“Am I sorry to interrupt your revels? No. I am not. For centuries, you ignored me. Yes, I know. Because I was on the losing side at the end of what you now term the Wars of the Roses you preferred to airbrush me from history—a minor figure, a footnote.”
And here, playing at a tangent to the tiny American audience amid the throng of kings and queens, he added, "Like a one-term US president.
"To get in here, yes, I had to bludgeon the doors down, adopt an unpleasant Republican guise. But it worked. You see, we may be disabled but that doesn’t mean we’re not clever.
"After the battle of Bosworth centuries ago, what happened? Shamefully stripped of clothes and all dignity, carted off and dumped! Or was I found and buried a first time in Leicester Abbey in a tomb paid for by the pretender Henry Tudor in order to ease his conscience?
“After Henry Tudor’s wine-swilling, wife-killing, glutinous and ulcerous son, Henry VIII, broke up the monasteries and Leicester Abbey was destroyed, my body was thrown away. For centuries, all that was left of me was a plaque on Bow Bridge. Ignominy upon ignominy! But that wasn’t all that was left of me, was it?”
The crowd of kings was shamefaced. But since they were no longer threatened by a Republican bogeyman, they had grown back to their regular sizes. Tall and small, overweight or underweight, they no longer stood like a platoon of toy soldiers but more like craven courtiers.
Richard III loved the situation.
“Why now, you black and secret midnight hags?” he asked again. "I’m here so your revels now are truly ended.
“When your beloved William Shakespeare, intent on blessed fortune with the usurping Tudors, decided to bang their propaganda drum with his big timpani of rhetoric, it seemed I would be damned forever. Killer of a king, a brother, a wife, two adorable nephews, various forgettable in-laws and deservedly forgotten nobles, it seemed my infamy knew no bounds. And all in service to my supposed overweening ambition: to get the crown by hook or by crook. Not just a survivor of scoliosis but a fully deformed hunchback with a shrivelled arm and legs of different lengths. I was to be a defeated bogeyman whose only saving grace was my devilish, insolent wit as I turned my quest for the crown into a malignant black comedy.”
While saying this, Richard writhed this way and that, splaying his limbs akimbo as if copying and also deriding well-routined actors’ attempts to demonise his body.
"I could not turn in my grave but I positively shrivelled there, reviled and stripped of all human dignity. But out of this injustice and calumny perpetrated by the only Shake-Scene in the country, grew justice, albeit postponed. It was not the pro-York White Rose Society or the White Boar Society that rescued my reputation. Ironically, it was the damnable play by the double-dealing dramatist. For in this fictional drama, the character is the play. And the character with all his relish, his comic timing and his duplicity is immortal. That’s me, folks.
"So, friends, countrymen, and courtiers all, it is Richard III who is the most immortal of Shakespeare’s history kings—not the boy’s own hero, Henry V, but me—my ambiguity, my demonic language that is known, admired and repeated across the world. This detestable play has proved my salvation—not only the means of my resurrection but also my immortality. Not a penny-plain Richard but a Richard two-pence coloured, an iridescent Proteus rising like the phoenix.
"You could say I was the original ruin that Cromwell knocked about a bit. And like Charles II, I, too, rose from the dead. He returned from the political wilderness. I restored myself.
"Not even so commonplace a modern wasteland as a car park could bury me forever—whatever the public conveniences nearby. Even your dastardly playwright could not have devised it: the last degradation of the modern theatre—from the kitchen sink to the lavatory pan!
"And when they dug me up, sniffed my innards, dissected my skeletal remains to identify me through their miracle science ingredient, DNA, I found that I had risen like the boy king pharaoh Tutankhamen—another mislaid monarch whom Death has made immortal—so that the whole wide world woke up to celebrate me.
“You self-effacing kings and queens a-trembling before me (I say that ironically), whatever sort of ends you made, how pitifully few mourners there were at your funerals. But once I was discovered, my funeral was seen by the entire world. I know what you’re thinking: so many people turned up, or tuned in and watched it on TV because they wanted to make sure I really was dead. Was that it?”
There was not even a titter from the assembled monarchs.
“You can’t respond, can you? For to suggest, people wanted to see the end of me forever might imply that people also want rid of the hereditary monarchy.”
Silence, followed by suppressed sensation.
“And as for scoliosis? Did it prove an effective disbarment from the throne? A king who could not lead his troops! In fact it’s my armour and my horse that make me as strong—no, stronger—than any one of you.”
With that, Richard III clicked his fingers. Suddenly, his armour flew on to him.
“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
With another click of the royal fingers, the splendid metal horse reappeared from the shadows and onto it, Richard leapt. Raised in the saddle, he looked as invincible as his armour. His steed looked impregnable.
“My armour was secure and protected my arms and legs. In fact the combination of my spinal disorder and the armour fixed to my body made me, on horseback, a more formidable fighter than other not so disadvantaged soldiers.”
“How did he do that?” Ginny asked the little gardeners now sitting in the front row.
The eldest boy gardener shrugged his shoulders. Ginny remembered she had seen him before—as the boy playing the part of Philippa of Hainault in the little tableau of the burghers of Calais.
Richard III caught Ginny’s questions about the horse and said almost kindly, “I borrowed the horse from Queen Boadicea—across the way by Westminster Bridge—none of this modern-scholarship, newly-pronounced ‘Boudicca’ nonsense but ‘Boadicea’ like you’ve always called her.”
As if from nowhere, a bass voice said, “Queen of the Iceni.”
Richard III continued imperturbably. “She lent me the horse, after a little persuasion. What’s a queen good for, except to serve a king? The Ottoman Empire got that right.”
The sepulchral bass voice re-joined with, “Don’t let Boadicea hear you say that. She has special tortures for her enemies.”
Some queens in the abbey shuddered and rustled their gowns.
Georgie and Ginny realised that it must be the coal black horse that was speaking.
As if he resented being upstaged by a magic horse, Richard III said insistently, “I’m the big cheese around here.” And he said to the horse, “Me, not you. Think of me as Double Gloucester, like the Big Cheese—or, after our local football team became Top Dog, Red Leicester—even though their colours are blue.”
The youngsters were brought up even more sharply when Richard III winked at them. Then he put his formal kingly face back on and continued as if he was—and always had been—in charge—wherever he had lain for over five hundred years.
"Practically single handed, I bestowed glamour on Leicester Cathedral. I put it on the map. For William Shakespeare gave me charisma. He made my charm endless.
“And I survived all the falsehoods, all the calumnies because they enhanced my reputation. Every shrill accusation that turned my memory from man to monster echoed the devil-like images of church gargoyles. Whether I was hog or serpent, it was as if humankind had recreated me as a devil in its own foul image. It was as if it had also somehow cross-bred a monstrous giant insect. My original, Adonis-like self was turned into something like the fiend-like gargoyles all around us in old churches. And today what could be more apt for everyman than a disabled person who survived and thrived against all the odds?”
There was no answer to that. The more highly strung kings and queens shivered—some with class-conscious horror and a few with fr
isson as Richard continued, saying to Georgie, "There’s another F word for you: frisson. How do the damned writer’s words go? I should know. I’ve had years and years to learn them. Ah, yes:
Torment myself to catch the English crown:
And from that torment I will free myself,
Or hew my way out with a bloody axe.
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile.
And here Richard III smiled a ghastly smile.
And cry ‘Content’ to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears.
And here he dabbed away a pretended tear.
And frame my face to all occasions.
I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;
I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk.
How else does the boring old play go? Ah, yes:
I can add colours to the chameleon.
With that, he swirled his short bum-freezer cape to give his audience a glimpse of its rainbow coloured lining.
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down.
At that, he mimed pulling a crown down from a medium sized tree.
As Richard paused to take a breath in the Shakespearean sentences, the reluctant but rapt audience of kings and queens in the deathly silence heard the unmistakeable sound of a chair falling. For, in his eagerness to hear Richard more distinctly, Charlie Chancer had edged forward from safety beside a pillar and upset a chair. The clatter reverberated around the abbey. It seemed almost fatal for poor Charlie. In a trice, the more energetic kings were onto him.
CHARLIE CAPTURED
“Who goes there?” boomed Edward I.
“It’s a man. A living man. We’ve been betrayed,” answered Edward III.
“A man!” echoed other petulant kings.
In a trice, the more energetic kings were upon Charlie. Their resplendent clothes in different fashions fluttered together like confused petals in a riotous flowerbed. These flowers did not sing, however. Instead, they started whispering to one another, “He’s corrupt. He’s a pleb! Foh! He’s impure. He smells of greedy human life. Ugh! The stench is overpowering. Monstrous! Yuck!”
This was a supreme opportunity for wily James I. He called out triumphantly, “Make the sign of the holy cross against this shivering devil! Dear fellow kings, summon our little animals to prick and pierce him with their barbed snouts and horns.”
In response to this naughty invitation, a horde of different heraldic devices rushed over to Charlie and formed a malevolent dancing ring around him. Mysterious offstage castanets accompanied them and summoned insects such as midges and dragonflies, wasps and honeybees. There was another offstage chorus with devilish cries of, “Sting him! Bite him! Butt him! Choke him till he joins us in death!”
In this bad tempered way, the English kings and queens cried out for punishment for poor Charlie, their tremulous voices quivering around the abbey. They spat out their spiteful denunciations with vindictive English, French and German words. It was a cacophony of vocal abuse. Reverting to his original language the one German-born king was concerned that ‘Pinch him, burn him, twist him,’ would sound too mealy-mouthed. So George II called out, “Zwickt ihn, sengt ihn, last ihn dren,” in formidable German.
Not to be outdone, those sovereigns who fancied themselves as diplomats because they spoke French called out, “Pincez le, brulez le, faite le tourner.”
Determined as usual to show off, premier linguist Elizabeth I, rather than simply saying, “Pinch and poke him,” called out in Italian, “Pizzica, stuzzica.” Mary, Queen of Scots, who wanted to show her solidarity with the little court (even though it preferred to ignore her) cried out, “Torch him. Put him to the flame!”
Obligingly, more diminutive midges and beetles swarmed over Charlie and bit him. Charlie tossed and turned but felt nothing. Yet the spiteful royals whooped with ecstasy. They must have thought he really was being whipped for his audacity. But when Charlie saw the already tall figure of Charles II seeming to grow even taller as he strode towards him, he did feel a needle of apprehension. What would happen next? Charlie knew this unforgiving Charles II—this docent-turned-psychological-torturer—was his nemesis.
In the full fig of royal raiment and bewigged with cascading black locks, this time Charles II made no attempt to play good cop. His occasional mask of kindly support had gone. He was now a sneering bully boy incarnate about to speak with a severe malevolence that feared no opposition:
“So, you puny, petrified little man, well, what are you, hey? You’re an inane goat, Charlie boy, a braggart without either muscle or nerve to back you up. You like to think you’re an all-American beefcake hero. But the painful truth is you’re just a puny wise-guy stranded without a sidekick. You’re a percher—a social climber—who’s come to scale the castle walls but forgotten the ladder. Impudent speck of upstart humanity, all right! What on earth drove you to spy on us at our sacred masque? The usual penalty is death. When we last met, I warned you and I never warn twice. Don’t expect mercy. You deserve to die.”
Charlie said nothing. He was trying to work out what the kings knew and what they would—or, more precisely—what they could do to him. Were these spirits who were dead actually in some parallel life and he—a real living being—was not? What would happen to his kids?
“We have ways of making you talk,” said the nasty king.
“Stop! Stop this!” cried Ginny running forward. “He’s our father.”
In an unexpected moment of Christian charity, Mary Tudor implored the other sovereigns to think of Charlie’s two children. Somewhat surprised at her delicate side, the other monarchs yielded to Mary Tudor and so the American family was reunited. As he sat up, Charlie hugged his children together and blurted out one word: “Sorry!”
At the west doors, Richard III had been upstaged. He did not like being interrupted when he was in full flow. Yet Richard respected Charlie for his cheek. Indeed Charlie’s daring reeked of mortality and its inextinguishable challenges to authority. But Richard could do no more for his human friend. So Richard and his borrowed horse retired from centre stage and hid undetected in a dark recess of the abbey to wait until their turn came again.
When the little American nuclear family broke apart from their fond embrace, two giant spears with cruel points held by dark halberdiers fell between father and children. Then the sinister animal halberdiers lifted the two children away, snorting bad breath through their crude snouts as they did so.
Charles II beckoned one fearsome king to escort Charlie Chancer. Charlie did not recognise him. Charles II said, “I would relish interrogating our puny prisoner but, as you know—damn it—I have to be elsewhere to manage our queens. Take this wretched speck of humanity to another room of special purpose. Find out what you can—but, above all, hold him firm.”
And so it was that Charlie found himself alone in another special room. The spindly metal chair he sat on was uncomfortable. But that was the least of his problems. From some speaker placed high up, he heard the voice he had come to dread like no other as Mr Slime said, "When were you last truly alone, Charlie boy? With no phone, internet or any other connection with the outside world, how will you do? Let’s find out, shall we? Oh, something else. This time there will be no shimmering visions of, or voice-overs from, your dear children.
"Well, that’s the way we kings live in death most of the time. We don’t even have one another to talk to. Not even our most irritating relatives to speak to. We have to make the most of it until we dead awaken. And we don’t get a choice of when. When we are alive again, our three dynasties inhabit parallel but separate courts. Then, once in a blue moon—no, not even then—the hidden fates that rule our lives in death awaken us for our joint coronation exercises.
“In your intriguing, once-in-a lifetime opportunity,
we would like you to experience in life what we experience in death: complete solitary confinement. Don’t worry overmuch: you will be overseen by your favourite psychiatrist.”
Then Charlie heard George II’s voice say, “You are going to find it more difficult than you think. But don’t despair. Although you can’t see me, I will be with you every step of the way.”
Charlie knew this was no consolation.
Then someone using a dimmer switch raised the light in the room. Charlie’s eyes wandered around the room. He saw that it was an L-shaped room. He noticed a window just before the bend—or was it a two-way mirror?—on one wall. The window (or mirror) frame was an ornate gold shape with swirls and curls and scallop-shapes that he associated with Spanish baroque design. Into this frame and outwards at him appeared three women’s faces peering in at him and sniggering. One he recognised immediately as the Virgin Queen with one of her inscrutable expressions, always staring into the middle distance. The other two faces were much duller and more subdued so Charlie thought they must belong to two of Elizabeth’s handmaids. He did not say this aloud. But the other two spirits, who were, of course, Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart, read his thoughts and exploded to one another.
“To be the senior queen and to be taken for a maid servant,” said Mary Tudor, “it’s insupportable.”
“To be the fairest of us all and be treated as a drudge, it’s outrageous,” said Mary Stuart. “Off with his head!”
“That can be arranged,” said Mary Tudor. “Burning is far too good for him.”
Elizabeth I said nothing but smiled cruelly at Charlie’s unspoken denigration of her sister queens.
Changing tack, Charlie blurted out, “Gracious majesties, if you know where my kids are now tell me. They are my life—more than my life.”
Midnight in Westminster Abbey Page 20