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Authors: Jeanette Winterson
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costume as a drab, had felt Hugh Peter's oily hand slide under his skirts promising the freedom that only Christ can bring. Jordan had wept and moaned and begged two more passes for other friends of his. Common women, women in need of a pastor's touch.
And here we were.
The soldier squinted at the bits of paper and asked me to leave my wheelbarrow at the entrance to the gallery.
'I cannot, sir,' I cried, 'for I have the Clap and my flesh is rotting beneath me. If I were to stand up, sir, you would see a river of pus run across these flags. The Rule of Saints cannot begin in pus.'
Jordan and Tradescant stood behind me, each holding a handle of the wheelbarrow.
'My daughter and my niece, sir,' I said, waving a hand. These two have pushed me from Plymouth so that I can be redeemed.'
'We have,' said Jordan, 'every mile a torment.'
The soldiers turned aside and conferred amongst themselves, while I sweated for fear that they would make me stand up and thus see my size. Since my battle with the guards Tradescant had told me there was a warrant for my arrest.
'You may go in,' said one of the soldiers.
Then, please,' said I, rolling my eyes winningly, 'please, clear a path for us, for I will have to stagger up the steps into the gallery while my daughter catches any fluids that may flow from me. It is the stench of a three days' dead dog and not for the noses of the tender.'
I saw the soldier's lips twitch, but he said nothing and led us to the great doors leading up to the gallery. He pushed aside the queue waiting for admittance and waved us through.
Once the doors had thudded behind us I leapt from the barrow, picked it up and ran to the top of the stairs where I immediately jumped back in and recommenced my groaning and calling out to Jesus.
The trial lasted seven days, and it was no trial but a means to an execution. The King in his velvet hat, with no jewels about him but his Star of the Garter, bore up proudly in the face of Bradshaw, the chief prosecutor. He won sympathy even from his enemies. On Sunday, when religious folk were at church, Obadiah Sedgewick denounced the King as usual from his pulpit in Covent Garden, and met with silence.
On the seventh day the gallery was packed with goggle-eyed ruffians all in their Puritan clothes come to hear sentence. The clerk stood up and read through all the King's misdeeds, including that of refusing to plead guilty or not guilty because he would not recognize the authority of the court. At length this stick of a man with a spotted youth's face and the balding skull of an ancient read out, solemn as he could, 'Charles Stuart, Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer and Public Enemy, you shall be put to death by the severing of your head from your body.'
Then all the commissioners who had signed the death warrant, sixty-eight of them, stood up to signify their agreement.
The King tried to speak, but Bradshaw would have none of it and motioned for him to be led away. The King was already dead in law, and a dead man cannot speak.
We watched the King leave the chamber, his back straight, his cane in his hand. At the doorway to the street he saw crowds of his followers, flouting the ban on their presence, too many for the guards to arrest but still unable to reach the courtroom. They were weeping. Charles turned to his gaolers and said, in a voice loud enough for all of us to hear, 'You may forbid their attendance, but not their tears.'
In winter the frost at midnight brightens the ground and hardens the stars. We kept vigil all night, the three of us, huddled together, watching the execution platform being built by the light of a dozen flares. The carpenters wore black masks and kept looking about them as though they expected a troop of demons to ride through the darkness and claim them. It is bad luck to kill a king.
The executioner himself stood underneath a torch in the wall, sharpening his axe with a whetstone. He sharpened, and the sparks flew in orange spikes. He tested the
And here we were.
The soldier squinted at the bits of paper and asked me to leave my wheelbarrow at the entrance to the gallery.
'I cannot, sir,' I cried, 'for I have the Clap and my flesh is rotting beneath me. If I were to stand up, sir, you would see a river of pus run across these flags. The Rule of Saints cannot begin in pus.'
Jordan and Tradescant stood behind me, each holding a handle of the wheelbarrow.
'My daughter and my niece, sir,' I said, waving a hand. These two have pushed me from Plymouth so that I can be redeemed.'
'We have,' said Jordan, 'every mile a torment.'
The soldiers turned aside and conferred amongst themselves, while I sweated for fear that they would make me stand up and thus see my size. Since my battle with the guards Tradescant had told me there was a warrant for my arrest.
'You may go in,' said one of the soldiers.
Then, please,' said I, rolling my eyes winningly, 'please, clear a path for us, for I will have to stagger up the steps into the gallery while my daughter catches any fluids that may flow from me. It is the stench of a three days' dead dog and not for the noses of the tender.'
I saw the soldier's lips twitch, but he said nothing and led us to the great doors leading up to the gallery. He pushed aside the queue waiting for admittance and waved us through.
Once the doors had thudded behind us I leapt from the barrow, picked it up and ran to the top of the stairs where I immediately jumped back in and recommenced my groaning and calling out to Jesus.
The trial lasted seven days, and it was no trial but a means to an execution. The King in his velvet hat, with no jewels about him but his Star of the Garter, bore up proudly in the face of Bradshaw, the chief prosecutor. He won sympathy even from his enemies. On Sunday, when religious folk were at church, Obadiah Sedgewick denounced the King as usual from his pulpit in Covent Garden, and met with silence.
On the seventh day the gallery was packed with goggle-eyed ruffians all in their Puritan clothes come to hear sentence. The clerk stood up and read through all the King's misdeeds, including that of refusing to plead guilty or not guilty because he would not recognize the authority of the court. At length this stick of a man with a spotted youth's face and the balding skull of an ancient read out, solemn as he could, 'Charles Stuart, Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer and Public Enemy, you shall be put to death by the severing of your head from your body.'
Then all the commissioners who had signed the death warrant, sixty-eight of them, stood up to signify their agreement.
The King tried to speak, but Bradshaw would have none of it and motioned for him to be led away. The King was already dead in law, and a dead man cannot speak.
We watched the King leave the chamber, his back straight, his cane in his hand. At the doorway to the street he saw crowds of his followers, flouting the ban on their presence, too many for the guards to arrest but still unable to reach the courtroom. They were weeping. Charles turned to his gaolers and said, in a voice loud enough for all of us to hear, 'You may forbid their attendance, but not their tears.'
In winter the frost at midnight brightens the ground and hardens the stars. We kept vigil all night, the three of us, huddled together, watching the execution platform being built by the light of a dozen flares. The carpenters wore black masks and kept looking about them as though they expected a troop of demons to ride through the darkness and claim them. It is bad luck to kill a king.
The executioner himself stood underneath a torch in the wall, sharpening his axe with a whetstone. He sharpened, and the sparks flew in orange spikes. He tested the
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