The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III

by Freda Warrington

  “They did what?” Richard loomed over the table, white and dangerous.

  “And the young king replied by instructing them to do everything in their power to remove you as Protector.”

  Ratcliffe shot to his feet, all florid outrage. John Howard said, “Christ!” Then there was heavy silence, filled – in Raphael’s eyes – with a mad dance of fire-demons.

  The door opened and a servant announced the Duke of Buckingham. No one responded. The duke made his usual impressive entrance in a swirl of blue, red and gold, like some mythical prince. Still no one acknowledged him. He frowned.

  “Have I arrived at an inconvenient moment, my lords?”

  Richard finally spoke, addressing Catesby.

  “Good. Now I know precisely where I stand.” He patted Ratcliffe on the shoulder. “Sit down, Dick. Harry, welcome. Excuse our bad manners. You’ve arrived at the best moment possible.”

  Confident again, Buckingham strode in and kissed Richard on both cheeks. “I’ve found him.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who has the proof. Bishop Stillington.”

  “Gods, Harry, are you sure?”

  “He’s here. May I bring him in?”

  Raphael, confounded by this exchange, watched as Harry Stafford ushered in the prelate. Stillington was a tall, stooped man with a mournful face and a nervous manner. His simple white robes hung loosely on him.

  “What news?” said Buckingham, shutting the door behind him. “What have I missed? You all look ready to do murder.”

  “Yours first,” Richard said coolly.

  Buckingham gestured to the bishop with a triumphant air. Stillington hesitated, said, “Er, my lord duke, in private, if it please you…”

  “This is private,” Richard answered. “These are my friends. Please, be seated.”

  Raphael jumped up and held chairs for the newcomers. Richard sat next to Buckingham, opposite the bishop.

  “What is it?” asked John Howard.

  “Something Edward once told me,” said Richard. “Long before he married Elizabeth Woodville. I was nine or ten and he was in his cups, of a mind to instruct me in the ways of women. He spoke of a noblewoman so virtuous that in order to seduce her, he had to go through a form of marriage with her. He roared with laughter as he told this tale.” Richard looked pale as he spoke. “Doubtless I laughed with him, and admired him for it. It was only in later years that his behaviour struck me as dishonourable. But I wondered, did the ceremony truly take place, and if so, would it not make his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville invalid?”

  Stillington’s lower lip trembled. “Just so, my lord. Edward married Elizabeth bigamously. Their wedding was not only rushed and secret, but unlawful. He was already joined to another woman. I know, because I was the one who joined them.”

  Buckingham grinned triumphantly. The rest sat stunned. Gloucester was rigid, his eyes narrow. “Who was she?”

  “Lady Eleanor Butler,” Stillington said unhappily. “Perhaps King Edward had true intentions towards her at the time. Certainly she would allow no sin to take place; and so I formally betrothed them, which ceremony, followed by consummation, as you know, is as binding as marriage, so he was not free…”

  “Yes, your account could not be more clear.”

  “True intentions?” Buckingham exclaimed. “I think not. Edward cast her in a nunnery when he’d finished with her!”

  John Howard put in, “Lady Eleanor Butler died some years ago, did she not?”

  “She was, er, very much alive, my lord, when he made his dishonest marriage to Dame Grey,” said Stillington.

  “Yes, but after her death,” said Howard, “all he had to do was to remake his vows to Elizabeth and their union would have been legal. Why did he not?”

  “How could he?” Richard said. “It would have been hideously embarrassing, especially to the queen. Perhaps she didn’t even know. He would have had to admit bigamy, go through another ceremony, and have his children declared legitimate by Parliament. Much easier to let the matter lie and hope no one found out.”

  “Still, better to endure some embarrassment than to leave your sons illegitimate and disinherited,” said Lovell.

  Richard put his head in his hands. “Oh, gods, Edward!”

  “I thought this news would please you,” said Buckingham, crestfallen.

  Gloucester raised his head, struck the table with an open hand. Stillington jumped. “Please me? To hear that my brother’s married life was a sham, all his children bastards, and that we have suffered the depredations of the Woodvilles for nothing? It doesn’t please me. Nor does it surprise me. It makes me despair to be part of my own family.”

  “The only worthy part,” said Buckingham.

  “However.” Richard exhaled. “It’s done. I asked for the truth and I can’t claim to be amazed.” He leaned towards the bishop. “Your Grace, would you swear the truth of this in public? Or swallow the secret and take it to the grave?”

  Stillington’s lip quivered. “Whatever you command, Lord Protector, I shall do.”

  “Good. You’ll find me most grateful. For now, say nothing, and await my word.”

  After Buckingham had shown Bishop Stillington out, Richard sat with his elbows on the table, hands clasped. His forefingers tapped silently together.

  “We needn’t tell anyone of this. I can silence Stillington. We can purge our memories, seal our lips, make masks of our faces. We can go forth and put young Edward on the throne, all as it should be, while I do what little I can to curb the excesses of his family. But….”

  He drew a breath and went on softly, “Even if my Protectorship were extended, in four years’ time Edward will reach his majority. Already he has asked Hastings to destroy me. Shall he not take his revenge on me, for removing his uncle and half-brother and all his beloved servants? What I did was necessary, but he’ll never understand that, and certainly never forgive. He’s a clever boy, calculating and vengeful like his mother. If they are not making war upon me within the year, it will be a miracle. As with George – they’ll take my lands and slaughter me.”

  “Gods, no!” Francis Lovell cried in disgust.

  “If I were unmarried, it would matter less. I’d as soon go into exile, and sell myself as a mercenary to fight the Turks. However, I have my wife and my son to consider. Must I stand by and see my son lose his inheritance, birthright, future, everything that should be his?” Richard paused, his voice darkening. “Do you know how many times Edward asked Parliament to grant him money for war? Then there was no war, and the queen’s family grew a little richer.

  “Cursed is the day that Edward my brother feigned marriage to Elizabeth Woodville.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Why should I exert myself to put her bastard upon the throne, at my own son’s expense? I’ll die before I see a Woodville government of this realm.”

  Buckingham placed his hand on Richard’s forearm, too familiar.

  “If you won’t say it, I will. You must take the throne. This is your means to do it. Your legitimate, legal means. The boys are bastards.” His green eyes shone.

  “I know. And I expected to feel glad, but…” Richard rose from his seat and stood in front of the fire, inky against the flaming glow. “I can still pull back,” he said. “It’s not too late. At this moment I am the most powerful man in the kingdom. Do you think I wish to give that up on the twenty-second of June at Edward’s coronation?”

  “No, and nor should you,” said John Howard.

  “But if I go on, you must all come with me. One more step, and we turn their nervous rumours into truth and there’ll be no going back. Don’t think for a moment this will be easy. Start, and we must go on to the bloody end.”

  Buckingham was the first to move. He went to Richard and fell to his knees, his hair spreading over his shoulders in a sun-coloured veil. His fervency was strangely disturbing. Catesby was next, then Raphael with Lovell beside him, then Howard, Ratcliffe, Tyrrel and all the others swearing fealty. Ra
phael’s heart drummed furiously. This was terrifying, and he could hear Kate talking of branches in the path, but this was the only path he could see, richly glistening with rubies. Or blood.

  Richard looked down at them with tears in his eyes.

  “You are the king, Richard,” said Buckingham. “The rightful king.”

  ###

  Anne was asleep, the lights burning low in her chambers. Her women were abed, or undressing; all but Katherine. If anything was said about her comings and goings, she knew how to silence gossipers with a basilisk stare; but she was always as discreet as possible. She slipped out of the door to meet Raphael, only to find her way blocked by a dark figure in the corridor outside.

  She started. It was Richard, alone and so quiet she hadn’t known he was there.

  Recovering, she made a minimal curtsey out of habit. A safeguard, to renew the wall of distance between them. She went to open the door to the duchess’s apartments so he could go through, but he didn’t move.

  “How is Anne?” he asked.

  “Tired out,” Katherine answered. “Asleep.”

  “Then I won’t disturb her.” Katherine pulled the door shut and stood waiting for him to go. He didn’t move. He asked softly, “How does she seem to you?”

  “She’s anxious, and not very happy,” Katherine replied frankly. “She misses her little boy. And I believe she’s troubled by rumours that she may rather unexpectedly become queen.”

  Richard’s eyes narrowed, glittering. Their stony light reminded Katherine of why people were sometimes so afraid of him. He had a way of freezing, as if he’d turned into a demon-winged statue. She’d made many impertinent comments to him in her time, but now she feared she had finally overstepped the mark.

  “Anne isn’t one to let idle rumours trouble her.”

  “But is the gossip idle? Only one man can answer that, but I imagine I’d as soon get blood out of a rock as I would get the truth from you.”

  Richard looked hard at her. He didn’t seem the same man who’d given her the Spanish mare; he was guarded and pre-occupied, as grim as she’d ever seen him. Then he gave a dry smile. Moving closer to her, he murmured, “Are you surprised that I’ve thought about it?”

  “No.” Her skin prickled. “I wouldn’t blame you at all.”

  “Is that the same as supporting me?”

  She felt her blood rising. “Are you admitting that you aim to…”

  He took her arm and drew her behind an arras. Behind was a little alcove, a doorway onto a roof. Moonlight came under the door, a bar of silver.

  “There is no other answer, Kate.” His face, what she could see of it in shadow, was sad, gaunt and chillingly determined. “I wish my brother hadn’t died, so we could have stayed in the north. However, he is gone, and his death has thrown us into chaos. A child-king always brings bloodshed. I’m the only one who can stop it. To end this uncertainty and shape the world as I want it? Of course I shall aim for that.”

  Her heat turned to shivers. He had just confessed to her what he’d been denying in public. The darkness around him seemed to shimmer, like a heat-haze. At last she managed to ask, “What will you do?”

  “Whatever I must.”

  “Legally? I don’t see what can be done to remove Edward…”

  His expression silenced her. “Fear must help me where the law won’t. I desire a strong and stable kingdom, Kate, not another thirty years of warfare. I have no choice.”

  “It sounds unbelievably dangerous. If you fail, you’re inviting assassination, attainder, execution–”

  “I know.” He looked steadily at her. Again she had the disturbing impression that an eldritch haze reared over his left shoulder. “It’s kind of you to worry about me, but you mustn’t. Nothing was ever gained without risk. I seem to have a taste for it.”

  “You should be telling your wife this, not me.”

  He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment, as if in pain. “Anne is exhausted. When she’s stronger, when there is firm news, I’ll talk to her. At present this would only add to her well of troubles.”

  Kate arched her eyebrows. “Whereas I am a bottomless well?”

  He touched her velvet sleeve. “Yes, you are, and that is a pure compliment. I know that any secret I share with you vanishes as if into a locked vault.”

  That’s truer than you know, she thought. “I’m no gossip, my lord.”

  “Well, I’ve told you now,” he said, so low she could barely hear him. “What are you thinking?”

  “Why do you care what I think?” she whispered back. “I have no political power.”

  “No. But you always speak frankly to me. And if you’re going to give me Medusa stares and disapproving looks for the rest of time, I’d like to be forewarned.”

  Kate bit her lip to stop herself laughing. How eerie, to be whispering to him in the dark, alone with him in the very heart of the plot. His hand on her sleeve felt like adultery.

  “I think,” she said slowly, “that England should have the best king possible. The best appointed. That is the philosophy of the Motherlodge.”

  “Diplomatic Kate. Would you be glad?”

  “Yes. Yes, I would. I’d have you a thousand times rather than that reed of a Woodville child. You have nothing to prove. Wouldn’t you rule the whole kingdom as fairly as you ruled the north? Who could not prefer you? And no, because it will bring you danger and Anne unhappiness. But mostly, yes. I suppose I’ve spoken treason, but you wanted the truth.”

  “And it sounded fervent.”

  “Did you doubt my loyalty?”

  He studied her for a time, his eyes changing like water; gentle, shrewd, thoughtful, calculating. “No, and you’re no flatterer. You see more clearly than most. I value that.”

  “I’m here for the comfort of your wife,” said Kate. “She may wish this were not happening, but she will support you with all her heart. And so will I.”

  Richard nodded gravely. “To crown a king I trusted, then return to my life in the north… that would have been my desire, but it can’t happen. It never could. And I’ve gone too far along the road to turn back.”

  Then he lowered his head, exhaling as if all the strength had gone from him. His eyes looked bruised.

  “I think you should go to bed and not haunt the roof all night,” she said. “You don’t look well.”

  “To tell you the truth, Kate, I have not felt well these past few days. I can’t eat, can’t sleep, there is a strange numbness in my right arm.”

  “Is there anything I can…”

  “It will pass.”

  She had trailed off because the fog that hung about him suddenly resolved into clear focus. A thick-bodied, gossamer eel was coiled about his chest and neck, squeezing. It looked like the elemental that Kate had seen Jane Shore summoning in the Motherlodge. Its shapeless head hung over Richard’s shoulder, regarding her from languid half-moon eyes.

  “Oh, hell and damnation,” she whispered.

  He looked quizzically at her. “I’m sure you’ve a good reason for swearing. May I know?”

  “You have a… someone has…”

  “What?”

  “You feel as if something is feeding upon your strength? There’s an elemental attached to you, the sort that lingers near the sick. A body made of many elementals, rather. But they don’t join like that, nor attach themselves to the healthy, unless someone deliberately shaped it and sent it to attack you. Someone who knew what they were doing.”

  Richard stared. “A sorcerer?”

  She nodded miserably. She couldn’t mention Jane Shore’s name. It was part of her oath to Auset, never to betray a sister.

  “Can you…?”

  “I’ll try,” she said. Her skin crawling, she reached towards him, her hands travelling over his chest, into the body of the elemental. As if it were fog, she couldn’t grasp it. Then her skin tingled. Grey coils went around her arms. She and Richard were both caught and she was suddenly terrified. If sh
e recoiled, it would split in two and they’d both be infected.

  Forcing herself to breathe, she whispered to the elemental, coaxing it as Jane had, as if enticing a shy wild animal. Gradually it began to slither onto her. She turned cold. Thousands of tiny fangs nibbled at her skin. Weariness crept over her and she could have fallen down and slept where she stood, not caring if she never ate, drank or saw the sun again.

  She made herself think of sunlight, imagined light shining out of her own heart, all rosy health and vitality. The entity recoiled, detaching from her body and sliding down her arms. Once it reached her wrists she flung it away and saw it dissipate into a thousand wisps that vanished into the moonlit bar beneath the door.

  “It’s gone.” She sighed, shuddering. Turning, she looked into Richard’s grave, incredulous face. “Whoever conjured it wanted to harm you. I doubt it would have killed you, just made you feel too deathly to do anything.”

  Richard was speechless for a few seconds.

  “I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t witnessed it.” He rubbed his shoulder. “The feeling is coming back. It tingles like fire. Some enemy sent a demon to afflict me… Will it return?”

  “No. And it wasn’t a demon. These beings are stupider than a horned toad and they have no more malice than a flea that sucks your blood.”

  “But to think I had no idea it was there.” He crossed himself. She smiled sourly.

  “Then it’s a good job I did.”

  “Who would do this to me?” His eyes, full of sudden fury, glared straight through her. She recoiled, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t tell him: either she lied to Richard, or she betrayed her oath to Auset. Either path meant doom.

  Then he spoke, saving her from having to answer. “Elizabeth Woodville, of course. She and her mother are known witches. They bewitched Edward into marriage. Who else?”

  Katherine said nothing. Turning hot and cold, she kept her face expressionless. Eventually his eyes came back into focus and he spoke more gently.

  “Forgive me, Kate. This is not your battle. I don’t know what to say, except to give you my heartfelt thanks.”