Page 60 of The Queen’s Witch

I never learned what became of the unfortunate Oxford midwife, but all the world knew when, in May, the genuine horrors began.

King and queen and their attendants had gone hunting. Unwanted, I slipped away to London. If Anne did decide she needed great magicks from me, I would need a thrice-braided witch to conduct my ceremony.

Never did I long more for the clean sea air of Tydd Saint Stephen than when I ventured into London. The narrow streets, darkened by the jutting upper stories of buildings, smelled foul. Sewage ran through ditches down the middle of the streets. Cats, feral and skinny, eyed me from shadowed corners. Men carrying great cans of water from the Thames elbowed past, once knocking me into a cobbler’s pentice, disturbing the shoes. The cobbler cursed at me. I ignored him, scanning every building for the secret runes of the Sisterhood.

I could not find a single one.

Even in London, where every sort of sin flourished, the noose was being tightened around the “sin” of magick. The new religion thought it heresy. The people, more accustomed to city ways than the older practices of East Anglia and the North, stayed wary. So did the Sisterhood.

Finally, unable to stand the reek, I left the narrow streets for a broader avenue and was surprised to find crowds of people streaming east.

An old woman on the arm of a young one hobbled past, moving as rapidly as she could. I matched her pace. “Mistress, where does everyone haste to?”

“Tyburn. The execution,” the young woman said. Her face shone with anticipation.

Let it not be a Sister.

It was not. I followed the crowd to an open area with a raised scaffold in the center. A great shout went up as horses dragged hurdles, to which were tied five men in monks’ habits. They were strung up on gallows and left to choke until half dead. The crowd jeered. A man beside me said, “So should die all who be treasonous to the king!”

The monks were cut down. Soldiers splashed vinegar, the smell of it pungent in the fetid air, over the men to revive them. More jeering.

But the people quieted as the five men were stripped and then castrated. Their howls of agony filled the air. Castration was followed by disemboweling, their entrails pulled from their bodies and burned before them.

Now the crowd stood completely silent.

Finally, the monks’ heads were severed from their bodies. But even in death, the punishment continued. Each body was hacked into quarters.

The woman beside me bent over and vomited onto the ground.

From somewhere behind, a young boy’s voice said, “But ye told me that—”

“Be quiet,” a man said, “or I’ll strap ye. Ye be too young to understand.”

There was fear and shock beneath his anger.

I pushed back through the crowd. Someone muttered, “She ordered this.” Jabbing with my elbows, I fought to free myself from this horror, this wanton cruelty, lest I, too, could not hold my bile. I had just reached the edge of the crowd when I saw Mark mounted on a sleek sorrel.

He motioned me over. His face was ashen—surely the monstrous scene had appalled him, this man I once loved!—but his eyes were hard. Had he changed so much, or had I just had no occasion in Tydd Saint Stephen to know how hard he could be? All those soft, giddy evenings of courtship . . . despite everything, they remained sweet in memory.

Mark leaned down from his horse. “I well remember what you are, Alysoun. I will tell no one unless you act in any manner against the queen.”

“I intend no harm to Queen Anne.”

“You had best mean that. Or I will denounce you.”

“And set people wondering why you did not do so before now, Master Smeaton?”

We stared at each other, the contest a draw. The monks’ bloody heads rose on pikes above the crowd. Mark said, as if the words were torn from him as the monks’ manhoods had been torn from them, “’Tis monstrous.”

A moment later, covering weakness with bluster, he snapped, “Remember well what I said,” and turned his mount away.

Seven years ago in Tydd Saint Stephen, he had not even known how to ride.

I made my way back to Whitehall and was admitted at the gate.

No one at court spoke of the monks’ execution. But at dinner, Anne, sitting beside an uncharacteristically silent Henry, said to him quietly, “Justice was done.”

He did not answer.