At the fifth hour Greene mounted the pyre with such a spring in his step as if it were his bridal couch. And as the words appear under my quill, I am reminded of what he said to me, namely that he hoped this day to be the bridegroom of his Great Mother, by which blasphemous speech he doubtless meant his return to the bosom of his black mother, Isaïs.
As they tied him to the stake he laughed aloud and called out to the Bishop, “Take care, priest, when I sing the Hymn of the Journey Home, that thou mind thy bald pate, for I am minded to sprinkle it with drops of pitch and fiery sulphur that thy brain shall burn until thou make thy own journey to Hell!”
The bonfire had been constructed with cruel and devilish cunning, such as has never been seen before, nor, God willing, will ever be again in this vale of sorrow. It was a pile of damp, ill-burning elm logs with above it a stake to which they fastened Greene with iron clamps. Around this martyr’s pole hempen threads full of sulphur were twined from top to bottom and above the head of the victim hung a broad crown of pitch and sulphur.
When the executioner pushed his torch into the pyre the first things to flare up, as if they were touchwood, were the sulphured threads which took the oily flames to the garland over the malefactor’s head so that drops of sulphur and pitch slowly began to rain down upon him.
However, although it was horrible to behold, for the singular man at the stake it seemed as if it were but a refreshing spring shower or manna from above. And all the while he kept up a stream of insolent remarks at Bonner so that it seemed more as if the Bishop on his velvet cushions were the accused, rather than his victim on the bonfire. His sins were trumpeted abroad in public; Greene knew of his most secret transgressions and did not withhold them, so that had he been able to with good grace, my Lord Bishop would gladly have sacrificed the pleasure of watching the execution. He seemed bound by some spell and must needs sit there silent, trembling with shame and fury; then, foaming at the mouth, he screamed order on order at his henchmen that they should hasten to put an end to the spectacle that he had thought before to draw out to the last terrible second. It was miraculous to see how none of the arrows that rained upon Greene could silence him; it was as if his whole body were invulnerable. Finally dry wood, with much kindling and tow mixed in, set the pyre blazing, and Greene disappeared in smoke and flames. But then he began to bellow out his song, more joyfully than in the cell, where he had swung from the wall, and the crackling of the wood was drowned in the spine-chilling rapture of his wild singing:
“Heave ho! All night Tom plays on his fiddle
After the moult of May.
Heave ho!
While Kitty sings hey diddle diddle
To the moon and Black Isaye.
Heave ho!”
It was deathly still around the place of execution; all the executioners and guards, the judges, priests and nobles felt their skin crawl with fear and loathing until every limb seemed paralysed; and the sight made me want to laugh out loud. Before all the rest, however, sat my Lord Bishop, Edward Bonner, like a grey ghost on his throne, his hands clamped on the arms, gazing fixedly into the flames. As the last note of the song died away on the lips of the blazing Greene I saw the Bishop stagger forward with a cry like a condemned man. Was it a gust of wind blowing through the fire or were there truly satanical powers at work there? – from the top of the pyre a wreath of flames, like yellow tongues of fire, suddenly flew up, fluttered, plunged and whirled upwards into the sky over the episcopal throne and the head of Bishop Bonner. Whether it really was singed by a drop of sulphur as Greene had prophesied only minutes before, I cannot say; from the grimace of terror on the face of the Bloody Bishop it would almost seem so – it was impossible to tell in the general tumult of men and weapons that filled the reeking courtyard.
One final detail I must record for accuracy’s sake: when I regained my senses a lock of hair, singed off my own head, floated down to my feet as I brushed the confusion of the last hours from my forehead. The night that followed these terrible events was full of the most strange happenings, of which I can confide but a small part to these pages; but I shall never forget that night, nor anything that befell me in the Bloody Bishop’s dungeon.
That evening and the first part of the night I spent in constant expectation of a renewed interrogation, if not torture, by the Bishop’s men. I must confess that I did not put much trust in the words of Greene, yet I kept taking out the black coal to see if there were an image of my future on the polished surfaces of this common mineral. Soon, however, it was too dark in the cell: as on the previous night, the turnkeys did not think it necessary to give me a light; they may well have been following an express order.
I spent I know not how long sitting there pondering my fate and that of Bartlett Greene; at times I even sighed with envy of the outlaw, who was now beyond all chains and cares. Towards midnight I must have fallen exhausted into a leaden slumber.
Then it seemed to me that the heavy iron door to my cell swung open – by what agency
