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

by Alex Marchant

  ‘I simply thought that you should hear the news from me.’ Edward looked away finally.

  The duke felt his lungs re-inflate, only now realizing that he had held his breath throughout the silence without willing it. Despite Edward’s apparently genuine concern, Richard knew well that this had been orchestrated to gauge his reaction to the news. The pain returned in the pit of his stomach. His brother still did not trust him. As he rose and left, he refused to betray his sadness at the loss of a man he had thought of as a father. His brother would doubtless have misread this as a form of betrayal. The simple fact was that Richard had loved Warwick and felt every bit as betrayed by him as Edward did. Even that, though, did little to numb the pain of another loss.

  ‘Richard!’

  He was snapped from his thoughts by the return of his brother’s powerful, regal tone.

  He turned slowly. Edward was smiling softly after him.

  ‘We ride tomorrow to pursue the rest of the Lancastrian rebels.’

  ‘Lancastrian rebels?’ Richard mused. ‘No doubt they refer to us as the Yorkist rebels. Perspective is a powerful and distorting looking glass.’

  ‘When we meet them next, you shall lead out my forces, Richard.’ Edward spoke with the solid authority of a monarch bestowing a great honour. And a great honour it was indeed, Richard knew, but a continuation of the endless testing too.

  ‘Thank you, sire,’ he conceded graciously, bowing as he stepped back from the tent doorway and took a long slow lungful of the crisp spring air.

  Whatever else he felt, he was glad to be home again.

  About the author

  Matthew Lewis was born and grew up in the West Midlands, and, having obtained a law degree, he currently lives in the beautiful Shropshire countryside with his wife and children. Writing and history, in particular the Wars of the Roses period, have always been his passions, and his novels, Loyalty and Honour, were born of their joining.

  More recently, Matthew has launched a career writing non-fiction, particularly an acclaimed biography of King Richard, Richard III: Loyalty Binds Me, and The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, which seeks to provide a rounded and complete assessment of the most fascinating mystery in history.

  Amazon:​https://www.amazon.co.uk/Matthew-Lewis/e/B0088LP1H0/

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

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

  Easter 1483

  Alex Marchant

  An excerpt from The Order of the White Boar

  The leaf buds were fattening on the trees and the first lambs appearing before Duke Richard returned to Middleham from Pontefract.

  He brought with him special sweetmeats from the local bakers to help us break our Lenten fast, after weeks of eating little more than fish from the river and castle ponds. Then, after the solemn Good Friday unveiling of the Cross and the Easter vigil, we pages begged eggs from the kitchens’ stockpiles, stored since Ash Wednesday. We boiled them hard in onion-skin dyes to roll them down the slopes in the Duchess’s pleasure gardens.

  The squires looked on, with good humour or disdain, too old now for such childish pastimes. But, to my surprise, and to the laughter of the ladies who gathered to watch us, not only Masters Lovell, Ratcliffe and Kendall, and various other gentlemen, but Duke Richard himself joined us.

  Each of the gentlemen had brought his own egg, except it seemed the Duke.

  For a moment, there was disappointment on his face. Lord Lovell declared, ‘Then this year I have a chance of winning.’

  But the Duke called Alys forward from where she was waiting with the other ladies.

  Her dimples showing, she stepped up to him, bringing from behind her back a small casket. As she lifted the lid, there, nestled in black velvet, was the largest egg I had ever seen. It was intricately painted with swirls of red, blue, green, gold, putting our home-dyed hens’ eggs to shame.

  ‘The swans of Pontefract obliged me,’ said the Duke, picking it up with a flourish.

  He beckoned to his son, who had been fidgeting next to me as the scene played out and now leapt forward with sparkling eyes.

  ‘Come, Ed – help me. It is such a fine egg – we shall roll it together.’

  So the Duke and his son swept all before them, not only racing the smaller eggs to the bottom of the slope, but surviving without so much as a hair’s crack.

  Myth and Man

  Narrelle M. Harris

  Richard endured the whispers as long as he could, and then he went riding. It was that or thrash someone, and since he could not thrash the authors of the insults he heard in his brother’s house, riding it would have to be.

  Who’d have thought the Duke of Clarence would have so ill-formed a brother?

  As though the twist in his spine made him somehow deaf, and the useless arm made him somehow too stupid to notice when people were talking about him.

  Young Richard’s countenance affrights the milk to curdling.

  Richard had been born with his spine out of true and his right arm atrophied, and he had heard such whispers all his life. Sometimes the muscles ached and spasmed awfully, and as a babe and child he had been fractious and difficult to please, he knew. Further, he had not been born under a smiling star, being given rather more to serious thought and plain speaking, which was less pleasing to the ear than flattery.

  Perhaps, Richard thought as he kicked the mare to a gallop across the fields towards the woods, if he had known better how to flatter and craft sweet lies, there would have been more kindness. He did not think himself unkind, either, though he was oft accused of the vice. When he had no good thing to say, he kept his counsel, but then he was labelled surly or, worse, thick-witted. As though his silence without heralded a silence within.

  Insensible dolts. All those braying asses made so much noise it would deafen the birds, and barely a thought made even a timorous noise in those empty heads.

  No, Richard thought, I could not and never will be one of those smiling types of cripple, who praise God for their deformities with cherubic countenance, singing foolish songs and playing the jester so that others of better form and weaker brain could smile and laugh, and praise God for their deliverance from affliction. He was a man who spoke plain, and dissembled not, even when it were politic to do so. His words were as straight as his back was bent, and there was no reward for that.

  Thou twist-backed lumpen toad.

  Richard scowled as he rode through the woods, down the well-trod path. He was not so bad as all that, he believed. He was short, but he walked straight enough, and though his right arm hung stiff and useless, his left was strong and wielded both pen and sword with skill. The limp which plagued him in weariness was hardly noticeable most of the time, and never at all on horseback, where he excelled.

  Were I but mounted from daybreak to star-rise, they would never know, he thought bitterly. I could rule a kingdom from a horse and be counted a great man.

  And yet he was Richard the cripple, Richard the blockhead, Sour-faced Dick and the ape-backed uncle. There were those who thought that his body was a reflection of a soul likewise afflicted. Even his mother thought so. She did not say as much, but she did not deny it either. She loathed to touch him. His brothers teased him, as brothers are wont to do, but they gave more affection to their hunting dogs than they had for him.

  How does his mother bear the shame of having birthed him? Wonder not that she prays each day for his soul, and her own.

  Well, damn them all to hell, anyway.

  Richard reined in the mare to a walk and guided her off the path. He tucked his head to spare his eyes from the whip of low-hanging branches and urged his mount along to the little glade by the brook. None but he visited it. It was a sanctuary, of sorts.

  Or, it had been.

  As Richard dismounted and led the mare to the water, he knew that someone else was there – a watchful presence in the cool green shadows, the quality of their silence somehow evident above plash a
nd gurgle of the brook over the rocks.

  He feigned ignorance of the intruder and spoke softly to the mare, concealing the more covert action of unsheathing his dagger.

  A man in gore-streaked armour stumbled from the shadows, sword in hand. His dark blond hair was matted with sweat and blood.

  ‘I would not draw my weapon, if I were you.’ The man raised his weapon as though it cost him great effort, but would regardless fight until he fell.

  The voice startled Richard with a strange familiarity, as though it were that of a long dead friend. Richard knew of no such friend, however.

  The mare at his back, he turned to face the soldier, dagger raised.

  ‘And I would flee, if I were thee. Therefore I must conclude we are not wise men.’

  The two men faced each other across the soft grass of the glade, each resolved, fierce, unafraid. The light of startled recognition in their blue eyes likewise the same.

  Richard marvelled at this stranger that was no stranger. The armoured man seemed not much older than Richard, though his dark blond hair was longer and greyer than Richard’s. His eyes were as lined with suffering as his own. His unshaven cheek and jaw were like Richard’s; his nose, his mouth, his ears. It was like seeing into a subtly altered glass.

  Even as they stared at one another, the intruder altered. One moment he stood in gory plate and chainmail, then, as suddenly, the man stood naked, scored with wounds that scarcely bled. He fell to his knees, pale as death.

  Richard could see plain that though his shoulders were uneven, this man had two strong arms and two strong legs; that he lacked the painful hunch that drew such callous mirth from Richard’s brothers.

  In the very next moment, the man’s nakedness was covered in a tunic and trews, though head and feet remained bare. He raised his head, defiance and a terrible knowledge in his gaze.

  ‘Oh,’ he breathed. ‘I am done in.’ Grief darkened his gaze, which turned to relief and then, as he looked upon Richard again, to a grim understanding. ‘I know you.’

  Richard’s stout heart beat hard, for he knew witchcraft when he saw it. Yet this better-formed changeling seemed not malicious. A sorrowful light of kindness was in his eyes.

  ‘Greetings, spirit,’ said the stranger-like-Richard.

  ‘I am no spirit,’ said Richard, defiance defeating any qualm. ‘I am Richard, Duke of Gloucester and brother to the Duke of Clarence, on whose lands you trespass.’

  ‘The Duke of Gloucester, you say?’

  ‘Aye. Now name thyself, and what manner of creature you are.’

  ‘I am but a man, Richard, duke and brother of a duke. Those close to me call me Dickon.’

  Richard lowered his dagger, wary yet. No one in his life had ever been fond enough to call him his name’s dear diminutive.

  ‘If you are a man, Dickon, you are an uncanny one. You bear something of my likeness. Have you been sent to curse me? For I tell you, I am well cursed already.’

  ‘I think … the opposite may be true.’ Dickon smiled compassion at him.

  It inspired fury in Richard.

  ‘Have you dared come to pity me? I will not take it from you. Let me be plain. I distrust and mislike you. Who sent you to thus insult me with your pity?’

  Dickon sighed, patient and sad, as yet unpricked by Richard’s bristling jabs.

  ‘Perhaps Fate has sent me here, or an angel with some dark humour. Perhaps it was the will of the turning stars, which I saw when I so ignobly died.’

  Richard stepped back from this not-quite-mirror. ‘I am dead, then.’

  ‘One of us, certainly, and both in time. You do know who I am, then.’ Dickon raised a solemn smile.

  ‘I am I,’ said Richard carefully, ‘Though you are better made. Are you my mother’s wish made whole?’

  ‘I have my imperfections,’ said Dickon. ‘They are but the seeds of yours.’

  ‘But say again. Am I dead?’

  ‘I am not you, although our fates are intertwined,’ said Dickon, ‘for I too am Richard, once Duke of Gloucester, once King of England, for all too brief a time.’

  ‘King?’ breathed Richard. ‘Truly, am I?’

  ‘Truly, I was, at great cost.’

  ‘And thou art dead.’

  ‘Me, my wife, my son, my line, my hopes, all lost. Tudors rule England now.’

  ‘And who am I in this host of the lost?’

  Dickon shrugged. ‘My knowledge comes from somewhere outside me, yet it tells me you are a dream of me.’

  Richard was not impressed.

  ‘No dream was ever taunted as I am. No dream has daily curses such as I bear. No dream longs more for recompense. No, Dickon. I believe that you are a dream of me.’

  Dickon laughed. ‘It may be so, but whichever of us is the dreamer or the dreamed, here we are, face to face at the whim of fate.’

  Dread filled Richard from toe to top. He, who had always held so strong a sense of self, felt the world shifting under his feet. This Dickon was an apparition, appearing first as warrior, then as corpse, and now as a humble man of no great rank. Why then did Richard feel as though he, himself, was insubstantial, the outline of a man waiting to become real?

  In that fearful moment, Richard understood all, because the same terrible knowledge that had come to Dickon now came, full-formed, to his own mind.

  Dickon’s hand upon his withered arm startled him.

  ‘Be not bitter, Richard.’ Dickon’s touch was gentle and unflinching.

  ‘Why should I not?’ snarled Richard, for he knew now who was real. ‘I am but a cracked reflection – a monster made in your likeness. You were not born half made. Your brothers were not cruel to you. Your mother loved you.’

  ‘I’m dead all the same,’ said Dickon, rueful-kind. ‘Butchered on a battlefield, brutalized and scorned. The victors write my story, and you are he.’

  ‘It is not a good story,’ said Richard. ‘I wanted to be a good man, but that is not my fate.’

  ‘No.’

  For the first time since his lonely childhood, Richard’s heart overwhelmed him. His eyes glistened with tears, and his grief made him angry.

  ‘You have come to my only sanctuary to mock me,’ he accused. ‘Raise up your sword.’

  ‘I will not fight you, Richard.’

  ‘I would rather be cut than mocked to death.’

  ‘I neither mock nor pity you. In your heart is the seed of me. In mine, is a seed of you.’

  Richard was not pacified.

  ‘I have a scholar’s mind and a fishwife’s wit, the humour of a cat and the heart of a lion, and were I but made as straight-limbed as my father, I would be a prince instead of a half-blasted ape. But I can fight, and I will make thee eat thy mocking.’

  ‘I don’t want to fight you.’

  ‘Alas for all your wants, as I cry alas for mine.’ Richard raised his dagger and poised for combat. ‘I have heard counterfeit apologies by the cartload, tendered by those who should love me better by ties of blood. What can you bend to my ear that will make a more pleasing sound than scorn? You cannot hide it from me. Scorn is the music played me from my birth and for all my seven and twenty years, and I will cut the harp strings of your throat if you offer it me.’

  Dickon spread his arms, hands palm-up, and head high he stepped up into the point of Richard’s blade.

  Richard pressed until he knew the dagger must prick Dickon’s skin. Dickon betrayed nothing but compassion in his blue eyes.

  Richard’s knife fell.

  ‘You bewitch me.’

  Dickon laid a hand over Richard’s heart.

  ‘Storytellers will twist our lives for their own purpose, for their own times. But I know who you are. You are the lie they make of me. We are cuttings from the same root, and though we grow in different ways, we are brothers.’

  ‘I am destined to do terrible things,’ said Richard darkly and filled with despair.

  ‘You do not choose your course,’ said Dickon, hand still on Richard’s heart
as though it were a worthy thing. ‘Your blood is but the ink with which men write our story.’

  Richard’s voice was thick with sorrow. ‘I wished to be a good man, Dickon, despite all. But I am what the storytellers have made of you. No one will ever know me or the man I could have been.’

  ‘I know,’ said Dickon.

  ‘I will do such wicked, unforgiveable things. I will slaughter what you love and what you hate with equal rancour, to spite a world that cannot love me.’ Tears coursed freely down his rough cheeks, grief for everything he would not have and would become. ‘None will forgive what I shall become.’

  ‘I forgive you,’ said Dickon, and he took Richard, his other self, in his arms. Richard folded into the only tender touch he would ever remember.

  On soft green grass, by the singing brook, the king that was and the king to be embraced and wept.

  Face pressed to Dickon’s shoulder, Richard closed his eyes and bid goodbye to all the choices he might have made. In return came a clear, proud knowledge.

  ‘Your story will live again,’ he said quietly to Dickon. ‘Your roots in the earth will see the sun once more, and the flower of your truth will bloom. Justice will rise. You will regain the name of champion.’

  ‘I am truly but a man, and flawed withal.’

  ‘And I am but a villain, hand-made for the purpose.’ Richard stood tall as his bent back allowed and withdrew from Dickon’s embrace. He limped a circle around his other self, and when the turn was done, Richard wore a sly scowl.

  ‘Thus I embrace my storied fate. I will learn to dissemble. I will smile and murder while I smile. I will be the dagger and cut at everything for spite. I will be the twisted soul they say I am, yet so much blacker than their poor imaginations can conjure. I will build a monument of rage and blood and show them: you cannot treat child and man as a beast, but that the beast shall rise and devour them. They are so riven with their petty quarrels and hatreds that I, who hate them all equally, shall conquer. I am a villain and repent not.’