The Crippled Angel. Sara Douglass

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      Whittington’s curiosity grew, and he fidgeted impatiently.

      The queue ahead of him was moving very quickly now. Perhaps only some four or five stood between Whittington and his turn at a viewing, and Whittington’s head craned all the more. He could see a little into the open coffin over the shoulders before him—there was a heavy drape of a richly embroidered material over most of Richard’s body. Whittington could see a pale blur of a face, and it appeared that Richard’s skeletal arms and hands were crossed over his chest, clutching a gold crucifix.

      He shivered suddenly, feeling as if a winter frost had dug deep into his bones.

      The people ahead of him visibly shivered, too, and hurried the faster, bending only briefly over the coffin.

      Then, finally, it was Dick Whittington’s turn, and he stepped forward. A priest murmured in his ear, “Hurry! Hurry!”, and the stench of hot incense and cold decaying flesh assaulted his nostrils, making his stomach roil.

      He stepped up to the coffin, and peered in.

      Richard’s remains were horrible to behold. His flesh had shrunk close to his bones, his skull was sparsely dotted with a few clumps of dry hair, his eyelids had gummed closed over sunken eyeballs. His nose was a thin ridge only barely covered with the remnants of flesh—in one spot cartilage had poked its way free.

      His desiccated lips were frozen into a horrible rictus, showing yellowed, slimy teeth. Behind them loomed something huge and horrid—his swollen, blackened tongue.

      Whittington tore his eyes away from Richard’s face and looked to where his skeletal hands clutched a crucifix. The fingers were clasped so tightly about the cross that in places the flesh of Richard’s hands had rotted into the chain, and then reformed about it; the crucifix had become part of Richard’s flesh.

      “Move on!” came the whisper from a close attendant priest, and Whittington looked one last time at Richard’s face…

      … and screeched in terror. Richard’s eyes had opened, revealing black, glistening orbs. They rolled in Whittington’s direction, and, as the Lord Mayor stared, horrified, the dead king’s lips moved: Murderer! Murderer!

      Whittington tried to move, but couldn’t. Richard’s eyes held him locked in place.

      Murderer! Murderer!

      There was a clink, and Whittington realised that Richard’s finger bones had clicked as his hands moved about the crucifix.

      Whittington, Whittington, what do you think? Shall I rise from my grave to my throne again?

      Whittington’s face contorted, and he physically wrenched himself away from Richard’s rolling eyes. He stumbled back, almost falling, then turned about, his breath coming in great, gasping gulps.

      He realised no one was looking at him—Why? Why? Had no one seen what he had? Had no one wondered at his strange reaction?—then realised that everyone was staring at a richly cloaked and garbed man walking slowly up the clear space of the centre of the nave.

      Gold glinted about his brow.

      Bolingbroke.

      Whittington stumbled further away from the coffin, staring at Bolingbroke.

      Bolingbroke had no eyes for anything but the coffin. He strode forth slowly but purposefully, his eyes fixed on the bier and what lay on it.

      Don’t go near it! Whittington’s mind screamed. Don’t go near—

      “Sire!” he gasped as Bolingbroke approached. “Sire!”

      Bolingbroke ignored him. His steps quickened, the heels of his boots ringing across the flagstones, the hem of his cloak fluttering out behind him.

      Every eye in the cathedral followed Bolingbroke up to the coffin, to this meeting of kings.

      Bolingbroke stepped up to the bier, put his hands firmly on the edge of the coffin, and peered inside.

      The only indication of what he saw within was a very faint tightening of the muscles along his jaw line.

      Whittington could feel the corpse roiling about within, feel the hate and injustice and vengeance reaching up to seize Bolingbroke by the throat. He wanted to rush to Bolingbroke’s side and tear him away, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as twitch a muscle.

      This was between Bolingbroke and Richard alone.

      Something spattered on the stones beneath the bier, and Whittington’s eyes looked down, as did everyone else’s in the cathedral save Bolingbroke’s, who kept his eyes firmly on whatever was happening within the coffin.

      Fat drops of thick, black blood oozed from the joints of the coffin, soaked into the material covering the bier, then dripped onto the flagstones where it pooled in a mess of foulness.

      The entire cathedral took a great breath of mixed fear and awe.

      The corpse bled in the presence of its murderer.

      Bolingbroke’s face twisted, and he lifted his hands and stepped away from the coffin.

      He looked to the priests standing frozen to one side. “Take this coffin and its contents and burn it,” he said. “Richard was ever adept at fouling up the realm.”

      He started to say something else, to address the crowds present, but as he opened his mouth, a low, vicious growl interrupted him.

      Everyone’s eyes, now including Bolingbroke’s, swept to the open doors of the cathedral, from where the sound emanated.

      There stood a hound of such vast size that most instantly assumed it was of a supernatural origin.

      Richard’s soul, perhaps, come to exact its vengeance.

      The hound stalked forward, its legs stiff with fury, its hair raised along its shoulders and spine. It was entirely black, its body covered with weeping sores. Its head it kept low, its yellow, unblinking eyes fixed on Bolingbroke, fetid strings of foam dripping to the floor from its snarling snout.

      Bolingbroke moved his cloak slightly away from the sword he wore at his hip, but made no other movement.

      The hound’s snarling increased both in volume and in viciousness. As it progressed up the centre of the nave, the very path Bolingbroke had just walked, the hound lowered its body until its belly almost scraped the flagstones, creeping now, rather than stalking.

      Its eyes shifted slightly from Bolingbroke to the coffin behind him.

      Bolingbroke stepped to one side.

      All down the nave, as the hound crept past, people shrank back, making both the sign of the cross and the sign against evil. Many clutched charms, some whispered hasty prayers, all wished they had chosen some other time to view Richard’s corpse.

      The hound was now close to Bolingbroke.

      The king took another step away. The hound ignored his movement. Its attention was all on the coffin, and on the spreading pool of black, clotting blood beneath СКАЧАТЬ