There was a stirring, and the queen appeared. She was flanked by ladies-in-waiting, a surpliced chaplain and the red-coated guards. She looked thin and haggard, bony shoulders hunched inside her white cloak, her hair tied up in a coif. As she approached the block she kept looking back, as though a messenger might arrive with a reprieve from the king. After nine years at the heart of the court she should have known better; this great orchestrated spectacle would not be stopped. As she came close, huge brown eyes surrounded by dark rings darted wildly round the scaffold and I think, like me, she was looking for the sword.
In my dream there are none of the long preliminaries; no long prayers, no speech from the scaffold by Queen Anne beseeching all to pray for the life of the king. In my dream she kneels down at once, facing the crowd, and starts to pray. I hear again her thin harsh cries, over and over, 'Jesu, receive my soul! Lord God, have pity on my soul!' Then the executioner bends and produces the great sword from where it had lain hidden in the straw. 'So that's where it was,' I think, then flinch and cry out as it swings through the air faster than the eye can follow and the queen's head flies up and outwards in a great spray of blood. Again I feel a rush of nausea and close my eyes as a great murmur comes from the crowd, broken by the odd 'hurrah'. I open them again at the prescribed words, 'So perish all the king's enemies,' barely intelligible in the executioner's French accent. The straw and his clothes are drenched with the blood that still pumps from the corpse, and he holds up the queen's dripping head.
The papists say that at that moment the candles in Dover church lit spontaneously, and there were other such silly legends around the country, but I can attest for myself that the eyes in the queen's severed head did move, roving madly round the crowd, the lips working as though trying to speak. Someone shrieked in the crowd behind me and I heard a susurration as the crowd, all in their best puffed-sleeved clothing, crossed themselves. In truth it was less than thirty seconds, not the half an hour people said later, before the movement stopped. But in my nightmare I relived each of those seconds, praying for those ghastly eyes to be still. Then the executioner tossed the head into an arrow box, which served as coffin, and as it landed with a thud I woke with a cry to the sound of someone knocking at the door.
I lay breathing heavily, my sweat congealing in the bitter cold. The knocking came again, then Alice's voice called urgently, 'Master Shardlake! Commissioner!'
It was dead of night, the fire burned low and the room was icy. Mark groaned and stirred in his pallet.
'What is it?' I called, my heart still pounding after the nightmare, my voice shaky.
'Brother Guy asks you to come, sir.'
'Wait a moment!' I heaved myself out of bed and lit a candle from the embers of the fire. Mark rose too, blinking and tousle-haired.
'What's happening?'
'I don't know. Stay here.' I threw on my hose and opened the door. The girl stood outside, a white apron over her dress.
'I beg your pardon, sir, but Simon Whelplay is very sick and must speak to you. Brother Guy said I should wake you.'
'Very well.' I followed her down the freezing corridor. A little way along a door stood open. I heard voices: Brother Guy's and another that whimpered in distress. Looking in, I saw the novice lying on a truckle bed. His face shone with sweat and he muttered feverishly, his breath wheezing and rasping. Brother Guy sat by the bed, mopping his brow with a cloth that he dipped in a bowl.
'What ails him?' I could not keep the nervousness from my voice, for the sweating sickness made people writhe and gasp so.
The infirmarian looked at me, his face serious. 'It is a congestion of the lungs. No wonder, standing about in the cold with no food. He has a dangerous temperature. But he keeps asking to speak with you. He will not rest till he has done so.'
I approached the bed, reluctant to go too close lest he breathe the humours of his fever on me. The boy fixed red-rimmed eyes on me. 'Commissioner, sir,' he croaked. 'You are sent here to do justice?'
'Yes, I am here to investigate Commissioner Singleton's death.'
'He is not the first to be killed,' he gasped. 'Not the first. I know.'
'What do you mean? Who else has died?'
A series of racking coughs shook his thin frame, phlegm gurgling in his chest. He lay back, exhausted. His eyes fell on Alice.