The Mirror and the Light

The light is early and tender, the sky eggshell blue. He can feel already it will be another hot day. He must walk out of the fortress as far as Tower Hill, where they have set up a public scaffold.

He stares, incredulous, at the bristling ranks of the guard. ‘All these?’ he says to Kingston.

‘Wait, wait, wait!’ yells the captain of the guard. ‘Halt, halt, halt!’

It is only Hungerford. He is propped up between two officers, his mouth gaping, his feet dragging. The intention is for the processions to merge. Hungerford’s glazed eyes pass over him as if he is a stranger. ‘My lord?’ he says. ‘We have very little time now and I trust our pain will be sharp but will not endure. Are you man enough to bear yourself in hope? If you are truly sorry for what you have done, there is mercy enough with God.’

He has been in prison forty-eight days, during which time he has hardly stepped out of doors. Even this light seems to dazzle, so he thinks of Tyndale, walking in the bleach fields. Rafe is right, he thinks, we always complain of the weather, and today is not what it should be. An Englishman dies drenched, in the rain that has enwrapped him all his life. Then he lurks about his old haunts in the drizzle and mist, so you cannot be sure whether he is quick or dead. The climate protects him, as a cupped hand protects a candle.

They are outside the fortress, on Tower Hill. The crowd surging towards the execution ground are walking on their own dead, their foremothers and fathers. They say the bones of thousands lie underground, the men and women of London killed by plague. They fell in the streets and died where they fell, they were carried off in such haste that they were buried in their good boots, and not even their purses cut; so if any man dared dig for it, there’s a fortune beneath our feet.

It is not clear, from the roaring, whether the Londoners are there to regret or revile. But the king has turned out some six hundred soldiers so it hardly matters. And perhaps they don’t know themselves. After the silence of the Bell Tower, he feels he is on a battlefield, moving to the beat of the drum: boro borombetta …

Scaramella to the war is gone …

Now the pages of the book of his life are turning faster and faster. The book of his heart is unscrolling, the lines erasing themselves. Between his prayers run the lines of a verse:

I am as I am and so will I be

But how that I am, none knoweth truly

Be it evil, be it well, be I bound, be I free,

I am as I am and so will I be …

… But how that is I leave to you.

Judge as ye list, false or true

Ye know no more than afore ye knew

Yet I am as I am, whatever ensue.

His heart thuds as if it will break out of his chest. Behind him, another drumbeat, rat-tat-tat. It trips the rhythm of his own heart – pit-pat, rat-tat. He feels the surge of his blood check and stand, like a tide about to turn. He swivels his head, distressed, to the source of the racket, a drum in the crowd. The guard close in, as if to block his view. Why? Do they think it is a signal? Rat-tat-tat: do they think he hopes to be rescued?

Scaramella fa la gala …

‘Look where you are going, my lord,’ one of the guard says; and he does, and finds he is at the foot of the scaffold. ‘So one arrives,’ he says. Thomas Wyatt stands before him. It was Wyatt who wrote the verse: who but he? Judge as ye list, false or true … Wyatt holds out his hands. They have not bound him, so he is able to grasp them. ‘Do not weep,’ he says. ‘If there is anything to forgive, I forgive it. Mind, that does not go for Stephen Gardiner. But I forgive the king. Be quiet now and you will hear me do it.’

He thinks, there is death in Wyatt’s eyes. Who can better recognise it, than I? Your enemies will flourish. You will follow after.

‘Go up,’ one of the guard says.

He tries to shake off their hands. ‘I can do this.’ His heart is still tripping, racing. But they will help you whether you need it or no. Men have been known to fall. Men have been known to plummet. Men have been known to do anything and everything. Lords have stood up to death; indeed, they have stood up after death. In the days of our ancestors Thomas Fitzalan, who was Earl of Arundel, was axed down on this spot and his corpse leapt upright to say a Pater Noster. All headsmen, when they meet in their conclaves, talk of it as a fact.

His foot is now on the step of the scaffold. His mind is quiet but the body has its own business, and that business includes trembling. His head turns again. He is not looking for pardon. He knows the king is busy getting married. All he is looking for is the source of the noise, to quell it, because he wants to die listening to his own heart, till verse and prayer fade and heart says hush.