A Crowning Mercy

by Bernard Cornwell

  “And the charge of murder?”

  “Guilty.”

  Sir John half expected the girl to cry out, but she kept her composure as she had throughout the trial. Sir John looked at her. A pretty thing, he thought, but the devil often chose the best. He looked sardonically at Caleb Higbed. “You had a plea, Mr. Higbed?”

  Caleb Higbed shook his head, smiled. “The substance of the plea is already before your Lordship, unless you wish it repeated?”

  “No, no!” Sir John closed his great book. He picked up his black cap and stared at the scarlet-dressed prisoner. A few seconds before she had been on trial, now she was a witch and a murderess. Sir John’s mouth curved in malevolent dislike.

  “Dorcas Scammell, you have been found guilty of offenses so vile that they defy Christian comprehension. You willingly entered into a pact with the devil and you thereafter used the sorcerous powers he gave you to murder your husband, Samuel Scammell.

  “The penalty for witchcraft is hanging. Parliament, in its wisdom, decreed that should be so, but you have also been found guilty of your husband’s murder for which the penalty is death by burning.” He shifted heavily in the uncomfortable chair. He hated trials in the Tower, a drafty, cold, inconvenient place.

  “I would bring it to the court’s attention, and for the edification of those lawyers here who will one day bear my responsibilities, that there was a hallowed belief in this land that witches should be burned. The purpose was not to give pain, but to prevent the spirit of evil from passing away from the body of the witch into her family. This seems to me to be a precaution worthy of this court. Therefore, using the discretion given me by your conviction of murder, I sentence you, Dorcas Scammell, to be taken tomorrow forenoon to a place of execution, and there burned to your deserved death. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  There was a second’s silence in the courtroom, every eye on Campion, and then a great explosion of exalted applause.

  Campion, her face pale, her hands tied behind her back, did not move a muscle. She showed no shock, no distress, nothing. Then the guards turned her and led her away.

  The next day dawned as fine as any man could wish. There was a feeling of cleanness to the city, as if the rain had scoured it and the night wind aired it, and in the morning the burgeoning crowd on Tower Hill saw the last, high, ragged clouds fleeing eastward.

  The crowd was huge, as big, some said, as that which had collected for the Earl of Strafford’s death. They were in good mood, cheering as the gibbet was taken down and the wagonloads of faggots brought to the stake which had been hammered between the cobbles. The crowd shouted at the workmen, “Build it high!”

  “Remember the people at the back!”

  The workmen piled it eight feet high and only the shortness of the stake prevented them building it higher. They provoked laughs by pretending to warm their hands at the unlit pile, but stood respectfully back when the executioner came to inspect their work.

  He climbed to the top of the faggots, jumping up and down to test them, and then his assistant nailed two chains to the stake that would bind Campion’s neck and waist. Back at the foot of the great pyre the executioner ordered two holes forced in the piled faggots, holes where he would place the fire, and only then was he satisfied.

  Those closest to the fire would see best, though the cordon of soldiers who held them forty feet from the piled timber were constantly being asked to remove their helmets and crouch a little. Small children were pushed between the troops to wait expectant in the warming sun for this spectacle they had stayed up all night to see. The next best vantage points were on the houses to the west of Tower Hill where the rich had rented rooms. Some householders offered refreshments as part of the price, while others set up spyglasses in windows and on roof-leads; every space was crammed. To the east, on the ramparts of the Tower itself, the privileged guests of soldiers and officials stared down at the huge throng. The morning passed slowly.

  The preachers had been active the night before, whipping the faithful into a new hysteria, and now those same ministers moved among the crowd and held extemporary meetings. The air was loud with psalms and prayers.

  The children fretted, wanting the entertainment to begin, while some toddlers cried, thinking their parents would not lift them up soon enough to see the fire. The pie-sellers forced their way through the throng, shouting their cries, while water-sellers carried their heavy barrels on their backs.

  It was a holiday, a true holiday, a holy-day, because today the wishes of God, the preachers said, were being fulfilled by the children of God. Today a woman would die in exquisite, horrid agony to protect the kingdom of God, and it was no wonder, the preachers said, that He had sent fine weather.

  They had told Campion, the previous day, that the scarlet dress was the only dress available. Now it had been taken away and in its place she was dressed in a light, cotton shift. It was shapeless, loose and she suspected it would flare up at the first touch of flame to scorch her body.

  She seemed, to her jailers, to be in a daze. Ever since Francis Lapthorne had disappeared and she had realized, too late, that he had been yet another of her enemies, she had given up all hope.

  Only once in the time since had she shown emotion. The Reverend Perilly’s letter had reached her and she had cried terribly. Partly she cried for joy, that Toby lived, yet she cried for herself that there would be no green meadows beside a stream with him. She would die.

  The jailers let her cry her heart out. They were embarrassed.

  The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey was not embarrassed. He would accompany her to the scaffold, and he had prayed that, on this her last journey, she might repent. That would make a fine story! He could preach how the witch had begged forgiveness, had thrown herself on God’s mercies, and how he, Faithful Unto Death, had led her to the throne of grace. He came into Campion’s room with the soldiers who would take her to the stake and he started immediately, preaching the word in her dumb, dazed face.

  The soldiers were not embarrassed. One tied her hands, pulling the knots behind her back so tight that she cried out. Another soldier laughed. “Watch it, Jimmy! She’ll put a spell on you!”

  Their captain snapped at them to be quiet. He felt uneasy performing this duty, even troubled by it. He had believed the law to be sacred, yet only the night before he had taken dinner with his parents at Caleb Higbed’s house and the lawyer had laughed when asked about the trial. “Of course it’s all nonsense! There are no witches! That girl’s no witch! But the law says there are witches, so there are! This is very fine pork.”

  At least, the captain thought, the girl was quiet. She seemed drained of life and emotion. The only remnant of her last, troubled night was the drawn look on her face, her red eyes, and one quick glance she gave him that seemed, somehow, to reek of the terror he guessed she must feel. The captain, wishing he had thought before her hands were tied, stepped forward with a leather bag in his hands. It seemed heavy and had a long, looped thong hanging from its neck. He smiled nervously. This was not part of his duty, but his father had suggested it and the captain was glad. “Mrs. Scammell?”

  The eyes looked at him. She said nothing. She could, he thought, have been miles away.

  He hefted the bag in his hands, smiled. “Gunpowder, Mrs. Scammell. If it can be hung about your neck, under your shift, it will give you a swift end.”

  “Gunpowder!” Faithful Unto Death frowned. “Gunpowder? On whose orders, Captain?”

  “No one’s, sir. It’s customary.”

  “I doubt that.” Faithful Unto Death Hervey smiled. “The witch’s victims did not have a swift end, so why should she? No, Captain, no. Take it away. She must suffer the rigors of the law!” He turned back to Campion, and his onion-smelling breath hissed on her face. “‘Ye have plowed wickedness,’ woman, ‘and ye have reaped iniquity.’ Repent! It is not too late! Repent!”

  She said nothing, not even when the soldiers pushed her toward the door and one of them f
ondled her breasts through the cotton shift.

  “Stop it!” the captain shouted.

  The girl seemed oblivious.

  A bell sounded the single, flat note that told the world it was a quarter past the hour. The captain looked at the beautiful, pale face. “We must go.”

  She walked as if in a trance, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, crossing the Archbishop’s footprints in the grassed courtyard. Behind her and above her, at a barred window, the Archbishop made the sign of the cross toward her. One day, he knew, he would tread the same path and walk toward a death that the Puritans would applaud. He watched her disappear beneath the archway, then turned back into his quiet room.

  Some of the crowd were calling out, impatient for the witch to be brought, while others waited more good-naturedly and pointed out there were still fifteen minutes to go. A great pathway had been cleared by soldiers from the Tower’s gateway to the heaped faggots, a road that was kept clear by levelled pikes and by hard pushing. Some vendors were allowed into the roadway to sell pies, ale, or the rotted fruit that always sold well at executions and was hurled at the victim.

  In the cleared space beside the pyre the executioner’s assistant used bellows to heat up a coal brazier. The air shimmered above the glowing coals while, on the ground beside them, two pitch-smeared torches waited to carry the flames from the brazier to the faggots. Someone called out to the executioner for a farthing’s worth of chestnuts. The big, leather-jacketed man smiled tiredly. He was used to all the old jokes. Dying had no surprises for him.

  A cheer started low down the hill, hard by the Tower gate, a cheer that turned into a spreading, growing roar. She was coming! Small children were hoisted on to their father’s shoulders, people stood on tiptoes and stretched their necks. The preachers shouted praises. God’s will was about to be done on earth.

  The cheer had started because the Tower gates had opened. Those closest in the crowd could see the horse and cart waiting that would draw Campion on her short, last journey. She could have walked, but that would have cheated the crowd of their sight of her, and so the soldiers had commandeered one of the Tower’s dung carts to carry her to her death.

  Campion walked toward the cart. She could see through the open archway and she sensed the presence of the vast crowd. The noise was appalling. A roar, a growl, the sound of a crowd baying and howling their hatred, egged on by God’s ministers. The noise was like a furious animal, assaulting her, and for the first time that day she flinched from her ordeal.

  Imagination was her curse now. She was afraid. She shrivelled inside at the thought of the first touch of flame, the heat on an ankle perhaps, and then the searing agony of light about her, the shift burning, her skin bubbling, her screams winging out to feed the crowd’s hatred. She imagined her hair burning and she knew the pain would be terrible, far worse than her imaginings, a hell on earth that would be followed, at last, by peace in heaven. She would meet Sir George, she thought, and she imagined his shy smile greeting her in heaven, and she wondered whether there was such happiness in heaven that earthly sadness was forgotten. She did not want to forget Toby.

  Faithful Unto Death Hervey hissed in her ear, “‘Hath I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? Saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways.’ That’s the scripture woman, the scripture! Repent!”

  She ignored him. She could not climb unaided into the cart, but the captain of her guard lifted her himself, then held her elbow as he walked across the foul, slippery boards. He tied her by the neck to the high upright poles that protected the driver from his normal loads. The captain wanted to say something to her, but he could think of nothing that could have any meaning to her now. He smiled instead.

  The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey pushed through the jostling soldiers to the cart’s edge. He had been warned to walk behind, rather than on the cart, because of the missiles that would be hurled. He shouted up at her, his voice hardly audible over the crowd, over the laughter of the troops, “Repent, woman! Your death is at hand! Repent!”

  Campion had her back to the Tower gateway. She heard hooves behind her, but did not see the four horsemen who crowded the archway. Their boots, jackets, and orange sashes were spattered with mud as though they had ridden a long way. The presence of the four strange horses made the carthorse jerk to one side, restless because of the noise, and Campion mistook the lurch of the cart for the beginning of her journey. She spoke at last. Her eyes were shut, but her voice rang out loud and clear in the small courtyard, “‘Our Father which art in heaven.’” She had planned to shout this from the stake, but the clawing noise of the mob warned her she would not be heard. Nevertheless she wanted these men to know that they burned an innocent woman. “‘Give us this day our daily bread.’”

  “Stop!”

  The voice was huge and harsh, deep and cruel. She would not stop. She could hear Faithful Unto Death screaming blasphemy, but she went on with the prayer. “‘And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’” She steeled herself for the cart to move, for the wash of hatred from the crowd. The captain was still beside her. “‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.’”

  “Amen.” The harsh voice mocked her.

  She opened her eyes to see a mounted soldier who had forced his way beside the cart. He was in leather and steel, one gloved hand restraining his big horse, the other holding one of the cart’s upright poles. He looked at her with a face more terrible than any she had ever seen. He had a steel-gray beard that framed a cruel, wide mouth. One eye, surrounded by the lines of middle age, seemed to mock her, while the other eye, his right, was covered with a leather patch, but a patch unlike any she had ever seen. It covered not just his sightless eye, but also most of his cheek and forehead, and it disappeared under his steel helmet. There was something utterly terrible and savage about the man, as if he was the kind of human beast unleashed by warfare. He easily dominated the gateway’s courtyard. “Is this the witch?”

  The captain was still in the cart. “Yes, sir.”

  The bearded, scarred man felt in his pouch and handed a scroll to the captain. “This is a warrant for her.” The captain took it, unrolled it, and Campion saw a great red seal hanging from a short ribbon. The captain frowned.

  “You’re Colonel Harries, sir?”

  “No, I’m the King of Spain. Who in God’s holy name do you think I am?”

  The captain stepped back from the blast of savagery. He looked at the warrant again. “It seems to be in order, sir.”

  “Seems? You bastard! Seems? Are you doubting it?” Colonel Harries put a leather-gloved hand on a battered sword handle. “Is it all right, you filth, or is it not?”

  “Yes, sir! Yes!” The captain was horrified by the anger that bellowed at him.

  “Then cut the bitch down and give her to me.” Harries twisted in his saddle. “Mason!”

  “Sir!” One of Harries’s three men spurred his horse forward.

  “See if the damned boat’s here.” He looked back to the captain who, astonished, had not moved. Harries smiled, not prettily, and his voice dropped, “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Wellings, sir. Captain Robert Wellings.”

  “Cut her down, Wellings, or I’ll cut your bloody entrails apart. Move!”

  Wellings still held the warrant. He shifted it from hand to hand, obviously confused. He had no knife so, nervously, he half drew his sword. Harries exploded in wrath.

  “Bastard! Has she put a spell on you?”

  There was a scraping noise, a movement so fast that Wellings blinked, and Harries held his long sword. He looked at Campion. “Lean forward, witch. I said, lean forward!”

  She strained ahead, stretching the thong that tied her to the cart. She heard the swish of the sword, she shut her eyes, and felt the passing of the blade at the back of her hair. She cried out, felt a jerk, and then Captain Wellings was steadying her
. Harries had severed the thong without touching her and now he pushed the blade back into its straight scabbard.

  “What is this? Who are you?” Wellings’s own colonel pushed through the soldiers. He was red-faced, sweating, angry at the delay. The crowd was chanting now, chanting for the witch to burn.

  Harries held a hand out to Wellings. “The warrant.”

  “Sir.”

  Colonel Harries turned his single eye on the newcomer. “Who out of hell are you?”

  The red-faced colonel frowned. “Prior.”

  Harries looked round at the soldiers. “This is a warrant requiring the Papist witch to appear before the Committee of Safety. This,” he touched the seal, “is the seal of Parliament, put there this morning by the Speaker of the House of Commons. If any of you wish to dispute the warrant, tell me now!”

  No one seemed likely to dispute anything with Colonel Harries, but Prior tried a feeble protest. “She’s to be burned this morning!”

  “She can burn another morning.”

  “But the crowd!” Colonel Prior waved a hand at the archway beyond which the baying and chanting was rising to frenzied pitch. The soldiers, guarding the roadway, were struggling against the mob’s impatience.

  “Good God Almighty.” Harries leaned forward in his saddle. “In 1629, you worm, I held a fortress for nine months against the armies of the Holy Roman Empire. Are you telling me you can’t hold the Tower of London against a rabble of women and apprentices?” He looked at Captain Wellings. “Don’t stand there, filth! Take her off the cart!”

  The soldiers, crowding the space between the outer walls of the Tower, muttered protests. As Wellings helped Campion forward the mutterings became louder and Harries stood in his stirrups. “Silence!” He looked about him, waiting for quiet. “You’re not damned children! You’ll see her burn, but not today!”

  “Why not?” a voice shouted from the back.