We followed our prisoner at every waking hour: at his prayers, at his rounds through the gardens, at his meals, where we stood hard by and counted every knife afterwards. It was at my dawn council with Cromwell that I was told I would accompany the Stuart king on his final walk to Whitehall.
The few days before he was to die, Charles Stuart accepted his fate and kissed his children good-bye. Once, rising from his prayer altar, he stumbled, and I caught his arm. He thanked me and, straightening his vest, said, “I have known you before, Corporal.” He looked me up and down and, gesturing to my sleeve, said, “You were my royal bodyguard once. The coat you wear is the same crimson as before, and yet it comes to me that the lining has changed.” He raised one eyebrow, his lips curling. “Yes, yes, the lining is quite changed.”
At midnight before the morning of the execution, I was awakened from my sleep by a colonel of the guard and brought, with Robert Russell, to an outer courtyard. There waiting were three other men, soldiers of Cromwell’s New Model Army. We drew our cloaks against the blistering cold and followed without a torch to a far door, bolted from the inside. Upon a knock it was opened, and we were led down into the bottommost part of the castle. We gathered in a vaulted room where tapers had been lit, and the colonel left us to stand awhile. Soon two men, cloaked and hooded, came into the chamber and I could see in an instant that the taller man was Cromwell. The smaller man was his son-in-law and fellow soldier, Henry Ireton.
Cromwell swept off his hood, saying, “Every man among you has been tested and found steadfast: in zeal, in loyalty, in courage and godliness. But there is not one man here that does not have blood on his hands. Not even myself. We have fought together, friends, and God has found us worthy. There is but a single obstacle to a final victory, and that is the death of one man.” He paused, holding up a finger. “One man who at his death on the morrow will give us the liberty we seek.”
The finger, held upright, wavered and in turn pointed to each of us. “But who will be the liberator? Who will be the one who frees us from the tyrant? By God, I would do it myself but for the people saying it would be to crown myself king.”
Motioning to Ireton, Cromwell took from his son-in-law a set of small wooden stakes. “Let God decide, then. We will choose in lots as the Testament prophets did. The first to draw the short lot will be headsman.”
There was a heavy silence in the room as each man waited to take his turn. Each one of us had in recent days been counseled alone by Cromwell, asked by him if we loved God and England. We had only to look in Cromwell’s eyes in the torchlight of that chamber to know that to be loved by him in return was to be forfeit to his cause. The first man reached out with shaking hands to take up a stake, and came up long. And so did the next man, and the next. It was down to Robert and myself, and when Robert reached for the two remaining pieces, he came up short. His face knotted, first in surprise and then in terror. He had killed his share of common Englishmen in battle, but to kill an anointed king was to pull the sun down from the sky, leaving a void for anarchy, bloodshed, and damnation to fill.
Cromwell turned to me, holding the last piece, and waited silently for me to reach out and take it. He clasped my arms in his two hands and said, “I had prayed that it would be you, Thomas. I have often dreamt it so.” And with that I offered myself to be Robert’s second on the killing platform, and thus it was decided who would wield the ax.
We were sworn to silence and returned to our beds, where we waited for first light. For hours I heard the ragged, labored breathing of Robert Russell as he readied himself to be both the savior and villain of all England, and thus the world. At dawn we were led to Whitehall and secreted in a closet off the banqueting hall, waiting for the time of execution. Charles Stuart was brought to the hall in the morning but could not be taken to the block as Parliament was meeting urgently for a bill banning kingship forevermore. They had only just remembered that after killing the present king, his son could one day seek the crown for his own. It was two of the clock before the king stepped, with his chaplain at his side, before the thousands gathered to watch.
Robert and I donned masks, but the Stuart knew at the instant who we were. And he knew, as Robert stood nearer to the block, that it would be he who would deliver the blow. The king bore himself with steady dignity, wearing two shirts together so he would not shiver and be thought a coward. He spoke to those gathered, citizens and soldiers of London, some words of defiance. Unrepentant in his sovereignty, he said, “I go from a corruptible crown to an incorruptible one.” He turned to Robert and asked calmly, “How will I tie back my hair?” His locks, though quite gray, were long to his shoulders and he did not want the headsman to miss the mark.
The moment stretched into the wretched silence of waiting death; the crowds remained hushed and expectant. In all of the dreadful hours before dawn, the terrible imaginings of the execution, Robert never believed that the king would turn and, with studied grace, speak directly to him. I stepped forward and said quietly, “Sir, you must tuck it into your cap.” He nodded and did as I directed. Then he turned to face the mob and prayed awhile with his chaplain. When he had finished, Colonel Hacker, the man who had summoned us to Cromwell, motioned for the prisoner to approach the block. Again the Stuart paused and, turning to me, asked, “Can the block be set no higher? I would kneel at the block and not be made to lie down upon the boards.”
For all his self-possession, there comes a time when the presence of the void looms too great and a quaking begins in the limbs. I said, “Sir, we have no time. It cannot be made higher.”
He nodded and lay prone upon the boards as one would lie down for a long sleep. Robert had not yet pulled the ax from its hiding place, but I could see its blade winking beneath the straw. There was no quick movement from him then as there should have been to pick up the ax; no setting of the feet in readiness to hoist the heavy shaft, bringing the blade down neat and true. A gentle moaning came from the man on the block and a pleading whisper. “For pity’s sake. Do it now, do it now.”
But Robert, filled with the immensity of the act he was about to do, had turned to standing stone. And so I pulled the ax swiftly from the straw and within five steps was beside the block. For pity’s sake, and for pity’s sake alone, did I, in one rapid movement, draw back, bringing down the ax with a clean and heavy stroke. And, with no accompanying words of the rights of men or the rule of governments or of wars won and lost, the head that had ruled as king fell from its body and lay staining the harsh and glistening boards beneath our feet.
HAMMETT CORNWALL LEANED against the rock and closed his eyes. He was tired and content to sit awhile, letting the old woman do her work beside him. The long illness and the weeks following, traveling through the unsettled nowheres, had sapped his vital spirits. At the outset, he had had profound reservations about killing the landlady; she had ever been kind and, if not for her bustling care, he was sure both he and Brudloe would have ended as fodder for maggots. But the necessities of clandestine travel had supported it, and he had mostly forgotten her since departing Boston.
The biggest worry plaguing him was that, at some point in the past few weeks, lost and trampling through endless thickets, he had also lost his voice, as though all the puking and retching, first on the ship and then in the sickbed, had stripped him of the instrument of speech. He’d known a man once who’d had his throat cut and lived, but forever after, the man could not utter so much as a word, not even a whisper. The man’d had to gesture and point, like the idiot cabin boy on the ship. The thought of the black time on the ship made his breathing labored, and the old woman made placating noises. He couldn’t understand her words, but the tone seemed to say, “Soon, soon.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to speak. At first he’d found the infirmity taxing in the extreme; but, try as he might, he couldn’t seem to talk. Brudloe had believed it was belligerence that kept him silent, and had berated him and hounded him until he had shown Brudloe his fist, and the smaller man was then quiet. But now the silence had come to be comforting to Cornwall. He was sick unto death of all their straightforward plans unraveling, their repeated blundering into uncertain circumstances. Now, at least for a brief time, there were no expectations, no bothersome queries and laborious decisions to be made; only walking in companionable silence.
