Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu

by Jonathan Green

  Tyrell shakes his head. “’Tis a story that should never be told, boy. Go now, believe in the comforting mythology your new lord and master Tudor is busily creating. Forget me.”

  He stands, and More takes an involuntary step back, surprised at how tall the condemned man is. The disturbed shadows rear around Tyrell, make him appear to rise to the very apex of the arched ceiling itself. There is an unsettling gleam in his dark eyes I have never seen before, as potent as the white glare of his teeth, and I cast an anxious glance over my shoulder to the locked door.

  Thomas retakes his seat and attempts to hide his unease. He clears his throat and says, “You advanced highly and quickly through the ranks. By bloodshed. One who lived for slaughter. Quite a butcher’s bill you racked up, Sir James. George, Duke of Clarence was your first assassination – yes, we know it was you — then Rivers, Buckingham, Stanley, Grey... All to secure your master’s grip on the throne. A common soldier elevated to nobility, an iron fist in a silken glove… a blunt instrument painted with fair and deceptive colours.”

  Tyrell snorts. “You have a way with words, sir.”

  “A blunt instrument…but was it Richard who wielded you?” More extends a hand to the bundle and pulls the silk away. Despite the weak light from my lantern and More’s candle, it is as though a sun has exploded in the cell.

  The silver cross is two feet long. Its gilded foliate borders glitter like starlight; the solid gold circling the roundels of the arms, head and base shine like the midsummer sun.

  Tyrell hisses with horror. His withered arm rises to hide the cross from his sight. His limb is hideous in the full glare reflected by the relic: yellow skin covers waxy, lumpy flesh, streaked along the skeletal shaft like melted candle wax. The stumps of his fingers are putrid, open sores, like obscene, cancerous polyps.

  “A processional cross recently unearthed from Bosworth, Sir James. As the roundels display the Sun in Splendour – the York emblem – it was sent to the royal court for destruction. Fortunate that I, who am learned in matters of arcane geometry, inspected it first.”

  He taps the bronze alloy Corpus and the strange, ebony structure that has replaced Christ’s head, while averting his eyes from the strange jewel. The light does not reach it; it appears a writhing pool of blackness. “This gem would appear to be of obsidian. It is no such thing. The material of which it is crafted is nowhere to be found on God’s Earth, and the angular surfaces carved herein are beyond the wit of any human craftsman. To even look at it for longer than a moment will turn the mind to potage.”

  Tyrell is trembling. He refuses to look at the cross.

  “It is known among the scholars of old as a Shining Trapezohedron, a polyhedron beyond man’s capacity – and sanity – to craft.” More stares hard at Tyrell. “The Pnakotic Manuscripts call it the Shining Splendour of Azathoth. The name Azathoth was last heard at Richard’s court, one of the many curses uttered by Margaret of Anjou.

  “Tell me of Margaret, Sir James. Tell me of the powers invoked after Tewkesbury. Of the sundering of the seal that separates this world from the next. Tell me what you know of the Shining Splendour of Azathoth.”

  Tyrell lowers his cancerous limb and fixes More with those hypnotic pools of blackness that have seen so much death and horror.

  “It was birthed in the battlefield… in the burst of a sun…”

  May 4th, 1471 – The River Avon, one mile southwest of Tewkesbury Abbey

  When the light exploded, I forgot everything. I forgot the oppressive heat of the morning, the smell of spent gunpowder and smoke from both sides’ artillery, the fallen arrows that turned the battlefield into a giant pin-pillow, the hot blood that stained my plate armour and filled my nostrils with the stench of death. I forgot the fearful whinnies of our dismounted horses, half a mile to our south.

  I forgot the fear that had gripped our battle, the vanguard commanded by the king’s youngest brother, Richard of Gloucester. And I forgot how the fear turned to joy with the success of our surprise force of over two hundred spearmen in the evil lanes of the wooded section of the Colnbrook that became a tributary of blood, feeding the Avon with the spilled life fluid of men from both Houses.

  Until the sunburst we saw nothing but the billmen, rising from the hidden ditches within the ancient oak woods, their glittering curved blades surmounted by top and rear spikes atop ash poles that stretched to the sky, seemingly sprung from the depths of Hell to wipe out the Duke of Somerset’s battle. And Hell is what we descended into, gladly and gleefully.

  Their front formation fell to our pikes, three hundred men suddenly disembowelled, their innards entangling with the ancient roots that had pressed through the leaf litter and topsoil like the exhumed remains of ancient serpents, and our billmen dropped their halberds and finished them off with dagger and shortsword. Lightly armoured in sallets, mail standards and brigandines, the billmen had lost their advantage of surprise and distance and would be no match for the heavy plate armour, swords and maces of Somerset’s advance had they not been joined by Richard’s battle: innumerable soldiers in their own plate armour, wielding our own mace and sword.

  We descended into the maelstrom of the mêlée, where each man lost sight of his comrades and commanders and fought for his own survival in a world of crashing blades, pierced plate and gored flesh, spurting hot blood that blinded, and barely human howls of agony that deafened.

  The Lancastrian forces of the deposed king, Henry VI, and Queen Margaret, advancing from the north over the patchwork ground of foul lanes, hedges, and deep dykes, outnumbered us by over one thousand men. But not one hour ago King Edward IV, in a stirring address accompanied by an angelic chorus of trumpets, amidst a blaze of banners bearing the Flower of York, birthing within a glorious golden sun, had convinced us we would prevail.

  Our eyrie is built in the highest cedar’s top, dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun. For God is with the House of York.

  The trees grew in height, reared above us and shut us into darkness; we fought without the blessing of sunlight, for now the sun scorned us.

  A mace crashed into my side and I spun, almost falling to the churned ground. I arrested the second blow with my sword, pushed the pommel into the open visor of the armoured man and saw his mouth erupt in a shower of blood and broken teeth. I slashed, thrust back, and he crashed to the ground. To my left I saw our commander, Richard of Gloucester, his helm cast aside and terror in his youthful eyes, and I hesitated.

  Richard was only eighteen, ten years my junior, but a natural leader whose prowess put more seasoned warriors to shame; he had distinguished himself on the fog-strewn battlefield at Barnet the previous month.

  All that was now forgotten. He sank to the churned mud and carnage, on his knees, his sword abandoned. His hands clasped together, misshapen in steel gauntlets, and his head tilted forward.

  Praying, in the midst of battle! A cold fury took me, to see our commander abandoning his natural ability and martial experience, to commend his soul to God rather than inspire his men to battle to the last breath. This is the moment when battles are lost: when men look to their lord and commander for strength and see only a mewling boy, resorting to grovelling on the ground like a tiny wren, hiding from mightier birds of prey.

  “Richard!” I shouted, the protocol of using his title forgotten. My voice echoed through the slaughter field and I saw several combatants flinch. I strode toward him, stepping over opened corpses.

  “Gloucester! To me, man!” I was within yards of him. He must have heard me, for I clearly heard his whispered words, his fevered exhortations – but I could not understand them. I froze.

  His black hair was matted and drenched with sweat that ran down his lopsided cheeks. His words became guttural, his face distorted by a snarl, his thick lips twisted and drawn back from his uneven teeth so the prayer became even less intelligible – the snuffling, questing sounds of a boar. He shrank into himself, his drooping right shoulder exacerbating the crookback that his custom
pauldrons usually disguised so well.

  The darkness grew; shadows lengthened, hiding the carrion of battle carnage in their sinuous blackness. Plate armour and sharpened blades no longer reflected the summer sunlight – they became blurred, grey shapes from which the light shrank. I glanced up, and saw nothing above the treeline but thickening greyness, like the fog that had obscured the battlefield at Barnet.

  But darkening. This was no repeat of Barnet; this was no natural mist. I looked down to the still muttering Richard, but the darkness was absolute. I put my hand out to where my ears told me he would be, laid gauntleted fingers on steel pauldron.

  I felt fire, the overlapping steel and leather coverings no protection from the heat that scorched my fingers. An angry hiss interrupted the incantation, rolling into a roar that shook the grove. The ground trembled, the invisible fire continued to consume my hand, and then the light exploded.

  I did not know its source – it came from all around me, from above me, below me… and through me, blinding me to my surroundings. It was not the golden light of a glorious summer sunrise, nor the cold glare of a harvest moon. It was not the harsh flickering fire of a candle trapped behind a magnifying glass, not the fierce rage of an inferno.

  It was a light that is beyond my powers to describe, and yet there was something familiar about it. A feeling that I had seen its like before, many years ago. All I can say is that at the time, I felt I was being remade, forged in some unearthly furnace; reborn. And then I knew where and when I had seen this light before.

  It was the light we all see just before we enter the world. When we leave the darkness of our mother’s womb, just before we take our first breath to scream and cry with anguish at the pain of being alive. A light we forget immediately after, because man’s mind is not able to ponder the awful power of the light of Creation.

  I was a man, with a man’s sensibilities and a man’s knowledge of the world. I was not meant to see this light. To feel it, to hear it. To taste it, to breathe it.

  To live it.

  To be conscious of the things that exist within the light, and beyond it. Things that were aware of my presence, my intrusion, and turned what passed for eyes upon me.

  I heard the roars of demons that were too horrific even for Hell, heard the fluting melodies of beings that were more beautiful than the most blessed seraphim in Heaven and I do not know which ones terrified me the most.

  The light vanished before my mind turned in on itself. For the second time in my existence, I was deposited upon the physical reality of this world, amid the blood and carnage of my fellow sufferers, and I wept anew at my rebirthing.

  Only when I became aware of physical sensations – of the water soaking my skin through my carapace of leather and steel plate; of the cramp in my legs from where I had lain unconscious; of the feel of cold, damp stone under my tear-streaked cheeks; of the metallic aroma of blood and spent life that assailed my nostrils; of the cries of disembowelled men thrashing and drowning in their own blood as the sons of York despatched them from this world; of the shivering of my body and the thirst that afflicts all men after battle – only then was I able to connect with this Earth once more, to be aware of my surroundings.

  The ancient woodland had gone, changed for the cool sanctuary of the Norman splendour of Tewkesbury Abbey where Queen Margaret of Lancaster had sought sanctuary. Dying bodies twitched and writhed among the shattered pews of the nave, their spears splintered, the pikes bright with their owners’ blood which fed the chill air with spectral wisps of steam as it cooled. In lifeless heaps of steel plate and mail, the broken bodies of armoured knights lay like destroyed siege engines. I examined one with trepidation, frowned at the blistered holes, glowing red hot, gouged into steel plate by what looked to be hooves…

  I crossed myself hastily, an attempt to abjure the Dark One. For surely, only Satan and his children could make such footprints. The sun shone timidly through the glass windows, as if fearful of shining its light on the carnage and horror beneath it.

  I got to my feet, my boots squelching with blood and river water where I had crossed the Avon in a trance. I looked for my sword, felt relief when I saw the familiar pommel – and horror and disbelief when I saw where the blade was embedded.

  I would never be able to use the weapon again; the sword tip had punctured the knight’s breastplate as though it were butter, the blade passed through and buried, impossibly, two feet into the stone flags of the sanctuary floor. Its edges glowed scarlet and blood sizzled and steamed where it met the escaping life fluid from the dead man’s chest. His visor was open, and his eyes stared at me with a look of horror that must surely have accompanied him to death. The gold circlet on his helm that marked him to be the young Lancastrian heir to the throne, Edward, Prince of Wales, was spattered with blood.

  A loud keening reached my ears, an unmistakably female voice filled with grief and despair, cruelly amplified and distorted by the strange acoustics of the abbey church. I looked to its source, and a shadow shuffled across the altar. I regarded it, watched it unfold and rise, take shape with wings of scarlet and precious stones. And yet the grief on Margaret of Anjou’s face was not for her dead son, lying pinned to the stones of the House of God. Her despair was directed to the vaulted roof, as though asking God Himself for forgiveness.

  “I am Mother of Ruin.” Her hands clutched to her heaving, shivering breast what I took to be the silver and gold processional cross taken into battle by the Prince of Wales. “A cockatrice hath I hatched to the world… Lord God, forgive me. Pour all your tears unto me, mankind, for I am your sorrow’s nurse.”

  “All will have cause to wail the dimming of your shining star, my lady.”

  I froze. The new words seeped into my ears, floating like mist, ethereal and unearthly, but there was no mistaking the voice.

  Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

  “Tyrell. Turn and face me. Face your master… your king.”

  Edward IV, his brother, was alive, outside the abbey – I heard the triumphant rally of trumpets and heard the King’s cries of thanksgiving to God, saw glimpses of banners bearing the Sun in Splendour through the parts of the altar window that had not been sheathed in blood.

  Margaret took her eyes from the ceiling and her arms dropped when she beheld the thing that spoke behind me. The cross slipped from her fingers and I gasped at the carved figure within the radiant sunbursts. Christ’s body writhed, the holy agony of His Passion, yet a blasphemy was embedded where His head should be. A black, gleaming gemstone, carved in crazed angles that reflected and refracted light that suddenly coalesced, focussed upon the man it knew observed it.

  And now I was observed. A black portal opened to another realm where alien intelligences regarded me with hunger.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath and turned, choosing instead to face a new horror.

  No monster greeted me. Instead, Richard of Gloucester stood before the dispatched Prince of Wales. Fingers slowly unfolded from the hilt of the sword buried in the knight’s chest, extended like serpents, and the hand rose, palm upwards.

  I could see little of his face until the light that was his halo, as bright as a sunburst, faded. And the smile on his face was that of a saint.

  “Loyaulté me Lie.”

  May 5th, 1502 – The Garden Tower, London

  “Loyalty binds me.” Thomas More whispers the words, the translation of Richard III’s personal motto. He has been as enraptured by Tyrell’s account of Tewkesbury as I; his quill has not moved once.

  “We were both bound to each other – but not by military brotherhood. Not by familial ties or duty. It was a loyalty that was forced upon us by… by the thing that came through the gate. Remember: I held his arm when the invocation finished. Our destinies were joined at that moment.”

  He grimaces and glances at his crooked arm.

  “King Edward knighted me for my valour, soon after Henry VI met his end in the Tower at Richard’s hand. Richard did sing splendidly of m
y actions to his royal brother, made me to be the hero of the engagement. ‘The Soaring Eagle of Tewkesbury.’ A mass murderer in the House of God, in the service of the House of York.”

  A grim smile twists his features. “I had no recollection of my journey from the ancient wood to the abbey, and only Richard bore witness to my killing of the Prince of Wales, and my slaughter of dozens of surviving Lancastrian knights.”

  I pause. The slaughter had been so great the abbey had to be closed for over a month until it was purified and reconsecrated. I tried to imagine the scene, the blood… I could not.

  “King Henry was murdered, then.” More is more focused on the lives – and deaths – of notable figures; the fates of the common soldiery is of little import to him. “Why did Edward allow his brother to do that? Did his conscience not trouble him?”

  Tyrell laughs, without mirth. “Do you know what Richard said, to the newly restored King of England? “Conscience is but a word that cowards use. Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.’ Edward did not resist; he shrank, allowed Richard to snuff out Henry’s life. He even agreed to Richard’s demand to have Margaret present to witness the killing.”

  Thomas has begun to write again. The writing is faster, the nib louder, scratching like rats in the walls.

  “Bathed in that eldritch sunburst, the wren became an eagle.” Tyrell grimaces. “But a darker bird of prey you would not find. His new direction was fuelled by what Margaret had unleashed.”

  “And you did aid him.”

  He glowers; the black pools of his eyes glitter. “Of course, I was his bondsman. ‘Bound in chains of loyalty, forged by the light from the grove, my dear Tyrell. My servant and brother in darkness.’ We were cursed, Master More, by our rebirth in that sunburst – we saw the realm of gods older than this world and the void that hungers to consume all.

  “Human acts, politics, war, power plays – and the love and kinship we feel for each other – all these are nothing in the great scope of the universe. That is why I murdered with impunity, with no thought to my soul or the grieving of wives and children left behind.