himself 'a Child of Wrath'.
Hewson had singled out a sergeant, a man he knew and trusted. This fellow was to stand in for the executioner's normal assistant. Brandon and his companion-to-be were provided with grey periwigs and false beards, the axeman's frizzled grey, the other of a lighter, tawnier shade.
'Now we'll frock you — '
The hangman looked alarmed. But he and the sergeant were merely provided with shapeless coveralls. Gideon helped them arrange these, a necessary disguise when many people owned only one set of garments, by which they might be identified.
Then they waited. Like the King, now penned in his apartments in Whitehall Palace with Bishop Juxon, they had to sit out a three-hour delay. People in the streets outside were saying it was because Brandon had refused to come. In fact, the House of Commons had belatedly decided they must pass an order making it illegal to proclaim the Prince of Wales as King when his father was dead.
During this tedium, Colonel Fox opened up and told Gideon why there had been the moment of awkwardness at Okey's house, when Okey introduced him. While carrying out his duties as the commander of President Bradshaw's guard, Fox had been arrested for debt; it took a special order of the court to obtain his release. He uttered some choice comments, once again complaining that he was owed four thousand pounds in arrears. It seemed a large figure. Apparently a dispute with the treasurer of his garrison had complicated matters though, according to Fox, allegations of corruption were entirely erroneous.. Gideon kept a non-committal face. The executioner and his temporary assistant listened in with great curiosity.
To while away more time, they took Brandon to check the scaffold. It had been erected outside a great window on the landing of the main staircase. He confirmed that arrangements were satisfactory. One Tench, a drum-maker in Houndsditch, had provided ropes, pulleys and hooks with which the King could be fastened down, in case he resisted.
The warrant finally came. It was passed to Brandon discreetly, though a whispered conversation took place outside the room. Gideon knew how to eavesdrop; he overheard that one of the three officers listed in the King's death warrant, the fabulously named Colonel Hercules Hunks, had refused to sign the order accepting his part in today's business. Colonel Axtell had burst out that he was ashamed of Hunks. 'The ship is coming into harbour — will you strike sail before we come to anchor?' Oliver Cromwell, infuriated, called Hunks a peevish fellow and scrawled out the necessary warrant himself. Gideon managed to peek at it and saw Cromwell had had it signed by Colonel Hacker, another of the officers in charge.
All that day, he never saw Cromwell. Afterwards he heard that Cromwell and Fairfax had been closeted together deep in prayer throughout: Fairfax, riven by doubts; Cromwell, bursting with certainty.
At two in the afternoon, a subtle change in atmosphere signalled developments.
The executioner and his assistant were led to a place on the landing, just inside the window. There Brandon would kneel and ask the King's forgiveness for what he had to do.
Numbers on the scaffold were strictly limited; there would be no place for Gideon. He paused, uncertain of his role now. After quickly shaking Brandon's hand — which seemed to startle everyone — he promised to see that the executioner got away safely and privately after the event.
The undercroft had emptied. Soldiers and members of the public were crowding on the stairs and pressing towards the hall, anxious for a glimpse of the King. As Gideon came down the stone steps, he felt colder air wafting upwards from some open door below. He remembered waiting here, in his feathered dotterel costume, just before The Triumph of Peace.
Someone was opening the double doors to the great room, just as they had when the masque started. Gideon went forwards and gazed in at the huge empty chamber. Its long windows were now boarded up, its once- thronged balconies deserted, its tall throne of state stripped of rich curtains and swags and barely visible across the gloom. Through this darkened room, he was told, Colonel Hacker and Colonel Tomlinson were about to bring the King.
When he saw them coming, Gideon slipped away. Down in the street outside, he forced a passage through the crowds and found a place by the Horse Guards opposite. He avoided soldiers he knew.
There were many familiar faces, men amongst whom he had fought, marched, ridden, struggled through torrential rain, wind, mud and floods, tangled in hedges, slept in frozen fields, endured clamour and flame and choking smoke, survived shit-making terror, buried the mangled dead. He reflected on these comrades, and the other, more senior names he knew — Hacker, Axtell, Tomlinson, Okey, and now Fox. The lawyers had done their work; it was the soldiers' turn to bring the business to completion. Cromwell was right. This was why they had done everything. There could be no turning back.
Gideon watched, unconsciously tugging down his bum-starver coat to keep his belly warm. After rising so early with no breakfast, he felt like a man in a dream. He had the benefit of height; even from the opposite side of Whitehall, he could look over heads and see.
Not long after he positioned himself, the King emerged. He was just visible, walking around the scaffold then talking to the Bishop of London and to the executioner. For ten or fifteen minutes, he attempted to speak to the crowd, but although nobody stopped him, the noise from thousands of onlookers was too great for anything to be heard. Allegedly a man took notes. As published afterwards, the King's speech was rambling. The phrases 'A subject and a sovereign are clean different things' and 'I am the Martyr of the People' would be plucked out of incoherent paragraphs and made famous. Gripped by tension, Gideon endured the pause while the King removed his cloak, his George medal, his outer coat. Charles passed the medal to the bishop for the Prince of Wales, saying 'Remember.' There was some business with a cap; long hair had to be pushed up under it. Another moment of gazing at the block.
The King knelt. Black swags now hid him completely from view. The wait seemed endless. Suddenly light flashed off the axe. It swung up and descended smoothly. Silence in the street. The assistant had stooped. Grasping the head by its long hair, Hewson's sergeant held it high for the crowd and cried out traditionally, 'Here is the head of a traitor!' Inexperience made him drop the severed head, which crashed on the boards. Through the crowd rippled that celebrated long groan of reaction. The body and head were carried off indoors. The tall window was closed.
Cavalry swept through the streets. The onlookers dispersed quickly. After twenty minutes, Whitehall lay completely empty. By then Gideon Jukes had made his way quietly back into the Banqueting House, to fulfil his promise to Brandon.
The execution took place between two and three o'clock. Not long afterwards, with January darkness fast descending, a small file of Axtell's musketeers left the back of the Banqueting House and stamped down the narrow side streets to the River Thames. It took only a couple of minutes to reach Whitehall Stairs. Dark, icy cold water lapped menacingly against the mooring. The embankment seemed deserted.
'Where are the bargemen?'
They had all vanished. Thames watermen were a surly, tricky group, most of them deeply conservative. Only one boat was there, about to cast off with a woman passenger. She had fought hard to negotiate a trip downstream with a miserable and suspicious rower who did not want to take her or anybody else. He had finally agreed, though would not go below London Bridge because he claimed the Pool of London was frozen solid. A bitter wind across the water here seemed to confirm it.
The young woman was already sitting in the stern, hunched in her cloak, her hands buried in a muff, her face shadowed by a hood which she had pulled well forward to defy the wind-chill. She was cold, lonely and depressed, and as the twilight thickened into darkness, she was anxious that she was too late to make the journey to Greenwich, and on from there to reach her children. Her emotions were at their lowest ebb. The King's execution had forced her to face up to bitter truths about her own position, her sons' futures, her missing husband and her chances of ever knowing peace, prosperity or happiness. She had been weeping.
It was Juliana Lovell.
Her heart fell when she saw the soldiers. One of them directed a man to this solitary boat. The soldier indicated with an angry arm movement that she had to disembark.
With her Royalist connections, Juliana felt extremely nervous. Afraid of awkward questions, she did stumble to her feet. She actually climbed back onto the slimy green stairs. Her shoe slipped and slid a few inches. The soldier could have steadied her, but he stepped back instead. With only half his mind on it, he gesticulated irritably that she must move right out of the way.
