The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III (56 page)

Don’t you see yon narrow, narrow road

So thick beset with thorns and briars?

That is the road to righteousness

Though after it but few enquire.

Don’t you see yon broad, broad road

That lies across the lily leaven?

That is the road to wickedness

Though some call it the road to heaven.

Don’t you see yon bonnie, bonnie road

That lies across the ferny brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland

Where you and I this night must go.

Thomas the Rhymer, Anon

Richard recognised the cave: the low, rounded mouth, overhung by grass and foliage, the misty black interior. This cavern had featured in many dreadful dreams. He had always been drawn towards it, his heart pulsing harder the closer he went; and then running, fleeing for his life while the woman and the child stood like spectres, watching him. Never, in the dream, had he been able to face what lay inside.

Now his skin felt icy. He noted the familiar rise of dread. A hundred battles held not a shred of fear to compare with this. Yet it was only a peaceful walk by night along a river bank, with the moon and stars bleaching the pale limestone around them. A gentle climb, then the arch of stone received them like an ancient gateway.

Katherine went ahead, graceful as a goddess with her hair hanging down her back. This was her domain. Following her, he felt as vulnerable as a child. He had no knights around him, no attendants. No one even knew where he was. With all the trappings of kingship stripped away, he was only a man, his soul naked.

The cave was a temple. Katherine went straight in, ducking through the low entrance. The lantern she carried illuminated a bleached-gold space with a stump of rock in the centre. A primitive, pagan altar. Not allowing himself to hesitate, Richard followed her.

She began to light candles on the rough altar. Flame writhed on a lump of pitted rock set in a niche on the rear wall. He saw it was a crude black statue; all female curves with a terrible, featureless visage set on its shoulders.

“She is Auset,” said Kate. “Isis, Tara, Cailleach, the Black Virgin. She has many names, but if it makes you easier in your mind, address her as the Mother of God.”

“She bears little resemblance to the Madonna.” The cave echoed, making their soft whispers sound loud.

“More than you think, perhaps.” Kate lit amber resin in a censer. Fragrant clouds wreathed around her. “In the beginning, as our legend goes, there was only the Dark Mother. She is complete in herself, able to give birth without a male counterpart. Think of it like this. Her son is the one who goes out into the world, fiery and wrathful, smiting unbelievers. The Mother remains in her seat of earth, biding her time and occasionally rolling her eyes at his excesses.”

There was amusement in her tone. Richard half-smiled. In other circumstances, her words would have been gross heresy. Here, though, he was in another world. This was her realm, where her theology was solid and true.

He said quietly, “Kate, the first time I entered the hidden world, I saw this cave, or one so like it I can see no difference. But I wasn’t here. I was in Ludlow.” The memory still disturbed him. “Many days’ ride from here!”

Unperturbed, she looked at him with her large, wondrous eyes; just as when he’d thought her an elf-child. Chills seeped through him.

“As I told you before, the hidden world is not only in one place. It’s everywhere. It has no map, and no logic. If you were fated to meet us, it’s perfectly feasible that we were here and you were in Ludlow.”

“As if we met in a dream.”

“Yes, but a dream as solid as reality.”

“I think I expect too much, to understand what happened.”

As he spoke, something entered the cave.

A whirl of cold air, nothing visible, but he was transfixed by the feel of eyes upon him: an intense, mocking scrutiny. Despite his efforts to stay calm, his breathing became quick and shallow.

“It’s nothing,” Kate said easily. “A nosy elemental. We will attract them, but they’ll protect us, so it’s a fair exchange. They’re friends.”

Richard stood chilled and shaking, watching her arrange the small altar to her satisfaction. This was against all his beliefs. When elementals crept in from the godless faerie realm, priests were always called to drive them out. Yet Kate and her sisterhood welcomed them.

“I don’t know if this is proof that you worship the Devil,” said Richard, “or simply proof that we don’t understand you.”

“Unfortunately, people’s fear of what they don’t understand leads them to destroy it. And to justify their destruction, they condemn it as evil.” She shrugged. “Come, sit down. Forget any notion of good or evil.” She placed two age-worn tapestry cushions on the rock floor before the altar. One showed a graylix, one a silver pard. “Don’t kneel. We don’t abase ourselves.” Grinning, she added, “Only in the direst circumstances.”

Hesitantly he sat cross-legged beside her. “I don’t see what this will achieve.”

She put her hand on his arm. “You’re as tense as a priest forced to walk down Cock’s Lane.”

He laughed out loud. “Your analogy is perfect: the horror of depravity and the temptation of falling into it.”

“That’s it. Horror and temptation. Don’t look away. Trust yourself. Have you something to give as an offering?”

“Offering?”

“I don’t mean a slaughtered lamb. Just a gift, a token. A thread from your doublet; anything.” Leaning forward, she opened a pouch and tipped a handful of walnuts into a small gold bowl. “Auset, great mother of all, we bring you these tokens of our love and we ask you to stand before us, as we stand before you, in perfect love and trust.”

Richard paused, uncertain. Then he took a chain from around his neck. From it hung a silver cross, its pointed arms curled around rubies. It looked like a little sword. He set the cross upon the walnuts and let the chain pour in after it. There it lay, shining.

“What should I ask of her?”

“Ask for clear sight,” said Kate.

He did so, silently. Closing his eyes, he made a wordless invocation to the dark mother. Let the darkness come and do its worst. I ask no protection of God. If the Devil claims me, so be it: I’ll pay my debts without fear. Only let me see the truth.

When he opened his eyes, the world had turned slate-blue and Kate had vanished.

Richard rose to his feet in confusion. If he was nervous before, that was nothing to the terror he felt now. Not fear of losing his life, but of losing his sanity. His soul. The candle flames on the altar burned dim and blue. The landscape was swathed in a limpid blue mist. He was in the hidden world.

He’d thought Kate would be with him. He hadn’t expected to find himself here alone. She had given no instructions for escaping this dream. He looked for his cross, meaning to take it for protection, but the offering bowl was empty.

Ice-cold, he went to the cave mouth. Blue twilight awaited him. As he stepped out he saw no river bank below; instead, a marsh spread before him, the marsh of countless nightmares, gleaming, waiting. Wan lights danced here and there. Shadows moved between the tussocks, prowling. Smoke and eyes. The whole place was softly alive and watching him.

Raising his head he walked steadily forward, passing beneath the arch of Briganta’s Bridge, until the ground began to squelch under his feet. He stood on the very edge of the marsh…

In which, in another life, Henry Tudor’s men had butchered him. He felt the echo of memory; the last brutal blows and his last words bursting harshly out of him, “Treason, treason!”

Richard felt he was dead, after all, and in the underworld.

This was the place he’d dreaded all his life. Here he was again, bone-cold and desolate; but knowing he could not be anywhere else. This was inevitable. Accepting that, his fear retreated to a dull background ache.

A shape moved out on the marsh. Something huge was gliding towards him. He watched in wonder. A charcoal bulk with spars and spider webs of rigging, sailing the marsh as if through clear sea.

A huge black ghost ship. Coming for him.

He thought it would plough him down where he stood, yet he was powerless to move out of its path. As it came closer, he saw that it was not a ship at all but a living creature; a gigantic sea-monster, a leviathan. It veered broadside on and he saw moisture coursing down the dark, sheened sides. Its spars were the spines of bony fans that splayed from its neck, with cobweb membranes stretched between them. Its head was a wedge poised high in the gloom. Tar black, it loomed above him and he tried to back away, only to find himself sinking thigh deep in the ooze.

He stumbled back into the sucking mud. Between them, marsh and serpent would consume him. He struggled to breathe. Then his feet touched a resilient surface and he was being dragged forward, lifted. The monster had forced her paw beneath him and he had no choice but to cling to the plated limb. She lurched, turning. He climbed as if scaling the side of a ship, gained her shoulder and then the broad span of her ridged spine and ribs.

Her fins cracked like sails, folding and unfolding. The leviathan completed her ponderous half-circle and began to take him away from shore. Away from Kate. Looking back, he couldn’t even see the cave.

There was open sea around him. A disc of calm rippling water, black in the night, encircled by a wall of fog. No boundaries. Above, the moon was a dull green eye staring down.

He was on the English Channel, going into exile. That had been their life: his and his brothers’. Fleeing in defeat, storming back to triumph. Washing in and out like the tide. A strange life, but all he knew. It seemed a thousand years ago.

Edward, George and Edmund were long gone. Richard was all that remained. He felt stranded in life, left behind. He yearned to join them.

He heard a sound behind him. A whisper of cold, the faintest rustle of movement, and something… breathing.

Richard flung himself forward, rolled on the scaled surface, and came back to his feet with his dagger in his hand. His only weapon. The creature that faced him was a demon no taller than him. Its body was made of fire. Its face dazzled, and above its shoulders rose two huge curving wings, black and gleaming with peacock colours.

A voice came from the being, rumbling from the blinding mask of a face. “You know me.”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Then let me come closer.”

The demon lunged. Richard ducked the sweep of its pinions and thrust at the abdomen. His wrist was stopped as if he’d hit stone. The jolt made him curse. The demon had caught him in a vicious grip and was forcing his arm upwards.

With his free hand, Richard struck out and met insubstantial flesh, more liquid than solid. His hand found the burning-cold face and forced back the chin, fingers seeking the eye-sockets. His assailant uttered a sibilant gasp. Then it squeezed his wrist and Richard’s fingers sprang open, loosing the dagger. His only weapon skidded down the curved flank of the beast, and was lost. He heard the plop as it hit the water.

He jerked out of the demon’s grasp. He hadn’t fought bare-handed for years. The moves came back easily but the creature would not play. Its great wings deflected his blows.

The leviathan’s back was unstable and treacherous. He got a purchase on the demon’s shoulders but, wrestling, they slithered. His attacker’s strength and agility were too great. It ran him back against the serpent’s thick neck – which rose like a mast – and held him there.

The demon seemed intent on smothering him. As the terrible face came closer, its odourless breath filled him like the wind. It was drinking his soul. Above them, its great wings cracked on the air.

Now its hands went around throat. Richard felt himself failing, as much through horror as exhaustion. He saw the black void of the sea waiting for him. This was the end, his last stand against the Devil…

With a grunt of desperate effort, Richard jerked up and broke its grip. He got one arm free, and the demon was suddenly half-doubled beneath him. His chance was brief. He brought his fist down with a crack on a wing-bones and felt it break like a bird’s.

As he did so, pain flared in his own shoulder. Breathtaking agony.

Then he understood.

The shock of pain sent him staggering backwards. The demon drew itself up and the broken wing rose to its former arch, healing. Richard’s own pain faded, but the sight made him desperate. In the pause, he launched himself at the demon and threw it off balance, forcing it onto its back on the leviathan’s heaving shoulder-blade.

As he held it there beneath him, the demon’s strength seemed to fail. Its fire faded and the body went dark. One wing came free and fluttered out over the water. Its face, close to his, was ghostly with deep black eyes.

Richard was looking into his own face.

Far below, Richard saw the hungry shimmer of the sea. He meant to throw the creature into the depths. Then his shadow would be gone forever. But as he tried, it clung to him like a lover. He hesitated and could not bring himself to kill it. His hands slid under its feathery wings and he paused there, panting for breath, wondering how to be rid of this hellish ghost.