John, looking behind him at the tight-packed crowd and then forwards to the stage, thought it seemed like an exercise in perspective, like Inigo Jones’s deceiving painted scenery for a masque, the penultimate scene of a masque which would be followed by the ascension, with Jehovah coming down from a great cloud and the handmaidens of Peace and Justice dancing together.

The two executioners climbed the steps to the platform and there was a gasp at their appearance. They were in costume, in false wigs and false beards and dark brown doublets and breeches.

‘What are they wearing? Masquing clothes?’ Alexander asked of the man on his left.

‘Disguised to hide their identity,’ the man said shortly. ‘It’ll be Brandon the hangman hidden under that beard, unless it’s Cromwell himself doing the job.’

John briefly closed his eyes and opened them again. The scene had not changed; it was still unbearable. The chief executioner positioned the block, laid down his axe and stepped back, his arms folded, waiting.

It was a long wait, the crowd grew restless.

‘A reprieve?’ Alexander suggested. ‘The plan he had for peace finally heard and accepted?’

‘No,’ someone said in the crowd nearby. ‘He has been stabbed to death by Cromwell himself.’

‘I heard there was an escape,’ someone else said. ‘He must have escaped. If he was dead they would show the body.’

The rumour and the speculation continued all the morning in a swirl of muttering all around John who stood cold and silent in the middle of it all.

‘I must find something to eat,’ Alexander said. ‘I am famished.’

‘I don’t want anything,’ John said.

‘You must be starving, man; and cold,’ Alexander exclaimed. ‘Let me bring you a loaf of bread when I buy some dinner for myself.’

John shook his head. ‘I feel nothing,’ he said simply. ‘Nothing at all.’

Alexander shook his head and wriggled through the crowd to where an enterprising baker was selling hot bread rolls from a tray. It took him more than an hour to regain his place at John’s side but still nothing had happened.

‘I brought you some bread,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And I filled my flask with rum.’

John took the bread in his hand but he did not eat it. His eyes were fixed on the scaffold.

‘They are saying that the Scots have visited Colonel Fairfax, who was against this from the start, and that they are all going to Cromwell to beg for a reprieve. The king can be free to live abroad, even Scotland.’

John shook his head.

‘I know,’ Alexander said. ‘If they gave him so much as a farthing’s chance he would raise an army and come back again. If he can conspire from prison when he is bound by his word of honour, what would he do loose amid the courts of Europe? He would always come back again. They can’t trust him with his life.’