It had rained in the night, and the slip of road where I abandoned my car was a quagmire necessitating careful footsteps. I pushed open the lych-gate and entered the grounds of what remained of the manor house of Minster Lovell, 15th century home of Richard III's close friend Sir Francis Lovell.
These two men had haunted my life these past few months, as my novel took shape around them. I had already paid my visit this year to the site of Richard's last stand, and now � at last � after several failed attempts, I was about to offer the same remembrance to his dear friend Francis.
This was my fourth attempt of the year to reach Minster Lovell. The first had been on the return journey from Bosworth in August � ill-fated forever in my heart and my soul because it was where Richard had fallen. The second had been on the return from Fotheringhay two months later. I have still not made it to Fotheringhay. That trip � for Richard's birthday in October � I had had to cancel because I fell grievously ill and couldn't even get there. The third attempt to reach Minster Lovell had been scheduled for November 1st, the first day of my spiritual new year, but when I woke after a night of torrential rain to find gale-force winds battering the windows of my house, I decided that � still suffering the after-effects of my illness, and having unexpected been out the day before and caused my symptoms to flare up again � I ought not to make the attempt. It's only a 35 mile drive, but in driving rain and howling winds it seemed foolish to go out when I didn't actually have to.
And so, at the fourth attempt, I was here at last. I'd been here before � I tried to recollect when exactly, but am no longer certain, though I believe it was on the way home from my last Bosworth trip a few years earlier. No matter. I am here now.
This is a desolate place in November, with the trees stripped bare and the sky heavy with leaden clouds, but also one of great and raw beauty, and a serenity that few places these days can match. Bosworth � when not in the grip of a battle re-enactment weekend � has it. I found it on a quiet stretch of beach on the Isle of Wight once, and on a headland above the ancient walls of Ibiza Town, and in an apple orchard in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey. An odd collection of places, but they have all been stops along the curious and winding path that has led me back here.
I had white roses in my hand, and as the light wind wrapped around me I caught their fragrance, the faintest hint of summer on the breath of encroaching winter. White roses for the slain and the fallen, for the Yorkist faithful. I cannot go to Bosworth without them; it seems equally unthinkable now that I should come here without them either.
I had not expected Francis Lovell to become so large a part in my thoughts. I had not realised what he represented or who he was in the great and wondrous pattern I had begun to watch unfold since this time last year. My love for Richard had blinded me to the possibility I now believe to be the truth � that the soul Richard carried was too heavy for his frail body, and that it had splintered into other parts, whose flames burned in his closest friends.
It was only since realising how that spirit had returned in our age � how now, when men had no faith to sustain so vast a soul, and the spirit had perforce to have split many more times to find flesh worthy of even a tiny spark of it � that I considered who amongst Richard's allies could have shared his soul and his great burden.
Lovell came to me almost by accident, and if I were inclined to believe in coincidences I should have considered it that. But the way he spoke to me was so immediate, the way I knew his character in my head before I ever wrote a word of him, convinced me he was part of the mystery of Richard's Great Soul. He had to be.
The novel I had been writing had come spontaneously, from a single line given to me in a waking vision some months before, and as these things do with me it had not been planned by me in any strict sense. I do not write as professionals write. I cannot tell myself I will work for so many hours in every day, or will set aside such times to work. I work when the spirit moves me, which is probably why I will never be able to call what I do my job, though it is my vocation, in the truest sense of the word since I know it has called to me to perform it.
Bosworth had called me sharply to attention, and this trip � so long delayed � had been a similar call to the spirit to respond. I needed to be here. I had to come.
I looked up at the fragile ruins, sensing the age of these stones that had witnessed the fall of a monarchy, a royal house, a way of life. The same raw emotion swept over me that I knew from Bosworth and I wept for those who were no more, but whose memories live on in those of us who know the truth.
I took shelter in the lee of a vast wall, its pointed window arch evident proof of the great building that had once been here. Out of the wind it was still here, still and silent and calm as only places of great antiquity truly can be. Everything that is modern, retreats. I love such places. They take me back home, to the source of the mystery, to the spring that wells up from the past revealing its long-lost secrets. I have a need for such places, for the solitude and the quiet, for the chance to meditate on my thoughts, thoughts I can but rarely share with other people who now seem so shallow-minded, and heedless of the importance of the past.
I followed the lines of the building down to the river. I had written in my novel of this river in spring flood, the happy breeding place of swans and ducks, shaded by great willows and glittering in sunlight. How different it looked to my waking eyes now, swollen in its winter flood, and yet that layer of my imagination was still vivid enough for me to see how this place might have been in spring. This spring. Or the spring of 1472 when the characters of my novel were here. I felt as though I were walking in their footsteps, the footsteps of people both real and imagined.
Francis Lovell had been here. Richard Plantagenet had been here. Connie Stone � the heroine of my novel � was, as far as I knew, fictional, but the lines between truth and fiction have always been blurred for me, and whether I had brought her to life solely from my own imagination, or channelled her restless spirit back into life through my writing, she was as real to me now as any of them. Gabriel Stone, her son and Richard's, had been born here.
As I pondered on these characters, real, unreal, long-dead all, I felt the familiar tingling at the base of my skull that told me something was approaching me, something otherworldly. I have felt this expectancy elsewhere, and whether it brings on a flash of insight from the past, a revelation of the future, a glorious technicolour time-slip or the finding of a simple symbol I have been searching for, I know to pay attention when it starts.
Looking about me, I saw that I was no longer alone in the ruins of the great house. A man had entered through the lych-gate and was walking slowly across the wet grass, his head bowed, his attitude one that immediately suggested thoughtful contemplation. My first thought was that he was not empirically real, but a hallucination of someone, a reflection of someone who had been here before. But then I realised that apart from the sense of almost monastic contemplation that came from him, and a tantalising whiff of a soul burdened with great spiritual age, he was entirely modern. He was wearing jeans and a well-cut jacket over a warm-looking jumper and a shirt with a crisp white collar. One hand was slipping his car keys into his pocket while in the other he swung a plastic wallet with some papers inside it. This was no phantom from an earlier age, whatever my tingling senses told me.
I have long had a knack of making myself all but invisible, whether by an effort of will or just by throwing out an aura so strange and incomprehensible to other people that they literally cannot bring themselves to see me. If you�ve ever read Patrick Suskind's 'Perfume', you'll know what I mean. I either lack or have acquired something that makes me appear less or more than human, and since your average person shuns what they cannot understand, I am thus rendered invisible. It has been useful on occasion � I can walk with impunity down the darkest streets in the dodgiest areas of town without feeling remotely under threat � though at other times I would like to suddenly flick the switch and announce 'here I am', as Suskind's Grenouille does when applying his 'human' scent.
But I digress. Being used to being invisible to those who cannot quite compute or accept what I am � who get a whiff of the age of my soul and panic themselves into selective and comforting blindness � I let myself fall back against the trunk of the nearest tree so I could watch this newcomer without being seen myself. I was, I should perhaps mention, dressed in shades of brown and black, so did tend to blend into the background a little naturally anyway, and with a tiny act of will I could make myself blend still further. Proteus I am not, but I have long understood the principles.
The man walked to the very spot at which I had earlier taken shelter, beneath the great window arch, and he stopped there, and did a most unusual thing. Unusual, that is, for a regular human being to do, but entirely the kind of thing I should have done had I been following me. He lifted his head up and inhaled deeply.
As he lifted his head, I could see more of his face than I had done previously, and though I was too far away to see him in any detail, I could see the prototype of the Ricardian soul in a human form. Dark hair, eyes that could have been any colour between grey and brown, and possibly were all those and more at times, fine cheekbones, a pronounced brow structure � not in a Neanderthal way, you understand, but strong bones showing under the temples and around the forehead � and a dark splash of mouth.
I felt a shiver pass through me as I looked at him, recognised the elements I knew from my own face, and from many other Ricardians I've met over the years, and knew what that meant. He's one of us! One of the group soul that was once Richard Plantagenet. And whether he knew it consciously or not, the scent of age, the aura of majesty that came off him was all too evident to my attuned senses. I knew what I was looking for whenever I scanned new people, and I saw it now. Saw it, felt it, wanted to run across the wet grass and wrap myself around it for joy, the way I always do when I find another spark.
And he was sniffing the air, as though he sensed the same presence, as though he felt something he could perhaps not quite understand, but recognised it all the same. I could almost read the thought in his head: something akin to me has been here recently, some part of me has stood here and thought my thoughts. How can this be?
And then he saw me. I flattened myself against the tree in surprise as I realised he had turned his head and was looking perfectly in my direction, as though his nose had told him which direction the curious scent of ancient twin-soul had taken. I ought to say I didn't see him see me, because my eyesight is completely useless over such a distance, but rather I felt him see me. I felt his eyes lock onto the sight of me, and the change in his aura was immediately apparent to me. It had been muted when I had first seen him walk across the grass, as befitted a man in contemplation of his thoughts, but now it was open, expansive, welcoming and curious, pulsing out across the ground between us wondering what I was and wanting me to make myself known.
I hesitated, feeling the rough security of the tree against my back, wishing I could meld with it and yet longing to run across the grass and take this new spark in my hands and welcome it to itself. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps he wasn't one of us, just a similar physical match, and being here today � after such a keen focus on Richard Plantagenet and Francis Lovell this year � was making me see them � us � everywhere. Perhaps I was just over-hungry and the emptiness of my physical body was making my mind play tricks on me.
But I knew. By his aura I knew it, by the fact he was here today and I could see him and smell him and sense him as a part of my shared self, I knew it. And then he raised one hand and waved in greeting, as though he too thought he recognised me, and any lingering doubts I might have possessed were swept away with the arc his fingers made in the air.
Why was I paralysed? Why did I not move, or return his greeting? Ordinarily I was overjoyed to meet another spark, and had indeed to restrain my enthusiasm for fear of overwhelming a human being who perhaps was not so aware of what their spark was or meant. I'd lost count of how many people I'd freaked out over the years. And now I knew how they felt. With one simple gesture, with that simple acknowledgement of my presence here, I had recognised a spark that was greater, more aware, more profoundly connected to the great mystery, than even I was.
He knew. Had he followed me here? Had he known I was here before I had even spotted him? The old shape-shifter's instinct in me reared up in angry denial � nobody could get under my radar first, nobody, certainly not a mere human. I had undergone years of training to become as attuned as I was, both to the Ricardian soul and to the world around me. I was angry and afraid, and as I always do in such situations I had reverted to my animal self, and I felt my lips curling into an aggressive-defensive snarl.
The man's hand dropped as though I'd physically assaulted him, and even from that distance I knew he had sensed my rage, and I sought to rein it in. Whoever he was, he carried a spark of Richard, a large and beautiful spark, and he deserved my admiration, not my abuse. It was only that I had been caught unawares, surprised by someone more powerful than myself. That didn't mean he was a threat.
We stood still, the great flat lawn of Minster Lovell between us. How long that absurd dumb-show continued, I'm not sure, but eventually I unpeeled myself from the tree and found myself walking towards him. As I moved, so did he, and I could not help but notice how similar his gait was to mine. Though he was a clear foot taller than me, he moved with the same animal-like tread, his whole body moving in tune with itself and making as least resistance to the air around it as it could. He walked as though he melted through the air, and it was a beautiful thing to see a big man move like that. It is usually just us small folk who can move with that degree of pantherishness.
As he came closer, I ceased to notice the way he moved, because my eyes were coming into focus on the rest of him, and I was dumbstruck to realise that I knew who he was. My brain beat a crazed tattoo in my head � a year and a day, a year and a day, Richard, Richard, Richard � and I couldn't make it shut up no matter how hard I tried.
It was him. It was Richard. Not the Plantagenet I had been expecting, at least not entirely. It was the other Richard. The actor who, exactly a year ago, I had realised was a potent rebirth of the Ricardian spirit, perhaps the strongest of us all, and of whom subsequent research had merely confirmed me in my hunch. The actor of whom I had had a vivid and powerful vision a few weeks later, of him walking towards me as he now was, with that same inscrutable look on his handsome face. The actor to whom I'd dedicated my whole year's work � the poetry, the Gisborne novel, the Ricardian novel I was still thrashing away at. The actor whom I had come to know I loved, despite never having seen him or spoken to him in my life. The actor who had redefined my life in ways I cannot even begin to enumerate.
I would've pinched myself if I'd thought at that point that my fingers would have worked, but there seemed little point. I couldn't deny the evidence of my eyes, and had I entertained any doubts at all, they were banished the moment he stopped in front of me and his lips curled in that too-too familiar smile. Elvish, mischievous, Puckish even. And breathtakingly beautiful. The TV screen does not do you justice, I thought, which was about the only thought I was capable of beyond the relentless hammering of 'a year and a day'.
What on earth are you doing here? I wanted to demand of him. Why are you here? How? Instead I just looked up at him, looked intently into those exquisite eyes through the bubbling tears in my own, and tried to remember how to breathe.
"Do I know you?" That voice! Deep, lyrical, unmistakeable.
"I know you." Oh well done, well done, nice opener! So much for first impressions!
His smile deepened, his eyes were twinkling with amusement. He, whom every interview I'd ever read had suggested was unaware of his own sex appeal, was almost embarrassed by the furore he caused in the fluttering hearts of his female fans, seemed actually to be enjoying the effect he was having on this one. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he was flirting.
"I'm Richard," he said needlessly, extending his empty hand towards me, "but I imagine you already know that." There was a lovely ironic purr in his voice, and I felt it melting my brain from the inside out, all but destroying my inner dictionary.
I reached out towards his hand, barely able to believe I was awake and this was not for once a very familiar dream. I think I may actually have flinched when our fingers made contact. I know for a split second his eyes broke their spell over mine and flickered down to look at our joined hands, as though he too sensed something odd.
"Quite a day to be out," he ventured while my head was spinning through every combination of syllables it had ever learned, trying to find one that wouldn't sound like the whimper of a hare caught in a trap.
"It is," I managed to say. I could feel the heat of his hand along the length of mine, his long fingers dwarfing mine and applying just enough pressure to make me realise he was real. This time, he was real. My brain was fizzing, my throat felt so tight I wondered how I was still breathing, and a flame of heat was travelling up my arm from the contact with his fingertips.
"You're shivering," he noted, and that adorable dimple appeared between his brows as he frowned.
Not shivering, I thought, trembling. Do you have any idea what this means?
"You're freezing." His fingers tightened around my hand a little and I felt another wave of warmth come out of him and shoot up my arm.
"You're..." Don't say it, for crying out loud, DON'T say it.
The curling lip and arching eyebrow said it all. My God, he actually was flirting with me, and he knew that even without the power of speech I was endeavouring to flirt with him.
As if to spare me any further mortification, the louring clouds suddenly did what they'd been threatening to do all morning, and fell open. I felt his hand close entirely around mine and before I had even fully reacted to the sudden downpour we were running across the slippery grass. At least, he was running, I was scrambling along trying my best to keep up with his long legs and not lose the grip of his hand, though there was precious little chance of that.
There is an ancient dovecote at Minster Lovell, with one of those stable door arrangements whose top is left open to allow visitors to peer inside and have a nose about, and as I looked through the rain I realised that was where we were heading.
I was about to give him the benefit of my own cynically arching eyebrow if he thought I stood any chance of getting over a door that was only open above the height of my waist, when I realised his fingers had let go of my hand. With a quick flick of his wrist, the plastic folder he'd been carrying in his other hand was inside the dovecote, and he had his arms underneath me and was lifting me off my feet.
He handed me inside the dovecote as though I weighed no more than a child, and then followed me in, his long legs making easy work of the door that barred our entrance.
I was still tingling from the feel of his arms around me, the closeness of being laid for a second or two against his chest, feeling the warmth and the strength of his embrace, when I heard him laugh. I looked up and realised what an absurd situation this was. How ridiculously unreal it seemed to be here, in this cool, dry place, dripping with rain-water and listening to the thunder of it on the domed roof, watching this man � this man, of all men! � shake the weather off his heavy coat, looking at me again with those remarkable eyes.
How often had I dreamed this? How often had I seen this very thing happen in my head? Was it true then, that if you dreamed something hard enough you could make it happen? A rush of giddy, trembling panic swept over me as I remembered what else had happened in those dreams. Hardly likely, I reminded myself. Not in November in a torrential downpour. Still, there was a certain romantic appeal in the setting; something gothic and windswept that might just...
To spare myself having to think of anything witty to say, I turned to pick up the plastic folder he had thrown so precipitately into the dovecote before lifting me into it. As I bent down and turned it over, I realised that dreams could come true after all. I recognised the folder, the pages inside it, the scroll-work font on the front page. 'Upon Ambion Hill', it read, 'being a last reflection on a true friend and noble prince'. I felt faint, and dizzy, as though my stomach had dropped into the vicinity of my knees suddenly. And elated. My short story. He came here carrying my short story.
"Won't you tell me your name?" he asked softly.
I span around, starting guiltily at the sound of his voice. Some last desperate scrap of my dignity shouted in my head that this was the moment to say something impressive, to do something dramatic. If I didn't do it now, what had been the point of rehearsing this in my dreams all these months?
I met his eyes and stepped closer towards him, holding the folder out in front of me with the title page presented to his view. "You already know it," I said quietly, smiling shyly.
His eyes flicked down to look at the page and then up again to fix upon my face, at first disbelieving and then wondering and finally twinkling with amusement. "Now that," he said finally, "is what � if I believed in them � I might call one hell of a coincidence."
My heart hammered. But by implication you don't believe in them, I thought, any more than I do. You know this is something more. My brain seemed finally to have become a functioning piece of my anatomy again.
He took the folder from my outstretched hand. "You wrote this?"
"Did you like it?"
"It was..." He shrugged his broad shoulders expressively, his whole face lit with a smile whose warmth radiated over me. "It was very moving, very... powerful."
"Then yes, I did write it," I said with a grin. "I'm glad you liked it." You should have done. I wrote it for you.
"I liked the dedication," he said, the delicate bow of his top lip tilting again.
For Richard: then, now, and always. I'll bet you did. I'd intended it to be as much a tribute to him as to the Richard I'd known all those centuries ago in another lifetime. Write a story about Richard III, dedicate it to Richard, and most people would just think I was being pretentious, dedicating it to a man long dead. Those who knew me, knew of my passion for both the old and the new Richard, would perhaps understand its deeper significance. And the man for whom I'd written it, to whom I'd sent it: I'd always hoped he would understand it too.
He rolled the folder up and buried it deep into the pocket of his great coat. He looked at me again with those hypnotic eyes, that beautiful smile, the soft crinkles of skin around his eyes echoing his pleasure at this unexpected revelation.
He took my hands in his, and I felt again that shock of warmth, coupled with a fresh tingling of the super-senses at the base of my neck. The dream flared up inside my head in glorious familiarity, drowning out even the thumping of my heart. This is it. It's finally, finally going to happen. And I'm not going to say something stupid, I'm not going to behave like an idiot, or panic or witter or run off. This is right, and it's time, and I'm ready. I've been ready for centuries, waiting for this to even be possible. Now, at last...
"I'm not in the habit of doing that," he said later, long hours after the rain had stopped and we had no reason to still be sheltering in the dovecote. "In my position you can't risk..."
"I know." I lay at peace in his arms, finally having come home after centuries of wandering alone, finally being back with the lord I had lost on that grisly morning at Bosworth. I felt his chest rise and fall beneath my head, his breathing deeper, slower, now than it had been a few moments earlier. His warmth surrounded me, filled me, and it was something far deeper than the mere physical presence of his arm around my waist or the long fingers that gently stroked my hair.
"Can you ever forgive my presumption?"
I laughed contentedly and twined myself a little closer to the beautiful body my lord had taken upon himself in this lifetime, feeling the sinewy strength of its limbs and the smooth splendour of its chest, the trim waist and supple thighs, and the fiery, resurgent heat between them. "The only thing I'm going to find hard to forgive is the interminable time you took to find me again."
He laughed, and I knew that he understood me completely. He knew who he was; he had only needed convincing of it by someone who thought the same thing to be entirely sure he wasn't going mad in thinking it. If it was madness to believe such a reincarnation could occur, at least it was now a folie a deux, and not a torment to be borne alone.
"I'll make it up to you," he said, his voice warm with hunger and intent, his fingers slipping beneath my hair to cup my head in his hand once again, to tilt my face up towards his.
"I know you will," I said, smiling as his lips reached mine.
[17th November 2009]
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