Fings ain't where they used to be, or A Kestrel for a King

I was chauffeuring Son the Elder to a roboteering event in Leicestershire yesterday, and as it wasn't far from Coventry where Son the Younger now works, we decided to meet up. I don't know that part of the country at all well, but as it happens my publishers, Ronnie and Dawn of Indigo Dreams, used to live in the next village, and gave me lots of suggestions for places to visit, from which we chose the Bosworth Battlefield trail. First, though, a battle with the car parking meter at Sutton Wharf, which was refusing to issue tickets.

On, then, along the Ashby canal for a short way - just far enough, in fact, to admire a very bold kestrel which passed quite close by us ... 

... and this piece of spalted wood which turned out to be not spalted at all, but faux-crackled with some sort of blackened vegetation ... 

... before turning up through Ambion wood to the Visitor Centre. Inexplicably, Son the Younger decided to rely on my largely fanciful grasp of history instead of the carefully curated exhibition, so after admiring the Earl Shilton stone coffin (Earl Shilton being a place, not a person), which was believed for many years to be that of King Richard III and which has Romano-British tool marks on its side ... 

... and the stocks ... 

... we decided to start the battlefield walk. Now, the problem with history is that it often happened a long time ago, and there's no one alive from 1485 to say with any precision just where Bosworth Field was. And so after more than 220 years of thinking you know exactly where it was, and just when you have got your marker stone set up ...

 

... some bright spark discovers the inconvenient truth that it wasn't there at all, and gets loads of plaudits, while you're left with a massive boulder marking the wrong spot altogether.

It's even worse when you've established the Heritage Centre in a 14th century tithe barn that's handily nearby, and stuck your flagpoles up with your Yorkist and Tudor flags ...

... and hell's teeth, even built your Richard III sundial with commemorative thrones. 

Now, after centuries of mistaken celebration, Ambion Hill has been returned to arable use. 

Down at Shenton Station we saw a diesel train advertising the rather optimistic destination of Scarborough. (It actually goes just a few miles up the track to Shackerstone.) 

We walked back towards Sutton Wharf along Shenton cutting, which is no longer in use.

A short detour past the turning to the canal takes you to what is currently believed to be the site of the battlefield, where, on 22nd August 1485, Henry Tudor's small rebel army defeated the much larger Royal army of King Richard III, with Richard hemmed in by marsh and cut down 'in the thickest press of his foes'. 

I think the historians might have the right location this time, as the reedmace in the far corner looks like spears coming into view.

Marsh marigold

Back at Sutton Wharf, we watched the kestrel which was still hunting and ate lunch outside in the sun. After a bit it started to snow. We vacated the seats by the cafe and watched the driver of a hire boat hurtle into view, scraping the boat along the concrete edge of the tow path. 

By now shift-working son was getting sleepy, so we headed back to robot land, and I read in the car till it was time to set off for home. Another small jaunt in this time of pandemic. I'll take what I can get. 

The Black Death being a topical subject ...

Dead monarchs buried under car parks? Pshaw! This is the all-conquering Black Death, baby ... 

'Yet still the wind it blows, and it blows wisht.

It’s an unket wind that rolls and bowls

along the lonely drovers’ trails

in sunlight and in starlight

when ghostly owls make  moan.

And with it comes a frittening

like naught you’ve ever known.

Forget your bullbeggars, dragons and bogies,

Jack o’ Lanterns that dance over mires

those drear, drowned souls rising up from their depths

with slimy hands that beckon and clutch …

Forget the whispering spirits of All-Hallow-E’en,

your pixies and ogres and hags

Old Nick and his hell hounds that howl in the blackness

their eyes all a-flame …

They’ve long since been sung of in stories

and vanquished by name.

For now absence begets a presence

older than words, colder than ice at the heart of the fire.

A darksome sending – nameless, formless dread –

a shapeshifter that drifts and slides

beside its helpless prey

a displacement of air, a quickening, thickening

clotting and curdling into a shade

that isn’t fog or a cloud for it’s real, it’s alive

though it reeks of death and decay.

And soon you’ll reacquaint yourself

with one you’ve glimpsed before –

Bloodless and Boneless behind the door

but now it’s breathing through your keyhole

forcing fingers through

the cracks and chinks and squints.

And though it utters not a sound

you understand what’s brought it here

and its intention as it reaches through              

is boulder-cold and clear - 

             It’s come for you ... '

Richard III: Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory

Photo by Dominic Maxwell

Even though we made our traditionally early arrival at the Tobacco Factory to see Richard III, we were astonished to find the queue to get into the theatre winding right out of the bar and down the stairs to the box office, with the result that instead of getting a seat at the front with an almost-part-of-the-cast view, my son and I found ourselves in the back row, craning to see around one of the pillars. 

‘Just because they found him under a car park!’ another regular said to me, wearily.

And when he comes onto the stage to deliver his opening soliloquy, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, (played by John Mackay) does indeed resemble a skeleton.  Tall and bony, with cropped white hair and a white face blackened about the eyes, he starts the play as he ends it – no flawed, flesh-and-blood hero brought down by overweening ambition, but the personification of depravity.   Mackay’s Richard is the archetypal psychopath who, devoid of empathy and conscience, murders as much to divert himself from what he sees as the pointlessness of existence as to achieve the power he craves, and often, horrifyingly, the audience finds itself laughing along with him. 

In a play that is dominated by its villain, the rest of the cast put in sterling performances.  I was especially moved by Nicki Goldie’s portrayal of the Duchess of York, the only character who truly knows Richard for what he is, having given birth to him.  But it is Richard who charms, entertains, disgusts and mesmerises, often all at the same time, right up to the end when he lies dead on Bosworth Field, his long limbs curled up in a way that is fittingly reminiscent of a dead spider.  

On the long trek back to the car, I found myself wondering whether Richard III might have availed himself of the nearby Aldi car park, were he still living, or would he have feared returning to find that his horse - assuming one had been procured for him - hobbled? I doubt we shall ever know the truth.