

  Beyond her, on the tallest snow-capped tower, flapped a great banner, red, blue, with a boar stitched in white.

  About the author

  Alex Marchant was born and raised in the rolling Surrey downs, but, following stints as an archaeologist and in publishing in London and Gloucester, now lives surrounded by moors in King Richard III’s northern heartland, not far from his beloved York and Middleham.

  A Ricardian and writer since a teenager, Alex’s first novel, Time out of Time (due out 2019), won the 2012 Chapter One Children’s Book Award, but was then put on the backburner in 2013 at the announcement of the rediscovery of King Richard’s grave in a car park in Leicester. Discovering that there were no books for children telling the story of the real Richard III, Alex was inspired to write them, and so The Order of the White Boar and its sequel The King’s Man were born. Together they tell King Richard’s story through the eyes of a young page who enters his service in the summer of 1482, and have been called 'a wonderful work of historical fiction for both children and adults' by the Bulletin of the Richard III Society and 'exciting, appealing and refreshing' by the publication of Richard III's Loyal Supporters (www.r3loyalsupporters.com).

  Website:​​https://alexmarchantblog.wordpress.com

  Amazon:​https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alex-Marchant/e/B075JJKX8W/

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

  Twitter:​​https://twitter.com/AlexMarchant84

  GoodReads:​https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17175168.Alex_Marchant

  Joanna Dreams

  Máire Martello

  Joanna dreams. In mist, she dreams. She dreams of a bright object that fades into mist. When she wakes, like many people who dream, she remembers nothing.

  She is pressed to marry by her brother, King John of Portugal, a son of the English House of Lancaster. She is the Infanta Joanna and many rulers seek her hand. They wish to make strong alliances with Albion – that great nation of trade and travel. She rejects them all; she wishes only to marry Christ. Brought before her brother and his court, she is insulted and bullied into choosing a suitor. King John reminds her of her age and mocks her long sad face which draws no man’s interest. In her darkened room, she weeps and prays that God will deliver her to the Dominican Sisters in Aveiro.

  As she twists and turns, hot under her coverlet, she falls into troubled slumber. Mist rises and through it she sees an image that shines as bright as Canis Major, the Dog Star. She reaches out for this precious object, but as she does, it again disappears before her eyes. She wakes, but unlike other times, she remembers. She is startled, but not unhappy at her dream.

  Her brother presses her again: he would like her to marry King Charles of France. But he is a child of fifteen and she turns away in horror. She is thirty-three years old.

  That evening the dream becomes as sharp as it never was before. It’s as if she was looking through a new invention called the camera obscura. The bright shining object comes close and appears to be polished armour. It is the kind of armour that might be worn by a knight. She looks desperately for a face, but all she sees is a slender white hand extending a white rose – for her? She’s unsure but reaches for it all the same. It falls into the mist.

  Still the negotiations go on with King Charles of France. He is said to be a pleasant boy, but Joanna only wants to be reunited with Christ. This boy-king, she knows, will bring her despair. But her dark and powerful brother frightens her so that she appears to agree to the marriage.

  So Joanna dreams. And in this dream, she sees the entire figure of the knight. He holds out another white rose to her. He is more beautiful than any man she has ever seen – as if he has walked out of the sun. He is tall with soft blue eyes and tumbling blond hair and the sweetest curve upon his tender lips.

  Who is he? she wonders. What hope does he bring her? He seems to be encouraging her, but she cannot make out his words – she cannot hear in her dreams.

  He draws a veil aside and she sees a young prince on a wide unknown plain. He is quite different from the golden knight. He is lean and dark-haired and he sits proudly on a tall white stallion. He wears a quilted tabard over his armour
. The tabard is sewn with the flag of St George. Around the knight’s head is a fiery circlet of gold. He has a serious, quiet face with intelligent grey eyes. She would even say a pious face. He turns his head and beckons to her. Joanna runs to meet this intriguing prince, forgetting all thoughts of duties to the realm or the convent.

  When she awakes, she pounds her pillow and cries tears of frustration that she cannot speak to the soldier prince. She no longer thinks of her marriage to Christ. Instead, she dwells on the young man on the tall white horse. She sinks to her knees and prays that God forgives her failing vocation.

  Great wars are coming to England. Joanna hears this at a distance. Her brother wants to build an alliance with Yorkist England and Portugal. He believes the two houses of Lancaster and York can be reunited and thus end the terrible War of the Roses. These wars have devastated England and created havoc on the continent.

  ‘Dear Joanna,’ says her brother, ‘I have a new offer for your hand in marriage. He has been a widower for a year and he is quite young. He is close to your age – thirty-two. He has been kind enough to send a small portrait of himself. Would you care to look at it?’

  Joanna, still dream-walking towards her soldier prince, is not inclined to look. Nonetheless, she slips it out of its white silk cloth curiously embroidered with a tusked boar. The small portrait shows quite a nice face – calm grey eyes, straight lips and high cheekbones. His hair is dark and long. The only hint that he is a man of substance is the heavy gold collar of office he wears upon his shoulders. His expression is so serious, so pious—

  Her heart beats faster.

  ‘Who is this, Brother?’

  ‘It is Richard, King of England. He wishes to marry you.’

  ‘Is he a soldier?’

  ‘One of England’s greatest. It has been the sum total of his career until he assumed the throne of England.’

  ‘What is he like, Brother?’

  The king sighs. He is bemused by his sister’s many foolish questions about her various suitors.

  ‘He is a good king and a widower without issue. Do you like the portrait?’

  ‘He is not unfamiliar.’ She smiles secretly.

  Seeing for once that she is not obdurate, he leans down and kisses her upon her high white forehead. She returns to her room admiring the portrait.

  No knight-angel visits her that night. She wakes disappointed but not unhappy. She attends her brother the king and tells him she agrees to marry Richard. He is overjoyed and swings her up in his arms and dances with her about the gallery. The entire court is overjoyed.

  Still a virtuous woman, she continues to pray to the Virgin Mary and partake of Holy Communion. Eventually, a silky diplomat, Sir Edward Brampton, arrives from London and begins negotiations for the marriage. After several days of signing contracts, King John asks his sister to pray and meditate on this marriage. She humbly agrees, suppressing her happiness lest he be wary and mock her unaccustomed gaiety.

  That night, Joanna dreams.

  He appears before her. He opens his brightly coloured tabard and many white roses tumble towards her. She laughs and grabs at them, and he smiles and laughs in return. He mounts his beautiful horse, turns once to take her into his mind’s eye and rides away. She stumbles towards him awkwardly, but he is lost in mist. When she wakes, she knows she’ll never be as happy as she is this day.

  August of 1485 arrives and King Richard, it is reported, is heading to a place called Redmore Plain to fight a battle against an upstart named Henry. The court of Portugal laughs at such a fool. Joanna does not laugh, but retreats to the cold dark stone chapel in the palace to say the rosary for his safety.

  Again, Joanna dreams. The mist arises and she hears the sound of distant drums. Her knight-angel returns and swiftly draws back the veil to reveal her soldier prince, King Richard. But he is no longer upon his great steed. He is on his knees before her. Again, he opens his tabard to present her with white roses and she rushes towards him. But the flowers are not white. What tumbles out are red roses, but as they continue to fall in multitudes, she realizes that they have turned to blood – rivers of blood. She tries to staunch his wounds with her hands. She wipes away the bloodied hair from his face. The angel draws the veil and mouths words that she can barely hear.

  ‘Your Richard is gone from the living.’

  Joanna wakes screaming. To the horror of her ladies-in-waiting, she is covered in blood. Her hands are red with it as are her face and nightdress. A doctor is summoned, but they cannot find any wounds upon her body. All they can find are white roses scattered on the bed; but the thorns could not draw so much blood. The court is in an uproar; even an astrologer is brought in to solve the mystery. Joanna fights them off tigerishly, refusing to change out of her soiled gown with its precious blood.

  King John finally prevails. She is helped into fresh clothes and put to bed with magical draughts that will make her sleep.

  But like many people who dream, she dreams of nothing.

  About the author

  Máire Martello is a playwright currently living in Manhattan.

  14th April 1471 – Blooding

  Matthew Lewis

  An excerpt from Loyalty

  Mist clung to the glistening, dewy hilltops, refusing the warm draw of the sun that stood proudly at the rim of the clear spring sky. Though the sun was not shaded, a chill still cut through the air and tickled at the back of the neck of a rider who sat alone, looking almost like a ghost atop a dark demonic horse in the lingering haze. His mount stomped its front hoof in the damp grass with a dull thud, spraying moisture fully half the way up its own leg as the rider tugged at its reins to contain the horse’s excitement. Clearly the beast knew what was to come, even if its rider could only wish that he did.

  ‘How does it look, brother?’

  The voice made the man jump in his saddle, but the alarm was momentary as he well knew the sound of it.

  ‘Cold, wet and foggy, sire.’ The reply was somewhat solemn and brought a deep frown to the brow of King Edward.

  ‘You are nervous, Richard.’ It sounded more a command than an enquiry.

  Richard, Duke of Gloucester, shot a hard gaze over his shoulder at his brother, whose own horse was moving alongside him, and replied shortly,

  ‘No, sire. I have come here to do my duty this day, to my country, to my king and to my brother.’ His gaze turned into the haze before them. ‘Today, here at Barnet, you will reclaim your throne and your exile will end.’ Richard kept his tone deep, thinking this to be the best way to mask the dread he truly felt in his very core.

  ‘Our exile, Richard, shall end. It was ours together and we shall return to London together in triumph.’

  Edward thought for a moment. He had forgotten that his brother was only eighteen years of age and that this was to be his first taste of the mud of a battlefield.

  ‘Do not think,’ he continued in a softened tone, ‘that your loyalty has gone unnoticed these long months. Your support has been the bedrock upon which I have built my return, and where our brother’s blood has fuelled his own ambition, yours has thickened your loyalty.’

  Perhaps Edward over-stated the measure of his brother’s importance, but then perhaps not. Either way, he felt it would serve to stiffen Richard’s resolve.

  ‘Thank you, sire,’ Richard replied, his eyes darting back to his brother. ‘But I need no thanks for doing right, Edward. I would serve a thousand exiles with you and not falter.’

  He smiled for the first time since his brother had startled him, allowing only a faint upturning of his thin lips. His slender nose sniffed at the cold air. He looked little like his brother, who was tall and broad as Richard was slender and of a more normal height.

  ‘By God, no!’ Edward roared loudly. ‘I have had enough exile to last me a hundred lifetimes!’

  Rearing his horse, he laughed heartily and called down the hill behind him to where the mist concealed ranks of soldiers who stood like figurines on a child’s playroo
m floor.

  ‘Draw up the lines!’ he bellowed.

  His command was echoed by a dozen lesser voices and a great clamour grew as each part of the assembled mass ground into motion, lurching like a wheel stiffened by a lack of use, until it eventually moved smoothly up the hill to draw up around its leader.

  ‘Do not ignore your fear, Richard,’ Edward spoke softly again as his army obeyed his words.

  ‘I am not afraid, my king,’ Richard snapped defensively.

  He did not want his brother to know the dread that gnawed on his stomach like some disease-ridden rat on an old rope. More than anything else he craved his brother’s respect as a man and as a soldier. Edward was ten years his elder, and Richard had always been aware of his stature, as king and as a man who stood a full foot taller than himself; though Richard was not particularly short, he had long since given up hope of matching his brother. He was lithe while his brother was broad and imposing. Edward was proven in battle and commanded respect, and Richard wanted desperately to be like the king he served.

  ‘If you are not afraid, then you are a fool, brother.’ Edward was blunt and Richard smarted at the jibe, though that had not been the effect that his brother had desired. The young man felt himself blush, and thanked the heavens for the cool air that hid the worst of it. He bit his lip hard in anger at the apparent disapproval of his brother and at his own inability to control his reaction. Unable to answer, he simply stared into his brother’s eyes, but was surprised to see only a look of concern rather than ridicule within them.

  ‘Your fear is your own spirit guarding you against harm. Ignore it, and you lose its protection. Listen to it and it will keep you safe. God has no desire to see any of us die, and so he gave us fear to protect us.’

  The brothers looked at each other for a long moment, not as a king to his noble subject, but as men bound by a love that transcends a feudal relationship. Almost as one, they then nodded to each other as if an agreement had been reached in the silence.