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

by Alex Marchant

  They’d always done it. To everyone. But now it was worse. Since I’d given them such a fantastic reason.

  The best.

  Once news of my hospital visits was out.

  ‘Hunchback!’

  ‘Crookback!’

  ‘Spaz!’

  I’d had enough. I rang the bell and flung myself to the front of the bus.

  The driver was puzzled as the doors folded open.

  ‘This isn’t your . . .’

  But I was down the step, on to the kerb, didn’t glance back.

  The doors grated shut, brakes squealed, a glimpse of pale faces pressed against the back window as the bus passed me, and I was alone.

  The wind speared the back of my neck. I should have brought my scarf. But Mum in the morning, twittering, put me off.

  ‘Wrap up warm, Jack. Don’t forget your scarf. They’re forecasting snow.’

  I didn’t need it, I’d thought then. Five minutes from stop to home. Barely even that.

  Don’t fuss. Nothing’s changed.

  But now . . .

  I pulled my narrow collar up, hunched my shoulders against the chill, settled the strap of my school bag across my chest.

  Looked around.

  Not the best place to leave the racket and fug of the school bus.

  To one side, grey-wall-bounded fields, speckled white with lamb-heavy sheep. Across the road, only moor.

  Heather, bracken, bilberry, stretching up to the horizon. Not purple, golden, blue-pimpled green now. Just every shade of dismal brown beneath the dull grey clouds.

  Swelling, bellying clouds.

  Snow-heavy clouds.

  The footpath sign stabbed upwards, stark against their massing bulk.

  The ‘short cut’. Across the moor top.

  My fingers scrabbled in my pockets. A bus was due in half an hour. If I could find enough cash . . .

  Two 10ps and some coppers.

  The rest I’d spent on cookies at break time. One for me, one for Joel. He’d taken it, eaten half, then gone back to the others. His friends. Their sniggering had reached my ears before I’d turned away.

  A battered old Land-rover grumbled past me as I hesitated on the verge. The first traffic since the bus. It turned into a drive further up the road. Bounced over the ruts towards a grey-stone farmhouse beyond the sheep fields. Ryan and his big brother returning home.

  Had he seen me – standing – waiting – for what?

  I thrust my hands in my pockets again, crumbs from the cookies digging under my nails.

  Looked both ways.

  The path was sharp points of icy mud and stones under my smooth-soled school shoes.

  Last time I’d been up here, after early autumn rains, water had been standing ankle-deep on the soft peaty soil. Some remained, skatey-hard sheets. I skirted them as I trudged up the hill, and overhanging frozen fronds crunched underfoot.

  The narrow way meandered up through the thick plant cover until it met the low grey clouds far ahead. There, I knew, lurked the hollows of the old quarries, overgrown now, but watched over by crouching crags of bare stone. Their blank faces had been cut by men years, maybe centuries, before. Yet no heather or ferns had gained a foothold on their sheer weathered sides.

  I paused, looking ahead.

  High above, where the moor touched the sky, the clouds became mist, fog even, that danced in the sharpening breeze.

  Now was the time to turn back, if I was sensible – to go back to the road, see if my mobile could find a signal, call Mum for a lift if she was at home, or start the long tramp along the tarmac, dodging the speeding cars.

  I looked back.

  Far off now, in the fields, three figures, bundled in warm camouflage, were slowly urging ewes towards an open gate. Three dogs too, ducking low, darting in black-and-white flashes, circling the sheep.

  Ryan and his family, herding them to the shelter of the cluster of barns on their farm.

  Before the snow came.

  If I were sensible . . .

  Ryan. Joel.

  ‘Spaz!’

  In a few minutes I was at the top, among the dips and dells and humps left by the ancient quarrymen.

  It was hard going. My breath rasped in my throat, the icy wind – whipping up now – knifed inside my nostrils. The mist was twirling closer around me. The once-familiar bump, bump of my school bag had become a dead weight, thumping, pressing – textbook-heavy – against my – back.

  My back.

  Did it hurt?

  No. Not yet.

  The pointy textbook corners didn’t poke it, didn’t hurt. Not through bag canvas, padded jacket. Not yet.

  But would they? One day? That weight? Any weight. Any walking? Any climbing?

  Before my feet the dark soil, frozen heather, became sandy, gravelly, pebbly. A slope up. A scramble. Almost a climb. Rocks above my head, to the sides, a little stone canyon enclosing a path.

  I didn’t remember this. Not on my other walks. Had I missed my way in the swirling mist, fog, cloud? It pressed against me now, clammy cold against my face, my hands.

  I looked to left, to right.

  Only grey, glowering cloud. Brown heather, brown bracken. No other path.

  Then came a sharp spike in the breeze, pricking my cheek, the back of my hand. An icy spike. Ice crystals caught on my black padded sleeve.

  Snowflakes.

  Twirling, whirling snowflakes.

  Dancing about my hatless head. Wuthering in my ears. Stinging in my eyes. Chilli-painful on my lips.

  I licked them off. They melted on my tongue like a tasteless slush puppy.

  I looked back the way I’d come.

  Grey snow-shroud cloud, curtaining the whitening heather. A screen of snowflakes hiding the way back. No sign of any path at my feet. Dense bilberries, settling snow. Streaming foggy snow.

  There was no way back.

  So I had to push on. Up the stony canyon, where flakes were beginning to stick, even where the path was steep. I stumbled. Stones skittered from under my feet, rattling to the bottom. I put out my hands to help my balance, then tipped down on to all fours to scramble up the last slope.

  Standing now at the top, beneath my feet the ground was flatter, but a great buffet of wind almost knocked me sideways, snow like hail hammering against me.

  I crouched down again. My cheeks were numb now, and my fingers stiffening. As I shoved them in my pockets, I realized for the first time how cold I was. The heat from my anger and shame and the fast walk across the heather was no longer enough. The cold was seeping in all over my body. I started to shiver.

  I swung my arms around and thumped them across my chest like they did in films, but all that did was cause flurries in the flying snow.

  I looked about me, squinting through the grey-white maelstrom. Only jumbles of rocks and glimpses of scrubby heather beneath their cloaks of snow. No sign now of any path ahead. And in this white wilderness, hemmed in by the blustering fog of snow, I no longer had a clue which way I wanted to go.

  Follow the footpath up hill, across the quarried moorland tops. Eventually reach the far side, stand there gazing across wide Wensleydale. Fields beginning far below, edged by grey drystone walls, quarried from these tops. Checkerboard, patchwork, the tourist brochures said.

  Follow the path to the road winding through them – from there to the bridge. Across the slow-moving river, then up to Middleham village outskirts, the ruined castle standing proud, on guard, at its highest point. A glance up at the huge flag flapping in the breeze at the top of its tallest tower before opening the front gate and home.

  But not today. I had no idea where Middleham was.

  Shivers ambushed me again. I had to walk somewhere or I’d be frozen to the spot.

  I blundered on forwards, whatever way that was, my feet sinking into deepening snow drifts. Up to my ankle, then my shin. Then a trip, a stumble forward.

  Hands outflung, I landed in the snow.

  All wet now, all freezing
. The wind still blustering about my ears.

  I curled into a ball against the storm, hugging my knees, my back arched above me.

  My back.

  It didn’t hurt, but I could feel it. Arching. Curving. Snowflakes settling on it. Soon it would be all that could be seen of me. Above the snow. If I didn’t move.

  I lay there motionless, feeling the cold invading me, creeping into my body.

  Drowsiness began to steal over me. My thoughts drifted like the snow.

  What should I do?

  The doctors had said it would only get worse as I got older. Would twist my ribs, squeeze my lungs, perhaps make me struggle for breath. That I should go to hospital to have it fixed, sooner rather than later.

  But did I want to?

  Perhaps I’d just stay here instead and see what would happen. Now I was starting to feel strangely warm.

  Through the raging of the storm, came a different noise.

  What was it? The short, sharp bark of a dog? Or a fox?

  I moved my head from side to side, trying to shake the sound from my ears.

  Why was I lying face down in the snow?

  What had happened?

  Then I remembered. And knew I must have been dreaming. There was no animal here. Not in this wild whiteness.

  And I knew I mustn’t stay here – that it was dangerous to be caught in the cold and the snow. That I might die of . . . what was it? Hypo–

  I shook my head again to clear it.

  Hypo– hypo– thermia – that was it. That was the big word doctors used to mean freezing to death. Why couldn’t they just say that?

  Like – scoliosis. That was another big word they used. When they could just say ‘curve of the spine’.

  ‘Hunchback!’

  ‘Crookback!’

  ‘Spaz!’

  I pushed myself to my feet and shook myself like a dog to dislodge the snow. Swaying at the blast of the wind, I stumbled on again. But the wind was so strong, and my feet so frozen and heavy I could barely lift them, and I could still see nothing through the driving snow.

  And all around now the darkness was creeping up.

  I’d never been on the moortops at night. I’d never been on the moor in snow.

  My chest hollowed at the thought, fear gripped me.

  How would I get home?

  Mum would soon miss me – it was her day off and the school bus would have been and gone by now. But what would she do? She couldn’t come and search for me in the snow. She wouldn’t know where to start. I had no friends on the bus to let her know. The driver? Perhaps, eventually. But what then?

  I’d heard of the Mountain Rescue. They found people. Even round here where there were no mountains. Tourists, walkers, climbers, summer or winter. Anyone who got lost in the dales, fell off crags, injured themselves. Phone 999 they were told.

  What about my mobile?

  Unslinging my school bag, I squatted down, rummaged in it till my fingers closed on the slim cool shape. I dragged it out. The screen cast a warm glow in the swirling snow.

  No signal.

  Of course.

  Not here, not up on the moortops.

  Bloody phone company. And I’d asked Mum for a better phone. Maybe after this . . .

  If I got home.

  I shoved it back and hunched over the gaping bag, watching snowflakes drift into its dark depths.

  Was there anything else in there I could use?

  Books mostly. Pens and pencil case. Maths instruments. Remains of my packed lunch. My stomach rumbled, but there were only crusts and an apple core and a biscuit wrapper.

  Anything else?

  Two conkers left from the autumn in the side zipped pocket, scrunched-up paper, some string. Why?

  Then my scrabbling fingers brushed against smooth plastic, and pulled a small object out in triumph.

  A lighter!

  The one I’d found by the bus stop last week. Translucent red. A spark of colour in the grey-white world, like a fluorescent buoy on a stormy sea.

  Straightening up, I shielded my eyes against the waves of wind-driven snow.

  Looked all around.

  A moment’s gap in the icy torrents, a glimpse of – what? A crazy twisted skeleton, stark black against the darkening veil of snow. I stepped forward, saw an ancient, gnarled tree. A gust blew the white curtain across once more.

  Shouldering my bag, clutching the lighter, the wind howling around my ears, I battled towards the tree. A hawthorn, clinging to a rocky outcrop at the height of my head. But knobbly roots hung down, a shadowy hollow beyond.

  Pushing past the roots, I crawled in. Almost a cave, just big enough for me, bent double. No room for snow to follow. Leaves rustled as I squirmed to get comfortable. A twig cracked.

  Sheltered from the worst of the wind, my thoughts cleared. Dry leaves, dry twig?

  Scraping a handful or two of leaves into the small space between my shoes, I felt beneath me for the twig. My hand grasped it, broke it into smaller pieces, propped them up on the leaves, wigwam fashion.

  My fingers trembling, numb from the cold, I tried the lighter. Once, twice, three times. A flame blossomed. But no leaves or twig caught its fire. Edges smouldered, tiny trickles of smoke were whipped away by wind sneaking in. Even the crumpled paper only charred.

  Another try, and another. Still no joy.

  The stinging now in my eyes was tears of frustration and fear. Pictures crowded into my mind – rescuers finding a frozen body huddled among tree roots. There was barely room to move, to try to keep warm. I was no longer on the exposed top of the moor, but even here the bitter cold forced its way in.

  Soon not only my fingers were numb. From my feet, my bum, my ears and neck, the cold was seeping through me, stealing along my calves and knees, arms and elbows, right into the very heart of me.

  Yet as my head filled and my eyelids drooped, warmth grew inside, spread out from my core, washing me on gentle sunlit waves, until . . .

  . . . until a sound wormed into my ears. Low and quiet at first, it rose with the wind outside. Until a full-throated primeval howl echoed round my hiding place.

  Wolves!

  Awake again, alert again, my heart, my mind racing.

  Wolves? It couldn’t be. There were no wolves in Yorkshire. Surely not anywhere in England.

  Yet that howl . . .?

  All quiet again, bar the wind’s moan.

  I hugged my arms around my chest, leaned sideways to peer through the grille of tree roots. Fat snowflakes splattered my face. I wiped them away, blinking to see.

  Dark night had closed in. Nothing there but the still falling snow. But at least no long, grey-whiskered nose or fiery eyes faced me.

  But in that moment I remembered – remembered the old tales told around the village.

  Of the strange beast that was thought to roam the moors. Not often seen, and then only in darkest shadow; seldom heard, but always on winter’s nights, and from far away.

  No one agreed on what it was. A gigantic cat or panther escaped from a zoo? A wolf, or werewolf (surely they weren’t real)? Or perhaps, some said, the great ghost hound of a long-dead king who had once called Middleham Castle home.

  But all were agreed on one thing – it was terrifying.

  The hammering of my heart drowned out the tumult outside. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, tried to steady my breathing. Surely surviving a snowstorm was enough for one boy to cope with, without coming face-to-face with the Beastie?

  The shock of the howl had sent a surge of fire through me. Now the cold was nipping again. I wriggled my toes and fingers against it, tried to stretch my neck, my back, despite the low roof. But sleepiness began to crawl through me, and with it that weird warming glow.

  Perhaps – yes – perhaps I was safe here after all . . .

  That was when I heard it.

  A voice.

  ‘Boy!’

  Outside, not far from my cave.

  ‘Boy?’

  More urgent now,
louder, above the groaning wind.

  ‘Boy – come. Take my horse.’

  Horse? Out there? In this weather?

  And who was speaking?

  ‘Hurry, boy! He must be held while I don my mantle.’

  A man. The accent was strange – or perhaps just the way of speaking. But –

  Was this a rescuer? Had they found me?

  But with a horse?

  Perhaps that’s what they used up here on the moors. In the snow.

  The voice spoke again, closer now.

  ‘Come, boy. You must – What? Are you sleeping? In such weather as this? Come, wake up! They say the cold creeps into the mind and brings it dreams of warmth and laughter as at the best of feasts – then steals away your life and soul. Wake up, I say!’

  Was that it? What I’d been feeling?

  Something wet and very cold struck my ear. I jerked up, hit my head on the roof.

  A whimper.

  Me or it?

  I opened my eyes and saw –

  A long, white-whiskered nose next to my face. Brown intelligent eyes.

  Heard a bark of laughter from outside.

  ‘Well done, Florette! If he will not wake at my call . . . ‘

  Dog, not wolf.

  I breathed again, the air bitter cold still in my nostrils, but tinged with the smell of wet fur.

  The dog grinned, pink tongue lolling through sharp white teeth, and backed away. Behind it, a flickering orange glow. A light held aloft. Battered this way and that by snowy gusts, yet enough to show me the scene beyond the trailing hawthorn roots.

  A great pale-grey horse, its hooves planted firm in snow reaching up to its fetlocks. Its ears pricked, head tossing against the swirling flakes. Bridle gleaming with silver. Rich embroidered cloth of red and blue beneath its tooled leather saddle.

  Before it, the reins loose in one gloved hand, a flaming length of wood in the other, the man who had spoken. He was youngish, younger than my dad. Perhaps no older than Mum’s new boyfriend. Thirty, maybe thirty-five. But shorter, slimmer than Callum. And very strangely dressed.

  Surely this wasn’t Mountain Rescue’s normal kit?

  All in midnight blue, he wore a padded tunic, or jacket, worked with intricate patterns in silvery thread. Close-fitting leggings of some kind, tucked into sturdy black leather boots. Over the arm that held the reins hung an enormous black fur, long hairs glinting in the flaring light.