Sumerford's Autumn

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Then, should all else fail,” smiled Frizzard, “there is castration. A traitor sentenced to hang may first be castrated, which entertains the crowd and prepares a common man for the greater tortures of hellfire to come. But nobility, executed on the block, escapes such sordid contempt of his masculinity, as is proper.” He sighed. “And I should not want to emasculate a fine man like yourself, my lord. But sometimes castration can encourage a little common sense in an uncommon man, where other methods fail. The knife right through the base of the prick as the pincers sever the cods, it’s a painful business, sir, and one to avoid I assure you. And I think it would be a great shame if you were to hobble out into the cold without your better parts, should a pardon then be granted by his majesty’s mercy after all.”

  Ludovic felt a large hand fall flat and heavy across his groin. “I could have your codpiece off and the job done in an instant.” Frizzard removed his hand after a brisk pat to the relevant area, and smiled. “But the rack first, as is fitting. For the rest, it’s up to you, sir. I am experienced in all these matters, and will be busy about my business until the moment you consent to admit your guilt. And my good assistant here who will be pulling the levers and insuring your lordship stays fully awake, this is the faithful Barnaby, my friend and apprentice Luke. You’ll get to know him as well as myself I don’t doubt, before the end.”

  Ludovic said nothing. He heard only a nonsense of rigmarole, words drifting from far away. Nothing but his breathing mattered. He held his own life in complete control, sufficient, he believed, even within his power to stop. Should the pain prove unbearable, he planned to die by the voluntary cessation of breathing. He did not know whether he truly had that power, but he intended to try. He might, at the very least, ensure prolonged unconsciousness. He settled, patiently, and counted his breaths.

  The first roll of the base pulley was grindingly brutal; a sudden onslaught on all his senses that instantly wrenched Ludovic away from the studied concentration of his breathing and instead flooded him, reeling, into dizzy and overwhelming agony. The roller had moved very little but the chains holding his manacles sprang into full distension, cutting violently into his ankles. A creak of wooden cogs, the tug on the handle, and every joint in his body screamed. His head pounded. His back arched and his spine vibrated, vertebra leaping in flame as if they tore apart. He felt the sweat soak through his shirt and hose and clamp his hair to his neck. The burst of pain stunned him and the extent shocked him. He remained silent, but instantly knew himself lost.

  The levers pressed down again and the roller attached to his legs swept back. His knees were on fire as the joints at his hips cracked. In the silence, he heard his own bones suffer.

  “A short pause, perhaps,” suggested Martin Frizzard, “for his lordship to contemplate. We are, of course, only at the very beginning and have hardly started. But we’ve given, I believe, a small indication of what will come.” Ludovic heard his chuckle. “You’ve a fine pair of legs, sir. It’s a real shame, I believe, to ruin them. And once we start on the roller holding your wrists, well, you’ll not be lifting even a feather for a long time after. Will you reconsider the confession now, perhaps? Before too late?”

  Ludovic wondered how long it would take them to break him. He no longer believed he could resist until the end. He abandoned entirely the hope of ending his own life by refusing to breathe. It could not be done. His breathing was now stertorous, each breath short and shallow as he gasped for deeper inhalation. There was no question of choosing to die. He could no more hold his breath than move his breaking joints.

  In his wavering and desperate silence, both rollers cranked again. Pain shot through him, darting into each muscle and each bone, riveted as though by iron into his shoulders, wrists and hands, concentrating down his back and swarming into the raw nerves of his hips, knees, ankles and feet. His head swam. For one instant, abstracted, he hoped to prove himself far weaker than most and faint immediately.

  He did not. His consciousness, tormented by waves of agony through each tendon and every particle of flesh, remained alive. The rollers turned again and for the first time he screamed. He heard the thin, wild sound and did not know that it was himself.

  “Another pause, my lord?” Master Frizzard bent over him, took Ludovic’s chin in his hand, and peered into his bloodshot eyes. Frizzard turned to Barnaby. “Throw cold water over the fool. He’s growing faint.”

  Ludovic shut his eyes. The water was icy and he welcomed it, though it stung. In the nightmare of heat and the rivers of suffering, the water seemed to attach him back into reality. He prepared himself for the next turn of the wheel.

  Barbaby was calling for more water and a guard came forwards with a bucket. Frizzard loomed over Ludovic once again. “The initial stage is now over, my lord,” he told him. “At the next full roll, the first of your joints will snap. Your muscles will begin to tear beyond mending. You will hear the pop, as the stretching causes the first break. Muscles can mend even when pulled beyond their weight, but not once they have torn apart. To save yourself permanent crippling, will you now confess, sir? It is your last chance to remain whole.”

  Ludovic tried to find his tongue. His mouth was open when the next bowl of cold water sluiced over him. He drank. It was strangely refreshing.

  Frizzard pulled up a stool and sat beside the rack. It seemed a casual act, as of a man invited to supper. “I studied abroad, sir,” he said. Ludovic kept his eyes closed. He doubted his own waning comprehension, for the words seemed incongruous. Martin Frizzard continued cheerfully, ready for conversation. “It was France where I learned most of my trade and watched in interest as other methods of persuasion were practised. Sadly most of those are not encouraged here. We English have the Duke of Exeter’s daughter, as we call the rack which you are enjoying now, my lord, but France knows greater refinements. Of course, the old days of trials against the Templars were already long over when I studied there, though I heard tell of them. It was torture indeed at that time, for the Templars were proved heretics and the kings of France wanted them punished and their vile secrets uncovered. Obtaining confessions was imperative.” He sighed, shaking his head. “A civilised race, the French, even if we call them enemies more often than not. One criminal I saw in Paris, a brute accused of vile blasphemy, sodomy and rape, had escaped death twice. First ran from the cell in which he was held, and then after recapture, he ran again, claiming sanctuary, which was naturally denied. To convince him to stay and face his execution, he was sat on a wooden stool awaiting the hangman. His hose were pulled down around his ankles, his legs spread wide and his prick nailed to the seat of the stool. Sat and howled he did, bleeding merrily as though pissing himself. Then when it came to drag him off to the gallows, no one could extract the nail. I tried myself but it was too far embedded. They had to cut his prick off and leave it attached to the seat. It looked exceedingly strange and sadly wizened; left there alone once the man was carried off screaming.”

  Ludovic heard very little. The story, whether true or invented, held little importance. He knew himself goaded, encouraged into a confession which would cut short his pain but ensure his death. He was once again concentrating on his breathing. Given pause and time to adjust to the extreme stretching of his limbs and to the limits of his endurance, he believed one more pull on the rollers would break both his limbs and his resolve. His joints remained still intact, though held at the final extremity. Each muscle was ready to burst. Thought, though it was increasingly difficult to summon logic, told him one thing. He decided, slowly and with careful intent, to relinquish all he held important in himself and the truth of his whole life, and instead confess.

  “I’m a fair man, sir,” Frizzard was saying. “I give my prisoners every chance to turn honest, and will not cause pain beyond what they choose themselves with their silence. But you are obstinate sir, which proves your guilt beyond question. Only a guilty man would be so fearful to admit the truth of his actions.”

  Ludovic’
s decision was muffled by confusion but determined by the extremity of suffering. He opened his eyes. He looked into Martin Frizzard’s face. “I believe you have won,” he said very slowly. But he could barely hear his own voice, his tongue was swollen and the mumbled words held no clarity.

  Frizzard bent a little lower, his ear to Ludovic’s mouth. “You will have to speak up, sir,” he said crossly, shaking his head. “I am a patient man, but ‘believe one’ means nothing to me. Do you ask for a pause? Or a singular chance? Do you state your belief in the one God? Or is it something else you ask for one of? I cannot understand you, my lord, but I must warn you further. If you do not accept this final offer for confession, the rollers will turn again. First there’s the pop, pop of the sinews snapping. That loosens the muscles, which tear like parchment. Finally the crack of the bones as they wrench from their sockets. The knees are left to wobble as the bones above and below pull right out. A dismal picture, my lord, I promise you. This is your last opportunity to repent, or you will surely never walk again.”

  Ludovic tried to clear his throat and struggled to find his voice. He had whispered just one word when he was interrupted.

  He did not hear the opening of the door or the entrance of urgent boots, but he saw Martin Frizzard’s expression change abruptly before he stood, hurrying away into the far shadows. Beyond Ludovic’s limited range of sight, the voices became loud and imperious. “Stop in the name of the king,” someone demanded attention.

  “It is finished here, and your work done. Release the chains and remove the irons from the pulleys.”

  The flames of the brazier flared suddenly. Luke Barnaby folded his arms across the sweating bare muscles of his chest, and scowled.

  Frizzard’s voice echoed dully from some distance. “My lords, there is no impropriety. I have the authority and can show you my orders signed by the Lord Chancellor. My business here is legally sanctioned.”

  “Not any longer, fool. This abomination is at an end.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The Earl of Sumerford carried his son from the cellars of the Tower Keep. He was a strong man, honed in warfare and hunting, but he was well past his zenith and into advanced middle age. The youthful body he carried should have weighed heavily, straining his muscles and his back. But he found his son pitifully light.

  Ludovic’s head rested silent against his shoulder. The earl looked down and sighed. He had not touched the boy for many years, and now found the closeness strangely emotional. He remembered the scampering of children long ago when life had seemed sweet and there was promise of happiness on each horizon. He shook his head, climbed the winding stairs, and entered again into daylight.

  The litter he had hired was waiting for them. The Constable of the Tower had offered two good sized chambers within the Tower’s upper apartments to house them, promising food would be brought while the doctor was called to attend. But the earl had declined. “My son is unconscious,” he had said. “I will not have him regain his wits, still to look upon the walls of this foul place. I am taking him away.”

  “He should not be moved yet. It is too soon,” murmured the Tower physician.

  “I am his father and the decision is mine,” said the earl curtly. “You have the papers, signed in the king’s own hand. My son has been pardoned. Now I will take him to a place of peace and comfort, far away from here.”

  He took Ludovic to the great house in the Strand which he had been renting for the past three months and more. The earl had not left his son’s side since permission had been given to take him from the place of torture. He had nursed him in the litter, cradling his body to lessen the bumps and grinds of the wheels on the cobbles and deep ruts of the roads. The earl had never before in his life travelled in a litter since leaving behind his infant swaddlings. At the age of three years he had ridden his own pony from Sumerford to Exeter. Now, incredulous at the discomfort, he sat enclosed by sweating hessian, sitting on old woollen cushions, the litter pulled by two tired and flatulent horses. And in the privacy of the shadows, he kissed his son’s forehead and prayed silently for Ludovic’s recovery.

  The hired servants at the Strand house had prepared the bedchamber and it was there that the earl carried his youngest son. The wide windows and furnishings were too modern for the earl’s taste, but the great bed was grand and spacious. The linen was aired, the drapery clean, the high tester swagged and hung in green, the coverlet tasselled in purple and quilted in rose, and the bolster well stuffed and perfumed with lilac blossom. The doctor and his assistant were already waiting at the bedside. The earl relinquished his burden, laid his son down and sat close to supervise.

  They carefully removed Ludovic’s shirt, hose and braies so that he lay naked across the feather quilt. His body was streaked in a broken maze of bruises. Like a beggar, half-starved and beaten, there were no longer signs of the knight and warrior, once trained in combat and gleaming in health under the sun. Where his bones protruded through the shrunken flesh; his ribs, pelvis, clavicles and spine, livid grazes scoured each point, running in stripes across the pale skin. His joints were hugely swollen and inflamed. Great purple bruises had formed around his knees, ankles and wrists, and the flesh there was lurid and blackened.

  His body was grimed in old dirt, flea bites and the sour sweat of fear and abandonment. His hair clamped to his head, smelling of months unwashed. His face seemed hollow, the flesh drained into sallow exhaustion, and his eye sockets were deeply bruised. But his breathing was steady and his chest rose and fell with the gentle satisfaction of natural sleep.

  “My lord,” the doctor was examining Ludovic’s legs, his fingers nervous over the massive inflammations and discolouration around the knees. “I must warn you, after racking most men will never walk again. But the young lord lives, and that is, of course, what matters most. However, muscles so far stretched will not usually retract, but will stay always loose and useless. And a dislocation of such complicated joints cannot ever be righted. You must be prepared, my lord, for your son will likely be crippled and confined to his bed for life.”

  The earl sat rigid on his straight backed chair and stared at the small man bending over the bed. “If,” he said, “you speak to me again in terms of hopelessness and negativity, I shall dismiss you instantly. I do not intend to escort an ailing, infirm or disabled son back to his home and family. I shall nurse him here, while you will restore him to full health. Is this clear, sir?”

  “Indeed it is, my lord.” The doctor blushed slightly. “But I am no saint to work miracles upon the broken and diseased. I shall do my best, I assure you.”

  “Your best, sir,” the earl informed him, “must be sufficient. If it is not, I will find a better man whose best will prove superior. I shall accept neither excuses nor mistakes. I am not a man to be crossed, and failure is not an option here. My son will walk again, and you will achieve this to his satisfaction and mine. You will be well paid, but only after complete success.” He clasped his hands in his lap and gazed unblinking towards the bed. “I am waiting for you to begin, sir. The sooner you start your doctoring, the sooner the healing will be accomplished.”

  Ludovic opened his eyes to a paradise of peace. The sounds around him whispered of care and comfort; the busy crackle of flames from the hearth and its accompanying dance of muted light and colour, the swish of silken curtains, the chink of jug against cup and the pouring of liquid. Sounds long associated with comfort and normality, the pleasant traditions of an ordered and unthreatening life.

  He moved his head, deep cushioned on fine linen over feathers and duckling down. The firelight was heady, ranging across a wide glowing hearth. Its warmth seemed magnificent. There was no rack, no green slime streaking bare stone walls, no hard bundled pallet, nor the stench of dirt and misery. There was no cause for panic, for terror or for hopelessness. A new life had been born around him.

  He turned his head slowly in the other direction, careful to avoid the pain which still cocooned him. He smiled. />
  An elderly man was pouring wine, bent over the table, pitcher in hand. His back was to the bed. But Ludovic recognised him at once. He opened his mouth to call his father, but found his voice silent. Then the earl turned as he brought the cup to his mouth to drink. But he paused, cup raised

  The old man’s face, tired and strained, lifted suddenly into a delighted smile, infused with relief. “My dear boy,” he said, striding over. “You are awake.”

  It occurred to Ludovic that he had not seen his father smile for a very long time. Perhaps years. Ludovic’s own smile was smaller, though his relief even greater. But the muscles of his face would not respond and the continuous ache of consistent pain strangled pleasure. It was some hours later, after he had slept deep again and the day had passed on into evening, that he was able to speak, and smile, and believe the horror truly over.

  “It is more than three months I have waited,” the earl said, sitting stiff at his son’s bedside. “A messenger was sent to Sumerford from the Lord Chancellor’s office in mid-January, informing me of my sons’ arrests on the grounds of high treason, and their immediate incarceration in the Tower. I left Somerset the following day and came directly to Westminster. I proceeded to petition the king for my sons’ pardons but it was some time before he agreed to see me. Your arrest, I understand, took place on the 20th of December. We are now in late April, the 23rd to be exact, St. George’s Day and high spring of the New Year.” The earl sighed, his mouth tight. “His majesty has been – let us say, persistently unmoved. Each day I presented myself at court, and each day he denied me. At first he claimed illness. Indeed, I hear he is often ailing. They say the strain of these constant threats to his throne have unnerved him and weakened his mind and health. Although fierce in denial, clearly he greatly fears this Warbeck’s true identity, and the strength of his foreign support. The king is not an old man. I am older by several years. But it seems this Tudor monarch does not have the training nor the iron intellect of the Plantagenets. He prefers to work in the dark and unseen, shuffling his papers and scribing endless meticulous lists of his expenses, trusting no one, peering into matters more suited to an apprentice barrister, a grosser or a clerk. The reappearance of old King Edward’s sons claiming their right of inheritance has ruined Tudor’s nerve. They say he was previously confident in his arrogance, thinking the princes long dead. But now he appears shaken and bent. He fears his own shadow and accuses every man who blinks, of plotting against him. The monarchy of England is in wreckage. Does Tudor suffer from guilt? He clearly knows the truth, though cannot admit it. Denied open battle, he fights with the quill, and dips his nib in malice and propaganda. His eyes are haunted. He fears for his soul, yet cannot abandon avarice and determination, and will hold frantically to what he has so gleefully acquired. The tyrant I once thought him would surely be less destroyed by his own actions. But he is not so destroyed that he permits doubt, or becomes less angry and obdurate. He knows himself disliked by his people, and is determined not to mind. When he eventually received me, I saw his disillusion. But I also saw his fury.”