The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds (19 page)

Day Twelve

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

The day dawns like any other recently, blue skies and unbroken sunshine. It will be the day I never forget.

At 7.45 a.m. everyone is still buzzing about the grave cuts in Trench Three, and eager to get on with the new eastern slot that will be cut there this morning in the hope of revealing more of them. I’m not really interested. My mind is still on Trench One.

I’m alone again on the plastic chair in the sunshine, enjoying the solitude as Jo Appleby works below me. Appleby picks up the mattock, chipping away at the western edge of the slot. It’s hot, heavy work and I try to help by grabbing some of the bucket loads of earth she passes up.

Leon Hunt comes to tell us that the eastern slot in Trench Three is already exposing more grave cuts and I really should take a look. I arrive to see enormous slabs of dark grey slate on the spoil heaps. Morris says they’re probably left over from the Victorian buildings, part of their infill. They look like grave tops to me. He cleans one off but it’s local slate with no markings, so … Victorian rubble.

Back at Trench One, before I can sit down, Appleby says I need to look at something. A smooth expanse of creamy yellow bone is poking out of the earth at the far western end, almost beneath my feet. It’s the top of a skull with a large gash in it. Battle wound? No. She apologizes, and says that she was using the mattock when it crunched into something. When she brushed away the soil, she realized the mattock had driven straight into the skull, the clean white edges of the crack indicating the newness of the damage. She’s mortified and explains that as the leg bones are so much lower in the earth, the skull should not have been where it is. She thinks it must belong to different remains. The real skull, if the leg bones are articulated, she says, will be beneath this. Seeing my concern, she tells me not to worry, and assures me that the damaged skull is not part of the same remains. Morris arrives and sees the crack. ‘It happens,’ he says.

It’s not the start I was hoping for. If there is more than one burial here, it could be a lengthier process to determine if one is Richard. Appleby exposes more of the skull, which is perfectly round with no other marks or wounds, but needs a lot of work before it can be removed from the earth. It looks like the skull of a male. The large upper leg bones, the femur bones, are now exposed, as are the arm bones. The foot bones have gone, thanks, it would seem, to the Victorian builders, and it was probably a shroud burial since the hands are still in place over the pelvic area and the legs are together.

The leg bones look strong and healthy, with no marks or battle wounds. One of the lower leg bones was mashed up a little by the excavator as the trench was being dug but the others are in good condition. The arms are normal with no marks or battle wounds, and no signs of being ‘withered’. It also looks as if the skull is part of the same remains as there is no other in the ground, but Appleby can’t understand why it would be so high up in relation to the rest. I ask how tall he was. She can’t be certain as she doesn’t have a measuring tape, but the size of the femur, the longest bone in the body, is reasonable so he wasn’t small. I look down at the remains, trying to gauge his height from my own leg. I’m five foot nine and the remains look roughly that or slightly less.

I ask Appleby her opinion as to the possible identity of the remains. Since there are no wounds, normal arms, good height and a shroud burial, located in the nave of the church, she believes it could be a friar. Morris agrees. As I look down at the bones, I remember from contemporary sources that Richard was reputedly small in stature, and begin to think that this can’t be him. I feel odd, as if the world were closing in on me.

Truth be told, I’m shattered by this news and want time on my own to digest it so I head off to Piero’s, stopping at Trench Three on the way. Everyone there is hugely excited. Richard Buckley is filming with Simon Farnaby and the DSP team beside three grave cuts, one of which, the central one, has everyone transfixed. It’s a long cut in the central flooring of the church, a place of great honour, but there are bricks poking through the top soil which they need to investigate. There’s also a new wall exposed by the earlier western slot that could be the remains of the base of a choir stall. A square piece of an elaborate stone frieze, virtually intact, has been found, as well as the most beautiful window tracery in the eastern slot, which may be from the east window of the church.

No wonder the team are all in Trench Three again. If we are looking at part of the east window then this could be the choir of the Greyfriars Church and, more importantly, Richard’s grave could be here. I look at the tracery which is so perfect, as though it fell into the ground yesterday, not several centuries ago. Jon Coward is smiling. ‘Not bad for a morning’s work,’ he says. I ask about the grave cuts and we chat about the middle one that is cut into the flooring and runs much further east. Coward is not totally convinced it’s a burial, as he hasn’t yet removed the top layer of soil with the bricks, which he thinks are most likely Victorian, but could be Georgian and have to be checked out.

I can understand everyone’s interest in this cut. We believe that Richard was interred in the choir and if you’re going to bury a king it would surely be in a place of honour, in a central position with the floor cut to accommodate him. If this is Richard’s grave and it has modern rubble at its surface, did the Victorians or Georgians accidentally remove him? I’m interested but strangely not concerned. I’m still reeling from the disappointment in Trench One.

In Piero’s I have no appetite and sit at the back. Mohcin, who works there, brings me my drink and tries to cheer me up. I hadn’t realized I looked as miserable as I feel. Why did I get the intuitive feeling for a friar? I try to reason with myself. Perhaps this friar has a story to tell, something that might throw some light on Richard and his time. Perhaps I need to focus on Trench Three. I wander the Leicester streets, then sit by the soothing fountain in Town Hall Square, and ponder what I have to do next.

Back on site, I head to Trench Three. This, I’ve persuaded myself, is where I should be, but I don’t get there because the DSP team want to film me at Trench One. Simon Farnaby has a question he wants to put to me before we see Jo Appleby in the trench but he won’t tell me what it is before the cameras roll. He looks rather on edge, so I don’t push it.

‘So, Philippa, do you remember that story you told me about where you felt Richard was buried and how that came about? Can you tell me about it?’

I’m thrown. Is this relevant now? But I tell him as lightheartedly as I can about my goose-bumps that day and the letter ‘R’, and the feeling that I was walking on Richard’s grave.

At the trench, the cameras roll as Jo Appleby bends down and removes a light covering of earth from the chest cavity and upper vertebrae. The spine has the most excruciating ‘S’ shape. Whoever this was, she states, the spinal column has a really abnormal curvature. This skeleton has a hunchback.

The word hits me like a sucker-punch. No, I can’t take it in. Are they saying this is Richard? I look again at the acute ‘S’ shape of the spine. If this is Richard, how can he have worn armour with a hump in his back? Appleby says she wouldn’t try but confirms that the arms are normal, there was no ‘withered arm’. Farnaby says he could have been a hunchback but still been the nice guy. But it doesn’t add up. How could he fight with his head tilted downward? How could he see? The faces of Dr Tobias Capwell, Dominic Sewell and the other combat and weaponry experts I’d spoken to whirl before me. Personal descriptions of Richard come to mind; written by people who met him, none mentioned any acute abnormality.

There’s more. Appleby explains there is a wound at the top of the skull and damage to the base inflicted at or around the time of death. She lifts the skull that she has released from the earth and turns it round. There’s an indent on the inside with two small flaps of bone hanging from it. Directly above this, on the outside top of the skull, there is a small square puncture wound like that inflicted by a poleaxe. Appleby turns the skull over. At the back is a massive cleave wound, suggesting a blow that would have taken off most of the back of the head. This is not a friar dedicated to peace. This is a man who could have died in battle. I’m reeling.

Replacing the skull, she demonstrates how the remains looked in situ when she first uncovered them. I can see how high the skull is in the earth. The neck has been forced up so that the head is sticking out, jerking forward and downward onto the chest. The evidence is there, staring me in the face. I’m trying to discern the man from the bones, but can see nothing. Appleby lifts the skull again showing the massive cleave wound and the face. Suddenly there is hair, blood and humanity.

I flop down on to the spoil heap behind me. Farnaby puts his arm around me and asks if I’m all right. I feel as if I’ve been hit by a train. The others want me to be excited because it looks as though we may have found Richard but all I can hear is the pounding in my ears and the awful word ‘hunchback’ in my brain. Appleby is talking about the Paralympics, the men and women who overcome disabilities to become superhuman heroes. This was Richard, who became a warrior king in spite of everything. She’s trying to help me comprehend what I’m seeing.

But that’s not why I’m in turmoil. The hunchback stigma, if confirmed, will allow modern historians with their reputations tied to Tudor propaganda to claim that their chosen sources have been validated. Any hope of revealing the man behind the myths will be lost and the cardboard cut-out caricature held up as incontestable.

Filming stops. Everyone is elated. I catch their excitement and smile, but it’s a mechanical smile. They think it may be Richard whereas I know it’s Richard. The joviality of the Time Tomb Team helps me cope but I just want to be alone.

I head to Trench Three where Jon Coward is working by himself. He’s excited about the trench, since they may be able to confirm exactly where they are in terms of the east end of the church, and therefore the burial in Trench One could be in the choir. I ask him if he has heard about the discoveries at the exhumation yet. He looks blank. When I tell him I can almost see his mind whirling. If the remains are indeed in the choir of the church then the likelihood of them being King Richard is even greater. I return to Trench One, where John Ashdown-Hill has arrived and is standing by the remains. We hug. He is white and in shock; strange that this should be our reaction. He too comprehends what this will mean for Richard’s reputation.

The exhumation work resumes. Jo Appleby bags up each bone and Mathew Morris brings another brown cardboard finds box. I find myself thinking how sad it is. Appleby hands up a clear plastic finds bag containing a small piece of rusted metal, possibly iron, approximately two to three centimetres long, which looks as if it has a sharp point. It was found in the upper back between the second and third thoracic vertebrae, but not lodged in the bone. Turning it over, I ask if it could be the tip of a weapon that snapped off in the mêlée after it was thrust into his flesh – a pike maybe. Appleby doesn’t know.

It’s getting late and the site slowly clears. Richard Buckley is back, amazed by the news of the discovery. He doesn’t normally swear, he says, but he did on this occasion. Ashdown-Hill has a modern copy of Richard’s royal banner, and I’d like to place it over the finds box for its departure from the site. We won’t be doing this again, and I want to mark the event, to pay him what respect we can. Richard Buckley agrees, and leaves.

Morris and Appleby bag the final remains, and I see the skull up close for the first time. The face is short with well-defined features, the skull itself almost delicate in appearance, not the heavy-browed Neanderthal type you sometimes see. Only the skull seems to have the creamy yellow appearance, whereas the bones are mostly dark with the clay soil clinging to them. The bones are being put into the bags still dirty to protect them as some are quite fragile. They’ll be cleaned in the lab for analysis. I reflect on how Richard was found. We so often see human remains with the awful gaping mouth of death, but not this time; Richard’s skull, with its acute angle, looks as though he had just nodded off to sleep in the grave, his head fallen forward on to his chest.

It’s nearly 7 p.m. and Richard is out of the ground. I ask Jo Appleby if she would like the honour of carrying the box with the royal banner covering it to the van, but she declines. She’s not comfortable as we don’t know for certain that it’s Richard. It doesn’t feel right for me to do it, so then who? Suddenly it dawns on me: John Ashdown-Hill; without his research we wouldn’t be here. I hold the cardboard box, as he places the banner over it, he takes the box and carries it as we walk to Mathew Morris’s van. Ashdown-Hill places the box inside then Morris closes the door.

It’s a peaceful moment and I feel enormous relief that it’s all over. Then all at once Jo Appleby is angrily telling us that what we’re doing isn’t right, that everyone should be treated the same. On top of everything else, it’s the last straw and I’m furious. She’s forgotten, or doesn’t know, the struggle I’ve had to find this man. I tell her so in no uncertain terms, but feel guilty about it. As a scientist, she is dedicated to evidence and while I agree that in death we are all equal, at that moment, at the end of my journey, with the agony of discovery, I feel emotional. Then I calm down because Jo Appleby is right: he hasn’t been identified yet.

As Morris closes the site, I look at where Richard had lain. Two yellow field markers are all that remain, the western one marking the position of his head, the eastern the extent of his leg bones. Gazing at these two simple markers I should be happy, or perhaps sad, but I just feel numb.

But we weren’t quite at the end of the journey. The next morning I tell Sarah Levitt at LCC the news. She blanches and informs Sir Peter Soulsby, Leicester’s mayor, who utters one word: ‘Bugger.’ Phil Stone, chairman of the Richard III Society, gasps, as does the private secretary to the Duke of Gloucester.