“But Smith?”
Walsingham says nothing. Dee understands though; there is nothing anyone may do about Smith, for the moment at least.
Burghley has no choice, and anyway even takes some pleasure in announcing the death sentence. Hearing it, Gethyn clenches his eyes and then opens them and nods once, because what did he expect? The guards are gentle with him, and as he turns, he nods to Dee and even Walsingham.
Smith sits glaring at the floor.
He dies two days later, on the last good day that year, at Smithfield. There’s a lively crowd, for this kind of thing doesn’t happen too often, and the day’s atmosphere reminds Francis Walsingham of that day in Paris, all those weeks ago, when the celebrants danced through blood-red streets.
Dee refuses to come.
“No,” he had said. “I’ve had enough of this stinking business, Walsingham, and I’ve had enough of you.”
Walsingham had managed a laugh.
“So your recovery is now complete, eh, Dee? Back to your old self?”
“Fuck off, Walsingham.”
So it is just Walsingham and Beale who come to see Gethyn die. They stand alone, in a roped-off area reserved for dignitaries from court, and together they watch Gethyn brought up Giltspur Street from Newgate tied to a hurdle dragged by an ox. When he is untied he is helped to his feet and he rubs his wrists, but he seems unharmed by the ordeal even though someone has flung every sort of excrement at him.
He climbs up the steps to the scaffold and the executioner shakes him by his hand, and Gethyn looks about him for a priest of his own religion, but he finds only the grim-faced visage of a priest of the new faith, who is quoting a verse from the Bible, shouting above the crowd and still unable to make himself heard.
Walsingham watches Gethyn’s gaze slide past the priest, to the rocks that lie piled like ship’s ballast at the back of the scaffold. The executioner has two men to help him this day, and a lad, too, to carry the plank. Gethyn gives the executioner his doublet and then is persuaded to hand over his shirt to the boy, from whom it will hang like a nightdress.
Then he kneels and says his prayers and now the crowd would ordinarily bellow and throw offal and whatever was to hand, but there is something about Gethyn that stills their malice, and they calm into a placid sea of coinlike faces, and only the priest’s voice can be heard.
“… Princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives to get dishonest gain.…”
When Gethyn has crossed himself, he stands and puts himself into the hands of the executioner, who leads him to the front of the scaffold where he lies him down on his back. It is strange to think he will never get up again. It is also strange to see how the executioner is solicitous of Gethyn’s comfort.
“Get him a fucking bolster why don’t you!” a wit shouts.
The executioner summons his boy, who passes him the plank. It is as tall as the executioner, not as tall as Gethyn, and he lies it on him so that his head and feet are clear. Again he checks his comfort, and the people in the crowd laugh. But his concern does not prevent him placing a first layer of rocks on the plank, two hundredweight, Walsingham supposes: the weight of two heavy men. Under them Gethyn is flushed and puffing. A second layer of rocks is piled upon the first, and Gethyn’s face turns purple. He sucks and blows like a horse at a trough.
“What actually kills them?” Beale asks.
“I think breathing,” Walsingham says. “Or perhaps the heart? It cannot beat when it is so…”
He mimes compression.
It is difficult not to talk nonsense in a moment like this.
The third layer of stones.
Gethyn sweats blood. His eyes boil red, too, and then something gives. His rib cage, maybe, and that’s that. The plank jolts. Blood froths from every orifice. The people cheer. The executioner’s men scramble to keep the rocks from sliding from their perch.
“Fuckin’ rubbish!” is one opinion.
Walsingham agrees. Hang a man, burn bits of him, and then chop him up. Let them bathe in his blood. That is what you really want.
“Well,” Beale says. “A martyr’s death. I suppose that is what he wanted.”
Walsingham agrees.
“A martyr, yes,” he says, “but a martyr for whom?”
Walsingham dines alone with his wife that evening and listens when she tells him of Frances, his eldest daughter, who is as clever as any boy, and of Mary, his youngest, who sleeps well, which is a gift to all concerned.
But what is it that bothers him about Gethyn?
That he was innocent, he thinks, that was it.
He stood in another man’s place and took the punishment for the future of his family.
Bloody Smith. Bloody Smith and his bloody Irish project.
But how to get him? How to expose him now that Gethyn is dead and his secrets are taken to the grave?
In Sheffield, Queen Mary watches the sun blink out over the hills beyond the western range of the castle, and she thinks of the wide open spaces, and of the endless black sea across which she now understands that Admiral Quesada’s fleet tacks.
It grows quite dark before she hears Mary Seton come up the steps with a candle, and she turns to watch her bob her sleek little head. She feels a sort of weary fondness for the woman.
“How long have I known you, Mary?”
“Twenty-five years, Your Grace.”
“We are old friends.”
“I hope so.
“I am melancholic tonight,” she admits.
“You are tired, after today’s hunting.”
“Perhaps.” She sighs. There is an ugly pause. Queen Mary knows that Mary Seton expected her to rage and rant, having heard the news of Gethyn’s arrest and death through the usual route from Sir Thomas. But she is not angry. She is sad. She knows nothing of
