VIII

announcing my glorious future – five hundred of my father’s best spearmen, commanded by Lord Daubeney, meet the rebel army at Gill Down and drive them into retreat. The rebels regroup and make camp by Deptford Bridge, near the River Ravensbourne. Three days later, my father’s army attacks at dawn, taking the rebels by surprise.
    By two o’clock that afternoon, my father is entering the City of London on a magnificent war horse, a livid scar showing fresh on his cheek and one of the rebel leaders lying, shackled, over the saddle of a horse led behind him. Unlike the thousands of dead even now being dragged from the field, this man has been saved for a slower and more public end.
    A battle is a test of God’s favour – I know that. A battle proves who is the rightful king. So, now, God has shown His favour, not to the rebels, or the Pretender – whoever he might really be – but to my father.
    That same afternoon, as my father parades through the City streets in triumph, I suddenly turn hot and shivery. My joints ache and my legs feel like jelly and the women servants put me to bed. I stay in bed for days and days – I have no idea how long. And when my mother leaves the Tower to join my father for the thanksgiving at Westminster, I have to stay behind. I’m in a cocoon of sickness. If my mother comes to say goodbye, I’m too ill to know.
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    During those feverish days in the Tower I have an odd dream.
    In the dream, I am lying in the dark, underneath something – it is like lying under the covers in bed. Except that I am cold. I don’t mind. It’s restful. Perhaps I am asleep. And then it occurs to me: I’m not sleeping, I am dead. Covered by a layer of earth. Of course! How silly that I didn’t notice it before.
    And I am just thinking: so this is what it is like and it’s quite all right really, why do people worry about dying so much? – I must tell my mother when I see her – when a black dot appears in the darkness. Or rather, a black dot that has light all around it.
    And the dot rises up and gets bigger as I watch it, until it’s as big as a sun, and the light from it is beaming down like strange sunlight on a clear day.
    And at first I think there’s just the dot, and something about the dot is moving, but then I see that the moving thing is a little boy, coming down the beams towards me, walking on the light as if it is a road. He gets nearer and nearer.
    As the boy draws close to me, I see that he is very pale, with a halo of straw-coloured hair; he looks like the Christ child in an old painting, except that his eyes are so deep-set they’re completely hidden in shadow. It looks as if he has strange dark hollows instead of eyes. And the golden hair and the shadow-eyes make a contrast of light and dark like the brilliant black sun, and I am chilled and I shiver.
    The boy stretches out his hands to me – pudgy hands, the hands of a toddler – but when I put my own hands in his, the grip is strong, like a grown-up’s.
    And the moment he touches me, being dead isn’t restful any more. I’m drenched in terror, and I grip the boy desperately, as if he can keep me safe.
    All at once, too, we’re no longer in darkness. I see that we’re in a field on the edge of a gorge. The spot where I’ve been lying is right by the drop. Somewhere far below I can hear rushing water.
    The boy pulls me to my feet. He’s smaller than I am, and dressed in a coarse gown like a poor man’s child, but there’s something fierce and powerful about him.
    At that moment I hear a terrible noise from the gorge. I turn to see a huge serpent hauling itself up over the cliff-edge. Its legs are short and muscular, and from its back vast wings unfold, with skin stretched across them like a bat’s. Its eyes are red, its nostrils wide; with a terrible swinging motion of its head it seems to be searching for something, roaring in pain and rage. The smell from its open jaws is rank – of rotting flesh. Step by relentless step it comes, dark water sliding off its scales.
    The boy tugs me sharply, pulling me away. He breaks into a run and I stumble after. Up ahead, a horse appears. The boy must somehow have grown taller, because it’s a large horse and he mounts it with no problem, and hauls me up in front of him into the saddle, just as the serpent’s teeth snap the air where I stood. However close I am to the boy, still I can’t see his eyes.
    His arms reach round me as he holds the reins