Philippa Gregory - Virgin Earth

“No,” Bradshaw said. “We will proceed to sentence.”

The king looked stunned, he had not thought they would resist the temptation of an agreement. He sat back in his chair for a moment and John could tell, from his absorbed expression and the gentle beating of his fingers on the arm of his chair, that he was thinking of another plan, another approach.

It was John Bradshaw’s great moment. He had a speech in his hand and he started to recite. He read slowly enough for all the writers from the journals to copy down what he was saying. He cited the traditional duty of Parliament and the duty of the king, and the claim that kings could be held accountable for their crimes. The crowd grew restless during the long legal citations but Bradshaw came to the point – that the king, by taking arms against his people, had destroyed the agreement between a king and his people. He was there to protect his people, never to attack.

“I would desire only one word before you give sentence,” the king interrupted.

“But sir, you have not owned us as a court, we need not have heard even one word from you.”

The king subsided into his chair as Bradshaw gestured to the clerk of the court.

“Charles Stuart as a tyrant, traitor, murderer and a public enemy shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.”

In silence the sixty-seven commissioners rose to their feet.

“Will you hear me a word, sir?” the king asked politely, as if nothing had taken place.

“You are not to be heard after sentence,” Bradshaw said and motioned to the guards to take him away.

The king leaned forward more urgently. He had not realized that they would not hear him after sentence had been passed. He knew so little of the laws of his own land that he had not realized a man sentenced is not allowed to speak. “I may speak after the sentence-” Charles argued, his voice a little higher in anxiety. “By your favor, sir, I may speak after the sentence.”

The guards came closer. John found he was shrinking back, a hand to his mouth like a frightened child.

Charles persisted. “By your favor, hold! The sentence, sir, I do-”

The guards closed in, forcing him to his feet. Charles shouted over their heads to the stunned crowd: “I am not suffered for to speak: expect what justice other people will have!”

They hustled him from the hall, there were confused shouts, some for, some against him. The commissioners filed out, John saw them go as if they were floating away, Bradshaw’s red gown and absurd hat a dreamlike imagining. “I never thought they would do it,” John said. “I never thought they would.”

John would not attend church with Frances and her husband. He sat at the kitchen table, a glass of small ale before him, while the church bells rang and then fell silent, and then rang again.

Frances, entering in a rush to prepare the Sunday dinner, checked at the sight of her father, so uncharacteristically idle.

“Are you sick?”

He shook his head.

Alexander followed his wife into the kitchen. “They say he is praying with Bishop Juxon. He is allowed to see his children.”

“No clemency?” John asked.

“They are building the scaffold at Whitehall,” Alexander said shortly.

“Not here?” Frances asked quickly.

Alexander took her hand and kissed it. “No, my dear. Nowhere near us. They are closing off the street before the Banqueting House. They are fortifying it against a rescue attempt.”

“Who would rescue him?” John asked forlornly. “He has betrayed every one of his friends at one time or another.”

It was such a bitter, cold morning that John thought the ice on roof and gutter had crept into his own veins and was freezing his belly and bones as he waited in the street. The king was to be executed before noon but though the streets were lined three-deep with soldiers, and the two executioners waited in the lee of the black-draped scaffold, the note-takers and sketch artists gathered at the foot, there was no sign of the king.

The street, crammed with people packed in behind the cordon of soldiers, had a strange echo to it, as the sound of talk, prayers, and the shouts of ballad-sellers bawling out the titles of their new songs bounced off the walls of the windowless buildings and boomed in the cold air.

John, looking behind him at the tight-packed crowd and then forward to the stage, thought it seemed like an exercise in perspective, like Inigo Jones’s deceiving painted scenery for a masque, the penultimate scene of a masque which would be followed by the ascension, with Jehovah coming down from a great cloud and the handmaidens of Peace and Justice dancing together.

The two executioners climbed the steps to the platform and there was a gasp at their appearance. They were in costume, in false wigs and false beards and dark brown doublets and breeches.

“What are they wearing? Masquing clothes?” Alexander asked of the man on his left.

“Disguised to hide their identity,” the man said shortly. “It’ll be Brandon the hangman hidden under that beard, unless it’s Cromwell himself doing the job.”

John briefly closed his eyes and opened them again. The scene had not changed; it was still unbearable. The chief executioner positioned the block, laid down his ax and stepped back, his arms folded, waiting.

It was a long wait, the crowd grew restless.

“A reprieve?” Alexander suggested. “The plan he had for peace finally heard and accepted?”

“No,” someone said in the crowd nearby. “He has been stabbed to death by Cromwell himself.”

“I heard there was an escape,” someone else said. “He must have escaped. If he was dead they would show the body.”

The rumor and the speculation continued all the morning in a swirl of muttering all around John who stood cold and silent in the middle of it all.

“I must find something to eat,” Alexander said. “I am famished.”

“I don’t want anything,” John said.

“You must be starving, man; and cold,” Alexander exclaimed. “Let me bring you a loaf of bread when I buy some dinner for myself.”

John shook his head. “I feel nothing,” he said simply. “Nothing at all.”

Alexander shook his head and wriggled through the crowd to where an enterprising baker was selling hot bread rolls from a tray. It took him more than an hour to regain his place at John’s side but still nothing had happened.

“I brought you some bread,” he said cheerfully. “And I filled my flask with rum.”

John took the bread in his hand but he did not eat it. His eyes were fixed on the scaffold.

“They are saying that the Scots have visited Colonel Fairfax, who was against this from the start, and that they are all going to Cromwell to beg for a reprieve. The king can be free to live abroad, even Scotland.”

John shook his head.

“I know,” Alexander said. “If they gave him so much as a farthing’s chance he would raise an army and come back again. If he can conspire from prison when he is bound by his word of honor, what would he do loose amid the courts of Europe? He would always come back again. They can’t trust him with his life.”

“They’ve called Parliament,” a man said beside them. “That’s the reason for the delay. They are passing a law in a hurry which says that no one else can be proclaimed king. No value in beheading a king if another springs up to take his place, is there? And we have one of his sons in England and another two of them in France, and his nephew hanging round like a dog at the door of an abattoir. We’ve princes enough for pass-the-crown to go on forever. We have to break them of the habit now. So they’re making a law to say that no king can be proclaimed in England ever again.”

That sentence shocked John out of his absorption. “No king can be proclaimed in England ever again,” he repeated.

“Yes,” the man said. “It has a ring to it, doesn’t it? It makes you feel that it’s all been worth the struggle. We are free of them forever. There will never be another man to set himself high above all others. There will never be another family who think themselves better than the rest of us by virtue of the bed they were born in. Any masters we have in the future will have to earn their place. They will have to be men that we choose to serve because they are wiser or better or even richer than us. But not because they are born to it. This is Charles the Last. After him there will be freedom.”

“Charles the Last,” John repeated. “Charles the Last.”

The clocks had struck twelve and then one and then two before there was a stirring among the soldiers, which was quickly caught by the crowd, and then a shout: “He’s coming.”

John did not move. He was still and silent as he had been all day. The crowd around him jostled fiercely but John gripped his hands on the railing before him and held tight. Alexander saw that his knuckles were white; but so were his hands, his face, his whole body was bleached by cold and distress.

A window in the Banqueting Hall was open and the king stepped out onto the platform. He was simply dressed in black again: a black cape, a tall black hat, black breeches and a white shirt. The Order of the Garter was a blaze of color in dramatic contrast. He looked out at the crowd, John felt that somber, dark gaze pass over him and wanted to raise a hand, to catch at recognition for a moment. He kept his hands and his head down.

The king took some notes from his pocket and spoke quietly to the men on the platform. John, straining his ears, could hear only tantalizing snatches of speech; only the last few words rang clear: “I am a martyr to the people.”

John heard a hiss of breath at the unending, irresistible grandeur and folly of the man, and realized it was cold air through his own teeth. The king swore that he died in the faith of his father, as a Christian, and then spoke quietly to the executioner.