Caribee

by Christopher Nicole

  In the midst of the guards, there walked another horse, drawing the hurdle to which Mr Walkden's wrists were tied, not too tightly, to permit him to squirm without getting free, for this humiliation was but a part of the entire humiliating punishment. He had been stripped to his shirt, and was in this regard fortunate that there was scarcely any breeze, yet as his feet and legs and buttocks banged and scraped on the ground he could not help but twist and turn and writhe to give himself some comfort, and thus for the most part remain exposed to the gaze and the jeers of the crowd.

  Behind him walked the Reverend, his lwok open in front of him, praying. And now, as the procession moved down the hill, the crowd fell in behind, setting up a loud chant. They surely had no cause to love Scotch James, who had proved himself but a shadow of what they had come to expect in a monarch, and a mean, timorous and vicious shadow at that. But here was spectacle, and a challenge to speculation.

  Would Mr Walkden die like a man, or a shivering cur? Many a wager passed on this point, and on other, less savoury aspects of tlie coming execution. Even the guards remaining on the gate had forgotten their duty, and were inquiring the odds and calling their bets to the eager touts outside. Edward gazed at them, at the dusty street down which the procession had gone, and felt excitement and a distinct nausea. Neither would be abated by roaming the walls this day. Out there was the world, and the terrors of the world, too. He was allowed out only twice a year, to the Midsummer Fair and for the Christmas Eve drive through the snow to Uncle Edward's farm at Framlingham. But today... he sucked breath into his lungs until they swelled, and darted through the gate. 'Hey,' shouted one of the guards.

  "Tis Master Edward,' shouted another, and started forward. 'Come back here, Master Edward.'

  But Edward was already into the last of the crowd, swallowing dust, dodging round feet and breeches and skirts. The guards had. no chance, now. The crowd might taunt Mr Walkden to his death, but they would brook no interference with their pleasures from the King's men. Cudgels and fists were waved, and rather than risk a riot the discomfited beefeaters retired to the gates of the Tower,

  The procession went down the Strand, contained now by the two steep walls of houses, while dust and heat and noise rose into the still morning air, and hung there, a blanket of obscenity over an obscene occasion. Edward felt choked by the stenches of unwashed bodies and uncleared refuse, of belcliing breaths and dripping horse manure. True, the Tower often smelt as bad, but never in such volume, such concentration. He wondered how Mr Walkden, virtually at ground level, breathed at all. Perhaps it would be better did he not. Perhaps he would wish to be taken off immethately, to be spared the humiliation of the gallows. But Mr Walkden was lost to sight behind the forest of people. And soon enough the procession, gaining numbers every moment, reached Charing Cross, and could there explode into the fields beyond, swelling out on either side to converge on Hyde Park like an advancing army. Here they were joined by the ale sellers and the sweetmeat distributors, and the day took on the aspect of a gigantic picnic. The citizens of London Town, en fete, to see Mr Walkden taken off.

  Now there was more room, to see and to be seen. Glances began to be thrown in Edward's direction. Not on account of his age; there were sufficient children in this mob, and sufficient babes even at the breast. But his clothes were a shade too fine. He belonged on one of the horses which were beginning to appear in the lane close by the Park, mounted by brilliantly clad ladies and their equally gorgeous husbands or lovers, hurrying ahead of the procession to be sure of a good place once Tyburn was reached. Because there it was already, the waters of the stream trampled and muddied by hoof and foot, and the sweat and the stench and the noise slowly settling as the crowd waited for the fun to begin.

  Edward saw his father, sitting rigidly on his horse, flanked by his guardsmen, immethately before the raised platform on which stood the gallows. To the right, up wind of the mob, the ladies and gentlemen had also gathered to enjoy their pre-breakfast sport. The mob itself was all around him now, no longer pushing and heaving, but anxious to listen and watch.

  Mr Walkden was released from his hurdle, and escorted up the steps to the gallows. Out of town a slight breeze had come up, and it ruffled his shirt, revealing his legs, long and spindly, too white and appealing to tremble. Undoubtedly he was afraid; his face was pale and his hands shook. He stood between the executioner and his assistants, and when the sentence was read he broke out into a violent shivering, while tears rolled down his face. The crowd booed and whistled, and Edward found himself shouting with them. But now his throat was dry, and he had the queerest feeling in his belly.

  The Reverend did his talking, and then stepped aside. The crowd stopped its noise, and waited, for Mr Walkden to speak. Mr. Walkden took a step forward, and stood on the edge of the gallows. His mouth opened, and closed, opened and closed, and someone shouted, 'He's lost his tongue,' the remark being drowned in a howl of contempt.

  Mr Walkden turned, shuddering, and the executioner stepped forward, to drop the noose around his neck and adjust the knot, For there could be no mistake here. Many a man had cheated justice and the spectators by managing to break his neck or suffocate before he could be let down. Mr Walkden stared into the crowd, his shoulders heaving now as he sobbed; he seemed to be staring directly at Edward, but surely he was crying too hard to see. Edward had the strangest desire to wave, but he wished Mr Walkden would show more courage.

  The executioner gave the signal, and his two assistants heaved on the rope. It ran smoothly through the pulley, and the slack was taken up. Mr Walkden stood on tiptoe, and seemed to be sucking air into his lungs, and then his body stretched, and his feet left the boards, and he swung a good six inches clear, his shirt now flying freely in the breeze, his privies hanging for the last time, his face turning purple as Iiis eyeballs bulged. But the executioner was signalling again, and the rope was being slackened, Mr Walkden's feet touched the boards and his ankles and then his knees gave way; he sank forward on to his face. But then his head jerked. He had not even been rendered unconscious for a moment; no more than a few bright lights had blazed in front of his face.

  The crowd roared in anticipation. They too could see how alive he was, how responsive. They jostled each other and cackled happily as the executioner's assistants came forward, one to seize the condemned man's shoulders and the other to control his legs.

  Mr Walkden's shirt was around his neck, and his body was naked from the chest down, but there was no life down there, not even when the executioner laid hands upon him. Not even a twitch. And no juice. Berwicke had been wrong about that. Or perhaps some men were more virile than others. But there was life in the brain. Mr Walkden began to scream, in a high, thin voice, and his body awoke and arched itself this way and that, so that the executioner's assistants had to use all their force to hold him steady while the sharp-bladed knife was drawn across his groin and the triangle of lifeless flesh was raised on high, to be greeted with cheers from the crowd. Edward's stomach swelled, and continued to swell as Mr Walkden's screams grew louder, for following the castration must come the disembowelment. And suddenly he hated everyone in the crowd, everyone in London, even Father, sitting his horse so stoically. How he wished he possessed a sword, and the strength of a hundred men, so that he could charge to the rescue. Except that it was too late.

  The people around him began to laugh, as the boy vomited, while still staring at the horror in front of him. Almost he seemed to hear the rush of air from the punctured belly, and then he could stand no more, and he turned, to burst his way tlirough the clapping hands and the stamping feet, to run from the throng, to return, breath pounding, Mr Walkden's screams still ringing in his ears, all the way across the park, along the Strand, homeward, to collapse, panting, at the top of Tower Hill.

  'You'll enter, boy,' Berwicke looked unusually grave; his round cheeks had lost their gleam and his chin for once appeared from the middle of the rolls of flesh which surrounded it. He had served Tom Warner to
o long and knew too well his rages. Now he feared for the child.

  Edward sidled through the door, and Berwicke closed it, taking his place behind his charge. Edward stood on one side of the huge, bare schoolroom, his father on the other, by the desk and the blackboard, gazing at the Latin phrase left from the previous day.

  'You not only played the truant, but you left the premises without permission,' Tom said, without glancing at his son.

  Edward saw the stick in his hand; his stomach started to roll once again. 'Yes sir.'

  Tom Warner turned. 'To follow the mob?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Why, boy?'

  ‘I had never seen an execution, sir.'

  'There's reason enough, by God. And you've seen one now. Did you cheer and howl and whistle with the rest?"

  Edward flushed. 'No, sir. I... I vomited, sir.'

  Tom frowned. "Vomited? By God. Now there's a hopeful sign.'

  'Sir?'

  Tom came across the room, ran his fingers through his son's hair. ‘I said hopeful. You'll have been the only weak-bellied lad there. Or female, I suspect. And that's to the good.' His frown deepened as he saw the boy's bewilderment. ‘I have often enough felt like spewing the ground myself, on these occasions.'

  'But, sir, Mr Walkden was a .. .'

  Traitor. And traitors must die. Oh, I do not quarrel with the law on that score, Edward. Traitors, felons ... a man must serve his king and country, or there can be no room for him on earth. But to deprive him of his life is sufficient. To make a spectacle of it, to deprive him first of all of his manhood and then to butcher him before his own eyes, that is surely not fitting for a civilized nation.'

  Edward stared at his father, eyes wide.

  Tom turned away once more. 'You'll not understand. I scarcely do myself. I stand here, governor of this prison, determined to do my duty, while;... I tell you this, boy, were there a campaign and a command to which I could attend, I'd be off tomorrow. And once I had thought a campaign the least pleasant of all earthly ills.'

  'And I'd accompany you, sir,' Edward said eagerly.

  Tom almost smiled. 'Why, so you should, were such a thing possible. It could never be worse than remaining in this ..." he changed his mind about what he would have said, and sighed. 'So you vomited. No doubt you have been punished enough, on that score. But leaving the Tower without permission is the more serious offence, Master Edward. A man must learn discipline, when he is yet a boy, or he will never be able to impart it, when he is a man. And where would my future captain of the guard be then? You'll not leave these quarters for a month. You understand me, boy? Even that courtyard is beyond your reach, for thirty days.'

  "Yes, Father.' He was not sure; whether he wanted to weep from relief or from misery. Certainly he was happy to have escaped a whipping. But within this keep there was a sore absence of company. Philip was just a babe, and Berwicke was always too much the schoolmaster. And it was June, the best month of the year.

  He walked the brief area of battlement, every day after his lessons, and brooded at the city. But the city had lost its charm. When he looked out there he saw less of the great lords and their fine ladies, their magnificent horses and their long Spanish blades, now, than of the grinning, odorous mob which had followed Mr Walkden to the end. If he had been relieved to discover that his father felt much as himself, he was none the less frightened. His feeling had been a weakness. Was not Father's also a weakness? The more so, in a man. Father had been a soldier. And indeed, when they had visited Uncle Edward last Christmas, there had been enough contempt in Father's voice and manner, at least on the journey there, for farmers and their pigs. Yet at the same time he quarrelled with the sentences for treason, and perhaps even the definition of the word. And at the same time preached discipline to his own son. It was a sorry world, confused and becoming more so. For if criticism of the King and his ministers was treason, then a deal of it was spoken. Again, after Christmas, when Mr Merrifield and Uncle John Winthrop had ridden over to finish off the roasted sow, and the men had gathered in the parlour afterwards to smoke their pipes and talk politics, the conversation had inevitably turned to the ruination the King had brought upon the country, and not even by unsuccessful wars, but by the extravagance of his court and his unseemly gifts to his many favourites, and by his high handed treatment of Parliament. There had been the most tremendous quarrel, Edward remembered, with Uncle John saying that he no longer considered England the country it had been in Queen Bess's time, but rather a conquered nation, quite overtaken by the rapacious Scots, and that for his money he'd as soon remove himself and settle in the Virginias or elsewhere in the Americas; and Mr Merrifield, to the horror of them all, declaring that the fault lay in the whole institution of kingship, and pointing out that in Holland they made do without a king at all, and could not be considered the worse for it.

  Sentiments which had all but brought them to blows. Father had sprung to his feet in a rage. "The King is the King, and there's an end to it,' he had declared. 'There may be some kings who are better than others, but without a king England would no longer be my country, nor could I contemplate living in any country where such a state of affairs obtains. I'll trouble you to speak no more treason in my brother's house.'

  Mr Merrifield had apologized, and the matter had been smoothed over. But whatever the truth of the matter, Edward preferred the dreams of Uncle John, of lands across the sea, of great forests populated with Indians with red skins, of acres of gold, of endless plantations of corn. Father scoffed, and pointed to the miserable fate of Mr. Baleigh's Virginia colony. Bur Mr Winthrop had maintained that there would be others, and that the Virginias had suffered by bad organization and careless selection of the colonists.

  Endless quarrels. Endless differences. It was hard to believe, listening to the men talking, that England was not in a perilous state. But England would always be great, because of the sea. Even the solutions offered by Uncle John Winthrop depended upon the sea. By walking around a corner of the battlements Edward could look down on the river, hurrying under London Bridge, racing for the estuary and the North Sea, and beyond, the world. He was going to be a sea captain. He had long decided this, privately. Father might grumble that there were no men nowadays like Drake and Frobisher and Hawkins of his own youth, that indeed, there were no opportunities for men like those. But the opportunities would come again, and meanwhile there was the sea itself, and its highways.

  Even the river was a highway. He looked towards the upper reaches, where lay Hampton Court, and watched the barge coming downstream. No ducal barge, this, but a plain affair, although it contained soldiers; he could see the June sunlight glinting on their helmets and from their halberds. A prison barge, bringing someone to take up residence in the Tower. Then there might well be a noble lord or lady aboard, having fallen foul of His Majesty or my lord Villiers.

  Edward leaned through the embrasure to watch the boat as it came alongside the steps below. Traitors' Gate, for those the King would condemn without the knowledge of the citizens of London Town. Father was down there, dressed in his best, with a guard of honour to receive the new arrival.

  The prisoner stood in the stem. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, and beneath it a dark blue velvet cloak over a similarly blue doublet and breeches. And boots. But no sword, and Edward realized that his dress was quite lacking in jewellery as his fingers lacked rings. And now he removed his hat, as he stepped ashore, and filled his lungs, and looked up at the forbidding grey walls, and seemed to smile. His face was long and a trifle thin, and his beard had speckles of grey, although it remained carefully trimmed into a fashionable point. His skin was burned by tropical sun and endless wind, and lined with years of misfortune and endeavour. And yet he smiled, and with his smile the morning came alive.

  Edward left the embrasure and raced towards the staircase leading down to the family's apartments. He panted, missed a step, and landed on his hands and knees, regained his feet and burst open the door to his mother's with
drawing room. 'Mama,' he shouted. 'Mama. Mr Raleigh is back.'

  The door to the huge, vaulted chamber stood open; Tom Warner and Walter Raleigh had been friends for many years. And the chamber gave an echo. Thus by kneeling at the nearest corner in the passageway, hard by the stone staircase, Edward could hear every word that was spoken, and more, he could watch Raleigh himself, standing by the barred window as he lit his pipe, although his father was out of sight around the buttress.

  ‘I should say welcome back,' Tom said. 'But I doubt it would be well received.'

  Raleigh sucked on the stem. 'There are worse places than this tower, Tom, although you may not believe it.'

  'We had heard, of course, that you were sighted off the Lizard. After Whitney's calumnies, and the rumour that the court believed much of them, we had expected you'd stay at sea.'

  'And become a pirate? Not my way, Tom. In any event, if Whitney is to be faulted for deserting me, I doubt he related much save the truth. Tis my fortune to attract an evil fame.'

  'And yet, as I remember, you sought no fame at all. Was it not a city you looked for, and not even Spanish, but inhabited by Indians of such ignorance they use gold for their every need because they lack any other metal, and yet are quite unaware of the wealth they squander?'

  Raleigh smiled, a humourless widening of his lips. The story-tellers have been at it again, I see, Tom. No, no, nothing so fabulous. But there is a people beyond the Orinoco, who indeed know the value of gold, and possess it in abundance. Thus they suppose it is a gift from the gods, and who knows, they may well be right.'

  'No blasphemy, Wat. I beg of you.'

  'No blasphemy, Tom. I had forgot I was home. These people, then, in honour of their heathen god, make a sacrifice to him once in every year. The sacrifice is at once human and rich. For they take a sacred youth, and after paying him due ceremony throughout the year, they gild him from head to foot in the marvellous metal, and on the appointed day they row out into the centre of the lake which is near their city, and cast this man of gold, El Dorado, into the waters, where the weight of his metal suit very rapidly takes him to the bottom, and the god is made happy, and so their harvests are made good.'