Return of the King (of England)

by

Ben Lacy

Copyright © 2009 Ben Lacy

All rights reserved

Two days after the catastrophe, the Earl of Sussex summoned Lord Robert
MacGregor, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Crown and Nobel Prize winner, to the Earl’s
office at Buckingham Palace.
“I thought there were hundreds of blood relations. Won’t one of them do?”
MacGregor asked.
“None are close enough or interesting enough to be acceptable to the public. We
need someone who will be embraced by everyone. The state of the monarchy is too
precarious for anything else.”
“Well, how about a clone then. We can get hold of some tissue and …”
“No,” the Earl interrupted, “nobody wants a retread. Aside from the legal issues,
the last one, God rest his soul, wasn’t that popular. We need someone new.”
“All right, we’ll go back into the past and get a sperm sample, then we can …”
The look on the Earl’s face stopped MacGregor in mid-sentence.
“And how will you get this sperm sample. No, that is just too crude. I’m afraid
it’s hopeless. I’m sorry, Bobby, I’ve only wasted your time calling you here. The
Monarchy is doomed and the way things are going today, I fear the whole country will
soon follow.”
 MacGregor sat in his stiff backed chair, deep in thought. He had not become his
country’s greatest scientist by giving up. There had to be a solution, an angle that would
provide a replacement the public would embrace. No, a replacement that the public
would demand! In a flash of pure insight, he saw the answer. In his excitement, he leapt
to his feet. “No, my friend, I have the answer, the perfect solution. Yes, yes, it can be
done!”
The Earl stared at him with a touch of annoyance, “What are you talking about?
Calm down and tell me.”
“The Princes in the Tower.”
First the Earl looked stunned, then comprehension came and with it … a huge
smile.

**********

MacGregor walked the corridors of the Tower of London, carefully using his
hands to feel the way. Only a few hours ago, by his reckoning, he had carefully toured
the entire Tower, but that Tower had been a brightly lit tourist attraction. This Tower was
a dark, dank, prison; a place where more than one king had been murdered. Worse, the
Tower had been renovated several times over the last seven hundred years.
Records indicated that King Richard had removed most of the guards from inside
the Tower just before the murders, but MacGregor knew that an encounter with even one
would risk changing the course of history. He had to avoid that at all costs. He picked up
his pace, hoping he was near the boys. Behind him, his automated equipment cart sped
up to stay with him.
He could see light coming from the third door on the left. Voices were coming
from inside. He paused a moment to listen. They were children’s voices. He sighed with
relief. He had found his target.
Light came from a small window set high in the thick wooden door. Iron bars ran
vertically through the open window. MacGregor saw one boy standing over another,
smaller boy, who sat on a bed with a blanket wrapped around him. The younger boy had
been crying.
“I’m so cold Edward. I think I’m ill.”
The older boy tried to comfort him, “Be strong little brother. Mother will come
for us soon and everything will be fine.”
“No, no it won’t. We’ve been prisoners for months now. Uncle Richard will
never let us go. He means to have your crown. So we both have to die … just like
Clarence.”
Edward slumped down beside his brother and embraced him. “Aye, maybe we
do,” he sighed. “Oh, Uncle, I would gladly give you my crown would you just suffer us
to live.”
For a moment, MacGregor was spell bound watching history come to life, but
time was very short. To avoid making any change to the course of history, he’d had to
come back at the last possible moment.
The door had a crude lock. He pulled out a skeleton key that the Crown’s
Historian had assured him would open any door in the Tower. The key slid in, and with
some force, MacGregor was able to turn the lock. A good thing too, blasting his way in
would be a huge risk. He had to be careful to leave no evidence behind.
The boys looked up at him. They seemed wary but not particularly afraid. Both
were handsome, blonde haired boys. They looked unharmed but somewhat malnourished
for royalty. As Edward walked up to meet him, MacGregor had to struggle to keep his
face from crinkling. Edward V, the rightful King of England, smelled very bad.
MacGregor reminded himself that bathing was not a frequent habit of the era.
“What can we do for you milord?” Edward asked. Edward was used to receiving
deference, but the tone of his voice showed that he was no longer sure whether he should
expect it.
MacGregor was unsure how to explain himself, when young Richard, Duke of
York, forgetting his illness, leapt from his bed and ran around his brother. “What is that,”
he exclaimed, pointing to MacGregor’s equipment cart floating silently behind him. “Are
you a wizard?”
 Wizardry would be associated with the devil, so MacGregor decided not to accept
that designation even if it would simplify explanations. “No, I am a scientist from far, far
in the future. I don’t have time to explain, but the two of you have to come with me.
First though, I have to take care of a couple of things.” He pulled a large silver colored
bag from off the cart and carried it to the bed. Even through the bag, the boys could tell
that a body was inside. MacGregor grabbed another bag, with a slightly smaller body in
it, and brought it to the bed as well.
Tearing both bags open, he moved the bodies into a sleeping position on the bed.
He looked at the two bodies on the bed, then at the two boys. The likeness wasn’t great,
but it would be dark, and he doubted that King Richard’s assassin had ever seen the boys
before.
“Good God, man,” Edward exclaimed, “are those corpses you are putting in our
bed.”
“No, they’re puppets, to fool your captors,” Actually, they were simulated bodies
grown fully formed from an organic compound just hours ago. The bones matched a
human’s but the insides were soft vegetable matter, except for a pair of rudimentary lungs
and the diaphragm that supported them. MacGregor injected a needle into the diaphragm
of one of the bodies. This triggered a reaction that caused the diaphragm to expand and
contract. The body appeared to be breathing. He heard a gasp from behind him. He
ignored the boys; another needle started a chemical reaction in the body’s pseudo skin to
keep it warm. He repeated the process with the other body. They would keep breathing
until Richard’s assassin smothered them in a few hours.
“Sir, I truly must insist you explain yourself.” Edward stood beside a small
writing table. He held a large candelabra in front of him. His younger brother stood
behind him, cautiously looking around Edward.
MacGregor knew that he had frightened the boys badly and they’d already been
through so much. He had been fortunate that they were bright enough not to raise the
alarm. Time was now desperately short, but he felt he had to give them some kind of
reassurance. He held his hands in front of him to show that he was unarmed and walked
to within a few feet of Edward. He bowed deeply and sincerely. “Your Majesty, forgive
my brusqueness.”
Edward hesitated a moment then lowered the candelabra slightly and nodded for
MacGregor to continue. “As I said before, I come from as many years in your future as
King Arthur is in your past. In my time, our King and the entire royal family met with a
terrible accident.” They all died when a meteor struck the family yacht, which crashed
into one of Jupiter’s moons. That explanation could wait for later.
“We have no king and no one who can succeed to the throne. We want you,
Edward the Fifth, to be our king.”
Edward stared at MacGregor, trying to comprehend what he had just heard.
“Thank you for your offer, sir, but I am to be king here,” a note of defiance had crept into
the youngster’s voice.
“No, your Majesty,” MacGregor shook his head sadly, “your time in this world
ends tonight.”
Both boys gasped. They turned to look at each other. “Brother,” Richard said, “I
want to go with him. Leave this place to Uncle Richard.”
Edward looked at MacGregor for a long moment. Suddenly, a noise came from
down the corridor. A guard was coming.
“Your Majesty, our time is up, you have to decide now!” MacGregor said
urgently.
Edward turned back to MacGregor. “Very well, sir, we are in your hands. What
would you have us do?”
“Just stay absolutely still.” MacGregor turned to the equipment cart and flipped a
switch to open the time portal. A bright light formed at their feet. Both boys were
startled but held their ground.
As the portal opened beneath them, a trembling but angry Edward declared, “I just
wish I had been able to punish my uncle for his treason.”
“Don’t worry,” MacGregor said as they dropped through the portal. “He’ll get his
soon enough.”
And then they were gone.
 **********

Richard III had stolen the throne from his nephews and locked them in the Tower,
where they were never to be seen again. Within months, people suspected he had
murdered them. Opposition to his seizure of the throne became overwhelming. Two
years after that last night in the Tower, Richard III was killed at Bosworth Field by the
forces of Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII. For years, nothing was found of the
princes. People argued over whether they had actually died, and if so, who had murdered
them.
Two hundred years later, during renovation of a portion of the Tower, the
skeletons of the pseudo Richard and Edward were discovered, sealed underneath a
staircase. They were properly buried for another two hundred and fifty years, when
twentieth century scientists disinterred the remains and confirmed that they were probably
the murdered boy princes. After a reexamination of the evidence, historians could finally
prove that Richard III had indeed had his nephews murdered.
With the mystery of what had happened to them seemingly solved, they simply
became one of the more fascinating parts of the history of the British Crown. That is
until another two hundred years passed. When, on a bright summer day at Westminster
Abbey, after nearly seven hundred years, the true king was restored to the throne. Edward
V, redubbed Edward XII, was crowned … King of England.