The Bright Pavilions by Walpole Hugh

Author:Walpole, Hugh [Walpole, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Historical Fiction
Publisher: epubBooks Classics
Published: 2015-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

THE MARTYR

It had been rainy, off and on, for many days and the roads of the City were thick and deep with foul mud on this Friday, December 1st. Robin, wrapped in a thick cloak of Irish frieze, stood in Holborn pressed with the crowd.

It was a large crowd and excited, which was curious, for there had been many of these sights: it was no new thing to see condemned men dragged on the hurdles through the streets. But Campion had roused interest. There were many stories: how, under the rack, he had screamed and screamed, crying out that he denied God. Others said that when he had been first stripped the executioners had said: 'The flesh is as soft as a woman's.' They said that his limbs had been twisted so that he could not stand, and that, whether he had recanted or no, he was now firm and resolute and as ardent a Catholic as ever he'd been. Men had argued these weeks as to whether he were rightly punished or no, for it was clear that he had been himself no politician even though he had been mixed up with those who were. It was right enough, of course, that those who plotted against the Queen should be punished; but should not a man have permission to serve his own faith? There were those who said that you could not be a Catholic without being a traitor, but for the most part there was a sympathy for Campion and a liking for him. But this sympathy was mixed with a sadistic desire to see him suffer, to see anybody suffer, to hear anybody cry out, to see the waxen paralysed face and the sudden spirt of blood. Londoners, for many years now, had been encouraged to see these sights and hear these sounds. Blood ran through the City, blood and mud, rain and plague, lice and rats, foul water and dead stinking dogs and cats. Old women were tortured for their private hoards, old men had their teeth plucked out and their finger–nails, small children were debauched, and the bull–baitings, bear–baitings, cock–fights, dog– fights, rat–fights were filled with this stink of stale blood and with the muttered whispers of half–exhausted lechers.

But on a day when the sun shone and the flags hung out and the bands played through the streets and the train–bands marched and the apprentices shouted, all was light and colour and song. London was as clean as a whistle and bright as a new–painted toy. The fresh water gurgled through the gutters, and the jewels and dagger– hilts and mirrors and shoe–buckles glittered in the shops, and the crowd pressed the barriers, and wine flowed like water.

Not to–day though. The morning was bitterly cold, the wind wild, the rain stung like whips, and from underfoot the mud oozed up over shoes and ankles like a live thing. When London was cold it was an agony, for the cracks and crevices of the buildings caught the cold and blew it out into the street in icy gusts.

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