“Speak English. Speak English.” He minced as though lying were lecherous. “You are a liar in plain English.”

He would have been stunning but his nervous mouth always chewed on his cheek. “I will burn you—whore, Lollard, deceiver of the people!” He expected Margery to fall on her face and beg.

She said, “I am as redy, ser, to gon to preson as thee am redy to gon to chirche.”

“Ah,” said the Mayor with a meaningless smile.

•

Margery climbed to a privy in the prison tower. In company she was bright with expression but alone, smiling still, her teeth started chattering; the vibration reminded her of her skull.

There was a window she could put her face through. She saw orchards crowded beneath blond hills, city walls, and people laughing and pointing at her, saying, “Amazing, amazing.” The window’s position was a town joke and Margery became part of the joke’s folklore: the holy woman with her ass on the pot and her face in the clouds. Margery hoped Jesus wouldn’t hear of that, but she also laughed.

The Mayor took Margery by the hand and led her into his chamber; he told her he wanted to lick her breasts, that his cock was stiff and he wanted her to taste it.

“Sir, I am the daughter of a man who was mayor five times.” He rubbed himself and wet his lips. Margery felt giddy, that her body betrayed her by blushing.

“Tell me whether you talk with Jesus or the devil.” His breath was labored.

The Mayor repeated the question to himself that night when continuous rain pounded Leicester. People said it rained because he had thrown Margery in prison.

37

On the second Wednesday of July, Margery was brought to the Church of All Hallows before the high altar where the Abbot of Leicester and some canons were seated. There were friars, priests, and townsfolk who came to see if Margery would be burnt—so many they jostled and scrambled onto stools. They were coarse: a wave of acrid sweat, faces and hands added later.

The Mayor cried, “Silence!” and the Abbot put his spectacles on and looked around to see who was talking. The Mayor wore a blue silk mantle with an orange border. He wondered if the fear in Margery’s eyes when she saw him was mirrored in his own.

Margery knelt before the altar and raised her palms in the position of piety. It was a scene from a penny broadside, the clumsy perspective jumble, the figures partaking of the wooden block that made them.

The Mayor asked, “What have you done with the baby conceived in adultery and spawned when you were abroad?”