Richard III: Black Guard Hall

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Chapter One – Darkening skies.

The pursuit had been long and hard. As the storm clouds chased across the steely sky, black clods of cloying mud flew from the soaked ground, churned by the pummelling hooves of the two horses. Their flanks heaved and stretched with the effort now as two riders, crouched low over their necks, spurred them on and on, on to ever greater speed. Sparks flew from the iron shod feet of the handsome beasts as they skittered onto a stony track; foam flew from their muzzles as they grunted and gasped with the effort that the prolonged pursuit had cost them and flecked the sides of both horses and riders.

‘They are gaining on us!’ shrieked the older man on the second horse. The young boy in the lead on his lean bay gelding looked back over his shoulder, his hair, wet from the dawn ride, flicked painfully across his eyes. In an instant the faceless pursuers were upon them – two to each side they spurred their horses on and fanned out, overtaking the boy and his companion and cutting them off. The older man’s horse pulled up sharply and reared high, then dropped to the ground with exhaustion, trapping his rider’s left leg as he fell. One of the pursuers leapt off his horse and with a sweeping flourish deftly ended the man’s life where he lay, trapped. The remaining three slipped off their horses like shadows and surrounded the boy, pulling him from his horse as the deluge of rain suddenly hit and dropped like stones from the heavens.

‘No, noooo!’ he screamed.

***

‘No…!’ screamed Hansy, jolting upright in bed as her eyes snapped open. She was soaked in sweat. She looked about frantically getting her bearings. It was a dream, that’s all, just a dream. She was always having them, but she couldn’t remember ever having one like that before. It was so real. The boy’s white face had looked agonised as he saw his companion killed in front of his eyes.

It was still dark. A rumble of thunder sounded, a long way off, but horribly threatening. Hansy lay wide eyed and stared into the darkness for a while, shocked by her dream. Eventually, she succumbed to a fitful sleep.

***

The new day dawned heavy and airless. The storm, which had been storing up its anger all morning, in stewing, boiling, fat-bellied cumulonimbus clouds, finally broke free and became a storm unleashed.

It was sudden and violent, terrifying in its ferocity. It smashed and raged about the house like an army of avenging furies, battering the walls with lances of steel-tipped rain drops, and lashing at the windows with wet whips.

Hansy Igondi reluctantly turned her face from the steamy window to survey the mess that was her mother’s kitchen, especially when baking. Her mother, Daisy, staggered across the room through a wall of heat and dumped two big trays of slightly burnt biscuits on the worktop.

Outside the freezing hail stones had brought the coldness from a mile up in the sky down with them and were trying to beat their way in. Now the piles of ice were starting to form armies of whiteness, camped out on the lawn.

The unusual and exciting noise had sent Hansy’s brother, William, flying to the window shouting with glee as he squashed his nose firmly to the glass.

‘Hell-stans’ he yelled ‘Hell-stans.’

William was 2 ¼ years old and proud of it, and really could not understand why everyone else did not use the same language as him, or get excited about the same things as he did either. He had fluffy, crazy chestnut coloured hair, a cheeky round face adorned by a stub-nose and sky-blue eyes above a sturdy little body.

‘Go….out – go….out!’ he yelled, fumbling and thudding at the door, eager to get his plump little star-shaped hands on the tempting, rattling white balls falling from the sky, which were camouflaging the garden with a crystalline white blanket.

‘No’ said Daisy firmly, as the wind whistled through any crack it could find, ‘not now Wills-it’s too cold, and … look at it out there – as black as black, I cannot imagine what it will do next.’

William stamped his small feet with annoyance; Daisy straightened her back, rubbing it and then moved across the room, she ran her sleeve over the steamy window and peered through the mist-free hole. It was not just black out there, it was turgid purple, and steely-grey, and a very nasty, threatening shade of orangey-brown, with all the colours of the sky, the clouds and the land, smudging and moving, as though they were one, right down to the ground, like a monstrous shadow.

‘Uh-oh, heere we go’ sang Daisy, as the first crack of thunder rolled all around them and the lights in the room flickered. She swiped a long golden-brown fringe out of her midnight blue eyes with the back of a floury hand. Hansy, who was looking anxiously at her mother also saw a large, attractive woman, not yet forty, with the stubby nose and determined chin that had been inherited by her son.

‘Hmmm’ said Daisy turning; ‘Candles needed I think!’

As if to bear out her words, there was a sudden blinding flash in the gloom, which lit everything white for a second in its stark beauty, followed by a second crash of rolling thunder, silence, then just as suddenly pelting rain hit like arrows against the house. At the same moment, William smashed his favourite dumper truck into the wall in his anger. He had a wide-eyed moment of shocked silence, before the wailing started.

‘Broked, broked’ he howled as the door of his truck fell off and wobbled to an uncertain retreat under the kitchen table.

‘Come on’ Hansy said to William as she came back into the kitchen with some candles. She grabbed William’s hand and steered him past the burning smells that were escaping from the oven.

‘Come on, look Wills! Sunshine too! There must be a rainbow out there somewhere,’ smiled Hansy, suddenly inspired, ‘Let’s go find it!’

Hansy, with William in tow tottering alongside her, steered past her distracted mother and rushed from window to window in the house, searching for the rainbow that must be there.

‘Let’s try upstairs!’ she cried, her long legs already half way up the stairs.

‘Dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum,’ sang William, happy again, as he struck out a beat with his hands on the stairs, following up behind her on all fours.

‘DOM-DOM!’ he shouted out triumphantly thumping the top step as he reached it.

But Hansy did not hear him; she was already across the straggly landing gazing, with her mouth open, through the enormous window over the bath.

‘Wowww…..Wills, look at this!’

And there it was; the biggest, strongest, most colourfullest rainbow that she had ever seen, that anybody had ever seen. Hansy got into the bath and pressed her nose to the window for a better view. The magnificent rainbow arched right across from one side of the parkland and playing fields to the other, framing the gigantic oak tree perfectly. She could just see the church’s beautiful, octagonal lantern tower in the distance from where she stood; the huge clock face underneath it seemed to be lit up with many colours, Hansy leaned her cheek against the window and gazed at it, mesmerised. The golden numbers on the face of the clock shimmered and pulsated, she felt absorbed by it… drawn to it… enveloped by it. The shimmering clock face became larger and larger, making her head spin...

‘Woo…ooooow’ shrieked William, feet waving in mid-air as he grappled with the edge of the bath to get in, then fell, head first, whooshing gleefully down the sloping end and then; ‘Wraaaaaargh… Ansi!’ He held up his chubby hands to Hansy for rescue as another huge flash of lightning lit the church so that the image felt burned onto Hansy’s eyeballs. The bathroom cupboards rattled with the thunderous roll, and the walls of the house shook and shuddered.

Hansy pulled at William, who had his nose in the plughole, and brushed him down.

‘Don’t be scared Wills’ she soothed, ‘it’s only the cloud giants having an argument, they fight with swords and war hammers you know, and shields – like knights of old; it’s the swords that give off the big sparks when they clash together; that’s the lightning and you hear the big bangs when they bash the shields together, bang-bang!!’ She smiled at William, demonstrating – banging her hands together for effect, but, as he copied enthusiastically, she found that her eyes were drawn irresistibly back to the window;

‘Come on, just look at this amazing rainbow – quick, before it goes!’

The rainbow was still miraculously there, suspended in nothingness, the roiling sky brown and black behind. It was awesome and captivating, but fading slightly now in the sheeting drizzle. The two of them stared at it in wonder as a large bead of rain rolled lazily down the outside of the glass like a fat spider gliding down a silken, gossamer strand of its web.

‘I wish I could find the pot of gold’ breathed Hansy as she rubbed her palm on the steamed up window for a better view.

‘Dold’ said William looking up at her hopefully.

‘They say it’s at the end of the rainbow, but that the end of the rainbow moves no matter how hard you chase it, and which end should you chase anyway?’ Hansy gave a heavy sigh. She was pretty fed up. School was sort-of OK, if you didn’t count Melissa, but the holidays had been just, well, boring so far.

‘I wish ...’ she sighed again softly, leaning her forehead on the cool glass and staring intently at the rainbow.

‘You found it then?’ Her mother made her jump as she appeared suddenly and looked past Hansy’s shoulder at the now fading rainbow.

‘Yup’. As Hansy unwillingly tore her gaze away and turned towards her mother, Daisy felt a familiar surge of pride. Hansy was ten and tall for her age. She was slim, athletic and strong with golden skin and out-of-control auburn wavy hair that came just below her shoulders and defied straighteners. Her hazel eyes were set in a friendly face.

‘She looks a bit fed up’ thought Daisy.

Daisy Igondi had ordered the past for her family in the best way she could. She could see the present. But if she could have foreseen the future, Hansy’s mother may well have tightened her affectionate grip on her only daughter’s shoulder.

Chapter Two – Oscar

The storm was still raging when Hansy’s dad came in from work. He struggled through the kitchen door with the water running in rivers off his head, mac and the plastic bags of a supermarket shop, which were twisted, tangled and wet, in his strong grasp. The stormy rain blasted in behind him, and drenched the kitchen floor in an instant. Reginald Igondi was a tall handsome man, with dark, lustrous skin, full generous lips, which were usually curved into a wide white smile, and charcoal eyes. The raindrops glistened like crystals in the black/brown tight curls of his hair.

‘Cor, what a night,’ he said, wiping his wet face and shrugging off his soaking mac. He eyed the casserole on the table hopefully as he dumped the soggy bags unceremoniously on the wet floor and sat down.

At the table Hansy did not have much to say, until she remembered the rainbow.

‘... and the way it lit up the clock face on the old church,’ Hansy went on, ‘it was…it was…’ She was lost for words. How could she describe how drawn-in she had felt? Or the amazingly odd effect that it had had on her, exciting and at the same time, chilling.

‘…It was ...odd’ she said lamely.

‘Wish you could have found the pot of gold’ teased Reg boisterously.

‘Dold!’ shouted William.

‘Looks like the storm is set in for the rest of the night’ continued Reg, ‘and we are in for a rocky week too according to the forecast.’

‘I hope we don’t lose any… Wills!’ shouted Daisy as William sent a glob of casserole flying across the table, ‘No!!’

‘Dold!’ said Wills, staring happily at the mess.

‘Trees?’ finished Hansy – ‘so do I, especially my favourite one.’

‘Sounds like the trees are groaning and creaking now,’ said Reg above the noise being made by both the storm and William, ‘listen.’

From the direction of the garden came an odd sort of scratchy, creaky, whiney sound. In fact, it sounded creepily close to the back door. Suddenly, they all turned, listening carefully; even William stopped making mountains in his casserole, the last mouthful securely pouched in his bulging right cheek.

There it was again, a scratching, whining sound, distinctly at the back door and then, above the howling of the wind, came a different howl, thin and high-pitched. At that moment there was a violent roll of thunder and at the same time lightning ripped through the air. With a resounding ‘pop!’ all the lights went out and the fridge shuddered and clattered to a halt.

‘Wooaaaah’ yelled William ‘Muuumm?’ wavered Hansy uncertainly. Daisy scrabbled for the candles in the dark.

‘It’s all right, it’s OK,’ Daisy fumbled with lighting the scattered candles; ‘we knew this would happen in a storm like this.’

Across the flickering candle light they looked at each other and then the scratching and howling started again.

‘Gracious!’ said Reg with his loaded fork half way to his mouth, ‘it sounds like a …’

‘A creepy spook?’ whispered Hansy and then ... as a fresh, blood-curdling howl rent the air -

‘An animal of some sort’ chorused Hansy and Daisy together.

‘We’ll have to look’ said Hansy jumping up. At this, William began to join in with his own wailing and howling, half chewed casserole, dribbling brown and unattractively down his chin.

‘Oh dear,’ Daisy said, looking tired, ‘It’s set him off; do see what it is Reg dear – please.’

But instead, Reg dropped his fork and made a grab for Hansy.

‘I’m – not – opening – the – door – to – some – wild – animal – on – a – night – like…’

‘Oh come ON Dad’ shouted Hansy above the noise of the wind and William as she