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“I think the millstones have been changed a few times in the last thirty-five years, don’t you? It’s all been ground down. We’re all older—except you, my lamb, who are fresh and new—and all that is past can be forgotten. We sleep in the best linen where we were once the most despised squatters. And all this from the hands of a woman who seemed to bring nothing but trouble! Why wouldn’t we be happy?”
It was like a call to live—“why not be happy?” Matthew felt his heart lift like the wild ducks which suddenly arrowed overhead, whistling as they flew. “Why not?” he exclaimed. He took her hand and kissed it. He felt her little bones beneath the thin skin; it was the hand of an old woman, but her grip was strong.
“This is your land now,” she told him. “You take it, Matthew. And you be a good lord to the people, because once I was one of them, poorer than the poorest tenant on your land, and the most despised of women.”
TAUNTON, SOMERSET, AUTUMN 1685
Johnnie, in court for the trial of the five hundred men who had pleaded guilty on the promise of a pardon, saw the iron grille to the cells swing open and heard the soft, low moan from the crowd as the fifty men stumbled and were pushed into the well of the court. Judge Jeffreys clambered onto his ornate chair with the thick cushion and grimaced with pain.
“Silence,” he said, though there was no word spoken.
“Pleading guilty, my lord,” the clerk said, a wary eye on his scowling face.
“Any of ’em seen marching?”
“Four, my lord.” The clerk passed a paper with four names.
“Any exaggerated treason?”
“Six, my lord, two carried a green flag for the traitor. One wore a green leaf in his cap.”
A little sigh breathed from the public gallery from those who remembered how the green flag of freedom had billowed in the wind, and how everyone had worn Leveller green.
“A green leaf, eh?”
“Just a leaf, your honor. No more than a leaf.”
“Anyone pleading right of clergy?”
“Three.”
“Denied anyway.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Jeffreys lowered his gaze to the accused men standing before him. One, a lad of about sixteen, was silently crying, his tears soaking his shirt collar.
“You’ve pleaded guilty and so I find you,” Jeffreys told them. “The punishment for treason is death by hanging and then drawing and then quartering.”
There was complete silence in the courtroom.
“But His Majesty is merciful and may order you to be spared. He may. Or he may not. You’re all sentenced to death, but His Majesty is a kindly king and may send a pardon for you.”
There was a murmur of meek protest. They had all pleaded guilty on the promise of a pardon. They had confessed and incriminated each other to earn a pardon. They knew from previous hearings that the judge always executed men who pleaded their innocence; but they had not expected his promise of pardon to mean nothing in this Bloody Assize.
Jeffreys banged the gavel for silence. “I will hang you for interrupting me,” he told them. “I shall send all your names to London, and the king will decide who dies. The rest of you will be transported.Your pardon will be that you are transported to Barbados rather than hung here.”
He shouted “Next!” to the clerk, and the young lad let out a single sob of despair. A man put an arm around his thin shoulders as they were pushed out of the court.
“My lord, you forgot your hat,” the clerk reminded the judge.
“What? What?”
“Your black cap. For the sentence of death.”
“Ah! Yes. I’ve got it here. Might as well keep it on, eh?”
Johnnie craned forward to see the next group of prisoners being pushed into court. Among the bowed heads of the accused he caught a glimpse of dirty white linen: a bandage around a grizzled bowed head. It was his uncle Ned for sure, with his left ear bound up with a torn bloodstained piece of linen. He looked like all the prisoners, but a little lopsided, his head tipped a bit to one side as if he were injured. But he was at least standing, and apparently not wholly deaf, as his head came up when the judge asked the clerk if there were any prisoners guilty of exaggerated treason, or any that had been seen in arms.
