Shadow of the Axe (The Queen's Intelligencer Book 1)

by Peter Tonkin

  *

  ‘The Strand was filled with our troops,’ Raleigh continued. ‘Essex House steps were seized and closed. He and Southampton blockaded the doors and windows as best they could, then went up onto the leads of the roof and called down that they would bring up their own musketeers to destroy any force attempting entry through the main gates. There was a short stand off which led to a truce while the women and children were released. Lady Lettice was long gone to her house in Drayton Bassett. I doubt she’ll ever see Sir Christopher again. And that’s all to the good, considering the state of his face. Lady Penelope Rich was arrested on the spot. I hear Rich is considering a divorce and you can hardly blame him for that, given her activities. And, of course, her time as Mountjoy’s mistress.’

  Raleigh paused. Took a deep breath that seemed to Poley to shudder a little. Then he continued, ‘But Lady Frances and the children were treated well. Once the women were clear, Leveson simply informed those men still in the house that he was bringing the cannons down from the Tower here and he was quite willing to pound Essex House to rubble with them inside it. At last Essex capitulated. Came out. Surrendered his sword. Cried. Begged to send a message to the Queen asking for mercy. He and Southampton were taken to Lambeth Palace immediately and brought here later, when their accommodation had been prepared. Southampton’s in the White Tower. Essex was in the Devil’s Tower. He was there until this morning, that is. It has a secret passageway directly to the Church of St Peter ad Vincula, where Essex is now, surrounded by clergymen and praying that God forgives him as the Queen hasn’t. There was never any doubt that he would need to use the tunnel or the chapel. And the church of Saint Peter in Chains is where he’ll be buried. Just beside Her Majesty’s mother Queen Anne, I’m told.’

  Raleigh fell silent. But after a few more agonising moments, he glanced away from the scaffold and the block, turned on his heel and marched off. He paused after a few steps and turned back to look at his lieutenant. ‘Master Secretary Cecil is not the only one of us sorely scarred by years of duelling with the Earl,’ he said. ‘I will observe matters from a distance. If you need me I will be up in the Armoury.’ He gestured at the great keep of the White Tower and strode off towards it, head bowed; looking almost as defeated as Cecil.

  Silence flowed back, except for the restlessness of the waiting witnesses and the blustering of the wintery wind. ‘You know how many we arrested?’ asked Bacon quietly.

  ‘More than a hundred, I heard,’ answered Poley.

  ‘That’s right.’ Bacon nodded.

  ‘But not so many charged and fewer still condemned,’ continued Poley.

  ‘You’ll understand the reasoning behind that.’ Bacon’s tone let the words hang between a statement and a question. A lawyer’s trick, thought Poley.

  ‘Aye,’ said the intelligencer. ‘The more men charged, especially noble men, the greater weight Essex’s argument becomes that they were a band of well-meaning knights and lords, like knights of the Round Table, looking to save the Faery Queen from grasping commoners like Master Secretary. Who may have a title and whose brother may have a title but it goes back one mere generation.’

  ‘So does Essex’s.’ Bacon countered.

  ‘True. But of course Essex is the Queen’s cousin.’

  ‘Twice removed, if I understand genealogy,’ Bacon’s tone made it clear that he did. ‘But yes, descended from the Bolyens and the Howards who trace their lines back and back.’

  ‘So, fines for the others, Monteagle, Cromwell and so-forth. Nooses for the commoners of course. Even petty knights count for little more than common folk, especially if Essex dubbed them. And Southampton?’

  Bacon glanced up at the White Tower just as Raleigh vanished through the door. ‘Will be kept here at Her Majesty’s pleasure. The longer her life, the longer his confinement.’

  ‘So he doesn’t share Essex’s fate. Even though Thomas Grey who killed his page, and spent less than a month in the Fleet for it, was one of the judges.’ Poley was relieved. There was a great weight of guilt on his soul already. The doomed men would die because of him. The others, ruined by punitive fines or locked away for lifetimes, were suffering because of him. Their families destitute because of him.

  *

  It seemed that Bacon, witch-like, could read his very thoughts. ‘If there is any blame, it falls to the men who broke the most important laws in the lad – those of fealty owed by a subject to his monarch. The head of the Church, divinely appointed. Treason and blasphemy are kissing cousins. Essex and Southampton acknowledged their guilt at their trial, and have repeated the same since. The Queen has taken the path of leniency with Southampton because he is young, impressionable and too willing to follow Essex’s commands. It is the men who understood the full import of what they were doing who will suffer the full weight of the law.

  As Bacon said this, there was a stirring amongst the assembled observers. Poley and Bacon both swung round to look towards the church. The tall, black-clad figure of Robert Devereux emerged, surrounded by three spiritual advisors who were still fighting to save his soul now that his body was forfeit. ‘Is he still Essex?’ Poley asked Bacon. ‘Or have all his titles and honours been removed. Like his right to take the tax on sweet wines was?’

  ‘That is still for the Queen to decide,’ said Bacon. ‘And I have not heard that she has made the decision yet. There is the son, young Robert. If the titles are removed, the innocent child cannot succeed to them. And of course there is the guiltless Lady Frances in the mean time.’ He paused, then returned to the list of lesser punishments arising from the Earl’s actions. ‘And then there were those who were simply banished. The Percy brothers may never come to court again, for instance, though Lord Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, seems to have escaped all suspicion despite his Catholic leanings and his marriage to Lady Dorothy, Essex’s elder sister. Lady Janet Percy has been ordered to accompany the brothers back to their estates in the North. There is nothing left to hold her here, according to Master Secretary and she remains a possible risk to the Queen’s safety. It is highly unlikely that we will ever see her again.’

  The wind backed. Poley’s face filled with the dust and stable-smell of the rushes and the straw that had been laid on the top of the scaffold. His eyes filled and he was forced to wipe the tears away with one hand. ‘It is a tragic scene,’ said Bacon understandingly. ‘I am nearly unmanned myself.’

  The pair of them fell silent as the four black-clad men walked slowly to the scaffold. As they approached the low wooden stage, the witnesses stirred once more and the square, muscular figure of the executioner stepped forward, his axe with its massive blade carried almost reverently across his breast. He mounted the straw-covered platform first, and stood by the block, waiting for his victim to arrive, head bowed. Bacon leaned towards Poley. ‘It is Thomas Derrick,’ he whispered, recognising the man despite his executioner’s mask. ‘Two executioners were detailed for the task in case one of them found he could not bring himself to do the deed.’

  ‘I’m surprised Derrick agreed to it,’ answered Poley. ‘I hear the Earl refused to let him hang when he was charged with rape and so he became an executioner instead.’

  ‘That is so.’ Bacon nodded. ‘The life spared will take the life of the man who spared it. A situation fit for a tragedy by Sophocles.’

  ‘Or one by Christopher Marlowe,’ concluded Poley.

  Essex stopped beside the block, spread his arms and called, ‘God be merciful unto me the most wretched creature on the earth!’ As Essex continued with his short speech, the intelligencer who had done so much to bring him to this place and time, wondered whether there was any truth in Bacon’s supposition that his tears arose from emotion rather than from dust and chaff. Or from the news about Lady Janet, who he would never see again. A fact that seemed to claw at his heart with unexpected force. He shook his head, winced at the sharp pain, and looked up again as Essex declaimed ‘The Lord grant Her Majesty a long and prosperous reign…�
� A hope that was at least pious and perhaps barbed. It caused a stir amongst the witnesses. ‘I never meant any harm to Her Majesty,’ the condemned man persisted, and once again repeated that his one objective, as a knight who was loyal to both his monarch and his religion, was to save the Queen from the machinations of men who were advising her badly, were the root cause of the destitution of the common people and who were in the pay of the Spanish government, planning to hand the country back to the Pope as long as they could retain their affluence, influence and power.

  *

  A dangerous proposition to air in public, thought Poley. But, to be fair, it was too late to punish him further for it.

  Essex knelt and silence fell, undermined perhaps by continuing mutters of shock and outrage from the witnesses. Particularly those, like Master Secretary Cecil, who were in receipt of Spanish pensions, he suspected. After a few moments, the Earl stood up again. He took off his black hat and handed it to the nearest of his spiritual companions. Then he paused, the cold wind stirring his long brown hair. He swung the black cloak off his broad shoulders and handed it to the same man. He paused again and began to unbutton his black coat, something he found challenging, Poley noted, because his fingers were trembling slightly.

  ‘You need not fear, my son,’ said one of the divines.

  Essex smiled. ‘I have faced death often enough on the battlefield not to fear it now,’ he said. ‘The Lord will give me strength now as he did then.’ He slipped off the coat, revealing a long-sleeved black doublet. He paused again, then he turned to Thomas Derrick. The executioner sank onto one knee. ‘I beg forgiveness, My Lord, for the act I am about to commit.’

  ‘Of course I forgive you, Thomas,’ said Essex gently. He reached down and placed his hands on the kneeling man’s shoulders. ‘You are the minister of the Queen’s justice.’

  Essex turned back and briskly unbuttoned his black doublet. One of his companions helped him pull it off and there was a gasp from the witnesses. Poley smiled and shook his head in admiration. Under the black doublet was a shirt of the brightest, blood-red scarlet.

  Like a burning flame, Essex knelt before the block once more and loudly began to pray. Poley looked around, finally meeting Bacon’s gaze. They both shook their heads in something only a little less than wonder at the Earl’s final performance. ‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,’ the Earl concluded. But then he repeated, ‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.’

  He turned towards the block but one of the three priests called, ‘My Lord, you must also forgive your enemies.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Essex. ‘My enemies.’ Still on his knees he looked around the assembled witnesses; probably just a wall of pallid eyes and noses belonging to anonymous figures heavily cloaked and hatted to him. Therefore his gaze finally settled on the two enemies whose faces he could see clearly: Francis Bacon and Robert Poley. ‘Let the Lord forgive my sins as I forgive every man who has trespassed against me,’ he said. It seemed to Poley that he looked long and hard at Bacon and himself. Almost as though he was excluding them from the prayer.

  Essex turned to Thomas Derrick, still on his knees. ‘I wish to die reciting the fifty-first psalm,’ he said. ‘When I reach the line which says cleanse me from my sin, I will spread my arms as a signal for you to strike.’ He spread his arms to illustrate what he meant. And looked to Poley, like a man hanging on a cross. Probably just as he had intended.

  ‘Oh God, I prostrate myself before your deserved punishment,’ he said. And did so.

  The block was a solid piece of wood little more than a foot in height. It was hollowed on one side, the indentation designed to accommodate the condemned man’s chin. The other side was flat and the victim’s collar bones would be pressed hard-up against it. A ridge separating the square side and the hollow was designed to make the victim’s neck stretch out, lie still and present a clear target for the headsman’s axe. In order to place himself upon it, Essex had to lie face-down on the damp rushes. As he did so, and took a moment to settle himself as comfortably as possible moving both hair and beard out of the way, another minor squall brought a gusty, drizzle-laden wind blowing across the green. A flock of black ravens lifted off from their perches on the battlements, and hovered screaming, as though Master Secretary Cecil and his companions had somehow taken wing.

  ‘Have mercy upon me oh God,’ called Essex, his voice ringing. ‘According to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy compassions, put away my iniquities. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Executioner strike home!’ He spread his arms, fingers grasping the straw as though he could grip the earth and somehow hold himself to it. ‘For I know my iniquities…’

  Thomas Derrick had raised the axe on Essex’s signal and now he brought it down with all his might. He was a strong man, capable of exerting great force. He was well practised. He had chosen to do this himself in order to see it done right. He had chosen the heaviest-looking headsman’s axe Poley had ever seen and honed it to the greatest sharpness its edge could hold. It thudded unerringly onto Essex’s neck, cutting into skin and muscle; burying itself in the wood on the condemned man’s left. It crushed the bones in the Earl’s neck, clearly severing the spinal cord, and the raised edge of the block standing between chin and collarbones, crushed his windpipe. There was a brittle crunch; to Poley’s ear, the sound of a hasty footfall on a gravel path. The red-clad body convulsed. The head hung at a strange angle and Poly knew the man was dead. Derrick jerked the great blade free of the scarred wood. The axe rose and fell again. This time it cut through almost everything. Blood flowed copiously, but did not spurt. The heart had stopped at that first unerring blow – there was nothing to pump it. The third blow finished the grisly task, severing the few last threads of muscle, sinew and skin. Derrick stooped, picked up the head by the hair and held it high.

  ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ he shouted.

  Poley was no longer sure he believed that.

  *

  ‘I never thought he’d do it,’ said Nick Skeres. ‘The mob nearly killed him after he took off Essex’s head. He was lucky to get away in one piece. Now he’s going to oversee Meyrick and Cuffe cut into four pieces each. Five counting their heads. Even the Fates must be laughing at that.’

  ‘Essex’s beheading was three weeks ago,’ said Poley absently. ‘Memories hereabouts can be surprisingly short.’ He looked around. The royal hunting ground of Hyde Park contained one side of the excited crowd because it was bounded by a strong fence. The cross roads and the Ty Burn stream seemed to contain the rest, though Tyburn Road itself was packed as far as the eye could see. There were men and women hawking winter apples, Spanish oranges, and roasted chestnuts. The smoke from the chestnut sellers’ stoves mixed unsettlingly with the smoke from the executioner’s brazier which stood beneath the gibbet. Beside the blazing iron basket stood a great cauldron of boiling water kept bubbling by a fire beneath it. Beside both stood a sizeable table at one end of which the executioner had arranged all the tools he was going to need. These looked more like those a butcher would want, rather than what an executioner might require. Hooked knives, straight knives, saws and cleavers. But there were pokers and tongs there as well, needed to keep the brazier bright.

  The three-legged gibbet of the Tyburn Mare stood at the centre of everything. Thomas Derrick and his helpers were up on long ladders at the moment – except for the burly lads guarding their table full of equipment. The executioner and his men were stringing the ropes they planned to use on the two condemned men who were being drawn here on sledges. Poley reckoned their journey from Newgate of nearly three miles sway would already have started. Slow going through packed streets full of people out to see the grim show.

  The words of the sentence still rang in Poley’s memory because that sentence had so nearly been his: ‘You will be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution where you shall be hanged by the neck and being alive brought down, your
privy members shall be cut off and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your head severed from your body and your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the Queen's pleasure.’ He knew every detail of the reality those words described. Why he was waiting here to see the terrible sentence carried out on poor Henry Cuffe was something he could not quite fathom. Was it the same obscure motivation which had driven him to attend Anthony Babbington’s death fifteen years ago?

  ‘That’s good,’ enthused Skeres, cutting into Poley’s dark thoughts. ‘They’re greasing the channels that the ropes will sit in. A nice smooth pull. That’s what we want. No fatal accidents to spoil the show, eh, friend Poley?’

  Poley grunted by way of reply. His mind was a whirl of conflicting emotions. Uppermost, if he was brutally honest with himself, was relief. That he was not making the pair of condemned men a trio after all. It had come so close…

  ‘Lucky you made the Toad see reason,’ Skeres continued. ‘Though how you convinced him that joining the Earl’s invasion of London was part of your mission I do not know. Your job was done when he led his army out of Essex House and you know it. He was always going to lose his head for doing that. But then you had to go and spoil a perfectly elegant mission by going out there with him.’

  ‘To make assurance double sure,’ said Poley automatically, still not really a part of the conversation.

  ‘Which is why you took shots at Burghley, Leveson and Raleigh, no doubt…’

  ‘I didn’t. And you know it.’

  ‘Well, the Toad seems to know it and that’s really all that counts, isn’t it? Mind you, I still think he punished you in other ways, just so you’d know he wasn’t happy. Getting Her Majesty to banish that Percy woman, your light o’ love Lady Janet. That must have stung. Especially as Master Yeomans has closed his doors to you and Mistress Yeomans has closed her legs.’

  Poley grunted again.

  ‘Broken hearted Lady Janet was, by all accounts. Mind I only have her woman Agnes’s word for it…’