The Mirror and the Light

Then in the depths of the packed crowd he sees Christophe. He is pushing forward, flailing his arms. Please God he has not a weapon. His whole body braces, ready for a mêlée. ‘My lord, my lord,’ Christophe calls. The guard make a wall, but Christophe’s arm snakes between them as if to touch him. One of the men raises his armoured fist. He hears a crack. He sees the boy’s face twist in shock and pain. Holding out his arm like a broken wing, his voice hoarse, his body convulsing, he speaks his curse: ‘Henry King of England! I, Christophe Cremuel, curse you. The Holy Ghost curses you. Your own mother curses you. I hope a leper spits on you. I hope your whore has the pox. I hope you go to sea in a boat with a hole in it. I hope the waters of your heart rise up and spout down your nose. May you fall under a cart. May rot rise up from your heels to your head, going slowly, so you take seven years to die. May God squash you. May Hell gape.’

Christophe is hauled away. The crowd is so thick he can hardly distinguish one man from another. There are places kept for courtiers at a spectacle like this, but he will not afford them a glance. All the bloodied waters have run under the bridges. And now no more for lack of time.

He is face to face with the executioner. He sees the spectators spiralling away from him, growing very small. He can smell drink on the man’s breath. Not a good start. He can imagine Walter beside him, ‘Christ alive, who sold you this axe? They saw you coming! Here, give it to my boy Tom. He’ll put an edge on it.’

He thinks of picking up the axe and felling the headsman, but this is what life does for you in the end; it arranges a fight you can’t win. In his time he has encouraged many who lack practice and capacity. In other circumstances he would take the axe from the man’s fumbling grip: say patiently, ‘This is how.’

The man holds out his palm. He drops his fee into it. ‘Do not be afraid to strike. You will not help me, or yourself, by hesitating.’

The man kneels. He has remembered what he ought to say. ‘Forgive me what I must do. It is my office and my duty. I have this cloth here, sir. Will I cover your face?’

‘For what possible purpose?’ Only to spare you.

‘My lord, you must kneel. When you are ready, repose your head upon this block.’

After Anne’s swift end he had spoken with the headsman; he read the words engraved on the blade. Speculum justitiae, ora pro nobis. They don’t write words on the head of the axe.

He kneels. He makes his prayer. Drumbeats. La zombero boro borombeta … Blink of red. He thinks, this is all I have to do: follow my master, this and no more. Reach out your hand to find the train of his robe. Look for the spill of scarlet, follow.

He eases himself down to die. He thinks, others can do it and so can I. He inhales something: sweet raw smell of sawdust; from somewhere, the scent of the Frescobaldi kitchen, wild garlic and cloves. He sees the movement from the corner of his eye as the spectators kneel and avert their faces. His mouth is dry, but he thinks, while I breathe I pray. ‘All my confidence hope and trust, is in thy most merciful goodness …’ In the sky he senses movement. A shadow falls across his view. His father Walter is here, voice in the air. ‘So now get up.’ He lies broken on the cobbles of the yard of the house where he was born. His whole body is shuddering. ‘So now get up. So now get up.’

The pain is acute, a raw stinging, a ripping, a throb. He can taste his death: slow, metallic, not come yet. In his terror he tries to obey his father, but his hands cannot get a purchase, nor can he crawl. He is an eel, he is a worm on a hook, his strength has ebbed and leaked away beneath him and it seems a long time ago now since he gave his permission to be dead; no one has told his heart, and he feels it writhe in his chest, trying to beat. His cheek rests on nothing, it rests on red. He thinks, follow. Walter says, ‘That’s right, boy, spew everywhere, spew everywhere on my good cobbles. Come on, boy, get up. By the blood of creeping Christ, stand on your feet.’

He is very cold. People imagine the cold comes after but it is now. He thinks, winter is here. I am at Launde. I have stumbled deep into the crisp white snow. I flail my arms in angel shape, but now I am crystal, I am ice and sinking deep: now I am water. Beneath him the ground upheaves. The river tugs him; he looks for the quick-moving pattern, for the flitting, liquid scarlet. Between a pulse-beat and the next he shifts, going out on crimson with the tide of his inner sea. He is far from England now, far from these islands, from the waters salt and fresh. He has vanished; he is the slippery stones underfoot, he is the last faint ripple in the wake of himself. He feels for an opening, blinded, looking for a door: tracking the light along the wall.

Epitaph