Wolf Hall - Bring Up the Bodies

policed, and foreigners evacuated. He sets Kingston to do this. Anne, he is sorry to learn, has mistaken the day of her death, rising at 2 a.m. to pray on the morning of 18 May, sending for her almoner and for Cranmer to come to her at dawn so she can purge herself of her sins. No one seems to have told her that Kingston comes without fail at dawn on the morning of an execution, to warn the dying person to be ready. She is not familiar with the protocol, and why would she be? Kingston says, see it from my point of view: five deaths in one day, and to be ready for a queen of England the next? How can she die, when the appropriate officials from the city are not here? The carpenters are still making her scaffold on Tower Green, though thankfully she cannot hear the knocking from the royal lodging.
    Still, the constable is sorry for her misapprehension; especially since her mistake ran on, late into the morning. The situation is a great strain on both himself and his wife. Instead of being glad of another dawn, he reports, Anne had cried, and said she was sorry not to die that day: she wished she were past her pain. She knew about the French executioner and, ‘I told her,’ Kingston says, ‘it shall be no pain, it is so subtle.’ But once again, Kingston says, she closed her fingers around her throat. She had taken the Eucharist, declaring on the body of God her innocence.
    Which surely she would not do, Kingston says, if she were guilty?
    She laments the men who are gone.
    She makes jokes, saying that she will be known hereafter as Anne the Headless, Anne sans Tête.
     
     
    He says to his son, ‘If you come with me to witness this, it will be almost the hardest thing you ever do. If you can go through it with a steady countenance, it will be remarked on and it will be much in your favour.’
    Gregory just looks at him. He says, ‘A woman, I cannot.’
    ‘I will be beside you to show you that you can. You need not look. When the soul passes, we kneel, and we drop our eyes, and pray.’
    The scaffold has been set up in an open place, where once they used to hold tournaments. A guard of two hundred yeomen is assembling, drawing up to lead the procession. Yesterday’s bungling, the confusion over the date, the delays, the misinformation: none of that must be repeated. He is there early, when they are putting the sawdust down, leaving his son back in Kingston’s lodgings, with the others who are collecting: the sheriffs, aldermen, London’s officers and dignitaries. He stands himself on the steps of the scaffold, testing them to see if they take his weight; one of the sawdust men says to him, it’s sound, sir, we have all run up and down, but I suppose you want to check it yourself. When he looks up the executioner is already there, talking to Christophe. The young man is well-dressed, an allowance having been made him for a gentleman’s apparel, so that he will not be easy to pick out from the other officials; this is done to save alarm to the queen, and if the clothes are spoiled, at least he is not out of pocket himself. He walks up to the executioner. ‘How will you do this?’
    ‘I shall surprise her, sir.’ Switching into English, the young man indicates his feet. He is wearing soft shoes, such as one might wear indoors. ‘She never sees the sword. I have put it there, in the straw. I shall distract her. She will not see from where I come.’
    ‘But you will show me.’
    The man shrugs. ‘If you like. Are you Cremuel? They told me you are in charge of everything. In fact they joke to me, saying, if you faint because she is so ugly, there is one who will pick up the sword, his name is Cremuel and he is such a man, he can chop the head off the Hydra, which I do not understand what it is. But they say it is a lizard or serpent, and for each head that is chopped two more will grow.’
    ‘Not in this case,’ he says. Once the Boleyns are done, they are done.
    The weapon is heavy, needing a two-handed grip. It is almost four foot in length: two inches broad, round at the tip, a double edge. ‘One practises, like this,’ the man says. He whirls like a dancer on the spot, his arms held high, his fists together as if he were gripping the sword. ‘Every day one must handle the weapon, if only to go through the motions. One may be called at any time. We do not kill so many in Calais, but one goes to other towns.’
    ‘It is a good trade,’ Christophe says. He wants to handle the sword, but he,