In the cleared space beside the pyre the executioner’s assistant used bellows to heat up a coal brazier. The air shimmered above the glowing coals while, on the ground beside them, two pitch-smeared torches waited to carry the flames from the brazier to the faggots. Someone called out to the executioner for a farthing’s worth of chestnuts. The big, leather-jacketed man smiled tiredly. He was used to all the old jokes. Dying had no surprises for him.

A cheer started low down the hill, hard by the Tower gate, a cheer that turned into a spreading, growing roar. She was coming! Small children were hoisted on to their father’s shoulders, people stood on tiptoes and stretched their necks. The preachers shouted praises. God’s will was about to be done on earth.

The cheer had started because the Tower gates had opened. Those closest in the crowd could see the horse and cart waiting that would draw Campion on her short, last journey. She could have walked, but that would have cheated the crowd of their sight of her, and so the soldiers had commandeered one of the Tower’s dung carts to carry her to her death.

Campion walked toward the cart. She could see through the open archway and she sensed the presence of the vast crowd. The noise was appalling. A roar, a growl, the sound of a crowd baying and howling their hatred, egged on by God’s ministers. The noise was like a furious animal, assaulting her, and for the first time that day she flinched from her ordeal.

Imagination was her curse now. She was afraid. She shrivelled inside at the thought of the first touch of flame, the heat on an ankle perhaps, and then the searing agony of light about her, the shift burning, her skin bubbling, her screams winging out to feed the crowd’s hatred. She imagined her hair burning and she knew the pain would be terrible, far worse than her imaginings, a hell on earth that would be followed, at last, by peace in heaven. She would meet Sir George, she thought, and she imagined his shy smile greeting her in heaven, and she wondered whether there was such happiness in heaven that earthly sadness was forgotten. She did not want to forget Toby.

Faithful Unto Death Hervey hissed in her ear, “‘Hath I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? Saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways.’ That’s the scripture woman, the scripture! Repent!”

She ignored him. She could not climb unaided into the cart, but the captain of her guard lifted her himself, then held her elbow as he walked across the foul, slippery boards. He tied her by the neck to the high upright poles that protected the driver from his normal loads. The captain wanted to say something to her, but he could think of nothing that could have any meaning to her now. He smiled instead.

The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey pushed through the jostling soldiers to the cart’s edge. He had been warned to walk behind, rather than on the cart, because of the missiles that would be hurled. He shouted up at her, his voice hardly audible over the crowd, over the laughter of the troops, “Repent, woman! Your death is at hand! Repent!”