The Maiden of Ireland. Susan Wiggs

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      Someone removed the ropes. Blood rushed to the tips of his fingers and toes, so swift and hot that it hurt. But what sweet agony! His very blood had taken up the refrain he had been trying—and failing—to ignore: I want to live. I want to live.

      But his fate was here, on this infamous hill surrounded by green fields and budding trees and weeping women.

      As soldiers hauled him to his feet and shoved him toward the hangman’s cart, he allowed himself a last look at his mourners.

      All those women. Some harkened back to his misspent youth. Others were devout followers who had embraced his later cause. There were pretty women and plain ones, rich ones and poor ones, women he had liked and women he had merely lusted after.

      Good Lord, he thought. How quickly they had all discovered his identity. He suspected only a few had actually known him; the rest had been drawn by rumor and improbable tales that grew larger with each telling. Gossip through the Catholic underground flowed as swiftly as a river during flood season.

      Yet despite their grief, he could summon no sentiment toward them. Torture had scoured all emotion from John Wesley Hawkins.

      Until he thought of Laura.

      The very thought of the child brought a shimmer of light into his soul. A sense of loss made the impending horrors seem no more threatening than a stroll through Bartholomew Fair.

      Sweet Jesus, keep her safe. It was as close to true prayer as Hawkins had ever uttered, despite his vocation. Priesthood had been a foolish choice, one made in haste and desperation and a yearning simply to belong. He was glad Laura’s appearance in his life had stopped him from taking his final vows and forever binding his life to the church.

      Only hours before his arrest, he had paid a widow named Hester Clench to pass Laura off as her niece and speed the three-year-old to safe obscurity. Now the widow Clench possessed the only person who truly mattered to him.

      He pictured Laura’s round baby face, the profusion of rose-gold curls that gave her the look of a cherub. The memory of her childish laughter stabbed at his heart, for he would hear that sound no more.

      Ah, the pain of it. Never to exclaim over his child’s first lost tooth, never to see her grow tall and willowy and beautiful, never to play the stern papa evaluating her suitors.

      Heat prickled in his throat. He fought the tears. If his death were to have any meaning at all, he must die well.

      He was a king’s man to the end, he wanted people to say. If he could coax admiration from this hard London crowd, jaded by so many executions, his death might make a difference, after all.

      Goaded by the hangman, Hawkins stepped into the two-wheeled cart hitched to a mule. So this was where his life would end. No more saying mass in barns and cellars, always one jump ahead of the priest catchers. No more whispered messages to royalists, always looking over his shoulder for Cromwell’s hunters.

      At the back of the crowd, a man in an opulent high-collared robe dismounted and tried to jostle forward. A felt hat, with the brim tilted up at one side and held in place by a golden clasp, shadowed his face.

      He seemed to be shouting, but the wailing of the women and the beating of drums drowned his cries. Recognition niggled at Wesley’s torture-numbed brain, prodding a memory.

      The executioner stepped up beside him. The cart groaned under the giant’s solid weight.

      Good, thought Hawkins. The big lout should be able to put him out of his misery quickly.

      A cleric arrived. He wore a black cloak unrelieved by ornamentation, and a hat with a round, flat brim. Wesley wondered which sect was in fashion at the moment. Puritan, Anabaptist, Leveler...he couldn’t keep all the Protesters straight.

      “You’ve a dire sentence hanging over you,” said the cleric.

      Hawkins shot a wry glance at the noose. “So it seems.”

      “Recant, sir, and spare yourself from the sword.”

      Wesley allowed a hint of wistful regret to soften his features. “My good friend, I cannot.”

      Impatience tautened the cleric’s mouth. “You’re as insincere a priest as they come. Why play the martyr?”

      “Better to die a martyr than to live a traitor.”

      “Then you’ll suffer the full agony of the sentence. I shall pray for your everlasting soul.”

      “Do that, and you’ll surely send me to hell.” Wesley turned to the executioner and sketched the sign of the cross. “For what you are about to do, I forgive you.”

      “Aye, sir, you’ll not trouble my sleep.” The hangman had a deep voice muffled by the hood, and an East London accent. Wesley wondered what the man thought about, what he did with himself when he wasn’t torturing people to death. Did he stop off at the Whyte Harte for a pint of the plain, rocking back in his chair and regaling his cronies with morbid tales?

      The giant removed Wesley’s filthy cloak and shirt. Cool air tingled over his bare chest and arms. Sighs gusted from the women, whether at the scars from the lash or at the musculature of his stomach and chest, he couldn’t tell.

      The hangman flung the garments out of the cart. Feminine hands grappled for the clothing. As his wrists were tied behind his back, Hawkins winced at the pain. He heard the sound of rending fabric, shrill voices arguing. Each scrap of his cloak and shirt would be sold off as a holy relic.

      Saint John Wesley Hawkins. It had an interesting ring. He would be made patron of something, but what? Liars and cheats? Gamblers and skirt chasers? Defrocked priests?

      Through the slits of his hood, the hangman eyed Hawkins’s belt. The tooled leather, several layers thick, had ridden at his waist for many years. It was a beautiful piece, but that had little to do with its value. Inside the belt were several slim compartments, waterproofed with wax, in which he carried falsified documents, secret messages, and money when he had it.

      The belt was empty now. “It’s yours if you want it,” said Wesley.

      The giant shrugged. “Wouldn’t span me gut.” He took hold of the noose.

      Thick rope pressed on Wesley’s shoulders; twisted hemp scratched his neck. The hangman stepped down from the cart. Wesley’s thighs tightened. He expected the mule to bolt any moment.

      The executioner raised his hand to slap the beast and urge it forward. But he didn’t strike the brown flank yet.

      Four women Wesley remembered from his cavalier days sidled close to the cart. He knew their intent was to rush forward and hang on his legs, speeding the strangulation so the rest of the sentence would be performed on a corpse.

      Near the rear of the crowd he spied five masked and mounted men. Cromwell’s own, judging from their buff-colored coats and hooked halberds. For too many years, those evil hooks had buried themselves in the chests of royalists and men of reason and justice. Wesley tried to hate the Roundheads but couldn’t. They had supported the Commonwealth out of genuine concern for order and fairness. But in just ten years, Cromwell had made butchers of them.

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