The New Murrey and Blue blog

Richard brought to Greyfriars for Burial.  Artwork  Emma Vieceli

Reblogged from Sparkypus.com We Speak No Treason

And so once more the awful date has come and gone.  Many fictional Ricardian novels  have been written based on Richard and his life but surely the scenes of the aftermath of Bosworth in We speak no Treason written by the late Rosemary Hawley Jarman must rank amongst the most moving.    Many Ricardians will already be familiar with this book but for those who have not yet read it,  part of the story is told through the eyes of the Maiden who had ever loved Richard from when she was  a young girl and,  after losing him from her life,  events  had led to her becoming a nun.   She had not seen Richard for many years but in the aftermath of the battle Richard’s body has been brought to her convent to be laid to rest by loving hands.    

‘Men came to kneel by me,  first one cloaked like the stranger, then another still clad in harness and with a neck wound from which the red oozed wearily,  then four or five together. One of these wore a hermit’s robe carelessly donned with the strength of his mail winking beneath it.   They say that the church filled up from the porch to rood screen with men who entered like ghosts and wept like babes.   There were running feet and a voice that burst through the whispering silence with  ‘My Lord! My Lord Lovell!’ –  crying that they were hanging the prisoners and fugitives in Leicester market and Lovell must fly at once,  and for answer came only the deep,  dreadful sound of men’s grief,  the hasty feet clattered nearer and stopped short, the voice said “Ah Dickon!’ as a child might wail in the night, then swore like a man in the face of murder. And the church was filled with love and hate and vengeance, and a heaviness that one could touch with the hand….

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