by Peter Tonkin
‘Leave it, Nick or we’ll come to blows.’ Poley’s fist closed on the pommel of the Solingen steel rapier Sir Christopher Blount had purchased for him in the Steelyard. The disfigured gargoyle of a man was due to lose his head on the public execution block atop Tower Hill in five days’ time. That too added to Poley’s feelings of guilt and anger.
Skeres saw that he was serious and let the matter of Lady Janet drop. Instead, he began to shoulder through the crowd, pushing his way ruthlessly to the front row. Poley followed him, willy-nilly, as though he was his brutal colleague’s shadow. Once at the front, they stopped. The guardians of the butchers’ equipment were prowling in a circle, keeping everyone well back, slapping nasty-looking cudgels into broad, callused palms. Because of this, Poley found himself part of a large circle of onlookers at the centre of which stood the gibbet, the brazier, the cauldron and the table. There was nothing between him and the executioner’s equipment other than a few yards of open ground, floored with cobble stones. Thomas Derrick and his other assistants were climbing down the ladders, careful to ensure the ropes did not slip out of the greased channels. Once on the ground, they began a simple but disturbing ritual. Derrick himself took hold of the first noose. One of his men pulled the far end of the rope, testing how freely the rope ran through its channel high on the cross-beam. Satisfied, Derrick extended his arms until the noose was as high above his head as he could reach. The assistant tied the rope to a solid peg on one of the uprights. Derrick pulled himself up off the ground and swung there kicking and jerking. The peg held firm. ‘That’ll do,’ he called and lowered himself back onto the cobble-stones. Then he and the assistants went through the same ritual with the other rope.
‘Why’d they need two ropes?’ mused Skeres. ‘They’ll take them one at a time. One traitor at a time, one neck at a time, one rope would do for both.’
‘Tradition,’ said Poley.
‘And profit,’ said a new voice. ‘Rope that’s hanged a man is powerful magic. Sell it off for a pound a foot.’ Poley turned to find John Wolfall standing at his left shoulder. ‘A foot of rope from a drawing and quartering’s worth a great deal more, I can tell you!’
‘G’d day John,’ said Skeres companionably. ‘Here to collect the money you lent to Poley in the Fleet?’
‘That’s long settled, Nick,’ said Wolfall. ‘I’m just here to enjoy the show. Better than a bear-baiting, I’m told. Especially if you know the man who’s about to meet his maker the hard way. And you know them both, eh, Poley?’
Poley was saved from making any reply by a sudden explosion of sound from the mouth of Tyburn Road. The hurdles had arrived and suddenly everyone nearby was shouting. Some were cheering, some were hurling insults. Two horses emerged from Tyburn Road in single file. Each horse was pulling a hurdle like a simple wooden sledge on which lay a man. The men were trussed like capons ready for roasting. They each lay on their side, curled like new born babies, trying to protect themselves from the rain of spittle, night soil and rotten vegetables that was pouring relentlessly down upon them. But each of the condemned was escorted by a pair of guards to ensure that nothing was thrown at them which could knock them unconscious or kill them. They needed to be wide awake and in good repair for the terrible sentence to be carried out. Cuffe would have been able to explain the origins of the punishment and the relevance of each element as likely as not, thought Poley. Were it not being done to him.
When they reached the three legged mare of the gallows, the horses stopped, the condemned men were pulled to their feet and supported while the animals were led away. Lord Chief Justice Popham was far too important to mix with the common creatures here to see this grisly spectacle, so it was his representative who stepped forward and read once again the familiar words of the terrible sentence. At least it wasn’t Francis Bacon, thought Poley with a kind of relief. But once that final formality was done, the actual procedure got under way.
Gelly Meyrick went first. The two men supporting him moved forward until he was standing beneath the gibbet. If the Welsh swashbuckler had any last words, he kept them to himself. Derrick placed the noose over his head, slowly and carefully, settling it round his neck and tightening it by hand. Meyrick did his best to stand tall and invest his death with the dignity that everyone now knew the Earl had achieved on Tower Green. But that was hard to achieve when you’re covered in rotten vegetables, spit and shit, thought Poley grimly. At least he didn’t whimper or beg. Once the noose was settled to his satisfaction, Derrick gestured to his assistants and they pulled the far end. The rope tightened, then continued to slide smoothly through the greased channel high above. Meyrick was pulled into the air. He began to wrestle with the rope binding his wrists behind him at once, but he stayed as still as possible for a moment or two. When his feet were level with Derrick’s belt-buckle, the executioner’s assistants tied it off. Meyrick hung there, slowly choking. After a few minutes he lost control and his body took over, fighting for the breath that the noose denied him. His legs and body began to convulse.
‘Now that,’ said Skeres, impressed, ‘is what I call a Tyburn Jig.’
Meyrick’s approach seemed to change then. Whatever shred of self-control he still possessed went into an increasingly frantic attempt to end it all by breaking his own neck. But he simply couldn’t summon the weight or force to achieve his desperate objective. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Fifteen. The struggles grew weaker as consciousness began to slip away. Judging his moment with expert care, Derrick gestured to his helpers. Meyrick was lowered until his toes were mere inches above the cobbles. Derrick turned, reached for a knife with a viciously hooked blade, turned back. He reached for Meyrick’s cod-piece and pulled it aside. Poley closed his eyes.
The crowd roared. The sound seemed to Poley to be a strange mixture of horror and lust. Meyrick almost achieved speech after all – a high, shrill scream. There was a loud hiss from the brazier and an errant breeze brought the stench of burning flesh. Poley opened his eyes for a moment. Meyrick’s thighs were covered with blood, which was pumping out of him with surprising rapidity. Derrick swiftly pulled the hanging man’s shirt front wide. The tip of the curved knife went into his chest at the lower point of his breast bone and sliced swiftly downwards. Meyrick’s final word was an animal bellow compounded of agony and horror. The sides of the huge wound gaped. Derrick reached in and helped Meyrick’s intestines out, drawing him like a goose being prepared for the oven. Rope after rope of intestine tumbled free. Derrick did his best to control it all but some of it ended up on the ground. As the serpentine cascade slowed, Derrick gave a few more deft cuts and, with the help of an assistant, the intestines were free to join Meyrick’s genitals on the fire.
Derrick swung back, like an actor animated by the applause of his audience. He pushed his hand through the massive gape in Meyrick’s belly and up into his chest. He tore something out. Held it high.
‘His heart!’ said Skeres, simply awed. ‘I’ve never seen the like!’
‘And still beating!’ added Wolfall. ‘I swear it was still beating. But not for long, eh?’
The heart went onto the brazier with the rest, then Derrick was turning, gesturing. The corpse was lowered and Derrick guided it onto the clear section of the table, face down. He took the largest cleaver and hacked the head off with half a dozen brutal blows. He did not hold it up, and some of the crowd booed as he tossed it into the cauldron of boiling water while the bloodied noose swung free. As Meyrick’s head bobbed and seethed there, the executioner’s assistants tore off Meyrick’s clothes and spread the body, chest down. The cleaver chopped into the white flesh, cutting a line across the top of the hips until the torso and the legs could be pulled apart. Then another line was chopped up between the buttocks until the legs were free of each other. As the assistants added these to the cauldron, Derrick chopped the torso in half, following the hollow of the spine. The arm sections with the ribs still attached joined all the rest in the cauldron, boiling to preserve them for displ
ay at the Queen’s direction. The head would likely be dipped in tar and spiked at the Southwark end of London Bridge alongside all the others there.
‘That was as neatly done as I have ever seen it!’ said Skeres approvingly.
‘And your friend’s next, eh Poley?’ said Wolfall.
Even as Wolfall said this, Cuffe was brought forward and positioned beneath the second noose. His face was white. His eyes were tight shut but tears of terror still glistened on his cheeks. Like Meyrick, he was too wise to attempt any final words and too proud to whimper or beg. Poley was glad about that at least. Even so, the assistants still held his arms, keeping him erect despite his shaking legs. Derrick settled the noose around his neck and tightened it. He gestured to his assistants at the far end of the rope and it tautened, holding Cuffe upright as the men holding his arms released them and stepped back. The rope stretched a little but even so, Cuffe was pulled slowly up into the air. When his boots were level with Derrick’s belt buckle, the executioner made a gesture and the rope was secured to the peg in the upright.
Cuffe’s poor attempt at dignity failed then. Where Meyrick had achieved several minutes of control, Cuffe went straight into the Tyburn Jig. His bound arms flapped like clipped wings behind him, as though he was in the strappado Meyrick had arranged for Poley all that time ago. His legs pumped as though he could find a stairway in the air and leap up it to safely. Even though he was choking, he achieved a kind of animal bellow compounded of rage, terror and despair.
The sound called to Poley in a way he had never dreamed anything could. Before he knew it, he was in motion. He ran wildly into the circle, taking Derrick’s assistants by surprise. He shouldered past the nearest before he could even raise his club. Then he was pounding across the clear circle, his boots skidding on the cobbles. Derrick looked up as Poley approached the gory table with its terrible, blood-covered instruments. There was an instant in which the executioner could have stopped the intelligencer, but he hesitated, recognising him, no doubt, from Essex’s execution, as a man he had seen standing between Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Bacon. Likely to be a man of consequence, therefore. In that instant of hesitation, Poley was round the end of the table, skidding in the lake of blood that soiled the ground beneath the gibbet.
‘Stop him,’ bellowed Derrick.
His assistants jerked out of the shock that had held them like statues and began to run forward. But they were too late. Poley leaped up with all the power at his command. His shoulder smashed into Cuffe’s convulsing thigh. His face slammed into his hip, bruising and skinning his cheekbone. He bit his tongue and tasted blood. His arms reached up and closed around Cuffe’s waist. The pair of bodies swung like a pendulum, both sets of boots well clear of the ground. And Poley pulled downwards. The combination of weight, power and desperation did the trick. There was the sound of a wet branch breaking. Poley felt himself fall by several inches as the broken neck parted and stretched. Cuffe stopped dancing.
Poley let go and dropped to the ground. His forward motion hardly slowed. He pounded out from beneath the gallows and hurled toward the crowd on the opposite side to where he, Skeres and Wolfall had been standing. Something about his actions or the desperate look of him made the bloodthirsty audience fall back and he plunged into the middle of them, forcing his way through. But this was not something that could go on for long. At last he staggered to a stop, looking around, dazed. Confused. Like a man just that second stepped ashore in new-discovered America finding nothing familiar in front of him.
Poley stood there, surrounded, the centre of a circle walled with angry people: a bull in the baiting pit. He stared at them, helplessly, every emotion drained out of him: joy, despair, terror, rage. It was as though he was hollow; in a strange way, like Gelly Meyrick after Derrick disembowelled him. Well, he thought dully, at least he had saved poor Cuffe from that.
Someone shouted something. A cobble stone flew out of the crowd and smashed into his forehead, in the centre of the place the faceless Christopher Blount’s skull had knocked him unconscious at Lud Gate. He went down like a stunned ox. More missiles came but he hardly registered them, curled up just as Meyrick and Cuffe being drawn here on the hurdles to die had done. Then a pair of boots arrived to stand astride his head, one boot each side.
The last thing he heard before the darkness came was Nick Skeres saying, ‘Mother of Christ, Poley, how in God’s name are we going to get you out of this in one piece?’
AFTERWARD
The only characters in this story who are not historical figures are Lady Janet Percy, Agnes, her maid, and the Fitzherbert family. Everyone named in the Essex faction is part of the historical record and acted in the manner described, as did the various members of the Council, Sir Thomas Grey, the Bacon Brothers, Cecil and Raleigh. Sir John Heyden and Sir Richard Mansell/Robert Mansfield (authorities differ) had the duel as described but they had it just outside Norwich and Sir John’s hand is in the Norfolk Museum. Poley, Skeres, Frizer and Wolfall not only lived but also served as secret agents; however, making them witnesses to and/or participants in the Earl of Essex’s downfall is where the fiction begins.
SOURCES & AUTHORITIES
The Reckoning Charles Nicholl
Elizabeth and Essex Steven Veerapen
Elizabeth and Essex Lytton Strachey
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex Sidney Lee
Essex Tudor Rebel Tony Riches
Golden Lads Daphne DuMaurier
The Winding Stair Daphne DuMaurier
The A – Z of Elizabethan London Adrian Procter and Robert Taylor
Shakespeare’s England R E Pritchard
Elizabeth’s London Liza Picard
The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England Ian Mortimer
The Elizabethan Underworld Gamini Salgado
Hung, Drawn and Quartered Jonathan J Moore
Virgin Queen Christopher Hibbert
The Reign of Elizabeth J B Black
Elizabeth I Anne Somerset
Elizabeth, A study in Power and Intellect Paul Johnson
The Elizabethan Secret Service Alan Haynes
Elizabeth’s Spymaster Robert Hutchinson
The Thames Peter Ackroyd
Shakespeare The Biography Peter Ackroyd.
Several internet sites were consulted and may be of interest, primarily the SAT Conference 2019 which deals with the Essex uprising and which is available on You Tube.
I must also thank my wife Charmaine who is prime editrix on all my manuscripts, Dr Jonathan Botting for his advice on the medical aspects of beheading, Angela, Librarian at Castletown library on the Isle of Man, and Dr Steven Veerapen for his excellent book, his help and advice.
Peter Tonkin, Castletown and Tunbridge Wells, 2021